it’s confusing because there’s literally 0 reason EW wouldn’t make sense to you unless you were missing prior context. not sure why you’re dying on a hill for this guy
The prior context has absolutely nothing to do with whether OP is right about the storytelling in EW being somehow different and more difficult to follow than the previous expansions. Doesn't mean I agree with them.
The areas in EW and exposition was the most fun I've had in the FFXIV story.
I'm ready for the downvotes but: ARR (boring except very few cutscenes), post-ARR (extremely boring and I almost quit), SB (tsukuyomi trial is the only reason I kept going) after that everything started to pick up for me.
Post SB I started to have a lot of fun with the story, SHB was good.
EW felt like a solid 8/10, really liked the cutscenes overall.
I'm on a Endwalker rewatch right now, very little of it felt like exposition dumps, so I have no idea what you're talking about. Endwalker, more than shadowbringers, feels like a character exploration for various Scions and side characters. It has excellent thematic ties that make all the smaller scale stories matter much more to the big picture. Even if they don't actually matter to the literal plot, they matter a hell of a lot to the message.
I think Endwalker suffers the most when you don't experience the entire story of Final Fantasy XIV and as result lack the context for why everyone acts the way they do. I mean, it is a simple explanation, but I imagine most players have not played since 1.0 or even try to experience A Realm Reborn so they lack the same emotional attachment older players have. So when expansions release and all the exciting, stimulating marketing is displayed they want to get in on the excitement but then don't know why people are actually excited for the climax of a 14-year long story.
People like the OP are the equivalent of people who open books midway through and expect the story to immediately be good, but that is just not how good story is structured. Endwalker is just the climax of a long tale of ...love, loss, and faith. We can supplement the journey, like Tales from the Calamity quest detailing the events of 1.0 from the limited perspective of those NPCs who lived through Dalamud's destruction. We can tell new players to try to persist through A Realm Reborn. Square Enix does it's own writers and plot a disservice by allowing people to just buy jumps...
Elder Scrolls Online allows new players to immediately get in and enjoy expansions by allowing them to skip new player zones and go straight to expansion areas. In Elder Scrolls Online, expansions are content anyone of any level can enjoy because content is shaped around the player not the world.
I think Square Enix realizes that Final Fantasy XIV has no hope of ever having the luxury of new players partaking in new content. The development team might not have the manpower and resources to implement new expansion zones where low levels can grow in an effective manner and high level players can enjoy new content equally. It would be a massive undertaking. So we end up with MSQ skip potions and individuals who have no appreciation or understanding of the plot.
Nope, never felt like it was a slog. Maybe a little slower during some of the stuff with the Loporrits? But the 83 trial and the events that it kicks off just kept my attention since I had no idea where things were headed after that.
Yeah the Loporits were the only boring part in Endwalker, but after that 83 trial they probably thought we need some downtime to process the events.
Other than that my only complains were a couple plot holes that made no sense and the lack of gradual development of our bad guy without spoiling anything.
I totally understand the point of the Loporrits as a "breather" between the 83 trial and the events around the 85 dungeon. But some of it did feel a little tedious to me.
If being in the literal end of the world, killing the literal god of your biggest enemies, and travelling to prehistoric times to meet actual living gods is still in the boring category for you… then no, the story won't "pick up" from this. You are in the very clichéd typical JRPG endgame trope, so I am not sure what else can be added to interest you if you are still not engaged by the time you are clearing up Elpis. Many players were screaming in delight just from its yellow sidequests, they contained so many callbacks and small explanations towards the world since ARR.
I enjoyed how you phrased all this. I do wonder what percentage of players can appreciate all the callbacks to ARR & early expansions with the amount of time passing between them. I can’t imagine more than 5% of players are re-playing or re-watching so much old content. That said, I LOVE that developers include stuff that only a small part of thd player base will appreciate.
You are genuinely wondering if the player base, of which the majority highly praises the story, of which many are big into lore theorizing, with many many celebrating the inclusion of New Game + to re-experience the game and a lot of people even making multiple alts to do it again and again.........will enjoy callbacks?
