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

[Merrnryn]

Heh, the spouse calls Endwalker: Escort Walker because of all of them. A few would have been fine but it was way overdone.

[MikkoAkure]

Heh, the spouse calls Endwalker: Escort Walker because of all of them. A few would have been fine but it was way overdone.

It was the same thing with the spyglass/dart mechanic they made for SB that got shoved into a lot of the MSQ. They seem to make a new mechanic for the expansion and then throw it in all over the place to justify the cost in making it.

[Vyrerus]

This is not true.

You're confused. Chains of Promathia and Rise of the Zilart are separate stories in their entirety until the very end. They have associated lore and a tied together ending, but the "tied together" ending is more or less just having RoTZ done as a Prerequisite check so that Apocalypse Nigh's battlefield can be accessed (so that the Archduke and his brother are dead and can come out of the crystal line to fight you). You can do all of Chains of Promathia before Rise of the Zilart, and their storylines intersect in no discernable fashion outside of Apocalypse Nigh. They were also written by completely different writing teams.

When I say uplift the weaker story, I mean give players a reason to finish it completely. A very common thing that happened with FFXI storylines is that players disregarded them entirely even when current, because they offered few rewards. RoTZ had the oddity that the big reward from it comes from an optional 18 man version of Zilart Mission 14 -Ark Angels. The battlefield's name is Divine Might, and you receive one of five unique earrings if you do the 18 man fight against all 5 Ark Angels at once. At this point, most players stop, since you have full access to Tu'lia (Sky), and don't get any rewards from ZM15 or 16.

Then along came Chains of Promathia. At the very end of Chains of Promathia, you get a quest called Storms of Fate where you fight Bahamut in an 18 man fight that probably never really needed a full compliment of 18, but why not bring more muscle than you need? You gotta fight him, because he asserts that the Keeper of the Apocalypse could still manifest. Anyway, after that, your progress is halted until you beat RoTZ.

All that RoTZ supplies is the bad guys to fight and the damsel to be saved(returned from death). Narratively, all of this, "tie together" is from CoP, not RoTZ. And in some ways it doesn't even make sense, because the Zilart Princes are back and teamed up with no animosity towards one another, even though Eald'narche killed Kam'lanaut. (And for that matter, the Shadowlord comes back with no animosity towards either of them, in spite of his soul being trapped in Dynamis).

It would have been very easy for them, and made more sense even, to just have us fight another version of Promathia. Instead, they opted to gate this quest's access behind completing RoTZ. It's barely a tie together at all, relying entirely on CoP's narrative with the RoTZ cast merely showing up with no prior association or interaction with the CoP cast. Edit: And I forgot to mention that this fight has a reward earring similar to the ZM14 ones as the carrot on a stick.

It's like you didn't pay attention to it at all. Or maybe watched a Let's Play and read the cliff notes.

[MikkoAkure]

You're confused.

It's been well over a decade since I played but from what I remember:

CoP continued building on the same whole thing RotZ was on. As mentioned, they can be done separately and you can do Promyvion at level 30 or so from what I remember (also remember having to do that 40 times) but CoP is still built on top of the stories that came before it and is a part of the main story of the setting. You travel to Taznavia from the original opening (or at least see it from a distance and go to the shelter), the musical motifs are from the main song of FFXI (Distant Worlds) that is also present in some past vanilla FFXI cutscene music, Zilart and Kuluu characters are present in both, we travel to the Zilart capital referenced in RotZ, and eventually deal with the cosmic struggle and ancients and long-ago history of the game's setting.

The characters came and went unlike the Scions, but you had the Kuluu Nag'Molada and the Zilart woman with the scouter device whose name I forgot in early CoP quests despite the whole thing about their races being told in the previous expansion. Also pretty sure the Zilart priestess of Altana was in both as well. Yeah, they can be done out of order and I personally played them partially out of order because I was slow at leveling in the game and despite starting the game a few months after NA PS2 release, I hadn't made it to Sky by the time CoP came out and I wanted to get to Taznavia ASAP. But they were very clearly meant to be done sequentially since CoP built off of RotZ more than other expansions built off any other expansions and the story would be stronger had you done them in order. And again, I was there and I remember nothing at all about RotZ being a "weaker expansion" that required to be "uplifted" by CoP.

[MikkoAkure]

Wasn't it implied that rejoinings would happen on their own without hydaelyn keeping everything separate?

I don’t remember anything like that being implied but you’re free to show it here if it was.

