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

[aveyond-dreams]

I've said this before but EW was the equivalent of a Michael Bay movie, the fast pace and big explosions happening constantly to detract from the fact that the story is a complete mess.

Precisely this. The moment I started thinking critically about what I had just experienced, I found myself questioning so much. My belief is that a combination of factors from the rabidness of the twitter character fanclubs and the emotionally difficult situation brought on by COVID ultimately led for an internal push for a "safe" story that was carried by fast pasted, though illogical chains of events.

It's not so much the cute elements in themselves so much as the timing of their appearance. I doubt FF7 would be as well received if, after a certain character's murder, you randomly saw Cloud running around and giggling with a group of talking bunnies. Or if in FF9 when an entire city was destroyed, immediately afterwards the party just shrugged and never mentioned it again.

Up until Endwalker I quite liked that FFXIV hadn't gone down the same path of WoW where things just happened with minimal build up or explanation and I don't think it was a good way to have the finale of a decade long story just rapidly move from one event to the next with minimal time to breathe. Especially with the fanservice stacked towards characters that already get the lion's share of attention...and aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

What I would give to return to the days of Heavensward when we still had a team of writers who were unafraid of allowing characters to exit the story once their roles were over, and for people's sacrifices to carry meaning. A less bloated cast of more distinct characters with a narrative that didn't tread so much on abstract nothingness.

[RyuDragnier]

What I would give to return to the days of Heavensward when we still had a team of writers who were unafraid of allowing characters to exit the story once their roles were over, and for people's sacrifices to carry meaning. A less bloated cast of more distinct characters with a narrative that didn't tread so much on abstract nothingness.

Well you might get that back soon, considering that writer's work with FF16 is almost done, probably.

[Theodric]

It's not so much the cute elements in themselves so much as the timing of their appearance. I doubt FF7 would be as well received if, after a certain character's murder, you randomly saw Cloud running around and giggling with a group of talking bunnies. Or if in FF9 when an entire city was destroyed, immediately afterwards the party just shrugged and never mentioned it again.

Up until Endwalker I quite liked that FFXIV hadn't gone down the same path of WoW where things just happened with minimal build up or explanation and I don't think it was a good way to have the finale of a decade long story just rapidly move from one event to the next with minimal time to breathe. Especially with the fanservice stacked towards characters that already get the lion's share of attention...and aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

[Starshower]

A garlemald expansion going trougn the ilsabardian regions with the final boss being anima would be really underwhelming... I could see people saying it's stormblood 2.0 let's march to the empire liberating the lands in the way, then when we defeat anima and win the day we liberate garlemald! Now all the world is united under the banner of the eorzean alliance. How original... and you guys trash endwalker. That one would be a predictable mess.


And I love how some of you, to add contents to this imaginary expansion, add endwalker story points like dynamis and such.. leaving endwalker (an actual real expansion that happened) with nothing identifiable to it, or some have super original non predictable ideas like zodiark as the final boss (ooo who could have guessed)...


The truth is some of y'all aren't as talented story writers as you think you are. Your expansion would have flopped :x (garlemald burnout is real at this point) almost all contents for the past 4 years had garlemald as the main enemies.

[aveyond-dreams]

A garlemald expansion going trougn the ilsabardian regions with the final boss being anima would be really underwhelming... I could see people saying it's stormblood 2.0 let's march to the empire liberating the lands in the way, then when we defeat anima and win the day we liberate garlemald! Now all the world is united under the banner of the eorzean alliance. How original... and you guys trash endwalker. That one would be a predictable mess.

That is hardly what those of us who like Garlemald want. At all. I would much rather see one of the more competent members of the royal family placed on the throne to guide Garlemald into an era of better rule. I would have liked to explore territories who are very much in favor of being in the empire, and seek to restore order rather than to break away into a series of small, likely to fail nation-states.

I feel like I need to be absolutely clear on this, but I do not want to see the Empire join the Eorzean Alliance. This isn't like the Alliance of Altana from FFXI-its comparatively far less appealing and less interesting and every nation who joins it becomes another "free" democracy!

