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

[ArcaviusGreyashe]

Not gonna argue on EW's story, I've had my fair share of it, but

Neither themes nor literary references make a plot good or well-executed. Imagine the makers of something pretty universally panned and/or disappointing like the final season of Game of Thrones, or Rise of Skywalker, saying that actually, you didn't get it, they really did their research and were referencing this old as balls work of classical literature, and that maybe if you weren't such a boorish, low-brow rube, you would appreciate their masterpiece. Is this supposed to make the story's weird change in tone, tired old plot devices or weirdly anticlimactic conclusion to years of build-up that apparently went nowhere more satisfying to the audience? What even is the point here? (Other than condescension on an online forum because you might frankly be more upset than you should be at people not liking a thing you like.)

You can reference a lot of things, and still not be condescending, and you can be narratively bad, but be great in other aspects of a story's play (referencing rise of skywalker, here, which is what it is, but from a directing point of view is probably the best of star wars movie). Likewise, there are a lot of novels that are pretty bad, but very well written, as in "sentences are pleasant to read".

Then again, "deep" things are not the same for everyone. And this time, you're the one that could (not saying you are) be condescending. If people feel like something is deep, that's a feeling of their own, and you don't really get a say in it. Their life led them to have some philosphy that may or may not be questioned by whatever they "live", whether that is some niche, obscure novel from the XXth century, or a themepark video game. None is more pathetic or despicable than the other.

And finally, it's absolutely possible that most people reading/watching/playing a narrative object miss the point. It is a failure per se, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the story is not interesting or badly written.

Then again, not saying EW's story is great or bad, just saying you shouldn't be so close minded and, maybe, accept that some people do have different point of view (and that applies to far more than a random video game we all spend time on to divert ourselves from the unstoppable walk of time that will slowly but relentlessly guiding us all towards a certain death with shiny armours and pop folk music)

Besides, for that "Other than condescension on an online forum because you might frankly be more upset than you should be at people not liking a thing you like." part, the angrier people might be one that write 7770 messages about how bad something is...

[ameliaw]

I want to complain again about how Meteion, created by 1 regular dude, destroyed the WHOLE UNIVERSE but our planet. God how do I hate that decision. I dislike lots of things about Endwalker but this is what I dislike the most by far(other than the very weird message on suffering). It would be enough if our creation just finished a handful of civilizations, or if what destroyed the rest of the universe was something not related to the Ancients in any way. It is just too Etheirys-centric as it is and also kills the wonder of the unknown.

[Carin-Eri]

I want to complain again about how Meteion, created by 1 regular dude, destroyed the WHOLE UNIVERSE but our planet. God how do I hate that decision. I dislike lots of things about Endwalker but this is what I dislike the most by far(other than the very weird message on suffering). It would be enough if our creation just finished a handful of civilizations, or if what destroyed the rest of the universe was something not related to the Ancients in any way. It is just too Etheirys-centric as it is and also kills the wonder of the unknown.

That's not what happened though.

Meteion visited various Civilizations who were destroying themselves, as seen in 'The Dead Ends'. Granted her empathic abilities did bring about the end of a few of them but not all.

And I don't recall reading anything that suggested that she wiped out all life in the universe - in fact, to the contrary, the Omicrons are still out there.

[Graeham]

I want to complain again about how Meteion, created by 1 regular dude, destroyed the WHOLE UNIVERSE but our planet.

Leave think to guild. Must see long game.

No Shadow God it wanting to become the mustard race. To do this it must kill the lesser ape. But Megaman planet and Dragon planet it come to attak No Shadowlands to fight in the Starcraft tournament become mustard race. King Solus he hire the Herman to create God Meteo to destroy all others with the depression. But God Meteo is the kind god and feeling the depression of the Doctor Wily and the Midgard. So it attak the No Shadow God and killing them too. Is refer to FF4 spell Meteo which killing spoony bard who using it.

We having the genius idea. Is so much of the complaint on the 778 page submit by the silent majority. Guild it make the online petition for course correct to kill all ape chara and bring back No Shadow God. Then can take to the Yoshi Island and teach the lessen to the Jr ghost writer. Tariq take the note. We putting him in charge of plan.