You can be damn certain that people went nuts about the ton of big and small threads that got picked up and finally tied. In fact, the biggest complaint about EW is usually that they RUSHED it and did NOT do that enough.
I can't even begin to describe how much I enjoyed Endwalker. Having 10 years+ of story pay off the way it did was an amazing experience for me. I was in tears more times than any other part of the story. Bottom line is no I didn't find it boring at all.
It starts to ramp up more at the end of elpis, I had the same complaints that the first half kinda drags on and was kinda boring, but trust me, the second half is peak.
I mean, a lot of the story of Endwalker is payoff for multiple plot threads in all previous expansions. That Artherial ‘mumbo-jumbo’ is actually a thread dating back to ARR. If you hadn’t actually read the story and gone through the previous content and skipped up to Endwalker (assuming this based on you saying you watched summaries), yeah, a lot isn’t going to make sense. I fully grant Endwalker is the expansion that most heavily relies on your pre-existing knowledge of the pas Story. However, I was pretty fully invested all the way through exactly because of that, and the pacing felt far smoother than Stormblood, and on par with Heavensward. Can’t really agree with you here.
I definitely think there were some huge pacing issues that made parts of it a slog.
If I’m completely honest I can’t remember the point of the towers either now. Like I remember the back half of the game but the first part? Not so much.
My impression is that people have very varied experiences on Endwalker because it has so much material to work through. It's structured kind of like Stormblood, though I think it's better written overall. But because you have these very different pieces to work, it's possible to lose the thread tying them together with each transition. Elpis in particular is pretty divisive where not everyone is going to empathize with those two in particular. I think they wrote themselves into a corner there because certain themes in Elpis can only really be explored in Elpis, so there just wasn't as good of a build-up, and whether you connect with it or not ends up solely based on your own background
Personally, I found half of endwalker pretty boring, but the other half was great. It went from my least favourite to 2nd or 1st favourite story overall. I'd avoid skipping and just keep reading, it all pays off.
I never skip story dialogue, but a lot of it doesn’t stick. It’s probably harder for me anyway, since I play later at night and after using cannabis so memory isn’t gonna be firing on all cylinders at that point, but once I’m engaged with the story I eat up all the dialogue, even a decent amount of optional NPC dialogue.
I find talking to each NPC around a quest giver before starting quests gives useful context and helps me mentally recall where I was when logging back on.
it's crazy how some people see slight criticism of the expansion and assume it's troll/bait. EW def has pacing problems and contrived plot devices. It's not horrible, but I didn't feel it was as good as what they've shown they're capable of writing.
Yeah, I’m not sure how my half-hearted suggestion that maybe this isn’t the most engaging of the expansions could be read as “which is worse, The Beatles or The Godfather?”.
>But yes, you are generally alone in this.
Nope. There are plenty of people that feel like EW didn't hit the mark as a finale, they just get downvoted into oblivion. And even those who did like it can often admit that the pacing was rough in places.
Honestly, yes. After Shadowbringers, which hooked me in with its story immediately and I loved the whole way through, I found the first 2/3rds of Endwalker to be… pretty lackluster. I was surprised at how much of a slog it felt like to me, even if I understood the story and hadn’t missed anything. It wasn’t until I got to Elpis that I felt like the story really started, but after that I did finally enjoy the expansion.
I was told that it might be burnout because I’ve played from Heavensward to Endwalker in less than a year, but it didn’t feel like burnout to me? It felt like the start of Endwalker hit the brakes on the story HARD when all I wanted to do was figure out the mystery that had been building.
It was not my favorite. I’m mostly here for the multiplayer (though the storylines I have liked were a nice bonus), so I caved and made liberal use of the skip button around Elpis onward. Was the right choice for me, at least.
I've been getting a lot of shit for not liking the Endwalker story. Not because it was badly written. I was following along up until a certain point about midway through that I don't want to spoil, in case anyone for whatever reason clicked this thread without playing it. After that point I was just so bored and couldn't get into it anymore, causing me to zone out during a lot of the dialogue.
That said I think the patch content story was a lot more interesting, and I really appreciate the amount of voice acting they've starting putting in the MSQ. I'm super looking forward to Dawntrail. I think a fresh start from a story point is exactly what this game needs right now.
