Don't apologize for being negative. There was a vacuum in FFXIV fandom for criticism that no one was willing to fill, which is why I ended up making the Venat series because I knew if I didn't no one else would. Endwalker was a masterpiece, after all, the perfect finale and saying otherwise would range from you getting down voted & dog piled to being stalked & harassed. Things seem better now since some of even the biggest simps didn't like DT, but it was a much different story during EW when anyone who hated it had no voice to speak for them and limited places to go to discuss it. There is literally the entire rest of the internet if people only want to hear glowing praise of EW in particular. Aside from your channel & EoE (which has no current plans for future content) I wouldn't know where else to direct anyone. As for the video content, I cried my eyes out at the end of Ktisis for all the wrong reasons. My singular thought was, "The writers are really doing this." Emet mentions reporting Kairos to Pashtarot earlier in Elpis because of how problematic it is while Hythlodaeus notes he had not received a concept for Meteion. The fact that Hermes was still in consideration for the seat of Fandaniel after repeatedly demonstrating lack of respect for the rules was another irritation of mine. I believe Venat had already made up her mind not to prevent events from happening after Meteion gave her report on Deka-hepta (The Plenty), which is essentially confirmed repeatedly after the escape from not informing Emet to agreeing with Hermes' test of mankind. So I could argue it wasn't that Venat was incapable of stopping Meteion, it's that her heart wasn't in it to do so.
I swear, the more details I see, the worse the situation gets. That bit about Hermes chiding the rules is ridiculous, especially regarding Emet who was sincerely committed to Amarout's customs. And I'm sorry if there was heavy backlash back when EW first released. I remember a stray comment of mine on Trueblade Seeker's channel getting shat on for pointing out how flawed the script was. The amount of people who don't want to listen is extreme. It only makes me all the more grateful for those that do. Hopefully we'll see you back at content creating one day. No pressure. If and when you do, I'll happily be there to share my support. Thanks for the input as always!
One of the things I really hate about the Ktisis dungeon conclusion, and it was briefly mentioned in the video, is in regards to the absurd power increases the antagonists gain in cutscenes, right after being defeated in combat. We just beat the crap out of Hermes in his transformed form, then all of a sudden he has enough strength to bind all of 4 them, while not transformed and exhausted from getting beaten up in battle. He basically gets up, more powerful than ever, because... he was sad? I guess? And they keep repeating this. It happens again with Golbez, (it's even dumber there, everyone just stands there and lets him do his thing), and it happens once again in Dawntrail MSQ. I'm starting to get really sick and tired of my character prevailing in gameplay, only to then get a mandatory L in the cutscene afterwards. It creates a huge dissonance between what we experience in gameplay, and what unfolds in the narrative. This is a video game, after all-why even have us fight these bad guys if it has no bearing on the consequences that follow the encounter? edit: to clarify, I'm not saying we can never lose after the fight, but it needs to make sense. For example, we defeat Ilberd at the end of Baelsar's Wall, yet we still "lose" afterwards. But it makes sense, because the guy always intended to sac himself. It's easy to accept such a loss, because it's cohesive and doesn't break our suspension of disbelief. More recently, however, they don't really seem to care about making those losses logical. The bad guy simply gets back up in the cutscene with a power boost, and goes through with his evil plan as if nothing happened, rendering our fight with them meaningless in the process.
@@Beyondthegalaxies824 Which is bizarre because they have demonstrated they are clearly capable of this. When we confront Emet, the party tries to stop him, or at least stall him until Ryne can do her thing. Endwalker itself has multiple scenes where Estinien leaps into action. Heck, even in this very scene, once the characters break out of their binds, they immediately take action to stop Hermes and the bird. It's just them getting bound in the first place makes no sense. And I'm not even gonna get into the stupid amnesia machine.
The biggest issue for me during the Elpis storyline was how quickly Hermes became the villain, and without much justifiable reasons: His main argument during the dungeon was "I can't let you take Meteion from me, not yet, until I heard her final report". Ok, he does not want her taken away and he wants to hear her full report, those are fair points. Lets look at the situation directly before he turns villain: - Yes, Emet wanted to take Meteion back to Aumarot - but there was zero indication that Emet would harm or destroy her - neither was there any indication that her report would not be taken seriously - Surely the convocation would be eager to let Meteion do her full report. Since knowledge is a prime objective of the Ascians, I'm sure they would want to hear about other worlds - As the creator and caretaker of Meteion, surely Hermes would be allowed to accompany her, so the "You can't take her from me" doesn't really work - Surely Hermes would be allowed to hear the full report as well. Since he already knows about the other worlds and he is the expert in how Meteion works, he would be THE prime candidate to process the full report Even if Hermes did not believe that it was implied that he was allowed to accompany her, a simple question "Can I come with her to Aumarot? Surely I would be of help when dealing with her report" would have cleared that up. For me, his turn was not warranted and just seemed that he turned because the writers needed him to turn at that point in time. If Emet instead said "You conjured that 'Meteion' into existence without approval and by sending her off-world you conducted potentially dangerous research. Your rank as researcher is hereby suspended, you will be taken into custody. By the law, all records of this unapproved research, including Meteions memory, is to be destroyed and we will be taking Meteion with us. The convocation will decide what is to be done with her." with a strong implication that, as an unapproved being, she will be undone just like the dragon monster that Hermes released. Not only would that give Hermes a much better motivation (lost his rank, lost Meteion, all records will be destroyed), by Emet being fortified as a by-the-books character it would also strengthen the discussion about rules vs compassion.
"But she haaaaadddd to!" "Why?" "Because of the 4000 contrivances you have to believe wiped away every other possible solution." "But I don't." "But you haaaaavvveeee to!"
@@durantes And of course in the same expansion that preaches worldwide cooperation with the Sharlayan story, a single individual taking it upon herself to wipe out her species and replace it with another she decides is more viable must be a hero. There is no conflict in those two messages at all.
I would respect Venat more if she just allowed her people to die off lol she doomed billions into a life of hell and death thanks to her stupid sundering, she has more blood on her hands than every villain in this game.
@@SILVERONIN216 And what's the justification for her violating the personal autonomy of every member of her species? The Sundered are more plucky. Well, then I guess mutilating people's immortal souls is okay if it makes them more plucky.
On a grander scale I find Endwalker's biggest failure in writing and missed opportunities is how Ultima Thule was handled. While I found Estinien's "demise" confusing, because I did not understand immediately what the black nebula meant that appeared shortly before each Scions "fate" (is he dead? Transported away? How should I feel?), at least there was some concern. However, when the next scrions "sacrificed" themselves 5 minutes later it felt utterly predictable that this will be not a permanent sacrifice because they wouldn't dare killing off the entire supporting cast, and from that point onward I could no longer take any "sacrfice" cutscene seriously. Graha's "sacrifice" scene was worst of all. Remember how he went "please, promise me we go on an adventure"? Two things: a) He already did that line in the previous expansion post-msq (aka just half an expansion ago), repeating this is way too soon! In ShB I still cry whenever he does that scene after the Elidibus fight, in Endwalker I laugh in disbelief over the cheapness of reusing that line that soon b) We are at the edge of the universe fighting the embodiment of ultimate despair, how could Graha not call that an adventure? This also brings into question : If Thancred was able to sacrifice himself yet was conscious enough to manifest this zone for us to survive in, why did he not also include bridges between the areas? It's awfully convenient how he magicked this entire zone into existence, yet forgot to construct bridges, so the only solution to make bridges is for Scions to off themselves, which is a rather odd way of constructing bridges. Hey, how about using that spaceship we have parked at the start of the zone to fly to the next area? No need for any Scion to sacrifice themselves to make bridges, just fly there! All the scion's sacrifices in Ultima Thule were unnecessary! In my opinion we should have kept losing Scions over the entire expansion, not just in Ultima Thule, that way it would have felt much more believable and would have given the other Scions to properly react to it. Have some die in Thavnair, some in Garlemald, Zenos could have killed one when he disguised himself as us, so over the entire expansion we would have kept losing one by one, until when we blast off with the space ship and we arrive in Ultima Thule it is only us that is left. When we arrive, have a cutscene reminding us of all whom we have lost (or put black cloudy ghosts doing a memorable one-liner, like the others), and have the entire zone be us and us alone, only us against the end of the world. Then the Scions comeback would have had a lot more impact. Heck, if Zenos had actually killed someone from our gang (even if that person came back in the end), the end fight against him would have felt even more satisfying.
The thing that always confused me about this scene was that there was nothing whatsoever stopping us from just walking back in and reminding Emet Selch what happened and arresting hermes, so Emet’s speech was incredibly pointless, he might as well just say “see you in 5 minutes”.
