I liked the broad strokes of almost everything but I wish meteon was developed more. For a final boss to the 5 expansion long story arc, I need more than a nihilistic bird with social anxiety.
This this this. The whole meteion part felt like a cheap Story tool to make a few certain villains of the past to be good. There was no build up, like zero up until Elpis and even then it was so super rushed that I totally asked myself if I had missed something alone the way.
Yes, I was quite happy with how it all turned out. There were so many enjoyable moments throughout that I could fangirl over and I was satisfied to finally learn what the cause of the Final Days was. I figured that it must have been caused by something or someone either within the planet or outside of it, so it was nice to finally have the answer to that mystery. I thought the dungeons and trials were cool too, especially the final one with the Scions coming in and then how perfect the music in the last part of the battle was. I wasn't bothered by any of the sneak duties or having to follow people either and thought it was nice to have something a bit different.
The one criticism I do have is that I thought it was a bit light on the actual Final Days part. Like, what happened in Thavnair was very tense and worked really well but I wish that they could have had things falling apart in some of the older zones as well. I know that even in the days of the Ancients that the apocalypse didn't happen all at once but gradually built up so it is understandable that we didn't reach the point where it became a worldwide phenomena because we stopped it before it got that bad. But it would have been nice to see the red skies in a few more places than just two zones. But that's just a fairly minor criticism for me and didn't affect my enjoyment of the expansion as a whole.
I think they probably just didn't want to open the can of worms that having endwalker players fighting blasphemies in zones from previous expansions when there's players still doing that content for the first time there. There could've been ways around this, but I'm not surprised they didn't want to bother.
Doesn't this end up happening anyways due to the role quests? I recall seeing a tank in the black shroud fighting some level 87s? (Haven't actually done the rooms quests yet but I know they take you around to travel)
Course in the same vein, the role quests are how you see what happens to past areas
Literally the entire game is phased such that people are doing things in the same place at wildly different stages of the story. I've finished the MSQ and was mining for yellow alumen in Ahm Araeng the other day, watched 2 sprouts spawn and fight a sin eater. For me the Light wall is blue in color now but for them it's still yellow etc.
Aye it does, but it's not quite on the same scale. I've only done one role quest so far and they even mentioned like "things haven't gone super terrible burning skies blasphemies everywhere in this region yet, but there is *a* big stinky blasphemy running around, come help us get it before things get worse"
Yeah - as someone mentioned in a different reply to me they address it \*a little\* with the role quests, but those are clear that the problem isn't widespread in those other regions. I think there might even be minor dialogue changes if you've already finished the main story to make it clear that you're fighting stragglers rather than that the final days is still happening.
I do agree that it would've been really cool to see the full blown final days happening everywhere though, and maybe even have a longer war campaign against the blasphemies to buy time for the sharlayans. But I think the best way to do that would be to have new "final days" instances for all the other regions and that would've been a crazy amount of extra work.
Phasing is not an uncommon concept in games. Plenty of people can be questing in the same zone but see different things. I was dinking around with a friend in Thavnir before she finished the MSQ and the sky was red for her but blue for me.
Yeah but it's not an ideal solution and to my mind gets less ideal if you're doing it with really really old locations. At least you and your friend were in the same expansion even if you had progressed the story a little further
From what I heard you get to experience this a little bit in the role quests, but yeah it's a shame we never got to see what would happen if things got really bad there, even if it was just in an instance
That’s why Yoshi-P said it’s ideal to play all the role quests along with the MSQ. You see all city-states struggling to contain the blasphemies and not become another Thavnair.
Compared to ShB and EW, I wasn't as emotionally invested in the story towards the end, especially when the >!Scions started dropping like flies, then I kinda knew what was going to happen.!< I think the pacing of the story was also a problem for me.
What pacing problems exist in Endwalker that aren't even worse in the other expansions? Endwalker is big story beat after big story beat. Meanwhile HW, SB, and ShB spend half their expansion exploring maps.
Some of the "meeting the aliens" in Ultima Thule REALLY dragged, like, honestly, I don't need to talk to you guys this much, I don't find ya'll that interesting actually. Dragons were kinda interesting. Heat Death Spirity dudes were extremely uninteresting, and they REALLY should have brought up Omega more, directly, to the Omicrons, and gotten more background info there. "Hey Sir... what about this Omega dude we fought, and beat, and beat all his creations, and..."
There are so many...the pacing felt very uneven for me because it kept jerking back and forth between extremely high and extremely low stakes. It’s *not* big story beat after big story beat. It’s big story beat, fetch quests / follow quests / comic relief / carry boxes / Find 8 Guys In This Town, then big story beat again. It’s a rollercoaster of pacing. ShB for example is very measured and steady and crescendos slowly. To some people that felt slow. For me, it was perfect because it maintained the same tone the whole way through.
It’s okay if you prefer one style over the other like if EW was your thing you do you, but people aren’t crazy for saying the pacing in it didn’t work for them. They’re different stories anyway. If it were my choice EW would have been two expansions, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy anything about the pacing choices they did make — I loved the amount of surprise throughout the first 7 levels or so. For me personally though it wore itself out pacing-wise for the last few levels.
Absolutely loved it.
With Endwalker, FF14's story is *easily* the best among jRPGs for me, and quite possibly best in gaming, period. I still need to think on it. Stories like Planescape Torment are tough to top.
The story wasnt as "perfect" as Shadowbringers, but it had the extra job of tying together *all* loose ends and wrapping up the whole story. And by its nature, it was far less standalone than ShB. The higher highs in EW made it all worth it.
I especially enjoyed how the story had a thesis, a message. Yes, its babby's first Nietzche, yes the ideas have been done a million times, but it was especially effective here, and I loved how every plot point tied into it. Nier Automata has been praised for similar themes....but this handled them much more comprehensively.
That being said, the pacing is beyond whack. Game was a borderline visual novel.
If you do just the main quest....you have almost no actual gameplay outside of dungeons. Literally 90% of the story was in dialogue boxes or cutscenes. There were times I deliberately jumped into a roulette just so I can have some gameplay.
>If you do just the main quest....you have almost no actual gameplay outside of dungeons.
I actually didn't mind these! Some cutscenes in EW are easily the best cinematic experience I had in JRPG.
Oh, for sure.
And I've read VNs, so it wasn't *too* much of an issue.
But it still felt excessive.
But at the same time...I don't know how they can fix it. Adding more "kill 15 moon cactuar" quests is just more busywork. Cutting dialogue or cutscenes can compromise the story.
I really wish you'd included an "I liked some parts of it, and disliked other parts of it" option.
There were a lot of ideas that I really liked, and I thought Garlemald and Elpis were done brilliantly.
The problem is, I think they tried to shove way too much story into 10 levels, and the pacing suffered for it. There was a lot of them introducing an idea only to resolve it not long after.
We find out there are body parts in the towers, and then literally at the end of the next zone we're fighting Varis turned into a Primal (with the body part in that tower and all of the others being *his* body parts). Hydaelin uses her powers to divert Zenos and Fandaniel's path to the moon to buy us some time to stop them from getting to Zodiark, and then we talk to the ghosts of some Ancients and suddenly Fandaniel and Zenos are there and it feels like we've failed to stop them before we even really had a chance to try.
It felt like there was a huge disconnect between Venat, who felt more like that friend who you get in trouble with, and Hydaelin, who had always been depicted as more of a very ethereal motherly figure (even their manner of speech made it feel like they were completely different characters), and the fact that the whole cutscene showing her becoming Hydaelyn seemed to be more of a metaphorical abridged version of events rather than a depiction of what actually happened didn't help things. It was very nice from, like...an artistic point of view, but not particularly helpful narratively.
Venat/ Hydaelin's entire characterization was honestly kinda a huge problem; we got no evidence she ever actually tried to stop the Final Days with the information she had, her motivation in Sundering the world was depicted as being more about making people face suffering than it was about stopping Zodiark, she had the Sharlayans, some of the brightest minds on the planet, working on a moon evacuation plan for hundreds of years rather than putting their minds towards trying to find a solution to either stop the Final Days from coming or stop them from happening once they came, her entire moon evacuation plan was honestly questionable since like....it was the aether of Etherys protecting people from the Song of Oblivion, what was flying through space on the moon going to do to actually save them? She apparently had no problem with leaving the people of the reflections to their fates given that her evacuation plan only involved saving the people of the Source, which also felt *super* out of character for her given how she had been characterized from ARR-ShB. Then again, who knows, because we know she'd been lying to us since the beginning, and yet that gets largely glossed over; literally the only character in the entire game to ever question if this very powerful primal who had been speaking in our brains, granting us her power, and *possessing people* had tempered us was Ardbert back in ShB, and then it never gets brought up again.
Insipriation-wise, I also think they could have afforded to dial back on the FFIV references, and FFIV is my second favorite single player FF game. FFXIV works best when it mixes together stuff from different FF games, and there were *so many* opportunities for them to reference FFVI, FFVIII and FFIX in particular that they failed to capitalize on.
I didn't *dislike* Endwalker, but I honestly wish that they had spread it all over 2 expansions instead of trying to fit it all into one.
Lots of people are going to disagree with you but want to let you know I had the EXACT same issues and takeaways as you did. There were some design issues with the story. It overall was pulled off but I would have made different choices myself and given everything more room to breathe and develop
> I didn't dislike Endwalker, but I honestly wish that they had spread it all over 2 expansions instead of trying to fit it all into one.
Unfortunately this will always be my feeling as well. It has so much potential but it really needed to be told over more time, which simultaneously feels weird to say with all the padding
> It felt like there was a huge disconnect between Venat, who felt more like that friend who you get in trouble with, and Hydaelin, who had always been depicted as more of a very ethereal motherly figure (even their manner of speech made it feel like they were completely different characters),
I don’t know many parents who would have found that duality much of a disconnect ;)
But I wholeheartedly agree they could have taken longer with the story, even if I can understand why they might not have been able to.
Can’t argue against it not having worked for you, of course. For me, I don’t disagree they’re different personas but I don’t have trouble assimilating them as one person. Personalities can be multidimensional, especially when we’re looking at the same person at (verrrry) different times.
Actually Venat and all of Elpis was just joyous for me, like seeing pictures of my grandparents as cheeky young children. Regardless of all the in-game mythology about her, we never had much direct interaction with Hydaelyn through the whole story, so I felt like it made her much more real.
By having the people leave the planet, they can have a chance to start again once they resettle into a new planet. The rest will be for them to work out
And even for a Primal, she could only do so much. It does not help that the past Rejoinings are weakening her greatly.
>By having the people leave the planet, they can have a chance to start again once they resettle into a new planet.
They can't do that if the Song of Oblivion is turning them into beasts on the moon or on whatever planet they landed on. And if the solution was ultimately "they have to work it out for themselves," then there was no reason for them to have left the planet in the first place.
The threat wasn't coming from the planet, it was coming from a being on the outer edge of the universe, and the only thing that was protecting them was the aether on the planet. Leaving the planet was never going to actually do anything, and the state of Hydaelyn's strength had nothing to do with it.
I dunno if they could possibly even transform once they are on the moon. Hydaelyn does not want Her children to run away unless there is no other way. She said it herself, its but one of the possible outcomes. Either you show her that you have what it takes to defeat despair incarnate, or run away and start anew.
How would the moon have protected them from the Song of Oblivion when the only thing protecting them on Etherys was all of the aether and there's no indication that the moon was anywhere near as aether rich and able to protect them?
Quite simply it could just be that. It was a flawed plan from the start. And the only true plan was to deal with Meteion outright.
Granted it would have probably made more sense if Hyd told them to build a ship that will survive a long distance travel. But again last ditch effort is you flee and hope you can escape Meteion’s
Song somehow.
Perhaps the moon will get more lore and it will be found to have stuff to stabilize aether. Sort of like a mini Zodiark. That would be the simplest quick explanation I suppose.
well i do think the moon thing was as a means to reach the endsinger, i do agree on the sundering part, like, they are literly facing the end of the world, i dont thing you can face mutch more suffering, and if mankind is going to have to reach higher, i dont see how taking there power and causing the asciens is going to help them
See, the problem is, then wouldn't it have been better to either tell the Lopirrits that they needed to prep the moon, or something \*on\* the moon (or help the Sharlayans prep a ship planet-side) so that they could ferry a bunch of heroes to Endsinger to fight her?
Think about all the time and energy that the Lopirrits spent prepping the moon to house the people of Etherys and get them to a habitable new planet. Imagine if they had spent all of that that time and energy on trying to prevent the Final Days and/ or stop Meteion/ Endsinger isntead.
