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

[MikkoAkure]

The story being the same does not mean the presentation would have remained the same, which is what we're really arguing about. Garlemald would still be destroyed in the end, but it's likely that if the Garlemald arc wasn't basically condensed into a single zone, a lot of what happened wouldn't have been off-screened to make way for the Final Days arc.

Garlemald would still be a smoking ruin by the time we got to it since Anima would still have been a thing. Zenos would’ve been much more in focus than he was in EW if Garlemald had its own expansion and would’ve just been Stormblood all over again. Every second Zenos was on-screen in EW made me wish his death stuck in Stormblood and I could not have taken it again if he was the main feature of a whole other expansion.

There’s a lot of things they should and could have done, but a Zenos-lead Garlemald expansion is not one of those unless the Garlemald events of ShB didn’t happen and Zenos was somewhere else or just being a nuisance. That then would mean a Garlemald too strong for Eorzea to fight since the 1.0 writers made Garlemald too strong and they’d still need to self-destruct or get wrecked by deus ex machina to be defeated.

I personally find the Venat arguments a bit overdone too, when such arguments are most likely a consequence of her arc being just as condensed. Who knows how much cut context we're missing from both sides of the expansion as a result?

Venat’s arc was not condensed. Emet-Selch exposed the whole everything about the world PLUS his side of events in a post-dungeon cutscene midway through ShB and just half a zone at the very end. Venat’s side of events being what it was is just bad writing at worst and awkward storytelling at best and not anything to do with EW going zoom. In no way I can think of did it need to be longer to be better.

There was plenty of opportunity for her story to be explained better, but instead they decided to introduce brand new concepts and characters at the very end of everything that just muddled it all up culminating in a confusing Final Days cutscene that isn’t even canon to how Hydaelyn was summoned since that whole thing happened after the Final Days.

Her whole arc could’ve been salvaged with a change in the dialogue or cutscene after Kairos and/or when we meet her as Hydaelyn in the Lifestream. Instead we have the intention for how it was supposed to go, albeit with a lot of holes.

[Xirean]

Venat’s arc was not condensed. Emet-Selch exposed the whole everything about the world PLUS his side of events in a post-dungeon cutscene midway through ShB and just half a zone at the very end. Venat’s side of events being what it was is just bad writing at worst and awkward storytelling at best and not anything to do with EW going zoom. In no way I can think of did it need to be longer to be better.

There was plenty of opportunity for her story to be explained better, but instead they decided to introduce brand new concepts and characters at the very end of everything that just muddled it all up culminating in a confusing Final Days cutscene that isn’t even canon to how Hydaelyn was summoned since that whole thing happened after the Final Days.

Her whole arc could’ve been salvaged with a change in the dialogue or cutscene after Kairos and/or when we meet her as Hydaelyn in the Lifestream. Instead we have the intention for how it was supposed to go, albeit with a lot of holes.

This is probably the biggest contributing factor for the discussion imo. That single cutscene cannot be taken seriously because it is just a complete miss match of how we know the events played out. Show us the summoning of at least one of the 2. Show us Zodiark putting the aether shield over the planet and show us the fight. Showing us the fight is not only a big cool factor but also allows the writers to let the sundering be an accident. Something along the lines of her using the move mid fight but not realizing exactly how it works results in the sundering of the star. It's more expensive to make obviously, but it's the first and most ancient of primals; I'd need a better reason than budget to justify not seeing that fight.

[redheadturk]

Garlemald would still be a smoking ruin by the time we got to it since Anima would still have been a thing. Zenos would’ve been much more in focus than he was in EW if Garlemald had its own expansion and would’ve just been Stormblood all over again. Every second Zenos was on-screen in EW made me wish his death stuck in Stormblood and I could not have taken it again if he was the main feature of a whole other expansion.

There’s a lot of things they should and could have done, but a Zenos-lead Garlemald expansion is not one of those unless the Garlemald events of ShB didn’t happen and Zenos was somewhere else or just being a nuisance. That then would mean a Garlemald too strong for Eorzea to fight since the 1.0 writers made Garlemald too strong and they’d still need to self-destruct or get wrecked by deus ex machina to be defeated.




Venat’s arc was not condensed. Emet-Selch exposed the whole everything about the world PLUS his side of events in a post-dungeon cutscene midway through ShB and just half a zone at the very end. Venat’s side of events being what it was is just bad writing at worst and awkward storytelling at best and not anything to do with EW going zoom. In no way I can think of did it need to be longer to be better.

