Thinking aboutit, it's very fitting that the final boss was sent into space with a question from her 'father' while the hero was sent out with an answer from their 'mother'. Suddenly it makes so much sense to have Flow playing over the last scene with Meteion. The WoL was Venat's answer to Hermes's question. Dang that story works on a bunch of levels 🤣
To go a bit deeper, Venat couldn't figure the "Answer" herself. She created the situation where she forced all the livings to find that exact answer for the sake of their civilization. That results in us, the WoL, that also procure all the answers from everyone we met, compiling them all together then give it to Meteion.
While both Endsinger and The Jailer were both inserted into the immediate forefront of the story, the Jailer only received an articles worth of dialogue to the point where the player was openly confused and puzzled by his motivation and character arc. Endsinger however received a novel's worth of dialogue and we as players got to interact with her on a personal level and truly understand her motivations and goals which made us not only sympathize with her, but she helped conclude the FFXIV story.
The writing team planned the story far ahead. We now know that the morse code in the crystal tower cinematic that said “its all wrong” was the endsinger. The biggest problem with the jailer is the retcon they did to make him the bad guy. They should have released shadowland after two or three more expansion. That way they could have build a story.
@@marc789 Eh, the morse code was supposed to tie into Eureka, apparently, before it got dropped. People picked it up and noted it seemed like something that would work for the Endsinger and the dev team went "sure, let's go with that". Because it still works. It was a dropped plot thread that managed to find itself a new home. Because the writing in XIV is just that well done.
So in short, despite being similar, the Endsinger succeeded where the Jailer failed, because the Endsinger wasn't written by hacks under the direction of charlatans.
Endwalker has a single dungeon that accomplishes exactly what Shadowlands should have done with their entire DLC. The Aitiascope delves into the 'afterworld' and in the 45 minute dungeon you're helped along by the lingering spirits of those you've loved and lost, and those you've challenged and felled. How an entire expansion doesn't even do as much as a single dungeon is beyond me.
That's exactly why the Altiascope was so well placed. It was the final tribute to the setting: "this is where we appreciate the world and lore we share", which is followed by the final zone where, as Jesse puts it so well, "this zone is about you".
It's because of the design philosophy of the two games. Shadowlands was just another corporate-driven narrative that was designed to essentially redeem Sylvanas and empower her with a few other characters included as well. It seemed like the writing essentially painted Sylvanas as still being a victim of Arthas at the end of it all, and empowered her by reducing Arthas to nothing so she could have a big speech at the end about how she's better than him and he's nothing and deserves to be forgotten. It was a giant middle finger to the fandom in a lot of ways and it follows the format that most corporate-driven media has taken old beloved franchises. Case in point, Star Wars and how they shit all over Luke to empower Rey and essentially killed off the old beloved characters so the new main characters wouldn't get shadowed by them. Endwalker meanwhile was a passionately written narrative that is meant to connect everything together and conclude an actual storyline that's been going on since technically 1.0 but definitely 2.0. The writing was all about our characters, the characters around our characters, and how we would (with support from our allies) save the day against impossible odds. XIV has often focused the stories on other characters, but ours is a constant cornerstone and catalyst within those stories. We're not just a glorified errand boy who sits back to let the other heroes have their big moments - we either have our own big moments or we empower and help others to have theirs. We feel like our actions matter and that everything leading up to the latest expansion has built up to it on one long journey. Shadowlands was just another expansion whose story ultimately will be forgotten and swept aside for the next expansion. Endwalker was the climax of an actual 10-year saga. Blizzard attempted to coin Shadowlands as if it was some end to the saga that begun in Warcraft 3... but it wasn't in the slightest, lol. That was just god awful buzzword marketing to try and bring devoted Warcraft fans back to see the finale. FFXIV is designed with love and respect to the playerbase, while WoW at this point is designed with whatever's necessary to keep subscriptions up. Shadowlands had a massive amount of fanservice potential and they squandered it in the most spectacular fashion, showing how tone-deaf and corporate-driven WoW really is at this point. That's more a testament to how Square Enix lets Yoshi-P and his team do their thing more than anything, even though they're greedy af in a lot of ways too they at least let their developers do their thing and focus on keeping the players happy and satisfied. Corporate Japan is also much different politically and culturally than corporate America for better or worse. In this case, it's definitely for the better.
there is one simple explanation as to how Shadowlands could have fucked up so much: Alex Afrasiabi. The douchebag that had a boner for Sylvanas, got terminated for sexual harassment, and left without telling anyone his plans for her story, so the rest of the team had to stitch *something* together from his scraps.
Zenos behavior actually is shown since after Zodiark where he walks away from us because he knows we are too busy thinking about the final days and he'll come for us once we have resolved the situation. From the very start he knew we would succed
In the end, he really was our best friend. Guy went Super Saiyan and flew across the universe on beams of light and helped us take down the literal embodiment of Entropy just so that we could have a proper brodown together.
@@Maria_Erias Yup. On top of that he finally learned the golden rule: consent is key. All he had to do to get us to fight him, was ask. All the scheming and committing genocide to try and goad us into confronting him only served to distract us further from him as we were to busy trying to save the innocent lives he was putting at risk to give him the time of day. So once he realized this after our fight with Zodiark that's when he bided his time and waited for the opportunity to approach us on our own terms and simply...ask to fight us.
@@shawnward8361 It's unfortunate that they didn't follow trough and actually allowed you to choose, since forcing you to duel regardless of your response goes against the entire point of Zeno's development. Personally I'm all for fighting the crazy pretty boy, just a huge missed opportunity.
@@Ya0w While that would've been an interesting option to completely skip the actual "final battle", it'd also be insanely anticlimatic....and also kind of depressing. Zenos finally chooses patience over impatience, flies across the universe, helps the WoL fight the manifestation of existential despair, all for the WoL to say "Nah I'm good" to a final fight? What is he to do after that? Just drop his scythe, sit down, and die? Eh. Again, giving the player that option would've been interesting, but I feel it makes far more sense for Zenos to revert back to his impatient ways and fight anyway regardless of consent.
@@soulechelon2643 I know a few people who were so bummed about the ending of endwalker because they HATED Zenos, and wanted to do everything in their power to deny him his one wish, but the dialog didn't let them express that. Of course, we can't actually choose to leave him, he's too powerful and dangerous, but just a dialog path or something that shows just how much the WoL doesn't want to do the fight would have made them happy
Honestly the beautiful thing about FF14 is you don't even need lore videos to explain anything. It's all there. You just have to look for it and take the time to see it.
Like I said in a previous comment, I don't really care about mmos. Until this video I assumed they were sprinkled with story and the real meat was just doing stuff with your friends. I would 1000% watch more retrospective/breakdown content from FF14. I'm gonna go find those lore videos that were mentioned.
only thing i worry about in FF is a lack of continued development of optional side stuff. especially when there is alot of crossover in the research between side quests after doing all of the ShB job quests and new patch MSQ, yet its never mentioned so far and i assume is because its its optional yet it has a strong impact.
No one makes lore videos for FFXIV because everyone gets the entire story from just playing the game. Its not like Warhammer or WoW where you have to dive into a billion different pieces of media to understand what's going on. What has more value is story analysis and that's much harder than just reading off entries of a wikipedia article. This video is analysis and its good. No one wants someone to just recap what happened in Stormblood for them.
Zenos being your biggest fan still makes me smile. His absolute certainty that you will be beat any obstacle in your path is oddly heartwarming. There's no doubt, no hesitation. He's honestly _baffled_ that your enemy still stands.
@@TheAlderisAstari I wouldn't have been surprised if he decided NOT to give us a ride. "Bruh. You're slacking on this - you feeling all right? I'm gonna sit right over here and wait till you get off your butt and get through. I WILL NOT BE THE WINGS TO BEAR YOU TO YOUR FINAL TRIAL. HENCEFORTH YOU SHALL WALK."
So you're telling me WoW and FFXIV both let you visit the afterlife, the former through an entire expansion and the latter in a single dungeon, and somehow that one dungeon had more fanservice than almost all of Shadowlands?? How is that even possible??
The problem is, there IS fanservice in Shadowlands, plenty of it, but it's all used as side-narrative. The only place we really interact with it, is during the freeing of Alexandros Mograine together with Darion... and even then they barely acknowledged it and going with 'we are going to talk off-screen'. Pretty much everything else falls under 'stay a while and listen'. Yes it tells a story, but it does not feel good. Imagine this: During the fight with Dormazain, rather then Garrosh being tortured during the fight, our entrance gives him the chance to break free and he starts to fight the Boss, he becomes the main tank and the battle becomes a race of beating Dormazain before Garrosh perishes and the boss can one shot kill us. He still uses up to much and dissolves after the face, but with a grin on his face of 'In the end, I still am tougher then you!'.
Man, even your 5-minute animation of the jailor being beaten by all the past forces of Azeroth gave me chills when the music swelled. I'm convinced, they should have gone full fanservice, as cheesy as it would have been it would have been awesome nonetheless.
I had never even considered what I would have liked Shadowlands to have been, but this is it. When he started describing his idea, I actually started to tear up. It made me think back to all of those moments I experienced with those characters as I grew up and everything that was going on in my life at the time. It would have been the perfect time to be the passing of the baton. I'll never forget the experience of Endwalker and now I'm even more upset with what Shadowlands could have been. Oh well, here's to, hopefully, the new era of WoW.
@@Madlad000 In i would agrue they hate them, I think they only see the haters and choose to turn a blind eye to the rest that just love their game and want to love it.
I think it's also because, in my opinion, Zodiark wasn't really the "big bad" for most the story, it was the Ascians. We fought them, they were in every expansion and no matter what expansion we were in we were waiting for them to appear. So it makes sense that the 'true' ending was putting them to rest.
Yeah, Zodiark pretty much became irrelevant as an actual, possible villain the moment Elidibus got sent to crystal baby jail. Even before then, though, it was that the Unsundered were _tempered_ by Zodiark, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're carrying out his will-with Elidibus separated from him, Zodiark had no will anyway. They were essentially compelled to do anything to ensure Zodiark's survival because the tempering was powerful enough to hold after some 12, 000 years, and naturally it's in Zodiark's best interests to survive, but Zodiark was not telling them to murder a bunch of people in the rejoinings; that was a plan the Ascians themselves came upon in order to fulfill the objective they were compelled into honoring. The "evil" in their plans did not come from Zodiark, and Zodiark was not the actual threat.
@@LedZaid What they actually meant is that Ascians are not supposed to be tempered. It's a wrong perception and already been debunked in the story. These unsundered weren't actually tempered. They were just lost causes because of the time and grieves it took to the current setting. Emet, for an instance, was shown to not being influenced by Zodiark at all. He was just so depressed and flipped his own characteristic over the past thousands of years.
@@sleepythemis Zodiark ceased being a villain the moment they said it was a primal used to forestall the final days. It was then obvious that this mysterious, cataclysmic event would be the central conflict.
The "power of friendship" moment at the end of Endwalker is perfectly set up because we are currently in a realm that *LITERALLY is influenced by the strength of one's emotions.* The Scions praying for you to remain safe is a direct callback to the original leader Louisoix, who sacrificed his life to seal Bahamut and save everyone. They weren't able to save him then, but they are able to do so now.
In the endsinger fight when the 2nd phase starts. It’s more than just a the power of friendship moment. What the Scions did there was complete something they started all the way back at the opening cinematic of A Realm Reborn and failed at… …they did the evocation of the 12 and succeeded this time. It also served as a great callback.
This is so true! I loved that scene in the movie where they were all praying and still failed to contain Bahamut. But this time, their efforts paid off.
I thought they were praying to invoke the power of Dynamis. The prayer for Bahamut NEEDED the places of worship so the 12 could hear them. They tell you this in the Aglala raids. The 12 can't hear any old prayer they need to have a connection. That why in the cinematic you see them walking away from those places.
I think another good point as to why Endwalker worked so well is giving you power creep with out "giving" you power creep. When you fight the Endsinger, "Who is this universal threat", you do so in a realm of dynamis. Dynamis being this force this is shaped by the will of those around. You the player character are not strong enough to beat it because you have some unapproachable, but because those around you believe you can't loose. To me this is a big deal because it lets Final Fantasy still have not galactic threats that can still "threaten" the player.
God I continue to love how well they wrote dynamis in. We win because we believe we in, and that allows us miracles in the form of our LB3s. Others can produce these miracles too (like Yugiri Godmodwalker), so the 'bare minimum' of our miracles is nothing special. It's when we're seeped in the realm of Dynamic, where belief becomes reality, where Power of Friendship becomes a reality, that we see our power swell. We aren't more powerful, but rather, circumstances align in the most splendidly self-destructive manner possible for a being whose whole schtick requires driving YOU to despair, only to find out that nothing it does, even the despair of a whole universe, is capable of doing so. Battle is not a literal physical conflict in Endwalker's finale, but rather a conceptual battle, where you and your summoned allies attack on a conceptual level with techniques you've gained absolute faith in in battles across Eorzea and Norvrandt, against a being attacking you on a conceptual level with what it believes it can do. And it fails. It cannot bring you that despair. You walk around it, and it eventually just resorts to 'bigger bomb', and even then, you don't give up, your friends don't give up. You effectively give the Endsinger the bird (hah), and it can only drive itself inward in despair and devour itself until there is none left as there is nothing it can do but despair as it cannot drive us to. There is no better way to write Power of Friendship. FFXIV did it, and I give them mad respect for it. Endwalker's a fucking masterclass of storywriting.
@@katomamundara8106 with every expansion we are reminded of the true final boss, godbert, who has the ability to squat the end singer in half, and create relics with his own sweat!
@@katomamundara8106 Ah yes, because suddenly having a new type of magic that NO ONE HAD HEARD of except like two people in the entire world and like ONE person in the old Ascian society was SO well written in. That wasn't pulled straight from someones rectum at all!
I remember the phase transition in the Endsinger fight. It was like almost midnight, I was emotionally drained from all the stuff on UT, and, as the music ramped up to 11, all I could think was “gods, I love this game.” 😭
I remember my first time hitting that fight. When the phase transition happens, and someone goes, "That's it, boys. Enrage timer hit." And someone else went, "Wait, how did she enrage so soon?!" Only to be met with, "Not her enrage timer. Ours."
I stayed up to finish it off too, and I remember weeping and laughing at the same time when the music kicked in and we started blasting. It was an incredible moment in gaming for me, and I don't think I'll ever forget it.
I'm a lore enthusiast, so the callback to the fall of Dalamud and Bahamut's release at phase change made me YELL out loud at my desk. And when the "Maker's Ruin" theme kicked in at 30 seconds into the music? I was in genuine happy-tears. It's been our unofficial theme since ARR, and now it was OUR BOSS MUSIC. And that's something else that FFXIV absolutely nailed; the sound design woven into the story was magnificent. Jesse could do an entire episode (and I hope he does, if he hasn't already!) on the storytelling done just through the sound design throughout the entire game, another reason why Endwalker hits like Truck-kun isekai-ing an anime protagonist
one simple reason i feel it works in FFXIV and did not work in WOW is because FFXIV did not negatively retcon/destroy very well established lore and motives of beloved characters. WOW writers gives off the impression that they do not care about ANY of the characters in the game and they are willing to destroy them and kill them off just to move their narrative forward. the last 3 expansions in WOW just turned sylvanas from a brilliant strategic ranger general of silvermoon into yet another lunatic warmongering warchief of the horde. FFXIV writers on the other hand feel like they care about the characters in the game as much as we do and pour over all the established character development before they decide what to do to move the story forward. on top of this they give characters the respect they deserve and dont just kill them off screen, possibly worse actually, unceremoniously getting stabbed in a cutscene like a scrub, in some obscure side quest or their favorite make you read a book to find out. can you tell i'm salty about what they did to half the horde cast?
Even after 1 year, and finishing endwalker 3 times now, "the walk" end the endsinger always makes me cry. Light the way my frends will we see you again. This was a story that took 10 years, and I will always keep thous in heart.
The thing that helped 14 work so well is that they were willing to end the "but there's someone bigger!" trope that the structure of MMOs seems to make mandatory. You finish the big bad in an epic finale, and go on a whole new adventure. There's no "oh, you beat despair but behind the scenes urianger was actually manipulating her to get back at all the people who ignored his dialogue and he's actually even more powerful and is betraying you for skipping cutscenes in ARR!"
@@SporeTres His enrage would be to force you to watch all his voiced cutscenes without skipping them, then quizzing the raid on things he said in them.
Dawntrail is gonna make it even better. News doesn't neccessarily travel very far, especially outside the Eorzean region. We're going to a place people don't know us. Going on an adventure of our own choosing. They kept saying on the WoW team interviews how they can't go back to that. That you're this hero forever and MUST do crazier and crazier. No you don't. There's no reason you can't take a vacation. You're powerful, yes, but you're not a god. You still rely on everyone around you. Beach episode gonna feel so good.