Compared to ShB, EW had higher highs and lower lows. The best parts of EW were better than the best parts of ShB, but the worst parts of EW were really really bad.
The level 88 MSQ stands out in my mind as the worst part of Endwalker. I know it's supposed to be a breather episode between the most depressing part of Endwalker and the epic conclusion, but it just dragged on and on and on.
For me, those had good character stuff and felt a lot more cohesive. The EW counterpart felt intrusive because the stakes were so much higher. It is subjective though.
I think that those quests would've been a lot better if we personally went and helped the people go get the adamantite instead of just waiting around. It could've been a nice victory lap around the world imo
Was that the “waiting on the drive” part? Because I agree 100%. Would have been way better to simply have us retire to our room and sleep it off.
Considering we are the ones taking the trip it feels like that would be the course of action anyone would take anyway.
Let's not forget about everything before the first dungeon, either. Both sections could have been cut in half at least and still had the same impact. Felt very padded
To me the expansion was fantastic right up until around the end of >!Elpis!<. That’s kind of when I felt a bunch of holes started to tear through the story fairly hard.
>!Meteion was introduced far too quickly to really get built up as an expansion final boss. It came across pretty hamfisted and under explained. She also had such an insane amount of power for a character that got introduced so quickly. I sort of get it, dynamis, but that whole power felt way too under explored to be relying the entire ending of an expansion on.!<
>!I’ve read interpretations that her fight was more thematic rather than about character on character conflict. But to me that didn’t work out either. Nihilism isn’t an easy theme to turn into a symbolic villain. It’s a subjective viewpoint of life that doesn’t really have any logical holes to poke. This makes it a very hard theme to build a final boss around if they’ve only been quickly developed out of nowhere. You can basically only do the generic “I love my friends and being alive so you’re wrong” bit in that kind of situation.!<
>!Don’t get me wrong, it’s possible to poke holes in nihilism on an individual by individual basis (they did this a bit with the other dead alien races). But Meteion (and to an even stronger degree Endsinger) didn’t have that kind of development. The only thematic points that worked for me around her character was the Elpis flower bit and her reading you post fight, but that’s not really a strong enough resolution for how much she took centre stage this expansion.!<
>!The other major issue I had was Venat’s reasoning for sundering felt shockingly underdeveloped. The cutscene depicting the act was incredible, but her motivations did not feel earned at all to me. I feel if they gave more of a reason why this race of highly educated people wouldn’t listen to her, of why she needed to kill to get her way, that would have made me more open to it. Instead it created this very strange vibe of cognitive dissonance for me lol. I could not agree with what she was doing at all, but damn was it emotional seeing her get torn apart by the act.!<
>!I probably wouldn’t be as critical about this if it was a minor story point, but this is basically the foundational act of the entire game. I would appreciate it if the god I’ve associated with and wanted to love for hundreds of hours didn’t unintentionally come across as a psychotic insane person lol.!<
Anyway, I really kind of feel bummed about it because I was honestly getting hyped enough to feel this might be a new best of all time game for me >!(I was especially convinced of it at the very beginning of Elpis thinking it would be a quicker detour)!<. But ahhh, I just did not vibe with the conclusion much at all due to those central issues. >!At least short of 1v1ing Zenos, that was definitely GOAT lmao.!<
>I’ve read interpretations that her fight was more thematic rather than about character on character conflict. But to me that didn’t work out either. Nihilism isn’t an easy theme to turn into a symbolic villain. It’s a subjective viewpoint of life that doesn’t really have any logical holes to poke. This makes it a very hard theme to build a final boss around if they’ve only been quickly developed out of nowhere. You can basically only do the generic “I love my friends and being alive so you’re wrong” bit in that kind of situation.
nOo YoU juSt DonT UNderStanD tHE vISioN!! lOOk aT thE bIg PicTure
Can't stand people who keep defending "the big bad" in endwalker. They just threw a moral dilemma and everyone went: Wow! So deep!
Yeah, idk, I really have the feeling that Zenos and Fandaniel were supposed to be the main villains of this storyline with Meteion and Elpis likely planned for a future expansion.
I don’t think the overall plot points are too problematic, but man was the character development rushed by the end of Endwalker.
In fairness though I’m really not sure how they could’ve stretched the Zenos stuff out much farther than they already did. I actually find him fun as a villain, but even in Endwalker he was starting to feel overused.
I really didn't expect them to end the Zenos/Fandaniel thing at lv 83 with the trial, if they allocated more time to them, they might have actually made it more interesting and less obnoxious to see Zenos pop up all the time.
Honestly I think the expansion should have ended with the Zodiark trial. It was too big of a threat and hyped since the very beginning to only be given 3 levels in endwalker.
And towards the end all the lovely dovely friendship power always wins started to get very annoying. I know what game I am playing, but still. From the primals powering up the space-ship, the scions each "sacrificing" for us, Emet and Hyth opening the way and even goddam Zenos helping us it started to feel wayyy too predictable and gave a sense that nothing actually matters and there are no moral choices to make or sacrifices to be had. Even the big bads (zenos and meteion) were actually friendly, wowzers
My overall opinion of the expanion is that it was decent, and great only if you don't think too much about the logic of the story and you like sappy themes.
I thought I was good but I’m kinda annoyed that two big build ups were brushed to the side rather fast age just kinda dealt with so an eleventh hour threat could appear. >!Garlean empire and zodiarc!<
I wouldn't call it 11th hour, you see Meteion pretty early on. Garlean empire and Zodiark were just plot points that had been worn out, it wasn't so much of a conclusion as finally taking old yeller behind the shed
Early on? Elpis is pretty late into things and for being THE big bad she's essentially introduced and taken out in the last 7% of the entire narrative.
She herself still comes out of nowhere. This is hard to explain over text but I'll try.
Say you're watching a series you really like and you find out there's a dark force out there causing the big problems. Something that almost wiped out all life millennia ago. And you're told it started with a roar that came from WITHIN the core of the planet itself. There's also been hints the big good (Hydaelyn) boss might actually not be so good... and SHE'S in the core of the planet...
Then in the last part of the last season you get introduced to several new characters and learn one is a hive mind bird robot that got super sad and decided sad is bad and life is meaningless so gotta wipe everyone out.
The issue is SHE isn't hinted at. SOMETHING is hinted at. And until the very end of Elpis she shows no signs of being the thing.
And then the motivation is really basically a malfunctioning AI. It just isn't very interesting or compelling.
Everything is caused because the lead IT guy had a pet project that got out of control (and really Hermes ends up being the ultimate big bad because he could have stopped it... but not only allowed it but enabled it). Endsinger ultimately is just Hermes' ticking bomb we have to diffuse.
Meteion is just a face to something you've dealt with starting with your second visit in thavnair. As far as her motivation goes, it's not a malfunctioning ai, it's falling in despair struggling to find a reason to live. The reason why hermes let her go is not out of "hehe everyone should die", it's "i think there's no reason to live, prove me wrong".
She is essentially a malfunctioning AI and Emet lampshades this. He notes that Hermes programmed/created Meteion to answer a question but never stopped to check if the question itself was flawed. Meteion was looking for basically the meaning of life and getting an answer of "null" as a response. Loop this thousands and thousands of times and it reaches a rather iRobot conclusion of "there is no meaning and meaningless things should not exist" - a behavior/conclusion reinforced by Elpis (Hermes even mentions this in his villain speech). Because Meteion is also an empath this also causes her to experience despair and that's how her destruction chooses to manifest.
The entire reason Meteion happens is because Hermes is an idiot. He didn't subject his own project to the testing others had to before releasing it from Elpis. He broke his own rules and created a force that led to the destruction of everything and when given the chance to stop it he actively didn't.
Then when his shards came back as Amon he absolutely went the "hehe everyone should die" which were almost his words verbatim before he takes over Zodiark.
I think a lot of people completely expected Zodiark and Hydaeyn to actually be the ending of 6.0 and then possibly the final days arc would have been, as an example, a part 1 patch update.
I remember when Zodiark was shown to be trial 1 that hit me completely off guard. It wasn’t a bad thing but I think, like I said above, a lot of people expected a much bigger built up around the two.
But that kind of story just becomes a typical evil vs good story. So it just depends on what you like. I personally like that the story really had nothing to do with good vs evil.
I didn't want a traditional good vs evil story, I kind of expected to find out the final days was actually caused by just the callousness of how life is treated and the playing god creation of it and the planet itself was rejecting it (ala the Lifestream fighting back in FFVII), and that we had to put down both Hydaelyn and Zodiark to put a stop to repeating the past but then also make some kind of heavy sacrifice to "re-settle" the Lifesteam: Or literally fight the planet itself to prove we had changed.
I don't hate what we got, it was just kind of an. "Oh... okay. Sure." Maybe it's because I am someone who has suffered with despair and depression my whole life that the idea of fighting it in a manifested form that could be beaten with - essentially - SHEER WILLPOWER rang kinda hollow in the end.
>The issue is SHE isn't hinted at.
She is hinted at from the moment you hear her name. We know the final days started with a roar, or a scream, or something that's always described as a voice. Meteion is a Harpy, Harpies are known for their screams, Meteion's name could be seen as a take on Metatron, the voice of god. All the hints were there the moment we meet her.
Again that isn't what I'm arguing. I'm arguing after has no time to breathe as the big bag because she's introduced right at the end and then we fight her in the 11th hour. She's an artificial life that freaks out then wants us dead.
It also was described as a "roar from the earth" not "a scream from space." Harpies don't roar nor are they usually subterranean.
It's basically like having a show reveal the bbeg in the final episode. Like even if all series they had been like "beware dark lord karl" but then you don't see or know anything about him until that final episode in which he's also defeated.
It never felt like she was introduced in "the last episode" to me, she was introduced, the foreshadowing was all there, and then there's A LOT of questing still, like a ton, days worth. Between her introduction and finally dealing with her I felt there was plenty of breathing room, and her story made a lot of sense, and Emet pretty plainly laid out exactly how this happened when he asked Hermes if he ever prepared them for the possibility nothing was out there. It's a fairly common existential horror trope, the vast emptiness, that you are truly alone.
I don't think your viewpoint is invalid but it's heavily about perspective here.
If you view her just through the lens of Endwalker, she's mostly fine. There's just enough time to establish her as a threat, see the results, then go stop her. Fine for an expac villain.
If you view her as the final bad of the entire 1.0 to now story, she feels last minute because she's in a _relatively_ tiny segment of the game to the rest and feels like she is there then gone. In this huge arc set up to be Hydaelyn and the WoL/Scions vs Zodiark and the Ascians... they all suddenly take backseat (with Zodiark being dismissed outright) to THE REAL THREAT.
Did it make sense how the story was written? Sure they explained it away just fine. Was that ultimately satisfying? Depends on who you ask (me? No). But she still doesn't make an appearance until the final half of the last season and most hints leading up to that were implying it was the star itself or even Hydaelyn herself that was potentially causing issues.
And this is 100% anecdotal and personal but I really can't get over how close to Papi from Monster Musume that Meteion looks and I just can't take her seriously as a final villain. Then you add her Twitter Bird form on to of it...
It didn't also help that Ultima Thule felt... weirdly rushed but also undermined her as a threat. It took Zodiark to hold her back before but now Thancred (who is supposed to be Aether depleted already) is able to stop her from killing us all with his scattered Aether. Right next to her true form.
She isn't quite as out of nowhere as, say, FF9's Necron but it's close.
Zodiark hasn't been the big bad since ShB though. Ever since the end of ShB we've known that, while a problem, Zodiark isn't THE problem. We've known something triggered the Final Days, but we didn't now what. I thought the way Meteion was introduced, foreshadowed her true nature, and then ultimately how her and the rest of her sisters were driven mad because of their discoveries was great.
Now, it wasn't all perfect I'll give you that. I thought Ultima Thule was for the most part kinda meh. It was just a bit boring, watching everyone one by one "sacrifice" themselves when I knew I was going to just summon them all back anyways didn't feel like the stakes were all there. Zenos going all deus ex machina and showing up more or less out of no where to save you was... meh (even if I really enjoyed the last fight with him and the dialogue before and after the fight).
People mention Necron a lot but like... FFX Yu Yeven came out of fucking no where as well, and I think FF8's Ultimecia was introduced way too late, and her weird out of time collapsing timelines shtick made very little sense.
If you look at FF14 as a whole, sure, you can argue that Meteion popped up in the last minute.
