FFXIV Spoiler thread

[Arlette]

The ending of this 400+ hour long JRPG/visual novel revolves around a bird introduced during the final 20 hours, the final 5% of the story. FF9 was a 40 hour long game and Necron came during the last hour, which was the last 2.5% of the story. The comparison is apt. No other Final Fantasy games besides 9 and 14 introduce the main threat that late.

We get it you hate the game and the franchise. Ridiculous comparisons and dishonest commentary and all.

Thanks once again for the exact same post on every final fantasy related topic.

[Yarathir]

The ending of this 400+ hour long JRPG/visual novel revolves around a bird introduced during the final 20 hours, the final 5% of the story. FF9 was a 40 hour long game and Necron came during the last hour, which was the last 2.5% of the story. The comparison is apt. No other Final Fantasy games besides 9 and 14 introduce the main threat that late.

Zodiark Trance.

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And that's what happened thanks to the mind wipe and Venat. She was pondering how to go about it; straight up call out Hermes to the Convocation, get the Ancients ready for whats to come, but that might change our future drastically; let history run its course and set up strategies in private that wouldn't affect our present (and if we consider that it's a perfect loop somehow, if our future is exactly the same as it was when we left that means that in our past, we - the WoL - went to Elpis as our present remained the same).

I think the time travelwasn't overly convoluted. There's a little bit of "What if" and pondering paradoxes but when you do a bit of time travel that's to be expected.

I guess my initial question was a bit rough. I don't expect devs to straight up plot-drop a future expansion, but the FFXIV writers are usually pretty good about explaining things after the fact. I guess what Ludek said might be the best explanation - it's a matter of time the person has spent in the Lifestream.

That's the funny thing. If you look at the cutscene, you actually see that she argues with her people, or well... the personification of her people in a small, representable group of Amaurotines. Then, when they firmly rebuke her and state that they've no intention of veering from their chosen course, she grits her teeth and looks visibly pained. Even though she knew that to keep history mostly intact, she had to commit to the Sundering, I really do feel like she was at least temporarily tempted to change history, even if it doomed the WoL and the Source's "present". Alas, having everything she was told reaffirmed and having her words rejected outright reminded her and cemented that she had to do it. Like a moment of grim realization. It's a cool moment to me.

[Aucald]

The ending of this 400+ hour long JRPG/visual novel revolves around a bird introduced during the final 20 hours, the final 5% of the story. FF9 was a 40 hour long game and Necron came during the last hour, which was the last 2.5% of the story. The comparison is apt. No other Final Fantasy games besides 9 and 14 introduce the main threat that late.

That's not really a very apt summary of the story of FF14, if you ask me. ARR had nothing to do with the Endsinger or related shenanigans - it was more about the state of the world following the last war, the various nations and their plights, and a distant B-plot concerns the goings-on with the Ascians trying to re-merge Etheirys (which we don't actually get into). HW was about the war between the dragons and Ishgard, which ended up having little to do with the Ascian conflict. SB was all about the renewed conflict with Garlemald, and the major war fronts of Ala Mhigo and Doma, during which the Ascian threat was a decidedly C-plot. Only ShB and EW ended up being direct continuations of one another's story with ShB informing and leading directly into EW, ending the war arc and dealing more directly with the Ascians and the Endsinger.

So it's more like a series of 5 novels, with the last two being more directly connected than the first three. Given the foreshadowing of the Endsinger all the way back in ShB, she's not really comparable to Necron or Zeromus. We knew there was going to be something behind the Final Day of the Ascians and the creation of Zodiark, and the Endsinger got almost an entire expansion explaining its origins, purpose, and ultimately why it was corrupted, which is a lot more build-up than Necron ever got.

[Ludek]

The comparison is apt. No other Final Fantasy games besides 9 and 14 introduce the main threat that late.

I - big bad introduced in the last dungeon (yes you could argue that he is also the first boss of the game, but he does nothing in between, nothing in game implies that Garland will become Chaos)
III - big bad introduced in the penultimate dungeon
IV - big bad introduced 2 dungeons before end

I know Necron is a meme but it's not like we never had surprise villains before him.

[Yarathir]

I thought it was a very good Final Fantasy story, but it's not exactly going to measure up to masterpieces in cinema, literature, or even other games. You could probably argue apples to oranges, but I'd say that fruit tends to be fruit. Even accounting for the story being very "anime," which is part and parcel of JRPGs, I just didn't think it was able to match the highs and lows of Shadowbringers, and while its pacing was better overall than Stormblood's, I felt like it lacked some of the punches that Stormblood was able to deliver. And even the best parts of XIV tend to look a little weak compared to the strongest examples of storytelling and narrative in other games - Disco Elysium being a contemporary example one might use.

It felt like Endwalker hinged way too much on fanservice and "soyjak pointing meme" virality. So many scenes felt like they were just purposely baiting out "omg u guys! it's that one dude from that quest! look!!!" reactions or just plain throwing fanservice at the playerbase, sometimes at the cost of good narrative sense.