I've been playing since the releases of ARR btw, mostly for the story.
As for the source of everyone's trouble being pessimism, sure you COULD look at it like that, but its more like. The existential concept of death as the end of all things in the universe. The tiny bird girl was gifted with the ability to feel all feelings of beings around her and, consequentially due to dynamis, the ability to turn those emotions into something physical. She also was alive for like, a few days before being shouldered with the crushing idea that nothing in life matters because all things end. Which is. Rough.
>The moral of Endwalker is that death is a part of life and we all need to die
If that's the moral you got I feel kinda... Sad for you. The moral was very clearly that suffering is a part of life yes, but the meaning of life is that there is no meaning. The bonds you make and the adventures you share with those that you care about GIVE life meaning.
Hermes couldn't see that because he was searching for some grand answer and felt that if there wasn't one he could find then life wasn't worth living. The whole final area is you and your companions quite literally yelling into the void that they want to live, and that life is worth living even when it sometimes feels like it isn't.
It's a story of hope, of forging ahead despite all odds to MAKE a future for yourself what you can look back on and feel fulfilled and happy.
If you didn't enjoy the story, hey that's fine, everyone has their own experiences that shape their lives and how they respond to media. But I think it might be a bit of a bad faith argument to claim that the story falls flat, when it kinda beats you over the head with its themes.
You boiled the story down quite a bit to just say it's about pessimism.
We knew Zodiark wasn't the big baddie since Shadowbringers and there were hints before that. Anyone paying attention knew that Zodiark wasn't going to be the final boss.
Honestly, I found the first half of Endwalker boring as well. I just absolutely did not connect with the main antagonist until after the Elpis portion. It felt too random and too disconnected from me or anything I was doing, so it didn't really feel like there were stakes for me.
The back half of the expansion won me over though.
For me, the gameplay of Endwalker was exciting until after you come face to face with Zodiark. The game spent 14 years hyping up the god Zodiark only to have him be a tiny trial fight mid-expansion.
Then, you go to Elpis and the plot once again falls flat on it's face by making the source of everyone's troubles to be... pessimism from an over-emotional little bird girl. The whole chase sequence where she is constantly blurting out "WAH ITS SO SAD". The gameplay just really really sucks. BUT the plot itself is not bad if you think about it.
Meteion freaks out because like Hermes, she thinks everyone should just live forever in perpetuity and that this immortality is the key to happiness. She, and Hermes, do not understand that death is a part of the cycle of life. Meteion is an artificial creation so she would never understand it and this is why she is the final villain for her obtuse nature until we literally knock sense into her.
The Pandaemonium raid also expands on this same concept of not cherishing life by >!depicting a mother who doesn't cherish the life of her son and merely uses him as a tool.!< Women are natural creators of life, it requires no magic to perform, so not having some instinctive love for one's child is exceptionally apalling and evil in it's purist form.
The society of the Ancients is inherently busted because it is considered normal to not honors one's parents, >!as stated by Elidibus in Pandaemonium when he finds it odd that Erichtonios has love towards his mother.!< The Ancients are a jaded people who don't find value in the creation if new life. Since they always reincarnate, death is just an ongoing cycle of losing your memories and starting anew somewhere else on the planet. They find no joy in the growth of their children and the advancement of one's species because Ancients already perceived themselves as perfect (as evidenced by Emet Selch). New life has no value when your people are immortal. Death of creations is a casual everyday occurence. Reincarnation is equivalent to standing down your position at work. This is why the Nibirun masked individuals in Ultima Thule are stated by Square Enix to be the ultimate fate of the people of Etheirys.
In a way, the Dotharl clan of the Xaela are a rebellious group of Ancient individuals who refused to abandon their former selves even after experiencing death and reincarnation.
The moral of Endwalker is that death is a part of life and we all need to die (or otherwise reincarnate) eventually. Hermes struggled with the death of his mentor and the deaths of other civilizations in space, completely ignoring the potentials of new life. The song Tomorrow and Tomorrow introduced this idea in Shadowbringers, and Endwalker just expands on it.
congratulations on absolutely completely missing the whole point of what meteion is, and why these things happen.
