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

[CrownySuccubus]

Eden is more side content I haven't done, so unfortunately those references are lost on me as well. I hate this direction they've gone where you have to have done raid content to have a full understanding of what's happening in the MSQ. This seems to have started when Ishikawa took over writing?

Short explanation: Gaia is a sundered Ancient and formerly the Ascian known as Loghrif killed by Ardbert and crew. She has now reincarnated as Ryne's Oracle of Darkness counterpart and best "gal pal".

[PawPaw]

Short explanation: Gaia is a sundered Ancient and formerly the Ascian known as Loghrif killed by Ardbert and crew. She has now reincarnated as Ryne's Oracle of Darkness counterpart and best "gal pal".

Not to mention Eden itself being the Ascian Mitron, Loghrif's lover. Real name: Artemis.

Eden is more side content I haven't done, so unfortunately those references are lost on me as well. I hate this direction they've gone where you have to have done raid content to have a full understanding of what's happening in the MSQ. This seems to have started when Ishikawa took over writing?

Hmm, I'd say finishing the Coils of Bahamut was pretty relevant to the MSQ and that was the very start of the game. Maybe Alexander would be the least relevant directly(?), but Omega was also quite important to the MSQ.

I'm not sure how the "time flows differently" rule works, either. Almost a decade had passed between Urianger being pulled into the first and the WOL's arrival

It was five years from Thancred's arrival and three from Urianger and Y'Shtola's arrival, if I remember correctly.

[Slatersev]

Eden is more side content I haven't done, so unfortunately those references are lost on me as well. I hate this direction they've gone where you have to have done raid content to have a full understanding of what's happening in the MSQ. This seems to have started when Ishikawa took over writing?

The Binding Coils is more important to the story then like 95 percent of the ARR MSQ, lmao.

[Brinne]

For my part, I actually mostly enjoyed the 6.1 MSQ and am interested in where it's going, but predictably, I was cracking nonstop jokes in chat about "What? Y'shtola lets a familiar die to further her own interests? Unacceptable. Sunder this cat!" "What? Vrtra wants to eliminate the suffering of the people of Thavnair? Sunder this dragon!" "Huh? Thavnair is encouraging Vrtra to try to restore a past with his sister instead of just accepting it and moving on? Sunder this country!"

[Lauront]

For my part, I actually mostly enjoyed the 6.1 MSQ and am interested in where it's going, but predictably, I was cracking nonstop jokes in chat about "What? Y'shtola lets a familiar die to further her own interests? Unacceptable. Sunder this cat!" "What? Vrtra wants to eliminate the suffering of the people of Thavnair? Sunder this dragon!" "Huh? Thavnair is encouraging Vrtra to try to restore a past with his sister instead of just accepting it and moving on? Sunder this country!"

What were your thoughts on this BTW?

[Brinne]

What were your thoughts on this BTW?

Hysterical laughter, mostly.

All right, in seriousness, of course my eyes rolled out of the back of my head, but it's also not really much beyond what I was expecting. As we've discussed, regardless of the problems with her character, Venat is very popular and has a lot of fans, so they're not going to go full-in on "what a terrible person" - in a general sense, yes, she's probably going to be treated positively when she's brought up. Also, the .1 patch is generally too early for the MSQ writing to take in fan feedback - I think they've mentioned the .1 patch stuff is basically established by the time the expac is rolled out, and IIRC, it took until about 5.2 for Shadowbringers's patch writing to really blatantly jump full-force onto the Emet-Selch train. That being said, LMAO.

What was most telling to me, honestly? Emet-Selch getting direct invocations and flashbacks from the MSQ, along with the heavy implication that the WoL is specifically setting out to honor his list of tasks - while Venat herself doesn't actually get mentioned or discussed once. I think in all the content she's only brought up as Hydaelyn in that brief red herring in the Alliance Raid. The Lodestone side story future may in fact at hand, my friends.

And hey, recounting of events aside, it's not technically inaccurate about Venat's character - she did, in fact, do everything out of "love." It's just that, um, her definition of "love" is vastly, vastly different from my own. Also sort of fun how the codex entry for the "Final Days" just completely skips over the Sundering, huh? Mankind selflessly sacrificed half its number to stop the Final Days--mumble mumble something something--AND THEN IT HAPPENED AGAIN! SOMEHOW! OH NO!

[PawPaw]

For my part, I actually mostly enjoyed the 6.1 MSQ and am interested in where it's going, but predictably, I was cracking nonstop jokes in chat about "What? Y'shtola lets a familiar die to further her own interests? Unacceptable. Sunder this cat!" "What? Vrtra wants to eliminate the suffering of the people of Thavnair? Sunder this dragon!" "Huh? Thavnair is encouraging Vrtra to try to restore a past with his sister instead of just accepting it and moving on? Sunder this country!"

See, this is what happens when we kill the one thing who has been keeping us in line this whole time. Outrageous abuse of familiars, wanting to minimize suffering, actually mourning the past. For shame. Headed straight for the Plenty, they are.

[Lauront]

The First and Source conveniently have a synchronised flow of time for the moment.

[myahele]

Definitely not. :P I loved HW, so it's off-putting (to say the least) to see the characters treated this way. *sigh*



Well, in that case the 13th should be beyond hope. One of the points made when treating tempering was that once physical transformation had occurred they couldn't be helped. Plus, if the planet is truly fragmented then there's no star to save anymore either.

You'd think so, but EW establishes that anything is possible with hope and writing

[Lauront]

Yeah, I thought it glossed over some key aspects a little too much for my liking. While she's popular, they should at least grapple with what she did and not mince words about what sundering means in this context. Not expecting them to say she's a terrible person, but this to me reads as a hagiography, and it moves a little too fast in taking possibilities or probabilities and treating them as inevitabilities. Reading between the lines, it is more or less saying she's using the calamities to test man, but it's so focused on inundating the reader with an account of her "love" that you could be forgiven for missing that. Certainly agree that the definition of love is a debatable one.

I also thought it was more than a smidgen unfair to Zodiark, to cast him off as the instantiation of some "ill-fated wish", as opposed to the being that the star and its inhabitants can thank for their continued existence. I think at this point I'm going to step back from the game and just take the stance of an observer with what each patch is bringing. If the short stories and future patches do show measurable improvement, great, but I'm not going in with the expectation of it.