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

[Teraq]

I am in the minority, but I hated Elpis. I'll use it to segue into your statement "Endwalker was popular and a success". I'm just going to be blunt, but I have been working in a specific environment that has brought my attention that people's comprehension levels are absolutely abysmal and it's embarrassing. People do not read. People do not have patience. People do not give an f-bomber plane about anything beyond surface level. People just want their hand held because it's easier. […]
I'm not going to say my comprehension levels are great. People liked endwalker because they saw a pretty game with great music and a neat story. They're not going to look into it much more than that. I don't need my hand held for the story, I don't need it held for the lore, and I don't want it held for the combat.

Absolutely this. I don't deny there are lore people who actually pay attention and still somehow love Endwalker, more power to them, but it honestly just seems the vast majority does not care this much and is just in it for a fairly enjoyable, "don't think too hard about this" romp, like most blockbuster movies are. Most people don't care to dissect a story and point out every little plot hole. It's the irony with FFXIV: it's touted as this amazing story, but at the same time, people will chide you for analyzing it too closely. "It's just a video game!". Yeah, it's just another media to tell a story. This does not mean it has to be subpar and not stand up to scrutiny.

That is when people are not giving you the ol' "Have we played the same game? / Pay attention to the cutscenes sweetie…" while in the same breath spouting headcanon like "Ancients were going to keep sacrificing lesser humans to their blood god" like it's the truth. Christ, dude. I've been obsessing over Ascians and Ancients for the past three years. I have this big folder of collected fan art right here. I can recite every Convocation seat and the color of their associated crystal in the order of the zodiac. I've done every side quest and spoken to every single NPC I could in Amaurot and Elpis, sometimes in multiple languages. If only I had never cared enough to pay this amount of attention. I truly, truly wish I hadn't.

This argument is especially bad when it's followed by the person regurgitating Endwalker's bad plot and aesop at me. Yeah. I got it the first time around when I suffered through it, because I happen to have a functioning brain. You repeating this stupid story but embellishing it with personal insults is not exactly making its case any better. People will just reply to criticism of Venat with a link to her martyr-o-vision cutscene, as if they think they are making a point that is completely new to me.



Here it is: Endwalker having all the subtlety of a brick the writer is throwing directly at your face, featuring everyone's favorite race. To be fair you must have a very high IQ to understand…

All in all, I cannot figure out what precise amount of attention I had to give Endwalker to enjoy it. I can only suppose that paying simultaneously too little and too much attention works exactly the same as the logic that the Ancients were both too perfect to live (the sheer gall of them to have been born with biological immortality and creation magics that instantly make their society post-scarcity!) and too flawed to be brought back: the answer is You Are Wrong.

Elpis was a frustrating mess for me for the bad dialogue and the pointlessness of conversations. To use an example, the scene where Hades is teaching the critter to fly and Hythlo would not shut up. Look, hes a great person. Look at him helping! I am not joking in that Elpis helped people realize that Hades wasn't always a big meanie pants. I mean, I thought that was obvious in Shadowbringers. That he was a normal person until 12k years of suffering.

You are entirely right, of course. However, I would posit that the subtle brick being thrown directly at the player's face is exactly what most of this player base needs. This reminds me of that post-5.3 interview where Yoshida says they made the incredibly unsubtle parallel between G'raha and Elidibus with that one line explicitly so players could better understand Elidibus through G'raha. I honestly found that insulting. Who even needed that to empathize with Elidibus??

YoshiP knows his audience, I suppose. Even as Pandaemonium bashes you over the head that the guy was nothing but the most precious of sweethearts (which was already made plainly obvious in 5.3 and its accompanying short story), you'll still find people wishing they could be hostile to Themis in dialogue options, because I guess they enjoy roleplaying their WoL as a moron with a grudge and no grasp of time and logic. Even though everyone and everything is telling them the Unsundered have been warped by trauma and 12k years of suffering and loneliness. Glad these people got the option to accuse Lahabrea of things he did literally twelve thousand years into the future, though. Gotta throw the Minority Report pre-crime people a bone, after all.

Yet, the worst part of Endwalker is Yoshida's attitude toward it. Him not knowing people cared about the lore so much. I'm sorry, but he doesn't have an excuse to not understand. Does he just forget about all the lore QandA? Is the game not marketed for its story? Do you not have lore books? A major complaint people had about WoW was the lore being retconned. This and Yoshida clearly wanting to be done with the story so he can "move on" to other stories.

Happy anniversary to this Q&A, by the way. The nail in the coffin of 6.0.

I particularly love that this was his immediate response to a question about Ascians in particular. It's like he's surprised people even care about them when they aren't named Emet-Selch.

It comes across as the polite way to say "wow, you guys care so much more about Ascians than I ever did!". I know, man. I know. I've played through Endwalker. I know you don't care about Ascians, you don't have to say it out loud.

