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

[Brinne]

I mean, yeah, that's exactly why they failed. In making us sympathize with the Ascians over Shadowbringers they made Zodiark into a Not Actually Evil god, thus writing themselves into a hole that made it hard to justify why what Venat did was good. When they made Zodiark neutral at worst, the introduction of "oh the world was gonna die anyway" didn't really stick. Instead of accepting that Hydaelyn is now a morally gray figure at best (allowing us to defeat an intergalactic world-ender, at the price of ending a civilization) they tried and failed to retcon that back to Hydey good Zodey bad world gonna die (I feel like YoshiP was partly responsible for this) and it fell apart. This is intent vs result, my point.

I mean, then we're in absolute agreement. I don't think the writers intentionally set forth to specifically do a Genocide Apologism. However, in the actual story they wrote and published, the text does, in fact, contain a Genocide Apologism. My feeling is they were so laser-focused on making the playerbase love Hydaelyn and convey that she was Good that they were careless and didn't think things through - at least, that's my hope - and here we are.

[anhaato]

I mean, then we're in absolute agreement. I don't think the writers intentionally set forth to specifically do a Genocide Apologism. However, in the actual story they wrote and published, the text does, in fact, contain a Genocide Apologism. My feeling is they were so laser-focused on making the playerbase love Hydaelyn and convey that she was Good that they were careless and didn't think things through - at least, that's my hope - and here we are.

That's a fair assessment, and again I said before that I know why people feel this way, but I'm choosing to look at what I believe to be their intent.

[Brinne]

That's a fair assessment, and again I said before that I know why people feel this way, but I'm choosing to look at what I believe to be their intent.

My personal feeling is that because I do believe/hope that it was basically unintentional, now that it's been pointed out and come to their attention, that I can get past it and basically forgive it if it is addressed in some way. Please, please do not double down on "Venat absolute good, those Ancients sadly just had to die," FFXIV team. I've loved your game for almost ten years, want to keep loving it, and I really wish I wasn't here, cringeposting all my dignity away. Woe.

[Caurcas]

But the sundering wasn't genocide anyway. Also I am getting ubermensch undertone with all the Ancient praise, which is ironic honestly.

[Rulakir]

In what sense? Elidibus's goal is to usher in a calamity, which barring the time travel, he managed to do. I think the issues with Elidibus are more in a retrospective sense - i.e. given that we learnt he was a primal, why didn't he do x,y or z. However, at least until 4.5, he seemed to be moving rather cleverly; its Varis's agenda which was curtailed as a result. Technically speaking, if we remove the Exarch (re the kidnapping of the WoL) and Emet-Selch (5.3) from the equation, Elidibus would've succeeded in ending the WoL twice through his own methods. Or do you mean with the equilibrium shifting too far to light i.e. he let the WoL become a problem for them?

I was more referring to his inability to deal with Zenos and to finish off the WoL in SB. Zenos, in particular, seems to be the reason why Black Rose was never deployed in our current timeline, which has caused me to wonder if he exists in the 8UC. As far as ShB, agreed, but that whole expansion was about the WoL getting gifted with 'get out of jail free' cards. Emet was an assured win had it not been for the Ardbert merger and Elidibus was an assured win had it not been for Emet's intervention.

[Lauront]

I was more referring to his inability to deal with Zenos and to finish off the WoL in SB. Zenos, in particular, seems to be the reason why Black Rose was never deployed in our current timeline, which has caused me to wonder if he exists in the 8UC. As far as ShB, agreed, but that whole expansion was about the WoL getting gifted with 'get out of jail free' cards. Emet was an assured win had it not been for the Ardbert merger and Elidibus was an assured win had it not been for Emet's intervention.

Ah I see. Particularly given Elidibus's primal aspect (although a 5.3 thing), it did sit rather strangely that he did not leverage that to gain more power, but I suspect it wasn't really planned out that early and instead was retrofitted. Regarding Zenos, my suspicion is Emet-Selch may have simply removed him from the equation if he posed a threat to their plans, if Black Rose itself did not, since he'd have little to keep him on the First. On the other hand, we saw how Zenos's motivation drained without the WoL as a sparring partner, so it's not inconceivable that, depending on the order of events, something similar happened in the 8UC, as well.

[Rulakir]

Regarding Zenos, my suspicion is Emet-Selch may have simply removed him from the equation if he posed a threat to their plans, if Black Rose itself did not, since he'd have little to keep him on the First. On the other hand, we saw how Zenos's motivation drained without the WoL as a sparring partner, so it's not inconceivable that, depending on the order of events, something similar happened in the 8UC, as well.

I can't help but feel Zenos got the shaft in the same way that Garlemald and the Ancients did. There were a lot of aspects about him that led to nothing or were hand waved away in the Q&A LL. It seems like for whatever reason they wanted to be done with all of the previous storytelling and move onto something new and it had better be worth it.

[anhaato]

Someone pointed out YoshiP's detachment from what the players are actually interested in; this I think was the root of the story's downfall. Shadowbringers wasn't a hit because of the high stakes, it was a hit because of how well it was done. If they had gone with the original plan of resolving Garlemald and THEN taking care of the ultimate Final Days threat then the story would've been a lot more fleshed out, but I feel YoshiP thought we wanted another lore-heavy high-stakes battle with godlike figures and a grand conclusion, so as soon as we had gotten out of the frying pan of shb it was straight into the fire of ew. And because they thought we wanted that, it just became a good vs evil shounen anime in the end hence the problems with trying to portray Venat's actions as good even though Hydaelyn was set up to be Maybe Not That Good since, once again someone else pointed out, way back in 3.x.

[anhaato]

In my maximalist fantasy for this game's storyline, we would've taken an expansion to cover Ala Mhigo and get a city state for it, then Doma, then the First, then Garlemald and Thavnair, and finally everything in Endwalker. I realize of course that by this time we would still be stuck in the same storyline, but if every episode is great then who cares? And I can tell you, selling a conclusion to a 15 year storyline is much more interesting than a 10-11 year one. Ala Mhigo would've gotten its chance to matter in the story and we'd have a city state for it, same with Doma as well as us getting a greater window into the Far East as opposed to just how tiny it feels now. And being there to have a hand in the true downfall of Garlemald would've been incredible! It also would've made us understand what exactly Zenos is aside from an OP enemy who's also part-Ascian. Why was Elidibus weak enough to his "echo" to give him his body back as soon as he showed up? Why is he a reaper now? Why was he having dreams of the Final Days? Being related to Emet is not a good enough answer to all of this. While I did come around to him at the end of 6.0 because of just how absurd in a good way it was for him to pop in out of nowhere, it would've been much better if that came after truly learning about him.

[KageTokage]

I'm honestly not sure they'll even bother with something like that because I've already noticed troublingly large amounts of people just rolling over and accepting what Yoshi claimed was "intended" by the writing.

He said he didn't expect people to "think so deeply" about the story, and many evidently don't if they're willing to just accept claims like "Ancient culture was scary" or "The Ancients were doomed to meet the same fate as the Plenty" without noticing/considering the myriad ways the narrative suggests otherwise or worse, making reaches to try to justify those claims.

At the end of the day, the people voicing discontent are still the minority even if there was enough of them to actually be noticed.