Endwalker was "meh" (for reasons other than technical issues)

[DoH]

Calling the Garleans 'dumb' for refusing the aid of their enemy since conception is a bit flippant, don't you think?

The Legatus had a point - warring states don't do things out of the goodness of their hearts, regardless of what you and the contingency believe. The offering of aid carries and implicit expectation that the Garleans who accept will cooperate with their 'liberators,' which is a hard thing to sell after all of the things the alliance - and especially the WoL - have done to them. In a way, it's a predatory proposition - they are in no position to refuse, and if they do, then they will starve and freeze to death. Whether they were wrong in the war is irrelevant at this point.

That's not even talking about how utterly terrifying it must be to see the WoL in their presence. Having heard the things the WoL and alliance has done to Garleans (and then multiplied due to likely propaganda), how could you possibly trust them?

Because... the WoL could literally kill every single one of them then and there if he wanted to? If the point was to subjugate them, we would already be doing it lol. Also, we had no problem knocking out tempered Garleans on our way there. It would've made much more sense if, instead of letting ourselves be captured, we just knocked everyone out and left them with some supplies that they would wake up to. Then they could choose whether to eat the food or not, and they could find out after the fact (when they aren't subjugated) that we were honest when we said that we're just there to help and not take their country over.

[Orieldis]

Because... the WoL could literally kill every single one of them then and there if he wanted to? If the point was to subjugate them, we would already be doing it lol. Also, we had no problem knocking out tempered Garleans on our way there. It would've made much more sense if, instead of letting ourselves be captured, we just knocked everyone out and left them with some supplies that they would wake up to. Then they could choose whether to eat the food or not, and they could find out after the fact (when they aren't subjugated) that we were honest when we said that we're just there to help and not take their country over.

Sure, we could have just gone in and killed them all, but then:
1) there would be nothing left to subjugate - which was not the intention, and
2) proves the Garleans right about us - that we're savage monsters.
The contingency, no matter how well intentioned, was a means to end the war that, evidently, many Garleans had no interest in doing, even in times of desperation. We even see this after the Legatus commits suicide - many of the refugees are so broken and tired that they just don't care any more and are simply desperate to live. We stripped them of any choice in the matter by moving in when they were at their most desperate, and even then they still wanted to fight. Were we right to do this? From a humanitarian standpoint, yeah. It's either this, or they all die slow and painful deaths. Were they justified to resist, or at the very least, remain skeptical? Sure.

And, if you ask me, the whole "We're merely knocking them out!" wave off was probably the weakest point in the story for me. Ignoring the fact that telling a whole army to set their guns and swords to stun mode is really stupid, so many of the refugees were weak and sick that 'knocking them out' probably would have meant killing them.

[Shougun]

I thought the Garlean section was quite nice, how they behaved is exactly how a lot of people behave on many issues (some far minor). The extra touches given the situation were also interesting, like the propaganda music.

Which is one of, many, reasons why I think the story had many gray elements (unlike a post that said it was more light and dark). Bias, propaganda, pride, nationalism, whatever form of fervent emotion that decides self checks and balances are not worth doing anymore because it's impossible to see, feel, or think anything else, stuff that can take good people and make them do bad things or seem really dull when they're really not. With FFXIV often responding with redemption and opportunity to grow, or at worse a relationship of how such things became as they were and not simply "bad is bad", not speaking strictly EW. A message that has generally, but not put in this way before, said many times in this game, imo.

[IdowhatIwant]

Perhaps on the part of the legatus, but what really irked me was (as I stated above) the fact that Alphinaud was too stupid to offer any sort of retort. He just clenches his fist and is unable to explain how the Garlean invasion of Eorzea is different from us providing supplies..

Can't have an FF expansion with out a clenched fist.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Absolutely agree on Ultima Thule and Omega. It was obvious from the outset. The same is true of the Moon and Y'shtola revealing the rabbits benefactor is the forum. Obviously the devs know we can figure it out so if there needs to be a moment of 'revelation' at least let us bring it up since we've been aching to point it out since getting to those zones.

With the Moon, I felt like Y'shtola just outright saying it despite the Loporits trying to build it up was hanging a lampshade on how obvious it was. It felt like the writers knew we'd figure it out almost immediately and used it to make a point about how out of touch the Loporits are.

