Quote Originally Posted by Alleo View Post
Yeah in your opinion. I found the writing style in Endwalker not much worse than other expansions. No I was even surprised how they were able to finish this long long story with a (IMO) great ending. Reading about your different views on the story including the newly introduced Zero I doubt that something that you would have liked would be something I enjoy. I hate grim dark stories. I stay away from books/movies like Game of Thrones because I find them utterly depressing. Endwalker and Shadowbringer (another great expansion you did not mention in your text I quote) are emotinal for me but not too depressing. We do lose people but its not a mass slaughter of favorite characters. The themes can be quite dark (that szene with the family in the dschungle dungeon) and mature (Uriangers grief), yet we also have nice scenes to bring our spirits back up.

Honestly I really dont see how ARR or even Heavensward were better in that regard. In ARR none of the scions die, even Minifila still exists in a way. Its mostly the bad guys that perish. Yes we have the attack the scions headquarter but again no major character dies there. And scenes like the headquarter exist in Endwalker too. After all we see quite a few people die on screen when the Final Days start. In Heavensward we lose a bit more character but overall the themes are also not that deeper than in other expansion. We are able to stop a war that is going on for thousand of years and make peace between dragon and man.

So I am really not sure how these are so much better than Endwalker. We still solve the problems of these long going on conflicts with the power of friendship (and some got trashing).

Variant itself was a reward to me. It did not need many rewards for me to run them quite a few times. Honestly even just the notes and the puzzles would have been enough for me. I barely even looked at the rewards until I was finished. This was something great, something new. Something that they can build upon and that could be a nice little side content. Side content which brings us more lore without being mindnumbing grindy. I am sure that the long living content will come with the new deep dungeon (including gear and/or weapons) and the next relic steps.

Also have you finally done Island Sancturay and have you run the Variant dungeons yourself?
It's baffling to me how much people over shill Heavensward and Shadowbringers stories for being these "masterpieces" and highlights of the entire game. Baffling because singling them out kills a lot of the substance owed by everything that came before it. They're all very shallow stories on their own. Ishgard is just a lite version of FF Tactics's plot, Shadowbringers is just a very lite version of FFX and Tales of Symphonia that deal with it's themes and conflict much better.