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Waffleman_ posted:Mitron and Loghrif's fates are only in the Encyclopedia Eorzea as well, so no one knows as of yet. I thought this was one of the lore drops Emet will give to you when he's just standing around mid-MSQ in 5.0?
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Aug 16, 2020 16:49
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thetoughestbean posted:I kind of agree. It was visually not very interesting until the final boss, and the rewards for doing the exploration are super lackluster. I agree with the complaints about the Nier raids so far, especially in direct comparison to how they integrated the Ivalice stuff - the latter was done with a lot of work to tie it into the actual world of XIV and set up actual world building for the MMO we're in; meanwhile the Nier raids feel quite disconnected from pretty much everything in the First, let alone the rest of the game. The one thing which gives me (probably false, I admit) hope is that right now the story is sort of holding to the story structure of the actual Nier games. For those unfamiliar with the titles Nier and Nier Automata have notable "twists" in that the initial progression of the story seems pretty standard and boilerplate. Until you hit a certain point, the plot can be decent and the world building interesting but it's the reframing of context given by the twist that people often find most memorable. In Nier this happens by letting you hear the voices of your enemies and discover that they're not the mindless aggressive monsters you assumed they were but are intelligent and may actually have just as much a claim to humanity than your viewpoint characters do. In Nier Automata it happens by first doing something similar to the first game in giving you viewpoints into the things you've been fighting the entire time, but adds onto it by dropping reveals way late into the game that your entire organization and purpose was a fraud and doomed to failure and that your viewpoint players have the same origins as the things you've been fighting the entire time. I bring this up mostly because what we've gotten from the XIV raids strikes me a lot like the initial story presentation of the Nier games; we're given the most basic of justifications for what's going on and are then thrust into a lot of situations where we solve problems by violence without really asking why we're doing it and who we're doing it to. There remains room in the story to elaborate on exactly what the gently caress is going on and come to a resolution which is, at least, interesting. To be fair this is going to be a bit of a stretch to wrap up in one raid and maybe two patches worth of story. Additionally, the other games they're trying to reference in XIV aren't memorable just because of their twists - they're memorable because of interesting characters, good world-building, and imaginative and messed up plot events. Right now the XIV raids have none of those, so my optimism is tempered.
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Aug 17, 2020 00:05
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Strife posted:Finally completed all four Cardinal Virtue quests and did the 5.4 content. I remember people saying "there must be something serious if we have to complete the warring triad savage quests!" I'm always legit annoyed whenever I see that last enemy design because I know the model it's based on from FFXI and frankly I think the new version is terrible. XIV wants me to believe that this pretty boy sitting on a stupid ball is supposed to be a lord of the void:  But in XI they were horrific cow skull demons chilling on a floating golden throne:  One of these things is metal enough to be a king of hell and it's not the modern one.
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Jan 18, 2021 06:09
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(Final Trial spoilers) Someday I hope to have a friend with as much confidence in me as Zenos does in my WoL, turning into a dragon and flying to the very edge of the universe and his only reaction to the End of All Things is "so this is your prey? What's taking so long, bro? How is this a problem???