I generally had a lot of fun Endwalker (annoyance of being unable to cross a fucking ravine in Thavnair aside) up to Into the Cold. Then after that narrative hook went over like a flaccid balloon, it kind of set expectations for everything else afterwards being... not what I was hoping for out of "wrapping up 10 years of story!" It had high points and low points, but between the obvious fucking rush job that was Garlemald, timey wimey horseshit in Elpis (which I fully admit is absolutely just a personal grudge I have with ANY story involving that shit... if you want to tell a timey wimey story that doesn't shatter immersion, just do the fucking amnesiac in medias res thing instead), and then them basically going "lol, dynamis!" in regards to the story hooks set in ShB about "the sound" that caused the Ascian civilization to shit the bed was kind of the cherry on top.

Ironically, while I didn't find her remotely compelling as a villain, Endsinger was a fantastic FF final boss. It's a depressed tween goddess that's essentially become the manifestation of entropy - hard to get more Final Fantasy than that!

I emphatically disagree, and to me, from my experience, a lot of people's vocal complaints about Endwalker and aggrandizing of Shadowbringers comes from shit memory. Shadowbringers had a ton of bad pacing, dull moments and stupid death fakeouts and lack of real stakes, and I say that as someone who absolutely loved and still loves Shadowbringers. But I love Endwalker too, and I find that they suffer from some of the same problems and also do some of the same things right. The low lows aren't in the same spots and neither are the high highs, but they've still a somewhat similar distribution.

Of course, if you're already not fond of Elpis on principle, you're going to disagree on that.



The only things I really had any issue with in Endwalker were:

1. The fact that they didn't have the Final Days represented in a more widespread way. I feel like it could've felt more cataclysmic.

2. The Loporrits causing tonal whiplash right after Zodiark. I don't hate the Loporrits, and even like them, but that was just a really bad way to introduce them.

3. "Resurrecting" Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus in Ultima Thule. I get the point and the reason for it, and I'm sure people loved getting one last moment with the two of them, but I felt like it dragged on overlong. It got a little bit too, as you said: "fanservicey".



Not sure what all the commotion is about a small thirdhand sidenote about a "keening that came from the Earth" and ascribing so much importance to it. It's definitely something I didn't put a huge amount of stock in. Feels like kind of a minor nitpick at best. And I dunno, that sound could've just been Endsinger's song resounding in Etheirys' atmosphere? It's such an offhand comment about the Final Days that I really don't see why it's such a big deal.

Endsinger wasn't a villain to me. She was an enemy and something to defeat/destroy, but I don't really see her as a villain. That's just my personal opinion, of course. I find that a villain requires autonomy, and the Endsinger was just a collective of Meteia, which in turn were basically just constructs shaped by dynamis. I.e. for me to consider Endsinger or any of the Meteia villains, they would had to have had their own motivations, but they really didn't. They got essentially brainwashed because internalizing dynamis is as natural to them as breathing is to us. As for how compelling they, and Hermes, were? I sort of agree with you, but I also disagree.

Again, I see Endsinger more as a manifestation of an universal force than a villain, so I'll leave her to the side for the moment. I feel like while they did make Hermes somewhat more compelling than he was pre-Endwalker, they still kind of missed the mark with him. I feel like it was a mistake for him to make his case over the deconstruction of vicious fantasy pitbulls that viciously attacked other creations without reason. In the end, I don't think Hermes was wrong to feel the way he did, but I do believe he was wrong to act upon his feelings the way he did. Especially when he helped the last Meteion escape and started acting chuuni about it.

On the flipside, I also really like Amon's moment in the Aitascope. All his dooming, all his nihilism, and still he has a moment of introspection.

"Even as the words pass my lips, I am filled with doubt. Has my search reached its end? Was this the only way? After all these years... is this the answer I was hoping for?"

The VA might have carried it a lot, but it was a good moment. Alas, in my playthrough I had no sympathy to spare for him despite that, so I didn't pick the friendly answer. Still thought it was kind of a poignant scene, until Asahi shows his ugly mug.

Anyway, I digress. At the end of the day, I don't need every antagonistic force to be Emet-Selch. Emet-Selch is good as he is. A guy who resorted to atrocities out of sheer desperation, who had understandable motives, motives most anyone can find themselves in, but whose intentions and machinations inherently clashed with "ours". That's great, and I will probably always think he's XIV's best bad guy, but I don't need XIV to only pump out discount Emet-Selchs from here on out. We have an unabashed, shamelessly and apathetically immoral guy like Zenos, we have the misguided and despairing nihilist in Hermes and we have Emet-Selch, a guy who seeks to return where he belongs, to reclaim his world, his friends, at any cost. Whose years of solitude have chafed at him, ground him down until he experienced very few moral quandaries or was outright able to push them from his mind.

Lastly, as for the callbacks, the fanservice, etc. Well, I'm not shocked? It is indeed the conclusion to a decade long story and with that comes reminiscing. Reminding the player of where they started, how far they've come, and the faces they met along the way. I thought it was pretty apt, and also rather inevitable.