Thank you for being one of the very few content creators out there giving Endwalker the criticism it 100% deserves. I will die on the hill that Endwalker is objectively a BAD story conclusion. Nobody should be harassed for saying so. Nobody should apologise for saying so. I be waking up REAL early to be an Endwalker hater. It has so many storytelling issues, particularly the second half in which it all comes crashing down because it’s so bad holy hell. -Don’t insert time travel into your plot that never was about time travel and have it affect EVERYTHING retroactively. “but shadow bringers!!!!!” No, because: 1. Shadowbringers’s time travel did not happen to the POV character, the POV character’s timeline only progresses forward and we never interact with the other timeline, it might as well not exist outside of plot justification. But it does and still exists, which brings us to 2. Shadowbringers’s time travel established this universe’s time travel (and more specifically, the Ironworks-modified Crystal Tower’s) as a branching multiverse, which allows for a specific timeline to still suffer the consequences of the plot without it resorting to “we’ve changed the past and now our world is all fixed! yay!” which would be bad because it negates the stakes. 3. Shadowbringers’s time travel was supposed to have been terminated. Does anyone remember the Twinning? It was the whole plot. We nuked the time machine as intended by the future Ironworks! This is a literal plot hole unless you believe dungeons inessential to the MSQ do not happen. Or if we headcanon that the Tycoon was only necessary to calculate the time travel spell and that Elidibus was able to perfectly replicate a spell calculated by a half-extraterrestrial machine from the future, which he might as well be because Elidibus is truly the GOAT. -Your stupid time travel hinges on headcanon to explain why it made a closed loop THIS TIME, which is pretty bad because this shouldn’t be on the audience to figure out these completely fictional physics your whole plot hinges on, and both options to explain it suck in their own way. Option #1: Fate exists, and everything was predestined, including G’raha’s time travel which is not contradictory because it is just part of the greater loop. This sucks. This sucks because inserting predestination at the eleventh hour of your plot gives everything this fatalistic meaninglessness. This particularly sucks because one specific character is entirely aware of the time travel and chooses to tell literally no one about it and try nothing impactful enough to change course, like OH I DON’T KNOW, telling the authorities we are shown to be perfectly competent in Pandaemonium so they can mobilise mass effort?? (This segues into Reason #3,584 Why Endwalker Sucks: the Idiot Plot.) Logically speaking, if Fate is forcing time to be one single timeline, then Venat screaming the truth on rooftops of Amaurot should change precisely NOTHING about events, but she never even attempts that because she is horribly biased against her own people and never gave them a single chance to fight Fate. Heroes fight Fate, and Venat is no hero at all. Option #2: Time travel mechanics are actually consistent within this universe, and consequently the entire loop was constantly at risk to veer off course, but Venat was here to steer it into the right direction. This stretches believability, yet is the option better supported by the plot, because we know for a fact that Venat saved the three Unsundered on purpose so the timeline could happen, making her responsible by proxy for at least 8 more planet-wide genocides, because her first wasn’t enough. This option is also the better one character-wise, because it doesn’t actually make everything meaningless and predestined, and it gives Venat a new dimension that isn’t just her boring and hypocritical “she’s 100% a tragic heroine who only ever meant the best but had to do a cruel thing! (because we’ll accept that the ends justify the means when it’s a good guy!)”. The problem that makes this option bad is that, well, then the plot never holds Venat accountable for denying the Ancients their very real chance at living. In fact, the plot never holds Venat accountable at all for her crimes, and that’s another Reason Why Endwalker Sucks. -The bad world building and subsequent Idiot Plot: It couldn’t be more obvious that this story was written by a mortal. Obviously, all stories are written by mortals, but not all stories written by mortals are this bad at characterising immortal humans. This is particularly bad because we are shown in Shadowbringers very good reasons why the portrayal of Ancients in Endwalker is stupid: these guys have lived for millennia in peace while being humans with massive powers with the potential to blow each other up at the drop of a hat, and what they value most is debate, philosophy and the sharing of ideas and viewpoints. In fact, Endwalker doesn’t entirely contradict this: the vast majority of Elpis side quests show Ancients as curious, benevolent and constantly valuing your input even though your alibi for being there is “I’m an advanced AI”. By all means, these immortal philosophers who have been creating things for millennia SHOULD be beyond basic questions of What Is A Person, What Is The Meaning Of Life, How Do We Treat Sentient Creations, etc. Hermes SHOULDN’T be the anomaly he is bafflingly portrayed as (because he’s the writer’s admitted fave). That their world has worked so well for a FACT (we have no reason to believe it didn’t, and Encyclopedia Eorzea 3 reinforces the point that lived in peace) implies that they had a lot of things figured out, and we are also shown in Endwalker that they had numerous social codes and laws around their very, very vast magical potential (such as A MACHINE LIKE KAIROS SKIRTING THE LAW as stated by Emet-Selch). Hence, for Endwalker’s convoluted plot to happen, it necessitates all Ancients to be morons. Multiple witnesses are shown outside of Ktisis, who have seen their boss doing the Ancient equivalent of streaking accompanied by Meteion. Nobody conducted a thorough investigation of this incident in which a sitting member of the planet’s highest rung of government and the director of Amaurot’s Bureau of the Architect suffered cognitive impairment? An incident that involved a machine which made Emet-Selch instantly think the guy in charge of laws would have a conniption if he learned of it? A machine that seemingly records no logs whatsoever? Nobody conducted a second, later evaluation of Hermes? This functional society of immortal humans whose incredibly powerful magic hinged on their mental state thought a guy with obvious mental issues was fit for a seat on the planet’s highest rung of government? And that guy was somehow the only guy in this society of immortals who loved knowledge and the exchange of ideas who knew anything about this plot device the writers just pulled of their twisting nether? Because it’s a space thing and these people who loved knowledge and science and based their highest rung of government on constellations weren’t interested in space I guess? What the hell even is this? None of it is helped at all by the existence of the Pandaemonium story, in which a sitting member of the planet’s highest rung of government investigates the facility run by another sitting member of the planet’s highest rung of government, and people are shown to be able to casually broadcast their memories of distant events.
(hit character limit because UA-cam is weak) -Hypocrisy: The only reason why the plot of Endwalker and its heroic portrayal of Venat (this is non-arguable: she is never opposed by the protagonist cast nor does the narrative ever put into doubt her beliefs for why she acted the way she did. The audience is supposed to agree with her because the plot attempts to showcase her as having her hands tied by the circumstances and being tragically forced to act the way she did) works at all is because Ancients aren’t Us. Ancients are Them. They who thought themselves superior but (GASP) it turned out They were not mature enough to handle death and despair. See point above: there is no way in hell immortal humans who could blow each other up at the drop of a hat didn’t have this figured out. The one way it is acceptable is if we don’t consider the Ancients as humans with as many dimensions and feelings as Us, but Them, the Incomplete Other. And this flies in the face of Shadowbringers whose entire plot rested on Them being Us. To be completely honest, those who baffle me the most in Endwalker’s fanbase are the Ascian and Ancient fans who loved it. Endwalker made the Ancients go from painfully human and relatable to these aloof Others who really are kind of stupid and in fact you kinda wonder how they survived so long like this. And Venat? Would have most certainly, 100%, absolutely been a Well-Intentioned Extremist villain had the Ancients been Us. Her motivations make her a literal textbook case. Mankind cannot face this cosmic threat because we’re too immature, we would panic if told, we would ignore it, we would self-destruct-therefore mankind has to be remade better. The reasons why she did not tell anyone (who mattered) the truth all boil down to this: she never had faith in their capacity to respond to a crisis or their potential to create new solutions and overcome the odds. Hermes becoming Fandaniel? Was completely unnecessary had she told them what exactly he would bring to the table (which we are told to only be the correlation of the Final Days with celestial aether, and nothing else), and that Dynamis was involved. The flower was right here for every researcher to iterate upon. The way she acted is also very much not how you should act in crisis management if we consider the Ancient world to be a sane and functional one-which the plot does not mean us to, because Ancients are Them, not Us. They’re aloof, naive and dumb immortals. I could go on forever about how bad Endwalker was. It was a disgrace, and one of the worst things about it is that people don’t see it. (It made them cry, therefore it was good!)
The Time Travel plot is a symptom of one of Endwalker's greatest problems: It was intended to be two expansions and they wanted to cram it into one. What happened was sure, they ended the story with the beginning but... it had a very VERY inconsistent pace. :/ We alternate from exposition to suddenly jumping from beat to beat at the speed of a James Patterson brand novel... then it wants us to stop and smell the roses. Then it starts moving again. It shows in both Elpis and Garlemald. Could the time travel plot have worked? Yes. I absolutely think so. But the problem was? IT didnt' have enough time to cook. This is why there are so many contrivances - it has to end with this particular outcome, but they only have about like, 2-3 hours to do it, and they spent about 1 hour in. So they had to rush. I genuinely wouldn't be shocked if this detail wasn't thought of when Shadowbringers was made. If it had more time? PErhaps we could have seen more things like "Hey wait a minute... Venat is right. Wasn't Hermes running around with a little creation?" or trying to find all sorts of records only to find that there were none or that they could easily be describing other experiments. (Which would further help the accidental Aesop of "Peer review your shit, please.")
I really don't understand why perfect loop time travel was needed plot-wise. Why we couldn't go with the divergent time-line time travel the plot has used before. Wouldn't it have been even more interesting to go back in time and change it directly through our actions? Our friendship with Hermes? Honestly, that feels pretty on theme for FF14. Meteion being the ultimate big bad could have been revealed either way, and it cut out the frankly insane plan by Venat to do absolutely everything the exact same for the sake of preserving the timeline or whatever. Our timeline just didn't have us travelling back to prevent things. We get to save two worlds for the price of one! Whatever is going on in management with that dev studio can only be an even bigger headache than the plotline that came out of it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they mention that Ktisis dampens the strength of non-Elpis personnel? I think that's why Emet was so weak. (He even has a dialogue saying, "If only I could transform" if he dies.) Regardless, your point still stands. Hermes had been beaten down and weakened. There's no reason why he should have been able to ward off Emet-Selch, Venat, and the WoL. The whole thing was terribly written to justify how we traveled back in time, yet didn't change anything. It was, as you said, horribly contrived. That scene wasn't half as clever as the writers thought it was. Also, did you notice that while Venat freed herself, Emet-Selch was busy trying to free everyone else? Once again, Venat thought only of herself. I still remember how disappointed I was when I watched this for the first time. I was thinking we'd hear Meteion's report and learn of some horrid entity floating in the cosmos that she'd come into contact with. Then we'd defeat it in the future. But, no, that's not what we got. Instead, we got "the universe sucks, everything is dead or dying, there's no hope, and Meteion is your final boss." Meteion. The cutesy bird girl. And she's sad. Because, well, more plot contrivances. oh, and feel bad for Hermes too. Cuz, reasons. And apparently only people who suffer horribly can know hope.
It would've been more interesting if they leaned into the aspect of Meteion and her sisters being similar to the Maenads from FF4 The After Years and they met The Creator who made the worlds. Because The Creator concluded his experiment failed and while he and his Maenads had already destroyed other countless worlds, the heroes of FF4 fought and defeated him to save their's and were triumphant. Granted I didn't much care for that in TAY (the implication was he created the other FF worlds and then destroyed them and everyone on it) but it would've been more interesting than what we got.
