What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Atelier-Bagur]

I kinda like how this whole "story thread' is getting so deep that were discussing the nature of morality and ethics. Im not being sarcastic, its just that its been very interesting to see how much people read into things with Endwalker's story.

[Theodric]

It would have been nice to be given a 'Blessing of Darkness' from Zodiark to balance things out. Perhaps as a last desperate act before he was taken over by Fandaniel.

I was hoping that our character would be 'depowered' in some way to better allow for a more grounded adventure. Our character already has the Echo, to tap into for all sorts of weird and wonderful plot conveniences so I'm not too sure why we need the Blessing of Light, specifically, to remain.

Especially since it seems counterproductive of the goal of allowing the Sundered to stand upon their own two feet which...was supposedly Venat's goal with the Sundering...?

Meh.

[Vyrerus]

A person acting against the majority is just when the cause is just, wrong when the cause is wrong.

And who or what decides what is just or unjust? Who or what decides what is right and what is wrong? Who or what is the absolute?

Ultimately it is up to everyone as individuals to decide what is right or what is wrong, and then physically enact their will onto reality. You could chest thump all day long about whether a particular act is right or wrong, but unless you can enforce what you think is right then you're just blowing smoke.

Morals are ultimately subjective. You can't show me a single atom of justice. There is no molecular structure for righteousness. There is no physical law in reality that prevents one man from destroying another on a whim.

In our world, in order to judge others, all we need do is make it part of our own individual moral system that our system is superior. Then we judge without second thought. It becomes our imperative to judge them, because we make it so.

You can see these differences firsthand everyday. Look in on a family who is deeply Christian with completely home schooled children. They look down on the world and judge it harshly. Then look to a gaggle of LGBT college graduates rooming together in a large city apartment. They also look down on the world and judge it harshly, but for completely different reasons.

If you were to ask either of these families what was right and wrong, they would have different answers. And then, living in completely different ways, they could each succeed in life reinforcing their personally held beliefs about what is right.

So, again, who or what provides us with an absolute moral system?

[Teraq]

Dude, I thought this was just going to be a Q&A, not a "the devs are going to go and personally confirm every single one of Teraq's worst fears about the story of Endwalker and what it very obviously implied about the Ancients being bad and not deserving a future" session.

I'm pouring one out for the most tragic character in the entire saga, who doomed his entire civilisation and people with a time loop that would influence Venat to take the actions she did, and lived for 12,000 years apparently hiding his amnesia well enough for Emet-Selch to only ponder it circa Stormblood according to the Tales From The Shadows.

Also, I loved that Zenos's dreams actually amounted to nothing and that Fandaniel's musing on Emet-Selch was just "Hmmmm... I guess Emet-Selch fucks". I mean. Obviously, Danny. Look at the guy.

Honestly it's a real shame Final Fantasy XIV's storyline stopped at 5.3. I would have loved to see where it would go from there. Ah well. I guess we will never know.

I could ask the same for the sundered. After the walking plot-armor that is the WoL (a.k.a us the players) died, hundreds or thousand years later, what stopping them from making the same mistake as the Ea/dragons/omicron? Or the Ancients themselves even. We know from the Allag Empire era that the sundered isn't that much different from the Ancients. They seek prosperity, then they stagnated. Or perhaps they will go in the direction of the second world of "Dead Ends".

I'm sorry Kozh, but you can only draw Dead Ends / Ultima Thule parallels with the Ancients. I don't make the rules, all right?
(Also, let's not forget to mention the first world of Dead Ends: Emet explicitly made note that the Sundered were susceptible to disease, after all. I see no reason why such a scenario wouldn't simply start as soon as tomorrow.)

[Rosenstrauch]

Dude, I thought this was just going to be a Q&A, not a "the devs are going to go and personally confirm every single one of Teraq's worst fears about the story of Endwalker

That about sums it up for me. This Q&A has swiftly become FFXIV's Burning of Teldrassil—the event that convinces me I don't want to keep paying to play this game. And it's a shame, too. I really did enjoy Endwalker's story.

[Atelier-Bagur]

That about sums it up for me. This Q&A has swiftly become FFXIV's Burning of Teldrassil—the event that convinces me I don't want to keep paying to play this game. And it's a shame, too. I really did enjoy Endwalker's story.

