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

[linayar]

Now with a few playthroughs under my belt the last bit of msq feels a bit muddy for me. Prior to Elpis the story is about finding hope in moments of hopelessness, which is a nice sentiment and par the course of FFXIV's overarching story. Once we hit Elpis it then shifts to Perfect Is Bad, which even gets a speech from a bunny in the 2nd part of Labrynthos explaining that Perfect Is Bad and we should stay in our lane and just make due with what we have. Then we reach the last zone and attempt to juggle Perfect Is Bad (Ea, Omicron, Peace wars, Ra-la), Stay In Your Lane Or Die (little fish people), finding hope in moments of hopelessness (friends, flowers, etc) and the dragon ghosts...that never chased perfection or things outside their means.

I think the funniest summary of how sideways it gets is when the Ea spend their whole area being our example as to why Perfect Is Bad in that they learned everything there was to learn and it ended poorly and Yshtola just says NO U as her rebuttal. She wants to learn everything she can learn! But now its ok because she is doing it I guess.

"Perfect" is not bad, but the problem is that people don't know what it is. When people reach what they think is perfection but still find it wanting, they are left with nothing but despair because they don't think it can get any better for them, but they still want more.

That's where hope comes in. Like with Y'shtola and her hope and desire to know more as opposed to Ea where there is no hope of learning anything more.

Holy crap lmao. "No, I don't kill them, I only blown them into 14 pieces. 7 of them will be destroyed though, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make". Sounds exactly like what genocide apologist would say.

Who said anything about killing people? I was talking about sundering the world. And speaking of genocide, guess who caused the destruction of 7 of those worlds?

Only one that’s arguable for is the 3rd sacrifice but we don’t know what that life was.

It would have to be the ancestors of the existing races. Their preservation was one of the points of the sundering.

[Sathona]

She sundered every soul on Etheirys and split the planet into Hydaelyn and 12 other reflections as well as creating imperfect races so they are never this single perfect race again and probably turned all sundered Ancients into Garleans with no aptitude for magic. And condemned all life to perpetually suffer in a losing battle to attain perfection under the pretense to avert the final days or perfect civilizations desiring death and ruin.

Do your mental gymnastics if you want but it is still Genocide on a massive scale. Of which both Emet/Convocation and Emet are equally guilty of.

The diffference being Emet/Convo offered a choice and Venat pulled a "Mother knows best" and decides for everyone herself without any say in the matter.

Wait what? xD

[KizuyaKatogami]

"From that temptation, I sunder us." is the part in context.

That was the quote. It was just a linguistic choice on the writers' end, it wasn't the moment of sundering, and I don't think that's where she decided to sunder the world either.



I can't actually remember that many examples of characters dying outside of antagonists that wasn't undone later on. For that you have... 2, 5 (best scene in the series, don't @ me), 7, arguably 15? It was utter bullshit in that last case though, as Noctis deserved better, and ambiguously canon supplements like the novel muddy the water on just what happened or what should've happened. I never played 8 or 13 so I don't have the faintest idea what happens there (i know lightning returns undoes it all though), and fuck 10-2 for undoing one of the most amazing parts of 10's ending. No main character dies in any other mainline FF game, and there are rarely ever lasting consequences either.

People who can be inferred to die offscreen shortly after the game ends or based on your own choices (6 and 9) don't count.

Either way, it's hardly a recurring trend in the series to kill off characters or give them lasting consequences.

2,4,5,7,10(still counts as it was an entire game after that it got undone, even then Auron still “died”),12,15,type0. Even in some where no one was killed off, 6 destroyed the base world and left it in ruin, 9 had numerous countries completely blown up, 13 had the entire world and then some completely destroyed where only a select few souls actually made it out alive.

[ReynTime]

2,4,5,7,10(still counts as it was an entire game after that it got undone, even then Auron still “died”),12,15,type0. Even in some where no one was killed off, 6 destroyed the base world and left it in ruin, 9 had numerous countries completely blown up, 13 had the entire world and then some completely destroyed where only a select few souls actually made it out alive.

IX's main theme is death and it explores the theme without any suspension of disbelief coated pretentiousness that Endwalker has by the way.

[KizuyaKatogami]

IX's main theme is death and it explores the theme without any suspension of disbelief coated pretentiousness that Endwalker has by the way.

Tbh 9 felt a bit like a fever dream. Loved the game and thought it was really good, but the amount of plot armor a lot of the time was pretty comical xD I did like how they managed to imo perfectly mix the comic relief and serious moments. I didn’t feel at any time that the comic relief took away from the situation because it was timed really well. Something i wish Endwalker had.

[ReynTime]

Tbh 9 felt a bit like a fever dream. Loved the game and thought it was really good, but the amount of plot armor a lot of the time was pretty comical xD I did like how they managed to imo perfectly mix the comic relief and serious moments. I didn’t feel at any time that the comic relief took away from the situation because it was timed really well. Something i wish Endwalker had.

