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

[Silverquick]

I didn’t like many aspects of the Endwalker storyline either, you’re not alone in that. However, making a thread like this is just going to get you hate from people who did.

To be honest with you, I have not really been that impressed with Endwalker either so far. I just picked it up and am moving through the campaign now. It was about as cringy as ARR at points. You know... run yourself off the cliff kind of naivety, emotion emotion emotion with no reason or rationality behind it, despite many of the characters supposedly being scholars and espousing rationality and reason. it was like all the characters reverted back to ARR with no character development. They reference it... but then don't actually show it.

On top of that it's got some of the worst elements of the Stormblood gameplay that just annoyed the hell out of people, half the time I'm not playing my character but rather someone else's. At the very least in ARR there was a lot more freedom, especially with exploration.

After some of the most interesting and in truth mature stories in Heavensward and Shadowbringers, how did it revert back to this state?

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

There will be no main character deaths in FFXIV.

To be fair, Papolymo "died"
And I guess Zenos.

So thats 2 major Players

[Theodric]

At the very least in ARR there was a lot more freedom, especially with exploration.

That's definitely something I miss. As a roleplayer, it's been incredibly frustrating to see increasingly less interest in building an actual world to explore and more investment in changing the game's tone and aesthetics in order to appeal to the 'lol so randum xD' crowd. I like consistency and immersion in my world building which is why, when playing the likes of The Witcher 3 I don't suddenly want Geralt to pull out a bucket of KFC and emote eating it.

[Vyrerus]

FFXI's story weakness

Honestly, FFXI did storylines in different parts of the world and adventuring as the through line very well. It is a new storyline in each place, and your adventurer is crucial to it. It makes complete sense that we don't have characters carry over always, and meet entirely fresh faces when we travel to places we've never been before.

If anything, FFXI's story's weakness is that it's using FFXI logic for quest/mission progression, so what you're doing to progress isn't always 100% in line with what characters said or what the storyline battles pertain to. Back in the days where the grind was long and the story was short, the difficulty of the battlefields themselves and the rewards from them were way more of a player concern than the plot of the story. It could take months back in the day to get a competent group together, just to beat Snoll or Airship 6-4 fights or 8-3 Pots, and those are all from just one storyline. This form of progression meant you had to write that shit down or revisit the bards and goblin footprints to get a refresher if you cared about what was going on.

Now that it can be done back to back by yourself with Trusts, you'll find that the stories really are entirely cohesive. Still separate, of course, but all quite solid if a bit tropey. The actual, actual weaknesses being limitations of the 2002 engine. So no voice acting. Lots of reading. Translation choices not always reflecting the prior scene's context. Game day waits instead of JP midnight waits tripping up the pacing to appease convenience for the player.

[BRVV]

To be fair, Papolymo "died"
And I guess Zenos.

So thats 2 major Players

Why the quotes? Did Papalymo not die? And Zenos... well is a villain. Even when a lot in the fandom seem to want to hang out with mass murderers.

Just watched the trailer for the next patch. Should i drink a shot everytime we get boring exposition ("i can still use the light") or lame one liners? Some rambling about "Salvation". I could just write an FFXIV boss by that point without giving them any agenda or character trait besides "spouts bs".

"I am Lameness the 14th and i will no longer let this keep on going! Come here Warrior of Light, Darkness, Grey but always good, and face my wraith! I shall bring salvation from you! You are in the wrong! It is the one-sided brethen you haventh listenth to that manipulated thou. Do you not see? Now we will face off in this battle in a patch cycle that people will forget a week after patch! Can you dodge my 'Why-Even-Bother'?"

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Why the quotes? Did Papalymo not die? And Zenos... well is a villain. Even when a lot in the fandom seem to want to hang out with mass murderers.

I dont wanna hand out with a Mass Murderer. But I personally thought Zenos was a Good Villain. At the very least I found him fun and entertaining compared to some other Villains
(Not Emit, he's still the best)

But I should have also put Quotes on Zenos...because him "Dieing" just felt like he got sleepy and passed out. He just wanted to stay there forever now that he got his Rematch. The game says he dies, but I just dont feel that. We didnt kill him, we just beat him
Papolymo I guess "died" when he very well could have just essentially casted "Flow" to dissipate his body into the Lifestream after attempting to recreate the Cocoon to slow down Shinryu. Y'shtola did it and and got brought back out. You could say She "died" to but is now a well taken care of Zombie like Auron who was an unsent

Idk, his "Death" just also felt unceremonious, like he might come back in the future or something.

