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

[Theodric]

I suppose it remains to be seen how they respond to the reception to Endwalker. That they felt obligated to take the unprecedented step of creating a 'clarification' Live Letter to address the story suggests to me that there is a lot of mixed reactions across the board. It's hard to see on a surface level due to how much gatekeeping the community itself likes to partake in, though the cracks are beginning to show across the board in a way that cannot be stifled as easily as in the past.

I do hope that they manage to turn things around and create something that satisfies a broader audience. The one sided fanservice and consequences only existing for the antagonists is wearing pretty thin. I'm the type to enjoy darker stories, though only when there's consistency. Introducing characters without plot armour who are sympathetic and forced to do bad things in order to survive only to be blamed for not rolling over and dying is just...childish. It's also far removed from some of the commentary put out there in interviews about 'no good, no evil' and 'it's all a matter of perspective'.

[YukikoKurosawa]

Honestly the Final Days as never going to be anything more than a wet fart because the writers are painfully averse to consequence. A doomsday level event with a writing team that refuses to kill off anyone besides side nps nobody cares about is never going to have the weight it needs. When characters die just come back almost every time (even when they should logically be dead), there is zero tension to any drama revolving around death.

Can you imagine the current writing team writing The Lion King? At the climax of the film it's revealed Mufasa is actually alive, turns out he survived his fall (without any explanation, he just got better) and has been in hiding in a cave for the 3 or however many years that followed and arrives to save the day. Also Scar somehow survives too and is teased in a capeshit-tier after-credits scene as coming back for the sequel, with the help of a new villain from out of nowhere.

You may think this sounds outlandish but I fully believe this is how they would've handled that movie were they in charge of the script. Unironically.

At the end of the day if you want to tell a story like they were trying to tell in EW you need to commit to consequence and to make me care you need someone that actually mattters to me to suffer consequences (generally that being death). But when are you are so averse to this and just want to revert to the status quo every time than this is doomed to fall flat. Especially when you are comitted to inserting humor at innappropriate times in such a way that kills tension. We go from killing Zodiark and realizing we just caused a doomsday-tier event to happen to only a few minutes later hanging out with cute bunnies who outright crack jokes about our impending doom.

I think the writers would be more accustomed to writing light-hearted slice-of-life stories if I'm being completely honest. Serious, dark stories are clearly not for them and they should stop trying since they just refuse to commit to them.

[Xirean]

At the end of the day if you want to tell a story like they were trying to tell in EW you need to commit to consequence and to make me care you need someone that actually mattters to me to suffer consequences (generally that being death). But when are you are so averse to this and just want to revert to the status quo every time than this is doomed to fall flat.

This brings up an interesting question. I know people have very wide ranges of opinions on the various characters we adventure with, but I'm curious which character this criteria could qualify for? For me that's Estinien, but for others they may be happy to see him leave.

[Lauront]

I think the writers would be more accustomed to writing light-hearted slice-of-life stories if I'm being completely honest. Serious, dark stories are clearly not for them and they should stop trying since they just refuse to commit to them.

It's made all the weirder by the fact that both Ishikawa and Oda claim to like darker stories, so it may be a case of what they were allowed to write in the time they were given to write it.

Is it possible that the intention is that the sound was The Endsinger? I know it comes from within the planet, but magic? idk just a thought.

I can't say for sure but I almost get the vibe that they're hoping people don't look too closely at it and just take it as a given that it's the same thing. There's possible explanations of things Endsinger might have perturbed, such as the mysterious elementals, or other things inside the star, but my feeling is they're just hoping people run with it and don't look too closely at how much sense it makes.

[Rulakir]

At the end of the day if you want to tell a story like they were trying to tell in EW you need to commit to consequence and to make me care you need someone that actually mattters to me to suffer consequences (generally that being death).

