[SPOILER] Resources wasted in final zone?

[LittleArrow]

I'm not a game developer, and I'm positive many people aren't here either, but if anyone has some sort of experience with game design I have a question for you!

I just finished the last zone of the MSQ, and I was stunned to see how many assets were wasted after the zone changed in appearance. It went from a nicely detailed zone to just... nothing, black squares / electrope. The detail in colors and design were all gone. It shocked me to think that all of that work was for maybe 1-2hrs of gameplay and what it was replaced with looked like it could've taken them half the amount of time to develop.

I just thought, "wow.. what a massive waste." It's been bugging me so much. So, was this a huge waste or was that zone's design not as work intensive as I'm thinking?

[Aulainn]

Don't worry, if you did any sidequests you'll notice they were beast tribe starting quests. Now you might have to wait a year to get the right one though...

[LittleArrow]

Don't worry, if you did any sidequests you'll notice they were beast tribe starting quests. Now you might have to wait a year to get the right one though...

Ah ok, that's good to hear. I hope they'll do something with the appearance. Again, I'm not expert so I don't know really if they wasted too much, but my goodness if they did, that makes me sad lol.

Thanks for your response, this does give me hope they didn't just give up on that zone.

[Andevom]

Nothing is wasted; the art design is preserved no matter how frequently it appears in the game and it's purposeful. It's no different from the light drenched areas in Shadowbringers or the Final Days of Endwalker. They've been making temporary variants of locations since the beginning.

[SirShady]

The fact that it was temporary is what makes it so poignant... Or at least it would be if the writing wasn't crap and the concept of The Endless was explored any more than "they're AI, we should kill them".

[LittleArrow]

Nothing is wasted; the art design is preserved no matter how frequently it appears in the game and it's purposeful. It's no different from the light drenched areas in Shadowbringers or the Final Days of Endwalker. They've been making temporary variants of locations since the beginning.

I have to disagree with this, though I'm open to changing my opinion. The light areas in ShB didn't have nearly the depth and extent of design that the final zone in DT had. We're talking full on carnival ride attractions, solid assets like popcorn buckets, ice cream, drinks and the like. ShB just looked like a filter they put over the zone itself. I agree that there are some uses of variant zones but it's usually always additive never subtractive. The final days for instance, there was added rubble and a light effect over the base map - that doesn't seem very intensive to me. The final zone, as I said before was beyond more extensive than anything I've seen in the past.

Again, I'm happy to change my opinion on this because I really want to be wrong, that's why I made this thread. I'm hoping to hear, Oh yeah a lot of those assets are easy to put in there, it wouldn't have taken them a long time to do that. Hopefully someone with more knowledge than I have will come in and say that.

Still, I don't think this comparison is totally valid due to the extreme number of assets lost between the change compared to how little is changed in the examples given.

[SherriCrimson]

(snip)

It's a very ambitious zone. Every zone in this expansion has pushed graphics and assets used beyond anything before it. Most of Ultima Thule was a skybox, with fog and a bit of other stuff added in after. To tell a good story, they gave us a grand theme park, complete with every asset that they have. Every zone is chock full of life and sights to see. When we're done and we've turned off the supply of aether to the area, we see it for what it is: a massive hulk of Electrope, the thing that the society warred over to begin with. It is by far the best zone they've ever put in the game story wise, and its loss is to be felt intimately as you progress through it. Its existence is a comfort to no one except the dead, and some of the residents themselves don't even want to exist in it. It all still exists on characters who have not finished the zone, but as of now, it is a drab, grey zone with not much in it except some fates, some elite marks and a few gather nodes. That is a good thing, and I'd prefer those things didn't exist there either. It should be a place we close up and leave forever. But, lorewise, the scientists of our planet will most likely be studying the shard extensively, and introduce electrope to Eitherys.