I'm really happy to finally see some real critique of Endwalker coming out. I, too, had a lot of negative things to say about the story, but I deliberately held off on expressing those thoughts, because I knew people weren't ready to hear it. I even got a taste of this when I released my Venat video, which basically had a civil war going on in the comment section. It was also my most negative video at the time, which is unusual for me, as I deliberately try to keep my content positive. Judging by the like:dislike ratio of this video, it seems people are more open to criticism now, but clearly some friction still. When Endwalker came out, I said that Heavensward, Shadowbringers and even Stormblood will all remain loved by fans, no matter how much time passes. But that Endwalker will age like milk. The main thing I can point to is Avengers Endgame. It was a very similar situation: epic conclusion to a story, very hyped and highly rated movie when it released. But look at the discourse surrounding that movie now: it's basically universal bashing of Endgame and its terrible writing decisions, and universal praise for its predecessor, Infinity War. It also released at the perfect time, with the pandemic and everything, which really allowed it to cash in on those themes about despair and enjoying the little things (which it hits you repeatedly with like a hammer). But this also does contribute to it feeling very much like a product of its time. Someone going through the story now won't have the same weight behind it, as that context is lacking for them. Endwalker has some big W's, don't get me wrong. I love the Pandemonium story, and I felt the resolution to each main Scion's character arcs were really well made. I could definitely list a ton of positive things to say, but for me the bottom line is: *it should have been 2 expansions at minimum.*
As much I had some good moments with it's MSQ, I slowly started to notice the decline with it's writing as the story goes on. I will admit, however, EW was a much different time when it came out and while I'm at least glad it concluded, I could not help but wonder if those who hated EW were too afraid to speak against it or had the place to discuss it. Of course, I didn't see any of it for the time until as more Post EW patches comes by and I suddenly get recommended videos about people criticizing the expansion, it explains why I felt something off about it for so long. The fact that it opened my eyes about many of the sins that EW started with and what has been repeated in DT gave me all I need to know about FFXIV's future. The Elpis storyline is what made me question about this plot and it's time travel shenanigans. How did Hermes remain in the government seat with all of his shady and unlawful stuff and overpower everyone in that ONE scene is so beyond me. It got introduced so jarring and sudden shows how rushed it is, I...I was done taking it seriously by that point. Don't get me started on FUCKING...Meteion, she is such an biggest ass pull of an character of this game that made my WoL wanting kick her ass so hard from start to end. As a whole, EW has left me baffled and frustrated and I do not regret acknowledging the story falling apart before it was too late (and before DT as well).
If you go digging through early Endwalker reactions, like dec21-feb22, you’re likely to find quite a few dissenting voices. I can only speak for myself of course, but it feels like a recurring sentiment whenever someone posted their negative opinion of EW was “FINALLY I’m not alone!”, which speaks volume of the community. Simply put, after a while of being told I “didn’t get it”, I “skipped cutscenes”, having this stupid plot regurgitated at me straight up with added insults on top as if that would somehow make me see the light-I dropped off the face of FFXIV social media. The only situation in which you'll ever find me post in FFXIV spaces is to take a massive dump on Endwalker's plot, as has been my skincare routine for the past three years. The criticism that came during EW patches seemed to mostly fall into two categories: displeasure with gameplay/content and displeasure with the anime filler arc. For whatever reason, people seem unwilling to look back critically on 6.0 MSQ and realise, man, that plot sure was janky slop huh? Even now with Dawntrail's fanfiction-tier lore, it has just become a scapegoat for people to point at and say "Look how much BETTER Endwalker was!!!" without really ever getting into the details of that praise. A common sentiment I’ve had in response to my negative comments is “I’m glad I don’t think about it the way you do, that’d ruin it for me”. It seems the correct way to enjoy Endwalker was to walk into it with this brain-half-turned-off beatitude (but I thought I wasn’t paying ENOUGH attention to get it?? HUH🤔) and overlook its myriad plot contrivances for the sake of cherishing those scenes that made you cry-and they did, I did genuinely cry at certain points during 6.0 MSQ, and not just because I was watching the writers maul the story I once loved. Though I know that some dissenters eventually came around to recognise 6.0 MSQ as janky slop, I have to say I've never had that luxury. The more it went on, the more I felt my soul depart my body with my eyes firmly staring through the screen. I thought I'd get it done in 3 days at release but Ultima Thule went on for so mind-numbingly long vomiting sophomoric philosophy at me I had to call it a night in front of the final boss and finish it on day 4. And then when I hoped it was finally over, it had the gall to throw a solo duty at me, at which point I well and truly could not be more done with Final Fantasy Fourteen's Main Story Quest. I logged out on my uncanny sparkledog until Pandaemonium dropped with the plot I actually cared about, Lahabrea's vampire gay baby jail. And even that one ended tepidly ngl, endlessly (quite literally so with the added Themis minion quest, please I've had enough) wallowing in the ineptly forced tragedy of Endwalker's convoluted plot and dishonest, hypocritical narrative. I do take a little solace in it giving us an actually honest portrayal of an Ancient narcissistic mother about to commit genocide. Thanks, Pandaemonium. Already that makes you so much better than MSQ.
No i felt the same way. Maybe not about the same things, but especially about Hermes heel turn. It felt so jarring and sudden? Like i get that youre depressed but ...what? That seems excessive. I will say that Kairos was illegal, Emet comments on it in unvoiced dialogue that Pashtarot will want to know about this. Honestly Hermes does so much shady and unlawful stuff that im shocked he was even in position to be recommended for a government seat.
Endwalker, largely, put me in a bad mood. It had it's good moments, of course, mostly Zenos-related ones. But, man, do I hate Hermes. I am still looking forward to you giving that absolute ham sandwich something to be depressed about. Excellent points, by the way. My main criticism was Hermes being a hypocrite (specifically his point in fairness which I am glad you also got beef with). But yeah, I did point out something similar in a past comment about Hermes possessing Zodiark and how that shouldn't have worked. Hermes overpowering everyone is so dumb... I was so done I didn't even question it... Also, not sure if I said it before, but I meant to. Red vs Blue has so many useable clips it is actually fascinating. So, don't feel the need to apologize. I know I am not the only one that enjoys them. Lastly, get in line, it starts behind me. I feel EW aged me by 4 years.
I miss Stormblood and before. I hate the bait and switch the SB ending turned out to be. The story since then has had good moments, good characters, I even love Ryne and Zero, but as a whole it has been in a steady decline since ShB and lately it's been a complete freefall. Yeah, extremely unpopular opinion that has made me a pariah for the past few years, but at least finally some people are starting to notice the cracks. If you want to post XIV positive material, why not recall the good it did before? Point out the highs and the merits. Help people remember what was good and what made them stay in the first place. All the world building of ARR and the characters of HW is what made me finally switch from WoW, all the dialogue and consistency. It may be a disaster now but we can still remember what used to be good and remind others of it and maybe influence it enough to make a change. And even if not, then at least you had a good time remembering.
1 thing that amazes me is he still has the ability to move after being beaten literally moments ago,the gameplay being so seperate from the story is rather jarring since they make sure to only have a minimum amount of dungeons per story segment. EW moment I guess.
That's a general issue with the game, especially when it comes to quest design. Narrative and gameplay are almost entirely separated, the only occasional exception being a few solo instances, besides those you either have a "gameplay" section (not sure you can even call going somewhere and killing 3 enemies in a spot "gameplay") or an exposition text dump, but the game does a terrible job marrying the two.
No one should be taking critique or criticism of something they love personally. If you love something that much, you should be more critical of it than anyone. I loved the entirety of Elpis, but this scene still confuses me, and I've watched it multiple times. Still does not top the hairbrained scheme for fleeing that Venat gave the Lopporits, but it's still up there lol. I will suggest one more solution for Emet staying, tho. Have him try to get both himself and Hyth out together, and maybe run out of time? Give him another opportunity to show how selfless he is? I dunno. This scene is written like it's turnbased.
Oh, rest assured. The Lopporites are next on my list of issues to tackle. That's not a bad idea! We run ahead to ensure that at least somebody remembers. Emet tries to escape and fails. It amplifies the tragedy.
I hated the whole Elpis plot, it damaged EW for me. Venat is irredeemable and Hermes for someone who is respected as an intellectual, doomed the universe with the most basic bitch philosophical question that is easy to answer lol Also writers should stay away from time travel if you can't execute it correctly!
I'm never getting over the horror that is EW's world building giving us immortal wizard scientists with massive powers who were previously established to have a passion for debate now stumbling over "buuuhhhhh WHY live if DIE??" and the subject of personhood of artificial life seemingly being this incomprehensible, novel subject which only the writer's fave would ever have true feelings about. It's so baffling.
@@okbooma5436 lmao Hermes felt sad cause crazy beasts are out of control and needed to be put down, "oh but life though" lol like bro that thing was killing other docile wildlife and couldn't be domesticated. The whole writing is childish and pretentious, I honestly felt insulted with this whole plot. Also yeah good job tasking a little unstable empathetic girl to absorb the darkness of the universe and expect her to come back with a sound answer lol pure silliness!
Have you considered doing a once in a blue moon appreciation video of shadowbringers? Show how certain scenes were done right to back up the arguments agaisnt Endwalker and Dawntrail
@@durantes I'd love to see a ShB video as well at some point! Of course, also looking forward to more of your EW videos. ^-^ And thank you for making all these videos calling out the BS writing; it makes me feel less bad about disliking EW so much lol.
I'll just immediately add, the time travel was prepared all the way in Heavensward. It wasn't all that contrived, heck, we even got a post credit dungeon in Shadowbringer that explains the time travel mechanism being (almost) the very same we saw in Heavensward.
Except, the writers seem to flip-flop between what does and doesn't cause a closed loop. Alexander did, but G'raha didn't, then we use the same method as G'raha and it... does, again?
@@BlackEyedJester I'm not confident in calling the exact same method, what with us having a "tether" back to our own time, however even it it were- Honestly the biggest reason being a loop was because Venat for some reason really wanted to make sure it was. I'm not a fan of it either, I do wish it was explored a bit more, like she was afraid to change anything because she saw hope in your existence or SOMETHING little extra...
@@BlackEyedJesterHydaelyn implies it wasn’t a time loop when we meet her later. But then that makes her a psychotic monster even if you ignore the ancients, because she intentionally allowed the unsundered to escape and go on to kill millions. It’s a catch 22. Also if it was a time loop, unless she intentionally tried to break it and couldn’t (which would imply she had no free will whatsoever), her actions are still morally bankrupt, she has 0 reason not to try to change the past from her perspective.