RIP to all the WoL we lost along the way that didnt get to see the end to the journey. and thank you for this video in general, such a great break down on what makes endwalker, no, all of 14 so great.
I played WoW for almost 17 years at the time I quit, and have just played FFXIV for a year now, and I can't agree with you more. I think a big part of it boils down to the fact that Warcraft can't close a story line that is satisfying to the player, where as behind the Jailer there's something else that's WORSE that we know nothing about while not caring at all for the villain we just killed, while with the Endsinger, you did it. You defeated the big bad of the universe, but that's NOT the end of the story, YOUR story. There's still more to the world, the universe, more to do and see, but we can move away from the Final Days and the Ascians and explore the same world with new eyes. I think for me, and something you touched on here, a lot of it is that it felt like I mattered as a player, that my actions drove the story, where as in WoW I felt like I was a background character and being thrown at anything that was remotely a threat. Even now looking at Dragonflight.. it feels like a new direction, but very much the same, as we will fight this villain, find out something deeper is going on, be thrown at them-- rinse and repeat. Where as in FFXIV I have no idea what is going to happen in the Void, where the story is going to take us next, and I'm excited for every minute of it.
I think another reason for Endwalker working is that it fits the overall themes and development of our charackter. ARR-we were the wide eyed adventurer starting our journey HW- we learned the world can be a hard place and for what we stand SB- we became a guardian of the people and champion of good ShB- we were broken and beaten down we learned we cant do everything but its important to get back up. EW- we are done, we beat our weakness we grew we learned that not magics pr big swords make us strong but our hope and friendship lets our heart shine bright into the darkness we are not the warrior of light or darkness we are the Warrior of Hope and we are here to kick ass and repay estiniens debt! As epic and as sad as many moments in EW were it felt like our charackter was just in peak condition to beat up whatever comes along. I mean remember sharlayan we went there and didn't take shit from them, the epic entry into garlemald and later on soldiers shitting their pants when they realize who we are and then the final area were the big bad basicaly panics because we get closer and closer and can't get beaten down. Like our friend realized we are in for the thrill of adventure and nothing can stop us
I remember when I was in the middle of the Elpis section, that I was thinking: "Is this where the game is heading? The big baddie is just a menace from outer space?". But after the report, everything made sense. Meteion and Hermes reasoning, why the Ancients summoned Zodiark, what motivated Hydaleyn to sunder the world, etc. Not only that, but the way Endwalker handled FFXIV most beloved villain was stelar. Imagine how much different Shadowlands would have been if Arthas would have been given just a fraction of the treatment Final Fantasy gave to Emet-Selch.
something else btw, The Endsinger wasn’t even THAT out of left field. She’s not JUST a “Villain whose always been the real villain” . She’s another product of ascian hubris. I think everyone always thought that the end of the ancients would of come from ancient hubris. Unlike the jailer, who has nothing to do with anything from what i can tell lol
Let's keep in mind that Zenos and Fandaniel are both byproducts of the two major civilizations the ascians, namely Emet, created to further chaos and their grand plan on the source. Only for both together to end up destroying that plan utterly and completely to its very core. Even reigniting the very apocalypse it was meant meant to shield aetherys against.
In WoW you are merely "Expansion Protag Title" to EVERYONE. Whereas in XIV, you are addressed by your ACTUAL NAME and there are NPC's both major and relatively minor that you interacted with personally who still remember you even expansions later when they return in current events. WoW is a (poorly managed) story that, in the grand scheme of things, happens with or without your player character. WoW's main problem is that it tries to shoehorn your player character as "DA CHAMPION" into a story where the other main lore NPCs are both narratively and quite literally bigger than you and can ultimately do the shit they do with or without your involvement. XIV is the story of your progression from some rando adventurer who ultimately becomes the WoL, and the things that you achieve WITH the friends you make.
Where Endsinger brings an arc to a satisfying conclusion, Jailer reveals that the arc is being dragged on even further. Good musings Jesse. I can only hope that one day we actually stop getting "but wait! there's an EVEN BIGGER BAD GUY THAT I WAS PROTECTING YOU FROM!" in Warcraft.
That's been something Blizzard has been doing ever since they ran out of baddies from the RTS. The three best expansions - BC, Wrath, and Legion - all dealt with enemies and characters that we'd faced in Warcraft 2 and especially 3. All of the others ones have been, "But wait! There's something even bigger out there!" Cataclysm set up N'Zoth. WoD set AU Archimonde. BfA set up the Jailer. Shadowlands set up whatever the hell it did. Space jellyfish from Beyond.
She really, REALLY does not though. And I love XIV. She's a last minute asspull whose powered by literal space magic. She is Woobie, destroyer of worlds. We were robbed of a satisfying conclusion for the war with the Empire, we were robbed of a satisfying ending with the Ascians and Zodiark, we were robbed of a satisfying ending of Hydalen, an ending we didn't NEED by the way, and ultimately we were even robbed of a satisfying ending of the bad guy who had popped up a few hours before. Endwalker just recycled content from its earlier expansions, following Shadowbringers nearly beat for beat while tossing in Xenos and Fandanial (('s corpse)) from Stormblood. We're just seeing a repeat of the early WoW days, when they could do no wrong according to the community. This writing team is still far better but they aren't the amazing writers that some people for some reason think they are.
(XIV SPOILERS) It was so insanely brave of them to let Zodiark end the way he did, and it speaks volumes towards the confidence the writers had in knowing that they could make this work. It would have been so easy to infuriate everyone by letting them down so hard, yet they nimbly bypassed all of the potential pitfalls to make everyone love the story. I think what helped more than anything is that Zodiark had always been a faceless McGuffin though; since they never fully fleshed him out it also didn't bother anyone too much when he was cast aside so easily. It was a masterfully constructed twist.
the lead writer was once interviewed and asked what her favorite character was. She answered Fandaniel and got a WTF reaction from basically everyone in the community. Having played through Endwalker in can totally see her point
Big disagree, I think the story took a massive hit in quality in Endwalker, and their treatment of Zodiark is part of the reason why. It's very clear now, especially after several interviews, that the story of Endwalker was massively rushed, and all of this content deserved so much more room to breath than what it got. EW while you're doing the MSQ has a lot of emotional high points that in the moment make it feel good, but especially going back through it on alts or just reflecting more deeply on it, reveals just how swallow and rushed the story in EW is. HW and ShB were leagues better than what we got in EW.
Nah I felt like they did Zodiark dirty. If you're a new player it's kind of whatever but for those who have been following the game a long time, Zodiark was built up for literally like 8 or 9 years and to just bitchslap him and then move on to funny rabbit people was a letdown for me. He's one of the most important figures in the setting and they almost treat him like a joke. I'm fine with the way the plot played out, but I think they should have given way more time and attention to hyping up the Zodiark fight. It shows that Endwalker is really 2 expansions worth of story condensed into 1 and so they rush through quite a lot of things that would ordinarily be given a lot of time. I can only hope that one day we get an Ultimate fight where they do the big boy justice.
It's probably important to bear in mind that we don't fight a fully powered Zodiark as he's only a little more than halfway complete; his incomplete state is the reason we beat him so soundly. Zodiark's death bringing the final days is also something that was likely in the works since at least Shadowbringers, when it's revealed that Zodiark had saved the world from the final days; being portrayed as a savior was perhaps a bit of a twist in itself when up until that point Zodiark had been portrayed as a dark elder primal trying to plunge the world into darkness.
@@richardwicker8456 Looking at Zodiark's boss model makes it look like he was purely created to fight the Endsinger though: the tentacles, meteor throwing, creation magic, etc. The only way to get Endsinger to Ethyrias in EW was to kill Zodiark and there's usually only one person who can do that, the WoL.
The Endsinger fits a perfectly Square peg that the writers left a long time ago. That's how they've always done their story structure - how to make things open-ended so that when they've finally figured out everything they need they can make sure that it doesn't contradict with what was established before. Zovaal on the other hand, tried to force his way into fitting inside the peg toy, ultimately ending up destroying both himself and everything that was already laid out before. I can't spell enough how much I hate that they tried to shoehorn the Jailer across the many events of not just WoW but also WC in order to make sure he was present since the beginning while absolutely giving ZERO hints. Nobbel TV has a good video named "Puzzle and Lore - FFXIV vs WoW"- you can skip to 3 mins, 30 seconds where he explains this analogy better than I ever could (Keep in mind that that video was made just after him seeing the "Henceforth, he shall walk" part so he was missing some key information that happens much later). Edit: Jesse's suggestion on how Shadowlands could have been handled was miles better than... whatever we got now. How many expansions do we need to wait before we return to the "Bigger threat than the Jailer" storyline? Do people even want to go back? Dragonflight so far is an amazing distraction but, like Sargeras' Sword, sooner or later we're gonna need to deal with whatever got the jailer so spooked. Hope the writers of WoW are up for the task.
@@joaoteixeira8349 saw that interview. You can tell that Steve REALLY did not want to be there when Nobbel was grilling him about Shadowlands. Now that they're stepping away from the cosmic stuff for a bit, I guess it's time to see if Steve and co. can make something good out of Dragonflight's story.
The differences are just...huge. FFXIV carefully fits together and kept cohesive as much as possible, retcons are done carefully and only when necessary. The Endsinger just felt like a good natural conclusion to the story and themes. ...WoW is written like they have a different set of writers every fucking expansion who forgot what happened in the previous one and pull out random crap from their ass and throw it at the wall. With things being retconned on a whim every 5 minutes.
Zenos coming to us in the end was my absolute highlight. i did not expect that one bit. and when the music started i was like "wait, that sounds familier?" and i literally screamed when he broke through the barrier so that my housemates came to check on me xD And those moments are missing in wow. everytime someone shows up in wow its more of a "who was that again?" or "ah ok cool"
I couldn't have said it better, FFXIV is about hope. Not for your character, but for us, the players. After all we've made it this far. As Raha said, "you stand where you stand by virtue of the road you walked to get here." EDIT: This was, at least, the message I got from the game as someone who has depression, anxiety, gender dysphoria, etc. The message felt like, the past has been rough, almost breaking at time, but we've made it this far, and that has to count for something, right? Another good quote is from Alisaie when she tells the Endsinger "No one is unbreakable, what pains one may weather, may bring another to tears. Therein lies our strength, when we fall, our brothers and sisters [and nonbinary siblings] are there to raise us up. Again and again. Without end." It's all a message for the player, one that suffering exists, but we're not alone, we don't have to be. It's a message more personal than anything WoW has done. You see bits of yourself in the experiences of the people you meet in FFXIV.
Really? As another person who has suffered long and hard with chronic depression, I found Endwalker's message to be pretty fucking abhorrent and hypocritical. It operates on a privileged narrative where only those who cope the "correct" way are granted salvation. The Scions' characterization do a complete 180, with Hydaelyn being praised for genocide after all the shit Emet got for "the murder of billions that we cannot condone" and the narrative throws the Ancients under the bus with Other-ing strategies that'd make the biggest anti-autistic bigot green with envy. Hermes the Sad Boi School Shooter is one of the most piss-poor representations of "depression" I've ever seen, and practically espouses the viewpoint that depressed people are highly likely to go on mass murdering sprees and blame society for all their ills. We don't pity and praise the real life school shooters, no we nail those fuckers to the wall and pity their victims instead. So why does Endwalker give Genocidaelyn and Hermes the School Shooter so much leeway, slack and praise? It's fucking monstrous.
Also fuck Alisaie and everything she has to say. She's a blazing hypocrite like the rest of them. She'd never say that on behalf of the Ancients, only her own people. Selfish brat. I don't see any of myself in the Scions, I'd kill myself before praising the genocidal witch for condemning an entire people to death because they didn't grieve in the way she allowed them to. Endwalker has made me feel alone in a way I've never felt before, and the fanbase has made me feel unwelcome because I dare to criticize it. So much for "Best story in an MMO", "Best Community" and all this tolerance that is so mythical and famous but I can never seem to find.
I think it all boil down to the fact that the story of Endwalker respect your time and your investment into the storyline since AAR, while World of Warcraft was always extremely bad with that. Blizzard understood the fan service aspect of it, but it was always to bring x or y character as raid boss or to corrupt them or kill them of. It doesn't help that your character in WoW is more or less a spectator or a helper to other heroes or storyline where you don't have any agency. In FFXIV, you *are* the Warrior of Light and it's your friends and found family that are fighting by your side and you are never side stepped or made to feel like in the grand scheme of things you don't matter.
Endwalker helped me confront my extreme nihilism and hatred of existence. Actually changed my life. I don't think I've ever cried so much in my life. The Shadowbringers + Endwalker wombo combo is a masterpiece
@@99range92def that's kind of you to say, but I think the message of Endwalker is that we are the ones that give reason to life. Life is precious and worth forging ahead through its lower moments. Zenos couldn't even understand despair and even says to the WoL: "I had assumed you would be above something so banal as despair. Am I mistaken?" . Zenos found meaning in his own passion: fighting.
I'm glad to hear it my dude. I've seen people say they relate to Hermes and by extension Amon and I feel nothing but sadness for them. As for folks who say he did nothing wrong... I have nothing but frustration for them.
I hear ya, man. I suffered through my own bouts of fatalism and nihilism, and I can only wish I had been able to play this game 20 years ago when I needed it most. Still though, I’m happy to have been able to play it today and to be able to share the experience with so many people
This very same message was what made me resonate with Zenos to a weird degree. his whole "there is no meaning to life, which is why we're able to give it our own" has been something i've wholly believed for years and seeing it brought to words as perfectly as it was in that cutscene in garlemald with Jullus calling him out gave me a weird sort of validated feeling, that my opinions on life weren't weird. even if the person that gave me that validations was a huge sociopath i suppose
There is another VERY important reason on why the story turns of Endwalker work so well, on why fighting Zodiark at level 82 is an intriguing twist other than a disappointing waste of an opportunity, and it has to do with where the investment and interest of the player lies. I believe it is fair to say, that the average player of XIV has never really particularly -cared- about Zodiark, the entity. It was always a non-entity, at best a cool XII and Tactics reference, but it was never a storied character with whom the player has had any chance to develop any kind of emotional or narrative attachment, be it of appreciation or distaste, the way that Sylvanas undeniably was. The ASCIANS, however, over the course of Shadowbringers, very much became that. When people lavish praise upon XIV and Shadowbringers in particular, they talk about Amaurot, they talk about Emet-Selch, about Elidibus, they talk about all these characters and concepts that we have been able to spend time with and learn about and form an attachment to. And through that entire process, that hook is present, of the WHY Zodiark was created, of the tragedy it was meant to put a stop to, of the tragedy its existence caused, a compelling story of a people falling from Eden and turning from all-loving brothers and sisters nurturing their world in peace to shadowy monsters plotting to destroy everything. We have been told from a very early point in Shadowbringers, that from the villain's point, "there was a reason for all this. We have Motives. What we are doing is Right." Endwalker puts a stop to Zodiark very early on, but by that point the player's investment is no longer with Zodiark, the entity, if it had ever been. Zodiark himself is dispatched at level 82, but the story of the ascians, the ancients, of Amaurot, of those things we learned about and grew attached to, continues up until the very end of the expansion itself, until the very final boss battle. There is no break, no stark moment of "okay player, you think you care about this, nah, you should actually care about this OTHER thing", there is no "I can't wait to go beat up Sylvanas, wait, what do you mean she's actually just a pawn to this big villain, wait, what does he actually want? Why does he want it? What, there's an even BIGGER threat coming we're never told about? What?". Endwalker knows VERY well where the player's emotional attachment is likely to be during the course of its story, the parts of its plot that players are likely to feel hooked in, and knows to resolve all the plot points relating to it with a flourish and bow in a way that respects the parts of the plot that players feel investment in and resolves them to the end. Warcraft, in the meantime, keeps simply grabbing the player by the throat and trying to go "alright, direct your interest here. Now here. Now here. Oh, and by the way, this guy? He planned everything from since the days of Warcraft 1. Why? Don't ask question. Just be a good boy and love whatever we tell you to love."
Ironic that for the latest expansion that had heavier emphasis on souls and shit, Shadowlands was soulless. Not a FF guy, but when devs do cool shit like this, I just got to commend them for going ahead with it.
