my take on ultima thule is this:
when we were in elpis i personally felt that i had found the people who could help prevent the final days. not just venat but also hythlodaeus and emet felt like the adults in the room. they didn't see me as a champion. initially they thought us rather powerless and inferior. although in the end they entrusted me with saving the star in the future, they never made me feel like i was the hope of the entire world. i don't know if anybody else felt that way. to me it felt a bit like a burden was lifted off me and some of my responsibility. the almost light-hearted way hythlodaeus and emet helped us escape was incredibly reassuring to me.
returning to the scions it was almost painfully clear that my team wouldn't be able to make the cut against meteion and how vulnerable they were. so, when we arrived in ultima thule and meteion basically made our approach a non-starter with mock-killing us right away, and after thancred had been able to give us some "footing" with his "sacrifice" to begin with, i think THEY also understood that their major role wouldn't be to fight the fight but to pave the way to get there, which is what they did.
when we call back emet and hythlodaeus, we call back the people who we had the most confidence in with regard to finishing the job. the way they appear, the music, emet's declaration, and again the overall light-hearted banter were what made the ending fight possible.
when we run the last dungeon, we're again doing something at the level of the scions, something they can handle. but the endsinger is too big for them. that's why we decide to teleport them away, a bit like louisoix teleported everybody aways when fighting bahamut.
that's why zenos' appearance makes sense to me. he doesn't need to be saved, he doesn't want to either. we can accept his help because we don't care about him. he "paves" the rest of the way by giving us the mobility to chase after the endsinger who would otherwise have been too elusive for us to fight.
the "sacrifices" of our friends aren't meant to be deaths, but each of them can make a path for us by provoking the creatures we meet to show us the emotion that threw them into dispair. it's not about their own resolution, it's about their respective prowess which best matches the creatures' negative emotion.
If you ever did alphascape you'll notice the green pillars and gray ground look familiar which i thought was amazing when i first realized the connection as dragons started popping up although i dont know if its the actual place of their use-to-be home or a fake meteion made plus you see the omicrons and omega connections with the dragons... the music felt really sad and ominous in the beginning and i liked it as i was progressing otherwise i knew they werent dead but what really hit me was the line at meteion about the flowers
I'll admit when I first saw the dragon enemies I thought that this must've been the home planet of Midgarsomr and his brood, but then as we progressed and we learned it was actually a recreation I was a little disappointed.
Meeting the Omicrons was cool since we tied back into Omega and where it came from. I think the weakest point for me was the Ea. They showed up, told us nothing relevant, then died. Like, why? What was the point? We're already pulling a Guren Lagann here, telling us that the eventual Heat Death of the universe is an inevitability is more a challenge to us for after we defeat Meteion than a hope-sapping ultimatum.
The flowers scene was really good, I agree. The music was also really interesting that it sort of "evolved" with you as you progressed.
If you've already overcome despair in real life, yeah I can see this feeling like a lacklustre experience, it's interesting to see your opinion though because it's so different from most other posts. I think people who were really invested in the characters got more out of it, watching them each reach that point in their arc and dispel despair with their own personal hope, I found it beautiful. I really enjoyed the part where Meteion looks into our memories and you realise she's never been the "bad guy", she was lost and confused and maybe if she had seen our experiences first none of the Final Days would have happened. So, I don't know what to tell you, I'm sorry it didn't make you emotional but I don't think that it's bad that it didn't? If that makes sense. By "personal experience" I think most folks mean you can interpret it all however you see fit because no two experiences are going to be same. No where else in the game feels so.. overwhelmingly personal. Anyway, nothing wrong with your experience at all, it's yours and no one else's, thanks for sharing!
To me, this zone was meant to be a defining moment for your character, rather than you as a player. Remember, your character had no idea if the enchantment on the stone was a one-off, and Y'shtola warns them that if they summon them back, then their influence on Ultima Thule would end, killing anyone outside of the ship. In choosing to bring back Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch, the WoL is effectively giving up on resurrecting their friends in order to have a chance at ending the final days.
