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

[ReynTime]

Post #62 is almost exactly how I feel about post Stormblood XIV.

I'll also add that music isn't as good as before either. Before Stormblood the soundtrack out of dungeons didn't consist of overusing the same 2 leitmotif ad nauseum. Even heavensward and dragonsong were used more sparingly and definitely less like "same song but replace instruments" like Endwalker does.
Old Sharlayan's theme is great but Radz at Han sounds completely forgettable because it's basically a remix of a remix of the same theme with awkward beat.
Remember when each nation pretty much had its own motif and zones had distinct tracks generating more variety of motif for dungeons and hamlets? Well I guess you're loving hearing either recycling of 1.0 uematsu tracks taken out of their original context (ShB) to save on not getting additional composers or the same two leitmotif being almost everywhere.

This game is being held by eye candy, MCU tier writing, boss fights and all the casual lifesim content now. Everything else feels decidedly more rushed than before despite the increased budget and for all the job balance they swear by healers and tanks are still tedious.

[Kozh]

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.

Nope, it's all aether lol. Job crystal? Aether. Monk Chakra? Aether. Drk abyss? Aether. Memory and emotions of found in battlefield (relics)? Aether. Limit break? Aether. Echo? Aether. Hell, even summoning primal via prayer and faiths, which funny enough should be a dynamis thing, is actually aether based somehow.

Aether is like the Force of ffxiv, but can be scientifically measured and studied. Meanwhile dynamis has never been hinted before EW.

[OhNooo]

WARNING : THERE ARE HEAVY SPOILERS IN THIS POST!!! DO NOT READ IF YOU DID NOT FINISH THE STORY OF EW!!!!
First, the whole setting is really shying away from what this game was before. Traveling to the past like its nothing? Casually teleporting to the Moon that is also an Spaceship and walking there like its nothing? Flying a space ship to the literal edge of space ? Casually taking an elevator down to the literal center of the Lifestream and all Aether ? We are flying to the edge of the universe to fight a "Bird" that for what ever reason can manipulate this absolutely new concept we never heard before on a cosmic scale and wipe whole planets with it.
Everything just feels like its soo far-fetched its not even funny.
I loved HW and StB since it felt grounded, not this farfetched story about time travel, different dimensions etc. And in terms of overall feel and story, I rank them over ShB and EW.

I agree with this whole post especially these points I've selected. HW is still my favorite in terms of the story and Stb has my favorite 24 man raids (I've been waiting for them to top these raids and they haven't in my opinion). The trials and Omega raid were also pretty awesome. I feel like from the moment they dropped the Shb trailer they set themselves up for making things more and more convoluted and it feels like in EW they were really trying to deliver crazy plot twists. Let's just go back to local stories instead of fighting the embodiments of certain emotions lol

[Lauront]

Nope, it's all aether lol. Job crystal? Aether. Monk Chakra? Aether. Drk abyss? Aether. Memory and emotions of found in battlefield (relics)? Aether. Limit break? Aether. Echo? Aether. Hell, even summoning primal via prayer and faiths, which funny enough should be a dynamis thing, is actually aether based somehow.

Aether is like the Force of ffxiv, but can be scientifically measured and studied. Meanwhile dynamis has never been hinted before EW.

Yup, they were listed in this. They're extracts from Encyclopaedia Eorzea, which are in-world knowledge compiled by Sharlayan scholars - like you say, they have ways of measuring and even visualising aether. They will probably avoid a retcon and say the LBs can be fuelled by either/or (and in Elidibus's case it very clearly is prayer fuelling him, which raises further doubts about the inability of an ancient to wield it, albeit via workarounds), but in any case they've had that lore for a long while. The other thing typically brought up as foreshadowing is Omega, but I find that one particularly weak as an example, because it's a soulless construct created by beings that themselves lost their "essence" by digitising their minds and bodies to become robots. So there's already that massive differentiating factor with the main character.

[OhNooo]

There was an awful lot of attempted tear-jerking...