Given what we know of Varis through other characters like Regula and the opportunity to expand on his character further, a final fight against him as Anima would have carried far more weight than the fight against Meteion. An idealized Garlemald in my view maintains its militaristic spirit and is still headed by its monarchy, with its armies focused on battling things like blasphemies.

Sadly, given the current writing direction of sapping all magic out of FFXIV's world bit by bit, I can definitely forsee a future where Alphinaud, or better yet, his father, pacify the state and set up a democratic provisional government, and then 7.0 will ship us off to who knows where with Garlemald being an afterthought.

[Starshower]

a final fight against him as Anima would have carried far more weight than the fight against Meteion.

I don't know man, fighting a winged head as the embodiment of despair throwing planets at you while flying in the back of a dragon in the far edge of space is pretty metal. But cute bird girl bad

[aveyond-dreams]

I don't know man, fighting a winged head as the embodiment of despair throwing planets at you while flying in the back of a dragon in the far edge of space is pretty metal. But cute bird girl bad

This has nothing to do with Meteion's physical appearance and everything to do with how horribly her character and that of Hermes was handled. They were both thrown in last minute and it felt like I was fighting against someone I didn't care at all about and had very little relationship with.

Contrast this to antagonists like Ardyn, Emet-Selch, Jecht, Kefka - the fight against the Endsinger simply does not compare.

[Starshower]

This has nothing to do with Meteion's physical appearance and everything to do with how horribly her character and that of Hermes was handled. They were both thrown in last minute and it felt like I was fighting against someone I didn't care at all about and had very little relationship with.

Contrast this to antagonists like Ardyn, Emet-Selch, Jecht, Kefka - the fight against the Endsinger simply does not compare.

Hermes and Meteion obviously didn't resonate with everyone... but the 2 of them were my favorite new characters in endwalker... This is why I like this expansion so much, because of Elpis and the way it was presented, and specially those 2 characters. I got what they were going for, It really resonated with me. And I'm not alone, I know there are other people that understand Hermes as well. I cared about them and felt really close to them, more than many other characters from the other expansions (like say haurchefant, but I don't wanna be cancelled).

[Lauront]

Given what we know of Varis through other characters like Regula and the opportunity to expand on his character further, a final fight against him as Anima would have carried far more weight than the fight against Meteion. An idealized Garlemald in my view maintains its militaristic spirit and is still headed by its monarchy, with its armies focused on battling things like blasphemies.

This. I would've liked to see it morph into something closer to Archades, while retaining some of its territorial holdings (maybe those which benefitted from its rule and are thus more loyal to it), to provide a counter-balance to the Eorzean Alliance, to some degree, and also have a different flavour to the latter.

Only one person is saying that

Well, the story falls so far below from what I've come to expect of the writers (the phrase "too many cooks..." comes to mind, and there are at the least indications of rewrites being involved), that I've little trouble believing that several people in this thread could in fact come up with better ideas for how to handle it, and some have presented some outlines of that. It's less to do with stroking egos but more expressing how it could have avoided the pitfalls that have been identified... especially since people were asked how they'd do that. Also I doubt anyone is claiming people in this thread would do a better job of all the characterisation and writing etc. that'd go into it, but a high level plot overview is a different story. The writing team is very talented but it doesn't mean they or the writing process itself is infallible. I suspect though that poster is just doing a routine check of the thread so they can contribute some flyby sniping.

cool ideas

At least speaking personally, I'd have vastly preferred this. It's close to some of my own thoughts on the topic.

[anhaato]

A garlemald expansion going trougn the ilsabardian regions with the final boss being anima would be really underwhelming... I could see people saying it's stormblood 2.0 let's march to the empire liberating the lands in the way, then when we defeat anima and win the day we liberate garlemald! Now all the world is united under the banner of the eorzean alliance. How original... and you guys trash endwalker. That one would be a predictable mess.

Just because you lack the imagination to make an interesting story out of Garlemald doesn't mean the writers would. Ishikawa comes up with great stories when given adequate room to do so, this time she wasn't so it was messy. And I'd take predictable and satisfying (Heavensward) over unpredictable and messy (EW) any day.