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

[Atelier-Bagur]

The answer to this is pretty simple. They just don’t want to kill any of the main cast as we all know. Instead they kill off minor npcs so that people can defend it and say “see, it wasn’t without consequences! X character died!” We saw this in Shb with Tesleen who in reality we knew for 5-10 mins. It’s pseudo consequences basically. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of the stuff that might’ve actually threatened the scions has been completely dropped. Again, i bring up Yshtola’s supposedly draining life. What happened to that? Literally not mentioned after HW.

Im gonna just clip that last sentence because I have a feeling somewhere in the future the writers have been thinking about this part about new Y'shtola for years.

[ReynTime]

The answer to this is pretty simple. They just don’t want to kill any of the main cast as we all know. Instead they kill off minor npcs so that people can defend it and say “see, it wasn’t without consequences! X character died!” We saw this in Shb with Tesleen who in reality we knew for 5-10 mins. It’s pseudo consequences basically. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of the stuff that might’ve actually threatened the scions has been completely dropped. Again, i bring up Yshtola’s supposedly draining life. What happened to that? Literally not mentioned after HW.

It's a cheap way to make things more dire than they are in the plot. Introducing a character exclusively to kill them off 10~20 mins later.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Im gonna just clip that last sentence because I have a feeling somewhere in the future the writers have been thinking about this part about new Y'shtola for years.

More power to you. Personally i’ve been heading for the past two expansions, “Oh i’m sure it will be mentioned next expansion!” And it never has been. At this point it would feel pretty random for them to mention it, because in all honesty she should be dead from it by now. She got sliced in SB and then used flow again in ShB. That should’ve deteriorated her life even more. Instead the opposite has happened and she’s grown stronger. It seems like the rules and laws of the universe don’t apply to them.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Story is ruined. Time for me to quit the game then.

[Nilroreo]

Well, they lost the best writer in XIV for XVI to let someone who is apparently obsessed with trying to make people cry and power of friendship speeches... Yeah the old writer is still around but his involvement in ShB and EW is very minimal.

I don't wanna be too hard on the current writers as I'm sure they're really passionate about the prospect of working on this franchise, but It's a bit hard to ignore that some of the more aggressive retcons and recontextualizations became more frequent starting with Shadowbringers, which I believe was around the time Ishikawa came on board full time.

Random example, when Emet confirms he was tempered in Shadowbringers, I decided to take him at his word, since I have no reason to assume he would lie about something like that. But when paired with the revelation a few patches later that the Echo isn't some phenomenon tied exclusively to Hydaelyn but instead to all Amaurotines in general, it brings to mind every single instance of immunity to tempering up until this point and how all have been attributed to the Echo. In ARR, I believe we didn't even have Hydaelyn's blessing for most of the story, so it would've been the Echo protecting us. In Heavensward, our blessing was revoked by Middy, and in Stormblood, 3 separate characters, none of which have the blessing were able to resist it with their Echo. But then Shadowbringers drops this revelation and Endwalker confirms it was actually the blessing of light protecting us this whole time!

So now, if we assume the Echo is what gives us immunity, then Emet couldn't have been tempered, but if we assume it was actually the blessing, then every single instance of the Echo being used to resist tempering between ARR and Stormblood is now called into question. the "light tug" comment in Endwalker doesn't really help much to clarify things either.

[ReynTime]

I don't wanna be too hard on the current writers as I'm sure they're really passionate about the prospect of working on this franchise, but It's a bit hard to ignore that some of the more aggressive retcons and recontextualizations became more frequent starting with Shadowbringers, which I believe was around the time Ishikawa came on board full time.

Random example, when Emet confirms he was tempered in Shadowbringers, I decided to take him at his word, since I have no reason to assume he would lie about something like that. But when paired with the revelation a few patches later that the Echo isn't some phenomenon tied exclusively to Hydaelyn but instead to all Amaurotines in general, it brings to mind every single instance of immunity to tempering up until this point and how all have been attributed to the Echo. In ARR, I believe we didn't even have Hydaelyn's blessing for most of the story, so it would've been the Echo protecting us. In Heavensward, our blessing was revoked by Middy, and in Stormblood, 3 separate characters, none of which have the blessing were able to resist it with their Echo. But then Shadowbringers drops this revelation and Endwalker confirms it was actually the blessing of light protecting us this whole time!