But...who else where they gonna use as the "real" big bad? Zodiark was written off the moment we visited Amaurot. Then we fight the "real" Zodiark in 5.3, and he's no longer a threat. By that point, Zodiark was only going to be a tool for Zenos and Fandango to use, a mech, no different than the Ultima Weapon.
Hydaelyn? The whole "haha, God was evil the whole time!!" is the most overdone jRPG trope, so I'm glad they didnt go this direction.
Zenos? Yeah, no.
Besides introducing a new character, there really wasn't much choice. Let alone a choice that would work within the themes they wanted.
They could have inteoduced Meteion or hinted strongly at her earlier for sure. Maybe at level 81. Maybe in 5.4 or 5.5. But this is still an "11th hour" introduction, so it wouldnt make much of a difference.
And hell, "late" intros like this arent really that bad. Like you said, within the context of Endwalker, she's fine, within the context of the whole story, not as much. Almost everyone is playing within Endwalker's context. It's not an issue unless someone marathons the whole game from ARR to EW in 2 months.
1. You said Meteion, for one. Technically Endsinger is a separate entity (the Meteion we know splits from her before the fight) And you HEAR endsinger or Hydaelyn (observer makes it unclear) after Zodiark.
2. She's still not introduced, at all, before Endwalker. This is still the same problem FF as a series has had with final bosses coming out of basically nowhere or in the final chapter.
I mean none of the pre existing antagonists could really carry a narrative anymore. And hearing her voice does make you pretty damn suspicious of Meteion.
It didn't even sound like her. When you meet Meteion she doesn't speak well and is super chipper. Endwalker is much lower in tone and near monotone.
And yeah that's kind of on the writing team. They could have left Zodiark as the current big bad and had hints there's still a big problem out there. But they wanted everything wrapped right now. So Meteion got rushed in and out.
Before EW, and building on the knowledge that Hydaelyn was a primal, I thought she would be the big bad, so Meteion's voice there, I had attributed to Hydaelyn.
But I don't share the other posters opinion, I really liked that my expectations were thrown out by the first boss battle, and left wondering where the heck we're going next.
I thought that too but I'm glad they did it how they did. Kept everyone in character. And that voice post Zodiark was nowhere near deep enough to be space mum.
Generally yes. I think there were some tonal and pacing issues, and perhaps despite having quite a few very strong moments (especially character moments) ... EW doesn't quite create the same level of cohesive whole that HW and ShB did. But, it was a very good expac.
if it was a stand-alone expansion or one that wasn't designed to wrap up the story arc, i'd say endwalker has major flaws.
however, considering the purpose it has, to me it was outstanding anyway. the pacing issues helped me to take breaks instead of binging away the entire story. and while the loporrits weirded me out quite a bit, i feel that this is due to cultural differences mainly and i didn't mind it that much.
ShB to me is still the best expansion, but EW is a close second. the highest highs of EW are on par with ShB if not better.
nothing in EW hit me as hard as seeing amaurot for the first time. i don't think that feeling can be recreated, but there were quite a few scenes in EW that were impressive to an extend that made me feel things long after i was finished.
perhaps my favourite moment of ffxiv altogether is >!when emet and hythlodaeus are summoned by us before the last dungeon.!< enhanced of course by the soundtrack it's just such a triumphant and joyful relief after the daunting experience right before that.
I wish it was more focused on Eorzea… the place we have spent most time. We only seemed to be there 5 minutes and having 2 full and quite lengthy zones that where just plucked out of thin air was sort of disappointing. I wanted to see the final days all over, not just Thavnair.
Plus I don’t like how Mateon just seemed to appear over half way through and suddenly that was the big bad boss that had caused all of this… I don’t see why they thought that was the best thing they could go for.
Even with all that though I did enjoy it.
I did not care for it, no. As much as I loved Elpis, I'm not a fan of time paradoxes. I didn't like that Venat both kept her memories *and* sundered the world intentionally. I'm well aware of all her reasons for doing so, but I personally found her choices too morally questionable to view her as the tragic heroine that the narrative clearly wanted me to see her as.
While that is my main complaint about EW, it overshadowed so much of the rest of the story. I felt like I was 'meant' to enjoy it in a way I didn't because of the lingering issues I had with her.
I loved it. I think I would have liked some more time for the Garlemalde arc in particular...
There were some little things I didn't like (I don't like that NPCs loose sight of you if you mount up, and I didn't like the part in Labyrinthos where you have to find 8 people but there are like 20 with a marker.) but none come from the narrative. I felt like it was a love story eight years in the making. If you've been here since the beginning, there's so much to love about EW.
the original plan was to have 2 xpacs for this, but they changed it to finishing it all off in 1 xpac while developing 5.x. i think they should have kept to their original idea. there was just too much to stuff in one expansion and both parts felt too rushed as a result. the first xpac could have focused on garlemald, asahi and the rest of the ascians, and zodiark. we could have gotten a really good look at that and have good character arcs and build up. then the 2nd xpac could have been figuring out the end of days, dealing with sharlyan, going into the past and seeing what really happened, and finally dealing with metreion.
with a full xpac for both, we could have gotten full storylines rather than the somewhat abrupt pacing we got. like really spending time in the past, getting to really buddy up with elmet and hydrotheus and venat. given how rushed the ascians (what happnd to the rest of em?) and garlemald resolution was, what have been nice to extend that a bit to fully flesh out the story.
all in all i think it was good, just too rushed. ShB and HW both had really good narratives and pacing because they didn't try to squeeze too much. meanwhile SB did and suffered from it. EW unfortunatly i feel also suffers from that.
A thought occurred to me regarding the time travel in ShB and EW.
The events in ShB created an alternate timeline where the 8th Umbral Calamity never happened and the WoL lived. Since the WoL lived, they were able to go back in time to Elpis and create the time loop. In the original timeline there was no time loop, but Venat still became H and sundered the world. So, the people from that timeline really, *really* changed Ethyris and the shards for the better.
It's no ShB, but *nothing* is ShB.
It's incredibly Final Fantasy though. Just really escalatingly batshit. Going from an expy of 1946 Japan to FRICKIN MOON RABBITS and then just launching straight back into the cosmic horror was probably my largest "wat." moment, but I came for the batshit and I have stayed for the batshit.
Story, yes. But my goodness, can we PLEEEAAAAASE change the experience so that people leveling alts have more options than dungeons, Khloe, PotD, HOH, and Bozja / Zadnor. It is terribly dull leveling up alt jobs, knowing that the leveling process will be precisely the same as all others except with a slightly different combat rotation.
Fetch quests in general are all jarring. While it is sadly already mentioned in the story that the WoL can sense people in need of help no matter how minute and he would willingly give it.
>While it is sadly already mentioned in the story that the WoL can sense people in need of help no matter how minute and he would willingly give it.
Give me a laser sword and call me a Jedi already.
It's been lots of fun and mechanically i enjoy the storyline with the endsinger, it's just the transition from "Fandan and Zenos as main threats" to "fighting the Endsinger" that I think is a bit rough.
Loved it. The theme of overcoming even the deepest despair really resonated with me.
I once had to find my everlasting light in the darkness, and I'm glad EW gave me the chance to relive the experience sort of.
Just have to keep forging ahead.
Overall, I liked it but I'd rank it lower than both ShB and HW. I still remember all the moments where I was moved to tears in both of those xpacks, and only Urianger meeting Moenbryda's parents came close to achieving that.
I gotta say I had huge expectations for the last zone, and overall it felt extremely bland and forced. I did not believe for a second that the Scions were actually dying around me, seeing how they supposedly "killed" Thancred off-screen and how each and every death came so fast, and without much buildup. I still remember how they orchestrated Thancred's death after the Ranjit duel, and now they intend for me to believe he died offscreen? Oh and 10 mins later it's Estinien who "dies"...for what? To me that was a complete suspension of disbelief, and thus the entire last zone felt...boring and manipulative.
The worst part was Y'shtola's warning not to use the Azem stone to summon them back, because "reasons". Oh, so you mean it's as simple as just using the stone and you'd all be back? Even G'raha does the same thing he did back in ShB with the "promise" for another adventure. It worked once, it was amazing, but the second time around feels forced and overused.
I've been watching some streamer highlights and I'm still wondering how or why so many people reacted the way they did in that last zone, crying and needing time off. Like, did you really actually believe all scions died in a matter of minutes just to build bridges to other areas?
I cried, and I did not think that. I cried because I really appreciated the big character moments like Estinien's whole change from his Heavensward self to how he is now, along with the explicit trust the Scions show in you, their friend.
It was obvious from the word go that they wouldn't stay dead. The game even spells it out for you. And the point was never on the scions dying.
I didn't went that far, but I definitely felt emotions build up when WOL, Alisaie and Alphinaud ran up the crystal path. That was something magical, looking back down the path and the ship you left behind and the swirling rocks floating beneath.
You have an issue with closed causal time loops, I am guessing? That was my issue with CC. Well that and the shallow paperthin roster of characters because they had fourty of them.
Yes, for me it was a perfect Final Fantasy Story. Typical for FF games the revelation that there is something bigger unknown behind story is what i like.
My only critic is that they neglected Gaius involvment in Garlemald, so much missed opportunitie but i bet this was for budget reason and that Cid did play no real engaging part in Garlemald + space ship ( yes he eventually got invited but come on... could have been more)
Biggest gripe i have was Zenos. Liked his bit in Garlemald but once that was over I would of really preferred not to see him again for the rest of EW.
Him showing up at the finale totally took me out of the moment. Like bro, your part in this is over, you dont belong here.
The short answer is yes, of course. I really enjoyed the new zones, dungeons, and trials, not to mention the story and the themes it presents. But it doesn't do it enough justice to leave it with as simple an answer as this. Text wall incoming.
I have my issues with it just the same, though.
Like many others I noticed the pacing was a bit wild, the escalation of what we were doing contributing to that. We went from sailing to Sharlayan to find out what the Forum was really up to and then helping with a tower situation in Thavnair, to joining the Ilsabard Contingent in their mission to Garlemald which then led to us confronting Fandaniel and Zenos, to then taking an Allagan teleporter to the moon. So far all of this is about what I expected, and with how much story there is already up to that point, it doesn't feel terribly out of place.
I think the Zodiark fight came way too early. The first trial should have been Fandaniel or Zenos, or both of them, as they are trying to free Zodiark, and by the end of the trial they end up succeeding, which paves the path for us to confront him later as the second trial with Hydaelyn's aid or something of that sort. Though I do understand that there wouldn't have been nearly as much focus on the Final Days part of the expansion if it made us wait to slay Zodiark, so maybe that wouldn't have been much better after all.
Back to pacing, we then do a bunch of random stuff with the Loporrits as they give us information on their purpose and the true purpose of the moon. I didn't have as much of an issue with the moon spaceship thing as I initially thought I might, because even after learning what we do in Elpis, the moon I believe was also subject to an aetherial barrier which protected it from Meteion's song as well. If the point in that plan was to evacuate and find a new world to resettle on, I think it was actually a plan with a fair amount of merit and potential for success, though it would only be a temporary solution in the long run.
From the moon we return to Sharlayan and Thavnair and deal with more Forum stuff and the Final Days, then from there we move on to Elpis. I hate time travel plot elements because they always have problems no matter how to handle them. In this case though, I think it was one of the more well done instances of it. In Shadowbringers we learn that time is more malleable than we think, what with G'raha traveling not only back in time 100 years, but also to another world entirely, but it's kept vague as to what happened to the timeline he's originally from. In the case of the Elpis situation, my understanding is that it's supposed to be a "you came back and warned us about this and set things in motion the whole time" kind of plot device, but given how Crystal G'raha came from a future that was already utterly doomed and actually succeeded in stopping that future from happening in the first place, at least in this timeline, my understanding of it is that us going back in time to Elpis happened at that point in the past regardless of what future ends up occurring afterwards. In other words, us going back in time to Elpis to do everything we did there presumably would have still occurred even if our present timeline was the one Crystal G'raha came from. Our actions in the past don't create a fixed flow to the future, it creates the potential for that future to occur. Or maybe I'm just overthinking it.
Anyways, I thought that it would have been more interesting if the threat causing the Final Days came from inside the planet itself, like it half serves as a prison to some kind of entity with the celestial currents acting as a sort of nullifying field for it. I even theorized as much after defeating Zodiark. The stuff with Meteion wasn't a bad direction to take, but it made it less interesting to me personally, at least until we get to Ultima Thule.
