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

[Jojoya]

I am puzzled. Which RPGs have you played that gave you a choice (or even the possibility of choice) in dialogue?

It's not uncommon in RPGs. The Elder Scrolls games are a good example. You get dialog options where perhaps one response will provide generic information, another will lead to a quest, a third might leave the NPC attacking you and a fourth might result in skill gain. You get branching story options, usually related to the various guilds, that will give you a varied experience even if the general goal of the main story stays the same (defeat the big evil, how you do it is up to you).

It's the MMORPGs where you rarely get actual choice in dialog. SWTOR is the one exception that comes to mind, and its players tend to say that it ruined it as a MMO because it became an obstacle to playing with friends.

[Chyro]

Can't really tell if I like either of them more than the other, cause they both feel to me as parts of a whole. I enjoyed the story of both to the point that I went watching countless streamers play through the story for the first time, to the point that I've seen all the cutscenes and dialogues play out 15+ times, each time reliving the emotions through another person's first experience.

[Clover_Blake]

Personally, I enjoyed Endwalker much more.

While I loved The First's lore in Shadowbringers and was truly fascinated by it, I wasn't fond of the way you just save the world, and mary sue characters like Ryne ruined the experience for me. I loved the new characters from Endwalker much more, and the message from the story resonated deeply within me. So I have a clear favourite here.

[Lyth]

There are always limitations to how far you can go with 'player choice'. In a tabletop campaign the player has the option to deliberately sidestep the DM/storyteller's carefully designed plot hooks. No, I'm not going to explore the dungeon that everyone is asking me to go to, I'm going to travel to another continent. At which point, the story could veer into a completely new direction, or could forcibly loop right back into the same plot hook. You have that luxury because the story is being written as you're going along. In a pre-written story, you have to anticipate every player decision in advance, so true 'choice' doesn't really exist. And there's a limit to the number of diverging plot branches you can make before you have to start converging them again. The only thing that you can offer is the illusion of choice.

Interestingly, Bioware actually got themselves into a bit of hot water over this. Choice was one of the main marketing points for their games, and the developers at one point made fun of jRPGs as being 'inferior' for not offering 'true' player choice like their games do. Ironically, when they promised that the players would have 'complete control' of the outcome of the Mass Effect trilogy, there was a significant backlash over the end result. It's not surprising though, as you invariably have to converge down into a relatively small set of ending cutscenes (you can create a lot of slight variations in the text descriptions, but you're not going to animate a hundred different endings).

MMOs are more complex inherently because they're serial stories that get continuously released. Everything has to converge down to the same point before the next 'episode', so you don't have the luxury of multiple endings. There's another intrinsic problem here as well. If I get an ending that I don't want on, say, Elden Ring because I've made the wrong choices, I can just start a new playthrough (or watch a video of the other endings). The only real cost is time. Some games offer the option of save scumming, which allows you to explore branches before the point of no return. But MMOs are different here too. You may have spent thousands of hours on this specific character, and may have unlocked exclusive items on them that won't ever be available again. So what happens if you get locked into a choice then?

Some people will be fine with the RP on this, but many more won't. And it creates a lot of unnecessary pressure on many players on 'getting things right' because you effectively only have one shot at it. That's probably the main reason why MMOs tend not to do it.

In terms of the Zenos fight, you were always going to do it. The answer choices out of necessity are just flavor text without consequences. Should there be an option where you just turn on the music on your headset and try to walk away, only for Zenos to start attacking? Perhaps. It would make for an awkward scene transition into the duty. Personally, I was deeply lamenting the loss of the 'Kupo?!' and '...' options myself, but I'd get tired of making choices fairly quickly if every response set went from a) to j). Three is more than enough, and if your specific personality type and astrological sign aren't specifically represented in a given answer set, you can just tough it out till the next one like the rest of us do.

[Hyperia]

I really enjoyed both, but the despair theme of Endwalker coupled with us becoming just another adventurer, no more Warrior of Light, and the Scions publicly gone just leaves a bad aftertaste compared to ShB.

When the 5.0 story ended, I felt really good and was full of optimism. The ending of 6.0 left me feeling like I was dragged through the mud, unemployed and all by myself. I would have felt much better had that whole disbanding of the Scions part be left out, it was an unnecessary gut punch and ruined the ending for me.

I am very apprehensive about the MSQ in 6.1, if they are really resetting things, I’m not expecting much as they will have to start world building and laying the foundation for the future story.