Yes, it's ambitious. Yes, it is horrifying. Yes, it feels horrible to progress through the zone, get to know these people, and summarily delete them. But they shouldn't exist to begin with. They should be dead, with the only thing remaining of them being books, memories and monuments. The answer is: No, it's not simple to build a zone like that. I'm betting a large part of the development time was dedicated to making it the way it is. I'm glad they gave us the zone as it was, and I'll forever remember that it existed. I can experience it again on alts, and I might just do that when I'm done leveling all my jobs on my main. But for now, I'll keep it as it should be: a memory.

[cutestfox]

I recommend using NG+ when you go back to do fates in that zone (selecting any chapter will work, since they're all pre-dawntrail)
It's a cope, but it will restore it back to cozy mode for you to enjoy instead of playing in the creepy backrooms

[Naoki34]

Personally, I had no trouble obliterating them. All it took was a little Ether on an unprotected tower to wipe them all out. These dead who are transformed into Eternals, they survive selfishly by consuming souls.

Whether voluntary or not, starting from Sphene's selfish "benevolence". Me, I found the first 2 zones: Venice & Carnival forgettable, maudlin and emotional for nothing. It doesn't work on me, what I saw was just people who don't want to die and who have all consumed at least several times the soul of someone who won't return to the river of life or whatever it's called.

I wish I could have just crossed the zone and turned off the tower, it would have been the same effect. Plus, it was emotional ambience + cheesy musical ambience, it's not like you really need violins and emotional music when a character dies.

In general, I hated the emotional moments + the even more emotional BGM, as if you couldn't do without them, it's an overused bias.

The parts that were just passable were when we met the parents of certain characters.

Sphene is a sociopath who thinks only of her people/family at the expense of multiple universes/worlds... And to see Wut Lamak too kind and trying to understand her... Too nice for her own good... There's no excuse for her selfish "benevolence". You've beaten death by accident, but not diseases LOL, and the dead become Eternals, it was only likely to get worse especially if you operated on Ether and souls.

Dawntrail is good, but this last zone, I wanted to finish it in a hurry, it's so boring!

[HighlanderClone]

The fact that it was temporary is what makes it so poignant... Or at least it would be if the writing wasn't crap and the concept of The Endless was explored any more than "they're AI, we should kill them".

Agreed.

In principle it would be a powerful statement but the execution makes the turning off of the memories pointless...

It's a very ambitious zone. Every zone in this expansion has pushed graphics and assets used beyond anything before it. Most of Ultima Thule was a skybox, with fog and a bit of other stuff added in after. To tell a good story, they gave us a grand theme park, complete with every asset that they have. Every zone is chock full of life and sights to see. When we're done and we've turned off the supply of aether to the area, we see it for what it is: a massive hulk of Electrope, the thing that the society warred over to begin with. It is by far the best zone they've ever put in the game story wise, and its loss is to be felt intimately as you progress through it. Its existence is a comfort to no one except the dead, and some of the residents themselves don't even want to exist in it. It all still exists on characters who have not finished the zone, but as of now, it is a drab, grey zone with not much in it except some fates, some elite marks and a few gather nodes. That is a good thing, and I'd prefer those things didn't exist there either. It should be a place we close up and leave forever. But, lorewise, the scientists of our planet will most likely be studying the shard extensively, and introduce electrope to Eitherys.

Yes, it's ambitious. Yes, it is horrifying. Yes, it feels horrible to progress through the zone, get to know these people, and summarily delete them. But they shouldn't exist to begin with. They should be dead, with the only thing remaining of them being books, memories and monuments. The answer is: No, it's not simple to build a zone like that. I'm betting a large part of the development time was dedicated to making it the way it is. I'm glad they gave us the zone as it was, and I'll forever remember that it existed. I can experience it again on alts, and I might just do that when I'm done leveling all my jobs on my main. But for now, I'll keep it as it should be: a memory.

It's sad that I completely understand what you're saying at an intellectual level, and I was playing through it I thought the exact same things as you're saying...

but I just never felt it. I literally didn't care that we're shutting off the "servers". When the game warned that it would be irreversible, I didn't even hesitate to press "Yes, continue."

If that's not an indicator of how shoddy the writing and execution was I don't know what is.

I only started to feel anything when we got to Krile and Erenville, but even then I could hardly care less about the rest of the zone.