[Ghost of Cow]

That's not really a very apt summary of the story of FF14, if you ask me. ARR had nothing to do with the Endsinger or related shenanigans - it was more about the state of the world following the last war, the various nations and their plights, and a distant B-plot concerns the goings-on with the Ascians trying to re-merge Etheirys (which we don't actually get into). HW was about the war between the dragons and Ishgard, which ended up having little to do with the Ascian conflict. SB was all about the renewed conflict with Garlemald, and the major war fronts of Ala Mhigo and Doma, during which the Ascian threat was a decidedly C-plot. Only ShB and EW ended up being direct continuations of one another's story with ShB informing and leading directly into EW, ending the war arc and dealing more directly with the Ascians and the Endsinger.

So it's more like a series of 5 novels, with the last two being more directly connected than the first three. Given the foreshadowing of the Endsinger all the way back in ShB, she's not really comparable to Necron or Zeromus. We knew there was going to be something behind the Final Day of the Ascians and the creation of Zodiark, and the Endsinger got almost an entire expansion explaining its origins, purpose, and ultimately why it was corrupted, which is a lot more build-up than Necron ever got.

I thought XIV was at it's strongest when more..."grounded" for lack of a better word. Yes, there was magic and primals and such, but the story was so character driven and grounded in their real interactions and real conflicts that made sense and impacted the world.

Even when we started to get truly fantastical in ShB, the conflicts were still between characters. Flawed characters, understandable characters, their goals and ideas just putting them at odds.

Then EW just turns it all on it's head. Just turns it all into straight up wacky stuff where the characters are all lost in a quagmire of plot armor and spaceships and time travel and dynamis and a lack of any real stakes and a threat that was both out of left field but completely predictable at the same time. It really was XIV at it's weakest in my opinion.

[Arlette]

lost in a quagmire of plot armor and spaceships and time travel

boy do i have a franchise to talk to you about.

[Yarathir]

Boy, howdy, do I love my stakes.

Like when 90% of the results of ARR's finale are basically undone in Heavensward because Raubahn is still alive and we save him, then find out that Nanamo never died because Lolorito was so high IQ that he swapped out Teledji's legitimate poison for a milder poison that basically just puts her in a deep slumber. And then the elementals just help us pluck Y'shtola from the lifestream. Oh and Thancred is practically unmarred and was just living his best hobo life for a bit. And "Yda" and Papalymo are just doing their own stuff. Oh, and Alisaie gets poisoned but it's okay because the chirurgeons will take care of it and she can just sleep it off. And Urianger didn't betray us, he was just triple-crossing for our own sake.

Or Shadowbringers, where Y'shtola gets another death fakeout and Thancred gets to share in the joy by having a moment that paints him as being on death's door but later he's just sitting around chilling, a little scuffed up. "Yeah bros, they just, you know, found me in time and saved me hehe."

[Ludek]

I emphatically disagree, and to me,from my experience, a lot of people's vocal complaints about Endwalker and aggrandizing of Shadowbringers comes from shit memory. Shadowbringers had a ton of bad pacing, dull moments and stupid death fakeouts and lack of real stakes, and I say that as someone who absolutely loved and still loves Shadowbringers. But I love Endwalker too, and I find that they suffer from some of the same problems and also do some of the same things right. The low lows aren't in the same spots and neither are the high highs, but they've still a somewhat similar distribution.

I finished Shadowbringers couple of weeks before Endwalker got released so I was pretty fresh to both stories.
I don’t mind Metion/Endsinger - it’s a jRPG trope to have some hidden godlike end boss very vaguely related to the story.
I don’t even mind the tonal shifts that much.

For me the biggest problem is that Endwalker tries to resolve too many plots at once. Two expansions with the highest praised story - Heavensward and Shadowbringers - they both focus more or less on one topic in their base MSQ-s - sorting out Dragon and Light business.

Stormblood instead of focusing on one rebelion, just jumps from Alamigho to Doma back to Alamigho, not to mention that both have almost the same story and character tropes.

Then we have Endwalker where we stop Zenny and Fandydandy, try to finally finish Garlemald conflict, oh no Zodiark is free, try to counter Final Days and then we have Elpis/Cosmic stuff

We finally go to Garlemald, the big scary Empire which conquered half of the world, we get there via some big expedition army and… it’s just one zone. Same with the heavily marketed Moon - just one zone.

For me Endwalker ran kinda into the same problem as WoW nowdays have - where big lore-related locations are just relegated into a single zone - Argus, Nyalotha… those should be expansions, not patch zones.

Yet even if we wanted to fix it - it would be impossible with how the game is designed currently. In the ideal world Zodiark would be the last boss, we bring back the Final Days and deal with Elpis things in the patch content.
But the ideal world is not possible currently - Square never adds functional zones in the patch content. True, nowdays we even get some quest chains in the patch „zones” yet they are still just heavily instanced locations designed to funnel us through the story or send to proper areas.