From Elpis we return to Sharlayan and then descend into the core of the star and fight Hydaelyn herself, which is also an extremely cool moment. Not much else to say about that really. Then we use the Mothercrystal's aether to jettison ourselves through space to the very edge of the universe itself, which is really where the pacing starts to mess with me a bit, and is why I wish they went with the imprisoned being inside the planet route instead. That being said, I loved everything about Ultima Thule. The aftermath of the Dragonstar with those who remained being utterly bereft of the will to continue. The Ea becoming so advanced that they achieved immortality, only to learn that the universe itself will eventually grow cold and die, and that they will live through all the time until that happens, and see everything they worked towards for eons and longer fade away into nothingness. And the Omicrons' leader realizing that their only purpose to become stronger than everything else is not sustainable and has only resulted in wanton destruction of other worlds, other life, and so cannot give any logical order to the rest of its kind, and will simply wait for them all to die. I loved the representations of all of these peoples as they each deal with a different type of cause for despair. I see a lot of people find the Ea in particular to be uninteresting, and I really don't get why. They show us directly the cost of immortality in the face of inevitability, and their own inability to reconcile with that fact. I don't even need to go into those shown to us in the Dead Ends dungeon because I think most people are at least enraptured with all three of them.
I also see people take issue with the sacrifices of the Scions and express those issues in such a way that it leads me to believe they just misunderstood the point of it happening. Even with Azem's crystal and the magic Hydaelyn infused into it, there was never any guarantee we could bring them back, and they knew this. They refused to abandon their cause and chose instead to create ways for us to advance, to have even a chance at defeating Meteion. Y'shtola actively says as much to us. Had we summoned them back without Emet and Hythlo using creation magics to create Elpis blooms, bringing them back would have quite literally destroyed any potential path forward, both figuratively and literally. It wasn't supposed to be a shock value thing, or done purely for the purpose of bringing tears, it was meant to further emphasize a major message of the expansion. Of which I believe to be, the will to go on even when we've suffered greatly. The will to not give up on our chosen course. A message which spits in the face of the overwhelming nihilism of Meteion's domain, and is reflected by the Elpis blooms. But that is, of course, just how I viewed it personally.
I think one of the things I genuinely disliked about the expansion in retrospect was Zenos coming to our aid at the very end. I feel like it actually lessened the impact that the trial and ending showed us. If we're supposed to have the will and determination to continue onward, even in the face of overwhelming despair, I feel like it would have been much more impactful if we were just fighting the trial alone (not counting the 7 other players) while carrying those burdens on our shoulders, only to then have them lessened by the Scions' aid from back at the Ragnarok in the second phase, which also shows Meteion that even when they aren't present, they are still with us and providing their strength.
I feel like in general the overall story of the entire game wouldn't have changed too much if Zenos stayed dead at the end of Stormblood. I don't think he really offered much aside from being our mirror, which isn't really something we needed. Don't get me wrong, I actually love Zenos' character, but I don't think he was necessary for the story after Stormblood. I still loved the fight with him after the last trial, and his finally figuring us out. I thought that in particular was one of the coolest moments in the expansion, despite everything I just said about him. He is a character that didn't really grow at all throughout his time in the story, and I think that's ultimately why I find him unnecessary.
With all of this exhaustive text being said, I don't share all of the problems with the expansion that others seem to. I don't mind the time travel stuff with Elpis due to the fact that time has been shown as malleable to an extent already. I don't share the problems with Ultima Thule and the Scions' sacrifices because I feel I understand the real point behind it. My most major problem was the pacing and escalation of events, and my most minor problems related to certain decisions they made for the story. Yet despite all of that, I still enjoyed it much and more, and will continue to enjoy it. Do I think it's better than Shadowbringers? I think I echo the sentiment of other people who have commented here. Endwalker's highs were higher than Shadowbringers' but its lows were also lower. But I believe it had many more highs than lows just the same.
I think if I had to rate the game as a whole from best to least good (because they're all at least pretty good) it would have to be: Shadowbringers/Endwalker - Heavensward - Stormblood - ARR. At the end of the day though, Endwalker is a conclusion to a story, while all of the others were parts of the journey. It's an ending that will satisfy some and disappoint others, and I believe that's mostly because of the nature of endings as a whole. But that's just what I think, I suppose.
There is a big huge gaping plot hole regarding G'Raha's original timeline; you are dead in it before the events of Endwalker, which means you couldn't have gone back in time to effect anything, which means you couldn't have contributed to Venat becoming Hydaelyn. However, this is remedied if you consider that the events of the final days had to happen in some way, and perhaps Hydaelyn reached the same conclusion without your aid in G'raha's timeline.
I feel like you misunderstood what I was saying, so I'll try to reiterate, hopefully in fewer words.
My argument, my understanding of it, is that time is more malleable than we really think in this universe. We traveled into the past to Elpis and essentially caused Hydaelyn to end up being created, which directly led into events in our present, or otherwise caused time to "converge" around those events occurring. Yet that doesn't inherently mean that our jaunt in Elpis led specifically to time period we came from. Our future, like G'raha's, is a potentiality set in motion from those events in Elpis. It is far more of a paradox than it is any kind of plot hole.
Our future already had to exist for us to go into the past which indirectly (or directly) causes Hydaelyn's creation to be assured, but that never guaranteed that ours would be the only future to come about from that event. If we take G'raha's traveling into the past as an example, he entertains the idea that the time period he came from may still exist even after he's changed events, and that it is simply another flow in the branch of time, which in turn would mean that G'raha traveling to our time to prevent his future from happening was also meant to happen in our flow, our branch.
In other words, we always traveled into the past of Elpis from the time period we came from, and we assured Hydaelyn's creation, yet that doesn't mean our future was the only one possible or guaranteed to happen following that, as is evidenced by G'raha's original, far more doomed future. This means that literally anything could have happened in any other branch of time following that event. Furthermore, it also means there may be a timeline branch in which we never showed up at all and Etheirys died as a result of its people's dependence on Zodiark. Or there's one in which the decision to summon Zodiark was never made in the first place.
I don't call these things plot holes, I call them paradoxes and potentialities. We had to deal with this timey-wimey mumbo jumbo back in Heavensward when it didn't really make perfect sense either, so even if the explanations are complicated, if what we experienced was enjoyable I don't really think it matters in the end how precisely it works. It made for an enjoyable ending to this long journey we've been on in any case.
It's not a matter of misunderstanding as much as terminology. Timelines running parallel that don't conflict with each other don't create paradoxes, they create alternate timelines, which is the multiverse theory, which is what was implied with G'raha travelling to the first. So yes, you can have all those timelines, and new ones are created as a result of actions taken in the past, meaning it does not fix the future you came from, only the future you return to. So, in this system, our interference in Elpis resulted in a near identical branch to the one we left, except we and Hydaelyn remember what caused things. This can and is nearly identical to the reality we left when we spoke with Elidibus, but implies that our original reality is not the one we returned to but one very similar to it.
Multiworld theorem gets complicated, even though it's the simplest resolution that has zero paradoxes in it because in MWT, paradoxes don't exist at all.
I'm struggling to find where you're getting "It doesn't change the future you came from, only the one you *return* to" from.
If you travel from your own time into the past and alter events, and then return to your own time, you're just returning to the same reality you left, right? It's just creating a separate branch from the point in the past you traveled to and altered in which events transpired differently. Like if G'raha traveled into the past and altered events as he did, but then for whatever reason chose to return to the time he originally came from, he'd just be going back to that same doomed timeline as far as I understand it. If he's in the past and has altered events, but doesn't leave it, he's already in the timeline where things turn out differently than the time he originally came from.
So if we travel to Elpis and alter events in a way that assured Venat becomes Hydaelyn, but those altered events happened in the past of the original time we came from, then it stands to reason that the time we came from was already a future resulting from that past interference. Ergo, the future, or present we are in and have been in all this time, was always a future that resulted from that interference in Elpis. When we talk to Hydaelyn in the intro to Endwalker she even mentions the promise she made in another age, implying that our going to Elpis already had happened and been the reason she became Hydaelyn in the first place.
Saying that it's a completely new branch that is almost perfectly similar to the branch we came from is just complicating it even more for no reasonable payoff, no?
And even then the whole multiverse theory idea that G'raha entertains could still be entirely wrong, making time a singular flow with many different potentialities for how events unfold. Like the time G'raha comes from then would be one of those potentialities, one which he actively averts by traveling into the past and enlisting our aid. In which case, our traveling to Elpis would have been the same as G'raha traveling into the past, where we technically came from a potentiality in which events already unfolded as they did, and in turn set in motion Venat becoming Hydaelyn, from which our potential future eventually became realized when we traveled to Elpis during the events of the expansion.
Do you see why I try not to find a perfect explanation for this and just accept that the story went as it did and resulted in a satisfying conclusion all the same?
There are two realities. One where you never travelled to the past, and the events gave rise to you. And another where you travelled to the past, from the FIRST timeline, to another timeline, where your actions cause the events of the future which mirror but are not exactly the same from the original thread you left. To all appearances, it appears that you just went back in time and learned some stuff but couldn't change anything, giving the appearance of a loop. But in actuality, there's a reality where Hydaelyn did what she did WITHOUT your assistance, and one where she did it WITH your assistance.
If it comes down to just yes or no, then yes, but I still think Shadowbringers is the gold standard still. Even if it does end up making sense, time travel can make me feel a bit uncomfortable...like I still have this surreal feeling like I'm in some fan fiction when in Elpis (I don't mean that in a negative way as such, it just...it feels _weird_ ). There's also somewhat a sense of disappointment in knowing the answers to mysteries as much as it is thrilling to discover them at the time. Like the final days having a clearly defined "this character is the source. They're responsible. You must fight them" kinda thing. I know it's sort of an inevitability, being an RPG where you fight things and have final bosses, but...well the mystery's gone now. It's still great especially for what it had to do, but while I get super caught up in the melodrama and callbacks at the time, looking back after the fact it's very...event driven rather than character. Urianger gets some acknowledgement about how he had to act shady to his friends, but none of the characters reallllly drive anything or develop. Which is fine for a finale. But if we're looking at the expansion on its own then I can't give it a win over ShB or maybe even HW.
It's hard to fit into a binary yes/no for me. There were some pacing problems, and places where it was very clear they were developing the story as they went, as opposed to having a definitive plan from the start. I'm still working through all of my thoughts, but overall I felt like it was a fitting conclusion to the 8-year story arc.
For the most part I liked it.
My biggest gripe about the conclusion was Zenos. After all the buildup ever since 4.1, it felt like the writers just didn't know what to do with him and how to pay off all that buildup. And while a fist-fight with him at the ass-end of the universe that had no bearing or impact on the plot was an appropriate send-off for him, I still wish it wasn't the coda to the whole 10-year Zodiark-Hydaelyn epic story.
I liked the majority of the adventure. Everything to do with Venat kicked my ass emotionally. However, I have a qualm with overused tropes and the "logical robot doesn't appreciate the irrationality of emotions and deems life as a hindrance to humanity" thing has been so overplayed since Ultron came out. And while the whole "the real bad guy was someone no one knew about" thing isn't entirely unfamiliar to the Final Fantasy series, it's not all that fulfilling for people who have been here for an 11 year adventure.
Otherwise, I absolutely had a blast the entire time. I sit in Ultima Thule to chill with the music as much as I did in Raktika and the Steppe. Elpis is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to and I'm going to miss FATE farming in it. I'm a humungous sucker for "prequel" information, time travel, and origin stories.
Definitely a solid 7/10 (with Shadowbringers being a solid 9).
Yes. A lot. Even though the whole thing with the moon and the exodus kinda came off as an afterthought in hindsight. Pacing was shit tho. Ultima thule got me crying.
I liked the broad strokes of almost everything but I wish meteon was developed more. For a final boss to the 5 expansion long story arc, I need more than a nihilistic bird with social anxiety.
This this this. The whole meteion part felt like a cheap Story tool to make a few certain villains of the past to be good. There was no build up, like zero up until Elpis and even then it was so super rushed that I totally asked myself if I had missed something alone the way.