[ameliaw]

That's not what happened though.

Meteion visited various Civilizations who were destroying themselves, as seen in 'The Dead Ends'. Granted her empathic abilities did bring about the end of a few of them but not all.

And I don't recall reading anything that suggested that she wiped out all life in the universe - in fact, to the contrary, the Omicrons are still out there.

It's on the wiki that she decided to end all life in the universe as mercy after witnessing the end of a few. I do recall that she did succeed and Etheirys was the only place left, but I could be mistaken.

[ameliaw]

So I watched a few Endwalker cutscenes and I can tell that it was at least implied that she did indeed wipe everyone, considering that she's on the ''edge of the universe'' and says this






I'm trying to fact check but it seems to be ambiguous at best.
Also, isn't Omega the last omicron, the rest being dynamis copies? I didn't start their tribe quests yet.

[jameseoakes]

So I watched a few Endwalker cutscenes and I can tell that it was at least implied that she did indeed wipe everyone, considering that she's on the ''edge of the universe'' and says this


I'm trying to fact check but it seems to be ambiguous.
Also, isn't Omega the last omicron, the rest being dynamis copies? I didn't start their tribe quests yet.

Metions goal is to end all life as she can't understand why anything destined to die would want to live (or something) so the story strong implies she's purged everything she could in the universe meaning only planets able to protect themselves are left

[Heroman3003]

So I watched a few Endwalker cutscenes and I can tell that it was at least implied that she did indeed wipe everyone, considering that she's on the ''edge of the universe'' and says this






I'm trying to fact check but it seems to be ambiguous at best.
Also, isn't Omega the last omicron, the rest being dynamis copies? I didn't start their tribe quests yet.

We know life still exists out there, as of quest we get from Omega after the end. She did make effort to prevent life from flourishing by collecting all the aether she had into dead star we see in skybox of Ultima Thule, stopping life from flourishing anew on stars that died before she encountered them or as she encountered them. So you could say she ended all life in universe, but not in direct way, moreso by finding the graveyards and making sure nothing can ever grow from the ashes. As she puts it at some point, as she took feelings of dead and dying as her own, she started believing that true mercy is not just death - its nonexistance, not even being born. I dont doubt she ended at least a few worlds purely by singing her song, but its clear that it wasn't all of them. And her defeat also marks leakage of aether from the dead star she formed, which already causes birth of new one in the Omicron quests.

[DevonEllwood]

This is going to be a long post since I haven't really commented on the story and I wanted to actually defend it for a change.


I'm going to be completely honest, I have just been skimming the story. My friends are always further into the story, Tuesday is a 12 hour day for me, and I don't know if it's because of that or I'm generally getting impatient and just wanting to unlock things. Yoshida said he wasn't aware of people paying that close attention to details (in reference to the Shadow hunter scene....zooming in on the masks and people able to potentially identify them) but going on that I'll assume small details don't matter. I've been reading the first and last part of paragraphs and just, getting the general idea of what's going on.

All that being said, I feel the patch content has been okay. Not great or bad, just general middle of the road, kind of boring, but okay. The pacing seems fine if a bit slow, the characters have been okay, I don't feel like I'm being manipulated, there's no time travel, and cut-scenes were okay. I feel like this is a vast improvement over most of endwalker. I'd rather have a slow, boring story over whatever endwalker was. I did enjoy the character animations, especially for the eyes. I feel it gave them more life and maybe the writers might actually get me to eventually care about the characters. What I didn't like was Y'shtola being completely stupid. The dragon being sensed in Garlemald was an obvious trick. All they needed was for her to say, "this is probably a trick, keep your guard up" or something instead of "hey she may have been able to escape for a short time?". It was frustrating. The scene after defeating fire dude was weird too, I may have missed something. I was just letting the autoplay go for it and I guess I'm supposed to feel bad for him because he came to our world to die and rejoin the cycle of rebirth. I don't know, there was sad music playing. I feel like a lot of these story bits have already been done in the game and it's fine to re-do them, just bring something new to the table. I don't feel the patch quests have been doing that.