I think another big difference is the scope, Jailer was presented as this uber evil pulling the strings of every single villain and evil deed throughout the entire history of WoW. Suddenly Arthas wasn't a badass doing the 'necessary evil' that lost his way, now he's just a weak minded understudy being puppeted by the REAL villain to the point his soul itself had to be destroyed because the Jailer wore him like a jacket. Sylvanus has been doing a lot of evil morally dubious shit and is actively getting worse and worse but we've been told it's for a greater good... OOPS turns out she was just mentally handicapped and got used by the Jailer. Sargeras the Mad Titan turned to destruction and mayhem because he was told the eldritch truth of the Void Lords and their nightmarish evil by the Nathrezim, except, in a plot twist no one expected, the Nathrezim are under the control of the Jailer's buddy, WHAT A COINCIDENCE! That is to say if you can think of a villain and their motivations chances are it's really the Jailer's fault and he himself is an idiot being controlled by his fear of an unknown ultimate evil that is probably the Void Lords... It cheapens everyone involved, even the Jailer is rendered a joke the plot and he was supposed to be the culmination of everything. Endsinger on the other hand wasn't controlling anyone, she was a naïve hopeless creature sent on an impossible task by a depressed God and in turn found despair and sorrow. She may have wiped out countless worlds and ended the Ancients but she wasn't in the shadows guiding Emet-Selch to commit war crimes in the hopes of getting his loved ones back. She never whispered sweet nothings into Zenos' ear to drive him insane, she never toyed with Bahamut's endless rage to destroy the world, she literally has nothing to do with the vast majority of the storyline beyond being a catalyst. No one is cheapened, it adds depth to what we already knew, villains aren't puppets, they had their own motives and reasons even if we disagreed with them and ultimately it's the culmination of more than 10 years in the making. That's a much more fundamental problem...
Jesse made an even better ending in 5 minutes than the entire Blizz crew with all those decades of back lore to draw from. They should've just hired Jesse instead.
Jesse spouting ideas about how to improve SL alone gives me more tears of awesome and feels than Blizzard could ever manage in one of their high quality cutscenes.
I mean, if FFIV was doing powerful emotional scenes with tiny sprites and text in the 90s, why couldn't Jesse do it with cutouts of the characters? It was never really about production values, humans are wired to respond to stories just as much as we are to tell them.
Here's another reason why FF14 worked far better, Endsinger was never portrayed as this evil entity. Hell, we know the entirety of why she's doing this based on some simple interactions, where when it's revealed how hopeless everything is, we get it. They didn't try to over complicate anything, and what's more, we were given a villain we can completely understand their reasoning for.
The thing about WoW is that the world just does NOT care about you, the player. You’re just another adventurer. One of the many. Sure you might also be a speaker for your faction or a maw walker but those titles mean nothing. Nothing you do has long term recognition. People you’ve fought alongside in the past forget who you are, the fractured nature of leveling means that the dev team can’t create a story with characters that know your character. You might have played a different expansion to level them up, so original characters HAVE to act indifferent to you, or you’ll be confused why this character you’ve never interacted with is your friend. You do not know them and they do not know you. This is compounded by the fact the nature of the game encourages you to make multiple alts, by bouncing between them it’s not only the NPCs who don’t have a bond with you. You don’t have a bond with your characters. Some parts of the story can only be seen by playing a character of a different faction, class (order halls), covenant etc. FF14 solves this with the Main Story Quest. You are the Warrior of Light. Everyone you encounter remembers you, you give them hope, you’ve saved them numerous times just like they’ve saved you. Your deeds are recognized, you form a bond with those you fight alongside. Leaders of the city-states don’t enlist your aid just because you’re a powerful adventurer they might have heard of but never interacted with, you’re THE powerful adventurer that has saved them and their nations before. And in FF14 there really is zero reason to make alts because you can do everything in the game on one character. You can play every class, go through the whole story and learn every profession on one character, the more you play the more you gain a bond with your own character.
Just the fact that we, the Warrior of Light, have our own theme song is the most badass and emotionally powerful thing to be able to wield when telling a story. We heard the leitmotif at least once every expansion, but they sure saved the best for last.
This is why "The Maker's Ruin" will be my eternally favorite track from XIV. I feel powerful and feel like I can almost do anything whenever that track drops, even in any kind of arrangement. "With Hearts Aligned" also quickly went up there on my list.
The Endsinger is what I feel is a last minute bigger bad done amazingly, not only tying her to what is effectively the entire story but also she was given the space she needed to be understood and connected by the player and to make this even worse looking for the jailer this was all done in a single patch cycle whereas the Jailer failed for the entire expansion. Edit: I just realized something, technically speaking Endsinger had half of the runtime of the start of Endwalker as the first half was dedicated more towards Zenos and Fandaniel with no mention of Endsinger. This in my opinion makes the jailer look even more like wasted time and space storywise.
And they made Endsinger/Meteion more relatable with less runtime than Jailer. Can look back and be like '.. Who the fuck was Jailer?' But Meteion? "I will protecc little blue birb daughter with my life." ;n; She's the only minion I have out now a days.
In my opinion, the reason this works in ff14 and not shadow lands is because it can be argued that your character in ff14 is proactive, not just reactive. The main flaw with the big bad behind the villain trope is that besides it being out of left field, it throws agency for the character's story out the window and make them static reactionary characters. In order for the trope to work at all the characters haft to actually be proactive for it to work, as that allows room for the story to be re-contextualized which can present more interesting directions for story telling, maybe some reveals, or twists that actually make sense for example.
@@MarkFin9423 Basicly WoW: You're a background character in the actual main characters story. You're just along for the ride. FFXIV: You ARE the Main Character, thus making what is happening hit you on a personal level. Those are YOUR friends, this is YOUR world, and that is YOUR best friend/nemesis who just came in clutch. One feels hallow, the other tugs on your heart.
I think the main difference between the Endsinger and Jailer is that they tried to give the jailer more importance by retroactively saying he was manipulating every major power that we've had until now. Endsinger affected the ascians, but she wasn't controlling the ascians. And no other villain was related to her in any way.
I love a good long form Jesse Video. Thanks for your hard work on this! This hit the nail on the head. Great editing too. I'm glad people are enjoying Dragonflight now and hope it succeeds. That said I'm hella hype for the FFXIV LL coming up!!
As someone who played wow for 18 years and FF14 for about..5 years ish I can simply say FF14 > wow story in every single area and I will fight people over that fact. Wow is a broken mess of a story that makes no sense at times and was written for children who also have no clue of what is going on. I will not sit here and say Gameplay wise Ff14 is better...they both have something to enjoy and like about them though, FF14 is more flashy for sure and I find my self pumped up behind alot of moments in FF14 vs wow, In the end Gameplay wise...sure they are roughly equal no wrong choice but story wise? FF14 shits on wow every day all day. Now pardon me: my "champion" and "hero" needs to go kill a wanna be death wing and watch a bunch of former aspect dragons who did nothing but cry, hug and moan about every issue get all the rewards and become Demi gods again. ITS GOOD SHIT wait no its not.
Garrosh did nothing wrong. Lol But in all seriousness you're completely right. I probably would've resubbed to Wow for Shadowlands if it had been like the version you described. So much wasted potential.
I come from ffxiv. Man.... I started crying just re-remembering Endwalker. There were so many details you pointed out that re-contextualized my feelings on everything I experienced irl and in the past 8+ years I played ffxiv. Venat's question from the moment she asked it still sits with me. "Has your journey been good? Has it been worthwhile?" .... Good video. 😭
I played WOW from 2009 until the middle of Warlords of Draenor and then I came back for a few expansions at sporadic moments. Usually at the beginning and after the first patch I'd give up and go do something else. I absolutely agree with everything you've said. As a lover of the Warcraft universe and seeing how increasingly everything has become so unimportant and with such a childish and flawed narrative that it has generated a lot of discontent, well beyond the gameplay. When I got to know Final Fantasy XIV I was in the middle of the WoW expansion I liked the most - Mists of Pandaria. I was very wary of trying the game for fear of repeating the experiences I'd had with MMOs other than the highly acclaimed World of Warcraft. I was actually surprised. A game with much more difficulty than I had imagined and with a much more fluid operation than I had ever imagined. As a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise as well, I noticed several references to some of the games I had already played and initially thought that the story was just a simplistic background narrative like the one I was used to in WoW. I soon realized that I cared about the NPCs, that I remembered their names, their stories, their personalities and felt that I was really part of that universe. With the following expansions, it only got better, with well-crafted villains, like in Heavensward, who made you empathize with them, or even feel sad about the death of one, as in the case of Nidhogg. Then there's Stormblood with memorable villains like the unforgettable Yotsuyu. Then comes Shadowbringer... putting Final Fantasy's most beloved villain - Emet-Selch - in our hands. Creating narratives with well-written characters such as Crystal Exarch, Ryne, Feo Ul, Lyna... I cried so much in Shadowbringer that all I could do was curse Yoship for making such a good game. And today I'm proud and love being part of Warriors of Light.
Honestly, that bit when Zenos appears at the end really elevated him for me. I already liked him as a villian because sometimes I like having a villian who just wants to fuck shit up for no reason, no grand schemes or anything but just because he can and he is bored. But when he appears at the end, when all your friends have been (naturally) worried about you taking this thing on by yourself, he has such faith in your abilities he is just confused as to why it still lives. No doubt in his mind whatsoever that this thing would have a chance against you and no "hee hee hee you are distracted so now I will get you" type bullshit either.
It worked because m the endsinger isn’t a last minute shoe in. It was foreshadowed from the very first line of the game: “hear, feel, think”. Those three words Hydaelyn says are the antidote to the song of the end despair. That our suffering has meaning if we want it to. It’s the things the WoL and his companions feel for each other, the beauty they hear and the thoughts they think that validate their experiences in spite of all things ending. That’s why the ffxiv story is so powerful
The making it about you part, I hadn't even thought about. One of the first parts that hit me with happiness was the first time all the NPCs gatherer together to support you and all my job trainers were there. It made me so happy that the people who were important to me were there.
It always has been about you. That is the major difference compared to wow. Wrath of the lich king it's about tyrion and his redomption of ashbringer, we fought we lost, we fought again but it was not us in the end. Cataclysm it was all about thrals return, in the end we fought some dragon boils, but thral used the golden mirror and won for us. Mist of Pandaria It was the alliance and horde + pandas that brought down Garrosh. Dreanor others one again had the splotlight Legion we helped the redeemed star "You are not prepared out" (they tried the FF14 thing a bit, but dropped it in BFA for the most part) BFA while you doing it, not on your own strength but with the planet, I will give it a pass. Sadly the rest of BFA was too much crap.
I think there's also something to say about the story as a whole. Your connection to the world itself makes the final days actually worrying. Anyone, anywhere could turn at any moment. You're no longer just fighting to stop the bad guy, the idea of you as the WoL fighting to save everyone, to save existence itself, comes to the forefront. It is EXCEEDINGLY apparent. You team up with people who in 2.0 would have been enemies that you'd have no qualms about fighting (Gaius? Jullus? Zeno's?emet?). Emet comes to your defense to tell your enemy "you will not end our journey". Looking at all of these, not including the people who joined to help finish the ship or the ilsabard contingent helping to stop damn Daniel shows just how far you've come not only as a character in the game, but as the player as well. Venat's question I think really was kind of the starting point for writing all of endwalker. "Did you enjoy it?" The fact that the "final boss" is really just a fan service fight for fun really drives that point home. A test of your reflexes indeed. There's also something to be said about growth of characters. Urianger for instance really came into his own here. He's had some definite moments in shb and such, but how could ANYONE not be content with the dialogue with moen's parents. That kind of thing really makes the characters feel ALIVE, feel LOVABLE, and worth the fight that's coming.
I remember fighting Endsinger for the first time and we got to phase 2 and like, I was drowning in emotion and music. I was tearing up and forgetting my rotations. I was like "F my rotations, you are going down!"
My favorite part is that there's no necessary movement in the ending of the fight. you just stand there and throw everything you've got at her. And of course, being a Black Mage, that's always very welcome.
Dammit. Is there ever going to be a day where I can watch something about Endwalker and not tear up? Great vid Jesse. Obviously you can't get into the nuance and detail of the story in a format like this, but it think the "It's the little things" idea FF went with that permeates the entire game that truly highlights the difference between sub-par storytelling and brilliant storytelling. I played WOW for 5 years until the middle of Shadowlands and while I enjoyed the lore, looking back after quitting, I felt nothing when it came to the game. Nothing it be emotional about, nothing to look back on fondly, even though I played with a great group of people. There's nothing concrete there to get attached to. Maybe it's because I only played for 5 years as opposed to 10 for FF, but the "storytelling" in WOW just makes it feel hollow. Which blows because it could be amazing. I got hype listening to your Shadowlands redo and think it would have 1000% been better.
I played WoW from the beta days. In the earlier expansions, there wasn't much of a focus on a narrative storyline, so the stories you got tended to be told in sort of a distributed way. All the little storylines from questing through the zones tied into the overall narrative. A great example of that is the storylines that culminated in the Wrathgate cinematic in Wrath of the Lich King. That was basically the end point of a bunch of different storylines that dealt with coming to Northrend and confronting the dangers there. Blizzard doing larger narrative stories only worked in Legion, and even then, it was still a bunch of different storylines, since each class had its own, and then they all just tied together in the end. But Cataclysm, WoD, BfA, Shadowlands... they all sucked. And most of them were filled with retcons that, instead of adding context retroactively (an actual retcon), they rewrote past lore with new lore to follow whatever BS "Rule of Cool" storyline the team was pushing, with the team mostly not caring about the lore and giving it little thought with regards to pushing their story agenda forward. The biggest and most egregious example of that is the burning of Teldrassil. I remember the picture of Sylvanas standing in front of the burning Teldrassil that came out from Blizzcon, and everyone was talking. "Who burned the tree?" The speculation went on for months. It was Anduin, burning it because he was secretly corrupted by the Old Gods from his encounter with the Divine Bell in Pandaria. It was the Night Elves themselves, burning it to prevent it from being taken by the Horde. It was the Alliance, burning it without the consent of the Night Elves, to keep the Horde from gaining the Alliance's main port in Kalimdor. But then the War of Thorns story happened and it was revealed that Sylvanas burned it because she had a moment of angsty pique. And when confronted with that, Ion literally said, "What? Why would you think it was anyone but Sylvanas? She was standing right in front of the tree in the art." Even though he knew about all the speculation, and was happy using that to hype up the BfA launch.
To expand on this, by the time you were fighting Endsinger in FF14, you are emotionally drained at this point. Perhaps even tired from trying to binge through it. And the whole 2nd phase gave that motivation you needed to keep going. It's the element of 4th wall as a player that resonated with a lot of us that made that final battle near perfection.
16 years of WoW and I felt NOTHING. One year into FFXIV and I felt EVERYTHING I've never felt in any video game before. What a masterpiece FFXIV is! ...I still can't believe what I experienced this last year. At this point WoW can't get me back anymore. Never. And I'm not even sad :-)
Jesse, thank you so much for this. I’ve had a strange and up and down journey during my life and while playing FFXIV, but this video and analysis reminded me of just now deeply Endwalker impacted me and reminded me of how despite it all, we can continue to have hope. and we are still here to tell our story. I’ve been away from 14 for a while because it brought me so much sadness, but I think I’m ready now to dive back in. you are incredible. thank you.
I know, late to the party, but I just found the Vid and had some thoughts about the Endsinger fight just yesterday. I skip cutscenes, that I already have seen, so I forgot about that part, but it adds perfectly to that part. She is taunting us, that we will never reach the deliverance (the hope), we are looking for. And what does Zenos do, when we start the battle. Steeling the introduction from the Endsinger, by not knowing what this deliverence is, she is talking about, and still see her as our pray, we hunt. "Our hunt ends this day. There is nowhere you can flee that we cannot follow." Even thou it is just a Mechanic, she answers with "Even stars must die." knowing full well, that this is true for her too. But in her quest of destroying our hope, she is still says this to get us giving up the fight, as we will still die. jumping forward, as she tries to vanquish our hope or killing us during the fight. when she prepares for the transition phase and during the first part of it she tells us, that "If there is no happiness in life... There is only one place it may be found." ... "Oblivion!" and throwing a f... planat at us only faling, because of too many shields and a tank LB. Now realising, what power is behind us, she turns back time to crush us again, as all our Dynamis is spend for the moment. She failes again, seeing, what gives us hope and finally finding, what she was asked to find so long ago. In a final atempt to correct the univers to the sad and hopeless state it should be, she lashes out only to be defeated and freed from her own hoplessnes.
The Jailer was a mastermind who got retconnected into being relevant. The Endsinger is an explanation to the whys of the problems we have facing since Venat sundered the world, let alone the rest of the game. Better yet, it is pretty signaled that Meteon and her sisters found a manifestation of the void at the very edge of the universe and that contact changed them somewhat, basically dynamis (who we have been playing with since Limit Breaks were introduced in game, we just didn't know the name of it yet). Meaning that yes, Endsinger was a problem that we knew little about, but not only it connects to every nook and cranny of the conflict, it also hints that we just put out a fire, versus eliminating the 'evil' at the end. Which, by Endwalker's ending, is also hinted at as a natural force of reality itself. Nothing one can do to stop the heat death of the universe. All the Endsinger was doing was accelerating it. To say "FF14 made the mysterious villain work' is a bit silly considering the Endsinger is but one aspect of the story, one that moves its themes to its conclusion. We could've ended the story with Shadowbringers and in my opinion, we wouldn't miss much 'story wise' because the reasons to WHY the Ancients did what they did, from our perspective, were of not importance. But WHAT they did and how to properly combat their world view is where the main conflict lingers. I won't deny that Endsinger enhanced the story, but I legit feel it was merely a punctuation to a well constructed plot.
