Endwalker vs shadowbringers story, which did you enjoy more and why? (spoilers)

[Rulakir]

The Cataclysm revamp was controversial. Personally, I wasn't a fan of it. They wrecked a lot of my favorites zones and not for the better as some were substantially worse to quest through, like Darkshore.

Despite my criticisms of FFXIV, WoW is certainly not the game I want them to emulate when it comes to writing. We're refugees for a reason. :P WoW is the example of what not to do when it comes to killing off characters just for the sake of it. It's not even for shock value anymore. There's even a tweet by the narrative lead of WoW saying he thought the GoT finale was "brilliant".

Something like LotR is fine, but they're not doing LotR. FFXIV applied to LotR would mean that Gollum never turned on Frodo, that Frodo carrying the ring wasn't that much of a burden, that Sam was just there for light hearted moments and friendly competition, and at the end on Mt. Doom there would've been some speech given whereby everyone agrees to toss the ring and then they all return home no worse for wear. Gollum also would've likely ended up being restored to Smeagol somehow too. The hobbits would've remained trauma free, eager and ready for the next adventure.

[kpxmanifesto]

Despite my criticisms of FFXIV, WoW is certainly not the game I want them to emulate when it comes to writing. We're refugees for a reason. :P WoW is the example of what not to do when it comes to killing off characters just for the sake of it. It's not even for shock value anymore. There's even a tweet by the narrative lead of WoW saying he thought the GoT finale was "brilliant".

I'd argue that some of the major character deaths were written well: Varian Wrynn and Ysera in Legion, and Arthas in Wotlk. Wow had its ups and downs and then crashed really hard at the end.

[Theodric]

Personally I'd like FFXIV to emulate WoW's early style of writing, back when the game treated its various playable races as distinct and as having their own agendas and problems to address. Both games are suffering from similar issues in the end - it's just a matter of WoW going too far in one direction and FFXIV in another. I firmly believe that a healthy balance can be struck.

FFXIV in particular is becoming notorious for pandering to voices on social media. I think the game suffers as a consequence of that. Anything remotely 'gritty' seems to be slowly fading away in favour of something closer to a low stakes story with the bulk of characters fawning over the player character. Even looking at the single player Final Fantasy games, the dynamics between the various characters are a lot more engaging. Not every character even likes each other for some or even all of the duration of a particular game. Which makes for some interesting tension in itself.

A fair few of the characters I like in FFXIV have either been killed off or quietly shuffled into side content. The former are all antagonists, the latter...are the likes of Hien and Magnai who show up every now and then but not nearly as often as the Scions who in turn are forced down our throats at every possible opportunity. Even the 6.1 teaser site betrays that despite the hint of a break from them for a while we're going right back to dealing with them once again. So in other words, this 'new story' seems set to leave very little room for new faces.

[Skyborne]

I check back on this thread and I'm now confusing it with another thread with the same issue...

A fair few of the characters I like in FFXIV have either been killed off or quietly shuffled into side content. The former are all antagonists, the latter...are the likes of Hien and Magnai who show up every now and then but not nearly as often as the Scions who in turn are forced down our throats at every possible opportunity. Even the 6.1 teaser site betrays that despite the hint of a break from them for a while we're going right back to dealing with them once again. So in other words, this 'new story' seems set to leave very little room for new faces.

No, sweaty, you will enjoy your wholesome 4k HD texture muffin and donut parties with the Scions forever and ever and ever! The next main villain will have minecraft textures.

[KageTokage]

Even the 6.1 teaser site betrays that despite the hint of a break from them for a while we're going right back to dealing with them once again. So in other words, this 'new story' seems set to leave very little room for new faces.

I have a hunch that they're going to end up finding excuses to keep the Scions around us mostly for trust-related reasons instead of finding alternative established NPCs to fill the roles that they once occupied.

At minimum, we need a healer, tank, and two DPS present at all times, so while they don't necessarily need to bring in all of them, I'm kind of expecting G'raha to be present for the whole of this new story simply because having an all-rounder like him minimizes the number of other Scions who'd also need to be present to keep all the bases covered.

