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

[Ixon]

Honestly, after watching Pyromancer go through the Elpis scenes again, I can't help but think that Venat AGREED with Hermes's test to an extent. Her own personal concerns with how the ancients viewed the world and the fear of the world turning into those that Metion mentioned. Even in the sundering cut scene when she confronts a group of ancients, in an almost pleading and bargaining sort of way, she tell them "if we would live, we must accept it(despair) as our constant companion". When they denied it, they failed not only Hermes and Metion's test, but her own, and thus were sundered. Especially knowing through our stories we tell her that the humanity that existed in the future thrived even despite the grievous amounts of despair and disasters. IF the future of all Utopia's is to eventually all die out like those Metion discovered, then it was assumed the best bet was to destroy Utopia. Kick Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden so to speak. Not saying it's right, or justified, just a point that sits well in my head cannon.

[PawPaw]

Honestly, after watching Pyromancer go through the Elpis scenes again, I can't help but think that Venat AGREED with Hermes's test to an extent.

Of course she did. You can see that with the mental gymnastics she performs at the end of Elpis to justify doing absolutely nothing to help her people.

[Ixon]

Of course she did. You can see that with the mental gymnastics she performs at the end of Elpis to justify doing absolutely nothing to help her people.

I don't think it's mental gymnastics if it fits her character though.

[Skyborne]

Honestly, after watching Pyromancer go through the Elpis scenes again, I can't help but think that Venat AGREED with Hermes's test to an extent. Her own personal concerns with how the ancients viewed the world and the fear of the world turning into those that Metion mentioned. Even in the sundering cut scene when she confronts a group of ancients, in an almost pleading and bargaining sort of way, she tell them "if we would live, we must accept it(despair) as our constant companion". When they denied it, they failed not only Hermes and Metion's test, but her own, and thus were sundered. Especially knowing through our stories we tell her that the humanity that existed in the future thrived even despite the grievous amounts of despair and disasters. IF the future of all Utopia's is to eventually all die out like those Metion discovered, then it was assumed the best bet was to destroy Utopia. Kick Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden so to speak. Not saying it's right, or justified, just a point that sits well in my head cannon.

That she did, and she was entirely focused on the Plenty. I don't know if I would say that the first and second worlds in the Dead Ends were utopias... and the dragons, while it sounds like they had nice lives from what they described, also went out from a long and protracted war against robots from space. Essentially, it was all confirmation bias for her.

I don't know what it is with streamers getting hoodwinked (tempered? :P) by the post-Elpis cutscene. Even ones who echo our sentiments leading up to that point suddenly turn heel and become #TeamHydaelyn. The only exception I've seen was Zepla, who was thoroughly pissed off at the end of Elpis, but has since changed her tune. They may have tried to portray Venat as some sort of tragic heroine, but anyone with a lick of sense would know she brought that upon herself unnecessarily and at the cost of everyone else.

I don't really watch streamers save a couple that I can stand, and they don't touch FFXIV or any other MMO with a ten foot pole so dunno the feeling. Still, these characters are heavily pushed by the narrative of the story and overall the twitch/reddit/so on crowd loves her so it makes sense they would be influenced into conforming with audience expectations to keep viewers around even if they feel differently in private. That, and you know how people in the great community act when they're sure they can't get in trouble... can't blame them for kneeling.

[Akamadoshi]

Yeah, I think they really did Zodiark dirty. He was this epic evil-god figure, until EW hit and he became a muppet.

I wanted to meet Zodiark so much since Shadowbringers.............
Not only did they do Zodiark dirty....... I wasn't even done fuming and being disappointed how his ark ended and they threw Leporitto in our faces as if it all was a joke.
Unfortunately as somebody who LOVES FFXIV story more than anything in the world of stories......... THAT hit me harder than ANYTHING the story threw at us before....
And sadly that resulted me into disliking the moon allies......... and I still dislike them. Surely they are cute.... But they were introduced when I wasn't emotionally ready for it.
That's what made me--regardless how it ended--dislike Endwalker more than any expansion this game released. My favourite was Stormblood. (ARR is not an expansion, we don't talk about 1.0!)

[EmpyreanHelios]

I didn’t like many aspects of the Endwalker storyline either, you’re not alone in that. However, making a thread like this is just going to get you hate from people who did.

[Silverquick]

I didn’t like many aspects of the Endwalker storyline either, you’re not alone in that. However, making a thread like this is just going to get you hate from people who did.

To be honest with you, I have not really been that impressed with Endwalker either so far. I just picked it up and am moving through the campaign now. It was about as cringy as ARR at points. You know... run yourself off the cliff kind of naivety, emotion emotion emotion with no reason or rationality behind it, despite many of the characters supposedly being scholars and espousing rationality and reason. it was like all the characters reverted back to ARR with no character development. They reference it... but then don't actually show it.

On top of that it's got some of the worst elements of the Stormblood gameplay that just annoyed the hell out of people, half the time I'm not playing my character but rather someone else's. At the very least in ARR there was a lot more freedom, especially with exploration.

After some of the most interesting and in truth mature stories in Heavensward and Shadowbringers, how did it revert back to this state?

[Theodric]

At the very least in ARR there was a lot more freedom, especially with exploration.

That's definitely something I miss. As a roleplayer, it's been incredibly frustrating to see increasingly less interest in building an actual world to explore and more investment in changing the game's tone and aesthetics in order to appeal to the 'lol so randum xD' crowd. I like consistency and immersion in my world building which is why, when playing the likes of The Witcher 3 I don't suddenly want Geralt to pull out a bucket of KFC and emote eating it.

[Hysterior]

I personally don't mind how Zodiark was handled.
It would have been a bit too predictable to have him being the end goal
+ he's still a primal, we know how to deal with those by then, no matter how strong.

Having said that, I have always hated time-travel + memory spells as story elements, so I can't say I was a big fan of the whole Elpis chapter

[StealthPaladin]

I'm not particularly convinced they HAVE dealt with Zodiark.

This is a bit of a stretch but consider Hydaelyn sundered the world and Zodiark; splitting the source into reflections.

Then, it is pretty feasible that she remained unsundered herself while Zodiark may very much exist in multiple worlds simultaneously.
Within the realm of possibility that we only encountered the Zodiark fragment which remained in the Source