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

[CrownySuccubus]

Overall, I think the Endwalker plot issues can be summarized as three root causes: 1) Emet-Selch's breakout status, 2) the desire to "subvert expectations" and 3) pandering to the players' sense of Power Fantasy:

Point 1: The entire Elpis storyline felt sloppy, IMO, because the writers wanted to milk Emet for fanservice. They know that he was the most popular thing about ShB, and fans reacted positively to Emet showing up to save you from Elidibus. So, more Emet is no-brainer, right? Thus, an entire story thread where you get to interact with the real Emet-Selch, and constantly get pounded what a tragedy it is for such a good man to turn into a villain.

Point 2: The story could have made either Zodiark, Hydaelyn or both the villains. They've been hinting since ShB that there was no real "good" or "evil" between the two, so they really could have gone anywhere. But, they added a third element in ShB (a mysterious sound that caused the Final Days) and decided to make that the main villain. So we wind up with Zodiark, the big villain they've been hyping since ARR, dying first. Then Hydaelyn, the other side of the conflict, dying second. That means we now have to focus on the final "true" villain that only gets introduced in this expansion. This once again puts a lot of heavy lifting on Elpis.

Point 3: The main theme of EW is overcoming despair and always moving ahead to a brighter tomorrow. For this story to work, we must accept that the WOL (our character) is somehow doing things in the morally "correct" way. Otherwise, nothing in the story would make sense (the WOL never even hints that they might turn into a blasphemy, and they HAVE to be the last person standing when we get to Meteion). Further, this position also makes it necessary to paint the Ancients as "wrong" somehow. In order to prove that the new races (and, especially, our WOL) have somehow "overcome" the problem that killed the Ancients and that they have the power to create brighter tomorrow, we have to portray the Ancients as bad.

BUT, due to Point 1, we also don't want to tarnish our beloved cash cow Emet too badly, so we have to make the Ancients "bad, but not TOO bad". This creates silly scenes like being told our WOL is unhappy when Hyth creates butterflies out of robes and being offended when other Ancients kill a monster that can't fly, while I'm walking around in clothes I crafted from the skins of 100 jabberwocks, using a Relic Weapon I got from slaughtering everything on several maps. Combined with Point 2, this also means that Venat (aka Hydaelyn) has to be portrayed as correct, which is why we get that nonsensical post-Elpis scene where she argues with a bunch of cartoonishly strawmen Ancients, and when we then combine Point 3, we get some 10th-grade edgelord moral about suffering being good because it makes you strong.

[Nekokaori]

You know what really carried the story atleast for me,

First seeing daddy Emet-selch period no lines are anything that was it just seeing him..

and two: the final fight with zenos that was more fun than every bit of content in endwalker more fun than the trails or the dungeons.. just the two of you in the middle of no where beating the shit out of one another for no other reason than to beat the shit out of one another period. Many people give him shit but he is the most chilled character in the entire game he doesnt give a shit about conquest or bringing the end he just goes along with the ride to play with his playmate and that y i respect the guy more so than the trash fire that is vanat.. nothing about her is good other than she is a light holy entity but wait doesnt the snakes also have a "holy godddess"


plus why didnt the anicents just create another creation to go kill meta that also used the energy, they had no need to sunder the world to destory her with their creation magic ... it was just... ~_~

[PawPaw]

plus why didnt the anicents just create another creation to go kill meta that also used the energy, they had no need to sunder the world to destory her with their creation magic ... it was just... ~_~

They didn't sunder the world, that was all Venat. And they didn't, or rather couldn't come up with a counter to Meteion because they had absolutely no idea that Meteion existed or what was causing the Final Days. Only Venat knew that and she wasn't sharing.

[Nekokaori]

They didn't sunder the world, that was all Venat. And they didn't, or rather couldn't come up with a counter to Meteion because they had absolutely no idea that Meteion existed or what was causing the Final Days. Only Venat knew that and she wasn't sharing.

she did, she could have told her friends and saved everyone.. she act like a good friend to both of them and those around her it makes 0 sense what so ever she didnt even try and just accepted the path...

THink about this okay, what if someone connected to you showed up and told you something bad was going to happan around u effecting all those you care about everything around.. Would u accept this as a fact or would u get help from your friends and send out a party to deal with the issue..


Not only does it show vanet is a horrible person, but it also shows her as an uncaring friend. Not even counting how that doesnt suit her character which is why its bad writing.

She had the power, the tools and the knowledge to deal with before her people end before zodiark was even a thought .. she was shown in the light to be that kind of person yet she did nothing but sit on her fat ass with a thump up it accepting everything she learned and didn't even mention it to her so called friends

[Xirean]

They didn't sunder the world, that was all Venat. And they didn't, or rather couldn't come up with a counter to Meteion because they had absolutely no idea that Meteion existed or what was causing the Final Days. Only Venat knew that and she wasn't sharing.

That's basically the summed up reason people don't like her. She refused to give them a fighting chance. If we were shown them trying to stop Meteion and failing then we get our go, I'd feel a lot better about the story, but the forced time loop bit really just doesn't work when we have a giant crystal building and a red cat boi to show that time loops don't have to exist.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Honestly i was thinking today. I remember seeing quite a few posters back around the end of ShB bashing and hating on Mitron for wanting to have Loghrif back and getting rid of her memories etc. But it’s just so incredibly baffling to me that those same people who hate mitron for wanting to get rid of her memories are the ones praising and worshipping Venat who did that exact thing but on a much grander scale. Just another set of double standards i suppose.

