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

[aveyond-dreams]

Well that's the rewrite done, let no one say that I didn't at least try to not completely destroy the entirety of the source material I had to work with despite my strong urge to do so. I did what I could with characters that I otherwise despise, and hopefully I told a story that provides a bit more oomf than whatever the second half of Endwalker was supposed to be.

The most considerable challenge to this was definitely on how to handle Meteion - I tried to do for her what the writers thought they were doing for Venat, if that makes any sense. Whether or not I was able to accomplish this effectively is definitely up for debate. I basically said to myself, "What is a character that I can actually tolerate and whose behavior isn't nonsensical?" and I picked Rydia from FFIV and transposed her characteristics on top of whatever was salvageable from Meteion's original writing.

Naturally I make no excuses for Venat and try to stay true to what I expressed in an earlier post - a traitor who hides behind a beautiful illusion. I drastically changed the battle sequence against her to fit what would be the real final battle of the expansion, and thus various plot points are altered as a result of this. Again, I drew inspiration from the media I've already mentioned earlier in this thread for all that.

The most fun part was definitely getting to flesh out Garlemald with the addition of more Ivalice material and being able to provide some political aspects to the plot that I tried to handle a bit more carefully than how Garlemald's actual finale was handled this expansion. I openly challenge the whole "United States of Final Fantasy" that the scions and Sharlayan have going on through the characters who live in Ilsabard that reject this form of government. I would have liked to go into further depth but I made the decision to reign myself in to keep pushing the plot forward.