IX is very Disney-esque with its conclusion but I think it can be forgiven due how serious it gets before that. And it deserves props IMO for handling War in a way I haven't seen any other RPG handle. In IX there is no hipocrisy of exalting war/fighting (there is the hunter's game but the brutality of it gets called out immediately) while trying to give an anti-war message. War is portrayed as plain tragic, and the main characters try to stop them before they begin, depicting the start of the conflicts as a defeat in itself, rather than go to arms all TODAY WE FIGHT, BROTHERS, YEEAAH!! like pretty much every other fantasy western or japanese rpg tends to do.

[dapperfaffer]

I think the funniest summary of how sideways it gets is when the Ea spend their whole area being our example as to why Perfect Is Bad in that they learned everything there was to learn and it ended poorly and Yshtola just says NO U as her rebuttal. She wants to learn everything she can learn! But now its ok because she is doing it I guess.

The Ea lost hope (or faith or whatever you would call it) in their science when they came to the conclusion that no matter what they learned they couldn't escape the inevitability of death and the entropy of the universe. So when Yshtola does her confrontation she is reaffirming that their is a point to learning and therefore living in that even when what you are learning isn't something you want or something that has a positive benefit in the way that the Ea used their science to dictate their culture and society, there is still a point to doing so.
In the same way that the sadragons lost hope in being able to live peaceably with other species, as they always seemed to face conflict wherever they went. And the Omegabites acted from a loss of hope by not being able to find a worthy opponent to help them continually advance their species augmentation as they were ultimately destoryed/lost in the Sigmascape series. With a history of continually seeking out conflict to preserve their existence.

All 3 reflect the same ideas that are presented in Elpis with learning about how things are created and what their purpose is. The flying green thing because it has an affinity for the wrong element and couldn't fly( a reflection of the EA), as an example, was deemed to be unworthy of existing by Emancipation Selch so he suggested that it should be destroyed(reflection of Omegabites). But Hermes was the one who wanted to try and teach it to fly, and ultimately was successful and proved that even things that differ from what was planned or what should have been still has value and can contribute to the whole (reflection of the sadragons).

And then you have how all of those tie into the representation of varying races like the Garlemaldians (Omegas), Elephant people in Thavnadarian(Ea), and Old Sharlyan(Dragons). And then you have the last section in Ultima Thul that would represent everyone else that the WoL is "fighting" for to save from the Final Days, which is where you are met by the ghost of days gone past.

I don't think its about Perfect is bad but more so perfection is no longer attainable since a certain someone decided unilaterally they knew best.

[Kozh]

Mass murder?

Like other has said, the first two sacrifice are volunteers. The third one we won't even know if it would be voluntary or not since the new life that would be sacrificed aren't born yet to make that choice, or if it's even human soul that is needed. Let's just assume the third one is not voluntary for argument sake though, yet it doesn't change the fact that the first two are done willingly.

And she didn't commit genocide, the souls were simply split. Proof of that aplenty in game.

So if I split a human into 14 monkeys with no clear recollection of their human memory, does that mean I didn't kill them? Even erasing one's identity (like how the Exarch did to young g'raha or how minfilia did to previous oracle of lights) can be considered "killing" the person, you know?

What a mental gymnastic.

What proofs, really? The fact that nobody remembers them except for vague recollection which they drawn on cave walls? That the Ancients was erased from history?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Like other has said, the first two sacrifice are volunteers. The third one we won't even know if it would be voluntary or not since the new life that would be sacrificed aren't born yet to make that choice, or if it's even human soul that is needed. Let's just assume the third one is not voluntary for argument sake though, yet it doesn't change the fact that the first two are done willingly.



So if I split a human into 14 monkeys with no clear recollection of their human memory, does that mean I didn't kill them? Even erasing one's identity (like how the Exarch did to young g'raha or how minfilia did to previous oracle of lights) can be considered "killing" the person, you know?

What a mental gymnastic.

What proofs, really? The fact that nobody remembers them except for vague recollection which they drawn on cave walls? That the Ancients was erased from history?

You literally rejoin with Ardbert, and Emet saw a vision of your whole soul. The Rejoining itself is what they were doing to bring back all of the ancients, which means they weren't gone...

[Kozh]

Who said anything about killing people? I was talking about sundering the world. And speaking of genocide, guess who caused the destruction of 7 of those worlds?

Oh so now we're strictly talk about world as in the planet ethyris? Not the people? If venat is concerned about the planet, she doesn't even need to sunder her own people since zodiark protection will be able to shield them until the end of universe probably, had she not sundered Him.

And who let those destructions to happen? She knew about it beforehand due to our story, and yet she allowed it because "suffer™" and because it will lead the WoL to reach her eventually (timeline stuff).

What the ascian did is wrong, full stop. But at least I'm not pretentious enough to act otherwise. Unlike some people who keep claiming "sundering isn't killing, guys"