FFXIV Spoiler thread

[Lane]

A comment I saw on Reddit echoed how I feel about it: "I adore their story more than our story." This is the problem when you write your antagonists to be more compelling than your protagonists.

I haven't felt a connection to anything since Ishgard. Suddenly ShB introduces a past life I find incredibly interesting and I'm completely hooked. I want to know more about everything, especially as the most fascinating character in the series was apparently a dear friend of ours.

Our entourage is a group of people who speak on suffering yet have experienced comparatively little of it. Alphinaud and Alisaie are the two worst offenders as the quintessential adolescents who think they have all the answers. I've resigned myself to never understanding Thancred and Minfilia. Urianger has spent most of his time with us being deceitful and then complains how difficult that was when it's a choice he repeatedly makes. The only bad thing that's happened to Y'shtola, the 'blindness', arguably made her more powerful. G'raha, or more specifically the Crystal Exarch, and Estinien are the only two who have experienced suffering on a similar scale to the peoples we're both fighting against and supposed to help.

There's a reason that Elpis was the highlight of the expansion among those who either loved or hated EW. I'm not going to get into an ethical argument about it, I'll simply say if FFXIV had been a 'choose your own adventure', from a narrative POV, I wouldn't have given a second thought to traveling down Emet's path because I found it a lot more gripping than what the Scions were doing.

[Vakir]

That tends to be the general way it goes, especially in circumstances that aren't completely open ended, though. Well-written antagonists that have well-defined motivations usually have suffered more than the POV characters in a "standard" setting. There's exceptions, obviously. But usually they're intended to be representations of where we CAN go and not where we want to. Or how we can avoid devolving into that perspective even if it's what awaits us.

But I feel like the entire idea behind being able to find hope in a cruel and hopeless universe is a function of having characters that haven't been broken that way to assist in guidance for those who feel they're beyond it. This is seen in the two Scions that have suffered most in the first place. G'raha has been through the wringer and Estinien is a sour realist, but it's literally by the inspiration of the two main characters respectively that they found their place and their overall wills, because this isn't the Misery Olympics. Particularly Estinien, who is constantly reminding the audience that his humanity and his admiration for idealism is through someone that is young and hasn't been hurt that way.

I'm not saying it's the only way to tell a story or even the most valid one - but there's a very deliberate choice. It's easy to feel a total loss of any ability to have a sense of connection to the belief things will get better. But sometimes you find the answer in people who haven't been cracked yet, whether their situation is comparable or not, because they still act on those belief systems in the face of the same circumstances that you were doomed to run into.

While every generation is always saying it's "the worst time ever," right now, I think it's inarguable we're living in pretty fucking scary times, frankly. We may not be on the verge of heat death or anything, but a lot of the anxieties surrounding our planet or society being unsustainable are trickling into modern media very frequently and for a reason. I can't speak for anyone else, but when optimism is done correctly, it has value in being represented even when characters aren't necessarily challenged by the same circumstances I am or even if they are objectively more well-off. Provided it isn't completely tone-deaf to realistic struggles. Yes, at the end of the day, Alphinaud and Alisaie are affluent, born-gifted children with at the very least a stable mother and (previously) a society of all the knowledge they would ever want. But the fact that they're willing to stick their neck out basically endlessly is what makes them work as people, not because of all of the other stuff. Their privilege making them more able to do so doesn't invalidate that. Their ability to accept differing perspectives is what avoids the moralizing that plagues, say, Anduin.

Endwalker has plenty of problems (that I'll go into), but I just can't buy that the intention of crafting a setting that's about who took the bigger L, or worse, not being able to move beyond something that happened in the past, is the answer.

For example:

1. For starters, I think having the Dark-aligned primal be symbolically representative of being stuck in the past while the Light-aligned primal being representative of accepting the dissolution of what was and forging ahead to the future seems contradictory. Because they established that Darkness is chaotic but life-giving and the Light is explicitly said to be more about harmony, but stasis. Maybe that was the point? That the will of the people who sided with one or the other was contrary to their base nature? It would be interesting to hear Ishikawa comment on it.