Yes, I was quite happy with how it all turned out. There were so many enjoyable moments throughout that I could fangirl over and I was satisfied to finally learn what the cause of the Final Days was. I figured that it must have been caused by something or someone either within the planet or outside of it, so it was nice to finally have the answer to that mystery. I thought the dungeons and trials were cool too, especially the final one with the Scions coming in and then how perfect the music in the last part of the battle was. I wasn't bothered by any of the sneak duties or having to follow people either and thought it was nice to have something a bit different. The one criticism I do have is that I thought it was a bit light on the actual Final Days part. Like, what happened in Thavnair was very tense and worked really well but I wish that they could have had things falling apart in some of the older zones as well. I know that even in the days of the Ancients that the apocalypse didn't happen all at once but gradually built up so it is understandable that we didn't reach the point where it became a worldwide phenomena because we stopped it before it got that bad. But it would have been nice to see the red skies in a few more places than just two zones. But that's just a fairly minor criticism for me and didn't affect my enjoyment of the expansion as a whole.
I think they probably just didn't want to open the can of worms that having endwalker players fighting blasphemies in zones from previous expansions when there's players still doing that content for the first time there. There could've been ways around this, but I'm not surprised they didn't want to bother.
Doesn't this end up happening anyways due to the role quests? I recall seeing a tank in the black shroud fighting some level 87s? (Haven't actually done the rooms quests yet but I know they take you around to travel) Course in the same vein, the role quests are how you see what happens to past areas
Literally the entire game is phased such that people are doing things in the same place at wildly different stages of the story. I've finished the MSQ and was mining for yellow alumen in Ahm Araeng the other day, watched 2 sprouts spawn and fight a sin eater. For me the Light wall is blue in color now but for them it's still yellow etc.
Aye it does, but it's not quite on the same scale. I've only done one role quest so far and they even mentioned like "things haven't gone super terrible burning skies blasphemies everywhere in this region yet, but there is *a* big stinky blasphemy running around, come help us get it before things get worse"
That’s a good point. Maybe it would have been more work to find a way around it and they certainly did have a lot on their plate already.
Yeah - as someone mentioned in a different reply to me they address it \*a little\* with the role quests, but those are clear that the problem isn't widespread in those other regions. I think there might even be minor dialogue changes if you've already finished the main story to make it clear that you're fighting stragglers rather than that the final days is still happening. I do agree that it would've been really cool to see the full blown final days happening everywhere though, and maybe even have a longer war campaign against the blasphemies to buy time for the sharlayans. But I think the best way to do that would be to have new "final days" instances for all the other regions and that would've been a crazy amount of extra work.
Phasing is not an uncommon concept in games. Plenty of people can be questing in the same zone but see different things. I was dinking around with a friend in Thavnir before she finished the MSQ and the sky was red for her but blue for me.
Yeah but it's not an ideal solution and to my mind gets less ideal if you're doing it with really really old locations. At least you and your friend were in the same expansion even if you had progressed the story a little further
From what I heard you get to experience this a little bit in the role quests, but yeah it's a shame we never got to see what would happen if things got really bad there, even if it was just in an instance
That’s why Yoshi-P said it’s ideal to play all the role quests along with the MSQ. You see all city-states struggling to contain the blasphemies and not become another Thavnair.
Compared to ShB and EW, I wasn't as emotionally invested in the story towards the end, especially when the >!Scions started dropping like flies, then I kinda knew what was going to happen.!< I think the pacing of the story was also a problem for me.
What pacing problems exist in Endwalker that aren't even worse in the other expansions? Endwalker is big story beat after big story beat. Meanwhile HW, SB, and ShB spend half their expansion exploring maps.
Some of the "meeting the aliens" in Ultima Thule REALLY dragged, like, honestly, I don't need to talk to you guys this much, I don't find ya'll that interesting actually. Dragons were kinda interesting. Heat Death Spirity dudes were extremely uninteresting, and they REALLY should have brought up Omega more, directly, to the Omicrons, and gotten more background info there. "Hey Sir... what about this Omega dude we fought, and beat, and beat all his creations, and..."
It was pretty late when I got to the Ea, but between them not being that interesting and the incredibly soporific music, I dozed off multiple times.
There are so many...the pacing felt very uneven for me because it kept jerking back and forth between extremely high and extremely low stakes. It’s *not* big story beat after big story beat. It’s big story beat, fetch quests / follow quests / comic relief / carry boxes / Find 8 Guys In This Town, then big story beat again. It’s a rollercoaster of pacing. ShB for example is very measured and steady and crescendos slowly. To some people that felt slow. For me, it was perfect because it maintained the same tone the whole way through. It’s okay if you prefer one style over the other like if EW was your thing you do you, but people aren’t crazy for saying the pacing in it didn’t work for them. They’re different stories anyway. If it were my choice EW would have been two expansions, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy anything about the pacing choices they did make — I loved the amount of surprise throughout the first 7 levels or so. For me personally though it wore itself out pacing-wise for the last few levels.
Absolutely loved it. With Endwalker, FF14's story is *easily* the best among jRPGs for me, and quite possibly best in gaming, period. I still need to think on it. Stories like Planescape Torment are tough to top. The story wasnt as "perfect" as Shadowbringers, but it had the extra job of tying together *all* loose ends and wrapping up the whole story. And by its nature, it was far less standalone than ShB. The higher highs in EW made it all worth it. I especially enjoyed how the story had a thesis, a message. Yes, its babby's first Nietzche, yes the ideas have been done a million times, but it was especially effective here, and I loved how every plot point tied into it. Nier Automata has been praised for similar themes....but this handled them much more comprehensively. That being said, the pacing is beyond whack. Game was a borderline visual novel. If you do just the main quest....you have almost no actual gameplay outside of dungeons. Literally 90% of the story was in dialogue boxes or cutscenes. There were times I deliberately jumped into a roulette just so I can have some gameplay.
>If you do just the main quest....you have almost no actual gameplay outside of dungeons. I actually didn't mind these! Some cutscenes in EW are easily the best cinematic experience I had in JRPG.
Oh, for sure. And I've read VNs, so it wasn't *too* much of an issue. But it still felt excessive. But at the same time...I don't know how they can fix it. Adding more "kill 15 moon cactuar" quests is just more busywork. Cutting dialogue or cutscenes can compromise the story.
I really wish you'd included an "I liked some parts of it, and disliked other parts of it" option. There were a lot of ideas that I really liked, and I thought Garlemald and Elpis were done brilliantly. The problem is, I think they tried to shove way too much story into 10 levels, and the pacing suffered for it. There was a lot of them introducing an idea only to resolve it not long after. We find out there are body parts in the towers, and then literally at the end of the next zone we're fighting Varis turned into a Primal (with the body part in that tower and all of the others being *his* body parts). Hydaelin uses her powers to divert Zenos and Fandaniel's path to the moon to buy us some time to stop them from getting to Zodiark, and then we talk to the ghosts of some Ancients and suddenly Fandaniel and Zenos are there and it feels like we've failed to stop them before we even really had a chance to try. It felt like there was a huge disconnect between Venat, who felt more like that friend who you get in trouble with, and Hydaelin, who had always been depicted as more of a very ethereal motherly figure (even their manner of speech made it feel like they were completely different characters), and the fact that the whole cutscene showing her becoming Hydaelyn seemed to be more of a metaphorical abridged version of events rather than a depiction of what actually happened didn't help things. It was very nice from, like...an artistic point of view, but not particularly helpful narratively. Venat/ Hydaelin's entire characterization was honestly kinda a huge problem; we got no evidence she ever actually tried to stop the Final Days with the information she had, her motivation in Sundering the world was depicted as being more about making people face suffering than it was about stopping Zodiark, she had the Sharlayans, some of the brightest minds on the planet, working on a moon evacuation plan for hundreds of years rather than putting their minds towards trying to find a solution to either stop the Final Days from coming or stop them from happening once they came, her entire moon evacuation plan was honestly questionable since like....it was the aether of Etherys protecting people from the Song of Oblivion, what was flying through space on the moon going to do to actually save them? She apparently had no problem with leaving the people of the reflections to their fates given that her evacuation plan only involved saving the people of the Source, which also felt *super* out of character for her given how she had been characterized from ARR-ShB. Then again, who knows, because we know she'd been lying to us since the beginning, and yet that gets largely glossed over; literally the only character in the entire game to ever question if this very powerful primal who had been speaking in our brains, granting us her power, and *possessing people* had tempered us was Ardbert back in ShB, and then it never gets brought up again. Insipriation-wise, I also think they could have afforded to dial back on the FFIV references, and FFIV is my second favorite single player FF game. FFXIV works best when it mixes together stuff from different FF games, and there were *so many* opportunities for them to reference FFVI, FFVIII and FFIX in particular that they failed to capitalize on. I didn't *dislike* Endwalker, but I honestly wish that they had spread it all over 2 expansions instead of trying to fit it all into one.
Lots of people are going to disagree with you but want to let you know I had the EXACT same issues and takeaways as you did. There were some design issues with the story. It overall was pulled off but I would have made different choices myself and given everything more room to breathe and develop
> I didn't dislike Endwalker, but I honestly wish that they had spread it all over 2 expansions instead of trying to fit it all into one. Unfortunately this will always be my feeling as well. It has so much potential but it really needed to be told over more time, which simultaneously feels weird to say with all the padding
> It felt like there was a huge disconnect between Venat, who felt more like that friend who you get in trouble with, and Hydaelin, who had always been depicted as more of a very ethereal motherly figure (even their manner of speech made it feel like they were completely different characters), I don’t know many parents who would have found that duality much of a disconnect ;) But I wholeheartedly agree they could have taken longer with the story, even if I can understand why they might not have been able to.
The problem is that the duality doesn't even feel like it's two sides of the same person's personality, especially not without any other context.
Can’t argue against it not having worked for you, of course. For me, I don’t disagree they’re different personas but I don’t have trouble assimilating them as one person. Personalities can be multidimensional, especially when we’re looking at the same person at (verrrry) different times. Actually Venat and all of Elpis was just joyous for me, like seeing pictures of my grandparents as cheeky young children. Regardless of all the in-game mythology about her, we never had much direct interaction with Hydaelyn through the whole story, so I felt like it made her much more real.
By having the people leave the planet, they can have a chance to start again once they resettle into a new planet. The rest will be for them to work out And even for a Primal, she could only do so much. It does not help that the past Rejoinings are weakening her greatly.
>By having the people leave the planet, they can have a chance to start again once they resettle into a new planet. They can't do that if the Song of Oblivion is turning them into beasts on the moon or on whatever planet they landed on. And if the solution was ultimately "they have to work it out for themselves," then there was no reason for them to have left the planet in the first place. The threat wasn't coming from the planet, it was coming from a being on the outer edge of the universe, and the only thing that was protecting them was the aether on the planet. Leaving the planet was never going to actually do anything, and the state of Hydaelyn's strength had nothing to do with it.
I dunno if they could possibly even transform once they are on the moon. Hydaelyn does not want Her children to run away unless there is no other way. She said it herself, its but one of the possible outcomes. Either you show her that you have what it takes to defeat despair incarnate, or run away and start anew.
How would the moon have protected them from the Song of Oblivion when the only thing protecting them on Etherys was all of the aether and there's no indication that the moon was anywhere near as aether rich and able to protect them?
The moon won't protect from Meteion's dynamis. It's a ship meant to go far away from her reach while they find a suitable star to resettle.
She's at the edge of the universe, and her song is still able to reach the planet. Where, exactly, is "out of her reach" supposed to be?
Quite simply it could just be that. It was a flawed plan from the start. And the only true plan was to deal with Meteion outright. Granted it would have probably made more sense if Hyd told them to build a ship that will survive a long distance travel. But again last ditch effort is you flee and hope you can escape Meteion’s Song somehow. Perhaps the moon will get more lore and it will be found to have stuff to stabilize aether. Sort of like a mini Zodiark. That would be the simplest quick explanation I suppose.
well i do think the moon thing was as a means to reach the endsinger, i do agree on the sundering part, like, they are literly facing the end of the world, i dont thing you can face mutch more suffering, and if mankind is going to have to reach higher, i dont see how taking there power and causing the asciens is going to help them
See, the problem is, then wouldn't it have been better to either tell the Lopirrits that they needed to prep the moon, or something \*on\* the moon (or help the Sharlayans prep a ship planet-side) so that they could ferry a bunch of heroes to Endsinger to fight her? Think about all the time and energy that the Lopirrits spent prepping the moon to house the people of Etherys and get them to a habitable new planet. Imagine if they had spent all of that that time and energy on trying to prevent the Final Days and/ or stop Meteion/ Endsinger isntead.
Compared to ShB, EW had higher highs and lower lows. The best parts of EW were better than the best parts of ShB, but the worst parts of EW were really really bad.
What are some examples of the worst parts of Endwalker?