Having reviewed this situation countless times, I can tell ya that your review is spot on, but it leaves out the plot idea around: Ktsis's dampening field -> This itself is the "reason" that Emet-selch, Hyth, and V-Bitch have to team up in a light party with the Azem Future Goblin. Supposedly when Ktsis enters "emergency" mode it suppresses all powers within its bounds to restrain creations, but apparentnly this also extends to any non-Ktsis personnel. Since Hades/Hyth/V-Bitch are all here on visitor passes, they are dampened. Of course, this creates the plot hole centered around the fact that none of the creations Hermes is using to get in our way are weakened. There may be the leeway that as head overseer he could choose what gets dampened, but that makes little sense. Why allow the system intended to stop rogue creations or rogue visitors to pick and choose? We could invent reasons, but the writers didn't.
I did forget that, admittedly. A dampening field that prevents them from fighting at full power and even Emet from transforming. But they can break their bonds rather quickly and shatter spacial confluences with ease. It's a real selective handicap.
I personally didn't find.... "too" much wrong with the scene. I agree to a point. The countdown builds tension and stakes. Its not bad. Having it be an instant spell would make it deadly then Emet using slow on it would make it feel like an actual conflict than what we got instead. If we made slow a concentration spell that would have made it Hermes vs Hyth as a 1v1 with hyth trying to protect emet and stop Hermes and vice versa. The WoL and Venat should have been chasing after Metion. On ONE Argus mount. Metion gets a hit on Argus and we get knocked off. Now Venat has to make a choice to save us or go after Metion. It doesn't make sense that a spell to track the bird hits but no other spell couldn't? If there was a moment the Metion we met came out as we fell and Venat put a track on her instead of attacking her (because feelings) them diving to save us. Would make the whole scene 100% better. As far as the chains.... they're fine. We're put in those all the time in fights. Iirc it was a sneaky move. And these chains and controlling other Amourotians happens in Pandaemonium. I can bend my disbelief. Its magic and it built up drama for exposition
It still baffles me that the same writer for ShB's wrote EW. As bad as DT's msq was, I genuinely did enjoy it more than the shit show that EW was despite its massive flaws because at least it didn't feel like it shat all over pre established stuff that ShB's set up. I will forever be salty about Meteion being the biggest asspull I have ever seen in this game.
I do wonder if there was some type of executive intervention involved. I can’t think of anything Ishikawa wrote before this that was anywhere near this contrived and dumb.
Iirc YoshiP said during one of the live letters? that Ishikawa was working on the story up until the very last minute which blew my mind. I don't recall seeing people criticize this but were praising it like what??? I played Endwalker on release and it really does feel like a lot of it was rushed.
Damn, I really loved Endwalker and the conclusion to the 10 year story. but I never thought about going back and looking at it through a microscope. Probably best I don’t.
I joined during Shadowbringers and so therefore I don’t have all the past stuff to build up to EW, and personally I actually really enjoyed EW (probably bc I didn’t have all that past stuff to compare it to). That being said I didn’t not enjoy HW. At all, imho it’s the xpac that felt the most pointless besides DT. Ik a lot of people feel very sad over what happened to Haurchefant. Rip, my guy. But imho, HW felt like an unnecessarily long side quest to get Estinien to help us and eventually join the Scions. I Feel like his stuff could’ve been summed up and we could’ve invested more time into what I thought HW would be about: Getting our friends back. But all that being said my opinion on the xpacs are kinda skewed anyways.
Hmmm. There's one thing that you forgot ..( but if i am honest it dont save any of it) The point of the dungeon is that the inside of the Tower severely nerfed the ancients....still bs cus hermes should have been nerfed as well but whatever
Do you also cover how watered down the combat mechanics are and vacant the class fantasy is in XIV? I haven’t been satisfied with XIV since… ever. 2.0 took so much out of the MMO experience and I just kept hoping it’d get better. Endwalker was the final straw for me, I could no longer keep playing this game simply for my friends.
Just let you know.......originally Natsuko Ishikawa wants to make this longer, but Yoshi said this has to be done all ing 6.0 so..........yeah.........
Problem is that you also only have whatever Koji pooped out as Localization director. There's a possibility he fucked up the translation as he has done since ARR and the explanation just didn't convey properly in English. There's no Primals. There's no Echo. And Hydalin is a Parasite. GG Michael!
I wouldn’t say it’s the fault of anyone in particular like Koji or Kate so much as SE NA’s policy on localisation. FFXIV isn’t its only victims, other recent games also have a …strange, to say the least, EN localisation compared to other languages like FR or DE. It is simultaneously too vague while adding its own little unnecessary flourishes that can drastically change the tone of some lines.
Im always unsure when time gets involved. On one hand we could have saved them thus. On the other we doomed them. But let no one say that no good deed goes unpunished. Had we saved them wouldn't that be cruel fate for present meaning we be worse than the ascians. By saving them we be erasing every living being in existence for those long dead. You know it sets u a dilemma that makes saving / killing them equally bad. You save a race long since dead congrats u wipe the future clean, on the other hand you unwillingly help wipe entire race of ppl off the map. Yeah you know what Fuck Time Travel. Too many damn loop holes and time displacia moments.... know what maybe saving them been better we wouldn't be sundered and we wouldn't have to hear wuk or see that mother fucking train......
But we know that isn't how time travel in FFXIV works. G'raha did change history, and his future wasn't wiped. You could argue that the characters in-universe would have no real way to know this (other than that timeline's aether-G'raha's memories-persisting in spite of the change to the past), but we never see them grapple with this concept. Only in the online short story which confirms the timeline's continued existence is it a subject a discussion. If we do change the past and save the Ancients, all story evidence points to our timeline being entirely unaffected. And besides, I don't think Venat would have too many qualms with potentially sacrificing people in the future, quite frankly. She did commit one genocide and make herself indirectly responsible for 8 more via saving the Unsundered, after all. Anyway, Fuck Time Travel indeed.
Ew didn't feel bad to me because I didn't pay enough attention. I didn't skip cutscenes or anything, I just read the text without giving it much thought. And I feel like most of EW fans were the same. On the surface it was fun and enjoyable, hence it's "10/10 perfect story". And I fell like this crazy fanbase hating on everyone who doesn't slightly enjoy any aspect of the game makes quite a few people just keep their complaints to themselves. I kinda want to replay msq since SHB to EW just to formulate my own opinions now, but I feel like I'd just die of boredom. So thanks for all the great videos, I really appreciate getting a new look on how weird the story really is.
I think it's definitely this. I would bet a large sum of money the vast majority of people who loved EW did not think too much about it. The guys I really, really don't get are the ones who overanalyse the hell out of the story and, for whatever unfathomable reason, still enjoy Endwalker. For real, I do NOT know how you could give this story so much mental energy and not come away from it feeling like it-the process, but definitely the story as well-robbed you of precious mortal time, oxygen and glucose. I feel you on the MSQ. I had been playing since HW and I was the sort to level up 5 characters to endgame. EW put a stop to that. I couldn't manage to get a 4th character through that.
EW was so, so, soooooooo f*cking bad. The writing started falling off during Elidibus' story arch in ShB. Sh*t started to feel rushed then, and honestly, for me, the moment Fandaniel was introduced the story started getting muddled. I remember being one of the few people who was disgruntled with EW's story, this scene in particular. I hated how the writers just threw this crap at us and counted on us liking it because our favorite and most memorable characters were in it. EW's second half preyed /heavily/ on our emotional attachments to the characters we'd grown to know and love. The writers were in such a rush to finish up the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story arc that they came up with the most confusing, inconsistent plots that had the main characters acting completely out of character. The whole of EW left me confused and angry and not understanding why no one else could see the story had fallen apart somewhere along the way.
It was so rushed. You don’t even have to look any further than Zenos and Garlemald to see it. How about those Populares, Nerva and Titus, Solus clones, dreams of Amaurot’s end and what those meant about Emet accomplishing something? oh yeah, let’s just have that whole tower plot culminate in FFX’s big time summon ending up a dungeon boss after having this cool bit of body swap plot that was THE poster child for Going The F*ck Nowhere. It wasn’t even a finale so much as its own little plot about Hermes’s dumb existential issues and Venat’s dumber solution, as demonstrated by the final credits artwork not showing us any of the purported 10-year story arc beyond the cast of EW’s second half. My man Elidibus got done so dirty by Endwalker. I thought 5.3 was rushed as hell as far as character “development” goes (that’s not development, that’s a whole new characterisation that was never hinted at before), but back then I accepted that because it wasn’t over yet, obviously the finale of Hydaelyn/Zodiark would have the Heart of Zodiark as a main character alongside the Heart of Hydaelyn. We’ll finally have the time to explore his feelings on failing to save everyone he loved from being stuck in the Zodiark phylactery, on being betrayed by the last person he knew, on finding out the WoL was Azem, on the oath he swore and forgot, on having to fight another Ascian desecrating the nameless grave of his people, and maybe do all of that with some of that scheming low-key villain energy he used to have as the longest-standing antagonist before being hit with the primal bat (wow! I sure am looking forward to how that will impact his Hydaelyn counterpart and her identity and memories!) Anyway that’s the story of how my favorite character became time machine fuel. Buckle up, Marty, this plot is going down and I don’t plan on staying around to watch, have fun with that jank! F*ck you and I’ll see you tomorrow over in that raid story over there. And speaking of desecrating graves… Look! Emet-Selch!
Don't apologize for being negative. There was a vacuum in FFXIV fandom for criticism that no one was willing to fill, which is why I ended up making the Venat series because I knew if I didn't no one else would. Endwalker was a masterpiece, after all, the perfect finale and saying otherwise would range from you getting down voted & dog piled to being stalked & harassed.
Things seem better now since some of even the biggest simps didn't like DT, but it was a much different story during EW when anyone who hated it had no voice to speak for them and limited places to go to discuss it. There is literally the entire rest of the internet if people only want to hear glowing praise of EW in particular. Aside from your channel & EoE (which has no current plans for future content) I wouldn't know where else to direct anyone.
As for the video content, I cried my eyes out at the end of Ktisis for all the wrong reasons. My singular thought was, "The writers are really doing this."
Emet mentions reporting Kairos to Pashtarot earlier in Elpis because of how problematic it is while Hythlodaeus notes he had not received a concept for Meteion. The fact that Hermes was still in consideration for the seat of Fandaniel after repeatedly demonstrating lack of respect for the rules was another irritation of mine.
