Thread: Endwalker is the lowest point of this game since 1.0

Originally Posted by fulminating

As a counter example, look at the worldbuilding for sharlayan over the years. It’s followed the exact path that the brotherhood of steel has in fallout, losing the dubious morality and extreme isolationism in favour of the bowdlerised parody of itself. All the nuance and darker undercurrent has been sanded off, making it significantly harder to care for as a result. Ala mhigo was built up from 1.0 only to be ignored for a jaunt to the far east with a shallow revolution. I think norvrandt only got away with it because it’s the familiar twisted and in the post apocalypse. For characters, the mundanity of lolorito and both halves of that rival lalafell felt more relatable than the whole universe’s despair being thrown around. Even gaius, the invading garleans and their succession issues offered a more grounded problem. Then they decided the garleans weren’t allowed any foot to stand on with the retcon about primals draining the land. I dunno, hades worked as a villain because it was a reflection of the player character to an extent, it’s only lead to them tying themselves in knots with regard to morality since. The ascians being cackling madmen wasn’t great, but their dealings with thordan was a nice use of villains having competing goals. There just doesn’t seem to be the kind of inter character conflict there used to be. I hope this wasn’t too rambly.

See this makes no sense to me. I'll be jumping across point so my apologies. You say there's no inter character conflict yet...isnt the whole of the Ancient storyline from ShB to EW just that? The Cruz of those expac stories is very much that to the T. Hades was a reflection of the player in ShB just as Zenos was in SB to EW (greater so in EW imo).

Garleans were set up to to fail and that was Emets doing. He himself made that clear. I think it's nice that the focus is rebuilding Garlemald now. Ala Mhigo I'd agree could've been handled better. Unfortunate how that turned out.

As for the relatability that (as most things are) is very subjective. From what I've seen and experienced myself EW hits a particular spot with alot of people. The dealing with Nihilism and the meaning/purpose of life is very relatable to quite alot of people. It's not something we've really gotten in XIV and was a breath of fresh air. Did it resonate with everyone? No. But for those it did with it was quite strong. With it being as heavy as it was (imo) I believe that's why the story pumped the breaks n chilled out hence the current post story.

And as for the top point. I mean...how long did you expect said place to stay isolated? It's been that way for years (our time). Eventually it was bound to come into the picture. The reason they stayed that way has been revealed and there's no longer a reason for that. As for nuance being gone I can't agree. Even now XIV as a whole story wise revolves heavily around it. Recent example Golbez. It's very much clear he's not "evil" for the sake of. It says something when Athena is one of the few times we have people who are just downright evil. No nuance there.

Long read so sorry lol