I think this game has reached the point where due to its MMO nature, will no matter what wont please everybody in terms of how its story was handled. Me personally I have been enjoying it for what it is and the personal emotional journey between my WoL and the main cast. Obviously story beats throughout this big arc has been hit or miss with some folk. Some people didnt care for Minfillia, some people really got attached to Ishgard and its plight, others didnt care for Ala Mhigo, others made the First their new home and others couldnt care less for the final Zenos fight. Certain moments that occur everyone will have their own interpretation for their meaning and its just difficult to gauge everybody's expectations, especially due it being an MMO story. Its clear that the writing team while they had a set end goal for this story, they didnt have every single detail set in stone from the beginning (that would honestly be too ridiculous to believe) and perhaps we should scale back a bit with how we should take the story presented here. Personally Ive been treating FFXIV as one of the best jrpg stories to date......but a jrpg story is still a jrpg story at the end of the day, you're going to have your usual tropes and themes.

Yeah it sucks that for some folk they wound up getting too disappointed for what was supposed to be the big pay off, although I think its a bit too much to think that we've gotten the next Burning of Teldrassil, thats being a little dramatic.

[Theodric]

That about sums it up for me. This Q&A has swiftly become FFXIV's Burning of Teldrassil—the event that convinces me I don't want to keep paying to play this game. And it's a shame, too. I really did enjoy Endwalker's story.

Heh.

I heard about that particular controversy. I had long since quit WoW before that point but for similar reasons. I was getting pretty tired of the characters and races I rooted for consistently being given a raw deal, often through increasingly contrived plot devices and a lack of meaningful consequences for the characters responsible for their plight.

[Teraq]

Heh.

I heard about that particular controversy. I had long since quit WoW before that point but for similar reasons. I was getting pretty tired of the characters and races I rooted for consistently being given a raw deal, often through increasingly contrived plot devices and a lack of meaningful consequences for the characters responsible for their plight.

I suppose I'm lucky in that while I've been playing Warcraft since I was a 6 year old girl who thought the Trolls with warpaint and big technicolor mohawks were cool (yes, I just played with cheat codes on and made my own maps), I've never really cared for WoW's storyline, I just find the lore of its world mildly interesting (or used to, anyway).

WoW lost me when it started to become apparent that they had stopped caring about entirely solo queue players like me, so around WoD. Thankfully, I turned to FFXIV, which to this day, still feeds me the weekly Valor cap through random queue faceroll instanced content I crave.

[Theodric]

I suppose I'm lucky in that while I've been playing Warcraft since I was a 6 year old girl who thought the Trolls with warpaint and big technicolor mohawks were cool (yes, I just played with cheat codes on and made my own maps), I've never really cared for WoW's storyline, I just find the lore of its world mildly interesting (or used to, anyway).

WoW lost me when it started to become apparent that they had stopped caring about entirely solo queue players like me, so around WoD. Thankfully, I turned to FFXIV, which to this day, still feeds me the weekly Valor cap through random queue faceroll instanced content I crave.

I favoured playing Blood Elves and Night Elves. I suppose if nothing else there's a certain irony in it. I left WoW due to becoming disillusioned with how the various Elven races were treated as an annoyance for doing everything possible in order to survive and for disallowing themselves to be subjected to genocide.

It took me a while to find another MMO that was to my personal tastes. FFXIV lured me in with what promised to be a more mature and consistent narrative. I liked both the Garleans and the Ancients as far back as ARR and yet here we are - with both the Garleans and the Ancients being treated as an annoyance for...doing everything possible in order to survive and for disallowing themselves to be subjected to genocide.

[Rosenstrauch]

I suppose I'm lucky in that while I've been playing Warcraft since I was a 6 year old girl who thought the Trolls with warpaint and big technicolor mohawks were cool

I mean. They are. I bought Warcraft 2 back when it released from one of those Scholastic catalogues, and I was blown away by how cool the Horde was in general, but especially the Trolls and their leader, Zul'jin. You could write out the entirety of his story on a sticky note, but it worked for me back then and it still does now. Even the part where he eventually became a raid boss in WoW: The Burning Crusade, where the Amani (Forest Trolls) were hit hard with the villain bat and Zuljin was made into a raid boss... it worked for me, because it was entirely in line with who Zuljin and his people were.

This, for me, is more like the rapid downward spiral most WoW characters take once they have any degree of prominence. It's not even a uniform drop in WoW's case, and this drop has been sharper and more painful than any of them. But to rattle off a few names: Tyrande, Vol'jin, Sylvanas, Lor'themar, Varok Saurfang, Thalyssra, Jaina, and Wrathion are all characters I once sincerely enjoyed seeing in the story. They were among my favorites. And invariably, each of them has been run into the ground in ways that defied explanation.

My favorite character in Endwalker? It is—or was—Venat. But from what I'm seeing of the Q&A, I was completely wrong about her character, and everything I did like about her was actually a carefully framed lie on the writers' part, made to convince me she was something other than what they intended all along.