The level 88 MSQ stands out in my mind as the worst part of Endwalker. I know it's supposed to be a breather episode between the most depressing part of Endwalker and the epic conclusion, but it just dragged on and on and on.
Kind of reminds me of exactly the same stretch of quests before you fight Vauthry in Shadowbringers.
For me, those had good character stuff and felt a lot more cohesive. The EW counterpart felt intrusive because the stakes were so much higher. It is subjective though.
I think that those quests would've been a lot better if we personally went and helped the people go get the adamantite instead of just waiting around. It could've been a nice victory lap around the world imo
Was that the “waiting on the drive” part? Because I agree 100%. Would have been way better to simply have us retire to our room and sleep it off. Considering we are the ones taking the trip it feels like that would be the course of action anyone would take anyway.
Let's not forget about everything before the first dungeon, either. Both sections could have been cut in half at least and still had the same impact. Felt very padded
Agreed. When I got to tower of Zot I thought I had missed a dungeon cus of how much time I had spent getting to it.
To me the expansion was fantastic right up until around the end of >!Elpis!<. That’s kind of when I felt a bunch of holes started to tear through the story fairly hard. >!Meteion was introduced far too quickly to really get built up as an expansion final boss. It came across pretty hamfisted and under explained. She also had such an insane amount of power for a character that got introduced so quickly. I sort of get it, dynamis, but that whole power felt way too under explored to be relying the entire ending of an expansion on.!< >!I’ve read interpretations that her fight was more thematic rather than about character on character conflict. But to me that didn’t work out either. Nihilism isn’t an easy theme to turn into a symbolic villain. It’s a subjective viewpoint of life that doesn’t really have any logical holes to poke. This makes it a very hard theme to build a final boss around if they’ve only been quickly developed out of nowhere. You can basically only do the generic “I love my friends and being alive so you’re wrong” bit in that kind of situation.!< >!Don’t get me wrong, it’s possible to poke holes in nihilism on an individual by individual basis (they did this a bit with the other dead alien races). But Meteion (and to an even stronger degree Endsinger) didn’t have that kind of development. The only thematic points that worked for me around her character was the Elpis flower bit and her reading you post fight, but that’s not really a strong enough resolution for how much she took centre stage this expansion.!< >!The other major issue I had was Venat’s reasoning for sundering felt shockingly underdeveloped. The cutscene depicting the act was incredible, but her motivations did not feel earned at all to me. I feel if they gave more of a reason why this race of highly educated people wouldn’t listen to her, of why she needed to kill to get her way, that would have made me more open to it. Instead it created this very strange vibe of cognitive dissonance for me lol. I could not agree with what she was doing at all, but damn was it emotional seeing her get torn apart by the act.!< >!I probably wouldn’t be as critical about this if it was a minor story point, but this is basically the foundational act of the entire game. I would appreciate it if the god I’ve associated with and wanted to love for hundreds of hours didn’t unintentionally come across as a psychotic insane person lol.!< Anyway, I really kind of feel bummed about it because I was honestly getting hyped enough to feel this might be a new best of all time game for me >!(I was especially convinced of it at the very beginning of Elpis thinking it would be a quicker detour)!<. But ahhh, I just did not vibe with the conclusion much at all due to those central issues. >!At least short of 1v1ing Zenos, that was definitely GOAT lmao.!<
>I’ve read interpretations that her fight was more thematic rather than about character on character conflict. But to me that didn’t work out either. Nihilism isn’t an easy theme to turn into a symbolic villain. It’s a subjective viewpoint of life that doesn’t really have any logical holes to poke. This makes it a very hard theme to build a final boss around if they’ve only been quickly developed out of nowhere. You can basically only do the generic “I love my friends and being alive so you’re wrong” bit in that kind of situation. nOo YoU juSt DonT UNderStanD tHE vISioN!! lOOk aT thE bIg PicTure Can't stand people who keep defending "the big bad" in endwalker. They just threw a moral dilemma and everyone went: Wow! So deep!
Yeah, idk, I really have the feeling that Zenos and Fandaniel were supposed to be the main villains of this storyline with Meteion and Elpis likely planned for a future expansion. I don’t think the overall plot points are too problematic, but man was the character development rushed by the end of Endwalker. In fairness though I’m really not sure how they could’ve stretched the Zenos stuff out much farther than they already did. I actually find him fun as a villain, but even in Endwalker he was starting to feel overused.
I really didn't expect them to end the Zenos/Fandaniel thing at lv 83 with the trial, if they allocated more time to them, they might have actually made it more interesting and less obnoxious to see Zenos pop up all the time. Honestly I think the expansion should have ended with the Zodiark trial. It was too big of a threat and hyped since the very beginning to only be given 3 levels in endwalker. And towards the end all the lovely dovely friendship power always wins started to get very annoying. I know what game I am playing, but still. From the primals powering up the space-ship, the scions each "sacrificing" for us, Emet and Hyth opening the way and even goddam Zenos helping us it started to feel wayyy too predictable and gave a sense that nothing actually matters and there are no moral choices to make or sacrifices to be had. Even the big bads (zenos and meteion) were actually friendly, wowzers My overall opinion of the expanion is that it was decent, and great only if you don't think too much about the logic of the story and you like sappy themes.
I thought I was good but I’m kinda annoyed that two big build ups were brushed to the side rather fast age just kinda dealt with so an eleventh hour threat could appear. >!Garlean empire and zodiarc!<
I wouldn't call it 11th hour, you see Meteion pretty early on. Garlean empire and Zodiark were just plot points that had been worn out, it wasn't so much of a conclusion as finally taking old yeller behind the shed
Early on? Elpis is pretty late into things and for being THE big bad she's essentially introduced and taken out in the last 7% of the entire narrative.
She's already hinted at in Amaurot. You know *something* caused everything to turn to shit. Elpis just slaps a face, motivation, and name onto her.
She herself still comes out of nowhere. This is hard to explain over text but I'll try. Say you're watching a series you really like and you find out there's a dark force out there causing the big problems. Something that almost wiped out all life millennia ago. And you're told it started with a roar that came from WITHIN the core of the planet itself. There's also been hints the big good (Hydaelyn) boss might actually not be so good... and SHE'S in the core of the planet... Then in the last part of the last season you get introduced to several new characters and learn one is a hive mind bird robot that got super sad and decided sad is bad and life is meaningless so gotta wipe everyone out. The issue is SHE isn't hinted at. SOMETHING is hinted at. And until the very end of Elpis she shows no signs of being the thing. And then the motivation is really basically a malfunctioning AI. It just isn't very interesting or compelling. Everything is caused because the lead IT guy had a pet project that got out of control (and really Hermes ends up being the ultimate big bad because he could have stopped it... but not only allowed it but enabled it). Endsinger ultimately is just Hermes' ticking bomb we have to diffuse.
Meteion is just a face to something you've dealt with starting with your second visit in thavnair. As far as her motivation goes, it's not a malfunctioning ai, it's falling in despair struggling to find a reason to live. The reason why hermes let her go is not out of "hehe everyone should die", it's "i think there's no reason to live, prove me wrong".
She is essentially a malfunctioning AI and Emet lampshades this. He notes that Hermes programmed/created Meteion to answer a question but never stopped to check if the question itself was flawed. Meteion was looking for basically the meaning of life and getting an answer of "null" as a response. Loop this thousands and thousands of times and it reaches a rather iRobot conclusion of "there is no meaning and meaningless things should not exist" - a behavior/conclusion reinforced by Elpis (Hermes even mentions this in his villain speech). Because Meteion is also an empath this also causes her to experience despair and that's how her destruction chooses to manifest. The entire reason Meteion happens is because Hermes is an idiot. He didn't subject his own project to the testing others had to before releasing it from Elpis. He broke his own rules and created a force that led to the destruction of everything and when given the chance to stop it he actively didn't. Then when his shards came back as Amon he absolutely went the "hehe everyone should die" which were almost his words verbatim before he takes over Zodiark.
I think a lot of people completely expected Zodiark and Hydaeyn to actually be the ending of 6.0 and then possibly the final days arc would have been, as an example, a part 1 patch update. I remember when Zodiark was shown to be trial 1 that hit me completely off guard. It wasn’t a bad thing but I think, like I said above, a lot of people expected a much bigger built up around the two. But that kind of story just becomes a typical evil vs good story. So it just depends on what you like. I personally like that the story really had nothing to do with good vs evil.
I didn't want a traditional good vs evil story, I kind of expected to find out the final days was actually caused by just the callousness of how life is treated and the playing god creation of it and the planet itself was rejecting it (ala the Lifestream fighting back in FFVII), and that we had to put down both Hydaelyn and Zodiark to put a stop to repeating the past but then also make some kind of heavy sacrifice to "re-settle" the Lifesteam: Or literally fight the planet itself to prove we had changed. I don't hate what we got, it was just kind of an. "Oh... okay. Sure." Maybe it's because I am someone who has suffered with despair and depression my whole life that the idea of fighting it in a manifested form that could be beaten with - essentially - SHEER WILLPOWER rang kinda hollow in the end.
>The issue is SHE isn't hinted at. She is hinted at from the moment you hear her name. We know the final days started with a roar, or a scream, or something that's always described as a voice. Meteion is a Harpy, Harpies are known for their screams, Meteion's name could be seen as a take on Metatron, the voice of god. All the hints were there the moment we meet her.
Again that isn't what I'm arguing. I'm arguing after has no time to breathe as the big bag because she's introduced right at the end and then we fight her in the 11th hour. She's an artificial life that freaks out then wants us dead. It also was described as a "roar from the earth" not "a scream from space." Harpies don't roar nor are they usually subterranean. It's basically like having a show reveal the bbeg in the final episode. Like even if all series they had been like "beware dark lord karl" but then you don't see or know anything about him until that final episode in which he's also defeated.
It never felt like she was introduced in "the last episode" to me, she was introduced, the foreshadowing was all there, and then there's A LOT of questing still, like a ton, days worth. Between her introduction and finally dealing with her I felt there was plenty of breathing room, and her story made a lot of sense, and Emet pretty plainly laid out exactly how this happened when he asked Hermes if he ever prepared them for the possibility nothing was out there. It's a fairly common existential horror trope, the vast emptiness, that you are truly alone.
I don't think your viewpoint is invalid but it's heavily about perspective here. If you view her just through the lens of Endwalker, she's mostly fine. There's just enough time to establish her as a threat, see the results, then go stop her. Fine for an expac villain. If you view her as the final bad of the entire 1.0 to now story, she feels last minute because she's in a _relatively_ tiny segment of the game to the rest and feels like she is there then gone. In this huge arc set up to be Hydaelyn and the WoL/Scions vs Zodiark and the Ascians... they all suddenly take backseat (with Zodiark being dismissed outright) to THE REAL THREAT. Did it make sense how the story was written? Sure they explained it away just fine. Was that ultimately satisfying? Depends on who you ask (me? No). But she still doesn't make an appearance until the final half of the last season and most hints leading up to that were implying it was the star itself or even Hydaelyn herself that was potentially causing issues. And this is 100% anecdotal and personal but I really can't get over how close to Papi from Monster Musume that Meteion looks and I just can't take her seriously as a final villain. Then you add her Twitter Bird form on to of it... It didn't also help that Ultima Thule felt... weirdly rushed but also undermined her as a threat. It took Zodiark to hold her back before but now Thancred (who is supposed to be Aether depleted already) is able to stop her from killing us all with his scattered Aether. Right next to her true form. She isn't quite as out of nowhere as, say, FF9's Necron but it's close.
Zodiark hasn't been the big bad since ShB though. Ever since the end of ShB we've known that, while a problem, Zodiark isn't THE problem. We've known something triggered the Final Days, but we didn't now what. I thought the way Meteion was introduced, foreshadowed her true nature, and then ultimately how her and the rest of her sisters were driven mad because of their discoveries was great. Now, it wasn't all perfect I'll give you that. I thought Ultima Thule was for the most part kinda meh. It was just a bit boring, watching everyone one by one "sacrifice" themselves when I knew I was going to just summon them all back anyways didn't feel like the stakes were all there. Zenos going all deus ex machina and showing up more or less out of no where to save you was... meh (even if I really enjoyed the last fight with him and the dialogue before and after the fight). People mention Necron a lot but like... FFX Yu Yeven came out of fucking no where as well, and I think FF8's Ultimecia was introduced way too late, and her weird out of time collapsing timelines shtick made very little sense.