[Ixon]

I like hypotheticals for the sake of discussion, so spare me a moment if you can: Let's say Venat warned the people of Etheirys of Metion, who she is, what she became, so on. What would the people have Etheirys done? Personally, with what I have seen, I think they would have done about the same as they did for the Final Days. Construct a way to protect their star at all cost. Hermes would have been little help, due to grief or guilt of his creation, even if he explained what may have happened, he would have not found the will to aid them past that initial explanation based on how I see him as a character. And of course if Venat attempted to explain our whole time traveling thing, that would have opened up a whole new can of worms. With this information, I can see the Convocation working on a means to save their start over chasing after Metion to the edge of the universe. This addresses the immediate issue(The Final days), but not the problem itself(hopelessness), and considering tales akin to our Azem charging into a volcano were taken as very extreme and outlandish, I see no reason to believe they would actually put forth any efforts to stop Metion over just protecting their star assuming they could even defeat Metion in the first place.

While Etheirys might have been saved, there would have potentially existed some issues. First, Metion would have still existed, belting out the Song of Oblivion for all eternity that we know of. So even if Etheirys was shielded forever, her presences means everything else in the cosmos dies(very sad that). Second, we have no idea if Etheirys could even come up with a permanent solution to the Song of Oblivion, one that wouldn't deteriorate over time like waves against a rock. Third, if the answer to saving their planet was still Zodiark, I still have my doubts that it would have worked perfectly according to plan. Not to mention the effects of the all powerful primal "tugging" at the strings at their potential of being tempered. Lastly, there is still the issue of them becoming doomed like every other civilization Metion discovered, whether it do to similar effects like The Plenty, or maybe more internal conflicts involving Zodiark if that was used as a solution(I'd think that even with their knowledge, the "tugging" of Zodiark would still result in potential zealots, leading to infighting, and perhaps an all out civil war of Zodiark vs No-Zodiark like we were led to believe in ShB, or perhaps something worse).

Not to mention the main problem we were pointed to wasn't Metion, but the overall despair that brought the end to all those civilizations in one way or another. The best way forward, especially in the eyes of Venat, to prevent BOTH the Final Days and the potential of a "The Plenty" outcome, was to accept despair and find meaning in life accompanied by it. If Venat believed that the alerting of Metion would only bring about a temporary solution and detract the people of Etheirys from the main problem at hand, then it would make sense for her to NOT tell them the truth of the matter and instead have them focus on the root of the issue of that being existential dread. I only think this way due to the Elpis cut scene, where Venat is confronting a group of people on Ethirys, pleading for them to accept despair, accept loss, and move forward regardless. When the people chose not to tackle the main issue and instead chose a way to shield themselves from it, she most likely thought that they were inevitably doomed, either immediately or in the far future.

However, when our character regales our adventures with Venat, through our story we seemingly prove that we are a people who meet that criteria. A people who embrace despairs inevitability and push forward again, and again. So, with Venat having the knowledge she had, knowing that that the solution was to tackle the main issue of despair head on to prevent both destruction via Metion and to also circumvent the outcome of many other civilizations. Keeping Metions knowledge a secret was part of her own "test" to see if the current people of Ehteirys were capable of overcoming what stopped so many before them. So in the Elpis cut scene when Venat pleads for them to tackle the main issue at hand, and they basically say no, she knows that there exists in a post-sundered future people who would have answered yes, and thus elected to sunder the star. Knowing that there were people more than just our character, who would tackle despair head on, who wouldn't think twice about going out to the edge of the universe,(plus there is that whole "we are better at dynamis than you" thing), who were probably the best bet on a not doomed future.

I've been reading this thread for a while, so I know many of the counter arguments, concerns, and plot holes that exist. However this thought processes make sense to me in what they might have been attempting to portray that fits the narrative of the current story. Hopefully we get more information later on, through perhaps Pandemonium, that expands or details what we have a little better, before it is all dropped for something new.

[Rulakir]

Well, this was a surprise. Quite a long comment thread on Reddit criticizing EW with awards and upvotes!

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...mment/i3gbmig/

[Lauront]

Well, this was a surprise. Quite a long comment thread on Reddit criticizing EW with awards and upvotes!

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...mment/i3gbmig/

Yeah, it goes to show that there's a lot of issues with it even besides Venat. Smooshing what could've been another 1-2 expansions into one came at a cost. Someone there made the comment that Elidibus is killed off too early, which is true.

[Skyborne]

Well, this was a surprise. Quite a long comment thread on Reddit criticizing EW with awards and upvotes!

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...mment/i3gbmig/

You linked the forbidden site! The brigades shall begin!

Anyway, still eternally sad that the prevailing opinion of a potential Garlemald expansion is that it'd be bad because it'd be 'Stormblood 2.0'. Being able to actually take part in the Garlemald conclusion instead of it just being dumped off-screen would have been nice. Also, Zenos doing something besides waddling around aimlessly, sitting on his throne, or trying on his new outfits (Dissidia outfit with the white coat obtainable when?).