Had I not had my friends to play with, the 6.0 ending would have made me quit for an extended period of time. Thankfully this game is more than its story and that is why I am still here.

[BokoToloko]

About the same for me. Not so much because Endwalker was so spectacular as it is because I find Shadowbringers massively overrated. They were both enjoyable but they were by no means the masterpieces people laud them to be.

Also, I can't take any part of Zenos post 4.0 story seriously. His entire storyline is a meme, except we're somewhat expected to take it as if it were serious. The fact SE team admittedly didn't even think how did he came to be a Reaper (for a reason other than advertising the job) only reinforces the idea.

[KageTokage]

The fact SE team admittedly didn't even think how did he came to be a Reaper (for a reason other than advertising the job) only reinforces the idea.

Yoshi said he was "bound to silence" about the matter which implies it's going to be relevant to...something in the future.

[Lauront]

It's not uncommon in RPGs. The Elder Scrolls games are a good example. You get dialog options where perhaps one response will provide generic information, another will lead to a quest, a third might leave the NPC attacking you and a fourth might result in skill gain. You get branching story options, usually related to the various guilds, that will give you a varied experience even if the general goal of the main story stays the same (defeat the big evil, how you do it is up to you).

It's the MMORPGs where you rarely get actual choice in dialog. SWTOR is the one exception that comes to mind, and its players tend to say that it ruined it as a MMO because it became an obstacle to playing with friends.

It's probably something that requires a fresh approach, with the benefit of hindsight, much like the 2 factions in WoW, which while great from a flavour perspective, created headaches that Blizzard later introduced workarounds to ease, to minimise the impact it has on faction balance and content completion in that sense. Though flavour dialogue options with no real meaningful impact on outcomes (i.e. what this game does) don't pose an obstacle in the same sense.

[HisShadowX]

I felt insulted someone whose playing since the beginning of ARR that the entire world events revolved around a massive depressive dude and his Kawaii Anime Doll in which the Kawaii Anime Doll destroyed the world and caused all this.

Then I started to think and man its pretty deep I think the massive depressive guy represents the weeb Fan base and they love for anime kawaii love dolls. Its like when Bill Shatner insulted his fans by telling them to get a life. Pretty much we learn a Massive Depressives souls in this game will always come back to be massive depressives. I'm shocked more of you people didn't feel insulted

[Sheriyana]

I enjoyed Shadowbringers way more personally. A whole new world, the story was more focused, a real villain and an amazing one at that. Even the music was way better in my opinion.

Endwalker was just all over the place. Too many characters, the Sharlayans are just pricks for most of the story for no reason, especially Fourchenault. The role quests sucked, mostly all of them being about some random nobodies, being accompanied by some familiar characters really didn't do anything for me. Half of the zones were pointless, Labyrinthos didn't need to exist as a zone, the moon was completely wasted as a zone when you spend most of it doing fetch quests for dumb bunnies instead of exploring the interesting lore about the ancients and Zodiark, and Ultima Thule felt like it was more just a set piece for the story than a proper zone.

While I enjoyed Ultima Thule, it felt like the whole point of it, the sacrifices to allow you to progress, you just know immediately that they're coming back so it really lacks any impact. It was especially bad with the twins when they "sacrifice" themselves and they're back like 2 minutes later. Also hated how the big bad of basically the whole game was a bird girl you just met, wasn't the sound supposed to come from within the planet too or do I just remember that wrong? Now her singing came from the edge of the universe. And the final boss was just a mess, Zenos barging in turns the whole thing into a joke and the duel against Zenos wasn't really the epic final battle I was looking for, it was cool but it was just like a casual duel with really nothing on the line.

Overall I enjoyed parts of it here and there, mostly just Elpis and some bits of Garlemald. I guess I'd rank it a little bit higher than Stormblood but not by much. Not really related to story but I'm getting really tired of the post expansion launch drought, how is it that you're immediately bored and out of things to do like a month after a new expansion just dropped? Just give us the relic or some longer lasting content. There isn't even enough content to last a week if you don't care about leveling all jobs. And no, capping tomes for like 5 hours every week isn't going to keep anyone busy and engaged. I know it's always been like this more or less but it just feels wrong, first you wait like 6 months for an expansion, you get content for 3 days and then you wait another 4 months to maybe get some actually lasting content that might keep you busy for more than 5 hours per week.