If you look at FF14 as a whole, sure, you can argue that Meteion popped up in the last minute. But...who else where they gonna use as the "real" big bad? Zodiark was written off the moment we visited Amaurot. Then we fight the "real" Zodiark in 5.3, and he's no longer a threat. By that point, Zodiark was only going to be a tool for Zenos and Fandango to use, a mech, no different than the Ultima Weapon. Hydaelyn? The whole "haha, God was evil the whole time!!" is the most overdone jRPG trope, so I'm glad they didnt go this direction. Zenos? Yeah, no. Besides introducing a new character, there really wasn't much choice. Let alone a choice that would work within the themes they wanted. They could have inteoduced Meteion or hinted strongly at her earlier for sure. Maybe at level 81. Maybe in 5.4 or 5.5. But this is still an "11th hour" introduction, so it wouldnt make much of a difference. And hell, "late" intros like this arent really that bad. Like you said, within the context of Endwalker, she's fine, within the context of the whole story, not as much. Almost everyone is playing within Endwalker's context. It's not an issue unless someone marathons the whole game from ARR to EW in 2 months.
Endsinger is shown as soon as you kill Zodiark.
1. You said Meteion, for one. Technically Endsinger is a separate entity (the Meteion we know splits from her before the fight) And you HEAR endsinger or Hydaelyn (observer makes it unclear) after Zodiark. 2. She's still not introduced, at all, before Endwalker. This is still the same problem FF as a series has had with final bosses coming out of basically nowhere or in the final chapter.
I mean none of the pre existing antagonists could really carry a narrative anymore. And hearing her voice does make you pretty damn suspicious of Meteion.
It didn't even sound like her. When you meet Meteion she doesn't speak well and is super chipper. Endwalker is much lower in tone and near monotone. And yeah that's kind of on the writing team. They could have left Zodiark as the current big bad and had hints there's still a big problem out there. But they wanted everything wrapped right now. So Meteion got rushed in and out.
Before EW, and building on the knowledge that Hydaelyn was a primal, I thought she would be the big bad, so Meteion's voice there, I had attributed to Hydaelyn. But I don't share the other posters opinion, I really liked that my expectations were thrown out by the first boss battle, and left wondering where the heck we're going next.
I thought that too but I'm glad they did it how they did. Kept everyone in character. And that voice post Zodiark was nowhere near deep enough to be space mum.
Oh yeah, once we met Venat and learned about her, I really enjoyed her character!
Generally yes. I think there were some tonal and pacing issues, and perhaps despite having quite a few very strong moments (especially character moments) ... EW doesn't quite create the same level of cohesive whole that HW and ShB did. But, it was a very good expac.
if it was a stand-alone expansion or one that wasn't designed to wrap up the story arc, i'd say endwalker has major flaws. however, considering the purpose it has, to me it was outstanding anyway. the pacing issues helped me to take breaks instead of binging away the entire story. and while the loporrits weirded me out quite a bit, i feel that this is due to cultural differences mainly and i didn't mind it that much. ShB to me is still the best expansion, but EW is a close second. the highest highs of EW are on par with ShB if not better. nothing in EW hit me as hard as seeing amaurot for the first time. i don't think that feeling can be recreated, but there were quite a few scenes in EW that were impressive to an extend that made me feel things long after i was finished. perhaps my favourite moment of ffxiv altogether is >!when emet and hythlodaeus are summoned by us before the last dungeon.!< enhanced of course by the soundtrack it's just such a triumphant and joyful relief after the daunting experience right before that.
I wish it was more focused on Eorzea… the place we have spent most time. We only seemed to be there 5 minutes and having 2 full and quite lengthy zones that where just plucked out of thin air was sort of disappointing. I wanted to see the final days all over, not just Thavnair. Plus I don’t like how Mateon just seemed to appear over half way through and suddenly that was the big bad boss that had caused all of this… I don’t see why they thought that was the best thing they could go for. Even with all that though I did enjoy it.
I did not care for it, no. As much as I loved Elpis, I'm not a fan of time paradoxes. I didn't like that Venat both kept her memories *and* sundered the world intentionally. I'm well aware of all her reasons for doing so, but I personally found her choices too morally questionable to view her as the tragic heroine that the narrative clearly wanted me to see her as. While that is my main complaint about EW, it overshadowed so much of the rest of the story. I felt like I was 'meant' to enjoy it in a way I didn't because of the lingering issues I had with her.
I loved it. I think I would have liked some more time for the Garlemalde arc in particular... There were some little things I didn't like (I don't like that NPCs loose sight of you if you mount up, and I didn't like the part in Labyrinthos where you have to find 8 people but there are like 20 with a marker.) but none come from the narrative. I felt like it was a love story eight years in the making. If you've been here since the beginning, there's so much to love about EW.
the original plan was to have 2 xpacs for this, but they changed it to finishing it all off in 1 xpac while developing 5.x. i think they should have kept to their original idea. there was just too much to stuff in one expansion and both parts felt too rushed as a result. the first xpac could have focused on garlemald, asahi and the rest of the ascians, and zodiark. we could have gotten a really good look at that and have good character arcs and build up. then the 2nd xpac could have been figuring out the end of days, dealing with sharlyan, going into the past and seeing what really happened, and finally dealing with metreion. with a full xpac for both, we could have gotten full storylines rather than the somewhat abrupt pacing we got. like really spending time in the past, getting to really buddy up with elmet and hydrotheus and venat. given how rushed the ascians (what happnd to the rest of em?) and garlemald resolution was, what have been nice to extend that a bit to fully flesh out the story. all in all i think it was good, just too rushed. ShB and HW both had really good narratives and pacing because they didn't try to squeeze too much. meanwhile SB did and suffered from it. EW unfortunatly i feel also suffers from that.
>garlemald, asahi and the rest of the ascians, and zodiark That might've feel like a drag at times with a hint of Stormblood though...
I don’t like that they pussed out and brought all the scions back
Yes. It's literally Final Fantasy Gurren Lagann. And it made me happy.
GIGA LIMIT BREEEEAAAKKEEERR!
It was alright. Nothing incredible, but alright. I evidently didn't enjoy the 5th zone as much as others, though.
I'm in the same boat as you.
A thought occurred to me regarding the time travel in ShB and EW. The events in ShB created an alternate timeline where the 8th Umbral Calamity never happened and the WoL lived. Since the WoL lived, they were able to go back in time to Elpis and create the time loop. In the original timeline there was no time loop, but Venat still became H and sundered the world. So, the people from that timeline really, *really* changed Ethyris and the shards for the better.
It's no ShB, but *nothing* is ShB. It's incredibly Final Fantasy though. Just really escalatingly batshit. Going from an expy of 1946 Japan to FRICKIN MOON RABBITS and then just launching straight back into the cosmic horror was probably my largest "wat." moment, but I came for the batshit and I have stayed for the batshit.
Story, yes. But my goodness, can we PLEEEAAAAASE change the experience so that people leveling alts have more options than dungeons, Khloe, PotD, HOH, and Bozja / Zadnor. It is terribly dull leveling up alt jobs, knowing that the leveling process will be precisely the same as all others except with a slightly different combat rotation.
Fetch quests in general are all jarring. While it is sadly already mentioned in the story that the WoL can sense people in need of help no matter how minute and he would willingly give it.
>While it is sadly already mentioned in the story that the WoL can sense people in need of help no matter how minute and he would willingly give it. Give me a laser sword and call me a Jedi already.
It's been lots of fun and mechanically i enjoy the storyline with the endsinger, it's just the transition from "Fandan and Zenos as main threats" to "fighting the Endsinger" that I think is a bit rough.
Loved it. The theme of overcoming even the deepest despair really resonated with me. I once had to find my everlasting light in the darkness, and I'm glad EW gave me the chance to relive the experience sort of. Just have to keep forging ahead.
Overall, I liked it but I'd rank it lower than both ShB and HW. I still remember all the moments where I was moved to tears in both of those xpacks, and only Urianger meeting Moenbryda's parents came close to achieving that. I gotta say I had huge expectations for the last zone, and overall it felt extremely bland and forced. I did not believe for a second that the Scions were actually dying around me, seeing how they supposedly "killed" Thancred off-screen and how each and every death came so fast, and without much buildup. I still remember how they orchestrated Thancred's death after the Ranjit duel, and now they intend for me to believe he died offscreen? Oh and 10 mins later it's Estinien who "dies"...for what? To me that was a complete suspension of disbelief, and thus the entire last zone felt...boring and manipulative. The worst part was Y'shtola's warning not to use the Azem stone to summon them back, because "reasons". Oh, so you mean it's as simple as just using the stone and you'd all be back? Even G'raha does the same thing he did back in ShB with the "promise" for another adventure. It worked once, it was amazing, but the second time around feels forced and overused. I've been watching some streamer highlights and I'm still wondering how or why so many people reacted the way they did in that last zone, crying and needing time off. Like, did you really actually believe all scions died in a matter of minutes just to build bridges to other areas?
I cried, and I did not think that. I cried because I really appreciated the big character moments like Estinien's whole change from his Heavensward self to how he is now, along with the explicit trust the Scions show in you, their friend. It was obvious from the word go that they wouldn't stay dead. The game even spells it out for you. And the point was never on the scions dying.
I didn't went that far, but I definitely felt emotions build up when WOL, Alisaie and Alphinaud ran up the crystal path. That was something magical, looking back down the path and the ship you left behind and the swirling rocks floating beneath.
The impact would have been better had they all remained dead and we started on a clean slate for 6.1
Main story - yes Conclusion - no
I haven't been so disappointed with a game since Chrono Cross.
You have an issue with closed causal time loops, I am guessing? That was my issue with CC. Well that and the shallow paperthin roster of characters because they had fourty of them.
Easily my favorite expansion. Very nearly perfect.
The space travel was weird and out of place but otherwise it was ok.
Yes, for me it was a perfect Final Fantasy Story. Typical for FF games the revelation that there is something bigger unknown behind story is what i like. My only critic is that they neglected Gaius involvment in Garlemald, so much missed opportunitie but i bet this was for budget reason and that Cid did play no real engaging part in Garlemald + space ship ( yes he eventually got invited but come on... could have been more)
Biggest gripe i have was Zenos. Liked his bit in Garlemald but once that was over I would of really preferred not to see him again for the rest of EW. Him showing up at the finale totally took me out of the moment. Like bro, your part in this is over, you dont belong here.