Maybe changing Garlemald story and moving it to 7.0 would be better solution while expanding on Moon/Elpis would be better, but then you would not get the entire saga conclusion.

Square wanted good, they mostly did good, but with the limitations of both the game mechanics and story structure, everything got a bit convoluted and subpar compared to Shadowbringers or Heavensward.

[Ghost of Cow]

boy do i have a franchise to talk to you about.

Yeah, people always come back with that, but "the franchise does that" doesn't mean that every story from it has to fall into line the same way. Doesn't mean that XIV can't keep playing to it's own strengths without copying the same pitfalls from other stories just because "the franchise did it".

Seriously, I hate that comeback. It's just a dumb handwave. As if everything should just be free from criticism because "it happened before". As if ARR, HW, SB, and ShB weren't good stories without that stuff.

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Or Shadowbringers, where Y'shtola gets another death fakeout and Thancred gets to share in the joy by having a moment that paints him as being on death's door but later he's just sitting around chilling, a little scuffed up. "Yeah bros, they just, you know, found me in time and saved me hehe."

I totally agree about ShB, honestly. That was when they started down the road of letting us know "This is now THE group." and you knew it wasn't going to change.

Like in Game of Thrones when you realized, "Oh, Jon Snow and Tyrion and Jamie and..." were all just going to keep making it because the show stopped being that "anything goes" sort of story.

[Yarathir]

I finished Shadowbringers couple of weeks before Endwalker got released so I was pretty fresh to both stories.
I don’t mind Metion/Endsinger - it’s a jRPG trope to have some hidden godlike end boss very vaguely related to the story.
I don’t even mind the tonal shifts that much.

For me the biggest problem is that Endwalker tries to resolve too many plots at once. Two expansions with the highest praised story - Heavensward and Shadowbringers - they both focus more or less on one topic in their base MSQ-s - sorting out Dragon and Light business.

Stormblood instead of focusing on one rebelion, just jumps from Alamigho to Doma back to Alamigho, not to mention that both have almost the same story and character tropes.

Then we have Endwalker where we stop Zenny and Fandydandy, try to finally finish Garlemald conflict, oh no Zodiark is free, try to counter Final Days and then we have Elpis/Cosmic stuff

We finally go to Garlemald, the big scary Empire which conquered half of the world, we get there via some big expedition army and… it’s just one zone. Same with the heavily marketed Moon - just one zone.

For me Endwalker ran kinda into the same problem as WoW nowdays have - where big lore-related locations are just relegated into a single zone - Argus, Nyalotha… those should be expansions, not patch zones.

Yet even if we wanted to fix it - it would be impossible with how the game is designed currently. In the ideal world Zodiark would be the last boss, we bring back the Final Days and deal with Elpis things in the patch content.
But the ideal world is not possible currently - Square never adds functional zones in the patch content. True, nowdays we even get some quest chains in the patch „zones” yet they are still just heavily instanced locations designed to funnel us through the story or send to proper areas.

Maybe changing Garlemald story and moving it to 7.0 would be better solution while expanding on Moon/Elpis would be better, but then you would not get the entire saga conclusion.

Square wanted good, they mostly did good, but with the limitations of both the game mechanics and story structure, everything got a bit convoluted and subpar compared to Shadowbringers or Heavensward.

Well, yeah, they did stuff Garlemald and Final Days stuff together. Presumably because they didn't believe Garlemald conflict alone could carry an expansion, and they were probably right on that front if you ask me.

I don't think the Moon was ever going to be more than one zone. Garlemald could have had a few locales to really cover the Empire, or at least a subzone city, though. Like Radz-at-Han in Thavnair, I'd agree with that. That said, remember that Amaurot was essentially a sub-zone that shows up in the ass-end of the Tempest.

I don't think Zodiark would be an ideal last boss at all. Zodiark is basically a broken meat-puppet piloted by a psychotic, sundered version of a nihilist with suicidal ideations. We dealt with Zodiark in 5.3 when we fought Elidibus-- Zodiark's true identity, not his organic, half-amputed mech suit.

There are things they could have done differently, but I'm not sure they would've been better. That said, I do hope they give us a little more Garlean attention. Gaius, Nero and Cid have been sorely absent, as has been any word of something akin to a Garlean Restoration Effort, which I feel is such a good opportunity it's basically a necessity.

As for the current story post-6.0? Hard to really judge that. 6.1 was effectively its own thing, building up to what 6.2 would really start. 6.2 is the actual start of the current arc, 6.3 was the continuation. Maybe it'll be good in the end, maybe it won't be, but 6.3 is too early because it basically has two patches of buildup compared to previous expansions' .3s, which built off the .0s. I'm content to wait and see.

I do understand the loss of more zones. Normally, you'd have had a Bozja but that effort was kind of split up between Island Sanctuaries and Criterion Dungeons. In my opinion, it's also too early to judge that. In their current iterations, they are alright to me, but they could and should be much more. Especially Island Sanctuary feels like it's a lot of foundational work they did for what is currently content they could've crammed into literally any existing zone at all. I want to assume that all that work went into it for a purpose that we haven't yet seen.

