Quote Originally Posted by MikkoAkure View Post
I’ve read through the thread and wonder if some of us have been playing the same game this whole time.
I started playing the game in around April or May and have felt this way about the entire lore forum. I thought it was just me not having the decade-long experience and familiarity. Or I am crazy, which is usually the correct answer.

In other places online, there are specific groups that tend to have more to talk about than "this zone was very slow, retcon, aether blade, etc." A lot of it is fanfic community and people who write.

Like, if you thought Labyrinthos was slow then maybe you weren't paying attention to the quests.

The quest where we have to find 8 distraught high-security-clearance scientists to comfort with loporrits, which are basically Venat's comfort toys for people in senior living facilities... I know the medium limits that quest a lot, but I felt like they were making a statement about what it means to live. People need companionship and someone to say, "Hey, are you okay?" And more often than in instances where they need CPR! Everyday anxieties and insecurities about whether we did everything we could. Existential dread that can come with being a scientist in a field faced with the end of civilization and asking you to fix an impossible problem (climate scientists, anyone who deals in environmental engineering, etc.... basically anyone in earth sciences, health, biology).

The things that give people the "boost" to make all this possible in FFXIV are magical in some kind of way -- whether it is moogles, flying pigs, dragons, loporrits and their technology...but in life we have to decide for ourselves what that magic spark is. The magic can even make a difference in these everyday situations that don't seem critical (the quest I mentioned was part of an instanced zone and the music that plays is like "I'm on a mission to save the world" music).

With Endwalker specifically, the story had to cover so much ground that they were stuck with uniting the bits thematically. And the themes of this game are very deep, personal, and meaningful themes.
What does it mean to live? What does it take to survive? Why do we need to fight? Is there a reason/answer? The collapse of civilizations. Despair.


I think geeking out about lore of stories naturally tries to avoid these ideas to get down to some kind of answer, and that Endwalker's STORY is saying, "You need to find your own answer within." This naturally feels at odds with the "facts" and how they change over the course of how the story is told (I admit, some of the facts still bother me--I am at the last trial).

However, I think there is a balance we can achieve here between this type of take and the lore details (which is just as, if not more important--don't get me wrong!!). There is no "story" forum. I have checked.