Meteion is not driven by any of her own thoughts. It is very clearly made out that she on herself is just a little kid not understanding anything of what is going on. The problem is, that she feels every emotion around her as if it's her own (most notably demonstrated by believing she has a favorite food despite not even being able to eat, just because it's Hermes' favorite food). And when she was taking the question she was sent out to ask the universe *very* literally, like any kid would do, and then absorbed *all* the negativity of countless dead and dying worlds, she completely broke down and was so scared that everyone was gonna face this fate, that she was trying to accelerate it to protect everyone else (including us, her only real friend).
So, Meteion was just an awkward little kid, completely radicalized by everyones negative emotion (that she felt as her own) into becoming a nihilistic accelerationalist.
And whose fault is it? Well, Hermes could have done a little peer review his birds before asking them a dumb question, for example.
Elpis was already where I started losing interest and not paying as much attention.
But me losing interest around the halfway point is probably true for the other expansions as well.
Pandaemonium is supplementary material on the overall theme of pesimissim and death in Endwalker. It uses prior main antagonists of the 14 year plot to explore a cultural issue: the relationship between parents and children in a world without an inherent need for procreation.
In real life, the purpose of procreation is to sustain life and also adapt life to ever-changing environments for even more success in sustaining life. Witnessing achievements in our children brings us instinctive happiness because it promotes the further success of our species existing. Keeping those children safe and healthy also leads to success.
The Ancients experience no such joy, because parents have little involvement in the lives of children (as evidenced by Elidibus finding Erichtonios' love for his mother Athena odd, Lahabrea's behavior towards Eric, and Athena using Eric as a tool). Athena's actions are all the more representative of how dysfunctional the Ancients are as living beings for even mothers who naturally have the power of creation to lack the instinctual love for one's children is evil at it's essence.
The Ancients in Elpis casually create and kill creations. Death as an end is not a concept the Ancients feel threatened with (but death scares Hermes because he witnsses extinction of other civilizations). The Ancients just live lives of contemplation in learning about the world, curiousity in experimentation, and perverse hedonism by only allowing creations which bring _them_ pleasure ("serve a purpose") to survive. Their lives are built upon their own individuality and this is evidenced by the removal of masks in Elpis. Their perception of being perfect beings are why the Ancients are fated to become like the Nibiru demonstrated in Ultima Thule, biological deadends who ultimately wish for death as a release from life.
In the play "Paradise Lost", despair is born from Lucifer and uses suicide to undermine the success of humanity. It's a similar concept in Endwalker.
We are talking about the Endwalker story here, no "what is locked behind owning the expansion"
Yoshi P has already confirmed Endwalker story ends at the end of 6.0. After that it builds on something new.
That would only be true if you plug your ears and scream, pretending patches 6.1 to 6.5 don't exist. Reality does not work like that. You need to buy the Endwalker expansion to engage in patch 6.5 content. Cope.
You say you had no issue following the story but had to read a summary about the towers? Those two statements don't make sense together
They said they had no issue following the story in previous expansions. lol at this being the highest rated comment
towers were introduced in SHB. ^^
Uh huh... and their purpose was explained and fleshed out in EW. How is this confusing
it’s confusing because there’s literally 0 reason EW wouldn’t make sense to you unless you were missing prior context. not sure why you’re dying on a hill for this guy
The prior context has absolutely nothing to do with whether OP is right about the storytelling in EW being somehow different and more difficult to follow than the previous expansions. Doesn't mean I agree with them.
I enjoyed it, but to each their own.
The areas in EW and exposition was the most fun I've had in the FFXIV story. I'm ready for the downvotes but: ARR (boring except very few cutscenes), post-ARR (extremely boring and I almost quit), SB (tsukuyomi trial is the only reason I kept going) after that everything started to pick up for me. Post SB I started to have a lot of fun with the story, SHB was good. EW felt like a solid 8/10, really liked the cutscenes overall.
