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

[Misplaced_Marbles]

yet here we are essentially responsible for instigating something so much more egregious.

Egregious isn't bad, but I'd say monstrous, abominable or diabolical would be more apt.

[Rokke]

A story that's on rails like a Disneyland ride is easier to manage, and the fact that SE was unwilling let go of those rails was very disappointing to me.

For me its less about the unwillingness to escape the rails as much as EW's reveal of the rails all together.

This is not actually the whole story. Below is a post of Venats goodbye in all four languages combined found on Twitter.
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I have no intentions on arguing about Venat. Venat only has as much agency as the writers give her because the writers opted to go with a muddy loop to explain why everything is the way it is. If things played out different we would not have gone to the past in the same manner and the writers made EW's (and Panda's) story hinge on us going to the past as we were/when we did.

SHB does not have this kind of issue even though it has time travel because there was no loop in the writing pre EW. I do not like loops. I do not like the implications of loops. I do not like not being excited about things because I know Im in a loop and the end its set in stone no matter how hard I try to harness the power of anime hero.


edit: There was a loop in the writing pre EW back in Alex. It was also dumb because Mide was revealed to be her own ancestor :')

[EgilTheStressedMage]

Freedom Planet spoilers: I wanted this as my fight with Zenos. Completely impossible for XIV's engine, but I wanted the same intensity and vengeful rage because in my version of EW before Zenos went back to his own body, he said he would pay our family a little visit because he was able to peer into our memories.

Honestly I think EW would have been better if XIV was single player. I feel like the mmo aspect of it made the devs too scared to go further than what they went with under threats from total losers and because there was far too much story to properly conclude in a single expansion. Maybe do what Harry Potter did and have EW be two parts: one dealing with the mess in Garlemald with Zenos offing characters we've known since day one and cliffhanging with the Final Days starting. Part 2 would be us finding the cause and stopping it before it would take more of the Source, and what I thought should happen was the game giving you warnings that sections of the world would be temporarily inaccessible during or after points in the story, a little like what Xenoblade Chronicles did. Because those areas are too busy fighting off blasphemies. Hell, make some quests inaccessible too, at least the ones with zero lore and no rewards beyond EXP and Gil. Restrict gathering as well, and obviously keep the Apocalypse weather. Again, I like what we have, but there is so much more they should have done, such as my silly ever changing headcanons or otherwise.

[Iscah]

EW's unintentional (?) big reveal was that life has been on rails like a ride at Disneyland ...and this simultaneously sucks the accomplishment of my wol's past deeds and the fun out of any ongoing multipatch content that deals with the past because both are just falling dominoes.

I disagree that it has done anything to put our life on rails. We still continue along and make our own decisions and have full influence on anything we do – even when travelling to the past, if we don't know the details of how that past event unfolded. It's our decisions that create those events in the moment, and the time loop doesn't dictate our actions any more than the fact that there are people in the future who see our current events as fixed history.

(On the other hand we have put Venat's life on rails by telling her what she will do in the future, and I will forever regard it a mistake that they didn't wipe those memories from her.)

While it's true that whatever we do in Pandaemonium will not fix the Final Days, it might make some people's lives better in the short term, and we will have learned something useful about the past.

And there is another causal loop error: The name "Hydaelyn" should not exist because nobody invented it. You tell Venat, that she will become Hydaelyn and Venat tells you, that she is Hydaelyn. But there is no inventor of the name.

Yes, it's not just the name but the idea of the Sundering itself, and everything else that unfolded. Even if she would have chosen the things regardless, now she has no chance to decide on them for herself, she can only justify them.

She should have been memory-wiped with the others, perhaps willingly after realising this is information she does not want her actions to be dictated by. Everything else would make sense if they changed that detail.

(Well, that and the complete rewrite of the details of the Sundering that doesn't seem to resemble anything we were told up to this point, but that's another well-trodden argument.)

Exactly. People try to say it works because it's a "stable" time loop, but it's a paradox. The worst part is it makes the WoL an accomplice to the sundering and all the consequences of it.

It is a stable time loop, and the paradox is a specific type of paradox that can exist within a stable time loop (aside of the question of how it ever got started) because it's just information and not a physical object that could degrade through multiple loops.

And I disagree that it makes us an accomplice. We didn't agree to it. It's just as inevitable as it was before, and we blundered into telling Venat about it to be acted upon, but that isn't the same as being an accomplice to her actions.

Ultimately it is a tragedy that has already happened, and even if we somehow "changed" events to prevent it, it would still need to happen in another branch of time to support our existence. Just like the Eighth Calamity timeline still exists despite being overwritten.

I went into Elpis screaming at the screen to tell them the truth so they could save themselves only for my heart to drop to the pit of my stomach when I realized we'd just handed Venat a loaded gun.

You are warned by Elidibus, right from the beginning, that even if you can interact with people you cannot undo the tragedy that has already unfolded, because the present world exists as a consequence of it.

If you went into the past wanting to tell them the truth despite that warning, then you've made the same choice that your character makes about how much information to give out. Your decision to tell them does not – cannot – make the Sundering any more or less inevitable than it already was. You exist because of it, and you're here to save a world that exists because of it.

(And even if you-the-player don't like the characters of the modern day, you have to accept that your character clearly does like them and cares about them.)

At best your actions can create or inspire a second branch of time. Perhaps you did, or Venat did at some point, and the story has not followed that other branch.