I think it also helped that Meteion was not the direct reason why the Ascians did what they did. Sure, she caused the event that led the Ascians down the path they took, but all the evil they did to undo the effects of the Final Days was entirely done of their own volition with no influence from Meteion in that specific regard.
FFXIV has a theme, WoW does not. You can't have 10+ years of story without something to tie it together. FFXIV's overarching story was _not_ planned out ahead of time, but by laying down a theme it allowed each expansion to tie its plot threads to that theme making the whole thing feel more cohesive. Endwalker takes the theme and brings it from the background to the foreground, making an overarching conclusion possible. Comparatively, WoW has never really concerned itself with its plot. It has always treated its story as just a backdrop for the gameplay. The theme of FFXIV is summarized in the song Answers which played 10 years ago over the final cutscene of 1.0 when the servers were brought down in an end-of-the-world calamity as the game was discontinued in order to be reworked into A Realm Reborn. The song has two halves--the first half is a mournful lament asking why must we live if living invites sorrow and death (the world of the 1.0 game appears to be ending). The second half of the song is a hopeful ballad proclaiming that the struggle for moments of light and joy is the whole point of living (the redesigned game will be back as A Realm Reborn). Every expansion deals with this theme. Endwalker personifies this theme with the characters of Hermes who posits the Question, Meteion who comes to a flawed conclusion, and the player characters/Scions/Venat/Hydaelyn who hold the true Answer--that the purpose of life is to live, to find light in the darkness and stand against the tide. WoW is genuinely themeless. I think that's by design because it affords them more flexibility in choosing the settings of their next expansions.
The ending of Endwalker was just so well done that even now being reminded of it brings a tear to my eye, with the focus so heavy around the importance of the player, and yet giving every character that was important to us a part in the ending. World of Warcraft with nearly a decade of story on them and dozens of larger-than-life characters and it feels like they didn't take advantage of it nearly enough.
The major difference in my opinion between WoW and FF14 is continuity. FF14 tells a story from A to B through multiple expansion. The fun part is that once you're down with the story, the Endsinger is dead and all is well, you can think back on all the numerous small details that eventually connects and confirms the story, it all fits and it all makes sense within the logic of the world created throughout the expansions WoW on the other hand only cares about 1-2 expansions ahead, they retcon the story and don't acknowledge the importance of a good story to connect the people to the game on a deeper level. They're more hung up on current expansion and don't give a toss about the upcoming expansions. And when you use retcon every 2 seconds, people lose their interest for the lore, they don't connect and they don't care any more. They're not invested in the game at a deeper level. For me at least, I think FF14 is the better game now as an MMO. It has fun gameplay mechanics, good story, good combat and overall better systems. There are some quirks and the UI could need some polish, but the overall package is just so much better than WoW is. WoW feels like a theme park ride, something you do a couple of times then get bored.
The bottom line is, nothing Blizzard tried to do with the Jailer felt earned. It didn't feel earned to insert him into the backstories of so many other events and characters players had taken their understanding of for granted. It didn't feel earned to make him personally responsible for so much of it, including a recent character arc that players had been so frustrated by. It didn't feel earned to make him so successful at what he was doing after he was introduced. It didn't feel earned to make him Sargeras version 6.0 at the last second. And I think, as written, there's no way to MAKE it feel earned. If FF14 did the same things with Endsinger, I don't think they could make it all feel earned either. Even though the seeds were planted much earlier in the narrative. So they didn't. Instead of trying to force an idea that was doomed to fail, they took those same basic building blocks and focused on an angle that could feel earned. The narrative didn't try and make Endsinger into the thing that would carry the expansion with engaging writing and intrigue and charisma (and then failed to deliver those things). It made Endinger into an obstacle, big yes, but YOU the player are awesome, so you can handle it.
Great video and well done picking out just what it is that makes a game resonate with the players. Just seeing characters from the different jobs in cut scenes that have nothing to do with them gets me giddy in FF. It's just them walking in the background and me going "I KNOW THAT GUY!" to my friend who hasn't done the job is such a treat. It doesn't have to be big, they don't even have to have lines, just the fact that i have worked with them in the past and they are not forgotten by the writers, that they (the writers) acknowledge that i worked through leveling that class with them means more than it really should to me. Well done and thought out Jesse!
I don't know Jesse, i always thought Zenos as our Arthas, not Sylvanas. Zenos and Arthas share the same concept with the mad targaryen king: corrupted by X in a position of power doing some crazy stuff while they are searching for some concrete sense about reality or themselves. Sylvanas and Jailer are more like Kratos: Vengeance and (almost) Redemption. Jailer and Endsinger seems like apple and oranges.
Arthas is much better than Sylvanas anyways! Good lord they annihilated all the characters in Shadowlands... and all the previous expansions too. Yay for the almighty retconning nightmare that is Blizzard's Story Team.
@@ArmageddonEvil Yep, Arthas is much better than Sylvanas no doubt. They tried to expand too much and tell a tale that not even Warhammer attempted to. Complex is not always better.
@@hermespymander9167 They tried to use the cosmic reality and failed in how they told it. All it is more 'There is always a bigger bad guy in this multiverse.' It's sooo annoying and tiring. I enjoyed it when it was only about Arthas taking Frostmourne and killing his father and becoming the Lich King after the Frozen Throne, RTS. >.
sylvanas is more like gaius, or at least there based on thier intent to make her do the bad thing for the good reason and they both end up working to undo the wrongs they have commited
Jailer:no one listen to me so i gonna do bad stuff for my evil secret plan Meteion:life has no meaning i saw the worst side of any kind in the eyes of my sisters so to solve this i gonna end this universe to end the suffering by spreading calamities with my song from my nest in the deepest part of the universe made with part of destroyed world
I think there's more to it than that. Endwalker had a message that we all needed by the end of 2021. How to hold on to hope in a hopeless world. Most of us are still a little scared of COVID and after world wide lockdowns, we were all a lil'bit lonely. Endwalker touches on all of this and the irony is that it was mostly written before the pandemic even started. Now, we've finished the story with messages of forgiveness and second chances and Dragonflight has started strong. I can't wait to see what the next 10 years of MMOs brings to the table.
Not really. After Shadowbringers making the protagonists have it clear that genocide was *NEVER* acceptable no matter what, Endwalker backtracks on all of that and genocides the Ancients because they didn't grieve the way Mommy told them to and the story *PRAISES* her for it. It's not about forgiveness and second chances so much as "forgiveness for those your local Supreme Deity decides deserves it and fuck everyone else". Doubly so with the 6.2 UT Omicron quests basically "fixing" what was wrong with the Ea, the Nibirun, and the Grebuloff to make them grieve and live the "right way". Shame the Ancients are already dead, and now the UT Beast Tribe quests basically proved they died for nothing in the end. Yes, so much selective *FORGIVENESS* I can taste it.
I love how FFXIV always had the one big baddie, The Endsinger, far off in the back ground, but we somehow never thought about it. Yes Ascians want to remake their world by summoning back Zodiark.... but we somehow forgot Zodiark was summoned in the first place to stop something else... something so bad that they were willing to sacrifice half of their race in sacrifice jsut to bring Zodiark into the world. They waited to give it a face until the very end of their well planned story.
Shadowlands would've been far better if it had more story content. The stuff that was in the expansion was fine. It just wasn't enough. We needed more information about the Jailer. We needed more story moments with the characters we liked. However, instead it was a few cutscenes for a small amount of characters with the rest of them basically being forgotten. It would very much be like what was described in this video. I'm not a fan of the "power of friendship" trope though, makes my interest go from 100 to 0 in a heartbeat, so I would've wanted that part to be different.
A couple of weeks after I finished Endwalker, I got "Forge Ahead" with the Azem symbol tattooed on my inner wrist. That story moved me, and even this video still made me cry. Thank you for this!
I did not return to wow and have not had strong pulls from wow since BFA. But I had kept up with the lore, when the whole jailor thing happened, and the sylvanas thing as well. It shattered that part as well, this was not how you write an end saga. Then end walker on top of that showed us how you do, do it.
Endsinger doesn't even feel that out of nowhere to me because it was an answer to a question that was asked in Shadowbringers. And it finishes explaining the Ascian backstory we've had since the beginning.
Hey Jesse I know you probably won't see this but I've been watching your stuff since the OMFGCata days (when I was a literal child) and just wanted to say I think this is my favorite video of yours. Clearly you have so much love for both of these franchises and you can just feel the emotion coming through as you talk. As a long time WoW player (still call myself a Wrath Baby) I totally felt what you said about WoWs story and I think you may have Finally gotten me to try out FF14. Seeing how your rival comes in and just understands and appreciates how strong you really are and is like "let's take this fool out together so I can have another go at you" is such good story telling I was feeling the emotional weight of it despite knowing basically nothing about FF14. All of that to say, keep on doing great Mr. Cox!
FFXIV is something special when, just listening to Jesse discuss this topic, whilst scenes from Endwalker play out & swell with music - makes me (you?) have an emotional response. Whereas WoW does nothing even remotely close to that.
I think one thing that helped 14 was that neither the ascians nor the telephoroi were actually working with or for Endsinger. They were both serving her, ultimately, but the ascians that they were fixing what Hydalean broke (and in the reality were going to rob the universe of the presumably only thing that could stop Endsinger), and the telephoroi basically thought she was a natural disaster. So there was no "It was me all along!" problem. Endsinger didn't actually influence the previous lore, so it kinda felt like a brand new problem.
The Endsinger was ultimately just a traumatised child hiding in the cosmic closet, trying to wish away what hurt her. Its just too bad that because her creator was an idiot who had no idea what he was messing with, that its actually working. Her role in the story is akin to that of a natural disaster, she's not supposed to be the architect of everything that's happened like Thanot the Jailer was. And like our predecessor Azem, we're there to find said disaster's face, so we can stop it by punching it in said face.
The Ascians weren't even serving her unknowingly, they were actively preventing her from doing what she wanted. But yes it's a huge difference from "I caused everything bad that has ever happened!" with the Jailer.
He said that WoW is an MMORPG while FFXIV is a RPGMMO. Dragonflight actually feels way more like an RPGMMO which is amazing, they are finally hitting the mark. DF is best xpac since Legion, and I would argue it is better than Legion. We haven't seen too much of the endgame yet, but at least story is very good. I know you are super anti-WoW right now, but I highly recommed at least playing through the main story. You can quit after that again, haha. Its amazing to see the game actually killing it story-wise for once. The last few expansions have been so...off.
The main story was short in DF. The only thing that makes it good is because of what we all experienced in BFA and SL. We are not experiencing heavy pressure to do anything in DF and we are able to do anything we want. If DF exceeds Legion, that’s up for debate. The story is okay in DF, but the writing isn’t great-- it still panders to a simple form of narrative construction. The justification for each Dragon Beacon lighting up is vague in conjunction to the function of each dragonflight. That aside… I will reiterate that DF only feels good in contrast to the previous expansions.
I like these types of videos. Companies are often inspired by one another and I use the word inspired loosely. Apex, Overwatch and Fortnite often copy each other's character designs and abilities. (Mad Maggie/Junker Queen for example).
I just have a picture of a party of Venat, Emet-Selch, Fandaniel, Zenos, Vauthrey, Elidibus, Lahabrea, and Endsinger just raid wiping against the WoL now. And it really makes laugh😂
You made a fatal error in your assessment Jesse Cox: Blizzard doesn't care about the fans. They certainly haven't in a while. They want you to buy game, be a good little payer and then wait for the next content push. They were too busy doing other bad and vile things behind the scenes to get work done. It isn't possible for them
Damn you Jessy Cox for making me cry! But yeah, Endwalker, was the story of my journey. When Zenos ask in the very last battle : "Why do you do it? Admit that you like the challenge." I couldn't hate Zenos anymore. I hated this character for so long... But as those words were said, I understood that it was the Devs talking to me... they were saying : Why did you spent months proging UCoB years after this fight was released? You don't need to win that fight to save the world? It's a story told by a bard... The answer is because I, the player, am exactly like Zenos.
Absolutely agree, i hated zenos post base stormblood and considered him annoying and a nuisance that wouldn't die everytime he showed back up. But the moment we had our final talk and he said "you're just like me, you're always trying to fight something bigger and stronger" i was like "as a raider and an ultimate raider, god dammit you're right." Just that small piece of dialogue gave me a complete 180 on him.
See the thing is and he did just kinda touch on it. The biggest problem between the two is, In WoW the player no body so we are not part of the worlds story at all. While in 14 the WoL is part of the story part of the world and all. That is where I think WoW falls hugely short if they wanna fix it they need to make the player part of the story.
God the Zeno's part where you team up is still such an amazing part. I love rewatching it and watching other people go through all of Endwalker for the first time.
The zone cohesion in Shadowlands basically boils down to their thematic representation of various real world afterlives. Maldraxxus is of course Valhalla, Bastion is Elysium, Rivendreth is your typical Christian Hell and then Ardenweald sort of serves as a catch all for various Fae realms of European folklore. It's not very clever or properly utilized, but it's there.
Even just watching this video and hearing you explain the stuff in FF14, I can feel that same feeling I had when I went to fight Endsinger and our theme song started up. It's already been a year, and that feeling still shows up every time I do that fight, or I hear that song. And I love it.
Thinking aboutit, it's very fitting that the final boss was sent into space with a question from her 'father' while the hero was sent out with an answer from their 'mother'. Suddenly it makes so much sense to have Flow playing over the last scene with Meteion. The WoL was Venat's answer to Hermes's question.
Dang that story works on a bunch of levels 🤣
_"Deep, dark, far away I have heard your voice, weighed your every choice_
_Now our hands join round the meaning you sought"_
NGL your comment almost making me tear up. ❤️
To go a bit deeper, Venat couldn't figure the "Answer" herself. She created the situation where she forced all the livings to find that exact answer for the sake of their civilization. That results in us, the WoL, that also procure all the answers from everyone we met, compiling them all together then give it to Meteion.
OOOO that gave me chills Trolling!
@@Luna-1re Thumbdrive of Light
While both Endsinger and The Jailer were both inserted into the immediate forefront of the story, the Jailer only received an articles worth of dialogue to the point where the player was openly confused and puzzled by his motivation and character arc. Endsinger however received a novel's worth of dialogue and we as players got to interact with her on a personal level and truly understand her motivations and goals which made us not only sympathize with her, but she helped conclude the FFXIV story.
It's all WRONG
Endsinger's twist never invalidated any of the established motivations or achievements, instead expanding on them as the Jailer should have done.
The writing team planned the story far ahead. We now know that the morse code in the crystal tower cinematic that said “its all wrong” was the endsinger.
The biggest problem with the jailer is the retcon they did to make him the bad guy. They should have released shadowland after two or three more expansion. That way they could have build a story.
@@marc789 Eh, the morse code was supposed to tie into Eureka, apparently, before it got dropped. People picked it up and noted it seemed like something that would work for the Endsinger and the dev team went "sure, let's go with that". Because it still works. It was a dropped plot thread that managed to find itself a new home. Because the writing in XIV is just that well done.
So in short, despite being similar, the Endsinger succeeded where the Jailer failed, because the Endsinger wasn't written by hacks under the direction of charlatans.
Endwalker has a single dungeon that accomplishes exactly what Shadowlands should have done with their entire DLC. The Aitiascope delves into the 'afterworld' and in the 45 minute dungeon you're helped along by the lingering spirits of those you've loved and lost, and those you've challenged and felled. How an entire expansion doesn't even do as much as a single dungeon is beyond me.
Yup, that's the entire argument in a single nutshell. If you have an afterlife, and fail to use it as such, that's a theming failure, pure and simple.
Seeing Minfillia at the end still gives me goosebumps and I always /hug her to this day lol
That's exactly why the Altiascope was so well placed. It was the final tribute to the setting: "this is where we appreciate the world and lore we share", which is followed by the final zone where, as Jesse puts it so well, "this zone is about you".
It's because of the design philosophy of the two games.
Shadowlands was just another corporate-driven narrative that was designed to essentially redeem Sylvanas and empower her with a few other characters included as well. It seemed like the writing essentially painted Sylvanas as still being a victim of Arthas at the end of it all, and empowered her by reducing Arthas to nothing so she could have a big speech at the end about how she's better than him and he's nothing and deserves to be forgotten. It was a giant middle finger to the fandom in a lot of ways and it follows the format that most corporate-driven media has taken old beloved franchises. Case in point, Star Wars and how they shit all over Luke to empower Rey and essentially killed off the old beloved characters so the new main characters wouldn't get shadowed by them.