My biggest issue with the story as a whole is that I don't feel like Zenos really adds anything. But then, I don't feel like he's really added anything to the game since the Royal Menagerie, so that was to be expected. The pacing was also a little shaky at a few points. But overall, I'm mostly satisfied with it.

[SgtPepperUK]

I agree with a little of what you say, some of it for slightly different reasons:

Huge Amounts of Pointless Time Sinks - I actually am not too bothered by the things you've brought up but I do have my own gripes about travel and also split zones. I don't like the thing of having to do 6 FATEs to upgrade chocobo speed. Namely, because the chocobo speed is so slow that getting to those FATEs before they're finished, with enough time to get gold on them, is a pain. IMO it would be better to have the faster speed from the off and maybe gate an Aether Current behind the first tier of Shared FATEs instead. This was compounded by split zones, where I would start heading to a FATE to find it was locked behind an invisible wall. One split zone per expansion at most in future is something I would like to see, if they must do them at all.

Too Much Doom and Gloom - I actually think they did a great job of balancing things here. Yes, there are dark moments, bleak moments but it never descends into misery porn, which some games absolutely would have at that point. Garlemald in particular hits a couple of very dark moments but then we help reunite a family for instance. And isn't that the theme of EW, yes, there are bad times and bad things happen but also good times and good deeds? As to Zenos, I'll grant you that one. The last fight with him upset the pacing for me at that point. I would have also liked the option of simply walking away from him.

Dumb Dialogue - Whilst I felt there were a couple of cringey moments on other parts of the story, I don't think it was all that dumb. Garlemald in particular, it actually made sense. These were a proud people who were sure that a plan was in place that would see the empire rise again. Why would they accept that the "barbarians" who, in their eyes, had victimised them historically to the extent that they set forth and found Garlemald, suddenly want to help them? From their point of view, we were there to take advantage of the disaster that had struck them, trying to subjugate them again before they could regroup, spreading lies to make them think the situation was worse than it was.

[Kyrj]

I didn't care for the "Final Days" bit. Not one thing about it felt "Final Days"ish, not one. You don't see any other zones affected by this other than one small cutscene showing a guy stumbling around in Ishgard and most of it takes place in a few quests in Thavnair and that's it, you're TOLD about it but never experience it. Once you've done the quests you're sent to Elpis to fap about chasing an NPC that had no real point being in the story. You come back and do some crap in Sharlayan and then that's it, off to the main bad guys base of operations, no resistance, no fights, no nothing. The towers? Nothing ever came of that, if Zenos could've just gone to the moon and destroyed the seals...why didn't he just do that to begin with? What was the point of alerting the entire world with your giant towers if it was just going to fail and for you to go "welp guess we'll just have to go there and one shot the remaining seal ourselves" while our character just stands there and watches no less....

[Rhysati]

This expansion, imo, is a mess. The pacing is all over the place and constantly undercuts any sort of tension or climax there is to be had. Just as "The Final Days" begin and it seems like the expansion is FINALLY going to move, it immediately does a 180 and goes back to escorting people around and hours of dialogue so we can see how the apocalypse is started ages ago. Great...I don't care. I care about the fact that people are currently dying and the end is nigh.

Then you have the nonsense of the space bunnies and moon spaceship that screamed Hitchhiker's. We also killed one of our Gods a few levels into the expansion because why pay off the entity we have been told is the 'evil' god that the 'good' one is locked forever in step with. And for some unknown reason NOBODY has the common sense to realize that killing one of the two that are in balance is probably a REALLY bad idea. Then we have storytime in the past to learn about how the ascians were bonkers insane and created a Terminator that is going to kill us all. Then we have a mass-effect style spaceship for some reason that is in complete defiance of everything the world knows about technology wise. It doesn't even look Allagan or Garlean. It looks like it's from an entirely different sci-fi universe.

And through all of this, all of the scions seem generally rather unbothered or unsurprised about pretty much any of it. I was sitting there for so much of this going: "Why does everyone seem so cool about all this? You just found out the moon is a spaceship filled with bunnies put there to save you from the apocalypse. How in any way is this something you all aren't absolutely shaken by? Your entire LIVES have been a lie in the grand scheme of things!

The story is like playing through a Kojima fever dream. And it's not even remotely up to par considering the expansions that came before it. I don't know why they felt the need to rush everything and try to close every plothole they could in rapid succession, but it is terribly executed.