I don't require death, although, given that the Scions have been through multiple wars and a universe ending threat the fact that nobody died except for people who were already dead was ridiculous. (Side rant: Thanks for bringing back fan favorites just to have to watch them die a second time and not be able to do a thing about it, that was great. -_-)

Having said that, there are no consequences for the Scions at all. Thancred's inability to manipulate aether is a minor inconvenience. Y'shtola's 'blindness' essentially became a super power and Matoya commenting she was burning through her life force viewing the world that way has never been addressed since. Estinien and G'raha did have the more compelling arcs when they were relevant. Now, they both generally seem fine, no adverse side effects for Estinien having fused with the essence of a dragon (again, superpowers) or G'raha having barely made it through 3 apocalypses now. Does no one have PTSD at a minimum? All of the Scions should be experiencing some mental health issues or other psychological setbacks that could be compelling. Instead, we end the story with Thancred commenting about not even having a scar to brag about and Estinien joking that still won't stop him.

I'd wager this is a large reason why people love the Ancient characters because they are endless tragedy despite being good people and your heart breaks for them. I think whoever coined the term "comfort characters" for the Scions had the right of it. They don't seem to serve a purpose of being anything more than that.

[YukikoKurosawa]

One thing I think nobody really mentions that deserves criticism is the amount of "As you already know...." lines they use in EW. A trope that is a literal meme (and a very old one at that) for how stupid it is (if we already know than why are you telling us is the entire point basically, its an extremely lazy way of getting information across to the audience even when the characters in-story recieving this information should already know it) , they unironically use it multiple times over in this expansion. And what's baffling is they never did it before to my recollection. The first time I thought "ok you didn't actually just use this trope unironically" than they just.....kept doing it. To the point of being comical.

[YukikoKurosawa]

I'm automatically less interested in whatever is going on with Panda Express because it's already established to happen in the past and all we get is a vague "this will somehow effect your future very badly if you don't go back in time and deal with it" is not particularily compelling. Maybe that's just me. And tying the source of the sound to this storyline is just wasted potential. We're finally dealing with this well after the fact, in a side storyline, and it's way back in the past. Okay.

And don't even get me started on how we're sent back in time to Elpis again but this time we're magically not incorporial and are also ancient sized.

[PawPaw]

And don't even get me started on how we're sent back in time to Elpis again but this time we're magically not incorporial and are also ancient sized.

Yeah, this bothers me so much more than it probably should. Also really annoyed that the portal Elidibus made, which hasn't been changed by him in any way since, now dumps us near Lethe/The Mourning Dew instead of Propylaion when we go back to meet Themis. Why? Nothing should have changed so why does the portal now randomly change our spawn point as well as "fix" our being incorporeal and small automatically when he couldn't do so himself before? It's still the exact same portal we used the first time.

[Theodric]

I'd just like Pandaemonium to either grant the Ancients a happy ending by shuffling them away into their own alternate universe...or just be subdued enough to have some cool fights without being another round of cruel trauma and consequences for no reason other than to stimulate 'feels'. If they're not going to allow the major protagonists to suffer any major consequences then there's no real reason to force the sympathetic antagonists to endure every indignity.

[Theodric]

It's just the same sort of bias that led to me to cease caring about World of Warcraft's story and characters. I was more enthusiastic about that game overall since it was admittedly more to my tastes in terms of aesthetics and I only left as a consequence of not wanting a constantly one sided trauma train of misery being rammed into the characters and races that I liked best. It's very unfortunate that FFXIV has decided to go down the same path.

There's also a very odd shift in terms of FFXIV itself. It both seems to want to be a story driven experience but...also not? I don't know how to describe it other than raising an eyebrow at comments about surprise at people paying attention to the story. What are we meant to make of that, exactly? It's the main thing the marketing department and community itself loves to advertise at every opportunity...

I do hope things improve as of 6.2 and beyond but I suppose that remains to be seen. It's just a shame that there isn't much in the way of viable competition where the MMO market is concerned.