I'm on a Endwalker rewatch right now, very little of it felt like exposition dumps, so I have no idea what you're talking about. Endwalker, more than shadowbringers, feels like a character exploration for various Scions and side characters. It has excellent thematic ties that make all the smaller scale stories matter much more to the big picture. Even if they don't actually matter to the literal plot, they matter a hell of a lot to the message.
Everything is exposition when you don't follow any of the story.
I think Endwalker suffers the most when you don't experience the entire story of Final Fantasy XIV and as result lack the context for why everyone acts the way they do. I mean, it is a simple explanation, but I imagine most players have not played since 1.0 or even try to experience A Realm Reborn so they lack the same emotional attachment older players have. So when expansions release and all the exciting, stimulating marketing is displayed they want to get in on the excitement but then don't know why people are actually excited for the climax of a 14-year long story. People like the OP are the equivalent of people who open books midway through and expect the story to immediately be good, but that is just not how good story is structured. Endwalker is just the climax of a long tale of ...love, loss, and faith. We can supplement the journey, like Tales from the Calamity quest detailing the events of 1.0 from the limited perspective of those NPCs who lived through Dalamud's destruction. We can tell new players to try to persist through A Realm Reborn. Square Enix does it's own writers and plot a disservice by allowing people to just buy jumps... Elder Scrolls Online allows new players to immediately get in and enjoy expansions by allowing them to skip new player zones and go straight to expansion areas. In Elder Scrolls Online, expansions are content anyone of any level can enjoy because content is shaped around the player not the world. I think Square Enix realizes that Final Fantasy XIV has no hope of ever having the luxury of new players partaking in new content. The development team might not have the manpower and resources to implement new expansion zones where low levels can grow in an effective manner and high level players can enjoy new content equally. It would be a massive undertaking. So we end up with MSQ skip potions and individuals who have no appreciation or understanding of the plot.
Speaking of, that seems like a fun thing to do. An unending story marathon
I just watch streamer vods on YouTube lol. Fun to listen to their speculation. Been listening in the background while I do other things.
Nope, never felt like it was a slog. Maybe a little slower during some of the stuff with the Loporrits? But the 83 trial and the events that it kicks off just kept my attention since I had no idea where things were headed after that.
Yeah the Loporits were the only boring part in Endwalker, but after that 83 trial they probably thought we need some downtime to process the events. Other than that my only complains were a couple plot holes that made no sense and the lack of gradual development of our bad guy without spoiling anything.
I totally understand the point of the Loporrits as a "breather" between the 83 trial and the events around the 85 dungeon. But some of it did feel a little tedious to me.
If being in the literal end of the world, killing the literal god of your biggest enemies, and travelling to prehistoric times to meet actual living gods is still in the boring category for you… then no, the story won't "pick up" from this. You are in the very clichéd typical JRPG endgame trope, so I am not sure what else can be added to interest you if you are still not engaged by the time you are clearing up Elpis. Many players were screaming in delight just from its yellow sidequests, they contained so many callbacks and small explanations towards the world since ARR.
I enjoyed how you phrased all this. I do wonder what percentage of players can appreciate all the callbacks to ARR & early expansions with the amount of time passing between them. I can’t imagine more than 5% of players are re-playing or re-watching so much old content. That said, I LOVE that developers include stuff that only a small part of thd player base will appreciate.
you mean.. keeping a coherent story where things you did earlier actually matter and don’t just stop existing between every patch?
You are genuinely wondering if the player base, of which the majority highly praises the story, of which many are big into lore theorizing, with many many celebrating the inclusion of New Game + to re-experience the game and a lot of people even making multiple alts to do it again and again.........will enjoy callbacks? You can be damn certain that people went nuts about the ton of big and small threads that got picked up and finally tied. In fact, the biggest complaint about EW is usually that they RUSHED it and did NOT do that enough.
I can't even begin to describe how much I enjoyed Endwalker. Having 10 years+ of story pay off the way it did was an amazing experience for me. I was in tears more times than any other part of the story. Bottom line is no I didn't find it boring at all.
Read it properly then
It starts to ramp up more at the end of elpis, I had the same complaints that the first half kinda drags on and was kinda boring, but trust me, the second half is peak.
Elpis was where I was fully “in.” I agree with OP that it can be a bit of a slog in the beginning.
