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

[Lunalepsy]

• The mighty Zodiark, which has been build up as this mighty(evil) entity over several expansions, turns out to be nothing but filler trash for the first Endwalker trial
• The true cause of the Final Days is a pet-project from an ancient which goes mad after observing countless dead world and possibly causing the death of several world by projecting negative emotions unto them, and is thus dead-set on bringing despair to every world, upon which said ancient goes mad and is now letting her run her course to test humanity if they can withstand/fight despair
• Venat, who hasn't had her memory wiped + still remembers you from being in Elpis, quite apparently doesn't lift a finger to learn about Dynamis herself or to mobilize the other ancients to end Meteion then and there, and instead chooses to turn herself into Hydaelyn, sunder the world and the inhabitants, thereby forcing them to live with and face despair and gambling that their resilience against despair might be enough to face Meteion one day

Really?
This is the best SQ could do in terms of story after ShB?

Don't bother showing the truth around these parts.

[Erza_Scarlets]

Shadowbringers was better in overall story. Endwalker just seemed forced to finish the arc faster and close all the gaps. Endwalker did have lot more cs time. After finishing the story I tried it again on alt to see how much time is cutoff with skipping and its big difference to other expansions. Even with skipping others was pretty long vs endwalker has all the story put in more cs's.

Before doing the story I thought what would happen is Zenos kills Fandaniel and Zodiark then corrupts Hydaelyn forcing you to face the corrupted Hydaelyn to save the world with no Zodiark to balance it. Doing all this to force us to have to confront him again.

One part that was interesting is the different races we meet in last zone. Would been great if they expand on what was and what kind races there were in the universe. Cause they talk about a log of races, but only show us very little of them.

[Thaciscokidd]

The time travel part could have been done better even with the little hint that was dropped that we were going to go back to the past.

But the story just seems super rushed and localized. I have a hard time believing that Ul'dah didn't see a problem with the despair bug.

Right now having gone through the story on my alt and main I rank it below ShB and HW and even with StB at the moment. The way they handle the Garlemald situation and the reaction that one of the world's greatest adventurers is a free agent will decide where I place this story. Because just assisting Garlemald alone could cause more that a couple of problems or change how other nations look at the WoL.

[Kozh]

She didn't gamble with the inhabitants of the now Sundered world. We, the PC, had already travelled back in time and told her about the Sundered world's beauty and our adventures in said world. She knew the inhabitants could overcome despair because she met us. Hydaelyn knew of the events leading up to when we went back to the past, because we told her on the bridge in the sky. That's where he knowledge ends. From the moment we return to the present, Hydaelyn has no knowledge whatsoever about what comes next. This is why Hydaelyn fought us, to test both our strength and resolve, and to see that we, the inhabitants of Etherys, can survive on our own without her guiding hand.

Her action is definitely a gamble. Something even y'sthola said it was. She met one strong sundered person, then decided to bet the future of humanity to that person plus seven other people. She is lucky EW is so deep in shounen anime trope that the protagonists can defeat literall endbringer, who accumulated despair for 12k years across the stars, via friendship power.

I can't believe I like tales of arise ending better than EW.

[Imperius_Relampago]

Her action is definitely a gamble. Something even y'sthola said it was. She met one strong sundered person, then decided to bet the future of humanity to that person plus seven other people. She is lucky EW is so deep in shounen anime trope that the protagonists can defeat literall endbringer, who accumulated despair for 12k years across the stars, via friendship power.

I can't believe I like tales of arise ending better than EW.

Again, it wasn't a gamble when you know the outcome. She knew Sundering the world would put a temporary stop to the Final Days. She heard our tales of stopping numerous world-destroying threats, she heard of us defeating Emet-Selch, who bare in mind is considered the most gifted in Aetheric manipulation out of all Ancients, as stated by Hythlodaeus, and knew how long it'd be until the Final Days returned. We literally gave her, Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus a detailed history of FFXIV and our accomplishments. She knew that choosing us to be Her Champion would result in said events playing out.

What she didn't know is what would happen when we returned from the past, and even then she put a plan in place in the event we failed. She didn't know if we would be able to defeat Meteion, as her knowledge of the future ended when we returned to the present, so she tested us. If we failed, we were to flee Etherys. If we passed, then we know what happens.

Think of it like this;

A future version of you arrives infront of you. You see they are extremely wealthy, and they tell you that they won the lottery and created a scientific research company, who then discovered time travel. They then give you the winning lottery numbers and return to the future. You use those numbers and win the lottery and you end up creating a company based on scientific research. One of the researchers discovers time travel and you become the first person to use it. You arrive in the past infront of a younger version of yourself and tell them you won the lottery and created a company etc. then return to the present. From the moment you returned to the present, you have absolutely no knowledge on what to do next, as the future version of you only told you up to the point of the researcher discovering time travel, and the rest of what happened you just lived through it. Your knowledge of the future is gone, and so you must figure something out. That is what Hydaelyn was like.

Another thing; Zodiark was built up for years, yes, however the playerbase had been speculating on what would happen after we defeated him for years. The in-game rumours, and in-game information only spoke of him at full power. The Zodiark we killed was severely crippled, both due to his "Heart" being killed and also being starved of sacrifices since the Sundering. Also, everyone seems to be forgetting that Zodiark's death was the literal cause of the Final Days, aka the end of the world in our time. Zodiark was a huge threat that we had to stomp out, and because we stomped him out, for the first time we experience the consequences of our actions. Every time we defeated a Primal or a "big bad", the world would return to what it was like pre-expansion, rinse and repeat. This time, however, defeating the Primal/"big bad" resulted in an even more catastrophic situation playing out; The Final Days. Endwalker is essentially a normal expansion up until the point where we defeat the "big bad" Zodiark, but are then forced into an extreme case of damage control due to our actions, and then being forced to confront an ancient enemy who laid in wait for literal eons amassing power for the sole purpose of wiping us out..