2. Having the End of Days occur approximately at the halfway mark into the game felt like a mistake. The stakes really don't feel that amped up until it's too late and a lot of what we were shown as the big selling point of the narrative doesn't actually happen in a way where we can interact with it. By the time things get going, it's already time to jump to Elpis and after Elpis, we're effectively dealing with a different threat. I understand why it happened, but it means that the big sky full of Terminus beasts feels more like a sizzle reel for marketing than an actual setpiece by the time it happens. (Also, when we get to it in Vanaspati, it's a bunch of flat textures moving around a sky box and it looks awful)

3. General pacing of action. FF14 actually, IMO, does quite well when it's slow-paced and methodical as long as it doesn't go full 2.1-2.5, but this scenario and it being the finale felt like a good opportunity to cut loose and really amp up the stakes. The very tail end of Garlemald got it right, as did a lot of the second half, but someone really needs to teach these guys about implementing this bold new thing in MMOs called "kill quests" rather than it being 80/20 conversation and fetching. Early Sharlayan was the only time I'd outright call it "bad," though.

I could go on - but the TL;DR of it is, if I need to compare it to another finale with a similar name - criticizing Endgame for pacing, tone inconsistency, inability to determine consistent rules for its setting, lack of resolution for certain characters, etc. are valid. I can't say that taking issue with the fact that you're sad Tony Stark died is not valid, but I can say it's kind of silly.

That being said - yes, Emet-Selch is the best character in the entire game by a country mile and it's not even close, and I still think a Scion or two should've bit it before the end, albeit more for the purposes of establishing stakes than to validate the themes.

[Lane]

It would've stopped it entirely because learning to live with sorrow means you don't fall for it completely

Were that true then every other world they visited wouldn't have fallen. The only thing holding Meteion back from Etheirys was Zodiark's barrier. Humanity had 12k years post-sundering to learn to 'live with sorrow' and still failed to conquer the Final Days until we defeat her. Hydaelyn even had nonsensical contingency plans to flee which, I'd point out, would've doomed the other shards and only serve to delay the inevitable.

The Ascian race couldn't handle it, as was shown when Venat talked to them in that cutscene, that's why they sacrificed half the planets population just so they can ignore it for a while longer.
That's when she realized that it's not going to get any better.

The Ancients weren't acting any differently than anyone else would. Humanity always wants to go back to better times. I did not agree with Venat's assessment and remain unconvinced that she did the right thing. I don't care how much the game narrative tries to bash me in the head with the theme, I still find it flawed.

[Tojara]

For me it's not even that Estinien suffered, it's that he basically grew as a character from when you first met him towards the end. A lot of the Scions grow in their own ways, but the development of somebody like Estinien compared to the rest just doesn't really compare. He goes from somebody you probably don't care for that much in HW (he's written like a smug asshole), to a lone wolf, to somebody that slowly starts enjoying the company of everybody else. He doesn't really go backwards and his character progression is really good.

I think one of my biggest gripes is that we didn't get more of Midgardsorm's clutch in EW, considering the stakes at hand.

But yeah, like others have echoed Emet-Selch is the best character in FF14, wish he showed up sooner. Hard not to like any of the Ascians actually, except for Lahabrea, he sucked.

Only an opinion because people will like different things, but I sort of wish that there were more kill quests in FF14. This isn't about turning the game into other MMOs, but the gear just seems completely useless, you barely get to try out new abilities and sometimes just doing hours of dialogue gets a little bit draining. They seemed to really love their new quest type (the one where you just run around with NPCs following you, in addition to the stealth quests in the first half) and jammed it into as many places as possible.

[Vakir]

@Lane "But it didn't happen until it did!" is uh, certainly a take. :/

Also the lack of a presence of a moral authority on-screen criticizing another character doesn't mean we're meant to agree with them, either. The ethos of needing to accept limitations, weakness, and ephemerality doesn't mean the steps taken to get there were universally intended as a good call, even if they played out to our benefit.