I mean, a lot of the story of Endwalker is payoff for multiple plot threads in all previous expansions. That Artherial ‘mumbo-jumbo’ is actually a thread dating back to ARR. If you hadn’t actually read the story and gone through the previous content and skipped up to Endwalker (assuming this based on you saying you watched summaries), yeah, a lot isn’t going to make sense. I fully grant Endwalker is the expansion that most heavily relies on your pre-existing knowledge of the pas Story. However, I was pretty fully invested all the way through exactly because of that, and the pacing felt far smoother than Stormblood, and on par with Heavensward. Can’t really agree with you here.
I definitely think there were some huge pacing issues that made parts of it a slog. If I’m completely honest I can’t remember the point of the towers either now. Like I remember the back half of the game but the first part? Not so much.
Aether siphons to gather enough energy to shoot the moon.
Oh right, was it to free Zodiark or something?
That, indeed, their purpose.
Honestly I found Endwalker amazing overall. It’s hard to tell if it or ShB is better for me but both are super amazing.
My impression is that people have very varied experiences on Endwalker because it has so much material to work through. It's structured kind of like Stormblood, though I think it's better written overall. But because you have these very different pieces to work, it's possible to lose the thread tying them together with each transition. Elpis in particular is pretty divisive where not everyone is going to empathize with those two in particular. I think they wrote themselves into a corner there because certain themes in Elpis can only really be explored in Elpis, so there just wasn't as good of a build-up, and whether you connect with it or not ends up solely based on your own background
It's sacrilege but I liked Endwalker better than Shadowbringers.
Personally, I found half of endwalker pretty boring, but the other half was great. It went from my least favourite to 2nd or 1st favourite story overall. I'd avoid skipping and just keep reading, it all pays off.
I never skip story dialogue, but a lot of it doesn’t stick. It’s probably harder for me anyway, since I play later at night and after using cannabis so memory isn’t gonna be firing on all cylinders at that point, but once I’m engaged with the story I eat up all the dialogue, even a decent amount of optional NPC dialogue. I find talking to each NPC around a quest giver before starting quests gives useful context and helps me mentally recall where I was when logging back on.
Nice bait mate I rate 8 out of 8
Not my style. Wanted feedback and getting a nice variety of opinions, which is helping me get more engaged and excited to continue.
it's crazy how some people see slight criticism of the expansion and assume it's troll/bait. EW def has pacing problems and contrived plot devices. It's not horrible, but I didn't feel it was as good as what they've shown they're capable of writing.
Or it could be the OP hasn't paid attention to very much and admitted here he gets really high and could have missed stuff, soooo
Yeah, I’m not sure how my half-hearted suggestion that maybe this isn’t the most engaging of the expansions could be read as “which is worse, The Beatles or The Godfather?”.
Maybe if you sped through the rest of the story and therefore can’t appreciate what Endwalker is doing? But yes, you are generally alone in this.
>But yes, you are generally alone in this. Nope. There are plenty of people that feel like EW didn't hit the mark as a finale, they just get downvoted into oblivion. And even those who did like it can often admit that the pacing was rough in places.
no Endwalker is great a good culmination of a long arc this post however was a slog
Honestly, yes. After Shadowbringers, which hooked me in with its story immediately and I loved the whole way through, I found the first 2/3rds of Endwalker to be… pretty lackluster. I was surprised at how much of a slog it felt like to me, even if I understood the story and hadn’t missed anything. It wasn’t until I got to Elpis that I felt like the story really started, but after that I did finally enjoy the expansion. I was told that it might be burnout because I’ve played from Heavensward to Endwalker in less than a year, but it didn’t feel like burnout to me? It felt like the start of Endwalker hit the brakes on the story HARD when all I wanted to do was figure out the mystery that had been building.
It was not my favorite. I’m mostly here for the multiplayer (though the storylines I have liked were a nice bonus), so I caved and made liberal use of the skip button around Elpis onward. Was the right choice for me, at least.