The Unsundered are gone, Zodiark’s body on the Source has had His aether dispersed and the souls devoted to His Creation sent back to the Lifestream. There’s no force left to prevent Rejoinings, but there’s no force to create them either. I’m not sure about the world-hopping abilities of the Sundered Ascians because they were all just normal people who got some manufactured memories back and Rejoinings require world-hopping. The Unsundered could have ferried them across the void between world like they did with Cylva, Unukalhai, and the WoDs, but I don’t know if they can do that on their own.

I don’t think Hydaelyn was holding the walls of the splintered world apart and everything will just keep going as-is.

[MagiusNecros]

I really hope that in Dawntrail they at least keep ESCORT/STEALTH QUESTS to a minimum. I HATE them. They can write whatever bishonen fanfic they want but get rid of those. All I ask.

[Equitable_Remedy]

I'm genuinely surprised that there's not already a thread to pre-complain about the story in DT.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Even if the shards are inclined to "naturally" rejoin over time, it'll probably be on such an enormous time scale that the game will never actually have to deal with it. Even ignoring that the game's handling of the passage of time in general is.....sketchy.

[ShadowyZero]

shocking this thread has lasted this long without being closed

but anywho to add my own thoughts to the many:

i was excited to see the conclusion to everything it was a very long time in coming and i hope going forward the developers and story writers can get even more creative now that all the loose ends have been tied more or less. (except for ascians/convocation sadly we still have 5 of em at large potentially if they haven't gone rogue by now like fandaniel did.)

people are mad about the scions not permanently disappearing or dying but honestly i saw them coming back a mile away they've done this in several of their games already
but its nice send off (at least i wish it were but sadly dawntrail begs to difer)

that said i was disappointed how the handled the Garleans this was our one chance to see their society an what it was like to lead them up to being so fanatic and willing to challenge the whole world but instead what we got is a bunch of extensional crisis people on the verge of fracturing at the seams because their empire was a tool of the ascians an their emperor turned into a primal.
and why on Earth was Gaius absent!? like seriously he was such a prominent figure and the whole cause and reason for wanting to inact change among the garlean society the writers excuse for not including him in my opinion was extremely weak he would've been a great voice to add to leading his people to a better path and convincing the other legions to join his cause yet nope can't do that he was "framed" allegedly for killing the emperor when there were several who could personally vouch that it was ZENOS' doing and therefore an active coup perpetrated by the crown prince and not the legions.

and onto the subject that everyone loaths so much about Venat and her reasoning for destroying her entire race rather than saving it
listen, she was give the full score of events that lead up to "our" and by extension her future and she decided to trust in us because she always has why wouldn't she? she handed to us her former job on the convocation and that job entails us protecting the people and making sure they are heard as well as safe guarding the world's future. and she also trusted that her future self had a plan in case things went horribly wrong an she was absolutely right
hydaelyn created plans to preserve the future at all costs an worked with the sharlayans to make sure it went smoothly an she created a massive eikon of her friends in the form of the twelve with their purpose being to slap zodiark back into place if he ever broke out and if need be take his place.
and lastly she took the meteion threat seriously as well as her reports about the other stars did ya'll even watch or read that cutscene??? meteion accurately described a race of people very much like the ancients who knew neither strife, pain, or wanted for anything but they found the absence of life's struggles to be too boring and too predictable an it made their lives seem so trivial so they decided what was the point in living forever if it had lost its luster? an so they summoned a being to end their seemingly unimportant lives and this resonated with Venat's soul she could see her people in the reflection of those from a distant star and didn't wish to repeat their mistake.
sure it wasn't her only option no she could've told the convocation hermes did a major f up an that they needed to prepare for meteion's assault but this would then have made our timeline not exist or would forever alter it which she just couldn't bring herself to do if you were in that position it would be hard for you to make a choice as well could you sacrifice all the lives of a future just to save your own present? i doubt you could carry such a weight on your shoulders knowing you murdered an entire timeline for selfish self preservation thats not even a guaranteed safety net but potentially a downward spiral cause even if they had stopped meteion well a certain someone's wife was plotting something equally worse.

[Dulcia]

sure it wasn't her only option no she could've told the convocation hermes did a major f up an that they needed to prepare for meteion's assault but this would then have made our timeline not exist or would forever alter it which she just couldn't bring herself to do if you were in that position it would be hard for you to make a choice as well could you sacrifice all the lives of a future just to save your own present? i doubt you could carry such a weight on your shoulders knowing you murdered an entire timeline for selfish self preservation thats not even a guaranteed safety net but potentially a downward spiral cause even if they had stopped meteion well a certain someone's wife was plotting something equally worse.

I highly recommend the Video Essay from Youtuber Echoes of Etheirys and their video "Venat: Why She Failed (Full Series)" as it explains extremely elegantly why the Elpis plotline was the weakest part of Endwalkers and directly refutes all of your arguments.