Again, none of this shit is new to Japanese culture. There's a catch-all term for it. This is standard mono no aware. It's Trisha Elric's speech spread over 30 hours.

[KrayZ33]

Were that true then every other world they visited wouldn't have fallen. The only thing holding Meteion back from Etheirys was Zodiark's barrier. Humanity had 12k years post-sundering to learn to 'live with sorrow' and still failed to conquer the Final Days until we defeat her. Hydaelyn even had nonsensical contingency plans to flee which, I'd point out, would've doomed the other shards and only serve to delay the inevitable.

Most of these worlds have fallen before the Song even started. The others that were consumed have, painfully obvious, been written similar to the Ascians. They were all pretty much gods. You only have to take a look at the Dragon race and see the difference between those that learned to live with it, and those that gave up and wanted nothing to do with it anymore.
And I never said Zodiark did nothing. I'm saying that Zodiark would've destroyed life in a different way, that as well, has been said multiple times throughout the story. That's why Venat reacted the way she did and that's really all the justification needed for what has happened.

The Ancients weren't acting any differently than anyone else would. Humanity always wants to go back to better times. I did not agree with Venat's assessment and remain unconvinced that she did the right thing. I don't care how much the game narrative tries to bash me in the head with the theme, I still find it flawed.

That's not the point..... the point is, once more, that you have to conquer this or you'll fail, the point is that the Ascians are, due to their lifestyle and their god-like power, unable to comprehend the issue at hand, You can't learn to live with sorrow if you never experience it (to give one example). In the end, what happened proves Venat to be right. While the Ascian immediatly lost control of the situation due to Zodiark tempering the Convocation, the strongest of their people.
Zodiark is a corrupting influence, even for Ascians.

[Lane]

In the end, what happened proves Venat to be right.

I feel like we're arguing in circles and are just going to have to agree to disagree. I didn't say Zodiark was the solution, but he may have not been needed. Venat isn't smarter than everyone else, she was simply more informed. We'll never know if the Convocation could've come up with an alternate plan or, if they had been armed with the knowledge, how they may have adjusted.

As far as I'm concerned, Venat will never be right in what she did. She made executive decisions for the planet that had no guarantee of ever stopping Meteion. I think people take for granted the fact that the WoL never loses because it wouldn't be much of a satisfying game experience if the end of 6.0 was you failing to defeat Hydaelyn and being banished from the star. :P Venat's choices hadn't paid off for 12k years and ultimately relied on a very specific set of events to occur to reach the conclusion it did. Her 'gamble' was one in billions at the very least and the costs incurred during that time were substantial.

It makes me miss the game over screens from Quest for Glory. If you failed to kill the final boss there was actually a cutscene showing them win. Every time someone wipes on Endsinger I think, that's it, Etheirys is doomed and everything Venat did was for naught. :P

[ippollite]

Yeah, i read all the comments and happily spoiled myself (in fragments)...

Thing is, ive always had this thought in the back of my mind: The ancients conjured zodiark because they figured they could control any eventuality. Hubris? There's the old adage: If you're a hammer, everything look likes a nail.

They heard the sound. Or didnt. But the idea of the sound... that things were escaping their control. And their reaction was to manifest both their fears (the end of days) and their solution (more potent (untested/chaos) magic). Drin pointed out a while back that zodiark was a failed concept. That there's no actual reason other than belief (run rampant) to necessitate a sacrifice. And thus was born 'primals'. Not ingenuity. Not technology. Just a redoubling of their own belief system that they could control concepts through order and reason (at the precise point their fears and anxieties were manifesting). They were so powerful, so utterly in control of all life that the 13 great minds combined (in their fear) could bypass the checks in their own system to speed along the most rational and logical (according to their (limited) experience thus far) the correct solution (in the midst of a crisis they failed to react to or understand).

And thus was born zodiark. A concept made manifest requiring near limitless satiation because of course they required an act/leap of faith to bring it about. Upon realising this solution they were already doomed. If i get this right from what y'all are talking about, its not just sorrow that drives venat, but basic arithmetic (and perhaps the capacity to rise from failure and not repeat the one dimensional thinking that got them into this situation (that everything is spinning out of their control) in the first place).

