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

[anhaato]

Question for the thread;

If you were to take over Ishikawa or Oda's position in the story and rewrite Endwalker to "fix" the story, or an expansion pre-Endwalker, how would you go about it? I'm curious, this isn't even a "well if YOU know so much why don't YOU apply for a job on the msq team!?" type of drag, I just think a lot of people in here have interesting takes on where they would've liked the story to go, and I'd like to hear from anyone who feels like succinctly laying out their do-over plan.

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I personally agree with the take on removing Meteion and cutting the fluff. I would've much rather had them go the Eldritch abomination route, a cosmic entity so terrifying and incomprehensible that we don't even fight it in a trial. THAT would've much better embodied the concept of world-ending despair than some bird. It would've been better still if this horror was something that came to be by no world's intentional creation, just came to be naturally by the negative dynamis released at a world's end amassing at some area in the galaxy. Speaking of which, keep it local to our galaxy while they're at it, instead of having to specify that every single world in the UNIVERSE is dead and that we're headed to the end of the UNIVERSE. That particular bit just didn't make sense to me, if it was the center of our galaxy around a supermassive black hole then I might have been like yooooooo astronomy.

But this is all predicated on there being a Garlemald expansion before, with adequate time to foreshadow dynamis to begin with through our escapades in Thavnair during that expansion, as we learn their theory behind akasha.

[Skyborne]

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I personally agree with the take on removing Meteion and cutting the fluff. I would've much rather had them go the Eldritch abomination route, a cosmic entity so terrifying and incomprehensible that we don't even fight it in a trial. THAT would've much better embodied the concept of world-ending despair than some bird. It would've been better still if this horror was something that came to be by no world's intentional creation, just came to be naturally by the negative dynamis released at a world's end amassing at some area in the galaxy. Speaking of which, keep it local to our galaxy while they're at it, instead of having to specify that every single world in the UNIVERSE is dead and that we're headed to the end of the UNIVERSE. That particular bit just didn't make sense to me, if it was the center of our galaxy around a supermassive black hole then I might have been like yooooooo astronomy.

But this is all predicated on there being a Garlemald expansion before, with adequate time to foreshadow dynamis to begin with through our escapades in Thavnair during that expansion, as we learn their theory behind akasha.

Yep. Involving the entire universe was pushing things a bit too hard, as was essentially going "all the aliens are dead lol". I suppose the writers just really wanted to nail in super hard the idea of our planet being "the last bastion of hope" and "humans rule, yeah!!!! we're special!!!!". Whole galaxy is still pretty high on the crazy scale and gets the idea across, but not as hard as they went. Especially since in the Studium quests, they supposedly want to travel around space... the idea of them putting in all that work just to find skeletons and graveyards is something.

I suppose if they ever want to introduce some kind of alien threat (as we already stopped the Omicron in the Sigmascape), they'd have to go "uhhh actually Meteion didn't survey ALL the planets, lol".

Of all the things in the story I had a problem with, the birdloli was fairly low on my list, and I can't blame her for anything at all besides her creator's flawed approach allowing her to be corrupted so hard. Agree with the memory wipe being everyone but us if they really have to keep the timeloopmemorywipe (an easy out that allows a writer to do ANYTHING). Having Elpis as ruins that we find or put some work into having them float again due to aetherial balance degradation, and the flashbacks being us as Azem (completely shrouded and masked since trying to hyur-ize every PC would probably not work) was also something I would've liked.

[Caurcas]

Also having a threat be tangible would work wonders. It's why Garlemald and Thavnir work in EW and Elpis, Sharlayan and Ultima Thule don't. Also seeing more of the Garlean civil war would've been beneficial to drawing the player. How effective a scene would be if we were privy to communications between two legions before they blew each other apart and during. The sorrow, the despair, the cries all would be more effective than Meteion.

[aveyond-dreams]

Apparently having us waste time with rabbits on the moon or hopping around as frogs in Sharlayan was considered a better use of time and budget than Garlean civil war scenes.

[Ixon]

Apparently having us waste time with rabbits on the moon or hopping around as frogs in Sharlayan was considered a better use of time and budget than Garlean civil war scenes.

Ok, I too was also for a Garlean expansion, but c'mon. One sidequest as a frog, and a comical relief race exactly like the Moogles in HW, or the Namazu in SB, or the Pixies in ShB was the breaking point?

[Nekokaori]

Ok, I too was also for a Garlean expansion, but c'mon. One sidequest as a frog, and a comical relief race exactly like the Moogles in HW, or the Namazu in SB, or the Pixies in ShB was the breaking point?

Moogles in hw had contex outside of a stupid joke...
Pixies have legit reason outside stupid jokes..

Namazu.. Also was only 1-2 cutscenes and had far more context and impact of trusting them ever good to learn..