I'm predicting him, Estinien, and Y'shtola (With the ability to flex as a healer) as the ones present for whatever MSQ dungeon we get this go-around.

[Iscah]

At minimum, we need a healer, tank, and two DPS present at all times, so while they don't necessarily need to bring in all of them, I'm kind of expecting G'raha to be present for the whole of this new story simply because having an all-rounder like him minimizes the number of other Scions who'd also need to be present to keep all the bases covered.

I don't think so necessarily. Ktisis has shown that the minimum is three characters, as long as those characters can cover any arrangement of roles.

For a plot where we're working with Thancred and Urianger, for example, we just need one extra person who can be a pure DPS, because the other two both have a DPS job they could switch to if you take their place as tank/healer.

For Alphinaud and Alisaie working in Garlemald (though I'm not sure we'd have another dungeon there) we would probably get Jullus or perhaps Lucia as tank/DPS, Alph as healer/DPS, even Alisaie could potentially get pushed into tanking since we've seen her fight with a PLD-style sword before.

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

It’s not really ambiguous when the devs themselves confirmed it lmao.

At the very end of FFVII, we see the epilogue to the whole story that takes place 500 years later, so really, you still have another 497 years' worth of games and movies to fill in....
YK: Ha, maybe I'll try to do that. In a way, I consider that epilogue to be the true happy ending of FFVII. Well, it's a happy ending even though all the human beings are destroyed. [Laughs]

As for 13-2, It’s not really a bad example. The world still ends, millions of souls are still lost, and the villain does get what he wants. Just because some of this is fixed in the next game doesn’t change anything. It’s still it’s own game. That’s what this debate was about. The game ended with the heroes losing, the villain winning, and the world being effectively destroyed. 6 is a fairly good example though yes, and if people want to try and say (ugh those games were 20 years ago,) Well then we can look at 12 as well, where due to Venat’s actions, magic slowly began to be removed from the world.

[Iscah]

Was 13-3 already planned when 13-2 was planned? If so then "the villain wins in a cliffhanger in part 2 of 3" is not exactly the same as them winning at the end of the story. (I haven't played any of 13.

[Lyth]

It's interesting that so many of the same people who want to see more Scion deaths also demanded that the dev team bring back the Ancients or retcon their fate using time travel during the Live Letter questions. Their stories were bittersweet, and yet people massively struggled to accept fact that they weren't coming back. It's easy to ask for character deaths when you're not attached to the character in question. But that's the exact opposite reason why writers kill off a character. They do it specifically to hit you where it hurts. And it looks like they did. Some of the most popular characters in this game are dead and not coming back.

The Warcraft expat background is an interesting insight. I wonder if a lot of you are expecting to find 'factions' in this game and are simply searching for an Alliance vs. Horde surrogate to channel your energies into? Yet the plotline of this game is the antithesis of factionalism. The dragons and the Ishgardians find accord. Omega and the Omicrons find new purpose that doesn't involve war. We are the descendants of the ex-Ascians and their leader gives us his blessing to inherit their legacy. Enemies are spared to become tomorrow's friends. There is no second faction. Just people learning to live together.

There was never a need to kill off characters tit-for-tat, faction for faction. And even Warcraft now wants to scrap its own faction system, because it unnecessarily fragments the playerbase.

[Kisshu]

Easily Shadowbringers for me.

To me, Endwalker has problems with what it wants. From the opening movie the "End of the world" fills near everything, but when we get down to it, it's basicly "run around Rads talking to people, half a zone trying to save a damn family, a dungeon and finally an instance" after that we move to Elpis and all the end of the world and blasphemies is not really touched again.

For the combat role-quests, in SHB they were used to flesh out characters we knew little about and gave some backstory while being tied to the main story, while in EW they felt much more like side stories more focused on the NPCs than the actual blasphemy we were hunting.

Not to mention that entering the final dungeon to till completing the final trial takes so much from Shadowbringer. Villain invites us into a memory and narrates it, showing the fall of civilizations/Amaurot, at the end the villain shows up and picks off the Scions with spells, forcing the WoL to fight it with WoLs from across the shards. Villian does several moves that are near copies from the Hades fight (mid-line and sides with same tells, flailing around in last phase).