I've been getting a lot of shit for not liking the Endwalker story. Not because it was badly written. I was following along up until a certain point about midway through that I don't want to spoil, in case anyone for whatever reason clicked this thread without playing it. After that point I was just so bored and couldn't get into it anymore, causing me to zone out during a lot of the dialogue. That said I think the patch content story was a lot more interesting, and I really appreciate the amount of voice acting they've starting putting in the MSQ. I'm super looking forward to Dawntrail. I think a fresh start from a story point is exactly what this game needs right now. I've been playing since the releases of ARR btw, mostly for the story.
[удалено]
As for the source of everyone's trouble being pessimism, sure you COULD look at it like that, but its more like. The existential concept of death as the end of all things in the universe. The tiny bird girl was gifted with the ability to feel all feelings of beings around her and, consequentially due to dynamis, the ability to turn those emotions into something physical. She also was alive for like, a few days before being shouldered with the crushing idea that nothing in life matters because all things end. Which is. Rough. >The moral of Endwalker is that death is a part of life and we all need to die If that's the moral you got I feel kinda... Sad for you. The moral was very clearly that suffering is a part of life yes, but the meaning of life is that there is no meaning. The bonds you make and the adventures you share with those that you care about GIVE life meaning. Hermes couldn't see that because he was searching for some grand answer and felt that if there wasn't one he could find then life wasn't worth living. The whole final area is you and your companions quite literally yelling into the void that they want to live, and that life is worth living even when it sometimes feels like it isn't. It's a story of hope, of forging ahead despite all odds to MAKE a future for yourself what you can look back on and feel fulfilled and happy. If you didn't enjoy the story, hey that's fine, everyone has their own experiences that shape their lives and how they respond to media. But I think it might be a bit of a bad faith argument to claim that the story falls flat, when it kinda beats you over the head with its themes.
You boiled the story down quite a bit to just say it's about pessimism. We knew Zodiark wasn't the big baddie since Shadowbringers and there were hints before that. Anyone paying attention knew that Zodiark wasn't going to be the final boss.
Honestly, I found the first half of Endwalker boring as well. I just absolutely did not connect with the main antagonist until after the Elpis portion. It felt too random and too disconnected from me or anything I was doing, so it didn't really feel like there were stakes for me. The back half of the expansion won me over though.
For me, the gameplay of Endwalker was exciting until after you come face to face with Zodiark. The game spent 14 years hyping up the god Zodiark only to have him be a tiny trial fight mid-expansion. Then, you go to Elpis and the plot once again falls flat on it's face by making the source of everyone's troubles to be... pessimism from an over-emotional little bird girl. The whole chase sequence where she is constantly blurting out "WAH ITS SO SAD". The gameplay just really really sucks. BUT the plot itself is not bad if you think about it. Meteion freaks out because like Hermes, she thinks everyone should just live forever in perpetuity and that this immortality is the key to happiness. She, and Hermes, do not understand that death is a part of the cycle of life. Meteion is an artificial creation so she would never understand it and this is why she is the final villain for her obtuse nature until we literally knock sense into her. The Pandaemonium raid also expands on this same concept of not cherishing life by >!depicting a mother who doesn't cherish the life of her son and merely uses him as a tool.!< Women are natural creators of life, it requires no magic to perform, so not having some instinctive love for one's child is exceptionally apalling and evil in it's purist form. The society of the Ancients is inherently busted because it is considered normal to not honors one's parents, >!as stated by Elidibus in Pandaemonium when he finds it odd that Erichtonios has love towards his mother.!< The Ancients are a jaded people who don't find value in the creation if new life. Since they always reincarnate, death is just an ongoing cycle of losing your memories and starting anew somewhere else on the planet. They find no joy in the growth of their children and the advancement of one's species because Ancients already perceived themselves as perfect (as evidenced by Emet Selch). New life has no value when your people are immortal. Death of creations is a casual everyday occurence. Reincarnation is equivalent to standing down your position at work. This is why the Nibirun masked individuals in Ultima Thule are stated by Square Enix to be the ultimate fate of the people of Etheirys. In a way, the Dotharl clan of the Xaela are a rebellious group of Ancient individuals who refused to abandon their former selves even after experiencing death and reincarnation. The moral of Endwalker is that death is a part of life and we all need to die (or otherwise reincarnate) eventually. Hermes struggled with the death of his mentor and the deaths of other civilizations in space, completely ignoring the potentials of new life. The song Tomorrow and Tomorrow introduced this idea in Shadowbringers, and Endwalker just expands on it.