Also bunny yes had context but not enough for amount of bs jokes the toad thing meha.. But this was suppose to be end of the world... End of the world has no place for stupid jokes and stuffing our faces with cheeseburgers (sware someone in america wrote that trash)

[Rulakir]

I was mostly okay with that scene (with some reservations about how Venat's actions were deliberately and transparently being softened, again, for the reasons you described - oh Venat, you card! I bet you were laughing at me the whole time, and even threw in a joke during the 12K years of torment you inflicted upon me! Say, was the joke Shadowbringers? Hilarious!!!) - but I could sort of write that off as overall consistent with Emet's characterization as ridiculously soft-hearted, and his demonstrated sensitivity toward the WoL's feelings. Then the thread clarified that his "as a show of respect to the last of us" declaration was about Venat, and I proceeded to flip tables.

I'll never be happy with that scene even given the soft-hearted context, but they couldn't very well have the fan favorite character (by a HUGE margin) undo all the gaslighting they set up to try to convince players to love Venat. The last part though, I absolutely do not accept. Emet was in anguish in the Hades trial that the WoL was using the power that had destroyed their world, then he's going to turn around and praise Venat at the end? F outta here with that.

If you were to take over Ishikawa or Oda's position in the story and rewrite Endwalker to "fix" the story, or an expansion pre-Endwalker, how would you go about it?

The long answer is I would've fundamentally rewritten everything involving the Ancients because I was unhappy with how the moon, Zodiark, Elidibus, and Elpis were handled just for starters. This isn't even getting into how thematically EW was a bust for me or that outside of two zones the Final Days were a whole lot of nothing when they should've been used to give the sundered a greater appreciation of the apocalypse the Ancients had to endure, instead it wasn't any worse than any given calamity.

The short answer is everything could've remained the same except Elpis ended in an AU (where Venat gets to maintain her likeability) while in our timeline we treat Hydaelyn as a reluctant ally, condemning her actions but having no choice but to follow through the path she's set forth.

Part of me is loathe to remove Elpis and, let's face it, Elpis hard carried this expansion. I think without it and Garlemald, EW gets ranked equal or even lower than SB. However, what I really wanted from EW were first person perspective flashbacks as Azem. While I loved hanging out with Emet and Hythlodaeus it was as a "familiar" and I had to, once again, listen to stories about my past self while being treated like I'm not that person. Perhaps if we'd been allowed to visit Emet in the aetherial sea (since Hydaelyn hints to us very early on that she ushered him there) we could've tapped into his memories and he could've coached us on how to better use the Echo instead of Venat. Rather than playing babysitter to Meteion, it could've been an interesting mystery we had to piece together by looking through the memories of everyone who was there.

[aveyond-dreams]

Ok, I too was also for a Garlean expansion, but c'mon. One sidequest as a frog, and a comical relief race exactly like the Moogles in HW, or the Namazu in SB, or the Pixies in ShB was the breaking point?

The Pixies in Shadowbringers did not outstay their welcome the way the Loporrits did. The Moogles and Namazu also did not proceed to waste our time with the worst filler arc since the trolley quests in Shadowbringers.

Comical relief is nice when appropriate. For an expansion marketed as "oh no it's the end of the world!" there was way too much of it.

[DelSolstice]

• 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

Killing Zodiark, after Fandaniel leaves us no real choice but to fight him, ensured that Eitherys' aether shield was gone. It's hardly filler. It leads right into everything after. It also was completely shocking in a good way. If he'd been the last boss that would have been boring to me.

• 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

Yes, he went mad at that point, as he felt that in a true paradise animals should have rights, especially sentient ones like Meteion, and finally snapped because he loved his daughter Meteion more than he loved other people. His actions also came from a fleeting moment of incredible rage and was not some carefully considered evil plan, which made it a lot more believable. Since Kairos erased his own memory too, he was much less able to help reverse this. My main complaint was it wasn't clear on the timing. Did Elidibus know that that was the crucial moment in history where the ancient world was doomed? Odd that he wasn't a little more clear about that.

• 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

We see in 5.2 when exploring the Anamnesys archives that she quite literally got more ancients involved and tried to get other convocation members involved on the Hydaelyn project. She was absolutely not working alone, it was a whole group of people. Who do you think the original Watcher was? Her confrontation at the temple in Amaurot wtih members of the Zodiark project happened both after Zodiark already did two restorations and also after she had taken on the power of Hydaelyn. You can complain that they didn't explain it a bit better, especially when the post-Elpis cutscene was mostly metaphorical, but that's a bit different


I have a few complaints about Endwalker, and do rank it a little below Shadowbringers, but none of them have to do with Zodiark, Venat, or the real source of the Final Days.

[Theodric]

They made the conscious decision to not only cut out an entire expansion but deliberately choose to end many of the major established storylines in the base MSQ's. They could have paced themselves better and focused on the meaningful stuff and left all the comic relief and so on for patch content. Which would be more suited to light hearted affairs.

It's not like anything of consequence happened to the protagonists in Endwalker, either. So there was no need for a 'break' from 'trauma' as far as I see it.