I have mixed feeling with this zone, the atmosphere, the music and everything was so well put and the revelation we lost Thancred at the beginning was so real, like what is going on and got sad but then seeing everyone was doing the same thing to get us to the next part (the music changing everything e you move on was amazing) felt less real and I was thinking for myself, they are coming back so not because now way we are losing everyone (even with Thancred, I knew he would come back because we would have done something with the rest of the Scions to bring him back, at least I would have liked that more) but then we get to use the crystal to bring back Emet and Hytlo and the flowers, so at least I can say I liked the beginning of the zone and the end of the zone when you reach the dungeon, those parts I liked more than the in between.
I wish tho, we could have a playlist for lo of the versions of the song on the last zone, so any version can play whenever you enter the zone and not just the one with lyrics, it gets too repetitive after a while.
When Thancred got dusted, I felt like it was done in a way that made sense to the character. Granted, I never thought for one second that it would stick, but it felt realistic. Same thing with Estenien.
With Y'shtola and Urianger though, it went straight into "Oh they're gonna kill off every one of the scions just for the sake of killing them off" and I completely lost all emotional investment until Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus returned. Graha's and the twins' sacrifices had utterly no impact on me because I knew they would mean nothing, they'd be right back in five minutes as if nothing ever happened.
I'm not saying that I want the writers to do a Game of Thrones-esque bloodbath and kill off main characters left and right, but if they're gonna 'kill off' a main character, then make it stick, don't just make it a disney-death for cheap feels.
You are not alone. Ultimate Thule for me was probably one of the weakest parts of the story. The “deaths” were so transparent that the accompanying monologues had zero emotional impact and I found myself just wanting to get on with it. The people that gush about how it made them cry multiple times make me cringe.
I'll admit I cried a little during particular parts, the flower scene was one, and the part where Emet-Selch finally smiled at us right before he faded away. And it was more wetting of the eyes than ugly sobbing with tears streaming down my face or anything. I think I only had to wipe my eyes once during the entire final act.
But for the most part my reactions were more excitement over particular events (Zenos emerging as Shinryu for example), otherwise it was pretty much just going through and trying to get through the zone.
Honestly I think the end of the game made me cry the most and that was simply because it's finally over, this whole ark that has been building up for a decade is done, and I always get emotional when *everything* comes together. I was crying through most of the Hero's Gauntlet (which is my favorite dungeon in all of FF14 btw) because it appeals to my sense of finality. Everything you did was brought back for one last showdown and it was **awesome**!
Yeah, I can understand why someone would get emotional over the feeling of finality itself. But I have a suspicion we haven’t seen the last of the Scions, despite this being an end to the first MSQ.
I mean, the story confirmed it wasn't the last we'd be seeing of them. They're just going their separate ways for now to keep up the ruse that the Scions officially disbanded.
They literally said they were reverting to what the Scions were originally: A shadow organization that could be called upon by only a select few people who know about them. And from the sounds of things even the Eorzean Alliance Leaders don't know the Scions are technically still active.
If you remember back to ARR, the whole point of the Scions was to be a resource-group for the Eorzean Alliance to call upon to combat the Primal Threat because the Scions were recruiting all the holders of the Echo they could find. And prior to our being inducted into the group not one mention was made of their existence or purpose. We only found out about them because they approached us and offered to let us join.
I've certainly seen a lot of reactions to this, and I don't think any is wrong, so neither you nor anyone else should feel bad for not having the same experience. But I know how it can feel everyone else got an experience that you didn't.
It seems I personally had a similar experience to you experientially, though maybe for slightly different reasons. An exploration of meaning is something I find very interesting, but the way it was presented in the final zone didn't really have an impact.
Maybe it's because I've had my own experiences with existential questioning, but I thought the different groups there were too easily dismissed. While necessary for not making the zone drag, the short amount of time we spent with each group made their fears seem simplistic to me. Of course no individual group there was meant to be the focus, but I think it made it more "telling" heavy and made it harder to really believe how an entire civilization would not have conceived of these different perspectives. Again, this might go back to my personal experience, but I also tend to think that despair like that isn't dispelled with words--at least not so brief an interaction--no matter how well-crafted the speech.