I believe Venat had already made up her mind not to prevent events from happening after Meteion gave her report on Deka-hepta (The Plenty), which is essentially confirmed repeatedly after the escape from not informing Emet to agreeing with Hermes' test of mankind. So I could argue it wasn't that Venat was incapable of stopping Meteion, it's that her heart wasn't in it to do so.
I swear, the more details I see, the worse the situation gets. That bit about Hermes chiding the rules is ridiculous, especially regarding Emet who was sincerely committed to Amarout's customs.
And I'm sorry if there was heavy backlash back when EW first released. I remember a stray comment of mine on Trueblade Seeker's channel getting shat on for pointing out how flawed the script was. The amount of people who don't want to listen is extreme. It only makes me all the more grateful for those that do.
Hopefully we'll see you back at content creating one day. No pressure. If and when you do, I'll happily be there to share my support.
Thanks for the input as always!
I remember when if you didn't enjoy the EW msq and preferred SHB msq you be accused of not paying attention to the story lol
One of the things I really hate about the Ktisis dungeon conclusion, and it was briefly mentioned in the video, is in regards to the absurd power increases the antagonists gain in cutscenes, right after being defeated in combat. We just beat the crap out of Hermes in his transformed form, then all of a sudden he has enough strength to bind all of 4 them, while not transformed and exhausted from getting beaten up in battle. He basically gets up, more powerful than ever, because... he was sad? I guess?
And they keep repeating this. It happens again with Golbez, (it's even dumber there, everyone just stands there and lets him do his thing), and it happens once again in Dawntrail MSQ. I'm starting to get really sick and tired of my character prevailing in gameplay, only to then get a mandatory L in the cutscene afterwards. It creates a huge dissonance between what we experience in gameplay, and what unfolds in the narrative. This is a video game, after all-why even have us fight these bad guys if it has no bearing on the consequences that follow the encounter?
edit: to clarify, I'm not saying we can never lose after the fight, but it needs to make sense. For example, we defeat Ilberd at the end of Baelsar's Wall, yet we still "lose" afterwards. But it makes sense, because the guy always intended to sac himself. It's easy to accept such a loss, because it's cohesive and doesn't break our suspension of disbelief. More recently, however, they don't really seem to care about making those losses logical. The bad guy simply gets back up in the cutscene with a power boost, and goes through with his evil plan as if nothing happened, rendering our fight with them meaningless in the process.
@imacuttlefish6832 reminds me of blade and soul story mode, character would always stand there no matter the situation and helpless.
@@Beyondthegalaxies824 Which is bizarre because they have demonstrated they are clearly capable of this. When we confront Emet, the party tries to stop him, or at least stall him until Ryne can do her thing. Endwalker itself has multiple scenes where Estinien leaps into action. Heck, even in this very scene, once the characters break out of their binds, they immediately take action to stop Hermes and the bird.
It's just them getting bound in the first place makes no sense. And I'm not even gonna get into the stupid amnesia machine.
The biggest issue for me during the Elpis storyline was how quickly Hermes became the villain, and without much justifiable reasons: His main argument during the dungeon was "I can't let you take Meteion from me, not yet, until I heard her final report". Ok, he does not want her taken away and he wants to hear her full report, those are fair points. Lets look at the situation directly before he turns villain:
- Yes, Emet wanted to take Meteion back to Aumarot
- but there was zero indication that Emet would harm or destroy her
- neither was there any indication that her report would not be taken seriously
- Surely the convocation would be eager to let Meteion do her full report. Since knowledge is a prime objective of the Ascians, I'm sure they would want to hear about other worlds
- As the creator and caretaker of Meteion, surely Hermes would be allowed to accompany her, so the "You can't take her from me" doesn't really work
- Surely Hermes would be allowed to hear the full report as well. Since he already knows about the other worlds and he is the expert in how Meteion works, he would be THE prime candidate to process the full report
Even if Hermes did not believe that it was implied that he was allowed to accompany her, a simple question "Can I come with her to Aumarot? Surely I would be of help when dealing with her report" would have cleared that up.
For me, his turn was not warranted and just seemed that he turned because the writers needed him to turn at that point in time.
If Emet instead said "You conjured that 'Meteion' into existence without approval and by sending her off-world you conducted potentially dangerous research. Your rank as researcher is hereby suspended, you will be taken into custody. By the law, all records of this unapproved research, including Meteions memory, is to be destroyed and we will be taking Meteion with us. The convocation will decide what is to be done with her." with a strong implication that, as an unapproved being, she will be undone just like the dragon monster that Hermes released. Not only would that give Hermes a much better motivation (lost his rank, lost Meteion, all records will be destroyed), by Emet being fortified as a by-the-books character it would also strengthen the discussion about rules vs compassion.
It’s even funnier when you remember that the ancients can actually teleport
"But she haaaaadddd to!"
"Why?"
"Because of the 4000 contrivances you have to believe wiped away every other possible solution."
"But I don't."
"But you haaaaavvveeee to!"
Obviously thinking is illegal in Ancient Amarout. Also, the writer's room.
@@durantes And of course in the same expansion that preaches worldwide cooperation with the Sharlayan story, a single individual taking it upon herself to wipe out her species and replace it with another she decides is more viable must be a hero. There is no conflict in those two messages at all.
I would respect Venat more if she just allowed her people to die off lol she doomed billions into a life of hell and death thanks to her stupid sundering, she has more blood on her hands than every villain in this game.
@@SILVERONIN216 And what's the justification for her violating the personal autonomy of every member of her species? The Sundered are more plucky.
Well, then I guess mutilating people's immortal souls is okay if it makes them more plucky.
On a grander scale I find Endwalker's biggest failure in writing and missed opportunities is how Ultima Thule was handled. While I found Estinien's "demise" confusing, because I did not understand immediately what the black nebula meant that appeared shortly before each Scions "fate" (is he dead? Transported away? How should I feel?), at least there was some concern.
However, when the next scrions "sacrificed" themselves 5 minutes later it felt utterly predictable that this will be not a permanent sacrifice because they wouldn't dare killing off the entire supporting cast, and from that point onward I could no longer take any "sacrfice" cutscene seriously.
Graha's "sacrifice" scene was worst of all. Remember how he went "please, promise me we go on an adventure"? Two things:
a) He already did that line in the previous expansion post-msq (aka just half an expansion ago), repeating this is way too soon! In ShB I still cry whenever he does that scene after the Elidibus fight, in Endwalker I laugh in disbelief over the cheapness of reusing that line that soon
b) We are at the edge of the universe fighting the embodiment of ultimate despair, how could Graha not call that an adventure?
This also brings into question : If Thancred was able to sacrifice himself yet was conscious enough to manifest this zone for us to survive in, why did he not also include bridges between the areas? It's awfully convenient how he magicked this entire zone into existence, yet forgot to construct bridges, so the only solution to make bridges is for Scions to off themselves, which is a rather odd way of constructing bridges.
Hey, how about using that spaceship we have parked at the start of the zone to fly to the next area? No need for any Scion to sacrifice themselves to make bridges, just fly there! All the scion's sacrifices in Ultima Thule were unnecessary!
In my opinion we should have kept losing Scions over the entire expansion, not just in Ultima Thule, that way it would have felt much more believable and would have given the other Scions to properly react to it. Have some die in Thavnair, some in Garlemald, Zenos could have killed one when he disguised himself as us, so over the entire expansion we would have kept losing one by one, until when we blast off with the space ship and we arrive in Ultima Thule it is only us that is left. When we arrive, have a cutscene reminding us of all whom we have lost (or put black cloudy ghosts doing a memorable one-liner, like the others), and have the entire zone be us and us alone, only us against the end of the world. Then the Scions comeback would have had a lot more impact.
Heck, if Zenos had actually killed someone from our gang (even if that person came back in the end), the end fight against him would have felt even more satisfying.
The thing that always confused me about this scene was that there was nothing whatsoever stopping us from just walking back in and reminding Emet Selch what happened and arresting hermes, so Emet’s speech was incredibly pointless, he might as well just say “see you in 5 minutes”.
Thank you for being one of the very few content creators out there giving Endwalker the criticism it 100% deserves.
I will die on the hill that Endwalker is objectively a BAD story conclusion. Nobody should be harassed for saying so. Nobody should apologise for saying so. I be waking up REAL early to be an Endwalker hater.
It has so many storytelling issues, particularly the second half in which it all comes crashing down because it’s so bad holy hell.
-Don’t insert time travel into your plot that never was about time travel and have it affect EVERYTHING retroactively. “but shadow bringers!!!!!” No, because:
1. Shadowbringers’s time travel did not happen to the POV character, the POV character’s timeline only progresses forward and we never interact with the other timeline, it might as well not exist outside of plot justification. But it does and still exists, which brings us to
2. Shadowbringers’s time travel established this universe’s time travel (and more specifically, the Ironworks-modified Crystal Tower’s) as a branching multiverse, which allows for a specific timeline to still suffer the consequences of the plot without it resorting to “we’ve changed the past and now our world is all fixed! yay!” which would be bad because it negates the stakes.
3. Shadowbringers’s time travel was supposed to have been terminated. Does anyone remember the Twinning? It was the whole plot. We nuked the time machine as intended by the future Ironworks! This is a literal plot hole unless you believe dungeons inessential to the MSQ do not happen. Or if we headcanon that the Tycoon was only necessary to calculate the time travel spell and that Elidibus was able to perfectly replicate a spell calculated by a half-extraterrestrial machine from the future, which he might as well be because Elidibus is truly the GOAT.
-Your stupid time travel hinges on headcanon to explain why it made a closed loop THIS TIME, which is pretty bad because this shouldn’t be on the audience to figure out these completely fictional physics your whole plot hinges on, and both options to explain it suck in their own way.
Option #1: Fate exists, and everything was predestined, including G’raha’s time travel which is not contradictory because it is just part of the greater loop. This sucks. This sucks because inserting predestination at the eleventh hour of your plot gives everything this fatalistic meaninglessness. This particularly sucks because one specific character is entirely aware of the time travel and chooses to tell literally no one about it and try nothing impactful enough to change course, like OH I DON’T KNOW, telling the authorities we are shown to be perfectly competent in Pandaemonium so they can mobilise mass effort?? (This segues into Reason #3,584 Why Endwalker Sucks: the Idiot Plot.) Logically speaking, if Fate is forcing time to be one single timeline, then Venat screaming the truth on rooftops of Amaurot should change precisely NOTHING about events, but she never even attempts that because she is horribly biased against her own people and never gave them a single chance to fight Fate. Heroes fight Fate, and Venat is no hero at all.