On to the food/slow scenes. I never cared for the burger scene. I felt it was awkwardly placed and served little to no purpose. I also just find hamburgers disgusting. The slow scenes have been on an incline since shadowbringers I feel. We've had them before, but they're nothing new. I am not concerned about budget being wasted on them, but if they continue like this, I feel that some of the slow/eating scenes will become saturated and feel less special. I liked the scene Where Jullus shares food with Zero. Did I skip it? Yeah...toward the end, again, that's on me. I'm impatient. I do appreciate that it was a way for Zero to remember being human, companionship and camaraderie. It was also a callback to the Jullus soup moment, which is one of my favorite scenes in the game. Off the top of my head, that one, anything with Beaten in it, every second Fandangle Dingobills was on screen, Vidofnir getting attacked (I was ready to kill a dragoon for that), and Bacon Moses Frog parting the Red Sea.

On where it started going downhill for me. I've said it before but 5.3. I really did not lie it. Great trial and music though, hated the story. Shadowbringers was a balancing act with the more "friendly and Disneyfied" moments and the darer scenes. It wasn't perfect, but I felt shadowbringers did a much better job at letting the heavy scenes play out to a natural conclusion. Also, I've been playing since 2.0, the reveal at the end of 5.0 felt like a payoff and I loved it. That being said, I really like Hades as a character, but...that's Elidibus's spot. He was the white rabbit motif we had in ARR, the ascian following us should have been him. The only thing is that the whole friendship with Hades, but then again, that could have been Elidibus.

On Ishikawa. She made a tweet that she was stepping down from lead writer about a month before endwalker. She made crossover content showing the sundering for an entirely different game series. I don't thin the fault of the endwalker mess lies with her at all. I feel that she wasn't allowed to do what she wanted to. Yoshida saying he stepped in to help because she was overworked, mentions of a re-write, covid issues and movie everyone to work from home, everyone potentially wanting to get a last say in to the "end of the story". These are the things I feel made the problems. It seems that things that get delayed, have too many writers, or are passed from one person to another, are things that have more potential to have problems. Because of corporate reasons, we may never know the truth and all Ishikawa can say was "that it was meant to be this way". Actions speak louder than words, her stepping down and writing material for another game shows to me she was not happy with endwalker.

Picking apart a story and analyzing it should make it better, not worse.

Also if we are going to complain about powerlevels: the ancients sacrificed half their population to create a being to make a shield, and another half of the remaining to jumpstart life. Venat munched 13 souls and created 13 worlds worth of budding life.

[AwesomeJr44]

The scene after defeating fire dude was weird too, I may have missed something. I was just letting the autoplay go for it and I guess I'm supposed to feel bad for him because he came to our world to die and rejoin the cycle of rebirth. I don't know, there was sad music playing. I feel like a lot of these story bits have already been done in the game and it's fine to re-do them, just bring something new to the table. I don't feel the patch quests have been doing that.

Yeah, the post trial cutscene in this patch was a bit shaky. I think the big issue with the archfiends in general is that they're treated less like characters and more like monsters of the week that we meet, fight, and kill in rapid succession. There really isn't enough time to set them up as proper characters, so it feels really weird when they try and act like Rubicante is someone we're meant to connect to and feel bad for. Unless they get some serious work done in flashbacks or they get revived like they do in FFIV, I feel like the archfiends are just going to be generic baddies that will be quickly forgotten about, not characters we can sympathize with. Zero preaching to Rubicante was also pretty annoying. She's the only voidsent we know of who has gotten lucky enough to be transformed back into something resembling her previous state, brought to the Source, told she can stay, and allowed to feed on normal food without having to hunt for it. (at least she's the only one I can think of, and even if there's another one that's slipping my mind, her case is exceedingly rare) And yet she wants to preach to a voidsent who is forced into a cycle of violence and constant hunger? It just seems like she's tone-deaf and that the messenger shouldn't be the one bringing the message.

Picking apart a story and analyzing it should make it better, not worse.

I agree. I have a very analytical mind, and looking at Endwalker logically ruined it for me.