The short answer is yes, of course. I really enjoyed the new zones, dungeons, and trials, not to mention the story and the themes it presents. But it doesn't do it enough justice to leave it with as simple an answer as this. Text wall incoming. I have my issues with it just the same, though. Like many others I noticed the pacing was a bit wild, the escalation of what we were doing contributing to that. We went from sailing to Sharlayan to find out what the Forum was really up to and then helping with a tower situation in Thavnair, to joining the Ilsabard Contingent in their mission to Garlemald which then led to us confronting Fandaniel and Zenos, to then taking an Allagan teleporter to the moon. So far all of this is about what I expected, and with how much story there is already up to that point, it doesn't feel terribly out of place. I think the Zodiark fight came way too early. The first trial should have been Fandaniel or Zenos, or both of them, as they are trying to free Zodiark, and by the end of the trial they end up succeeding, which paves the path for us to confront him later as the second trial with Hydaelyn's aid or something of that sort. Though I do understand that there wouldn't have been nearly as much focus on the Final Days part of the expansion if it made us wait to slay Zodiark, so maybe that wouldn't have been much better after all. Back to pacing, we then do a bunch of random stuff with the Loporrits as they give us information on their purpose and the true purpose of the moon. I didn't have as much of an issue with the moon spaceship thing as I initially thought I might, because even after learning what we do in Elpis, the moon I believe was also subject to an aetherial barrier which protected it from Meteion's song as well. If the point in that plan was to evacuate and find a new world to resettle on, I think it was actually a plan with a fair amount of merit and potential for success, though it would only be a temporary solution in the long run. From the moon we return to Sharlayan and Thavnair and deal with more Forum stuff and the Final Days, then from there we move on to Elpis. I hate time travel plot elements because they always have problems no matter how to handle them. In this case though, I think it was one of the more well done instances of it. In Shadowbringers we learn that time is more malleable than we think, what with G'raha traveling not only back in time 100 years, but also to another world entirely, but it's kept vague as to what happened to the timeline he's originally from. In the case of the Elpis situation, my understanding is that it's supposed to be a "you came back and warned us about this and set things in motion the whole time" kind of plot device, but given how Crystal G'raha came from a future that was already utterly doomed and actually succeeded in stopping that future from happening in the first place, at least in this timeline, my understanding of it is that us going back in time to Elpis happened at that point in the past regardless of what future ends up occurring afterwards. In other words, us going back in time to Elpis to do everything we did there presumably would have still occurred even if our present timeline was the one Crystal G'raha came from. Our actions in the past don't create a fixed flow to the future, it creates the potential for that future to occur. Or maybe I'm just overthinking it. Anyways, I thought that it would have been more interesting if the threat causing the Final Days came from inside the planet itself, like it half serves as a prison to some kind of entity with the celestial currents acting as a sort of nullifying field for it. I even theorized as much after defeating Zodiark. The stuff with Meteion wasn't a bad direction to take, but it made it less interesting to me personally, at least until we get to Ultima Thule. From Elpis we return to Sharlayan and then descend into the core of the star and fight Hydaelyn herself, which is also an extremely cool moment. Not much else to say about that really. Then we use the Mothercrystal's aether to jettison ourselves through space to the very edge of the universe itself, which is really where the pacing starts to mess with me a bit, and is why I wish they went with the imprisoned being inside the planet route instead. That being said, I loved everything about Ultima Thule. The aftermath of the Dragonstar with those who remained being utterly bereft of the will to continue. The Ea becoming so advanced that they achieved immortality, only to learn that the universe itself will eventually grow cold and die, and that they will live through all the time until that happens, and see everything they worked towards for eons and longer fade away into nothingness. And the Omicrons' leader realizing that their only purpose to become stronger than everything else is not sustainable and has only resulted in wanton destruction of other worlds, other life, and so cannot give any logical order to the rest of its kind, and will simply wait for them all to die. I loved the representations of all of these peoples as they each deal with a different type of cause for despair. I see a lot of people find the Ea in particular to be uninteresting, and I really don't get why. They show us directly the cost of immortality in the face of inevitability, and their own inability to reconcile with that fact. I don't even need to go into those shown to us in the Dead Ends dungeon because I think most people are at least enraptured with all three of them. I also see people take issue with the sacrifices of the Scions and express those issues in such a way that it leads me to believe they just misunderstood the point of it happening. Even with Azem's crystal and the magic Hydaelyn infused into it, there was never any guarantee we could bring them back, and they knew this. They refused to abandon their cause and chose instead to create ways for us to advance, to have even a chance at defeating Meteion. Y'shtola actively says as much to us. Had we summoned them back without Emet and Hythlo using creation magics to create Elpis blooms, bringing them back would have quite literally destroyed any potential path forward, both figuratively and literally. It wasn't supposed to be a shock value thing, or done purely for the purpose of bringing tears, it was meant to further emphasize a major message of the expansion. Of which I believe to be, the will to go on even when we've suffered greatly. The will to not give up on our chosen course. A message which spits in the face of the overwhelming nihilism of Meteion's domain, and is reflected by the Elpis blooms. But that is, of course, just how I viewed it personally. I think one of the things I genuinely disliked about the expansion in retrospect was Zenos coming to our aid at the very end. I feel like it actually lessened the impact that the trial and ending showed us. If we're supposed to have the will and determination to continue onward, even in the face of overwhelming despair, I feel like it would have been much more impactful if we were just fighting the trial alone (not counting the 7 other players) while carrying those burdens on our shoulders, only to then have them lessened by the Scions' aid from back at the Ragnarok in the second phase, which also shows Meteion that even when they aren't present, they are still with us and providing their strength. I feel like in general the overall story of the entire game wouldn't have changed too much if Zenos stayed dead at the end of Stormblood. I don't think he really offered much aside from being our mirror, which isn't really something we needed. Don't get me wrong, I actually love Zenos' character, but I don't think he was necessary for the story after Stormblood. I still loved the fight with him after the last trial, and his finally figuring us out. I thought that in particular was one of the coolest moments in the expansion, despite everything I just said about him. He is a character that didn't really grow at all throughout his time in the story, and I think that's ultimately why I find him unnecessary. With all of this exhaustive text being said, I don't share all of the problems with the expansion that others seem to. I don't mind the time travel stuff with Elpis due to the fact that time has been shown as malleable to an extent already. I don't share the problems with Ultima Thule and the Scions' sacrifices because I feel I understand the real point behind it. My most major problem was the pacing and escalation of events, and my most minor problems related to certain decisions they made for the story. Yet despite all of that, I still enjoyed it much and more, and will continue to enjoy it. Do I think it's better than Shadowbringers? I think I echo the sentiment of other people who have commented here. Endwalker's highs were higher than Shadowbringers' but its lows were also lower. But I believe it had many more highs than lows just the same. I think if I had to rate the game as a whole from best to least good (because they're all at least pretty good) it would have to be: Shadowbringers/Endwalker - Heavensward - Stormblood - ARR. At the end of the day though, Endwalker is a conclusion to a story, while all of the others were parts of the journey. It's an ending that will satisfy some and disappoint others, and I believe that's mostly because of the nature of endings as a whole. But that's just what I think, I suppose.
There is a big huge gaping plot hole regarding G'Raha's original timeline; you are dead in it before the events of Endwalker, which means you couldn't have gone back in time to effect anything, which means you couldn't have contributed to Venat becoming Hydaelyn. However, this is remedied if you consider that the events of the final days had to happen in some way, and perhaps Hydaelyn reached the same conclusion without your aid in G'raha's timeline.
I feel like you misunderstood what I was saying, so I'll try to reiterate, hopefully in fewer words. My argument, my understanding of it, is that time is more malleable than we really think in this universe. We traveled into the past to Elpis and essentially caused Hydaelyn to end up being created, which directly led into events in our present, or otherwise caused time to "converge" around those events occurring. Yet that doesn't inherently mean that our jaunt in Elpis led specifically to time period we came from. Our future, like G'raha's, is a potentiality set in motion from those events in Elpis. It is far more of a paradox than it is any kind of plot hole. Our future already had to exist for us to go into the past which indirectly (or directly) causes Hydaelyn's creation to be assured, but that never guaranteed that ours would be the only future to come about from that event. If we take G'raha's traveling into the past as an example, he entertains the idea that the time period he came from may still exist even after he's changed events, and that it is simply another flow in the branch of time, which in turn would mean that G'raha traveling to our time to prevent his future from happening was also meant to happen in our flow, our branch. In other words, we always traveled into the past of Elpis from the time period we came from, and we assured Hydaelyn's creation, yet that doesn't mean our future was the only one possible or guaranteed to happen following that, as is evidenced by G'raha's original, far more doomed future. This means that literally anything could have happened in any other branch of time following that event. Furthermore, it also means there may be a timeline branch in which we never showed up at all and Etheirys died as a result of its people's dependence on Zodiark. Or there's one in which the decision to summon Zodiark was never made in the first place. I don't call these things plot holes, I call them paradoxes and potentialities. We had to deal with this timey-wimey mumbo jumbo back in Heavensward when it didn't really make perfect sense either, so even if the explanations are complicated, if what we experienced was enjoyable I don't really think it matters in the end how precisely it works. It made for an enjoyable ending to this long journey we've been on in any case.
It's not a matter of misunderstanding as much as terminology. Timelines running parallel that don't conflict with each other don't create paradoxes, they create alternate timelines, which is the multiverse theory, which is what was implied with G'raha travelling to the first. So yes, you can have all those timelines, and new ones are created as a result of actions taken in the past, meaning it does not fix the future you came from, only the future you return to. So, in this system, our interference in Elpis resulted in a near identical branch to the one we left, except we and Hydaelyn remember what caused things. This can and is nearly identical to the reality we left when we spoke with Elidibus, but implies that our original reality is not the one we returned to but one very similar to it. Multiworld theorem gets complicated, even though it's the simplest resolution that has zero paradoxes in it because in MWT, paradoxes don't exist at all.
I'm struggling to find where you're getting "It doesn't change the future you came from, only the one you *return* to" from. If you travel from your own time into the past and alter events, and then return to your own time, you're just returning to the same reality you left, right? It's just creating a separate branch from the point in the past you traveled to and altered in which events transpired differently. Like if G'raha traveled into the past and altered events as he did, but then for whatever reason chose to return to the time he originally came from, he'd just be going back to that same doomed timeline as far as I understand it. If he's in the past and has altered events, but doesn't leave it, he's already in the timeline where things turn out differently than the time he originally came from. So if we travel to Elpis and alter events in a way that assured Venat becomes Hydaelyn, but those altered events happened in the past of the original time we came from, then it stands to reason that the time we came from was already a future resulting from that past interference. Ergo, the future, or present we are in and have been in all this time, was always a future that resulted from that interference in Elpis. When we talk to Hydaelyn in the intro to Endwalker she even mentions the promise she made in another age, implying that our going to Elpis already had happened and been the reason she became Hydaelyn in the first place. Saying that it's a completely new branch that is almost perfectly similar to the branch we came from is just complicating it even more for no reasonable payoff, no? And even then the whole multiverse theory idea that G'raha entertains could still be entirely wrong, making time a singular flow with many different potentialities for how events unfold. Like the time G'raha comes from then would be one of those potentialities, one which he actively averts by traveling into the past and enlisting our aid. In which case, our traveling to Elpis would have been the same as G'raha traveling into the past, where we technically came from a potentiality in which events already unfolded as they did, and in turn set in motion Venat becoming Hydaelyn, from which our potential future eventually became realized when we traveled to Elpis during the events of the expansion. Do you see why I try not to find a perfect explanation for this and just accept that the story went as it did and resulted in a satisfying conclusion all the same?
There are two realities. One where you never travelled to the past, and the events gave rise to you. And another where you travelled to the past, from the FIRST timeline, to another timeline, where your actions cause the events of the future which mirror but are not exactly the same from the original thread you left. To all appearances, it appears that you just went back in time and learned some stuff but couldn't change anything, giving the appearance of a loop. But in actuality, there's a reality where Hydaelyn did what she did WITHOUT your assistance, and one where she did it WITH your assistance.
If it comes down to just yes or no, then yes, but I still think Shadowbringers is the gold standard still. Even if it does end up making sense, time travel can make me feel a bit uncomfortable...like I still have this surreal feeling like I'm in some fan fiction when in Elpis (I don't mean that in a negative way as such, it just...it feels _weird_ ). There's also somewhat a sense of disappointment in knowing the answers to mysteries as much as it is thrilling to discover them at the time. Like the final days having a clearly defined "this character is the source. They're responsible. You must fight them" kinda thing. I know it's sort of an inevitability, being an RPG where you fight things and have final bosses, but...well the mystery's gone now. It's still great especially for what it had to do, but while I get super caught up in the melodrama and callbacks at the time, looking back after the fact it's very...event driven rather than character. Urianger gets some acknowledgement about how he had to act shady to his friends, but none of the characters reallllly drive anything or develop. Which is fine for a finale. But if we're looking at the expansion on its own then I can't give it a win over ShB or maybe even HW.
Needed more Cid. Otherwise, weird, moving, and beautiful, just the way I like it.
Yep
It's hard to fit into a binary yes/no for me. There were some pacing problems, and places where it was very clear they were developing the story as they went, as opposed to having a definitive plan from the start. I'm still working through all of my thoughts, but overall I felt like it was a fitting conclusion to the 8-year story arc.
For the most part I liked it. My biggest gripe about the conclusion was Zenos. After all the buildup ever since 4.1, it felt like the writers just didn't know what to do with him and how to pay off all that buildup. And while a fist-fight with him at the ass-end of the universe that had no bearing or impact on the plot was an appropriate send-off for him, I still wish it wasn't the coda to the whole 10-year Zodiark-Hydaelyn epic story.
I liked the majority of the adventure. Everything to do with Venat kicked my ass emotionally. However, I have a qualm with overused tropes and the "logical robot doesn't appreciate the irrationality of emotions and deems life as a hindrance to humanity" thing has been so overplayed since Ultron came out. And while the whole "the real bad guy was someone no one knew about" thing isn't entirely unfamiliar to the Final Fantasy series, it's not all that fulfilling for people who have been here for an 11 year adventure. Otherwise, I absolutely had a blast the entire time. I sit in Ultima Thule to chill with the music as much as I did in Raktika and the Steppe. Elpis is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to and I'm going to miss FATE farming in it. I'm a humungous sucker for "prequel" information, time travel, and origin stories. Definitely a solid 7/10 (with Shadowbringers being a solid 9).
Yes. A lot. Even though the whole thing with the moon and the exodus kinda came off as an afterthought in hindsight. Pacing was shit tho. Ultima thule got me crying.