Option #2: Time travel mechanics are actually consistent within this universe, and consequently the entire loop was constantly at risk to veer off course, but Venat was here to steer it into the right direction. This stretches believability, yet is the option better supported by the plot, because we know for a fact that Venat saved the three Unsundered on purpose so the timeline could happen, making her responsible by proxy for at least 8 more planet-wide genocides, because her first wasn’t enough. This option is also the better one character-wise, because it doesn’t actually make everything meaningless and predestined, and it gives Venat a new dimension that isn’t just her boring and hypocritical “she’s 100% a tragic heroine who only ever meant the best but had to do a cruel thing! (because we’ll accept that the ends justify the means when it’s a good guy!)”. The problem that makes this option bad is that, well, then the plot never holds Venat accountable for denying the Ancients their very real chance at living. In fact, the plot never holds Venat accountable at all for her crimes, and that’s another Reason Why Endwalker Sucks.
-The bad world building and subsequent Idiot Plot: It couldn’t be more obvious that this story was written by a mortal. Obviously, all stories are written by mortals, but not all stories written by mortals are this bad at characterising immortal humans. This is particularly bad because we are shown in Shadowbringers very good reasons why the portrayal of Ancients in Endwalker is stupid: these guys have lived for millennia in peace while being humans with massive powers with the potential to blow each other up at the drop of a hat, and what they value most is debate, philosophy and the sharing of ideas and viewpoints. In fact, Endwalker doesn’t entirely contradict this: the vast majority of Elpis side quests show Ancients as curious, benevolent and constantly valuing your input even though your alibi for being there is “I’m an advanced AI”. By all means, these immortal philosophers who have been creating things for millennia SHOULD be beyond basic questions of What Is A Person, What Is The Meaning Of Life, How Do We Treat Sentient Creations, etc. Hermes SHOULDN’T be the anomaly he is bafflingly portrayed as (because he’s the writer’s admitted fave). That their world has worked so well for a FACT (we have no reason to believe it didn’t, and Encyclopedia Eorzea 3 reinforces the point that lived in peace) implies that they had a lot of things figured out, and we are also shown in Endwalker that they had numerous social codes and laws around their very, very vast magical potential (such as A MACHINE LIKE KAIROS SKIRTING THE LAW as stated by Emet-Selch).
Hence, for Endwalker’s convoluted plot to happen, it necessitates all Ancients to be morons. Multiple witnesses are shown outside of Ktisis, who have seen their boss doing the Ancient equivalent of streaking accompanied by Meteion. Nobody conducted a thorough investigation of this incident in which a sitting member of the planet’s highest rung of government and the director of Amaurot’s Bureau of the Architect suffered cognitive impairment? An incident that involved a machine which made Emet-Selch instantly think the guy in charge of laws would have a conniption if he learned of it? A machine that seemingly records no logs whatsoever? Nobody conducted a second, later evaluation of Hermes? This functional society of immortal humans whose incredibly powerful magic hinged on their mental state thought a guy with obvious mental issues was fit for a seat on the planet’s highest rung of government? And that guy was somehow the only guy in this society of immortals who loved knowledge and the exchange of ideas who knew anything about this plot device the writers just pulled of their twisting nether? Because it’s a space thing and these people who loved knowledge and science and based their highest rung of government on constellations weren’t interested in space I guess?
What the hell even is this? None of it is helped at all by the existence of the Pandaemonium story, in which a sitting member of the planet’s highest rung of government investigates the facility run by another sitting member of the planet’s highest rung of government, and people are shown to be able to casually broadcast their memories of distant events.
(hit character limit because UA-cam is weak)
-Hypocrisy: The only reason why the plot of Endwalker and its heroic portrayal of Venat (this is non-arguable: she is never opposed by the protagonist cast nor does the narrative ever put into doubt her beliefs for why she acted the way she did. The audience is supposed to agree with her because the plot attempts to showcase her as having her hands tied by the circumstances and being tragically forced to act the way she did) works at all is because Ancients aren’t Us. Ancients are Them. They who thought themselves superior but (GASP) it turned out They were not mature enough to handle death and despair. See point above: there is no way in hell immortal humans who could blow each other up at the drop of a hat didn’t have this figured out. The one way it is acceptable is if we don’t consider the Ancients as humans with as many dimensions and feelings as Us, but Them, the Incomplete Other. And this flies in the face of Shadowbringers whose entire plot rested on Them being Us. To be completely honest, those who baffle me the most in Endwalker’s fanbase are the Ascian and Ancient fans who loved it. Endwalker made the Ancients go from painfully human and relatable to these aloof Others who really are kind of stupid and in fact you kinda wonder how they survived so long like this.
And Venat? Would have most certainly, 100%, absolutely been a Well-Intentioned Extremist villain had the Ancients been Us. Her motivations make her a literal textbook case. Mankind cannot face this cosmic threat because we’re too immature, we would panic if told, we would ignore it, we would self-destruct-therefore mankind has to be remade better. The reasons why she did not tell anyone (who mattered) the truth all boil down to this: she never had faith in their capacity to respond to a crisis or their potential to create new solutions and overcome the odds. Hermes becoming Fandaniel? Was completely unnecessary had she told them what exactly he would bring to the table (which we are told to only be the correlation of the Final Days with celestial aether, and nothing else), and that Dynamis was involved. The flower was right here for every researcher to iterate upon. The way she acted is also very much not how you should act in crisis management if we consider the Ancient world to be a sane and functional one-which the plot does not mean us to, because Ancients are Them, not Us. They’re aloof, naive and dumb immortals.
I could go on forever about how bad Endwalker was. It was a disgrace, and one of the worst things about it is that people don’t see it. (It made them cry, therefore it was good!)
The Time Travel plot is a symptom of one of Endwalker's greatest problems: It was intended to be two expansions and they wanted to cram it into one.
What happened was sure, they ended the story with the beginning but... it had a very VERY inconsistent pace. :/ We alternate from exposition to suddenly jumping from beat to beat at the speed of a James Patterson brand novel... then it wants us to stop and smell the roses. Then it starts moving again.
It shows in both Elpis and Garlemald.
Could the time travel plot have worked? Yes. I absolutely think so. But the problem was? IT didnt' have enough time to cook. This is why there are so many contrivances - it has to end with this particular outcome, but they only have about like, 2-3 hours to do it, and they spent about 1 hour in. So they had to rush. I genuinely wouldn't be shocked if this detail wasn't thought of when Shadowbringers was made.
If it had more time? PErhaps we could have seen more things like "Hey wait a minute... Venat is right. Wasn't Hermes running around with a little creation?" or trying to find all sorts of records only to find that there were none or that they could easily be describing other experiments. (Which would further help the accidental Aesop of "Peer review your shit, please.")
I really don't understand why perfect loop time travel was needed plot-wise. Why we couldn't go with the divergent time-line time travel the plot has used before. Wouldn't it have been even more interesting to go back in time and change it directly through our actions? Our friendship with Hermes? Honestly, that feels pretty on theme for FF14.
Meteion being the ultimate big bad could have been revealed either way, and it cut out the frankly insane plan by Venat to do absolutely everything the exact same for the sake of preserving the timeline or whatever. Our timeline just didn't have us travelling back to prevent things. We get to save two worlds for the price of one!
Whatever is going on in management with that dev studio can only be an even bigger headache than the plotline that came out of it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they mention that Ktisis dampens the strength of non-Elpis personnel? I think that's why Emet was so weak. (He even has a dialogue saying, "If only I could transform" if he dies.) Regardless, your point still stands. Hermes had been beaten down and weakened. There's no reason why he should have been able to ward off Emet-Selch, Venat, and the WoL.
The whole thing was terribly written to justify how we traveled back in time, yet didn't change anything. It was, as you said, horribly contrived. That scene wasn't half as clever as the writers thought it was. Also, did you notice that while Venat freed herself, Emet-Selch was busy trying to free everyone else? Once again, Venat thought only of herself.
I still remember how disappointed I was when I watched this for the first time. I was thinking we'd hear Meteion's report and learn of some horrid entity floating in the cosmos that she'd come into contact with. Then we'd defeat it in the future. But, no, that's not what we got. Instead, we got "the universe sucks, everything is dead or dying, there's no hope, and Meteion is your final boss." Meteion. The cutesy bird girl. And she's sad. Because, well, more plot contrivances. oh, and feel bad for Hermes too. Cuz, reasons. And apparently only people who suffer horribly can know hope.
It would've been more interesting if they leaned into the aspect of Meteion and her sisters being similar to the Maenads from FF4 The After Years and they met The Creator who made the worlds. Because The Creator concluded his experiment failed and while he and his Maenads had already destroyed other countless worlds, the heroes of FF4 fought and defeated him to save their's and were triumphant. Granted I didn't much care for that in TAY (the implication was he created the other FF worlds and then destroyed them and everyone on it) but it would've been more interesting than what we got.
I'm really happy to finally see some real critique of Endwalker coming out. I, too, had a lot of negative things to say about the story, but I deliberately held off on expressing those thoughts, because I knew people weren't ready to hear it. I even got a taste of this when I released my Venat video, which basically had a civil war going on in the comment section. It was also my most negative video at the time, which is unusual for me, as I deliberately try to keep my content positive.
Judging by the like:dislike ratio of this video, it seems people are more open to criticism now, but clearly some friction still.
When Endwalker came out, I said that Heavensward, Shadowbringers and even Stormblood will all remain loved by fans, no matter how much time passes. But that Endwalker will age like milk. The main thing I can point to is Avengers Endgame. It was a very similar situation: epic conclusion to a story, very hyped and highly rated movie when it released. But look at the discourse surrounding that movie now: it's basically universal bashing of Endgame and its terrible writing decisions, and universal praise for its predecessor, Infinity War.