Hey, remember that throwaway comment about the wol considering the scions as their posessions to bring the scions souls back to their bodies on the source. And if they should just flinch for a moment? And youre the race of beings for the first time dealing with that because of a 'sound'? That tiny flicker of 'doubt'...

[Tojara]

Venat just had more information than the rest of them, but because of the time stuff she wanted things to play out as they were meant to play out (thus the time thing in EW makes sense). Fandaniel being one step ahead of you the entire time makes absolute sense when you think retroactively as well, so I think that part was really done (memories restored upon death/reincarnation). She also didn't have an answer or proof (as Ancients strived for) to what would solve this mess, she however knew that Zodiark certainly wasn't the answer. All she knew is the current plan was never going to work and for them to push forward they must understand Dynamis, and for that to happen they needed to come to terms with emotions or negative feelings.

Zodiark isn't inherently evil but it ultimately would never solve the Final Days, just keep kicking the can down the road. Had the unsundered actually fulfilled their plans it would've only been a matter of time until Zodiarks influence waned. At that point what, all previous life sacrificed to bring back the Ancients again, who still were stuck in their ways with no real way to combat the song of oblivion. What then? At that point how much aether or sacrifice is Zodiark going to need to forestall it again?

To answer your question they summoned Zodiark, not because they wanted to control everything, but because they had nowhere left to turn. All of them were deeply logical people and with no where left to turn they created the first real primal through faith.

It's even sort of obvious that Emet-Selch wasn't really overly happy with the decision either in the cut scene after Elpis either, as he watched his friend go forth and sacrifice themselves, but like the others (in their mind) they had no where else to turn.

At the end of the day even Zodiark was needed, as he provided the time buffer needed for them to either evacuate or confront the threat directly.

[Faldric]

Just jumping in here quickly without reading anything because I am only in Garlemald. The whole forced "they are victims too" rubs me the wrong way. After showing the Empire's atrocities for 4 games, it's a little much to ask to feel sorry for them just because they are a little cold. And they seem to be happy to die for their homeland too. Let me grant them their wish. I feel a little robbed, finally being able to march into Garlemald and not being able to kick their butts.

[Pannonian]

The only thing i don't understand:

Why make the moon a spaceship? If Meteions reach is across the whole universe (as demonstrated by the universe being barren because of her) - how does fleeing help us?

So if Hydaelyn knew that we needed to confrot metein from the get go - why this elaborate plan with the moon and bunny people?

[Tojara]

It doesn't help us, it just delays the inevitable. Either to give more time to find a solution, or to live for as long as possible until the Final Days reaches yet another world.

Hydaelyn just had a back up plan that's all. The Ancients bid to summon Zodiark did virtually the same thing. While Zodiark shielded the planet with dense aether to prevent the end of days for a time, Hydaelyn's backup plan was to flee once Zodiark's magic ultimately faded in one way or another.

Basically spit in the face of death and live your life as long as possible I guess, even if it seems hopeless. She ultimately just knew that continued summoning of Zodiark wasn't going to accomplish anything either.

[Thestrawman]

The only thing i don't understand:

Why make the moon a spaceship? If Meteions reach is across the whole universe (as demonstrated by the universe being barren because of her) - how does fleeing help us?

So if Hydaelyn knew that we needed to confrot metein from the get go - why this elaborate plan with the moon and bunny people?

Because if humanity wasn't strong enough to face Meteion they only chance they'd have is to flee. And hope they can get far enough away to not be affected by the song.

[Poppincaps]

The only thing i don't understand:

Why make the moon a spaceship? If Meteions reach is across the whole universe (as demonstrated by the universe being barren because of her) - how does fleeing help us?

So if Hydaelyn knew that we needed to confrot metein from the get go - why this elaborate plan with the moon and bunny people?