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I totally agree about ShB, honestly. That was when they started down the road of letting us know "This is now THE group." and you knew it wasn't going to change.

Like in Game of Thrones when you realized, "Oh, Jon Snow and Tyrion and Jamie and..." were all just going to keep making it because the show stopped being that "anything goes" sort of story.

Personally speaking, I'm of two minds. I'll gladly say ShB had very few real stakes. We handily deal with the light tearing us apart and our corporeal aether is basically healed after that, too. So if we're talking about stakes, I don't think any expansion had very many of them. Do I necessarily mind that, though? I don't know. I feel like that moment after Thancred's fight with Ran'jit would have made for a beautiful death. At the same time, I'm also content that it wasn't? So I'm kind of caught feeling conflicted. Part of me wanted him to die there, part of me is happy he didn't.

Alas, I feel like he's been sort of flanderized ever since. I like his relationship with Ryne, but nowadays, he just comes off as being "Ryne's dad", and that's it.

[Ghost of Cow]

Personally speaking, I'm of two minds. I'll gladly say ShB had very few real stakes. We handily deal with the light tearing us apart and our corporeal aether is basically healed after that, too. So if we're talking about stakes, I don't think any expansion had very many of them. Do I necessarily mind that, though? I don't know. I feel like that moment after Thancred's fight with Ran'jit would have made for a beautiful death. At the same time, I'm also content that it wasn't? So I'm kind of caught feeling conflicted. Part of me wanted him to die there, part of me is happy he didn't.

Alas, I feel like he's been sort of flanderized ever since. I like his relationship with Ryne, but nowadays, he just comes off as being "Ryne's dad", and that's it.

Yeah, I get that. It's kinda how I felt. Like...ok, I'm glad, but also you're just desensitizing me to these kinds of scenes and it slowly erodes any impact they can have. Especially when it was just that appropriate and perfect.

[Yarathir]

Yeah, I get that. It's kinda how I felt. Like...ok, I'm glad, but also you're just desensitizing me to these kinds of scenes and it slowly erodes any impact they can have. Especially when it was just that appropriate and perfect.

It really was a great setup. Almost like they were really considering killing him off and someone just flipped the switch on it last moment. I would feel a little less robbed of a good, emotional opportunity if he actually justified his continued existence, but like I said, he's now just reduced to being Ryne's dad. Almost like the original Thancred is just gone, replaced by this parent archetype who thinks about nothing but his daughter, or, as I'm told in the JP version, his little sister.

On the other hand, I love Urianger, though. Such a great character.

[Auxis]

I - big bad introduced in the last dungeon (yes you could argue that he is also the first boss of the game, but he does nothing in between, nothing in game implies that Garland will become Chaos)
III - big bad introduced in the penultimate dungeon
IV - big bad introduced 2 dungeons before end

I know Necron is a meme but it's not like we never had surprise villains before him.

Maybe FFX? I know we spend most of the game thinking Sin is the threat, then we learn that Jecht is Sin so we put him down out of mercy AND to end the threat. But I honestly can't remember if or when Yu Yevon is mentioned as the Big Bad - just that a few people throughout the game mention Yu Yevon (Bahamut's fayth, Lady Yunalesca, Maechen (the scholar guy with the hat we find every once in a while), and Grand Maester Mika.

Yu Yevon is kinda like Necron I guess? He's a threat but has no personal connection to the protagonists and just sorta appears. But He has more mention than Necron.

[Arlette]

Yeah, people always come back with that, but "the franchise does that" doesn't mean that every story from it has to fall into line the same way. Doesn't mean that XIV can't keep playing to it's own strengths without copying the same pitfalls from other stories just because "the franchise did it".

Seriously, I hate that comeback. It's just a dumb handwave. As if everything should just be free from criticism because "it happened before". As if ARR, HW, SB, and ShB weren't good stories without that stuff.

Every expansion has every one of the things you're criticizing EW of except for Time travel (Outside of ShB).

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Maybe FFX? I know we spend most of the game thinking Sin is the threat, then we learn that Jecht is Sin so we put him down out of mercy AND to end the threat. But I honestly can't remember if or when Yu Yevonuess? He's a threat but has no personal connection to the protagonists and just sorta appears. But He has more mention than Necron.

I believe Yunalesca is the first one to mention it after you beat her and then Mika does again before he lets himself fade away.

I mean if you want to extrapolate this point, the big bad of almost every Final Fantasy game ends up becoming God or [Big Bad] that becomes either possessed by God or consumes God and becomes a God themselves. Some games do it better (Like FF6) than others (FF9, even though its my personal favorite, Necron sucks) but it almost always comes down to that trope.

