Wow, Wuk Lamat is really single-handedly ruining the DT story...

[dies_irae]

I don't think I've had a bigger 360 on a story than the twelve questline.

I was annoyed at first because it was going to be one god trope I dislike for being overdone (The gods are evil and we have to kill them because we're ahh-sum), then it turned out they were just testing us which I was fine with, then it turned out to be the other trope I dislike (the gods are nice but they die shortly after meeting them).

Made worse by the fact that most of the twelve were "just there" at best, to almost maliciously negligent at worst (Nophica and Menphina being the biggest offenders).

I was suspecting something like that from the beginning, it was just so predictable but i was hoping to be proven wrong until the end.

I wanted them all to just become adventurers like Deryk and spread all over the planet so we could meet them in future expansions. Or they could have just used them as future trust characters so they dont have to lobotomize the scions into generic trust npcs all the time.

[DonutSteel]

I was suspecting something like that from the beginning, it was just so predictable but i was hoping to be proven wrong until the end.

I wanted them all to just become adventurers like Deryk and spread all over the planet so we could meet them in future expansions. Or they could have just used them as future trust characters so they dont have to lobotomize the scions into generic trust npcs all the time.

Admitted I was initially worried, but was so relieved at them avoiding the "evil gods" twist that I was gaslighting myself into thinking "surely they won't just kill them all off at the end either, right?"

But then I finished Euphrosyne and got that "We're gonna accomplish our dream!" line from Menphina and I was just "Oh no. Surely not..." Then they did.

[ForteNightshade]

My theory is that they rushed to end the current arc to free up all the talents that made FF14 great. Either because they themselves wanted to move on from FF14 (YoshiP, Koji, Ishikawa, ...) ,the company decided to move them to other projects, or they wanted to leave because they did not want to deal with outside influence (consulting companies) interfering with their work.
So they "solved" every mystery/threat that was left in this arc:
-Garmelmald killed off screen
-Omicron threat killed off screen
- Hydaelyn and Zodiark
- Zenos
- Ascians
- What happened to the dragon star
- the twelve just being ancients that we help committing suicide ... (i really hated that story)

At first i thought they did that because they had this great new arc ready to go but after playing DT it is obvious that they have nothing.

Yoshida admitted they initially planned Endwalker to be two parts in one of the LLs. Ishikawa decided it would be better to condense the story into one as she didn't think there would be enough material. That was also a concern of Yoshida's, alongside whether people would like a potential cliffhanger that wouldn't really have a full resolution until two years later.

So assuming all that to be correct, they absolutely rushed to the conclusion. It hurt Endwalker in my opinion but also left them with next to nothing for Dawntrail. My own theory is they were wholly unprepared for a brand new story and vastly underestimated the position it put them in. Hence why Dawntrail feels like a big filler arc because, well, I suspect that's exactly what it will become. An expansion made to buy them another two years.

[Daralii]

Yoshida admitted they initially planned Endwalker to be two parts in one of the LLs. Ishikawa decided it would be better to condense the story into one as she didn't think there would be enough material. That was also a concern of Yoshida's, alongside whether people would like a potential cliffhanger that wouldn't really have a full resolution until two years later.

So assuming all that to be correct, they absolutely rushed to the conclusion. It hurt Endwalker in my opinion but also left them with next to nothing for Dawntrail. My own theory is they were wholly unprepared for a brand new story and vastly underestimated the position it put them in. Hence why Dawntrail feels like a big filler arc because, well, I suspect that's exactly what it will become. An expansion made to buy them another two years.

The first half definitely didn't have much material unless they massively expanded Garlemald(which I wouldn't have minded) and maybe Thavnair, but there needed to be a lot more after Zodiark's death to actually make things feel dire, as opposed to the Final Days fully manifesting in only 2 zones and then everything else happening in the past, underground, and in space, and Meteion needed to be introduced sooner. Hythlodaeus had some dialogue in either ShB or in Mare Lamentorum about them receiving reports of the Final Days gradually spreading across the planet before it finally reached Amaurot, and we needed to see that gradual spread as we tried and failed to find ways to get to Ultima Thule.

[AlienDiplomat]

Pretty much since the expansion launched people in our Discord have jokingly summarizing the DT story as "Talk to Woke La Mutt." xD

I didn't really get the whole "woke" vibe from it, but I always thought the play on words was funny regardless.

What DT was to me was a total cringe-fest with forced immature cartoon humor and total cheese writing tropes that belonged more in a Care Bears reunion film than a Final Fantasy game. It picked up a little at the end but even the new central hero/villain they introduced later had a very "Disney" vibe and also came off pretty cringe. I did like some of the story concepts this last stretch touched on, but they just didn't weave them very well through the character interactions.

