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

[Lunalepsy]

• The mighty Zodiark, which has been build up as this mighty(evil) entity over several expansions, turns out to be nothing but filler trash for the first Endwalker trial
• The true cause of the Final Days is a pet-project from an ancient which goes mad after observing countless dead world and possibly causing the death of several world by projecting negative emotions unto them, and is thus dead-set on bringing despair to every world, upon which said ancient goes mad and is now letting her run her course to test humanity if they can withstand/fight despair
• Venat, who hasn't had her memory wiped + still remembers you from being in Elpis, quite apparently doesn't lift a finger to learn about Dynamis herself or to mobilize the other ancients to end Meteion then and there, and instead chooses to turn herself into Hydaelyn, sunder the world and the inhabitants, thereby forcing them to live with and face despair and gambling that their resilience against despair might be enough to face Meteion one day

Really?
This is the best SQ could do in terms of story after ShB?

Don't bother showing the truth around these parts.

[Erza_Scarlets]

Shadowbringers was better in overall story. Endwalker just seemed forced to finish the arc faster and close all the gaps. Endwalker did have lot more cs time. After finishing the story I tried it again on alt to see how much time is cutoff with skipping and its big difference to other expansions. Even with skipping others was pretty long vs endwalker has all the story put in more cs's.

Before doing the story I thought what would happen is Zenos kills Fandaniel and Zodiark then corrupts Hydaelyn forcing you to face the corrupted Hydaelyn to save the world with no Zodiark to balance it. Doing all this to force us to have to confront him again.

One part that was interesting is the different races we meet in last zone. Would been great if they expand on what was and what kind races there were in the universe. Cause they talk about a log of races, but only show us very little of them.

[Ririta]

Do we know how Graha's future is possible if we're dead there and couldn't go to Elpis to tell Venat to investigate Hermes and his pet?

I mean, that's all Meteion was at the end of the day, a creepy underage doll for Hermes that he had a frankly somewhat creepy relations with. You've got issues Japan... Bet lets not forget that this was the same company that shoved ass-shots of a 15 year old girl in front of the camera at every opportunity in Final Fantasy X (Rikku). Its really creepy.

Don't need to go back to FFX for it, we have Ryne becoming Shiva and having a mechanic where you need to turn away from her while she changes her clothes... lol
They actually modelled her naked.

FFXIV was free of this low-tier trashy anime stuff in ARR and HW, it's sad they couldn't keep it in their pants.

[Thaciscokidd]

The time travel part could have been done better even with the little hint that was dropped that we were going to go back to the past.

But the story just seems super rushed and localized. I have a hard time believing that Ul'dah didn't see a problem with the despair bug.

Right now having gone through the story on my alt and main I rank it below ShB and HW and even with StB at the moment. The way they handle the Garlemald situation and the reaction that one of the world's greatest adventurers is a free agent will decide where I place this story. Because just assisting Garlemald alone could cause more that a couple of problems or change how other nations look at the WoL.

[Kozh]

She didn't gamble with the inhabitants of the now Sundered world. We, the PC, had already travelled back in time and told her about the Sundered world's beauty and our adventures in said world. She knew the inhabitants could overcome despair because she met us. Hydaelyn knew of the events leading up to when we went back to the past, because we told her on the bridge in the sky. That's where he knowledge ends. From the moment we return to the present, Hydaelyn has no knowledge whatsoever about what comes next. This is why Hydaelyn fought us, to test both our strength and resolve, and to see that we, the inhabitants of Etherys, can survive on our own without her guiding hand.

Her action is definitely a gamble. Something even y'sthola said it was. She met one strong sundered person, then decided to bet the future of humanity to that person plus seven other people. She is lucky EW is so deep in shounen anime trope that the protagonists can defeat literall endbringer, who accumulated despair for 12k years across the stars, via friendship power.

I can't believe I like tales of arise ending better than EW.

[Meril]

do people ever wonder why they might be in the minority?

[TaleraRistain]

I wasn't a fan of the "dynamis" thing, because it wasn't foreshadowed properly as a "thing". Had they mentioned something about an "unknown force next to aether" in past expansions, this would have worked better.

They've been hinting at this for a long time now. They really just finally gave it an official name. We push past our limits on a regular basis. And even the Echo doesn't explain it, because we can push further than others with the Echo.

[Millybonk]

What I get from this is I like Endwalker for the same reasons you dislike it. I can see it being a polarizing expansion.

I think where we can find common ground is what comes next: we're simply an adventurer again. We've done the crazy stuff, and it's time to just explore.

I still love exploring the ARR zones, too! Definitely give Thav another chance, though; I've found places in both Radz and the "proper" Thav I completely missed my initial time through!

Calling the lackluster story in EW to be "polarizing" is nothing but a sleight of hand: you either acknowledge all those illogical plot developments, character decisions, pacing issues etc. that are IN-YOUR-FACE if you actually paid a tiny bit of attention and actually questioned them if they makes sense given what you know about the story up until EW, the character backgrounds, the Elpis section etc. - or you fail to notice them/willfully omit them to be able to pretend that the story of EW isn't that bad right after ShB.

[Millybonk]

do people ever wonder why they might be in the minority?

For that to even be logical you'd have to question every player via a poll to then be able to discern what the "majority" looks like, and what they're the majority of.

[van_arn]

Calling the lackluster story in EW to be "polarizing" is nothing but a sleight of hand: you either acknowledge all those illogical plot developments, character decisions, pacing issues etc. that are IN-YOUR-FACE if you actually paid a tiny bit of attention and actually questioned them if they makes sense given what you know about the story up until EW, the character backgrounds, the Elpis section etc. - or you fail to notice them/willfully omit them to be able to pretend that the story of EW isn't that bad right after ShB.

I'm sorry you didn't like it. I might have paid a tiny bit of attention. For over a decade.

You might be serviced reading your own thread and referring to my own posts in it, though, to realize while I see problems with the narrative it's still my favorite expansion due to what it brought us. If anything, Endwalker makes another Shadowbringers possible. Shadowbringers only worked because it was partially detached from the Source and all the baggage that comes with that; most of the baggage has been dealt with on the Source now.