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

[Rulakir]

Bringing voidsent back into the picture felt fairly logical to me given the rather high likelyhood that a certain "friend" of ours is going to end up being used as a flesh puppet by one in the wake of his demise.

I just hope they keep Zenos' VA for it, he's great.

[RoroCookies]

It appears Garlemald only appears in the role quest in 6.1 despite being in the most dire straights at the moment. Sharlyan may have to change some policies but is still whole. Thravnir suffered massive damage as well but it at least still has a leader and viable living conditions. Garlemald has been reduced to Rubble, its residence huddling in a subways (and it was hinted at that a large amount of citizens and soldiers were un tempered and are undergoing treatment after the tower of babel so they need a more viable living location soon) and it has no current leader or government that people can turn to.

You think this would be the prime concern for the WoL due to how they like helping those in need but the recent trailer just shows us helping personal colleges to shard hop and go on a treasure hunt because lol TrEaSuRe and AdVeNtUrE. So very personal stuff over helping people in need. Maybe I am wrong maybe the dungeon serves the same purpose as the one in 4.1 to get an ancient lost treasure to help the economy of those who have suffered the most in the final days and repair some of the damage, so namely Garlemald, Thravnir, and the at the moment unvisited Corvos. Maybe they were to busy trying to get 6.0 finished and used this patch cycle to tune old content from 2.0 and so the story is more filler. Maybe Garlemald will get a similar treatment to Doma in SB where it gets a hub that is repaired over the expansion like the Doman Enclave and story arch that lasts at least 2 patches, which it is at least owed after losing an entire expansion. But still this lack of focus after I now know that a Garlean Expansion was sacrificed to rush the finale is only going to make me be more critical of the lack of content focused on Garlemald, only having 1 zone that is mostly destroyed, no hub like at least the Doman Enclave, and almost no side content at the moment outside of the role quest (which I am so glad I finished all of those so I can play that on day 1, before the MQS I might add).

Nah you see, the people of Garlemald need to learn from their suffering and become stronger. We shouldn’t have to help them improve their quality of lives because it will only make them weaker.

[Lauront]

Nah you see, the people of Garlemald need to learn from their suffering and become stronger. We shouldn’t have to help them improve their quality of lives because it will only make them weaker.

Indeed, back to the caves with them, and for that matter, everyone else!

[Caurcas]

Echo chamber aside. Zenos works as a simple antagonist. Shame about that middle bit with the Fandaniel/Hermes nonsense. Also having Venat play antagonist would just turn 14 into another cliché jrpg story.

[aveyond-dreams]

Echo chamber aside. Zenos works as a simple antagonist. Shame about that middle bit with the Fandaniel/Hermes nonsense. Also having Venat play antagonist would just turn 14 into another cliché jrpg story.

If Zenos had more scenes where he actually did things instead of endless teasing he would have likely been received better. It's like watching one of those movies about relationship abuse, it's the scenes where the abuser does something that makes us afraid and angry at him. Or scenes from serial killer or masked killer movies where they pick people off one by one and in doing so create a sense of tension.

I disagree that Venat as the main antagonist would be too cliche, not if they went with a "fallen angel" scenario for her. She is presented to us as our best friend, anyone remember what happened with our "best friend" in the Devilman series? The manipulations and the betrayal on that scale would have made for a lot better than Hermoine Granger +10 times the arrogance becomes a goddess.

[Caurcas]

If Zenos had more scenes where he actually did things instead of endless teasing he would have likely been received better. It's like watching one of those movies about relationship abuse, it's the scenes where the abuser does something that makes us afraid and angry at him. Or scenes from serial killer or masked killer movies where they pick people off one by one and in doing so create a sense of tension.

I disagree that Venat as the main antagonist would be too cliche, not if they went with a "fallen angel" scenario for her. She is presented to us as our best friend, anyone remember what happened with our "best friend" in the Devilman series? The manipulations and the betrayal on that scale would have made for a lot better than Hermoine Granger +10 times the arrogance becomes a goddess.

So you wanted them to go full Griffith with Venat? Also it would've helped of they hadn't written the ancients to be so drab that I might've cared.

[aveyond-dreams]

So you wanted them to go full Griffith with Venat? Also it would've helped of they hadn't written the ancients to be so drab that I might've cared.

I'm not familiar enough with Berserk to know the full extent of that character's story but our "best friend" becoming our worst enemy was absolutely what I had wanted to see happen with Venat. Here we have this beautiful "lady of light" who seems almost too good to be true, and then as time goes on she could have begun to deviate from Ancient society through more open, even violent ways while manipulating those around her for her scheme.

In one final stand, the most loyal and fanatical of her followers sacrifice themselves to give her power while we as her former best friend turn away from the conflict, only to regret it too late afterwards. I desperately wanted to see her battle against Zodiark in game too, especially if it was going to be anything like the final battle between Ryo and Akira.

[Lauront]

Whether or not it would be "cliche", they did a good job of that kind of portrayal with Yunalesca, where she's not premised as evil so much as trying to enforce the continuation of a blood-soaked rite purely for the sake of maintaining hope. She was a very well executed antagonist. She did what she thought was necessary, but they didn't try whitewash what she was doing, either. Venat is not fundamentally different to her at the end of the day, as much as the game may try to convince you otherwise.

[Skyborne]

Bleats of 'cliche story' always ring hollow when we've been whipping out time travel since Louisiox sent us 5 years into the future, the 'chosen one', le ebil empire, hooded darkness men, corrupt church that had been lying to its people for 1000 years, POWAH OF FRIENDSHIP with the scions all praying for us as a remix of previous themes blare, sparkly fluffy light goddess vs. horny demon darkness god, nihilistic jesters who want to end all existence, a man who is a walking battle-hungry shounen antag who only cares about The Fight, crying little girls standing in flower fields, and so on. A game whose premise is lifting entire elements from previous games in the series, including Yoshi's fave, 3.

As far as I'm concerned we got our Yunalesca-Hydaelyn, it was merely directed at someone else with us being the ones who benefited from it (at their expense). The ones who were wronged can't object to it because they're all dead, mission accomplished!

Don't mind cliches, honestly, it's more the execution that matters to me. There's just something about EW's writing that was extremely cloying and intolerable, and my cringe tolerance is normally pretty high.

[Caurcas]

Eh, I disagree. They should've scrapped ShB and EW both in favor of a black rose/Garlemald expansion. A mixture of what we saw promised in Bojza with a dash of brutal WWI-esque warfare instead of boring magic Greeks being got by a sad man and his bird loli and disagreeing on a solution. It would've been less cliché and FF cannibalizing.