Quote Originally Posted by Beddict View Post
Yeah you're giving them waaay too much credit. There was a recent Famitsu interview with Yoshi-P, Ishikawa, and Oda and the translation is on reddit. Ishikawa rewrote the Endwalker ending in late 2019 during the middle of Shadowbringers, "the team didn’t really think about how the story would continue long term" back in Stormblood, and the backstory of the Ascians was only planned in the leadup to ShB. This particular snippet from the interview blows my mind:

Frankly I'm amazed they managed to even finish the damn story, but they did and it came across feeling pretty half-assed to have "the Sound from within the earth" turn into a sentient version of Twitter deciding that humanity is shit and deserves to die.
Whether they only decided to do it later on or not, the amount of accuracy in that 3.2 cutscene shows a vague outline was there all along that was eventually followed. Heavensward even began the idea that Minfilia had gone to the First. Whether or not it was always outlined in storyboard form, they decided to follow the outline that had been created in their previous cutscenes.