It's possible that there's a planet out there that is even more saturated in Aether than Etheirys which would be safe from her. It's a longshot, but considering she couldn't stop Meteion then she probably thought even a chance at everyone living was worth it.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Here's a question I urge everyone to ask themselves, and something I continuously asked myself after the ending of 5.0. We know the final days were happening, and lord zodiark stopped it, but his power required more and more and more sacrifices, meaning people would eventually run out of others to sacrifice. Thus Hydaelyn bound him and sundered the world. But what caused the final days?

This question was one I constantly contemplated, but I knew it wasn't going to be either Hydaelyn or Zodiark, because both came after. So I don't get why some people are getting stuck on this idea that Zodiark should have played a bigger role? We knew what he did. He averted the final days through the sacrifice of lives. Venat saw this continuous sacrifice and thought it wrong, and instead sundered everyone's souls.

I'm going to strongly disagree with the notion that there was retconning. Everything presented was consistent with past expositions. The one exception may be that Venat's blessing wasn't actually a tempering, but then again, the blessing of light was never fully understood, so its nature was obviously known by the one who cast it, Hydaelyn/Venat herself. Shadowbringers was never supposed to be a light vs dark thing that turned the notion of good and evil on its head. Light and shadow are both elements. Hydaelyn along with minfilia stopped the flood of light. It's not as if the light is some force controlled by Hydaelyn. Light in and of itself is its own element and entity in the universe. Shadowbringers was merely a presentation that light isn't necessarily good, and instead hammered home the necessity for balance.

I don't know why some people took Shadowbringers as some kind of giant revelation that Hydaelyn was wrong and thus the bad guy. Because again, I circle back to the question of "What caused the final days?" It seems to be a question very few people ever contemplated. It seems most people just assumed that everyone's magic ran wild all at once for no reason just because?

Most of the criticisms I see are about "pacing", the rest is about people's broken expectations, where they were expecting something else to happen than what actually did, and thus they are disappointed.



The one thing I actually have to criticize about endwalker is the introduction of yet another time loop. G'raha time traveled to the first in the past with the crystal tower to avert the next calamity with Black Rose and the empire. Because of that, we avert the calamity, so G'raha's future never happens.

But then we have a second introduction of time travel, wherein we are Venat's conspirators. This in and of itself doesn't confuse me so much as it creates something of a paradox, or else directly implies infinitely branching timelines into infinite different universes. Us and Venat being the only people who know the calamity is coming, but that doesn't happen unless the WoL lives to confront elidibus at the crystal tower on the first and get flung back in time, which wouldn't exist if the WoL didn't die in the future and G'raha traveled back. That's what happens when you use time travel too much. And I see far more people willing to forgive this kind of time travel paradox because it features emet and hythlodeus, and instead they harp on about pacing and themes that weren't included that they wanted.



And while its application is questionable, not knowing who the true final boss of a FF game is until the 11th hour is a pretty consistent theme. Pretty much every FF game presents heroes and villains and raises tension through these encounters. Then in the last 10% of the game you suddenly find out that the REAL thing threatening the world/universe is this ultimate evil, SURPRISE. It's a pretty consistent theme, and one I was fully expecting to happen just being an avid FF player. When I see people disappointed that Zodiark wasn't the final evil, or that hydaelyn wasn't either, I'm just internally like "But that's not how an FF game works".

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I'm going to strongly disagree with the notion that there was retconning. Everything presented was consistent with past expositions.

According to Hyth in 5.0, it was caused by a Sound from beneath the Earth and was described as a sickness of the planet, which pointed towards corruption of the Heart of the Star/Lifestream. Corruption either by overuse of Amaurotine magic, or by some other force.

According to Endwalker, the Final Days came from not within the star, but by an outside force acting upon the planet. That is a retcon.

[Drindorai]

Yeah I have to say if you are any kind of Final Fantasy fan, I'd seriously question your credentials if you thought Zodiark or Hydaelyn were going to be the final bad. Zodiark's demise was fine. He was a faceless evil entity that never was really even his own character, centering the story of him through the eyes of Emet, Elidibus, Fandaniel, and Zenos was a thousand times better than trying to hurriedly give Zodiark some kind of personality in the final act.

