Originally Posted by
Grinning Serpent
Big disagree for me. I felt that EW had some pretty significant pacing issues, and the fact that they effectively sidelined Garlemald to turn the bulk of the second act into "people get sad and turn into monsters" didn't sit well with me. Like, why put so much effort into introducing the Telephoroi and resurrected Zenos in the post-game ShB patches when they were sidelined for a depressed tween introduced at the 11th hour?
I also hated Elpis and everything associated with it on the grounds of "timey wimey bullshit is a terrible narrative device and it almost never works out well." But I was never part of the Emet-Selch fanclub, and I didn't want to bang/be banged by Hythlo/Venat/Emet-Selch like the rest of the apparently very thirsty playerbase, so maybe that's just me. Clearly a lot of people liked it, so I'm perfectly fine with just accepting it wasn't my cup of tea. Endsinger was a *very* Final Fantasy final boss... and while that gave me nostalgia, I also tend to not think of "Final Fantasy final boss" as a generally good narrative end to a story. She kind of came out of nowhere in the final act of the game, at the same time they introduced dynamis as a retconned explanation for why things happened (kind of a shitty resolution to the "what 'sound' was Emet-Selch talking about?" plot thread if you ask me, but YMMV.) Not to mention the good guy brigade just going "idk I guess?" when Zenos shows up and wants to munch on what was left of the mothercrystal.
I don't understand where people get emotional investment in Ultima Thule from. Gorgeous zone, great music, awful plot. Sacrifices aren't meaningful, or sacrifices, if you're literally telling the player that they can make it all better when they feel like it. At that point it just becomes a monologue conga line.
There's also the separate issue that, for me... I don't really like the Scions that much? They're okay. But I feel like they're getting more and more Bowdlerized with every expansion, because Square-Enix doesn't want to threaten their cash cow. Yet with any story that's expected to be told for such a long stretch, and where the designated protagonist is effectively faceless and mute (at least Link has the benefit of expression, if not voice...), it's hard to keep using the same characters over and over, especially when by all rights they finished their story arcs long ago. Like, by the end of ShB, Thancred should have been retired as a primary character - either he dies protecting someone (as with many, I think he should have killed Ran'jit and died shortly afterwards from the strain, during that duty you play as him in ShB) or he's just sidelined like Krile and new characters become part of the "player party." See also: every other Scion that's part of the "player party" right now. Even the twins. None of the primary characters are really growing or advancing or changing in these narratives.
Alphie hasn't really changed substantially since the end of ARR - he's still the same arrogant, stubborn kid that expects success all the time, fails, does the shonen anime protagonist HEROIC DETERMINATION thing, and repeats. Alisaie is still a tsundere-for-WoL kid that gets angry and hits things and starts chewing the scenery as soon as Designated NPC That Will Die Later, in fact, dies later because they were marked for death the moment Alisaie made them her emotion pet. Y'shtola has never once stopped being a catty, "I seek knowledge!" person with zero complexity or nuance to their character, the downside of being the designated waifu. G'raha stopped developing after ShB, becoming just an uwu WoL-senpai husbando counterpart to Y'shtola. Urianger talks about being more open and honest with people and then in literally the very next fucking sentence wants to hide him doing another duplicity. Oh, and they mentioned Moenbryda, that one NPC that was introduced and then killed off a month or two later (and now less than an hour of gameplay these days), to the point that most people only vaguely remember who she is or what she did other than "yeah she was Urianger's gf or something idk." Great voice acting in that scene, seriously A+ work, but not exactly good storytelling.
I dunno. I think ShB benefited *greatly* from being a "contained episode." They could introduce new characters without having to worry about tying them into the greater whole, and they could have the Scions be somewhat different from their normal selves, owing to them arriving on the First months or years ahead of the WoL.