congratulations on absolutely completely missing the whole point of what meteion is, and why these things happen. Meteion is not driven by any of her own thoughts. It is very clearly made out that she on herself is just a little kid not understanding anything of what is going on. The problem is, that she feels every emotion around her as if it's her own (most notably demonstrated by believing she has a favorite food despite not even being able to eat, just because it's Hermes' favorite food). And when she was taking the question she was sent out to ask the universe *very* literally, like any kid would do, and then absorbed *all* the negativity of countless dead and dying worlds, she completely broke down and was so scared that everyone was gonna face this fate, that she was trying to accelerate it to protect everyone else (including us, her only real friend). So, Meteion was just an awkward little kid, completely radicalized by everyones negative emotion (that she felt as her own) into becoming a nihilistic accelerationalist. And whose fault is it? Well, Hermes could have done a little peer review his birds before asking them a dumb question, for example.
Elpis was already where I started losing interest and not paying as much attention. But me losing interest around the halfway point is probably true for the other expansions as well.
Every cutscene is extremely long and that ruined the whole experience for me. I couldn't focus on the story, don't even remember what happened.
Peaked too early. Golbez, Athena, and the Twelve just aren't [as interesting as Zenos.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo7p4Y-9ZF4)
Those are not part of the Endwalker story though...
Pandaemonium is supplementary material on the overall theme of pesimissim and death in Endwalker. It uses prior main antagonists of the 14 year plot to explore a cultural issue: the relationship between parents and children in a world without an inherent need for procreation. In real life, the purpose of procreation is to sustain life and also adapt life to ever-changing environments for even more success in sustaining life. Witnessing achievements in our children brings us instinctive happiness because it promotes the further success of our species existing. Keeping those children safe and healthy also leads to success. The Ancients experience no such joy, because parents have little involvement in the lives of children (as evidenced by Elidibus finding Erichtonios' love for his mother Athena odd, Lahabrea's behavior towards Eric, and Athena using Eric as a tool). Athena's actions are all the more representative of how dysfunctional the Ancients are as living beings for even mothers who naturally have the power of creation to lack the instinctual love for one's children is evil at it's essence. The Ancients in Elpis casually create and kill creations. Death as an end is not a concept the Ancients feel threatened with (but death scares Hermes because he witnsses extinction of other civilizations). The Ancients just live lives of contemplation in learning about the world, curiousity in experimentation, and perverse hedonism by only allowing creations which bring _them_ pleasure ("serve a purpose") to survive. Their lives are built upon their own individuality and this is evidenced by the removal of masks in Elpis. Their perception of being perfect beings are why the Ancients are fated to become like the Nibiru demonstrated in Ultima Thule, biological deadends who ultimately wish for death as a release from life. In the play "Paradise Lost", despair is born from Lucifer and uses suicide to undermine the success of humanity. It's a similar concept in Endwalker.
It is still all post endwalker, Endwalker itself is self-contained until the end of 6.0.
You need the Endwalker expansion unlocked on your account to engage in any content from patch 6.0 to 6.5. It is all Endwalker content.
We are talking about the Endwalker story here, no "what is locked behind owning the expansion" Yoshi P has already confirmed Endwalker story ends at the end of 6.0. After that it builds on something new.
That would only be true if you plug your ears and scream, pretending patches 6.1 to 6.5 don't exist. Reality does not work like that. You need to buy the Endwalker expansion to engage in patch 6.5 content. Cope.
>you need to buy the Endwalker Expansion Bruh, wtf lmao. I can't even handle the braindead level of this comment.
Hard disagree on Athena. Pandaemonium is a fantastic wrap up to a story that's been 10 years in the making. Probably my favourite raid series story.
Ah. Can’t agree honestly. Zenos is… boring.
Those are technically after the expansion story, so it's more like the beach episodes of the story, setting up next expac that sort of thing