As Cthulhu says, virtually every single game has this overarching ominous evil monster causing the things the 'villains' have been doing from behind the scenes either directly or an in an Old-God like fashion of being so evil you just corrupt the people and things that get too close to you.

According to Hyth in 5.0, it was caused by a Sound from beneath the Earth and was described as a sickness of the planet, which pointed towards corruption of the Heart of the Star/Lifestream. Corruption either by overuse of Amaurotine magic, or by some other force.

The bolded is nothing but an assumption by the community based on the vague language used. Also how does the sound somehow not correlate to what Meteion is doing? Are you stuck up on the phrase, "beneath the earth?" Because again then I think the case is you're just upset your own subjective interpretation isn't what happened.

Nowhere does Shadowbringers say definitely say that the Final Days was inexplicably started by Etheirys the planet. The absolute best you can get is that the Final Days was warping their creation magic and even then, there were people during its launch talking about how that isn't the story saying the creation magic was causing the Final Days.

This would not be the first time you got mad at the game and misappropriating blame as "bad" or "poor" writing or "retcons" for not doing what you wanted it to do.

[Cthulhu 2020]

According to Hyth in 5.0, it was caused by a Sound from beneath the Earth and was described as a sickness of the planet, which pointed towards corruption of the Heart of the Star/Lifestream. Corruption either by overuse of Amaurotine magic, or by some other force.

According to Endwalker, the Final Days came from not within the star, but by an outside force acting upon the planet. That is a retcon.

It was stated that the noise preceded the corruption, and was not the cause. It being described as a sickness of the star is consistent, in that people's own despair is a sickness that can pervade. I'd love to see all of the exact wording on this, but I never ever remember thinking that it was definitely going to be a sickness of the planet, that that was merely one theory out of the limited information we'd been given.

That is not retconning, that's just not going in the direction you thought it would go.

Hythlo's shade created by Emet would know what Emet knows Hythlo knows. And Emet only knew about the "moaning of the planet" but we eventually just found out this great moaning was the cries of the people themselves. Which to me is a perfectly acceptable explanation for it.

I will reiterate, I think people's biggest issue is that the story writers did not take the story in the direction they expected nor in the direction they wanted. And the weirdest part is, the most questionable aspect of the expansion - the double time loop - which directly interfere with each other's existence. And that gets a pass. Why? Because people massively love shadowbringers, and people massively love Elpis. So they're willing to give the double time loop paradox a pass because they enjoy the characters involved so they're willing to tolerate a double time loop paradox.

And as mentioned, Hydaelyn and Zodiark both appeared AFTER the final days happened. I would have told anyone a year ago that they were setting themselves up for disappointment if they thought either were going to be the final baddie. My guesses were either out far away in space, or deep in the planet's core. Or somewhere ambiguously unreachable, like the distant past. Those were the only places I felt the final evil "could" be, and fully knew that the final evil would neither be Hydaelyn nor Zodiark.

[Vakir]

Yep. A lot of this was born of assumptions, speculation, and thinly veiled fanfiction born of the last 2 years in waiting for Endwalker. Some people are mad it didn't play out how they wanted. We don't have anything Doylist that definitively states this for it to be a definitive retcon in the same vein as, say, a Chronicle type document.

We get the (implied) exact same noise around a similar timeframe when it happens to our planet in the present and by that point the alleged "retcon" would've already been written. Almost like it's correlational but not necessarily causational!

[zealo]

According to Hyth in 5.0, it was caused by a Sound from beneath the Earth and was described as a sickness of the planet, which pointed towards corruption of the Heart of the Star/Lifestream. Corruption either by overuse of Amaurotine magic, or by some other force.

According to Endwalker, the Final Days came from not within the star, but by an outside force acting upon the planet. That is a retcon.

Fan theories not coming true isn’t a retcon.

ShB never confirmed anything definitive about what the actual cause were.