It also released at the perfect time, with the pandemic and everything, which really allowed it to cash in on those themes about despair and enjoying the little things (which it hits you repeatedly with like a hammer). But this also does contribute to it feeling very much like a product of its time. Someone going through the story now won't have the same weight behind it, as that context is lacking for them.
Endwalker has some big W's, don't get me wrong. I love the Pandemonium story, and I felt the resolution to each main Scion's character arcs were really well made. I could definitely list a ton of positive things to say, but for me the bottom line is: *it should have been 2 expansions at minimum.*
As much I had some good moments with it's MSQ, I slowly started to notice the decline with it's writing as the story goes on. I will admit, however, EW was a much different time when it came out and while I'm at least glad it concluded, I could not help but wonder if those who hated EW were too afraid to speak against it or had the place to discuss it. Of course, I didn't see any of it for the time until as more Post EW patches comes by and I suddenly get recommended videos about people criticizing the expansion, it explains why I felt something off about it for so long. The fact that it opened my eyes about many of the sins that EW started with and what has been repeated in DT gave me all I need to know about FFXIV's future.
The Elpis storyline is what made me question about this plot and it's time travel shenanigans. How did Hermes remain in the government seat with all of his shady and unlawful stuff and overpower everyone in that ONE scene is so beyond me. It got introduced so jarring and sudden shows how rushed it is, I...I was done taking it seriously by that point. Don't get me started on FUCKING...Meteion, she is such an biggest ass pull of an character of this game that made my WoL wanting kick her ass so hard from start to end.
As a whole, EW has left me baffled and frustrated and I do not regret acknowledging the story falling apart before it was too late (and before DT as well).
If you go digging through early Endwalker reactions, like dec21-feb22, you’re likely to find quite a few dissenting voices. I can only speak for myself of course, but it feels like a recurring sentiment whenever someone posted their negative opinion of EW was “FINALLY I’m not alone!”, which speaks volume of the community. Simply put, after a while of being told I “didn’t get it”, I “skipped cutscenes”, having this stupid plot regurgitated at me straight up with added insults on top as if that would somehow make me see the light-I dropped off the face of FFXIV social media. The only situation in which you'll ever find me post in FFXIV spaces is to take a massive dump on Endwalker's plot, as has been my skincare routine for the past three years.
The criticism that came during EW patches seemed to mostly fall into two categories: displeasure with gameplay/content and displeasure with the anime filler arc. For whatever reason, people seem unwilling to look back critically on 6.0 MSQ and realise, man, that plot sure was janky slop huh? Even now with Dawntrail's fanfiction-tier lore, it has just become a scapegoat for people to point at and say "Look how much BETTER Endwalker was!!!" without really ever getting into the details of that praise. A common sentiment I’ve had in response to my negative comments is “I’m glad I don’t think about it the way you do, that’d ruin it for me”. It seems the correct way to enjoy Endwalker was to walk into it with this brain-half-turned-off beatitude (but I thought I wasn’t paying ENOUGH attention to get it?? HUH🤔) and overlook its myriad plot contrivances for the sake of cherishing those scenes that made you cry-and they did, I did genuinely cry at certain points during 6.0 MSQ, and not just because I was watching the writers maul the story I once loved.
Though I know that some dissenters eventually came around to recognise 6.0 MSQ as janky slop, I have to say I've never had that luxury. The more it went on, the more I felt my soul depart my body with my eyes firmly staring through the screen. I thought I'd get it done in 3 days at release but Ultima Thule went on for so mind-numbingly long vomiting sophomoric philosophy at me I had to call it a night in front of the final boss and finish it on day 4. And then when I hoped it was finally over, it had the gall to throw a solo duty at me, at which point I well and truly could not be more done with Final Fantasy Fourteen's Main Story Quest. I logged out on my uncanny sparkledog until Pandaemonium dropped with the plot I actually cared about, Lahabrea's vampire gay baby jail. And even that one ended tepidly ngl, endlessly (quite literally so with the added Themis minion quest, please I've had enough) wallowing in the ineptly forced tragedy of Endwalker's convoluted plot and dishonest, hypocritical narrative. I do take a little solace in it giving us an actually honest portrayal of an Ancient narcissistic mother about to commit genocide. Thanks, Pandaemonium. Already that makes you so much better than MSQ.
That's why I love Stormblood most, it felt the most grounded story, people call it boring cause it was political but for me it was consistent.
No i felt the same way. Maybe not about the same things, but especially about Hermes heel turn. It felt so jarring and sudden? Like i get that youre depressed but ...what? That seems excessive. I will say that Kairos was illegal, Emet comments on it in unvoiced dialogue that Pashtarot will want to know about this. Honestly Hermes does so much shady and unlawful stuff that im shocked he was even in position to be recommended for a government seat.
Endwalker, largely, put me in a bad mood. It had it's good moments, of course, mostly Zenos-related ones.
But, man, do I hate Hermes. I am still looking forward to you giving that absolute ham sandwich something to be depressed about.
Excellent points, by the way. My main criticism was Hermes being a hypocrite (specifically his point in fairness which I am glad you also got beef with). But yeah, I did point out something similar in a past comment about Hermes possessing Zodiark and how that shouldn't have worked. Hermes overpowering everyone is so dumb... I was so done I didn't even question it...
Also, not sure if I said it before, but I meant to. Red vs Blue has so many useable clips it is actually fascinating. So, don't feel the need to apologize. I know I am not the only one that enjoys them.
Lastly, get in line, it starts behind me. I feel EW aged me by 4 years.
I miss Stormblood and before. I hate the bait and switch the SB ending turned out to be. The story since then has had good moments, good characters, I even love Ryne and Zero, but as a whole it has been in a steady decline since ShB and lately it's been a complete freefall. Yeah, extremely unpopular opinion that has made me a pariah for the past few years, but at least finally some people are starting to notice the cracks.
If you want to post XIV positive material, why not recall the good it did before? Point out the highs and the merits. Help people remember what was good and what made them stay in the first place. All the world building of ARR and the characters of HW is what made me finally switch from WoW, all the dialogue and consistency. It may be a disaster now but we can still remember what used to be good and remind others of it and maybe influence it enough to make a change. And even if not, then at least you had a good time remembering.
1 thing that amazes me is he still has the ability to move after being beaten literally moments ago,the gameplay being so seperate from the story is rather jarring since they make sure to only have a minimum amount of dungeons per story segment. EW moment I guess.
That's a general issue with the game, especially when it comes to quest design.
Narrative and gameplay are almost entirely separated, the only occasional exception being a few solo instances, besides those you either have a "gameplay" section (not sure you can even call going somewhere and killing 3 enemies in a spot "gameplay") or an exposition text dump, but the game does a terrible job marrying the two.
No one should be taking critique or criticism of something they love personally. If you love something that much, you should be more critical of it than anyone. I loved the entirety of Elpis, but this scene still confuses me, and I've watched it multiple times. Still does not top the hairbrained scheme for fleeing that Venat gave the Lopporits, but it's still up there lol. I will suggest one more solution for Emet staying, tho. Have him try to get both himself and Hyth out together, and maybe run out of time? Give him another opportunity to show how selfless he is? I dunno. This scene is written like it's turnbased.
"Still does not top the hairbrained scheme for fleeing that Venat gave the Lopporits,"
One could even say...harebrained.
...I'll see myself out, lol.
@@angfour9684 Eh. A for effort!
Oh, rest assured. The Lopporites are next on my list of issues to tackle.
That's not a bad idea! We run ahead to ensure that at least somebody remembers. Emet tries to escape and fails. It amplifies the tragedy.
@@angfour9684 Straight to jail lol
This one was beautiful, and I'm thankful you went over it in such detail. Your content is appreciated as always, that's why You'll be remembered.
I hated the whole Elpis plot, it damaged EW for me. Venat is irredeemable and Hermes for someone who is respected as an intellectual, doomed the universe with the most basic bitch philosophical question that is easy to answer lol Also writers should stay away from time travel if you can't execute it correctly!
I'm never getting over the horror that is EW's world building giving us immortal wizard scientists with massive powers who were previously established to have a passion for debate now stumbling over "buuuhhhhh WHY live if DIE??" and the subject of personhood of artificial life seemingly being this incomprehensible, novel subject which only the writer's fave would ever have true feelings about. It's so baffling.
@@okbooma5436 lmao Hermes felt sad cause crazy beasts are out of control and needed to be put down, "oh but life though" lol like bro that thing was killing other docile wildlife and couldn't be domesticated. The whole writing is childish and pretentious, I honestly felt insulted with this whole plot. Also yeah good job tasking a little unstable empathetic girl to absorb the darkness of the universe and expect her to come back with a sound answer lol pure silliness!
Have you considered doing a once in a blue moon appreciation video of shadowbringers? Show how certain scenes were done right to back up the arguments agaisnt Endwalker and Dawntrail
I do have something in mind for that. Hopefully I'll have the spare time before 7.2 drops.
@@durantes I'd love to see a ShB video as well at some point!
Of course, also looking forward to more of your EW videos. ^-^
And thank you for making all these videos calling out the BS writing; it makes me feel less bad about disliking EW so much lol.
Also plot hole of Ktsis being dilated Tardis building but connected to outer space. Meteion should'nnt be able to leave.
I'll just immediately add, the time travel was prepared all the way in Heavensward. It wasn't all that contrived, heck, we even got a post credit dungeon in Shadowbringer that explains the time travel mechanism being (almost) the very same we saw in Heavensward.
Except, the writers seem to flip-flop between what does and doesn't cause a closed loop. Alexander did, but G'raha didn't, then we use the same method as G'raha and it... does, again?
@@BlackEyedJester I'm not confident in calling the exact same method, what with us having a "tether" back to our own time, however even it it were- Honestly the biggest reason being a loop was because Venat for some reason really wanted to make sure it was. I'm not a fan of it either, I do wish it was explored a bit more, like she was afraid to change anything because she saw hope in your existence or SOMETHING little extra...
@@BlackEyedJesterHydaelyn implies it wasn’t a time loop when we meet her later. But then that makes her a psychotic monster even if you ignore the ancients, because she intentionally allowed the unsundered to escape and go on to kill millions.
It’s a catch 22. Also if it was a time loop, unless she intentionally tried to break it and couldn’t (which would imply she had no free will whatsoever), her actions are still morally bankrupt, she has 0 reason not to try to change the past from her perspective.