And even Emet he expresses confusion about, sometimes bordering on resentment it seems, when he draws a false equivalence between him and Hermes and Venat in the very same Q&A, asking why people would resent Venat and Hermes but not Emet. This man truly, absolutely does not get it.

(And in case you were wondering, yes, of course I'm still mad about the obvious lion mask apparently not being Fandaniel's. I still refuse to accept YoshiP's answer. This is stupid. It's a lion, not a goat! At least PRETEND it was big brain foreshadowing for a main antagonist instead of "uhhhh random lol")

[kpxmanifesto]

I particularly love that this was his immediate response to a question about Ascians in particular. It's like he's surprised people even care about them when they aren't named Emet-Selch.

It comes across as the polite way to say "wow, you guys care so much more about Ascians than I ever did!". I know, man. I know. I've played through Endwalker. I know you don't care about Ascians, you don't have to say it out loud.

And even Emet he expresses confusion about, sometimes bordering on resentment it seems, when he draws a false equivalence between him and Hermes and Venat in the very same Q&A, asking why people would resent Venat and Hermes but not Emet. This man truly, absolutely does not get it.

Yeah, that Q and A session was pretty bad. He looked visibly uncomfortable as he struggled to answer fans' questions about the lore, as if he were withering away in his seat. He was pretty much in damage control mode for the entire duration of answering questions related to the MSQ.

[AceNoi]

Hello! Long time lurker, first time poster. This thread has kept me sane for the entirety of Endwalker, knowing that there *are* people out there who can recognize it for the train wreck it is. I had to log on and make my first (real) post in the forum after reaching Floor 30 in Eureka Orthos, because man if that last cutscene isn't emblematic of everything wrong with this expansion.

"WoL, now that you've been inside the tower's unearthed basement that never came up before, what do you think of the Allag and what they did?"

A. They were good people and did nothing wrong!
B. They weren't good but they weren't bad either!
C. They were the most evil people in the world!

No nuance allowed, gotta boil everything down to three simplistic choices instead of just cutting away and letting the player imagine what answer they gave to Koh and her awful new outfit instead.

[Absurdity]

Hello! Long time lurker, first time poster. This thread has kept me sane for the entirety of Endwalker, knowing that there *are* people out there who can recognize it for the train wreck it is. I had to log on and make my first (real) post in the forum after reaching Floor 30 in Eureka Orthos, because man if that last cutscene isn't emblematic of everything wrong with this expansion.

"WoL, now that you've been inside the tower's unearthed basement that never came up before, what do you think of the Allag and what they did?"

A. They were good people and did nothing wrong!
B. They weren't good but they weren't bad either!
C. They were the most evil people in the world!

No nuance allowed, gotta boil everything down to three binary choices instead of just cutting away and letting the player imagine what answer they gave to Koh and her awful new outfit instead.

I haven't done that yet, but I for one am glad to see that CBU3 also subscribes to Bioware's design philosophy of the blue, green and red beam lmao.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Can someone explain why G'raha needed to carry an aetheric analyzer? I thought that was what the goggles every scion carries were for.

Actually, wait.
With the Costume Changes, did anybody (besides Kryile, because she is still the 1 Scion that hasnt gone through an Evolution) even keep, much less even USE those Goggles?
So, while its a good question....did they even have them anymore?

[Graeham]

No nuance allowed, gotta boil everything down to three binary choices instead of just cutting away and letting the player imagine what answer they gave to Koh and her awful new outfit instead.

We agree. Three binary choice is remove all nuance. Should be three hexadecimal choice.

[Saraide]

Hello! Long time lurker, first time poster. This thread has kept me sane for the entirety of Endwalker, knowing that there *are* people out there who can recognize it for the train wreck it is. I had to log on and make my first (real) post in the forum after reaching Floor 30 in Eureka Orthos, because man if that last cutscene isn't emblematic of everything wrong with this expansion.

"WoL, now that you've been inside the tower's unearthed basement that never came up before, what do you think of the Allag and what they did?"

A. They were good people and did nothing wrong!
B. They weren't good but they weren't bad either!
C. They were the most evil people in the world!

No nuance allowed, gotta boil everything down to three binary choices instead of just cutting away and letting the player imagine what answer they gave to Koh and her awful new outfit instead.

"three binary choices"

[Teraq]

Hello! Long time lurker, first time poster. This thread has kept me sane for the entirety of Endwalker, knowing that there *are* people out there who can recognize it for the train wreck it is.

I'm using my last day of forum access – because 6.3 sucked this badly I've picked up WoW again – to say that seeing posts like this never fails to bring me joy, because we all have the same story: this fandom is an echo chamber, and we all felt like we were "insane" and alone. I am still getting messages by random people thanking me in replies for articulating what they felt about Endwalker (which is a rather dire situation tbh because I hate to think my rambling rants manage to successfully articulate anything) and making them feel less alone.

