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

[kinslayer-]

what? for real? he was one of the coolest guys in this site. And i'm glad someone revived this thread, the reason i created a forum account in this place.

[Vyrerus]

Zepla Owning Your Own Planet Vid

Cute Zepla vid where she reads some more interviews where the devs basically admit to winging it the whole time with the narrative, and not trying to connect the dots until Shadowbringers...

Smells more to me like, SHB pull such high numbers that, that became their go to line. I don't feel like they carried much of the rest of the game forward in Endwalker. It was just the conclusion to SHB's storyline, more or less, and SHB itself did not bring everything forward.

They trashed a lot of the game, and relied on the newbies brought in, in SHB, to honeymoon up the numbers and carry Endwalker's sales and reputation.

It bothers me severely that newbies with no long term investment get to drown out folks who'd been invested since day one. That a lot of the lore, villains, side characters, and areas get sidelined or destroyed completely in service of the new narrative.

Just gonna be a lot of things we never get closure for now, and they're just gonna continue winging it, because why not? Ugh.

[MagiusNecros]

In terms of how they handle story I ultimately prefer SWTOR even if SWTOR butchers Kotor 2. I suspect FFXIV is gonna go the Saturday Morning Cartoon route when it comes to storytelling. Or it turns into a bad season of Power Rangers or Saint Seiya.

Still disappointed that EW really just shafted all the buildup Shadowbringers had going for it just to be rushed to end the Zodiark story path.

[Vyrerus]

In terms of how they handle story I ultimately prefer SWTOR even if SWTOR butchers Kotor 2. I suspect FFXIV is gonna go the Saturday Morning Cartoon route when it comes to storytelling. Or it turns into a bad season of Power Rangers or Saint Seiya.

Still disappointed that EW really just shafted all the buildup Shadowbringers had going for it just to be rushed to end the Zodiark story path.

Ewww SWTOR. I'll stick with KoTOR2 prior to the canonization of that droid book, thanks.

[Swordsman]

Zepla Owning Your Own Planet Vid

Cute Zepla vid where she reads some more interviews where the devs basically admit to winging it the whole time with the narrative, and not trying to connect the dots until Shadowbringers...

Just gonna be a lot of things we never get closure for now, and they're just gonna continue winging it, because why not? Ugh.

Well there's no surprise there. When the director of the game, Yoshi P, responds to questions about lore during the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LXVIII by saying things like "when you're making this world you'll just sort of sometimes ignore things that are inconvenient" and "I didn't actually imagine anybody would ask this" or "wow, you guys are paying close attention to this game," you definitely question how much care and thought (or lack of) went into creating the story. The fact that the devs came out and basically admitted to winging it the whole time with the narrative is not very astonishing to me lol.

[MikkoAkure]

We've known since the very beginning when ARR overwrote 1.0 lore that they've been writing each expansion mostly one at a time. How is this a surprise or a point of contention? It's been known for a decade.

They took a game that was released half-baked and threw out a lot of the original story they didn't like and penciled in new things. Back before Yoshi-P took over in 1.2, the Allagan Empire was just an ancient country known for funny hats, eating snails, and building roads. The Ascians were just doing random acts of evil until after 3.0 was already released and then they started getting a better idea for a bigger picture after that. There were no Ancients or Hythlodaeus. Elements like Nidhogg or the Garlean Empire existed but were greatly expanded upon. Other elements like Sthalmann/Rostensthal, Seal Rock, Travenchet, and wildlings were greatly diminished or thrown completely out. Even ARR elements like the black-masked Ascians have quietly disappeared over time.

Since then, they've just been concentrating on it one expansion at a time with a little bit of planning on where they would like to go next or remembering past dangling plot threads to get picked up on. The Warriors of Darkness arc wasn't necessarily made to establish the Shadowbringers expansion, they came to that after the fact. And the often discussed "cancelled" Garlean expansion wasn't something that was fully planned out and then cancelled. In the interview they said "we have room for one or two expansions and then decided on one" and then discussed what it would have been like if there were two instead, with parts of what we had already received in Endwalker being expanded upon.