[Vyrerus]

Papolymo I guess "died" when he very well could have just essentially casted "Flow" to dissipate his body into the Lifestream after attempting to recreate the Cocoon to slow down Shinryu.

Well, no, he couldn't have. It's rather explicit that successfully making the cocoon used all of his life and aether, which is why when the cocoon finally broke, Lyse's Archon tattoo, that Papalymo had aetherically put on her, faded away.

[Silverquick]

Well I finally made it up to the Meteion arc, and completed that. And I admit this doesn't really feel like the story they originally intended. While it certainly has its cool points too, it just doesn't feel like what the story was originally supposed to turn out like.

You know what I think happened here. They intended to go into the ascians, but entire Shadowbringers arc was so good it made you actually start to care about them and think they weren't such bad guys after all. That they were fighting for a world they'd lost and it was more of a case of two parties, you and them... fighting to preserve your own worlds. You couldn't think of them as the bad guys anymore.

SO they changed what the original story was supposed to be.

When I look back on ARR and Heavensward, especially the Alliance Raids which is where a lot of this stuff was filled out, we always knew about the Voidsent which were more like Demons, and that was what they Ascians were supposed to be. Some kind of corrupted ancients that had become demons. More that they shattered their own world and became the void, ie the real demons, the empty shells consuming life. The Void was the darkness and the shattered world. The Alliance Raids of Heavensward and ARR both bear this out. This was the Darkness they were talking about that was consuming the world.

So they came up with the Meteion arc to distance it from the Ascians being actual bad guys.

It doesn't suck... but it also feels... well... like it doesn't really belong. At least not if you were there in the beginning.

I wonder if this is what contributes to the general malaise of people just not really caring anymore. That they didn't get the story they thought they were playing.

[Theodric]

I think it just comes down to a lack of consistency. We always knew that Hydaelyn was responsible for the Sundering, which in itself was always an act of genocide. It was just a matter of whether it was an intentional act or an accident - and quite a few of us were more than willing to give her the benefit of the doubt prior to Endwalker. As it happened, not only were her motives exceptionally dubious none of them hold up under even the slightest bit of scrutiny or would be accepted if they were instead aimed at the protagonists of the story. So I never got the impression that the story was ever going to be black or white even when we only knew some vague details.

I know a lot of people who only really started paying attention to the story during Heavensward and again in Shadowbringers due to the nuance that was present. Stories involving straight up 'good guys vs bad guys' only really work if the 'bad guys' are allowed to earn a victory from time to time. Sephiroth and Kefka are so memorable precisely because they 'won' to an extent. Yet the game's increasing aversion to anything resembling meaningful consequences for the main cast ensures that it's often difficult to care about anything that the Scions do. The game likes to not only clad them in ridiculous levels of plot armour but pretend as if their specific point of view is almost always correct.

Many other RPG's have more varied characters with different opinions, personalities, belief systems and goals. They may align with certain interests from time to time but it doesn't stop them from clashing every now and then. FFXIV is in dire need of more than that and although Dawntrail promises to go down that route, I'd be surprised if it didn't result in the Scions all coming to agree by the end of the base MSQ's.

A lot of people were also hoping for a more interesting cause behind the Final Days. Some sort of alien entity along the lines of Lavos, Jenova or Ultima would have been perfect - and arguably a lot more engaging than Meteion. Dynamis was also a rather grotesque element to add into the equation and one I suspect was only conjured up out of nowhere to try and justify Venat's actions as a 'necessity'. It's just a shame that the game spent a decade being exceptionally preachy and screechy only to fail to commit when it mattered most. It basically just revealed that the Scions have no real issue with the things they claim to fiercely oppose so long as the 'correct' targets are being wiped out.

[BRVV]

FFXIV is in dire need of more than that and although Dawntrail promises to go down that route, I'd be surprised if it didn't result in the Scions all coming to agree by the end of the base MSQ's.

It's gonna be a nothingburger just like that one

I hate how they "simplified" everything in trying to make us the "good guys" and now we are genocide excusers that protect the sacred timeline where Garlean falls. We are actually so evil we don't see our enemies as people anymore and pad ourselves on the back and smile like a five year old.