You can dislike that trope and that's fine, but if we're going to pick and choose which games to complain about that trope being used in, despite it being used in most of them, then that's where my issue comes in. And even in the ones you could argue don't, like FF8 or FF7, Ultimecia and Sephiroth are largely vaguely evil entities that the game doesn't really want to get too into specifics about (Even Sephiroth for how many FF7 properties there are) because by the end they're just Gods ultimately by their final defeat anyway.

I mean at least for Meteion, you get her full arc and see where she became the villain. You can argue that it happened too late, but that's an incredibly subjective discussion at that point. At least there was one. And arguably you can say that even though a character may be the final boss fight of a game, that doesn't even necessarily mean they were the Big Bad. I don't know if I would call her the big bad of FF14. There's multiple different people that could fill that role and just because she ends up being the last big bombastic trial fight, I dunno. Again its very subjective.

Is Meteion the final villain because she caused the final days? Is Zenos the final villain because he orchestrated the events that allow Meteion to cause the second Final Days? Is Emet Selch the final villain for creating the domino chain of events leading to Zenos' rise to power? Are the Ancients the final villain for creating a 'perfect' world where a Hermes can exist and have a crisis of faith and give rise to Meteion?

Part of the reason why FF14 is my favorite entry in the series is that all of the people I listed twist and turn and intermingle and there's not just a Yu Yevon or Necron or Kefka.

[Ghost of Cow]

On the topic of "stakes": One thing I wanted to point out is that "I'll destroy the world" or "I'll kill the player character" aren't really stakes at all. Because those things are never going to happen. It makes things extremely predictable and saps the excitement out of things because the outcome is obvious.

It's like betting your friend a billion dollars that something is going to happen. It's a big number, but you both know it's not real wager so there's no actual stakes involved. If you bet them one hundred dollars, now there's something real even though it's a smaller number.

I feel like XIV started out so strong in this regard. Even with the slog that was ARR sometimes, it still did a great job of pulling you in. Anything could happen, and the stakes were often so personal. We had events like like Nabriales' attack on the Scions, the Bloody Banquet, Papalymo's sacrifice...things that burst into the story and changed things, had far-reaching effects, had personal costs.

Then by Stormblood we had this established protagonist group and the story resolutions stopped being these big, dramatic events and more just a basic path to, "Good guys win" at the end, no matter how wildly unlikely that was. Sure, the stories themselves still had really strong beats here and there. Yotsuyu's parents, Vauthry's life, all of Emet, and so on. But it was still all just a smooth path to "Good guys win and nothing bad ever happens".

I was still ok with it all until Endwalker, then it finally got to me, I guess. I liked Garlemald, that was an example of XIVs finest storytelling, even if it was rather small and short. The rest just wore on me so much, and I hate that because I was so excited for EW. The body-swapping scene was the last straw for me, because it was the ONE chance to really shake things up and it just ended with yet another, "Nothing actually happened."

Maybe I should play through it again just to get some new perspective on it, perhaps the login queues and the rush at the time muddied it a bit for me.

[Aucald]

I thought XIV was at it's strongest when more..."grounded" for lack of a better word. Yes, there was magic and primals and such, but the story was so character driven and grounded in their real interactions and real conflicts that made sense and impacted the world.

Even when we started to get truly fantastical in ShB, the conflicts were still between characters. Flawed characters, understandable characters, their goals and ideas just putting them at odds.

Then EW just turns it all on it's head. Just turns it all into straight up wacky stuff where the characters are all lost in a quagmire of plot armor and spaceships and time travel and dynamis and a lack of any real stakes and a threat that was both out of left field but completely predictable at the same time. It really was XIV at it's weakest in my opinion.

I mean, that's your subjective take, and as such, I wouldn't say it is either objectively correct or incorrect - it just is what it is. I personally didn't mind the pivot from character-based drama to plot-based drama that began in ShB and ended in EW, but that's just my take. My post wasn't really about which mode of storytelling was better or worse, but more about what I felt was the actual objective mistake of lumping all of FF14's expansions into a single narrative in which a single "villain" appeared out of nowhere with no lead-up in the form of the Endsinger.

FF14 is a collection of narratives, broken up generally into expansions with multiple ongoing story arcs, multiple villains, and so forth. And even then, the Endsinger didn't show up with zero preamble, a fair portion of EW was all about where it came from, why it was doing what it was doing, and so on. The entire Elpis chapter basically covers the history of Meteion and her sisters, concluding with their corruption and reveal of their role in the greater arc. So comparing the Endsinger to the "Giant Space Flea from Nowhere" trope is, in my view, an invalid analogy.

[Grinning Serpent]

The ending of this 400+ hour long JRPG/visual novel revolves around a bird introduced during the final 20 hours, the final 5% of the story. FF9 was a 40 hour long game and Necron came during the last hour, which was the last 2.5% of the story. The comparison is apt. No other Final Fantasy games besides 9 and 14 introduce the main threat that late.