Endwalker meanwhile was a passionately written narrative that is meant to connect everything together and conclude an actual storyline that's been going on since technically 1.0 but definitely 2.0. The writing was all about our characters, the characters around our characters, and how we would (with support from our allies) save the day against impossible odds. XIV has often focused the stories on other characters, but ours is a constant cornerstone and catalyst within those stories. We're not just a glorified errand boy who sits back to let the other heroes have their big moments - we either have our own big moments or we empower and help others to have theirs. We feel like our actions matter and that everything leading up to the latest expansion has built up to it on one long journey.
Shadowlands was just another expansion whose story ultimately will be forgotten and swept aside for the next expansion. Endwalker was the climax of an actual 10-year saga. Blizzard attempted to coin Shadowlands as if it was some end to the saga that begun in Warcraft 3... but it wasn't in the slightest, lol. That was just god awful buzzword marketing to try and bring devoted Warcraft fans back to see the finale. FFXIV is designed with love and respect to the playerbase, while WoW at this point is designed with whatever's necessary to keep subscriptions up. Shadowlands had a massive amount of fanservice potential and they squandered it in the most spectacular fashion, showing how tone-deaf and corporate-driven WoW really is at this point. That's more a testament to how Square Enix lets Yoshi-P and his team do their thing more than anything, even though they're greedy af in a lot of ways too they at least let their developers do their thing and focus on keeping the players happy and satisfied. Corporate Japan is also much different politically and culturally than corporate America for better or worse. In this case, it's definitely for the better.
there is one simple explanation as to how Shadowlands could have fucked up so much: Alex Afrasiabi. The douchebag that had a boner for Sylvanas, got terminated for sexual harassment, and left without telling anyone his plans for her story, so the rest of the team had to stitch *something* together from his scraps.
Zenos behavior actually is shown since after Zodiark where he walks away from us because he knows we are too busy thinking about the final days and he'll come for us once we have resolved the situation. From the very start he knew we would succed
In the end, he really was our best friend. Guy went Super Saiyan and flew across the universe on beams of light and helped us take down the literal embodiment of Entropy just so that we could have a proper brodown together.
@@Maria_Erias Yup. On top of that he finally learned the golden rule: consent is key. All he had to do to get us to fight him, was ask. All the scheming and committing genocide to try and goad us into confronting him only served to distract us further from him as we were to busy trying to save the innocent lives he was putting at risk to give him the time of day. So once he realized this after our fight with Zodiark that's when he bided his time and waited for the opportunity to approach us on our own terms and simply...ask to fight us.
@@shawnward8361 It's unfortunate that they didn't follow trough and actually allowed you to choose, since forcing you to duel regardless of your response goes against the entire point of Zeno's development.
Personally I'm all for fighting the crazy pretty boy, just a huge missed opportunity.
@@Ya0w While that would've been an interesting option to completely skip the actual "final battle", it'd also be insanely anticlimatic....and also kind of depressing. Zenos finally chooses patience over impatience, flies across the universe, helps the WoL fight the manifestation of existential despair, all for the WoL to say "Nah I'm good" to a final fight? What is he to do after that? Just drop his scythe, sit down, and die? Eh.
Again, giving the player that option would've been interesting, but I feel it makes far more sense for Zenos to revert back to his impatient ways and fight anyway regardless of consent.
@@soulechelon2643 I know a few people who were so bummed about the ending of endwalker because they HATED Zenos, and wanted to do everything in their power to deny him his one wish, but the dialog didn't let them express that. Of course, we can't actually choose to leave him, he's too powerful and dangerous, but just a dialog path or something that shows just how much the WoL doesn't want to do the fight would have made them happy
Im waiting for jesse to just make a lore series about FF14 explaining every single aspect of teh story. That is all I want in life
He did. He started lore videos but hasn't done them in a while. Will absolutely love it if he did more of those.
Honestly the beautiful thing about FF14 is you don't even need lore videos to explain anything. It's all there. You just have to look for it and take the time to see it.
Like I said in a previous comment, I don't really care about mmos. Until this video I assumed they were sprinkled with story and the real meat was just doing stuff with your friends. I would 1000% watch more retrospective/breakdown content from FF14.
I'm gonna go find those lore videos that were mentioned.
only thing i worry about in FF is a lack of continued development of optional side stuff. especially when there is alot of crossover in the research between side quests after doing all of the ShB job quests and new patch MSQ, yet its never mentioned so far and i assume is because its its optional yet it has a strong impact.
No one makes lore videos for FFXIV because everyone gets the entire story from just playing the game. Its not like Warhammer or WoW where you have to dive into a billion different pieces of media to understand what's going on. What has more value is story analysis and that's much harder than just reading off entries of a wikipedia article. This video is analysis and its good. No one wants someone to just recap what happened in Stormblood for them.
Zenos being your biggest fan still makes me smile. His absolute certainty that you will be beat any obstacle in your path is oddly heartwarming. There's no doubt, no hesitation. He's honestly _baffled_ that your enemy still stands.
I always love the moment when Zenos is like "Ayo I crossed the universe for you and you haven't wrapped this up yet?"
Top 5 moments in gaming right there
Bestie!
@@TheAlderisAstari I wouldn't have been surprised if he decided NOT to give us a ride. "Bruh. You're slacking on this - you feeling all right? I'm gonna sit right over here and wait till you get off your butt and get through. I WILL NOT BE THE WINGS TO BEAR YOU TO YOUR FINAL TRIAL. HENCEFORTH YOU SHALL WALK."
@@sennaka henceforth, you shall endwalk.
Then you say it's endwalking time and endwalk all over those guys.
So you're telling me WoW and FFXIV both let you visit the afterlife, the former through an entire expansion and the latter in a single dungeon, and somehow that one dungeon had more fanservice than almost all of Shadowlands?? How is that even possible??
I'm not ashamed to say i cried in that dungeon.
When I saw the Shield it all clicked and I knew what was happening and it was beautiful
@@aurumvale9908 The shield, the staff, the axe. Ysayle showing up in the final boss to give us cover. How in the fuck did Blizzard mess up that badly
@@jacobkern2060 Easy: Blizzard has the directional skills of a Rhinoceros.
@@aurumvale9908 ...okay as much as I am displeased with Endwalker, I do have to agree.
The problem is, there IS fanservice in Shadowlands, plenty of it, but it's all used as side-narrative. The only place we really interact with it, is during the freeing of Alexandros Mograine together with Darion... and even then they barely acknowledged it and going with 'we are going to talk off-screen'. Pretty much everything else falls under 'stay a while and listen'. Yes it tells a story, but it does not feel good. Imagine this: During the fight with Dormazain, rather then Garrosh being tortured during the fight, our entrance gives him the chance to break free and he starts to fight the Boss, he becomes the main tank and the battle becomes a race of beating Dormazain before Garrosh perishes and the boss can one shot kill us. He still uses up to much and dissolves after the face, but with a grin on his face of 'In the end, I still am tougher then you!'.
Man, even your 5-minute animation of the jailor being beaten by all the past forces of Azeroth gave me chills when the music swelled. I'm convinced, they should have gone full fanservice, as cheesy as it would have been it would have been awesome nonetheless.
Would feel a bit like a callback to the ending of Warcraft 3 too with all the races banding together to defeat Archimond.
@@barisaxman2 Fitting seeing as WoW foundation came mostly from the lore beats W3 gave us
I had never even considered what I would have liked Shadowlands to have been, but this is it. When he started describing his idea, I actually started to tear up. It made me think back to all of those moments I experienced with those characters as I grew up and everything that was going on in my life at the time. It would have been the perfect time to be the passing of the baton.
I'll never forget the experience of Endwalker and now I'm even more upset with what Shadowlands could have been. Oh well, here's to, hopefully, the new era of WoW.
The issue is this is blizzard. They don't care about the fans
@@Madlad000 In i would agrue they hate them, I think they only see the haters and choose to turn a blind eye to the rest that just love their game and want to love it.
I think it's also because, in my opinion, Zodiark wasn't really the "big bad" for most the story, it was the Ascians. We fought them, they were in every expansion and no matter what expansion we were in we were waiting for them to appear. So it makes sense that the 'true' ending was putting them to rest.
Yeah, Zodiark pretty much became irrelevant as an actual, possible villain the moment Elidibus got sent to crystal baby jail. Even before then, though, it was that the Unsundered were _tempered_ by Zodiark, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're carrying out his will-with Elidibus separated from him, Zodiark had no will anyway. They were essentially compelled to do anything to ensure Zodiark's survival because the tempering was powerful enough to hold after some 12, 000 years, and naturally it's in Zodiark's best interests to survive, but Zodiark was not telling them to murder a bunch of people in the rejoinings; that was a plan the Ascians themselves came upon in order to fulfill the objective they were compelled into honoring. The "evil" in their plans did not come from Zodiark, and Zodiark was not the actual threat.
@@sleepythemis Given the nature of the echo it doesn't really make sense for any of the unsundered to be tempered.
@@TheAkashicTraveller we're under the hydaelyn blessing (traveler's bessing) thats what is keeping us from being tempered not the echo.
@@LedZaid What they actually meant is that Ascians are not supposed to be tempered. It's a wrong perception and already been debunked in the story.
These unsundered weren't actually tempered. They were just lost causes because of the time and grieves it took to the current setting. Emet, for an instance, was shown to not being influenced by Zodiark at all. He was just so depressed and flipped his own characteristic over the past thousands of years.
@@sleepythemis Zodiark ceased being a villain the moment they said it was a primal used to forestall the final days. It was then obvious that this mysterious, cataclysmic event would be the central conflict.
how can a 10 second clip of a guy seeing another player in game, over and over again, make me tear up all over again
Katsumi Kaijiru has that effect on people, I guess
Yoshida doesn't hold back and the scars are deep
The "power of friendship" moment at the end of Endwalker is perfectly set up because we are currently in a realm that *LITERALLY is influenced by the strength of one's emotions.* The Scions praying for you to remain safe is a direct callback to the original leader Louisoix, who sacrificed his life to seal Bahamut and save everyone. They weren't able to save him then, but they are able to do so now.
In the endsinger fight when the 2nd phase starts. It’s more than just a the power of friendship moment. What the Scions did there was complete something they started all the way back at the opening cinematic of A Realm Reborn and failed at…
…they did the evocation of the 12 and succeeded this time. It also served as a great callback.
This is so true! I loved that scene in the movie where they were all praying and still failed to contain Bahamut. But this time, their efforts paid off.
I thought they were praying to invoke the power of Dynamis. The prayer for Bahamut NEEDED the places of worship so the 12 could hear them. They tell you this in the Aglala raids. The 12 can't hear any old prayer they need to have a connection. That why in the cinematic you see them walking away from those places.
I think another good point as to why Endwalker worked so well is giving you power creep with out "giving" you power creep. When you fight the Endsinger, "Who is this universal threat", you do so in a realm of dynamis. Dynamis being this force this is shaped by the will of those around. You the player character are not strong enough to beat it because you have some unapproachable, but because those around you believe you can't loose. To me this is a big deal because it lets Final Fantasy still have not galactic threats that can still "threaten" the player.
God I continue to love how well they wrote dynamis in. We win because we believe we in, and that allows us miracles in the form of our LB3s. Others can produce these miracles too (like Yugiri Godmodwalker), so the 'bare minimum' of our miracles is nothing special. It's when we're seeped in the realm of Dynamic, where belief becomes reality, where Power of Friendship becomes a reality, that we see our power swell.
We aren't more powerful, but rather, circumstances align in the most splendidly self-destructive manner possible for a being whose whole schtick requires driving YOU to despair, only to find out that nothing it does, even the despair of a whole universe, is capable of doing so. Battle is not a literal physical conflict in Endwalker's finale, but rather a conceptual battle, where you and your summoned allies attack on a conceptual level with techniques you've gained absolute faith in in battles across Eorzea and Norvrandt, against a being attacking you on a conceptual level with what it believes it can do. And it fails. It cannot bring you that despair. You walk around it, and it eventually just resorts to 'bigger bomb', and even then, you don't give up, your friends don't give up. You effectively give the Endsinger the bird (hah), and it can only drive itself inward in despair and devour itself until there is none left as there is nothing it can do but despair as it cannot drive us to.
There is no better way to write Power of Friendship. FFXIV did it, and I give them mad respect for it.
Endwalker's a fucking masterclass of storywriting.
@@katomamundara8106 with every expansion we are reminded of the true final boss, godbert, who has the ability to squat the end singer in half, and create relics with his own sweat!
Love that even Zenos' unending belief in our ability helped fuel our dynamis power.
@@diamondsofsix I never even considered that, but yes, 100% he definitely added a ton to this too!
@@katomamundara8106 Ah yes, because suddenly having a new type of magic that NO ONE HAD HEARD of except like two people in the entire world and like ONE person in the old Ascian society was SO well written in. That wasn't pulled straight from someones rectum at all!
I remember the phase transition in the Endsinger fight. It was like almost midnight, I was emotionally drained from all the stuff on UT, and, as the music ramped up to 11, all I could think was “gods, I love this game.” 😭
I remember my first time hitting that fight. When the phase transition happens, and someone goes, "That's it, boys. Enrage timer hit." And someone else went, "Wait, how did she enrage so soon?!" Only to be met with, "Not her enrage timer. Ours."
I stayed up to finish it off too, and I remember weeping and laughing at the same time when the music kicked in and we started blasting. It was an incredible moment in gaming for me, and I don't think I'll ever forget it.
My friend disconnected right at the phase transition on his first fight. Missed the whole thing
@@TZShadow1 F in the chat
I'm a lore enthusiast, so the callback to the fall of Dalamud and Bahamut's release at phase change made me YELL out loud at my desk. And when the "Maker's Ruin" theme kicked in at 30 seconds into the music? I was in genuine happy-tears. It's been our unofficial theme since ARR, and now it was OUR BOSS MUSIC. And that's something else that FFXIV absolutely nailed; the sound design woven into the story was magnificent. Jesse could do an entire episode (and I hope he does, if he hasn't already!) on the storytelling done just through the sound design throughout the entire game, another reason why Endwalker hits like Truck-kun isekai-ing an anime protagonist
one simple reason i feel it works in FFXIV and did not work in WOW is because FFXIV did not negatively retcon/destroy very well established lore and motives of beloved characters.
WOW writers gives off the impression that they do not care about ANY of the characters in the game and they are willing to destroy them and kill them off just to move their narrative forward. the last 3 expansions in WOW just turned sylvanas from a brilliant strategic ranger general of silvermoon into yet another lunatic warmongering warchief of the horde.
FFXIV writers on the other hand feel like they care about the characters in the game as much as we do and pour over all the established character development before they decide what to do to move the story forward. on top of this they give characters the respect they deserve and dont just kill them off screen, possibly worse actually, unceremoniously getting stabbed in a cutscene like a scrub, in some obscure side quest or their favorite make you read a book to find out.
can you tell i'm salty about what they did to half the horde cast?
Even after 1 year, and finishing endwalker 3 times now, "the walk" end the endsinger always makes me cry.
Light the way my frends will we see you again.
This was a story that took 10 years, and I will always keep thous in heart.
The thing that helped 14 work so well is that they were willing to end the "but there's someone bigger!" trope that the structure of MMOs seems to make mandatory. You finish the big bad in an epic finale, and go on a whole new adventure. There's no "oh, you beat despair but behind the scenes urianger was actually manipulating her to get back at all the people who ignored his dialogue and he's actually even more powerful and is betraying you for skipping cutscenes in ARR!"
i'm not ashamed i laughed at the last part
Doth shan't skipeth mine cutsceneth. - Urianger, 2010s.
@@SporeTres His enrage would be to force you to watch all his voiced cutscenes without skipping them, then quizzing the raid on things he said in them.
WoL: Oh no! He's casting "Speech in Cursive" Rrrruuuunnnnnnnnn!
Dawntrail is gonna make it even better. News doesn't neccessarily travel very far, especially outside the Eorzean region. We're going to a place people don't know us. Going on an adventure of our own choosing. They kept saying on the WoW team interviews how they can't go back to that. That you're this hero forever and MUST do crazier and crazier. No you don't. There's no reason you can't take a vacation. You're powerful, yes, but you're not a god. You still rely on everyone around you.
Beach episode gonna feel so good.
RIP to all the WoL we lost along the way that didnt get to see the end to the journey. and thank you for this video in general, such a great break down on what makes endwalker, no, all of 14 so great.
