Would Endwalker have been better if we never visited Elpis at all?

[DPZ2]

If the entirety of the storyline surrounding Venat and the events of Elpis had not been in-game, would the story seem better to you? Or was it essential for the successful conclusion of 6.0, despite the dislike of that storyline for a number of forum posters?

[Xirean]

We went there to answer a question. So long as we find the answer to that question elsewhere I see no reason why we would have to go there. Yes I think it would have been better if we just visited ruins or something.

[Chie_M]

I think it would've been better if we'd done what we did with Cid's memories in the Southern Front - but Meteion would still be the end villain, so no, it wouldn't have improved Endwalker overall. Only Elpis.

[Theodric]

I think that it would have made for a better story if the game did not decide to weirdly attempt to justify the genocide of the Ancients. Whether that meant going to Elpis or not.

Endwalker fell apart in the eyes of many, I suspect, because of the inconsistent morality and 'themes'. The game loves to force the antagonists to be sympathetic and placed in impossible to comprehend bleak circumstances only to treat them as a nuisance for daring to stand up and do everything possible to in order to preserve and protect their loved ones. It's fair for the protagonists to seek to do the same thing, of course, though the story has become plagued with situations where the protagonists will do the exact same thing they accuse the antagonists of doing yet it's conveniently brushed under the rug.

[Chie_M]

I think that it would have made for a better story if the game did not decide to weirdly attempt to justify the genocide of the Ancients. Whether that meant going to Elpis or not.

Endwalker fell apart in the eyes of many, I suspect, because of the inconsistent morality and 'themes'. The game loves to force the antagonists to be sympathetic and placed in impossible to comprehend bleak circumstances only to treat them as a nuisance for daring to stand up and do everything possible to in order to preserve and protect their loved ones. It's fair for the protagonists to seek to do the same thing, of course, though the story has become plagued with situations where the protagonists will do the exact same thing they accuse the antagonists of doing yet it's conveniently brushed under the rug.

You make consistently excellent points about Endwalker, and you put things into words that I know I dislike, but I can't explain why I dislike them.

[PawPaw]

I commented to a friend when I'd finished the game that Elpis was both the best and the worst experience in the expansion for me, and that still stands. As much as I loved meeting Hythlodaeus and seeing and learning more about the world of the Ancients, 99% of the issues I have with Endwalker stem from Elpis and my experience overall would have been made better by the writers finding another way to tell that part of the story that didn't involve time travel, last-minute-villains, memory wipes and emotional manipulation.

While there were things about the place and the experience that I absolutely loved, it was not worth the dozens of massive plot craters that were created by its inclusion.

[Akiudo]

loved elpis, hated venat acting as stupid as she did.

really the only change i would have needed would be for venat to lose her memories as well and be forcibly kicked out of elpis right after (give some handwave why we can still visit it ingame but not warn the others, way more realistic than what we got) , that would have left us at a stable time loop that actually made sense (instead of venat doing what she did despite being explicitly told how everything went the first time). i mean heck, you could even handwave away hydaelin specifically setting us up to keep the loop going, just make it so she got her memories back AFTER she turned into hydaelin.

[Lium]

Well, I loved EW as it is, warts and all.

My biggest issues with Elpis were that I generally dislike time travel in all of my fiction, and I disliked the way information was presented. Not sure if I'm saying the latter right. But basically, during the cutscene where the WoL finally tells Hermes everything, he thinks about it for a moment, then tells everyone exactly what's really going on. Even using words like "we Ancients..." when addressing the group, which I thought was weird. To them, they aren't Ancients at all. They are the modern day. But that might be nitpicking.

However, later, when we return back to our present, the information we relay to the Scions is greeted with sort of a shrug. Like, "Ah, so it is dynamis that causes the Final Days. As we suspected. Thanks for confirming this!"

I would think us telling them that we actually traveled back in time to the World Unsundered and met Emet-Selch and freaking Hydaelyn before she was Hydaelyn, hung out with them and a bunch of other Ancients for a time - including Fandaniel before he was Fandaniel - then befriended the eventual Avatar of Despair that threatens to wipe out the entire universe, who was created by Hermes to travel the cosmos, giving us unprecedented insight into an Ancient's psyche would be a game-changing moment for everyone.

I feel like everyone should have just been standing there in stunned silence. "By the Twelve! You...you...met Venat? You saw Etheirys as it was before the sundering?" And then Y'shtola would say something like, "I trust your time in the ancient past was well spent. Tell us all you have learned about Fandaniel."

But instead it was just sort of received nonchalantly and then they moved on.

Which is why I don't like time travel.������

[Necrotica]

Yes.

10 characters.

[SomeRandomHuman]

I didn't mind Elpis all that much. I felt like it dragged on a bit longer than it needed to. The whole "time travel" thing is cliched through all 13 reflections and back, but I enjoyed seeing what the ancients were before they became the phantoms.

Garlemald and and the second visit(the final days portion) to thavnir were my favorite parts of EW. Yes I have a twisted soul before you ask.