I really do feel like they were trying way too hard to get these emotions out of people. For me the whole expansion felt like "isn't this sad? *plays music* are you crying NOW?" And just a lot of instances of starting something but then it ends up fizzling out and you're like "ok what was the point of all of that?" (like the body swap thing). That one song they always played when a "scary" part was about to happen and the close up jump scares they tried to do were just cringey in my opinion.

[Phaty]

Pretty sure we learned zodiark wasn't evil in ShB, just a primal summoned by the ancients who in fact staved off the final days.

[Phaty]

They did this in Final Fantasy X as well, the game revelled in objectifying Rikku. Its not xenophobic to point out a pattern here.

I guess i fail to find how a kid with wings on their head and bird legs is objectifying

[Ryaz]

No, it's certainly polarizing. I'm sorry you didn't like it, but I've seen plenty say -- with just as much fervor -- they've loved it.

Its honestly only here on the official forums where the hate seems to be more concentrated. Reddit, YouTube and every Facebook page I'm subscribed to seems to love it. Hell, it's still at 91% critical rating and 94% user rating on Metacritic (and one of the user scores is actually a mistake where he gave it a zero but praised the entire game).

The forums just seems to have a very vocal minority. Honestly, most posts on the forums seem to do nothing but criticize the game. The place is a ****show most of the time with very little in the way of productive discussion.

[Jandor]

Except even the lore surrounding dynamis is wonky. They say its tied to limit breaks now, yet in the past its always been classified as a combination of aether granted to you by your allies. If its purely dynamis, then the fact Elidibus and the ancient trusts in endwalker can use them causes some inconsistencies. If its a combination of the two, that even further complicates things as then im even further questioning how the ancients wouldnt have known about it for thousands of years.

The final boss says "Dynamis?" after you limit break. That's it.

That particular fight takes place in a realm built out of Dynamis instead of Aether, it's a rather exceptional set of circumstances.

[Tulzscha]

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 Ascians have been trying to power up Zodiark by merging reflections with the source for a long time but we already stopped them. He's weak and the only reason we fight him is because Fandaniel wants him to die.

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

Not quite. Hermes is shown to be overly sensitive for starters, he doesn't like the way things have been going on Etheirys so he sends familiars to other planets to find out other beings' reasons for living and such. Turns out they're all dead or dying or hopeless so he goes nuts because there's no meaning to anything and everything dies and yada yada.

So he decides he'll give humanity one last shot to prove their worth by letting Meteion & sisters bring about the Final Days. The way humanity's been going it was only a matter of time until they ended up like all the other dead civilizations in the universe so this actually ended up saving the planet in a way.

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

She tried to stop Meteion herself and couldn't, Meteion uses dynamis which makes up most of the universe and Venat uses aether of which there isn't much way out in space making Meteion more powerful out there. Also it wouldn't have mattered because Meteion has tons of sisters spread out across the universe.

The only way the ancients could figure out how to save their planet was by summoning Zodiark, which Venat was very much against because she had her memories and knew what was going to happen. That wasn't enough to change the course of things so she did all she could. Too little too late.


Most of the ancients never even heard about dynamis and couldn't use it due to having so much aether within themselves, it's explained that aether is far more potent and the only reason the WoL can harness dynamis is because we've been sundered thus lessening our aether.

Why (or how) she sundered everything idk. Zodiark's existence kept the planet alive but he needed sacrifices to keep going, Hydaelyn stuck 'em in the moon which apparently made it so sacrifices were no longer required but he still kept the planet alive somehow? Sundering the people set them on a new path - every other civilization fell apart while seeking perfection so she kinda made that impossible. Also by lessening the aether within the people they became more able to use dynamis and fight back against Meteion - limit breaks use dynamis and the tank LB3 is required in that trial.

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

It's pretty good imo, it just feels like a lot of it kinda came out of nowhere all at once - mostly dynamis, that would have been nice to see brought up in a previous expansion.