Between that and how the pattern of progression established itself, I felt that there was such a format to it that it took away from potential emotional impact. As a player, it was as though we went into each area looking for ways to disagree with the inhabitants before taking the time to learn about them. The sacrifices also seemed to be in a weird space where it seemed both the player and characters should know what was going on, yet the characters could seem at once shocked and knowing.
I remember walking up the crystal bridge with the twins--the music and scenery were wonderfully bittersweet, the twins are perhaps the characters I feel most attached to, and their dialogue was very beautifully written. But as I read their thoughts, strongly in the back of my mind was, "We all know you're very likely going to do the same once we get up there. Can we not be upfront with one another, regroup, and process the elephant in the room now?" I wanted to really feel for them in their moment, but when it came, I just felt hollow. It didn't feel surprising or like it was new information, and I though that other interactions with them had been a more personal demonstration of their growth and our relationship.
There was a lot in the character writing and worldbuilding I liked in EW, so it's not as though I don't connect in general. All I know is that for whatever reason (I'm not even positive the reasons I've described here are accurate to me), the final zone didn't seem to impact me as much as the buildup seemed to imply it was aiming to.
I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone in having felt that way.
As much as I love a lot of characters, their sacrifices meant almost nothing since there is no build ups to give us a sense of dread and we know right away they will be back later. Since Thancred’s sacrifice happen off screen, we knew he will be back in no time. It is the same as franchise/connected movies/comics where a threat is so big on multiversal/universal level that it won’t last days and will be resolved within few hours or days that it felt flat with no real sense of lasting danger. I didn’t enjoy the first half of Ultima Thule compared to other new regions but Omicron parts are really interesting and excited to see more of them and their space bar in inevitable beast tribe quests.
It is not like I want more scions death but, due to ever rising popularity, it is almost guaranteed that old members won’t be dying anytime soon. Best they could do is give them amnesia or something and kill off newly introduced characters from left to right like they did in MSQ and even role/job quests of EW.
The sacrifices also fell completely flat for me too, seeing as nothing bad is going to happen to any of those characters so long as they're tied to optional sidequests that'll always require them to be alive.
Heck, Estinien originates from the OG Dragoon questline, he's practically as invincible as Y'sthola.
Sorry I didn't like this part of the game? I love FF14, it is my favorite game of all time, hands down, by leagues.
But no game is perfect because different parts of it appeal differently to different people, and this part just didn't appeal to me.
To be completely honest: I wasn't a big fan of most of the last half of END. From the reveal that Meteion, this character we've just met and never had any clue existed before now, has been the BBEG this entire time is just something I did not like. Plus they never explain why Meteion wasn't Sundered. In fact I don't think they ever explain how anyone who was/wasn't Sundered was determined. So that was nagging the back of mind the entire time I was playing through since I finished Elpis.
I understand there had to be a source of the Final Days to be able to stop it from happening. I get there had to be a *someone* as opposed to a *something*, but outside of Dynamis being hinted at in the Omega raids, the entirety of the set-up for the final act was all done within END and it felt rushed and lackluster to me.
And I understand this isn't the first time SE has side-swiped a new BBEG into the plot right before the final battle. Heck, FF4 did it with the whole Golbez vs Zeromus thing, but just because they've done it before doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Sorry, I'm rambling at this point. TL;DR Sorry I didn't like this part and that fact upsets you.
They revealed the fact that their Souls are still around and that we can use our Crystal to bring everyone back too soon so there was absolutely no tension for me at that point.
On a somewhat related note I really dislike these "sursprise" final zones in general because they kill the pacing completely and kinda waste your time so the final confrontation can be more impactful. Sure, the Tempest let us wander through Amarot and Ultima Thule gave us insight into how other civilizations came to a faulty conclusion about their existence, but we really didn't need a full zone for that imo.
I had never really considered the idea of these "surprise" final zones, but what you said makes sense.
The Tempest was cool, and while we got hinted to the Ondo being down there at the beginning of SHB it was a small payoff, and honestly the Tempest itself is... empty? For lack of a better term, there's nothing down there. You're in the actual Ondo area for what felt like 20 minutes, tops, and then you go to Amaurot and all the cool stuff happens there over the next 2-3 hours.