Incidentally, both games also pull a bait-and-switch. EW setup expectations of Zodiark being our major, final foe but he's killed a little past the halfway point and the real final boss is revealed afterwards. FF9 instead setup Kuja as the final villain throughout the game and he ends up being the appetizer before the final boss fight, who was introduced in the last like 5 minutes of the game.

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Endsinger wasn't a villain to me. She was an enemy and something to defeat/destroy, but I don't really see her as a villain. That's just my personal opinion, of course. I find that a villain requires autonomy, and the Endsinger was just a collective of Meteia, which in turn were basically just constructs shaped by dynamis. I.e. for me to consider Endsinger or any of the Meteia villains, they would had to have had their own motivations, but they really didn't. They got essentially brainwashed because internalizing dynamis is as natural to them as breathing is to us. As for how compelling they, and Hermes, were? I sort of agree with you, but I also disagree.

Again, I see Endsinger more as a manifestation of an universal force than a villain, so I'll leave her to the side for the moment. I feel like while they did make Hermes somewhat more compelling than he was pre-Endwalker, they still kind of missed the mark with him. I feel like it was a mistake for him to make his case over the deconstruction of vicious fantasy pitbulls that viciously attacked other creations without reason. In the end, I don't think Hermes was wrong to feel the way he did, but I do believe he was wrong to act upon his feelings the way he did. Especially when he helped the last Meteion escape and started acting chuuni about it.

Being that Endsinger is quite literally just "Necron but with actual story," she is effectively a manifestation of entropy. All life is misery and pain, I will spare everyone the difficulties of having to live life by ending all life. It's quite literally the same shit Necron says, just with different wording. Necron was a lot more anime about it, talking about a "zero realm" and shit, but that could just be bad translations. Like I said, Endsinger is a *fantastic* Final Fantasy villain, seeing as how she is literally the same villain from the Final Fantasy game that was an ode to Final Fantasy games of the past. She's just not very compelling compared to "real" villains in "real" stories. Her motivations are too simple, too bland. Especially when just previously in the same damn story, we had a villain that started out bland and uninteresting but went on to gain some amount of nuance (Fandaniel/Amon.) A Jon Irenicus or Transcendent One, she ain't.

On the flipside, I also really like Amon's moment in the Aitascope. All his dooming, all his nihilism, and still he has a moment of introspection.

"Even as the words pass my lips, I am filled with doubt. Has my search reached its end? Was this the only way? After all these years... is this the answer I was hoping for?"

The VA might have carried it a lot, but it was a good moment. Alas, in my playthrough I had no sympathy to spare for him despite that, so I didn't pick the friendly answer. Still thought it was kind of a poignant scene, until Asahi shows his ugly mug.

I never had sympathy for any of the Ascians, Emet-Selch included. Bunch of mass murdering genocidal lunatics. Yeah, sure, it's sad what happened to them over the thousands of years of loneliness and despair and whatever, but they're still responsible for murdering millions of innocents and they're basically pulling the Nazi card when they say "yeah but they're not even *people* so it doesn't count." Miss me with that shit, fam. All of the Emet-Selch fanclub shit is really just wanting to bang/be banged by him anyway. Dig past the surface and that's always there. XIV players make the old "fans of night elves" in WoW look like Mormons.

Anyway, I digress. At the end of the day, I don't need every antagonistic force to be Emet-Selch. Emet-Selch is good as he is. A guy who resorted to atrocities out of sheer desperation, who had understandable motives, motives most anyone can find themselves in, but whose intentions and machinations inherently clashed with "ours". That's great, and I will probably always think he's XIV's best bad guy, but I don't need XIV to only pump out discount Emet-Selchs from here on out. We have an unabashed, shamelessly and apathetically immoral guy like Zenos, we have the misguided and despairing nihilist in Hermes and we have Emet-Selch, a guy who seeks to return where he belongs, to reclaim his world, his friends, at any cost. Whose years of solitude have chafed at him, ground him down until he experienced very few moral quandaries or was outright able to push them from his mind.

Maybe it's doomer mentality but I guarantee we're going to see more store brand Emets in the future. While the writers in XIV are certainly capable of better, I think it's too easy to just rinse and repeat things that are proven to get players to do the "soyjaks pointing at thing" meme to get your game out there in public social media spaces. Full doomium here, but I think EW is going to be representative of how XIV production will be moving forward, unless/until the game reaches a point where they need to do their own "Legion" revamp of the game. Square-Enix is not doing very well as a company outside of CBU3 continually shitting out golden eggs. XIV is basically the company credit card at this point - they're going to spend the minimum amount necessary to keep it signing the checks for the company so that their series of fucking idiot CEOs can continue chasing NFTs, blockchains, and shitting on obscenely expensive Marvel licenses. It's to the point that I honestly may not get 7.0, even if I have friends that do get it. I made myself get EW even though I had serious reservations about it, because my friends were playing, and because I wanted to see the end of the story. 7.0 no longer has the story hook (I honestly couldn't care less about shit that happened after 6.0, I think they should have ended the WoL's story there) and after how unsatisfying EW has been, I don't think "but my friends play!" will be enough to convince me to get it.