[ApolloGenX]

Think of it like this;

A future version of you arrives infront of you. You see they are extremely wealthy, and they tell you that they won the lottery and created a scientific research company, who then discovered time travel. They then give you the winning lottery numbers and return to the future. You use those numbers and win the lottery and you end up creating a company based on scientific research. One of the researchers discovers time travel and you become the first person to use it. You arrive in the past infront of a younger version of yourself and tell them you won the lottery and created a company etc. then return to the present. From the moment you returned to the present, you have absolutely no knowledge on what to do next, as the future version of you only told you up to the point of the researcher discovering time travel, and the rest of what happened you just lived through it. Your knowledge of the future is gone, and so you must figure something out. That is what Hydaelyn was like.

That's fine- but it's cheesy. It's what it is because it's what we said it would be.

That kind of removes the agency from all the characters and puts everything on a deterministic path. If that is what they wanted to do (they DID say we couldn't change the future) then why did we interact with the Ancients at all? It should have kept us invisible to them and we should have just passively learned what happened. Honestly, that is kind of what I expected to happen. The fact that they made our presence there a crucial part of the way things turned out means that we created this new future - ok... but if that is the case, why did the future ignore so much of the REST of what happened in the past?

It felt like if you watched Back to the Future and he got back to the present and nothing had changed.... because they had written the story of the present first and then no matter what happened in the past, they were stuck in a corner. That's the problem with time travel I guess.

[Imperius_Relampago]

That kind of removes the agency from all the characters and puts everything on a deterministic path.

I mean, the Echo literally lets you see the attacks of opponents before they happen. Also, every time you fail a duty, it is canonical that it was the Echo granting you a vision of what would happen if you attempted it at your current strength/mindset. The whole "empowered by the Echo" mechanic is described as you having learned from the vision and using that knowledge to defeat your opponent. So we already have some manner of precognition.

If that is what they wanted to do (they DID say we couldn't change the future) then why did we interact with the Ancients at all? It should have kept us invisible to them and we should have just passively learned what happened

Back to the Future used a different set of Time Travel rules. There are many rules and paradoxes to time travel, but the one FFXIV uses in Endwalker is the Predestination Paradox, aka Causal Loop/Closed Time Loop. In layman's terms, it means this: The time traveller is in the past, which means they were in the past before. Therefore, their presence is vital to the future, and they do something that causes the future to occur in the same way that their knowledge of the future has already happened. Prior to going to the Unsundered World, us arriving in Elpis already happened, as stated by Elidibus. He had memories of seeing us in Elpis in the Unsundered World. This means that in our time, we had already been in Elpis all those years ago. Our presence in the past and our actions is what caused Meteion to become the Endsinger. If we didn't tell Venat and co. about the Final Days etc, then Emet-Selch wouldn't have pushed so hard to take Meteion into the Convocations custody and away from Hermes, and as such Hermes wouldn't have pushed back so hard. Hermes simply wanted to hear Meteion's report, but Emet-Selch was trying to prevent it. If Hermes had heard the full report, chances are he wouldn't have done the stuff he did out of desperation.

The fact that they made our presence there a crucial part of the way things turned out means that we created this new future

It's not a new future. The past occurred in our past. We have always went to Elpis to discover what was causing the Final Days. Our travel to the past is what inevitably causes the Final Days in the first place. Hence, closed loop. It's like learning that you were going to be hit by a car that day, so you stay at home, and then a car crashes into your house and hits you. If you weren't at home, you wouldn't have been hit by the car. It's simple causality; You were influenced by the knowledge that you were going to be hit by a car that day and as such stayed at home, which in turn contributes to the car hitting you; The cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause.

[ApolloGenX]

It's not a new future. The past occurred in our past. We have always went to Elpis to discover what was causing the Final Days. Our travel to the past is what inevitably causes the Final Days in the first place. Hence, closed loop. It's like learning that you were going to be hit by a car that day, so you stay at home, and then a car crashes into your house and hits you. If you weren't at home, you wouldn't have been hit by the car. It's simple causality; You were influenced by the knowledge that you were going to be hit by a car that day and as such stayed at home, which in turn contributes to the car hitting you; The cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause.

You are right, I shouldn't have said "new" future... in fact, according to this story- this entire arc had already happened before players even started playing...because back in the past we said it would.

That still removes all agency from the characters and essentially means that we have been in a predetermined play that started I don't know over a thousand years ago. I don't love that. I especially don't love that it is being passed off as some kind of "You helped set this is motion". No we didn't. If we did, then all the rest of the circumstances they ignored would have been factored into the story, but they weren't. That's why I think we should have been passive learners in the past... we just left behind way too much evidence/opportunity for things to have gone differently to be shoehorned into the story the writers wrote. It was their story, not ours.

It's fine to say we are stuck on this course of history- I think it's a cheap trick to try to lay that at the feet of players and say "You were responsible for how we got here... because we said so". No, we weren't. You wrote a history and then stuck us into it, ignored the actual impact we had and said "Ta-da! Now you are responsible".

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

I think the other problem people have, along with all of the other ones that have been stated in this thread in regards to the time stuff, is that they use two different types of time travel over the course of only two expansions(Graha and Elpis). It's like they only introduced it because they couldnt come up with any other way to make the plot. They had to use two different instances of time travel to try and make it work so it just makes things unnecessarily convoluted.

[Meril]

do people ever wonder why they might be in the minority?