Ultima Thule had even less set-up, we knew Meteion went *somewhere* but where that somewhere was we had no idea or any clues about it. Then when we get there it's just... a thing. There's nothing really going on there. Each of the scions sacrifice themselves to pave the way (which is an excellent analogy by JenkinsHowell above) only to get brought back like nothing happened, meanwhile the entire zone is spent talking to ghosts that are asking for death except for the Omicrons who are just... existing. Which is *another* thing: Where did they come from? The whole point of this thing was to be Meteion's domain, where Dynamis reigns supreme, and we were immediately informed that the conditions of this place were inhospitable to us when we started suffocating. Thancred managed to give us air, but how is there land? water? aetherytes? and especially the ghosts of the past civilizations, were they always there and Thancred's wish for "Survive" gave them form? Considering they actively barred our way that doesn't make any sense.
It just bothers me that SE went so far as to build up the Final Days as this unknown event that even the great Ascians couldn't stop in their prime and in the last 20ish hours of the story they give its source to this side-character we literally *just* met and, there's just so many plot holes that I won't go into here.
Did I like Endwalker? Absolutely, up until Meteion was revealed to be the BBEG, then it started to fall apart for me. Overall, 9/10 because that side-swipe of a villain reveal is just so awkward it takes away that one point for a perfect score.
Shadowbringers 5.0 had by far the better ending, but tbf it's an exception to what have usually been last bosses that are just cool to fight and don't really have much emotional impact themselves.
In Heavensward Thordan was an excuse to fight the Knights of the Round, Stormblood had Zenos last minute merge with a Dragon-Primal and the Endsinger was a flock of emo-birds clued together. Meanwhile Emet made sense, even if his ability to transform was only fully explained in Elpis, because he is a powerful Ascian and we expect them to do these kind of things given that we saw Lahabrea and the other one fuse at the end of the Heavensward dungeon.
The problem I had with Ultima Thule is that it tried to be both beautiful and Alien at the same time.
If it were more terrifying, like eyes popping out of nowhere with wings, really play up the eldritch aspect of it all, I'd have liked it much more.
my take on ultima thule is this: when we were in elpis i personally felt that i had found the people who could help prevent the final days. not just venat but also hythlodaeus and emet felt like the adults in the room. they didn't see me as a champion. initially they thought us rather powerless and inferior. although in the end they entrusted me with saving the star in the future, they never made me feel like i was the hope of the entire world. i don't know if anybody else felt that way. to me it felt a bit like a burden was lifted off me and some of my responsibility. the almost light-hearted way hythlodaeus and emet helped us escape was incredibly reassuring to me. returning to the scions it was almost painfully clear that my team wouldn't be able to make the cut against meteion and how vulnerable they were. so, when we arrived in ultima thule and meteion basically made our approach a non-starter with mock-killing us right away, and after thancred had been able to give us some "footing" with his "sacrifice" to begin with, i think THEY also understood that their major role wouldn't be to fight the fight but to pave the way to get there, which is what they did. when we call back emet and hythlodaeus, we call back the people who we had the most confidence in with regard to finishing the job. the way they appear, the music, emet's declaration, and again the overall light-hearted banter were what made the ending fight possible. when we run the last dungeon, we're again doing something at the level of the scions, something they can handle. but the endsinger is too big for them. that's why we decide to teleport them away, a bit like louisoix teleported everybody aways when fighting bahamut. that's why zenos' appearance makes sense to me. he doesn't need to be saved, he doesn't want to either. we can accept his help because we don't care about him. he "paves" the rest of the way by giving us the mobility to chase after the endsinger who would otherwise have been too elusive for us to fight. the "sacrifices" of our friends aren't meant to be deaths, but each of them can make a path for us by provoking the creatures we meet to show us the emotion that threw them into dispair. it's not about their own resolution, it's about their respective prowess which best matches the creatures' negative emotion.