Allag has always felt so weird to me, lore-wise. Their civilisation apparently lasted for a millennia, if I recall correctly, and throughout that millennia their entire identity was apparently looking tacky and being Certifiably Bad. I mean, I guess their architecture wasn't literal coffins like Mhach, but at least Mhach had the good taste of, overall, not making me want to gouge my eyes out. There is literally one good thing that has come out of Allag, and it is Mr Patch 5.4 Stupid Sexy Scientist Allagan Laguna. Allag has always felt fake as world building, to me. Basically all Allagan names we know of are these shoe-horned FFIII references, and some of the most important Allagan characters we've seen have always been depicted as literally raid boss models. Endwalker, please stop trying to make me feel anything for the FFIII spoopy skelton man we can't even see emote. I know Yoshitsugu Matsuoka is carrying this whole character incredibly hard, but he isn't nearly enough to salvage Amon's boss model in cutscenes. There's a reason why since 5.0 we've kept coming up with excuses to have most Ascians and Ancients keep the hood and the mask off.

Stop trying to make Amon-Fandaniel-Hermes happen, Endwalker. Amon-Fandaniel-Hermes isn't happening.

Oh, and please don't mind the very obvious, weird unfunny troll that has somehow escaped moderators for literally 8 months straight, even though mods have just proved they're monitoring this thread because a certain poster's recent message was deleted. We're pretty sure by now, thanks to an unfortunate slip-up, that it is a most eminent figure of the lore masters' guild with a very particular grudge. Names matter, after all.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I'm using my last day of forum access – because 6.3 sucked this badly I've picked up WoW again – to say that seeing posts like this never fails to bring me joy, because we all have the same story: this fandom is an echo chamber, and we all felt like we were "insane" and alone. I am still getting messages by random people thanking me in replies for articulating what they felt about Endwalker (which is a rather dire situation tbh because I hate to think my rambling rants manage to successfully articulate anything) and making them feel less alone.

Allag has always felt so weird to me, lore-wise. Their civilisation apparently lasted for a millennia, if I recall correctly, and throughout that millennia their entire identity was apparently looking tacky and being Certifiably Bad. I mean, I guess their architecture wasn't literal coffins like Mhach, but at least Mhach had the good taste of, overall, not making me want to gouge my eyes out. There is literally one good thing that has come out of Allag, and it is Mr Patch 5.4 Stupid Sexy Scientist Allagan Laguna. Allag has always felt fake as world building, to me. Basically all Allagan names we know of are these shoe-horned FFIII references, and some of the most important Allagan characters we've seen have always been depicted as literally raid boss models. Endwalker, please stop trying to make me feel anything for the FFIII spoopy skelton man we can't even see emote. I know Yoshitsugu Matsuoka is carrying this whole character incredibly hard, but he isn't nearly enough to salvage Amon's boss model in cutscenes. There's a reason why since 5.0 we've kept coming up with excuses to have most Ascians and Ancients keep the hood and the mask off.

Stop trying to make Amon-Fandaniel-Hermes happen, Endwalker. Amon-Fandaniel-Hermes isn't happening.

Oh, and please don't mind the very obvious, weird unfunny troll that has somehow escaped moderators for literally 8 months straight, even though mods have just proved they're monitoring this thread because a certain poster's recent message was deleted. We're pretty sure by now, thanks to an unfortunate slip-up, that it is a most eminent figure of the lore masters' guild with a very particular grudge. Names matter, after all.

Too bad you and everyone else in this thread aint no different because I bet you believe Shadowbringers's story was top tier unlike me who believes it wasnt that good. I'm in the Stormblood msq was actually really good crowd. WHERE'S MY ECHO CHAMBER HUH!?

[Kazhar]

Too bad you and everyone else in this thread aint no different because I bet you believe Shadowbringers's story was top tier unlike me who believes it wasnt that good. I'm in the Stormblood msq was actually really good crowd. WHERE'S MY ECHO CHAMBER HUH!?

I don't know why you care so much about people's opinion on Shadowbringers. (Especially here, since it's mostly about 6.0)

You're free to dislike Shadowbringers. It wasn't perfect, and in some ways it started a downward spiral for the story even if it wasn't clear at the time. (Before the usual suspects come arrest me for my crimes against "objectivity/majority", I'm only stating my opinion here). And yes, Stormblood's story, while flawed, did a lot of things right.

Most, but not all, people I know who expressed their dissatisfaction with 6.0's story did like 5.0, but I wouldn't say it's closely related to 6.0's perceived issues.
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be impressed with Venat, Hermes, Labyrinthos 2.0 and Ultima Thule even if Shadowbringers didn't exist. I wasn't even a big Ancient / Ascian / Zodiark fan before Endwalker. (Ironically the story team's best efforts at making them unsympathetic made them more sympathetic to me)