I get we are on vacation and everything. But there is no reason not to touch on some more serious points of the larger universe instead of leaning totally on "self esteem gives you magical powerz" Wuk Lamat riffs. I mean we are only on another continent, not another reflection. There is no reason for this place to be so completely cut off from the larger saga of the calamity, the ambitions of the Empire, the meddling of the ancients, or anything else.

I mean we have airships, ships that go to space, and non-attuned teleportation magic FFS. The idea that this continent on the same world is so isolated that the biggest cultural challenges for them is healthy reed crops and building a rep as a successful capitalist with no mention of Primals or other forces in this universe canon is more than a little silly.

So, while I feel Wuk Lamat was critically overplayed and underwritten, I think what really ruins the story is the overall lack of maturity and the writing in general not being up to FFXIV standards.

If this was an isolated game in an unknown franchise that would be one thing. Hello Kitty Island Adventure had its audience. But you can't take a book from a mature sci-fi fantasy genre and just randomly stick a Care Bear Friendship is Magic children's story time chapter in the middle of it and expect people not to do a double-take.

DT feels completely out of place in this universe, and the way it was woven in makes no sense.

If, as it seems to me, SE has decided that gamers are all having babies and it is time to target a younger more immature generation of up-and-coming gamers, my advice would be to do it with a new game and IP.

Don't totally shift gears in a beloved decade+ established franchise and expect everything will turn out for the best.

[ForteNightshade]

The first half definitely didn't have much material unless they massively expanded Garlemald(which I wouldn't have minded) and maybe Thavnair, but there needed to be a lot more after Zodiark's death to actually make things feel dire, as opposed to the Final Days fully manifesting in only 2 zones and then everything else happening in the past, underground, and in space, and Meteion needed to be introduced sooner. Hythlodaeus had some dialogue in either ShB or in Mare Lamentorum about them receiving reports of the Final Days gradually spreading across the planet before it finally reached Amaurot, and we needed to see that gradual spread as we tried and failed to find ways to get to Ultima Thule.

That was seemingly the idea: an extended Garlemald and I'm assuming other areas that were in the first half. Anima would have been our final trial. So I suspect the whole Varis becoming a Primal would have actually had some substance instead of being kind of tossed in without much fanfare. Sadly, none of this left the concept phase.

I do agree though, and have frequently criticised how lackluster the whole Final Days aspect felt. It essentially boiled down to the Final Days: Screw Thavnair. It literally followed the Thavnair refugees and impacted nothing else to the point of feeling completely irrelevant. Which kind of undercut the whole back half of the story. I get they were likely afraid of repeating Shadowbringers with another "flood of light" equivalent but there were ways around that.

[TaleraRistain]

Yoshida admitted they initially planned Endwalker to be two parts in one of the LLs. Ishikawa decided it would be better to condense the story into one as she didn't think there would be enough material. That was also a concern of Yoshida's, alongside whether people would like a potential cliffhanger that wouldn't really have a full resolution until two years later.

I can kind of see their point there, though. Everything seems to be getting split into two. That new Wicked musical movie is apparently going to be 2 parts. Can you imagine the hate if they had explicitly made Endwalker a part 1 and part 2? They leave little breadcrumbs now for future expansions but they've never segmented an expansion's story arc like that.

[CuteBucket]

Endwalker should have been two expansions. I will die on this hill.

The Ilsabard expansion: Cities: Corvos capital, Radz-at-Han.
Zones: Corvos, Thavnair, two other unknown/hidden by clouds currently Ilsabard regions heading north from Corvos, Garlemald, The Moon.

This expansion would focus exclusively on the fall of the Garlean Empire and the sociopolitical repercussions of it. We get to meet the people of Ilsabard and see how differently their occupation looks like from Ala Mhigo and Doma, as many of them have been under imperial rule for much longer, like 40+ years. It's not easy to convince them to defy the Empire, as many don't remember a time before Imperial rule and have much more to lose, and it may come to blows. We spend more time on the Towers that Fandanial put up and the horror of what they really are and what happened to Varis as opposed to the whole thing being a footnote. We get some hints about Fandaniel's plan and Zodiark near the very end, but we dont' fight him until the X.3 patch. We know that something is very wrong, but we don't know what. All of the Scions are desperately trying to find any sort of hint as to what will happen to the planet without Zodiark there now, and we start to get small hints about Dynamis and Meteion.