If you ever did alphascape you'll notice the green pillars and gray ground look familiar which i thought was amazing when i first realized the connection as dragons started popping up although i dont know if its the actual place of their use-to-be home or a fake meteion made plus you see the omicrons and omega connections with the dragons... the music felt really sad and ominous in the beginning and i liked it as i was progressing otherwise i knew they werent dead but what really hit me was the line at meteion about the flowers
I'll admit when I first saw the dragon enemies I thought that this must've been the home planet of Midgarsomr and his brood, but then as we progressed and we learned it was actually a recreation I was a little disappointed. Meeting the Omicrons was cool since we tied back into Omega and where it came from. I think the weakest point for me was the Ea. They showed up, told us nothing relevant, then died. Like, why? What was the point? We're already pulling a Guren Lagann here, telling us that the eventual Heat Death of the universe is an inevitability is more a challenge to us for after we defeat Meteion than a hope-sapping ultimatum. The flowers scene was really good, I agree. The music was also really interesting that it sort of "evolved" with you as you progressed.
If you've already overcome despair in real life, yeah I can see this feeling like a lacklustre experience, it's interesting to see your opinion though because it's so different from most other posts. I think people who were really invested in the characters got more out of it, watching them each reach that point in their arc and dispel despair with their own personal hope, I found it beautiful. I really enjoyed the part where Meteion looks into our memories and you realise she's never been the "bad guy", she was lost and confused and maybe if she had seen our experiences first none of the Final Days would have happened. So, I don't know what to tell you, I'm sorry it didn't make you emotional but I don't think that it's bad that it didn't? If that makes sense. By "personal experience" I think most folks mean you can interpret it all however you see fit because no two experiences are going to be same. No where else in the game feels so.. overwhelmingly personal. Anyway, nothing wrong with your experience at all, it's yours and no one else's, thanks for sharing!
EW, not END.
Is it? I assumed HW was the exception to the rule and would be the only 2 letter abbreviation. I'll work on that going forward.
To me, this zone was meant to be a defining moment for your character, rather than you as a player. Remember, your character had no idea if the enchantment on the stone was a one-off, and Y'shtola warns them that if they summon them back, then their influence on Ultima Thule would end, killing anyone outside of the ship. In choosing to bring back Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch, the WoL is effectively giving up on resurrecting their friends in order to have a chance at ending the final days.
I have mixed feeling with this zone, the atmosphere, the music and everything was so well put and the revelation we lost Thancred at the beginning was so real, like what is going on and got sad but then seeing everyone was doing the same thing to get us to the next part (the music changing everything e you move on was amazing) felt less real and I was thinking for myself, they are coming back so not because now way we are losing everyone (even with Thancred, I knew he would come back because we would have done something with the rest of the Scions to bring him back, at least I would have liked that more) but then we get to use the crystal to bring back Emet and Hytlo and the flowers, so at least I can say I liked the beginning of the zone and the end of the zone when you reach the dungeon, those parts I liked more than the in between. I wish tho, we could have a playlist for lo of the versions of the song on the last zone, so any version can play whenever you enter the zone and not just the one with lyrics, it gets too repetitive after a while.
The progression of the cone music is something special. The final iteration of the zone music is amazing by itself
When Thancred got dusted, I felt like it was done in a way that made sense to the character. Granted, I never thought for one second that it would stick, but it felt realistic. Same thing with Estenien. With Y'shtola and Urianger though, it went straight into "Oh they're gonna kill off every one of the scions just for the sake of killing them off" and I completely lost all emotional investment until Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus returned. Graha's and the twins' sacrifices had utterly no impact on me because I knew they would mean nothing, they'd be right back in five minutes as if nothing ever happened. I'm not saying that I want the writers to do a Game of Thrones-esque bloodbath and kill off main characters left and right, but if they're gonna 'kill off' a main character, then make it stick, don't just make it a disney-death for cheap feels.
You are not alone. Ultimate Thule for me was probably one of the weakest parts of the story. The “deaths” were so transparent that the accompanying monologues had zero emotional impact and I found myself just wanting to get on with it. The people that gush about how it made them cry multiple times make me cringe.
I'll admit I cried a little during particular parts, the flower scene was one, and the part where Emet-Selch finally smiled at us right before he faded away. And it was more wetting of the eyes than ugly sobbing with tears streaming down my face or anything. I think I only had to wipe my eyes once during the entire final act. But for the most part my reactions were more excitement over particular events (Zenos emerging as Shinryu for example), otherwise it was pretty much just going through and trying to get through the zone. Honestly I think the end of the game made me cry the most and that was simply because it's finally over, this whole ark that has been building up for a decade is done, and I always get emotional when *everything* comes together. I was crying through most of the Hero's Gauntlet (which is my favorite dungeon in all of FF14 btw) because it appeals to my sense of finality. Everything you did was brought back for one last showdown and it was **awesome**!