I played WoW for almost 17 years at the time I quit, and have just played FFXIV for a year now, and I can't agree with you more. I think a big part of it boils down to the fact that Warcraft can't close a story line that is satisfying to the player, where as behind the Jailer there's something else that's WORSE that we know nothing about while not caring at all for the villain we just killed, while with the Endsinger, you did it. You defeated the big bad of the universe, but that's NOT the end of the story, YOUR story. There's still more to the world, the universe, more to do and see, but we can move away from the Final Days and the Ascians and explore the same world with new eyes.
I think for me, and something you touched on here, a lot of it is that it felt like I mattered as a player, that my actions drove the story, where as in WoW I felt like I was a background character and being thrown at anything that was remotely a threat. Even now looking at Dragonflight.. it feels like a new direction, but very much the same, as we will fight this villain, find out something deeper is going on, be thrown at them-- rinse and repeat. Where as in FFXIV I have no idea what is going to happen in the Void, where the story is going to take us next, and I'm excited for every minute of it.
I think another reason for Endwalker working is that it fits the overall themes and development of our charackter.
ARR-we were the wide eyed adventurer starting our journey
HW- we learned the world can be a hard place and for what we stand
SB- we became a guardian of the people and champion of good
ShB- we were broken and beaten down we learned we cant do everything but its important to get back up.
EW- we are done, we beat our weakness we grew we learned that not magics pr big swords make us strong but our hope and friendship lets our heart shine bright into the darkness we are not the warrior of light or darkness we are the Warrior of Hope and we are here to kick ass and repay estiniens debt!
As epic and as sad as many moments in EW were it felt like our charackter was just in peak condition to beat up whatever comes along. I mean remember sharlayan we went there and didn't take shit from them, the epic entry into garlemald and later on soldiers shitting their pants when they realize who we are and then the final area were the big bad basicaly panics because we get closer and closer and can't get beaten down.
Like our friend realized we are in for the thrill of adventure and nothing can stop us
I remember when I was in the middle of the Elpis section, that I was thinking: "Is this where the game is heading? The big baddie is just a menace from outer space?". But after the report, everything made sense. Meteion and Hermes reasoning, why the Ancients summoned Zodiark, what motivated Hydaleyn to sunder the world, etc. Not only that, but the way Endwalker handled FFXIV most beloved villain was stelar. Imagine how much different Shadowlands would have been if Arthas would have been given just a fraction of the treatment Final Fantasy gave to Emet-Selch.
Stratholme was a necessary evil. The plague was spreading.
It's crazy how just a summery of endwalker can make me well up.
something else btw, The Endsinger wasn’t even THAT out of left field. She’s not JUST a “Villain whose always been the real villain” . She’s another product of ascian hubris. I think everyone always thought that the end of the ancients would of come from ancient hubris.
Unlike the jailer, who has nothing to do with anything from what i can tell lol
Let's keep in mind that Zenos and Fandaniel are both byproducts of the two major civilizations the ascians, namely Emet, created to further chaos and their grand plan on the source. Only for both together to end up destroying that plan utterly and completely to its very core. Even reigniting the very apocalypse it was meant meant to shield aetherys against.
In WoW you are merely "Expansion Protag Title" to EVERYONE. Whereas in XIV, you are addressed by your ACTUAL NAME and there are NPC's both major and relatively minor that you interacted with personally who still remember you even expansions later when they return in current events. WoW is a (poorly managed) story that, in the grand scheme of things, happens with or without your player character. WoW's main problem is that it tries to shoehorn your player character as "DA CHAMPION" into a story where the other main lore NPCs are both narratively and quite literally bigger than you and can ultimately do the shit they do with or without your involvement. XIV is the story of your progression from some rando adventurer who ultimately becomes the WoL, and the things that you achieve WITH the friends you make.
Where Endsinger brings an arc to a satisfying conclusion, Jailer reveals that the arc is being dragged on even further. Good musings Jesse. I can only hope that one day we actually stop getting "but wait! there's an EVEN BIGGER BAD GUY THAT I WAS PROTECTING YOU FROM!" in Warcraft.
That's been something Blizzard has been doing ever since they ran out of baddies from the RTS. The three best expansions - BC, Wrath, and Legion - all dealt with enemies and characters that we'd faced in Warcraft 2 and especially 3. All of the others ones have been, "But wait! There's something even bigger out there!" Cataclysm set up N'Zoth. WoD set AU Archimonde. BfA set up the Jailer. Shadowlands set up whatever the hell it did. Space jellyfish from Beyond.
@@Maria_Erias What was in W3 besides the burning legion as being the "but wait these guys are more evil!"
@@acolyte1951 Arthas and the Scourge. On the other hand, you had Illidan setting up Archimonde and the Burning Legion.
@@Maria_Erias Well, Deathwing was actually introduced back in Warcraft 2 xD
She really, REALLY does not though. And I love XIV. She's a last minute asspull whose powered by literal space magic. She is Woobie, destroyer of worlds. We were robbed of a satisfying conclusion for the war with the Empire, we were robbed of a satisfying ending with the Ascians and Zodiark, we were robbed of a satisfying ending of Hydalen, an ending we didn't NEED by the way, and ultimately we were even robbed of a satisfying ending of the bad guy who had popped up a few hours before. Endwalker just recycled content from its earlier expansions, following Shadowbringers nearly beat for beat while tossing in Xenos and Fandanial (('s corpse)) from Stormblood.
We're just seeing a repeat of the early WoW days, when they could do no wrong according to the community. This writing team is still far better but they aren't the amazing writers that some people for some reason think they are.
God FF14 music is so good. Some of the music in the background still gives me chills just hearing it.
(XIV SPOILERS) It was so insanely brave of them to let Zodiark end the way he did, and it speaks volumes towards the confidence the writers had in knowing that they could make this work. It would have been so easy to infuriate everyone by letting them down so hard, yet they nimbly bypassed all of the potential pitfalls to make everyone love the story. I think what helped more than anything is that Zodiark had always been a faceless McGuffin though; since they never fully fleshed him out it also didn't bother anyone too much when he was cast aside so easily. It was a masterfully constructed twist.
the lead writer was once interviewed and asked what her favorite character was. She answered Fandaniel and got a WTF reaction from basically everyone in the community.
Having played through Endwalker in can totally see her point
Big disagree, I think the story took a massive hit in quality in Endwalker, and their treatment of Zodiark is part of the reason why. It's very clear now, especially after several interviews, that the story of Endwalker was massively rushed, and all of this content deserved so much more room to breath than what it got. EW while you're doing the MSQ has a lot of emotional high points that in the moment make it feel good, but especially going back through it on alts or just reflecting more deeply on it, reveals just how swallow and rushed the story in EW is. HW and ShB were leagues better than what we got in EW.
Nah I felt like they did Zodiark dirty. If you're a new player it's kind of whatever but for those who have been following the game a long time, Zodiark was built up for literally like 8 or 9 years and to just bitchslap him and then move on to funny rabbit people was a letdown for me. He's one of the most important figures in the setting and they almost treat him like a joke. I'm fine with the way the plot played out, but I think they should have given way more time and attention to hyping up the Zodiark fight. It shows that Endwalker is really 2 expansions worth of story condensed into 1 and so they rush through quite a lot of things that would ordinarily be given a lot of time.
I can only hope that one day we get an Ultimate fight where they do the big boy justice.
It's probably important to bear in mind that we don't fight a fully powered Zodiark as he's only a little more than halfway complete; his incomplete state is the reason we beat him so soundly. Zodiark's death bringing the final days is also something that was likely in the works since at least Shadowbringers, when it's revealed that Zodiark had saved the world from the final days; being portrayed as a savior was perhaps a bit of a twist in itself when up until that point Zodiark had been portrayed as a dark elder primal trying to plunge the world into darkness.
@@richardwicker8456 Looking at Zodiark's boss model makes it look like he was purely created to fight the Endsinger though: the tentacles, meteor throwing, creation magic, etc. The only way to get Endsinger to Ethyrias in EW was to kill Zodiark and there's usually only one person who can do that, the WoL.
The Endsinger fits a perfectly Square peg that the writers left a long time ago. That's how they've always done their story structure - how to make things open-ended so that when they've finally figured out everything they need they can make sure that it doesn't contradict with what was established before.
Zovaal on the other hand, tried to force his way into fitting inside the peg toy, ultimately ending up destroying both himself and everything that was already laid out before. I can't spell enough how much I hate that they tried to shoehorn the Jailer across the many events of not just WoW but also WC in order to make sure he was present since the beginning while absolutely giving ZERO hints.
Nobbel TV has a good video named "Puzzle and Lore - FFXIV vs WoW"- you can skip to 3 mins, 30 seconds where he explains this analogy better than I ever could (Keep in mind that that video was made just after him seeing the "Henceforth, he shall walk" part so he was missing some key information that happens much later).
Edit: Jesse's suggestion on how Shadowlands could have been handled was miles better than... whatever we got now. How many expansions do we need to wait before we return to the "Bigger threat than the Jailer" storyline? Do people even want to go back?
Dragonflight so far is an amazing distraction but, like Sargeras' Sword, sooner or later we're gonna need to deal with whatever got the jailer so spooked. Hope the writers of WoW are up for the task.
and then there's the nobbel interview of Danuser trying to retcon his own retcon
@@joaoteixeira8349 saw that interview. You can tell that Steve REALLY did not want to be there when Nobbel was grilling him about Shadowlands.
Now that they're stepping away from the cosmic stuff for a bit, I guess it's time to see if Steve and co. can make something good out of Dragonflight's story.
The differences are just...huge. FFXIV carefully fits together and kept cohesive as much as possible, retcons are done carefully and only when necessary. The Endsinger just felt like a good natural conclusion to the story and themes.
...WoW is written like they have a different set of writers every fucking expansion who forgot what happened in the previous one and pull out random crap from their ass and throw it at the wall. With things being retconned on a whim every 5 minutes.
What sword?
There is no sword
Zenos coming to us in the end was my absolute highlight. i did not expect that one bit. and when the music started i was like "wait, that sounds familier?" and i literally screamed when he broke through the barrier so that my housemates came to check on me xD
And those moments are missing in wow. everytime someone shows up in wow its more of a "who was that again?" or "ah ok cool"
I couldn't have said it better, FFXIV is about hope. Not for your character, but for us, the players. After all we've made it this far. As Raha said, "you stand where you stand by virtue of the road you walked to get here."
EDIT: This was, at least, the message I got from the game as someone who has depression, anxiety, gender dysphoria, etc. The message felt like, the past has been rough, almost breaking at time, but we've made it this far, and that has to count for something, right?
Another good quote is from Alisaie when she tells the Endsinger "No one is unbreakable, what pains one may weather, may bring another to tears. Therein lies our strength, when we fall, our brothers and sisters [and nonbinary siblings] are there to raise us up. Again and again. Without end."
It's all a message for the player, one that suffering exists, but we're not alone, we don't have to be. It's a message more personal than anything WoW has done. You see bits of yourself in the experiences of the people you meet in FFXIV.
And another Alisaie line: "No, I won't give up these experiences. Good and bad, they are mine. They are ME."
Really? As another person who has suffered long and hard with chronic depression, I found Endwalker's message to be pretty fucking abhorrent and hypocritical. It operates on a privileged narrative where only those who cope the "correct" way are granted salvation. The Scions' characterization do a complete 180, with Hydaelyn being praised for genocide after all the shit Emet got for "the murder of billions that we cannot condone" and the narrative throws the Ancients under the bus with Other-ing strategies that'd make the biggest anti-autistic bigot green with envy. Hermes the Sad Boi School Shooter is one of the most piss-poor representations of "depression" I've ever seen, and practically espouses the viewpoint that depressed people are highly likely to go on mass murdering sprees and blame society for all their ills. We don't pity and praise the real life school shooters, no we nail those fuckers to the wall and pity their victims instead. So why does Endwalker give Genocidaelyn and Hermes the School Shooter so much leeway, slack and praise? It's fucking monstrous.
Also fuck Alisaie and everything she has to say. She's a blazing hypocrite like the rest of them. She'd never say that on behalf of the Ancients, only her own people. Selfish brat. I don't see any of myself in the Scions, I'd kill myself before praising the genocidal witch for condemning an entire people to death because they didn't grieve in the way she allowed them to. Endwalker has made me feel alone in a way I've never felt before, and the fanbase has made me feel unwelcome because I dare to criticize it. So much for "Best story in an MMO", "Best Community" and all this tolerance that is so mythical and famous but I can never seem to find.
I think it all boil down to the fact that the story of Endwalker respect your time and your investment into the storyline since AAR, while World of Warcraft was always extremely bad with that. Blizzard understood the fan service aspect of it, but it was always to bring x or y character as raid boss or to corrupt them or kill them of.
It doesn't help that your character in WoW is more or less a spectator or a helper to other heroes or storyline where you don't have any agency. In FFXIV, you *are* the Warrior of Light and it's your friends and found family that are fighting by your side and you are never side stepped or made to feel like in the grand scheme of things you don't matter.
Endwalker helped me confront my extreme nihilism and hatred of existence. Actually changed my life. I don't think I've ever cried so much in my life. The Shadowbringers + Endwalker wombo combo is a masterpiece
Jesus loves you, he has a plan for your life.
@@99range92def that's kind of you to say, but I think the message of Endwalker is that we are the ones that give reason to life. Life is precious and worth forging ahead through its lower moments.
Zenos couldn't even understand despair and even says to the WoL: "I had assumed you would be above something so banal as despair. Am I mistaken?" .
Zenos found meaning in his own passion: fighting.
I'm glad to hear it my dude. I've seen people say they relate to Hermes and by extension Amon and I feel nothing but sadness for them. As for folks who say he did nothing wrong... I have nothing but frustration for them.
I hear ya, man. I suffered through my own bouts of fatalism and nihilism, and I can only wish I had been able to play this game 20 years ago when I needed it most. Still though, I’m happy to have been able to play it today and to be able to share the experience with so many people
This very same message was what made me resonate with Zenos to a weird degree. his whole "there is no meaning to life, which is why we're able to give it our own" has been something i've wholly believed for years and seeing it brought to words as perfectly as it was in that cutscene in garlemald with Jullus calling him out gave me a weird sort of validated feeling, that my opinions on life weren't weird. even if the person that gave me that validations was a huge sociopath i suppose
"Endsinger" just sounds cooler than "The Jailer."
There is another VERY important reason on why the story turns of Endwalker work so well, on why fighting Zodiark at level 82 is an intriguing twist other than a disappointing waste of an opportunity, and it has to do with where the investment and interest of the player lies. I believe it is fair to say, that the average player of XIV has never really particularly -cared- about Zodiark, the entity. It was always a non-entity, at best a cool XII and Tactics reference, but it was never a storied character with whom the player has had any chance to develop any kind of emotional or narrative attachment, be it of appreciation or distaste, the way that Sylvanas undeniably was.
The ASCIANS, however, over the course of Shadowbringers, very much became that. When people lavish praise upon XIV and Shadowbringers in particular, they talk about Amaurot, they talk about Emet-Selch, about Elidibus, they talk about all these characters and concepts that we have been able to spend time with and learn about and form an attachment to. And through that entire process, that hook is present, of the WHY Zodiark was created, of the tragedy it was meant to put a stop to, of the tragedy its existence caused, a compelling story of a people falling from Eden and turning from all-loving brothers and sisters nurturing their world in peace to shadowy monsters plotting to destroy everything. We have been told from a very early point in Shadowbringers, that from the villain's point, "there was a reason for all this. We have Motives. What we are doing is Right."
Endwalker puts a stop to Zodiark very early on, but by that point the player's investment is no longer with Zodiark, the entity, if it had ever been. Zodiark himself is dispatched at level 82, but the story of the ascians, the ancients, of Amaurot, of those things we learned about and grew attached to, continues up until the very end of the expansion itself, until the very final boss battle. There is no break, no stark moment of "okay player, you think you care about this, nah, you should actually care about this OTHER thing", there is no "I can't wait to go beat up Sylvanas, wait, what do you mean she's actually just a pawn to this big villain, wait, what does he actually want? Why does he want it? What, there's an even BIGGER threat coming we're never told about? What?". Endwalker knows VERY well where the player's emotional attachment is likely to be during the course of its story, the parts of its plot that players are likely to feel hooked in, and knows to resolve all the plot points relating to it with a flourish and bow in a way that respects the parts of the plot that players feel investment in and resolves them to the end. Warcraft, in the meantime, keeps simply grabbing the player by the throat and trying to go "alright, direct your interest here. Now here. Now here. Oh, and by the way, this guy? He planned everything from since the days of Warcraft 1. Why? Don't ask question. Just be a good boy and love whatever we tell you to love."
Ironic that for the latest expansion that had heavier emphasis on souls and shit, Shadowlands was soulless.
Not a FF guy, but when devs do cool shit like this, I just got to commend them for going ahead with it.