There was plenty of opportunity for her story to be explained better, but instead they decided to introduce brand new concepts and characters at the very end of everything that just muddled it all up culminating in a confusing Final Days cutscene that isn’t even canon to how Hydaelyn was summoned since that whole thing happened after the Final Days.

Her whole arc could’ve been salvaged with a change in the dialogue or cutscene after Kairos and/or when we meet her as Hydaelyn in the Lifestream. Instead we have the intention for how it was supposed to go, albeit with a lot of holes.

Her whole arc could have been salvaged if they had, I dunno, just made the Sundering an accident?

[Lelila38]

Her whole arc could have been salvaged if they had, I dunno, just made the Sundering an accident?

The whole story woukd have been much more bearable to me if just one of 3 possibilities had happened.

1. The sundering was an accident. Hydaelyn fought Zodiark and through that powerful clash it happened.

2. Venat was memory wiped too. We went to Elpis, we tried our best to warn them and change the outcome, but ultimately the past cannot be changed and we failed.

3. Hydaelyn is called out on her crimes. Despite believing when she says she thinks it was the right thing to do it was objectively a terrible terrible act that destroyed a whole people and their civilization. If the scions would only call her out on it and treat her like the well-meaning antagonist that she was portrayed to be, my disconnect would not be as strong.

[MoofiaBossVal]

Thinking on it, it seems a lot of people really like Amaurot, despite the story boiling down to an us vs them scenario. I haven't seen anywhere near as much enthusiasm for any of the city states in FFXIV. Even Garlemald seems to have more fans. It seems that there has been a critical failure on part of FFXIV's narrative to get the audience to care about the survival of the protagonist's civilizations of Ul'dah/Gridania/Limsa over the antagonists' civilizations. Even more puzzling given that Amaurot is introduced in the last hour of ShB, whereas the player has been running around inside and fighting for Ul'dah, Gridania, Limsa, etc for hundreds of hours before. I wonder what makes the city states less sympathetic or endearing despite having orders of magnitude more screentime? Is it that Amaurot and Garlemald get cool cutscenes in the MSQ while the city states don't? Or perhaps those hundreds of hours spent in the city states creates a familiarity that makes those factions seem mundane? Or is it just impossible to beat the appeal of wizards who create fantastical creatures or men in cool judge armor with mecha and airships?

[Striker44]

Thinking on it, it seems a lot of people really like Amaurot, despite the story boiling down to an us vs them scenario. I haven't seen anywhere near as much enthusiasm for any of the city states in FFXIV. Even Garlemald seems to have more fans. It seems that there has been a critical failure on part of FFXIV's narrative to get the audience to care about the survival of the protagonist's civilizations of Ul'dah/Gridania/Limsa over the antagonists' civilizations. Even more puzzling given that Amaurot is introduced in the last hour of ShB, whereas the player has been running around inside and fighting for Ul'dah, Gridania, Limsa, etc for hundreds of hours before. I wonder what makes the city states less sympathetic or endearing despite having orders of magnitude more screentime? Is it that Amaurot and Garlemald get cool cutscenes in the MSQ while the city states don't? Or perhaps those hundreds of hours spent in the city states creates a familiarity that makes those factions seem mundane?

I wouldn't call it a "critical failure" of any sort whatsoever. Rather, I see it as a huge success in writing that saw the playerbase come to sympathize with groups that we had originally been "led" to despise. The writers also did a great job in helping players distinguish between the leaders of those civilizations - the Ascians, the Garlean Emperor, etc. - and the common people within them (it also helps when some of those leaders end up supporting us a la Gaius).

There's also the really important point that we didn't come to sympathize with those groups until they faced actual destruction. We shed tears for the Amaurotines because they had this near-utopian society that was suddenly facing destruction from a source they couldn't fathom and which they didn't cause (to our knowledge). We grew a soft spot for the Garleans when their capital was razed to the ground and all of our experiences with them were helping the commoners who suffered as a result. It's natural to sympathize with people in those situations. By contrast, there's never been any real threat to Ul'dah/Gridania/Limsa. There are "threats" such as the sahagin, ixal, etc., but there's never really any fear that they would succeed in destroying any of the major city-states.