[Demetri_Delethorn]

Shadowbringers is objectively far better. Hermes's motivations makes absolutely no sense. Emet-Selch's I can believe.

[anhaato]

The time loop, if we accept it as the answer to everything, doesn't work, period. If our existence is the linchpin that holds the entire fabric of our modern reality together, then our death at Ghimlyt Dark in Exarch's timeline means that the timeline should've ceased to exist because we weren't alive to go back in time and set the pieces in place. Unless Exarch happens to go back in time to do all of that instead, which is impossible for him to recreate considering he's... not us. In fact, it shouldn't even have been possible for us to be killed at Ghimlyt Dark at all if this is the case.

This now gives us a potential of two loopholes to this:
Either we didn't ACTUALLY die at Ghimlyt Dark in the bad timeline and everything turned out to be a lie
or
Everything would've happened in the past exactly how they did without our intervention, including us being Hydaelyn's chosen

The latter is a pretty popular assumption, but that raises a huge issue; if that's the case, then WHY OH WHY did they settle for coming up with a paradox instead of explaining how things would've happened naturally? Surely it couldn't be that hard. Have us go to Elpis as an instanced zone as a passive observer instead of part of everything, with the flower being Hydaelyn's message for us to find out the truth instead of her getting us to literally create her. Then they could give us some real lore on how and why "Hydaelyn" was ACTUALLY created. I mean, they managed to do that with Zodiark by having Hythmet's memories be erased, why not have Venat also lose her memories and settle on Hydaelyn naturally? Why was Zodiark summoned because he was going to be summoned anyway, while Hydaelyn was summoned because we told her to?

All in all, it was just a ridiculous and unnecessary plot point. I don't think I'll ever understand why they did it, and even if they do manage to make it "worth it" by covering these loopholes somehow, I would've much rather had it been that we were a passive observer and Elpis wasn't used as one of the six zones in the end. Hell, could've saved another zone for Garlemald's capital. Just absolutely boggles my mind, what were they thinkig?

[Iscah]

The time loop, if we accept it as the answer to everything, doesn't work, period. If our existence is the linchpin that holds the entire fabric of our modern reality together, then our death at Ghimlyt Dark in Exarch's timeline means that the timeline should've ceased to exist because we weren't alive to go back in time and set the pieces in place. Unless Exarch happens to go back in time to do all of that instead, which is impossible for him to recreate considering he's... not us. In fact, it shouldn't even have been possible for us to be killed at Ghimlyt Dark at all if this is the case.

This is not the case. Our other self has no need to go back to Elpis, and in fact must not go there, precisely because the two timelines are linked and have only separated very recently.

When we travel to Elpis, we travel from our current branch of the timeline to a time before the separate branches existed, and play a role in events that form the history of both branches of time simultaneously.

Therefore there is no need for an alternate version of events involving our other self. If they had the opportunity to travel to Elpis at the same point in time we visit it, they would encounter us there.

[Vahlnir]

Shadowbringers is objectively far better. Hermes's motivations makes absolutely no sense. Emet-Selch's I can believe.

His motivations were pretty straight forward. He wanted to learn about life beyond his planet, so he created Meteion and its collective consciousness to scour the universe for any and all answers to one single question. What he failed to realize, however, was just how loaded that question really was and he was genuinely shocked by what information was brought back to him. Even Emet called him out on this, and rightfully so. He also cared for Meteion a great deal and had a strong bond with her, so he wanted to protect her. He obviously wanted to hear the rest of what she had to say, so he took her to Ktsis to do just that. The whole memory erasure was, at least from my understanding, his last ditch effort to protect Meteion, as foolish as he was about the whole thing. It seems like most of his decisions were motivated by his bond with her, much like a father wanting to protect his daughter. It all made sense. He just let his emotions get the better of him.

[Tehmon]

Shadowbringers is objectively far better. Hermes's motivations makes absolutely no sense. Emet-Selch's I can believe.

No, it is not objectively better.

[CrownySuccubus]

He obviously wanted to hear the rest of what she had to say, so he took her to Ktsis to do just that. The whole memory erasure was, at least from my understanding, his last ditch effort to protect Meteion, as foolish as he was about the whole thing. It seems like most of his decisions were motivated by his bond with her, much like a father wanting to protect his daughter. It all made sense. He just let his emotions get the better of him.

Yeah, that's definitely not the interpretation I got. It felt like Hermes' "care" for Meteion was merely a means to an end. As I've seen other people mention, despite his disdain for seeing living concepts as tools, Hermes did just that. Despite Meteion's clear suffering and fear of delivering it, Hermes decided he just had to hear it, no matter what. His own existential need was more important than her fear.

On a personal level, I personally just found Hermes to make too many bad/foolish decisions subsequently for me to have any sympathy for him. If he had JUST created Meteion and her abilities in secret, that would have been fine. If had JUST given her sisters their missions and sent them into space in secret, that would have been fine. If he had JUST ignored Venat, Hyth and Emet to hear Meteion's report, that would have been fine. If he had JUST erased everyone's memories, that would have been fine. If he had JUST issued his "challenge" to humanity as an impulsive decision, that would have been fine.

But Hermes doing ALL of these things, one after another, slowly made me lose any sympathy with his character. Whatever sympathetic character he may have once had before Elpis, by the end of Elpis, all I saw was an insane villain.