But since we haven't received firm details about what's in 7.0 other than the facelift, maybe they'll surprise me. Can always hope for better while expecting the worst, right?

Lastly, as for the callbacks, the fanservice, etc. Well, I'm not shocked? It is indeed the conclusion to a decade long story and with that comes reminiscing. Reminding the player of where they started, how far they've come, and the faces they met along the way. I thought it was pretty apt, and also rather inevitable.

Yeah, it was expected, but it got tiresome. How many "grab all the random NPCs from past quests and throw them at the player" cutscenes did we have? Like fucking *three*? Some of them made sense, others felt like more egregious HEY REMEMBER THIS NPC THAT EXISTS AND WAS IN THAT QUEST YOU DID??? inclusions.

Doesn't help matters that it feels like class quests are in this weird limbo of kinda-canon/kinda-not canon. Like, Scholars literally cure the fucking tonberry plague - how the *fuck* are the cured or at least "stabilized" Nymians not involved in a world-ending catastrophe? Those people survived more than one catastrophe of their own, I think they might be quite helpful in averting this one.

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Boy, howdy, do I love my stakes.

Like when 90% of the results of ARR's finale are basically undone in Heavensward because Raubahn is still alive and we save him, then find out that Nanamo never died because Lolorito was so high IQ that he swapped out Teledji's legitimate poison for a milder poison that basically just puts her in a deep slumber. And then the elementals just help us pluck Y'shtola from the lifestream. Oh and Thancred is practically unmarred and was just living his best hobo life for a bit. And "Yda" and Papalymo are just doing their own stuff. Oh, and Alisaie gets poisoned but it's okay because the chirurgeons will take care of it and she can just sleep it off. And Urianger didn't betray us, he was just triple-crossing for our own sake.

Or Shadowbringers, where Y'shtola gets another death fakeout and Thancred gets to share in the joy by having a moment that paints him as being on death's door but later he's just sitting around chilling, a little scuffed up. "Yeah bros, they just, you know, found me in time and saved me hehe."

Yeah, you're hitting pretty much all the reasons I don't rate XIV's story as GOATed, even among video game stories. It's a fun ride and I enjoyed it but it has way too many "this is just bad storytelling" moments for me to give it GOATed status like some people clamor for.

Thancred should've died or at least been permanently disabled after his fight with Ran'jit, as his character arc was more or less concluded by that point. He had some input in later events, so maybe death wouldn't be necessary but I definitely think they should have at least Arenvald'd him or something.

Maybe they felt one Scion faking their death every fucking expansion wasn't enough, so now we have two!

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Alas, I feel like he's been sort of flanderized ever since. I like his relationship with Ryne, but nowadays, he just comes off as being "Ryne's dad", and that's it.[/spoiler]

Flanderization is absolutely what we're seeing and what I dread will continue into 7.0. ShB established the boxes that each Scion fits into and EW codified it.

I keep going back to the "soyjaks pointing at thing" meme because it feels so fucking *apt* for what Square is doing. They know what they're doing. They *knew* the OMG CHEEZBORGER scene would turn into a viral meme and get Endwalker going viral on twitter and reddit and whatever.

It feels slimy, like they're intentionally going for what is marketable. Comparing it to post-books Game of Thrones is pretty accurate, sadly.

[Yarathir]

Can't say I disagree with most of what you have to say because a lot of it is pretty subjective and I can't exactly dissent against your experience of things. If it no longer appeals to you, I don't think you need to continue playing. It's all about your own enjoyment at the end of it. I had the same with WoW: I continued playing it for a bit for the sake of playing with friends, but in the end, I couldn't even bring myself to do that anymore and unsubbed cold turkey. Do what you need, video games are, at their core, a form of entertainment; if it no longer offers any of that, it's fine to no longer play it.

But I will say that I remain of the opinion that we effectively took care of and addressed Zodiark in 5.3.

[Auxis]

Can't say I disagree with most of what you have to say because a lot of it is pretty subjective and I can't exactly dissent against your experience of things. If it no longer appeals to you, I don't think you need to continue playing. It's all about your own enjoyment at the end of it. I had the same with WoW: I continued playing it for a bit for the sake of playing with friends, but in the end, I couldn't even bring myself to do that anymore and unsubbed cold turkey. Do what you need, video games are, at their core, a form of entertainment; if it no longer offers any of that, it's fine to no longer play it.

But I will say that I remain of the opinion that we effectively took care of and addressed Zodiark in 5.3.

Zodiark was no longer a threat until someone took control of him, correct? He was pretty much just sitting in his prison holding his Laws in place preventing the Dynamis change from occurring?

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Also, anyone know who Scarmiglione's english VA is? He sound suspiciously like Hermes/Amon or maybe Asahi (its tripping me up a bit because Amon as Fan'daniel possessing Asahi sounds partially like Asahi). But I cant find a credit online, IMDB doesnt have him. It has Golbez, but neither Scarm nor crazy wind lady.