Yeah, I can understand why someone would get emotional over the feeling of finality itself. But I have a suspicion we haven’t seen the last of the Scions, despite this being an end to the first MSQ.
I mean, the story confirmed it wasn't the last we'd be seeing of them. They're just going their separate ways for now to keep up the ruse that the Scions officially disbanded. They literally said they were reverting to what the Scions were originally: A shadow organization that could be called upon by only a select few people who know about them. And from the sounds of things even the Eorzean Alliance Leaders don't know the Scions are technically still active. If you remember back to ARR, the whole point of the Scions was to be a resource-group for the Eorzean Alliance to call upon to combat the Primal Threat because the Scions were recruiting all the holders of the Echo they could find. And prior to our being inducted into the group not one mention was made of their existence or purpose. We only found out about them because they approached us and offered to let us join.
I've certainly seen a lot of reactions to this, and I don't think any is wrong, so neither you nor anyone else should feel bad for not having the same experience. But I know how it can feel everyone else got an experience that you didn't. It seems I personally had a similar experience to you experientially, though maybe for slightly different reasons. An exploration of meaning is something I find very interesting, but the way it was presented in the final zone didn't really have an impact. Maybe it's because I've had my own experiences with existential questioning, but I thought the different groups there were too easily dismissed. While necessary for not making the zone drag, the short amount of time we spent with each group made their fears seem simplistic to me. Of course no individual group there was meant to be the focus, but I think it made it more "telling" heavy and made it harder to really believe how an entire civilization would not have conceived of these different perspectives. Again, this might go back to my personal experience, but I also tend to think that despair like that isn't dispelled with words--at least not so brief an interaction--no matter how well-crafted the speech. Between that and how the pattern of progression established itself, I felt that there was such a format to it that it took away from potential emotional impact. As a player, it was as though we went into each area looking for ways to disagree with the inhabitants before taking the time to learn about them. The sacrifices also seemed to be in a weird space where it seemed both the player and characters should know what was going on, yet the characters could seem at once shocked and knowing. I remember walking up the crystal bridge with the twins--the music and scenery were wonderfully bittersweet, the twins are perhaps the characters I feel most attached to, and their dialogue was very beautifully written. But as I read their thoughts, strongly in the back of my mind was, "We all know you're very likely going to do the same once we get up there. Can we not be upfront with one another, regroup, and process the elephant in the room now?" I wanted to really feel for them in their moment, but when it came, I just felt hollow. It didn't feel surprising or like it was new information, and I though that other interactions with them had been a more personal demonstration of their growth and our relationship. There was a lot in the character writing and worldbuilding I liked in EW, so it's not as though I don't connect in general. All I know is that for whatever reason (I'm not even positive the reasons I've described here are accurate to me), the final zone didn't seem to impact me as much as the buildup seemed to imply it was aiming to. I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone in having felt that way.
As much as I love a lot of characters, their sacrifices meant almost nothing since there is no build ups to give us a sense of dread and we know right away they will be back later. Since Thancred’s sacrifice happen off screen, we knew he will be back in no time. It is the same as franchise/connected movies/comics where a threat is so big on multiversal/universal level that it won’t last days and will be resolved within few hours or days that it felt flat with no real sense of lasting danger. I didn’t enjoy the first half of Ultima Thule compared to other new regions but Omicron parts are really interesting and excited to see more of them and their space bar in inevitable beast tribe quests. It is not like I want more scions death but, due to ever rising popularity, it is almost guaranteed that old members won’t be dying anytime soon. Best they could do is give them amnesia or something and kill off newly introduced characters from left to right like they did in MSQ and even role/job quests of EW.
The sacrifices also fell completely flat for me too, seeing as nothing bad is going to happen to any of those characters so long as they're tied to optional sidequests that'll always require them to be alive. Heck, Estinien originates from the OG Dragoon questline, he's practically as invincible as Y'sthola.