The Final Days expansion: City zones: Sharlayan, ??? (new unknown city we've never seen yet in Othard)
Zones: Labrynthos, New Eorzea zone (northern Eorzea in Ixal territory? Paglthan proper? Yafaemi? Corthas Eastern Highlands? We still haven't seen all of Eorzea), Nanxia (+ taking more time exploring places hit all around the world by the Final Days and making it really catastrophic + revisiting old zones and companions), New Unsundered World zone (could be part of Amaurot, could be another part of the Ancient world we haven't seen yet like one of the many other cities that we know once existed), Elpis, Ulitima Thule.

This expansion would spend the first half focused on the Final Days returning to the star, and it is NOT isolated to just Thavnair and Garlemald (though it may still start there first). As this is the wrap up of the story arc, we spend some time both in the new zones before everything goes to shit trying to reach out to the nation's leaders as a diplomat to let them know of the coming danger and what to do (which may not go so smoothly). As fire and monsters begin to rain down, we retrace our steps in our journey as the Warrior of Light, doing everything we can to help all the people we've come to know over the past decade of the game get to Sharlayan or Garlemald to evacuate to the moon and grapple with having to say goodbye to the world we've come to love. But then we follow the hints about Dynamis, Meteion, and Elpis to go to the First and seek what remains of Elidibus out to send us back in time. (I know some people hated the time travel, but I'm trying to keep things as canon friendly as I can in my spitballing two game theory here). It takes us longer to find Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus, as we don't get brought straight to Elpis and have to puzzle our way there by learning more about the Ancients and what the place is and how to get there, but we eventually get spotted by the two as we stumble around and things play out more or less the same, but with more time to tell the story of Venat and Hermes and the rest, as opposed to a very confusing "artistic license" not literal cutscene about the Sundering at the very end of the zone. We return to the present with the key to defeating Meteion and go to Ultima Thule to save the universe.

[SeriousPan]

Rushing Garlemald is one of the biggest tragedies in FFXIV's storytelling pre-DT. Spending 8 years hating Garleans and working towards finally wiping them out only for them to rush the story beat of us being a part of a contingent that goes over there for humanitarian aid. I couldn't, and still can't, swallow that. It basically expects you to 180 your opinion on Garleans immediately while still beating you over the head with how much they despise you and see you as less than human. I often have people go "omg you have no empathy, they're all brainwashed by propaganda." and it's like, no duh. Anyone that's done Highschool reading has seen this theme done to death. Not to mention that they are still actively attacking us in some zones, like the Weapons storyline. Issue is that the change from wanting to kill them all for invading my home and killing my friends & family to "we need to help them" was handled horrendously. All the interesting Garlean stuff happened offscreen where we couldn't see it. Now it's a singular zone and all the true parts of Garlemald are 'destroyed' and inaccessible.

What a waste. I wanted to be the one to lay waste to Garlemald. lol So many years of hating their faction and nada to show for it in the end.

[Hallarem]

Rushing Garlemald is one of the biggest tragedies in FFXIV's storytelling pre-DT. Spending 8 years hating Garleans and working towards finally wiping them out only for them to rush the story beat of us being a part of a contingent that goes over there for humanitarian aid. I couldn't, and still can't, swallow that. It basically expects you to 180 your opinion on Garleans immediately while still beating you over the head with how much they despise you and see you as less than human. I often have people go "omg you have no empathy, they're all brainwashed by propaganda." and it's like, no duh. Anyone that's done Highschool reading has seen this theme done to death. Not to mention that they are still actively attacking us in some zones, like the Weapons storyline. Issue is that the change from wanting to kill them all for invading my home and killing my friends & family to "we need to help them" was handled horrendously. All the interesting Garlean stuff happened offscreen where we couldn't see it. Now it's a singular zone and all the true parts of Garlemald are 'destroyed' and inaccessible.

What a waste. I wanted to be the one to lay waste to Garlemald. lol So many years of hating their faction and nada to show for it in the end.

MAssive wasted opportunity, much like Dawntrail with its characters. Its rushed and badly paced.
GArlemald should've been a huge part, we could've had political intrigue, infiltrated into their society. Worked together with the "Populares" to make Garlemald into a more reformed society or joined some Legions temporarily that wanted inner change in Garlemald. Seen how the inner workings functioned, how the royalty there functioned. Hell even Zenos who I hated couldve had more character development and he could've actually blossomed into something else than a murder hobo with no relevance in the plot.

But nooooooo.... Offscreen explosion, Garlemald gone. Woooooo.. So we could get what? Labyrinthos? Give me a break