I usually refrain from WoW comparisons, but I think there's an apt one here. The general WoW playerbase over the years didn't really have much "enthusiasm" for Teldrassil (Night Elf home). Even players who created Night Elves frequently got out of Teldrassil as quickly as possible and leveled elsewhere. But when the WoW writers had the Horde actively burn Teldrassil to the ground? Suddenly there was outrage. The point - it's simple human nature to have stronger feelings of sympathy for groups that are actually destroyed than for groups that are never really "threatened", and doubly so when you spend your time seeing how the common people in those groups suffer.

[SaitoHikari]

-snip for char limit-

My guess? We're told a lot about Ul'dah/Gridania/Limsa, but the game doesn't really show us much about them from an organizational level. Even the individual Grand Companies might as well be completely indistinguishable in regards to your membership within them, though you used to be completely locked to whichever faction you joined in PvP until the devs realized that it was a pretty bad idea as far as faction-based PvP matching went. We know way, WAY more about the Ascians and the Legati more than the high ranking members of each Grand Company aside from the leaders, for instance. This disconnect is arguably part of why something like the whole Chasing Ivy arc in ARR was a bit hollow - you're just told that the Alliance is trying to root out a spy, and you don't get to do anything in regards to that until you're asked to confront her at the last moment. Then she escapes once, gets caught again, and her existence is completely forgotten after that aside from a passing mention from Varis (though we should have had a chance to question Emperor Varis about her). Even the Garleans don't really seem to address any differences between the Grand Companies either - Varis is literally the only Garlean in the entire game that acknowledges any differences between the Eorzean city-states.

It's also important to note that we also see a lot of the societal flaws within those three city-states, while we only distantly observe them at best when it comes to Amaurot and Garlemald, because both end up getting destroyed before we get to witness their flaws for ourselves.

I'd say people would actually care a lot more about Ul'dah/Limsa/Gridania if we were actually more involved in the Grand Companies that we're supposed to be members of. For years, I had been kicking around an idea about how Squadrons and the entire GC ranking system should be completely overhauled into a serious Final Fantasy Tactics-like minigame where you lead your entire Squadron into lore-relevant missions, complete with involved questlines that differ depending on your choice of Grand Company enlistment (although you'd get invitations to assist the other Grand Companies later). For example, if you were a part of the Malestrom, you'd get to see how diplomacy works between the pirates that you keep hearing so much about, and raid Garlean ships and deal with stuff like Sirens out at sea. Twin Adders could deal with stuff like cultists, thwarting Imperial patrols from Baelsar's Wall, and expeditions into the West Shroud. Immortal Flames could go into corruption and dealing with cultists on their side of the border.

At the same time, some Garleans could stand to address your GC rank more - some extra world building flavor to add weight to your own threat level beyond just a simple adventurer that happens to be allied with Eorzea and kicking everyone's asses for breakfast.

[KageTokage]

Liking the antagonists does not mean you endorse them succeeding/winning. They're just very prone to being more captivating then the good guys for a variety of reasons. Having all the cool technology/powers and/or deeper, more complex motivations are two reasons that I feel are particularly common.

In the case of the Ancients, my initial perception of Amaurot was as some kind of "too good to be true" scenario where Emet-Selch's longing for the days of old had painted a far more idealistic picture then reality. Come Endwalker...it really wasn't far off the mark. The world was not perfect, but they realized that and had several measures in place to help ensure that their society would not collapse in spite of everyone being possessed of nigh god-like powers. It's only when someone blatantly sidestepped protocol followed by another effectively shirking their duty to enable mankind to be "tested" for gods know what reason that their world fell apart.

Endwalker tried, but failed to convince me that the world of old was so critically flawed that it had to be destroyed for the greater good and that the present is somehow a net positive, which isn't really helped by XIV's story MSQ or otherwise spending much of its time going down the laundry list of reasons for why humanity sucks...and will likely continue doing so going forward as running into more human antagonists with questionable motivations is a given. The story interviews just really further drove home how insanely out of touch I was with the writers, given statements like how the Ancients were meant to be perceived as "scary" and that their happiness was "superficial" as though suffering is somehow a key component to "true" happiness despite the concept being highly subjective by nature.

[Tulvi]

My absolutely satisfied take on EW - Hydaelyn did nothing wrong and EW is a masterpiece. Peace <3

[aveyond-dreams]

My absolutely satisfied take on EW - Hydaelyn did nothing wrong and EW is a masterpiece. Peace <3

Neither did Emet-Selch. EW however, is far from a masterpiece.