So now, if we assume the Echo is what gives us immunity, then Emet couldn't have been tempered, but if we assume it was actually the blessing, then every single instance of the Echo being used to resist tempering between ARR and Stormblood is now called into question. the "light tug" comment in Endwalker doesn't really help much to clarify things either.

I don't think Ishikawa is a bad writer, but the direction they went with starting with ShB is decidedly more "shounen" than any FF has been since VI. And credit where credit is due she IS good at making sympathetic antagonists... Meteion is just not one of them and I blame it on how rushed her development and exposition is.
I just think Maehiro is better at writing stories that don't underestimate an adult viewer's intelligence.

[Momo_Kozuki]

In ARR, I believe we didn't even have Hydaelyn's blessing for most of the story, so it would've been the Echo protecting us. In Heavensward, our blessing was revoked by Middy, and in Stormblood, 3 separate characters, none of which have the blessing were able to resist it with their Echo. But then Shadowbringers drops this revelation and Endwalker confirms it was actually the blessing of light protecting us this whole time!

Middy revoked your blessing in post-ARR, but you regained the blessing back (showing by earning elemental crystal one by one after you deal with dungeon/trial bosses in HW) by the end of HW. It was supposed Middy's test to see if you was worthy of her blessing, and you proved your worth. So your Blessing of Light is available since HW onward.

[Lauront]

I don't think Ishikawa is a bad writer, but the direction they went with starting with ShB is decidedly more "shounen" than any FF has been since VI. And credit where credit is due she IS good at making sympathetic antagonists... Meteion is just not one of them and I blame it on how rushed her development and exposition is.
I just think Maehiro is better at writing stories that don't underestimate an adult viewer's intelligence.

Has there been any word on whether she'll still be lead writer now that 6.0 is done with? I agree with your assessment of her writing style. She's not bad, but it is a particular style of writing better suited to certain stories and characters, and I've had my fill of it now.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I don't think Ishikawa is a bad writer, but the direction they went with starting with ShB is decidedly more "shounen" than any FF has been since VI. And credit where credit is due she IS good at making sympathetic antagonists... Meteion is just not one of them and I blame it on how rushed her development and exposition is.
I just think Maehiro is better at writing stories that don't underestimate an adult viewer's intelligence.

I don’t think Ishikawa is necessarily a bad writer either. I think a few things could be involved. One of them being i’ve felt like her writing is very same-y. A kind of, don’t fix it if it ain’t broke type of deal. For example, we have shb, where she made emet and the ascians/ancients as a whole sympathetic and understandable, and it worked! It fit for that sort of thing. But then we get to 5.3 where she decided to multiply that sympathy by 1000 and turned Elidibus from the manipulative cunning person he was in ARR to….dementia stricken npc. Not to mention the whole Amaurot instance with him just feeling like Drk questline 2.0,.

Then now we get to EW. Where she continues to do the same thing but this time strays away from the grey morality a bit and has Venat be considered benevolent and a hero. Then tries to make the ultimate big bad aka Meteion sympathetic as well. To me, Meteion is like they took Necron from ff9, a villain who can work just being clear cut bad, and tried to make him sympathetic, thus we got Meteion. Everything is just sympathy,sympathy,sympathy. And the one thing that she wrote that wasn’t sympathy….is one of the things many players hate(Zenos) and wasn’t even explored this expansion at all. Remember his whole visions of the end of days since early childhood? Yeah me neither apparently.

However, it’s hard to say whether all the blame is on her. How do we not know that maybe it was yoshi or some of the higher ups that influenced her writing? Considering that yoshi P made a comment on that podcast talking about how he cried so much at Venat’s scenes and, they spent a month or more on Hydaelyn’s model itself. It definitely seems like there’s some bias in that regards.

[TaleraRistain]

I like him, but his overly timid anime style admiration is tired bordering on creepy. They get it right with Estinien, imo.

I think of him like Phil Coulson from Marvel. Coulson is an incredibly capable leader. But he gets starry eyed around Steve Rogers, his hero. The story about the 8th UC timeline explains it well. G'raha grew up on stories and fables of heroes and we are the embodiment of that ideal.