It's a live game so being written as it goes along isn't unusual. Even original anime series are written while they're still airing. I don't know why people feel betrayed by this knowledge. Talking about how much you don't like the writers or how they're bad but considering a bunch of people care so much about the Ancients who didn't even exist at the story's inception and were written in as having been long dead, or the Ascians who originally had paper-thin personalities and did absolutely nothing except smirk and do evil laughs while talking about a plan the writers didn't even know about, then I guess maybe they did a good job.

[ReynTime]

Just "winging it" isn't this bad when they're not trying to have their cake and eat it too so to speak... They don't want to be consistent with lore and facts stablished in the past, but they also want to have strict continuity from an expansion to the next.

They can call Dawntrail a fresh start all they want. We're going into it with a whole baggage of past expansion lore, facts and links in form of the Scions and the "blessing" of light that they made the stupid decision not to cast away from the plot after Endwalker. So the glaring inconsistencies will go on. Not that this is a surprise, anyone who actually cares about solid writing noticed that with the way characters are acting in 6.55.

If they're incapable of building fortresses of plot armor around characters, too scared of having at least some of the Scions go off do their own thing to be replaced by fresh characters for a new expansion and unwilling to pay more attention to contradictions, they should have been planning the next expansions as stand alone adventures.
But they're not interested in cohesive world building. They just want a plot that gives excuses for characters to do things that will make fans spazz out on social media platforms and "cool as hell" setpieces happen. Also some "wholesome" touching moments that some fans will make it about themselves.

It's certainly telling how little the average XIV loving shmuck thinks when you look at the other thread complaining about the Scions sticking with us. There were people making a case of how "shows that replace the cast get bad". But the cast being replaced isn't what makes those shows bad... It's more common for them to lose all direction when characters with finished arcs stay, in fact. Just look at The Office, Dexter, The Walking Dead, or even garbage like Naruto. They all suffered from characters who started running in circles or were changed completely out of the blue because they ran out of ideas but didn't get rid of them unless an actor was quitting.

[MagiusNecros]

If Dawntrail was a fresh start we would be starting at Level 1.

[Galvuu]

If Dawntrail was a fresh start we would be starting at Level 1.

You don't need a "mechanical fresh start" (level 1) to have a "narrative fresh start". The latter just means that, since all previous plot threads are "resolved" (used loosely here... how resolved and how satisfactorily is not what I'm discussing here, although I know some people feel there's a lot left to be desired on that end), you go to a new place and meet new characters and explore new things and make new connections.
It's disingenuous to make this "start at level 1" point when it's evident what people are discussing in terms of the DT narrative.
Some people just wanted an actual new adventure, with new faces and in a new place. I agree that the moment you drag the scions along, they immediately become the centerpiece and a lot of potentially novelty that the DT story and areas could have is immediately sacrificed to the alter of marketable familiarity. Frankly, I've been playing for over a decade, I could do with a break from this same old (ARR and HW scions were quite different, but they've been the same since SB...).

[MikkoAkure]

You don't need a "mechanical fresh start" (level 1) to have a "narrative fresh start". The latter just means that, since all previous plot threads are "resolved" (used loosely here... how resolved and how satisfactorily is not what I'm discussing here, although I know some people feel there's a lot left to be desired on that end), you go to a new place and meet new characters and explore new things and make new connections.

I'm hoping for a Treasures of Aht Urghan experience since that was my favorite FFXI expansion and that seems to be how we're ending up so far.

- Travel to a far away continent we've barely heard of after finishing the main original story and defeating god.
- Adventure around a new place filled with Mamool Ja and trolls with the country's princess in a plot involving royal siblings (theoretically) ending in a coronation.
- an edgy and a goofy class are released.

ToAU's story was completely separate from vanilla, RotZ, and CoP except for the revelation that Odin, who was behind the Shadow Lord the whole time, had a starring role. Aphmau was one of the best NPCs in the game, the plot was really well done and more straightforward. Also it had my favorite FFXI/XIV sidequest of all time: Three Men and a Closet.