With that said, I'm very happy for anyone that truly enjoys this xpac and it's story. I really wish I did as well considering how much I liked the previous one.

[SeverianLyonesse]

I didn't care for the "Final Days" bit. Not one thing about it felt "Final Days"ish, not one. You don't see any other zones affected by this other than one small cutscene showing a guy stumbling around in Ishgard and most of it takes place in a few quests in Thavnair and that's it, you're TOLD about it but never experience it. Once you've done the quests you're sent to Elpis to fap about chasing an NPC that had no real point being in the story. You come back and do some crap in Sharlayan and then that's it, off to the main bad guys base of operations, no resistance, no fights, no nothing. The towers? Nothing ever came of that, if Zenos could've just gone to the moon and destroyed the seals...why didn't he just do that to begin with? What was the point of alerting the entire world with your giant towers if it was just going to fail and for you to go "welp guess we'll just have to go there and one shot the remaining seal ourselves" while our character just stands there and watches no less....

There has been a lot of convenient "telling" what happened off-screen instead of showing in Endwalker, at least as far as I've gotten. So far, we have had:

* Thavnairian research team making hundreds of talismans overnight.
* Garlean prisoners being rescued almost as soon as they are locked up.
* Body swapping (at least twice), in possibly the most inconsequential doppelganger arc I've ever encountered.
* The 10th legion seeking aid from the Eorzean Alliance.
* The repairing of one of the six seals almost immediately after it got shattered.

So far I admit to some disappointment in the quality of the writing. Unlike every other expansion that came before it, I feel like I am rushing through a checklist of things they wanted to cram into the finale. I think the Sharlayan/Garlemald duality is the strongest core of the story, but with each only receiving one zone they tried to pack in too much else around that...Thavnair, the moon, the past, the final days...

Maybe I will feel differently when I finish the expansion, but everything else just feels so tight by comparison: Ishgardian v. Dragon zones; Gyr Abania v. Doma zones; alter-Aldenard zones. And here there's no real thematic or geographical unity so far...just a bunch spare threads they wanted to halphazardly tie up. I think they either should have pushed back the Ascian resolution on the Moon to 6.X/7.0, or otherwise saved Thavnair for 7.0 when we could visit the southern continent and/or the rest of Garlemald...

[Auryan]

Then you have the nonsense of the space bunnies and moon spaceship that screamed Hitchhiker's. We also killed one of our Gods a few levels into the expansion because why pay off the entity we have been told is the 'evil' god that the 'good' one is locked forever in step with. And for some unknown reason NOBODY has the common sense to realize that killing one of the two that are in balance is probably a REALLY bad idea. Then we have storytime in the past to learn about how the ascians were bonkers insane and created a Terminator that is going to kill us all. Then we have a mass-effect style spaceship for some reason that is in complete defiance of everything the world knows about technology wise. It doesn't even look Allagan or Garlean. It looks like it's from an entirely different sci-fi universe.

We knew or at the very least had a vague idea of the ramifications of disposing Zodiark, but then again, what other choice was there? The binds were broken and a psychopath hijacked the eldest and most powerful primal and was about to commit planeticide, what could have been done? Ask the people on Etherys to cough up half of their populace to power Hydaelyn to rebind him?

The Ancients were...eccentric, but only one was actually planet-ending dangerous (Hermes). The others tried to actually nip the Final Days in the bud, but things happened and escalated. And if we're going with pop culture comparison, I think Meteion and her sisters made me think of what would happen if the Borg went nihilistic. Certainly didn't see this development coming, but I was absolutely enthralled (and depressed) during the many retellings of the many tragedies of those fallen worlds. I really hope that becomes a topic for future side quests. Maybe after completing all of the role quests or something.

The design of the ship isn't either Garlean or Allagan. It's a design by Venat and the other ancients skeptical of Zodiark's plan that the Loporits built on over the millennia (the one thing they didn't completely screw up) while being isolated on the Moon-ship thing. Of course the Etherians made their last minute modifications too, but the bulk is Ancient technology.

Maybe that made things a little clearer. I'm still digesting the story and may take a while. Thoroughly enjoyed it, even if I have some nitpicky complaints.

EDIT: didn't like my original comparison of Borg v. Terminator, so removed it and added more unnecessary information