I think another big difference is the scope, Jailer was presented as this uber evil pulling the strings of every single villain and evil deed throughout the entire history of WoW. Suddenly Arthas wasn't a badass doing the 'necessary evil' that lost his way, now he's just a weak minded understudy being puppeted by the REAL villain to the point his soul itself had to be destroyed because the Jailer wore him like a jacket. Sylvanus has been doing a lot of evil morally dubious shit and is actively getting worse and worse but we've been told it's for a greater good... OOPS turns out she was just mentally handicapped and got used by the Jailer. Sargeras the Mad Titan turned to destruction and mayhem because he was told the eldritch truth of the Void Lords and their nightmarish evil by the Nathrezim, except, in a plot twist no one expected, the Nathrezim are under the control of the Jailer's buddy, WHAT A COINCIDENCE! That is to say if you can think of a villain and their motivations chances are it's really the Jailer's fault and he himself is an idiot being controlled by his fear of an unknown ultimate evil that is probably the Void Lords...
It cheapens everyone involved, even the Jailer is rendered a joke the plot and he was supposed to be the culmination of everything.
Endsinger on the other hand wasn't controlling anyone, she was a naïve hopeless creature sent on an impossible task by a depressed God and in turn found despair and sorrow. She may have wiped out countless worlds and ended the Ancients but she wasn't in the shadows guiding Emet-Selch to commit war crimes in the hopes of getting his loved ones back. She never whispered sweet nothings into Zenos' ear to drive him insane, she never toyed with Bahamut's endless rage to destroy the world, she literally has nothing to do with the vast majority of the storyline beyond being a catalyst.
No one is cheapened, it adds depth to what we already knew, villains aren't puppets, they had their own motives and reasons even if we disagreed with them and ultimately it's the culmination of more than 10 years in the making.
That's a much more fundamental problem...
Mind blown, Jesse puts so much work into these!
Jesse made an even better ending in 5 minutes than the entire Blizz crew with all those decades of back lore to draw from. They should've just hired Jesse instead.
Jesse spouting ideas about how to improve SL alone gives me more tears of awesome and feels than Blizzard could ever manage in one of their high quality cutscenes.
I mean, if FFIV was doing powerful emotional scenes with tiny sprites and text in the 90s, why couldn't Jesse do it with cutouts of the characters?
It was never really about production values, humans are wired to respond to stories just as much as we are to tell them.
Here's another reason why FF14 worked far better, Endsinger was never portrayed as this evil entity. Hell, we know the entirety of why she's doing this based on some simple interactions, where when it's revealed how hopeless everything is, we get it. They didn't try to over complicate anything, and what's more, we were given a villain we can completely understand their reasoning for.
The thing about WoW is that the world just does NOT care about you, the player. You’re just another adventurer. One of the many. Sure you might also be a speaker for your faction or a maw walker but those titles mean nothing. Nothing you do has long term recognition. People you’ve fought alongside in the past forget who you are, the fractured nature of leveling means that the dev team can’t create a story with characters that know your character. You might have played a different expansion to level them up, so original characters HAVE to act indifferent to you, or you’ll be confused why this character you’ve never interacted with is your friend. You do not know them and they do not know you. This is compounded by the fact the nature of the game encourages you to make multiple alts, by bouncing between them it’s not only the NPCs who don’t have a bond with you. You don’t have a bond with your characters. Some parts of the story can only be seen by playing a character of a different faction, class (order halls), covenant etc.
FF14 solves this with the Main Story Quest. You are the Warrior of Light. Everyone you encounter remembers you, you give them hope, you’ve saved them numerous times just like they’ve saved you. Your deeds are recognized, you form a bond with those you fight alongside. Leaders of the city-states don’t enlist your aid just because you’re a powerful adventurer they might have heard of but never interacted with, you’re THE powerful adventurer that has saved them and their nations before. And in FF14 there really is zero reason to make alts because you can do everything in the game on one character. You can play every class, go through the whole story and learn every profession on one character, the more you play the more you gain a bond with your own character.
Just the fact that we, the Warrior of Light, have our own theme song is the most badass and emotionally powerful thing to be able to wield when telling a story. We heard the leitmotif at least once every expansion, but they sure saved the best for last.
the song that plays during the second part of the Endsinger fight is called "With Hearts Aligned"
Saw someone describe the final trial transition as "the Endsinger hitting the WoL's enrage timer" and I feel that encapsulates it perfectly lol
This is why "The Maker's Ruin" will be my eternally favorite track from XIV. I feel powerful and feel like I can almost do anything whenever that track drops, even in any kind of arrangement. "With Hearts Aligned" also quickly went up there on my list.
The Endsinger is what I feel is a last minute bigger bad done amazingly, not only tying her to what is effectively the entire story but also she was given the space she needed to be understood and connected by the player and to make this even worse looking for the jailer this was all done in a single patch cycle whereas the Jailer failed for the entire expansion.
Edit: I just realized something, technically speaking Endsinger had half of the runtime of the start of Endwalker as the first half was dedicated more towards Zenos and Fandaniel with no mention of Endsinger. This in my opinion makes the jailer look even more like wasted time and space storywise.
And they made Endsinger/Meteion more relatable with less runtime than Jailer. Can look back and be like '.. Who the fuck was Jailer?' But Meteion?
"I will protecc little blue birb daughter with my life." ;n; She's the only minion I have out now a days.
In my opinion, the reason this works in ff14 and not shadow lands is because it can be argued that your character in ff14 is proactive, not just reactive. The main flaw with the big bad behind the villain trope is that besides it being out of left field, it throws agency for the character's story out the window and make them static reactionary characters. In order for the trope to work at all the characters haft to actually be proactive for it to work, as that allows room for the story to be re-contextualized which can present more interesting directions for story telling, maybe some reveals, or twists that actually make sense for example.
@@MarkFin9423 Basicly
WoW: You're a background character in the actual main characters story. You're just along for the ride.
FFXIV: You ARE the Main Character, thus making what is happening hit you on a personal level. Those are YOUR friends, this is YOUR world, and that is YOUR best friend/nemesis who just came in clutch.
One feels hallow, the other tugs on your heart.
I think the main difference between the Endsinger and Jailer is that they tried to give the jailer more importance by retroactively saying he was manipulating every major power that we've had until now. Endsinger affected the ascians, but she wasn't controlling the ascians. And no other villain was related to her in any way.
I love a good long form Jesse Video. Thanks for your hard work on this! This hit the nail on the head. Great editing too. I'm glad people are enjoying Dragonflight now and hope it succeeds. That said I'm hella hype for the FFXIV LL coming up!!
As someone who played wow for 18 years and FF14 for about..5 years ish I can simply say FF14 > wow story in every single area and I will fight people over that fact. Wow is a broken mess of a story that makes no sense at times and was written for children who also have no clue of what is going on.
I will not sit here and say Gameplay wise Ff14 is better...they both have something to enjoy and like about them though, FF14 is more flashy for sure and I find my self pumped up behind alot of moments in FF14 vs wow, In the end Gameplay wise...sure they are roughly equal no wrong choice but story wise? FF14 shits on wow every day all day.
Now pardon me: my "champion" and "hero" needs to go kill a wanna be death wing and watch a bunch of former aspect dragons who did nothing but cry, hug and moan about every issue get all the rewards and become Demi gods again. ITS GOOD SHIT wait no its not.
Garrosh did nothing wrong.
Lol
But in all seriousness you're completely right. I probably would've resubbed to Wow for Shadowlands if it had been like the version you described. So much wasted potential.
I come from ffxiv. Man.... I started crying just re-remembering Endwalker. There were so many details you pointed out that re-contextualized my feelings on everything I experienced irl and in the past 8+ years I played ffxiv. Venat's question from the moment she asked it still sits with me. "Has your journey been good? Has it been worthwhile?" .... Good video. 😭
I played WOW from 2009 until the middle of Warlords of Draenor and then I came back for a few expansions at sporadic moments. Usually at the beginning and after the first patch I'd give up and go do something else.
I absolutely agree with everything you've said.
As a lover of the Warcraft universe and seeing how increasingly everything has become so unimportant and with such a childish and flawed narrative that it has generated a lot of discontent, well beyond the gameplay.
When I got to know Final Fantasy XIV I was in the middle of the WoW expansion I liked the most - Mists of Pandaria. I was very wary of trying the game for fear of repeating the experiences I'd had with MMOs other than the highly acclaimed World of Warcraft.
I was actually surprised. A game with much more difficulty than I had imagined and with a much more fluid operation than I had ever imagined. As a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise as well, I noticed several references to some of the games I had already played and initially thought that the story was just a simplistic background narrative like the one I was used to in WoW.
I soon realized that I cared about the NPCs, that I remembered their names, their stories, their personalities and felt that I was really part of that universe.
With the following expansions, it only got better, with well-crafted villains, like in Heavensward, who made you empathize with them, or even feel sad about the death of one, as in the case of Nidhogg.
Then there's Stormblood with memorable villains like the unforgettable Yotsuyu.
Then comes Shadowbringer... putting Final Fantasy's most beloved villain - Emet-Selch - in our hands. Creating narratives with well-written characters such as Crystal Exarch, Ryne, Feo Ul, Lyna...
I cried so much in Shadowbringer that all I could do was curse Yoship for making such a good game.
And today I'm proud and love being part of Warriors of Light.
That was an absolutely beautiful dissection of the differences and the narrative beats running through both XIV and Warcraft.
Honestly, that bit when Zenos appears at the end really elevated him for me. I already liked him as a villian because sometimes I like having a villian who just wants to fuck shit up for no reason, no grand schemes or anything but just because he can and he is bored. But when he appears at the end, when all your friends have been (naturally) worried about you taking this thing on by yourself, he has such faith in your abilities he is just confused as to why it still lives. No doubt in his mind whatsoever that this thing would have a chance against you and no "hee hee hee you are distracted so now I will get you" type bullshit either.
The only issue with what your version of Shadowlands ends is that you think Danuser actually knows how a story works
It worked because m the endsinger isn’t a last minute shoe in. It was foreshadowed from the very first line of the game: “hear, feel, think”. Those three words Hydaelyn says are the antidote to the song of the end despair. That our suffering has meaning if we want it to. It’s the things the WoL and his companions feel for each other, the beauty they hear and the thoughts they think that validate their experiences in spite of all things ending. That’s why the ffxiv story is so powerful
16:41 Never forget the dancing imperial soldier, always there to make you smile, even at the end of it all.
Where is the video he's reacting to there?
The making it about you part, I hadn't even thought about. One of the first parts that hit me with happiness was the first time all the NPCs gatherer together to support you and all my job trainers were there. It made me so happy that the people who were important to me were there.
It always has been about you. That is the major difference compared to wow.
Wrath of the lich king it's about tyrion and his redomption of ashbringer, we fought we lost, we fought again but it was not us in the end.
Cataclysm it was all about thrals return, in the end we fought some dragon boils, but thral used the golden mirror and won for us.
Mist of Pandaria It was the alliance and horde + pandas that brought down Garrosh.
Dreanor others one again had the splotlight
Legion we helped the redeemed star "You are not prepared out" (they tried the FF14 thing a bit, but dropped it in BFA for the most part)
BFA while you doing it, not on your own strength but with the planet, I will give it a pass. Sadly the rest of BFA was too much crap.
I think there's also something to say about the story as a whole. Your connection to the world itself makes the final days actually worrying. Anyone, anywhere could turn at any moment. You're no longer just fighting to stop the bad guy, the idea of you as the WoL fighting to save everyone, to save existence itself, comes to the forefront. It is EXCEEDINGLY apparent. You team up with people who in 2.0 would have been enemies that you'd have no qualms about fighting (Gaius? Jullus? Zeno's?emet?). Emet comes to your defense to tell your enemy "you will not end our journey". Looking at all of these, not including the people who joined to help finish the ship or the ilsabard contingent helping to stop damn Daniel shows just how far you've come not only as a character in the game, but as the player as well. Venat's question I think really was kind of the starting point for writing all of endwalker. "Did you enjoy it?" The fact that the "final boss" is really just a fan service fight for fun really drives that point home. A test of your reflexes indeed.
There's also something to be said about growth of characters. Urianger for instance really came into his own here. He's had some definite moments in shb and such, but how could ANYONE not be content with the dialogue with moen's parents. That kind of thing really makes the characters feel ALIVE, feel LOVABLE, and worth the fight that's coming.
I remember fighting Endsinger for the first time and we got to phase 2 and like, I was drowning in emotion and music. I was tearing up and forgetting my rotations. I was like "F my rotations, you are going down!"
My favorite part is that there's no necessary movement in the ending of the fight. you just stand there and throw everything you've got at her.
And of course, being a Black Mage, that's always very welcome.
Dammit. Is there ever going to be a day where I can watch something about Endwalker and not tear up? Great vid Jesse. Obviously you can't get into the nuance and detail of the story in a format like this, but it think the "It's the little things" idea FF went with that permeates the entire game that truly highlights the difference between sub-par storytelling and brilliant storytelling. I played WOW for 5 years until the middle of Shadowlands and while I enjoyed the lore, looking back after quitting, I felt nothing when it came to the game. Nothing it be emotional about, nothing to look back on fondly, even though I played with a great group of people. There's nothing concrete there to get attached to. Maybe it's because I only played for 5 years as opposed to 10 for FF, but the "storytelling" in WOW just makes it feel hollow. Which blows because it could be amazing. I got hype listening to your Shadowlands redo and think it would have 1000% been better.
I played WoW from the beta days. In the earlier expansions, there wasn't much of a focus on a narrative storyline, so the stories you got tended to be told in sort of a distributed way. All the little storylines from questing through the zones tied into the overall narrative. A great example of that is the storylines that culminated in the Wrathgate cinematic in Wrath of the Lich King. That was basically the end point of a bunch of different storylines that dealt with coming to Northrend and confronting the dangers there. Blizzard doing larger narrative stories only worked in Legion, and even then, it was still a bunch of different storylines, since each class had its own, and then they all just tied together in the end. But Cataclysm, WoD, BfA, Shadowlands... they all sucked. And most of them were filled with retcons that, instead of adding context retroactively (an actual retcon), they rewrote past lore with new lore to follow whatever BS "Rule of Cool" storyline the team was pushing, with the team mostly not caring about the lore and giving it little thought with regards to pushing their story agenda forward.
The biggest and most egregious example of that is the burning of Teldrassil. I remember the picture of Sylvanas standing in front of the burning Teldrassil that came out from Blizzcon, and everyone was talking. "Who burned the tree?" The speculation went on for months. It was Anduin, burning it because he was secretly corrupted by the Old Gods from his encounter with the Divine Bell in Pandaria. It was the Night Elves themselves, burning it to prevent it from being taken by the Horde. It was the Alliance, burning it without the consent of the Night Elves, to keep the Horde from gaining the Alliance's main port in Kalimdor.
But then the War of Thorns story happened and it was revealed that Sylvanas burned it because she had a moment of angsty pique. And when confronted with that, Ion literally said, "What? Why would you think it was anyone but Sylvanas? She was standing right in front of the tree in the art." Even though he knew about all the speculation, and was happy using that to hype up the BfA launch.
To expand on this, by the time you were fighting Endsinger in FF14, you are emotionally drained at this point. Perhaps even tired from trying to binge through it. And the whole 2nd phase gave that motivation you needed to keep going. It's the element of 4th wall as a player that resonated with a lot of us that made that final battle near perfection.
16 years of WoW and I felt NOTHING. One year into FFXIV and I felt EVERYTHING I've never felt in any video game before.
What a masterpiece FFXIV is! ...I still can't believe what I experienced this last year.
At this point WoW can't get me back anymore. Never. And I'm not even sad :-)
Jesse describing his variant of the Jailor actually gave my goosebumps. Fantastic stuff.
Jesse, thank you so much for this. I’ve had a strange and up and down journey during my life and while playing FFXIV, but this video and analysis reminded me of just now deeply Endwalker impacted me and reminded me of how despite it all, we can continue to have hope. and we are still here to tell our story. I’ve been away from 14 for a while because it brought me so much sadness, but I think I’m ready now to dive back in. you are incredible. thank you.
I know, late to the party, but I just found the Vid and had some thoughts about the Endsinger fight just yesterday.
I skip cutscenes, that I already have seen, so I forgot about that part, but it adds perfectly to that part. She is taunting us, that we will never reach the deliverance (the hope), we are looking for.
And what does Zenos do, when we start the battle. Steeling the introduction from the Endsinger, by not knowing what this deliverence is, she is talking about, and still see her as our pray, we hunt. "Our hunt ends this day. There is nowhere you can flee that we cannot follow."
Even thou it is just a Mechanic, she answers with "Even stars must die." knowing full well, that this is true for her too. But in her quest of destroying our hope, she is still says this to get us giving up the fight, as we will still die.
jumping forward, as she tries to vanquish our hope or killing us during the fight.
when she prepares for the transition phase and during the first part of it she tells us, that "If there is no happiness in life... There is only one place it may be found." ... "Oblivion!" and throwing a f... planat at us only faling, because of too many shields and a tank LB.