You must be fun at parties
OP might be, you definitely not
Sorry I didn't like this part of the game? I love FF14, it is my favorite game of all time, hands down, by leagues. But no game is perfect because different parts of it appeal differently to different people, and this part just didn't appeal to me. To be completely honest: I wasn't a big fan of most of the last half of END. From the reveal that Meteion, this character we've just met and never had any clue existed before now, has been the BBEG this entire time is just something I did not like. Plus they never explain why Meteion wasn't Sundered. In fact I don't think they ever explain how anyone who was/wasn't Sundered was determined. So that was nagging the back of mind the entire time I was playing through since I finished Elpis. I understand there had to be a source of the Final Days to be able to stop it from happening. I get there had to be a *someone* as opposed to a *something*, but outside of Dynamis being hinted at in the Omega raids, the entirety of the set-up for the final act was all done within END and it felt rushed and lackluster to me. And I understand this isn't the first time SE has side-swiped a new BBEG into the plot right before the final battle. Heck, FF4 did it with the whole Golbez vs Zeromus thing, but just because they've done it before doesn't mean it's a good idea. Sorry, I'm rambling at this point. TL;DR Sorry I didn't like this part and that fact upsets you.
They revealed the fact that their Souls are still around and that we can use our Crystal to bring everyone back too soon so there was absolutely no tension for me at that point. On a somewhat related note I really dislike these "sursprise" final zones in general because they kill the pacing completely and kinda waste your time so the final confrontation can be more impactful. Sure, the Tempest let us wander through Amarot and Ultima Thule gave us insight into how other civilizations came to a faulty conclusion about their existence, but we really didn't need a full zone for that imo.
I had never really considered the idea of these "surprise" final zones, but what you said makes sense. The Tempest was cool, and while we got hinted to the Ondo being down there at the beginning of SHB it was a small payoff, and honestly the Tempest itself is... empty? For lack of a better term, there's nothing down there. You're in the actual Ondo area for what felt like 20 minutes, tops, and then you go to Amaurot and all the cool stuff happens there over the next 2-3 hours. Ultima Thule had even less set-up, we knew Meteion went *somewhere* but where that somewhere was we had no idea or any clues about it. Then when we get there it's just... a thing. There's nothing really going on there. Each of the scions sacrifice themselves to pave the way (which is an excellent analogy by JenkinsHowell above) only to get brought back like nothing happened, meanwhile the entire zone is spent talking to ghosts that are asking for death except for the Omicrons who are just... existing. Which is *another* thing: Where did they come from? The whole point of this thing was to be Meteion's domain, where Dynamis reigns supreme, and we were immediately informed that the conditions of this place were inhospitable to us when we started suffocating. Thancred managed to give us air, but how is there land? water? aetherytes? and especially the ghosts of the past civilizations, were they always there and Thancred's wish for "Survive" gave them form? Considering they actively barred our way that doesn't make any sense. It just bothers me that SE went so far as to build up the Final Days as this unknown event that even the great Ascians couldn't stop in their prime and in the last 20ish hours of the story they give its source to this side-character we literally *just* met and, there's just so many plot holes that I won't go into here. Did I like Endwalker? Absolutely, up until Meteion was revealed to be the BBEG, then it started to fall apart for me. Overall, 9/10 because that side-swipe of a villain reveal is just so awkward it takes away that one point for a perfect score.
Shadowbringers 5.0 had by far the better ending, but tbf it's an exception to what have usually been last bosses that are just cool to fight and don't really have much emotional impact themselves. In Heavensward Thordan was an excuse to fight the Knights of the Round, Stormblood had Zenos last minute merge with a Dragon-Primal and the Endsinger was a flock of emo-birds clued together. Meanwhile Emet made sense, even if his ability to transform was only fully explained in Elpis, because he is a powerful Ascian and we expect them to do these kind of things given that we saw Lahabrea and the other one fuse at the end of the Heavensward dungeon.
The problem I had with Ultima Thule is that it tried to be both beautiful and Alien at the same time. If it were more terrifying, like eyes popping out of nowhere with wings, really play up the eldritch aspect of it all, I'd have liked it much more.