Would you consider make a video about rewritting endwalker story ?
Having reviewed this situation countless times, I can tell ya that your review is spot on, but it leaves out the plot idea around:
Ktsis's dampening field -> This itself is the "reason" that Emet-selch, Hyth, and V-Bitch have to team up in a light party with the Azem Future Goblin. Supposedly when Ktsis enters "emergency" mode it suppresses all powers within its bounds to restrain creations, but apparentnly this also extends to any non-Ktsis personnel. Since Hades/Hyth/V-Bitch are all here on visitor passes, they are dampened. Of course, this creates the plot hole centered around the fact that none of the creations Hermes is using to get in our way are weakened. There may be the leeway that as head overseer he could choose what gets dampened, but that makes little sense. Why allow the system intended to stop rogue creations or rogue visitors to pick and choose? We could invent reasons, but the writers didn't.
I did forget that, admittedly. A dampening field that prevents them from fighting at full power and even Emet from transforming. But they can break their bonds rather quickly and shatter spacial confluences with ease. It's a real selective handicap.
i regret to i form you that i have the same view and opinion as you so no productive disagreement
lol Leon Kennedy in the RE4 Remake wouldn't let Metion get away she would have been on sight her and her animal rights activist creator xD
I personally didn't find.... "too" much wrong with the scene.
I agree to a point. The countdown builds tension and stakes. Its not bad. Having it be an instant spell would make it deadly then Emet using slow on it would make it feel like an actual conflict than what we got instead.
If we made slow a concentration spell that would have made it Hermes vs Hyth as a 1v1 with hyth trying to protect emet and stop Hermes and vice versa.
The WoL and Venat should have been chasing after Metion. On ONE Argus mount. Metion gets a hit on Argus and we get knocked off. Now Venat has to make a choice to save us or go after Metion. It doesn't make sense that a spell to track the bird hits but no other spell couldn't?
If there was a moment the Metion we met came out as we fell and Venat put a track on her instead of attacking her (because feelings) them diving to save us. Would make the whole scene 100% better.
As far as the chains.... they're fine. We're put in those all the time in fights. Iirc it was a sneaky move. And these chains and controlling other Amourotians happens in Pandaemonium. I can bend my disbelief. Its magic and it built up drama for exposition
Meteions report is my favorite cutscene in the whole game
Too bad that character was an ass pull
It still baffles me that the same writer for ShB's wrote EW. As bad as DT's msq was, I genuinely did enjoy it more than the shit show that EW was despite its massive flaws because at least it didn't feel like it shat all over pre established stuff that ShB's set up. I will forever be salty about Meteion being the biggest asspull I have ever seen in this game.
I do wonder if there was some type of executive intervention involved. I can’t think of anything Ishikawa wrote before this that was anywhere near this contrived and dumb.
Iirc YoshiP said during one of the live letters? that Ishikawa was working on the story up until the very last minute which blew my mind. I don't recall seeing people criticize this but were praising it like what??? I played Endwalker on release and it really does feel like a lot of it was rushed.
Damn, I really loved Endwalker and the conclusion to the 10 year story. but I never thought about going back and looking at it through a microscope. Probably best I don’t.
I joined during Shadowbringers and so therefore I don’t have all the past stuff to build up to EW, and personally I actually really enjoyed EW (probably bc I didn’t have all that past stuff to compare it to). That being said I didn’t not enjoy HW. At all, imho it’s the xpac that felt the most pointless besides DT. Ik a lot of people feel very sad over what happened to Haurchefant. Rip, my guy. But imho, HW felt like an unnecessarily long side quest to get Estinien to help us and eventually join the Scions. I Feel like his stuff could’ve been summed up and we could’ve invested more time into what I thought HW would be about: Getting our friends back. But all that being said my opinion on the xpacs are kinda skewed anyways.
HW overrated af
I agree. Counter point: "With Hearts Aligned" is such a fire track it was worth everyone doing everything wrong to get us that fight.
Dunno about that. But I'll never dispute 14 having a bomb-as-hell soundtrack!
Hmmm. There's one thing that you forgot ..( but if i am honest it dont save any of it)
The point of the dungeon is that the inside of the Tower severely nerfed the ancients....still bs cus hermes should have been nerfed as well but whatever
CLOCK THE TEA! ☕ wake it up!!!
Do you also cover how watered down the combat mechanics are and vacant the class fantasy is in XIV? I haven’t been satisfied with XIV since… ever. 2.0 took so much out of the MMO experience and I just kept hoping it’d get better. Endwalker was the final straw for me, I could no longer keep playing this game simply for my friends.
Just let you know.......originally Natsuko Ishikawa wants to make this longer, but Yoshi said this has to be done all ing 6.0 so..........yeah.........
Problem is that you also only have whatever Koji pooped out as Localization director. There's a possibility he fucked up the translation as he has done since ARR and the explanation just didn't convey properly in English. There's no Primals. There's no Echo. And Hydalin is a Parasite.
GG Michael!
Koji hasn't been the FF14 localization lead since Shadowbringers. Kate Cwynar is the lead now.
@@AA-ph5dj she is horrible!
I wouldn’t say it’s the fault of anyone in particular like Koji or Kate so much as SE NA’s policy on localisation. FFXIV isn’t its only victims, other recent games also have a …strange, to say the least, EN localisation compared to other languages like FR or DE. It is simultaneously too vague while adding its own little unnecessary flourishes that can drastically change the tone of some lines.
Im always unsure when time gets involved. On one hand we could have saved them thus. On the other we doomed them. But let no one say that no good deed goes unpunished. Had we saved them wouldn't that be cruel fate for present meaning we be worse than the ascians. By saving them we be erasing every living being in existence for those long dead. You know it sets u a dilemma that makes saving / killing them equally bad. You save a race long since dead congrats u wipe the future clean, on the other hand you unwillingly help wipe entire race of ppl off the map. Yeah you know what Fuck Time Travel. Too many damn loop holes and time displacia moments.... know what maybe saving them been better we wouldn't be sundered and we wouldn't have to hear wuk or see that mother fucking train......
But we know that isn't how time travel in FFXIV works. G'raha did change history, and his future wasn't wiped. You could argue that the characters in-universe would have no real way to know this (other than that timeline's aether-G'raha's memories-persisting in spite of the change to the past), but we never see them grapple with this concept. Only in the online short story which confirms the timeline's continued existence is it a subject a discussion.
If we do change the past and save the Ancients, all story evidence points to our timeline being entirely unaffected.
And besides, I don't think Venat would have too many qualms with potentially sacrificing people in the future, quite frankly. She did commit one genocide and make herself indirectly responsible for 8 more via saving the Unsundered, after all.
Anyway, Fuck Time Travel indeed.
Ew didn't feel bad to me because I didn't pay enough attention. I didn't skip cutscenes or anything, I just read the text without giving it much thought. And I feel like most of EW fans were the same.
On the surface it was fun and enjoyable, hence it's "10/10 perfect story".
And I fell like this crazy fanbase hating on everyone who doesn't slightly enjoy any aspect of the game makes quite a few people just keep their complaints to themselves.
I kinda want to replay msq since SHB to EW just to formulate my own opinions now, but I feel like I'd just die of boredom. So thanks for all the great videos, I really appreciate getting a new look on how weird the story really is.
I think it's definitely this. I would bet a large sum of money the vast majority of people who loved EW did not think too much about it. The guys I really, really don't get are the ones who overanalyse the hell out of the story and, for whatever unfathomable reason, still enjoy Endwalker. For real, I do NOT know how you could give this story so much mental energy and not come away from it feeling like it-the process, but definitely the story as well-robbed you of precious mortal time, oxygen and glucose.
I feel you on the MSQ. I had been playing since HW and I was the sort to level up 5 characters to endgame. EW put a stop to that. I couldn't manage to get a 4th character through that.
EW was so, so, soooooooo f*cking bad. The writing started falling off during Elidibus' story arch in ShB. Sh*t started to feel rushed then, and honestly, for me, the moment Fandaniel was introduced the story started getting muddled. I remember being one of the few people who was disgruntled with EW's story, this scene in particular. I hated how the writers just threw this crap at us and counted on us liking it because our favorite and most memorable characters were in it. EW's second half preyed /heavily/ on our emotional attachments to the characters we'd grown to know and love. The writers were in such a rush to finish up the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story arc that they came up with the most confusing, inconsistent plots that had the main characters acting completely out of character. The whole of EW left me confused and angry and not understanding why no one else could see the story had fallen apart somewhere along the way.
It was so rushed. You don’t even have to look any further than Zenos and Garlemald to see it. How about those Populares, Nerva and Titus, Solus clones, dreams of Amaurot’s end and what those meant about Emet accomplishing something? oh yeah, let’s just have that whole tower plot culminate in FFX’s big time summon ending up a dungeon boss after having this cool bit of body swap plot that was THE poster child for Going The F*ck Nowhere. It wasn’t even a finale so much as its own little plot about Hermes’s dumb existential issues and Venat’s dumber solution, as demonstrated by the final credits artwork not showing us any of the purported 10-year story arc beyond the cast of EW’s second half.
My man Elidibus got done so dirty by Endwalker. I thought 5.3 was rushed as hell as far as character “development” goes (that’s not development, that’s a whole new characterisation that was never hinted at before), but back then I accepted that because it wasn’t over yet, obviously the finale of Hydaelyn/Zodiark would have the Heart of Zodiark as a main character alongside the Heart of Hydaelyn. We’ll finally have the time to explore his feelings on failing to save everyone he loved from being stuck in the Zodiark phylactery, on being betrayed by the last person he knew, on finding out the WoL was Azem, on the oath he swore and forgot, on having to fight another Ascian desecrating the nameless grave of his people, and maybe do all of that with some of that scheming low-key villain energy he used to have as the longest-standing antagonist before being hit with the primal bat (wow! I sure am looking forward to how that will impact his Hydaelyn counterpart and her identity and memories!)
Anyway that’s the story of how my favorite character became time machine fuel. Buckle up, Marty, this plot is going down and I don’t plan on staying around to watch, have fun with that jank! F*ck you and I’ll see you tomorrow over in that raid story over there.
And speaking of desecrating graves… Look! Emet-Selch!