Now realising, what power is behind us, she turns back time to crush us again, as all our Dynamis is spend for the moment.
She failes again, seeing, what gives us hope and finally finding, what she was asked to find so long ago. In a final atempt to correct the univers to the sad and hopeless state it should be, she lashes out only to be defeated and freed from her own hoplessnes.
The Jailer was a mastermind who got retconnected into being relevant.
The Endsinger is an explanation to the whys of the problems we have facing since Venat sundered the world, let alone the rest of the game.
Better yet, it is pretty signaled that Meteon and her sisters found a manifestation of the void at the very edge of the universe and that contact changed them somewhat, basically dynamis (who we have been playing with since Limit Breaks were introduced in game, we just didn't know the name of it yet).
Meaning that yes, Endsinger was a problem that we knew little about, but not only it connects to every nook and cranny of the conflict, it also hints that we just put out a fire, versus eliminating the 'evil' at the end. Which, by Endwalker's ending, is also hinted at as a natural force of reality itself. Nothing one can do to stop the heat death of the universe. All the Endsinger was doing was accelerating it. To say "FF14 made the mysterious villain work' is a bit silly considering the Endsinger is but one aspect of the story, one that moves its themes to its conclusion. We could've ended the story with Shadowbringers and in my opinion, we wouldn't miss much 'story wise' because the reasons to WHY the Ancients did what they did, from our perspective, were of not importance. But WHAT they did and how to properly combat their world view is where the main conflict lingers. I won't deny that Endsinger enhanced the story, but I legit feel it was merely a punctuation to a well constructed plot.
I think it also helped that Meteion was not the direct reason why the Ascians did what they did. Sure, she caused the event that led the Ascians down the path they took, but all the evil they did to undo the effects of the Final Days was entirely done of their own volition with no influence from Meteion in that specific regard.
FFXIV has a theme, WoW does not. You can't have 10+ years of story without something to tie it together. FFXIV's overarching story was _not_ planned out ahead of time, but by laying down a theme it allowed each expansion to tie its plot threads to that theme making the whole thing feel more cohesive. Endwalker takes the theme and brings it from the background to the foreground, making an overarching conclusion possible. Comparatively, WoW has never really concerned itself with its plot. It has always treated its story as just a backdrop for the gameplay.
The theme of FFXIV is summarized in the song Answers which played 10 years ago over the final cutscene of 1.0 when the servers were brought down in an end-of-the-world calamity as the game was discontinued in order to be reworked into A Realm Reborn. The song has two halves--the first half is a mournful lament asking why must we live if living invites sorrow and death (the world of the 1.0 game appears to be ending). The second half of the song is a hopeful ballad proclaiming that the struggle for moments of light and joy is the whole point of living (the redesigned game will be back as A Realm Reborn). Every expansion deals with this theme. Endwalker personifies this theme with the characters of Hermes who posits the Question, Meteion who comes to a flawed conclusion, and the player characters/Scions/Venat/Hydaelyn who hold the true Answer--that the purpose of life is to live, to find light in the darkness and stand against the tide.
WoW is genuinely themeless. I think that's by design because it affords them more flexibility in choosing the settings of their next expansions.
The ending of Endwalker was just so well done that even now being reminded of it brings a tear to my eye, with the focus so heavy around the importance of the player, and yet giving every character that was important to us a part in the ending. World of Warcraft with nearly a decade of story on them and dozens of larger-than-life characters and it feels like they didn't take advantage of it nearly enough.
The major difference in my opinion between WoW and FF14 is continuity. FF14 tells a story from A to B through multiple expansion. The fun part is that once you're down with the story, the Endsinger is dead and all is well, you can think back on all the numerous small details that eventually connects and confirms the story, it all fits and it all makes sense within the logic of the world created throughout the expansions
WoW on the other hand only cares about 1-2 expansions ahead, they retcon the story and don't acknowledge the importance of a good story to connect the people to the game on a deeper level. They're more hung up on current expansion and don't give a toss about the upcoming expansions. And when you use retcon every 2 seconds, people lose their interest for the lore, they don't connect and they don't care any more. They're not invested in the game at a deeper level.
For me at least, I think FF14 is the better game now as an MMO. It has fun gameplay mechanics, good story, good combat and overall better systems. There are some quirks and the UI could need some polish, but the overall package is just so much better than WoW is. WoW feels like a theme park ride, something you do a couple of times then get bored.
Amazing video Jesse. Never crossed my mind how similar Shadowlands and Endwalker were.
The bottom line is, nothing Blizzard tried to do with the Jailer felt earned. It didn't feel earned to insert him into the backstories of so many other events and characters players had taken their understanding of for granted. It didn't feel earned to make him personally responsible for so much of it, including a recent character arc that players had been so frustrated by. It didn't feel earned to make him so successful at what he was doing after he was introduced. It didn't feel earned to make him Sargeras version 6.0 at the last second. And I think, as written, there's no way to MAKE it feel earned.
If FF14 did the same things with Endsinger, I don't think they could make it all feel earned either. Even though the seeds were planted much earlier in the narrative. So they didn't. Instead of trying to force an idea that was doomed to fail, they took those same basic building blocks and focused on an angle that could feel earned. The narrative didn't try and make Endsinger into the thing that would carry the expansion with engaging writing and intrigue and charisma (and then failed to deliver those things). It made Endinger into an obstacle, big yes, but YOU the player are awesome, so you can handle it.
Great video and well done picking out just what it is that makes a game resonate with the players. Just seeing characters from the different jobs in cut scenes that have nothing to do with them gets me giddy in FF. It's just them walking in the background and me going "I KNOW THAT GUY!" to my friend who hasn't done the job is such a treat. It doesn't have to be big, they don't even have to have lines, just the fact that i have worked with them in the past and they are not forgotten by the writers, that they (the writers) acknowledge that i worked through leveling that class with them means more than it really should to me. Well done and thought out Jesse!
fk ffxiv. They keep adding fights that make me not see my hotbars because I'm fkn crying 🤣🤣🤣
I don't know Jesse, i always thought Zenos as our Arthas, not Sylvanas.
Zenos and Arthas share the same concept with the mad targaryen king: corrupted by X in a position of power doing some crazy stuff while they are searching for some concrete sense about reality or themselves.
Sylvanas and Jailer are more like Kratos: Vengeance and (almost) Redemption.
Jailer and Endsinger seems like apple and oranges.
Arthas is much better than Sylvanas anyways! Good lord they annihilated all the characters in Shadowlands... and all the previous expansions too. Yay for the almighty retconning nightmare that is Blizzard's Story Team.
@@ArmageddonEvil Yep, Arthas is much better than Sylvanas no doubt.
They tried to expand too much and tell a tale that not even Warhammer attempted to. Complex is not always better.
@@hermespymander9167 They tried to use the cosmic reality and failed in how they told it. All it is more 'There is always a bigger bad guy in this multiverse.' It's sooo annoying and tiring.
I enjoyed it when it was only about Arthas taking Frostmourne and killing his father and becoming the Lich King after the Frozen Throne, RTS. >.
sylvanas is more like gaius, or at least there based on thier intent to make her do the bad thing for the good reason and they both end up working to undo the wrongs they have commited
@@GamestMesa Technicality, you aren't wrong but they Botched it so incredibly badly with Sylvanas in Shadowlands it's inconceivable.
Jailer:no one listen to me so i gonna do bad stuff for my evil secret plan
Meteion:life has no meaning i saw the worst side of any kind in the eyes of my sisters so to solve this i gonna end this universe to end the suffering by spreading calamities with my song from my nest in the deepest part of the universe made with part of destroyed world
I think there's more to it than that. Endwalker had a message that we all needed by the end of 2021. How to hold on to hope in a hopeless world. Most of us are still a little scared of COVID and after world wide lockdowns, we were all a lil'bit lonely. Endwalker touches on all of this and the irony is that it was mostly written before the pandemic even started.
Now, we've finished the story with messages of forgiveness and second chances and Dragonflight has started strong. I can't wait to see what the next 10 years of MMOs brings to the table.
Not really. After Shadowbringers making the protagonists have it clear that genocide was *NEVER* acceptable no matter what, Endwalker backtracks on all of that and genocides the Ancients because they didn't grieve the way Mommy told them to and the story *PRAISES* her for it. It's not about forgiveness and second chances so much as "forgiveness for those your local Supreme Deity decides deserves it and fuck everyone else".
Doubly so with the 6.2 UT Omicron quests basically "fixing" what was wrong with the Ea, the Nibirun, and the Grebuloff to make them grieve and live the "right way". Shame the Ancients are already dead, and now the UT Beast Tribe quests basically proved they died for nothing in the end. Yes, so much selective *FORGIVENESS* I can taste it.
Your WoW Idea reminds me of Marvels Avengers Endgame where everybody comes back, where People were absolutely hyped!
May this glorious video be the video that gets our boy Jesse to a million subs.
I love how FFXIV always had the one big baddie, The Endsinger, far off in the back ground, but we somehow never thought about it. Yes Ascians want to remake their world by summoning back Zodiark.... but we somehow forgot Zodiark was summoned in the first place to stop something else... something so bad that they were willing to sacrifice half of their race in sacrifice jsut to bring Zodiark into the world. They waited to give it a face until the very end of their well planned story.
Shadowlands: "You thought Sylvanas was the lynchpin for the story, BUT IT WAS I, JAILER!"
Endbringer: [*Despite everything, it's still you.]
Well this was an unexpected punch to the gut. I haven't even played Undertale, but I know the significance of that one sentence. 🥺
I felt that from all the way here.
Shadowlands would've been far better if it had more story content. The stuff that was in the expansion was fine. It just wasn't enough. We needed more information about the Jailer. We needed more story moments with the characters we liked. However, instead it was a few cutscenes for a small amount of characters with the rest of them basically being forgotten. It would very much be like what was described in this video. I'm not a fan of the "power of friendship" trope though, makes my interest go from 100 to 0 in a heartbeat, so I would've wanted that part to be different.
A couple of weeks after I finished Endwalker, I got "Forge Ahead" with the Azem symbol tattooed on my inner wrist. That story moved me, and even this video still made me cry. Thank you for this!
I did not return to wow and have not had strong pulls from wow since BFA. But I had kept up with the lore, when the whole jailor thing happened, and the sylvanas thing as well. It shattered that part as well, this was not how you write an end saga.
Then end walker on top of that showed us how you do, do it.
Lil JC is just the cutest.
The true best-in-slot gear was the friends we made along the way.
I'm not even interested in the MMO genre, and find the Endwalker plot tear inducing. Great job Jesse, your passion comes like punches. GGWP
you can play FF14 as a practically Single player game btw. many of the mainline story dungeons now have NPC allies you can play solo with.
Endsinger doesn't even feel that out of nowhere to me because it was an answer to a question that was asked in Shadowbringers. And it finishes explaining the Ascian backstory we've had since the beginning.
Hey Jesse I know you probably won't see this but I've been watching your stuff since the OMFGCata days (when I was a literal child) and just wanted to say I think this is my favorite video of yours. Clearly you have so much love for both of these franchises and you can just feel the emotion coming through as you talk.
As a long time WoW player (still call myself a Wrath Baby) I totally felt what you said about WoWs story and I think you may have Finally gotten me to try out FF14. Seeing how your rival comes in and just understands and appreciates how strong you really are and is like "let's take this fool out together so I can have another go at you" is such good story telling I was feeling the emotional weight of it despite knowing basically nothing about FF14. All of that to say, keep on doing great Mr. Cox!
FFXIV is something special when, just listening to Jesse discuss this topic, whilst scenes from Endwalker play out & swell with music - makes me (you?) have an emotional response. Whereas WoW does nothing even remotely close to that.
I think one thing that helped 14 was that neither the ascians nor the telephoroi were actually working with or for Endsinger. They were both serving her, ultimately, but the ascians that they were fixing what Hydalean broke (and in the reality were going to rob the universe of the presumably only thing that could stop Endsinger), and the telephoroi basically thought she was a natural disaster.
So there was no "It was me all along!" problem. Endsinger didn't actually influence the previous lore, so it kinda felt like a brand new problem.
The Endsinger was ultimately just a traumatised child hiding in the cosmic closet, trying to wish away what hurt her. Its just too bad that because her creator was an idiot who had no idea what he was messing with, that its actually working.
Her role in the story is akin to that of a natural disaster, she's not supposed to be the architect of everything that's happened like Thanot the Jailer was. And like our predecessor Azem, we're there to find said disaster's face, so we can stop it by punching it in said face.
basically we fight force of nature that have emotion we fight dark matter
The Ascians weren't even serving her unknowingly, they were actively preventing her from doing what she wanted. But yes it's a huge difference from "I caused everything bad that has ever happened!" with the Jailer.
He said that WoW is an MMORPG while FFXIV is a RPGMMO. Dragonflight actually feels way more like an RPGMMO which is amazing, they are finally hitting the mark. DF is best xpac since Legion, and I would argue it is better than Legion. We haven't seen too much of the endgame yet, but at least story is very good. I know you are super anti-WoW right now, but I highly recommed at least playing through the main story. You can quit after that again, haha. Its amazing to see the game actually killing it story-wise for once. The last few expansions have been so...off.
The main story was short in DF. The only thing that makes it good is because of what we all experienced in BFA and SL. We are not experiencing heavy pressure to do anything in DF and we are able to do anything we want. If DF exceeds Legion, that’s up for debate. The story is okay in DF, but the writing isn’t great-- it still panders to a simple form of narrative construction. The justification for each Dragon Beacon lighting up is vague in conjunction to the function of each dragonflight. That aside… I will reiterate that DF only feels good in contrast to the previous expansions.
I like these types of videos. Companies are often inspired by one another and I use the word inspired loosely. Apex, Overwatch and Fortnite often copy each other's character designs and abilities. (Mad Maggie/Junker Queen for example).
Any game that people can go and say "This is not the final boss... YOU are THEIR final boss!" gives me shivers of joy.
I just have a picture of a party of Venat, Emet-Selch, Fandaniel, Zenos, Vauthrey, Elidibus, Lahabrea, and Endsinger just raid wiping against the WoL now. And it really makes laugh😂
This video that I have fully watched was engaging and wonderful! Keep up the good work I love you Jesse :D
but fr tho that was a great video I enjoyed it greatly and your passion is quite contagious :3
You made a fatal error in your assessment Jesse Cox: Blizzard doesn't care about the fans. They certainly haven't in a while. They want you to buy game, be a good little payer and then wait for the next content push. They were too busy doing other bad and vile things behind the scenes to get work done. It isn't possible for them
Damn you Jessy Cox for making me cry! But yeah, Endwalker, was the story of my journey. When Zenos ask in the very last battle : "Why do you do it? Admit that you like the challenge." I couldn't hate Zenos anymore. I hated this character for so long... But as those words were said, I understood that it was the Devs talking to me... they were saying : Why did you spent months proging UCoB years after this fight was released? You don't need to win that fight to save the world? It's a story told by a bard... The answer is because I, the player, am exactly like Zenos.
Absolutely agree, i hated zenos post base stormblood and considered him annoying and a nuisance that wouldn't die everytime he showed back up.
But the moment we had our final talk and he said "you're just like me, you're always trying to fight something bigger and stronger" i was like "as a raider and an ultimate raider, god dammit you're right."
Just that small piece of dialogue gave me a complete 180 on him.
See the thing is and he did just kinda touch on it. The biggest problem between the two is, In WoW the player no body so we are not part of the worlds story at all. While in 14 the WoL is part of the story part of the world and all. That is where I think WoW falls hugely short if they wanna fix it they need to make the player part of the story.
God the Zeno's part where you team up is still such an amazing part. I love rewatching it and watching other people go through all of Endwalker for the first time.
I just wish we could be a bit more appreciative, or accepting of his help.
The only options we get are essentially "fuck off", and "I don't care."
20:10 Come to think of it, I just realized Garrosh and Zenos have some parallels themselves lol, that would've been a great sendoff for Garrosh.
What a wonderful video. Such a good job.
The zone cohesion in Shadowlands basically boils down to their thematic representation of various real world afterlives. Maldraxxus is of course Valhalla, Bastion is Elysium, Rivendreth is your typical Christian Hell and then Ardenweald sort of serves as a catch all for various Fae realms of European folklore.
It's not very clever or properly utilized, but it's there.
Ardenweald was very tir na nog
Even just watching this video and hearing you explain the stuff in FF14, I can feel that same feeling I had when I went to fight Endsinger and our theme song started up. It's already been a year, and that feeling still shows up every time I do that fight, or I hear that song. And I love it.
Our song of hope, she dances on the wind. Higher, O Higher.