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Dec 9, 2021 00:35
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Raelle posted:Thank you for this. It seems sort of incredible to me that people are still trying to spin this as "Amaurot brought about its own demise and was a society doomed to fail", when Emet-Selch outright states the answer to Hermes's problem before Meteion is completely corrupted to despair, that Meteion herself reaffirms when we finally reach her - that Hermes looked for an objective truth to his questions out in the stars, when the answer was waiting for him all along right on his own. Emet-Selch is also the one who immediately understands that Hermes's question is fundamentally flawed, and Emet-Selch, who shortly thereafter more or less tells WoL and crew "I REGRET NOTHING" before driving off into the Lifestream sunset, is the one who gets to deliver the big capstone speech to Meteion about how they reject her oblivion and will strive to keep living - and that is the answer of lives both past and present. I agree with most of this but I think the depiction of Amaurot is a bit more nuanced than this. One thing that sticks out to me is early on in Elpis where you show Hermes that you, too, have negative emotions and feelings and he's utterly floored by this because no one else other than him has affected the flowers so. My reaction to that in the moment was "really? Just you? Literally no one else here feeling sad?" But we know that's the case because it's stated straight out a handful of quests previous that the flowers pretty much never change colour from their bright white, except when Hermes is around. Everyone is happy and content and can't even imagine suffering on Elpis, except Hermes. Even if he's making his own mistakes here, that's notable. This is messed up for more than a few reasons. For one because honestly maybe there should be some more complex emotions regarding the nurturing and necessary extinguishing of life, even if those actions are correct. For another because it really puts Hermes' pain in really stark relief - the pain he feels is bad enough, but how much worse is it if he is completely alone with it, when not a single person around him shares that pain or even really understands it, a fact made plain by fields and fields of white flowers surrounding literally everyone he works with? Now, your points still hold - Hermes is oversensitive to the concept of death, and his co-workers are totally on board with some esoteric strategies to save a particular species from being erased - but even when doing that they comment on how it's unusual to put this much effort in when standard practice is just to wipe the board clean and start over. Hermes is an outlier to society, and the fact that society is enlightened enough to accommodate him doesn't change that. Venat is an outlier too, also accommodated, also separate. That's one thematic point, and I take a second from how immediately the Amaroutines' actions after their Final Days to be returning to a world Free of Sorrow no matter the cost, no matter the sacrifice, as their immediate response to cataclysm. The conclusion I reach is that this is a civilization which isn't one of the doomed ones Meteion found across the stars... yet. But none of the dead ends started dead. In a hypothetical world where Hermes didn't exist, where Meteion never gets sent out to the stars, and Amaurot continues on untroubled for another ten thousand, hundred thousand, million years even, I think those outliers get smoothed out of the pattern of life and they end very much like everyone else does.
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Dec 9, 2021 01:37
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Jetrauben posted:Most of the time your flower is other colors, too, though. Hermes is morbidly depressed. He is probably literally clinically depressed. The problem is he doesn't ask anyone else for help, instead he assumes his misery is universal and fundamentally more true - a basic symptom of clinical depression - and subjects the entire universe to infinitely more misery. When his friends would absolutely have tried to help him. (More Hermes chat) Our flower changed colours a lot, yes; that's very much the point. We are subject to a range of emotion, good and bad, and so are everyone around us. Most of the changes we see are precipitated by the varied emotions of others. Elpis, though? An unchanging positive shade, for everyone but Hermes. I'm not trying to absolve Hermes of responsibility for how things turned out, but am arguing that the world he lives in is part of the cause of his suffering. Hermes doesn't ask anyone for help, but nor does anyone around him really notice exactly how much help he needs - worse then that, I doubt anyone even recognized that a situation like Hermes finds himself in could even exist. Maybe academically, but in real life? How could anyone be sad! Look at how beautiful our perfect world is! Raelle posted:I think it's pretty grim to conclude that Amaurot's fate was a foregone conclusion from an immediate response to extreme trauma, slippery slope "we can see where this is going", and therefore just wipe them out. I think that flies right in the face of everything FFXIV stands for. if that was a valid line of thought, then I don't know why we bothered helping out the First or Garlemald or any number of other places, then. I'm working mostly off a supposition which is fuelled by the text - Meteion goes out into the stellar expanse and finds nothing good, anywhere. Anywhere. Suffering and death on every world. Even if there's a trillion worlds and only a few hundred Meteia off exploring, statistically it's a really bad sign that 100% of explored sentient civilizations ended, and terribly. That's the universe of FFXIV, stated straight out in the clearest terms as possible.The conclusion I draw from that is that when we have textual examples of other idealized Utopias and they all went to poo poo our idealized Utopia in the unsundered world isn't the exception Just Because. Hermes sparks disaster by trying to deal with his internal suffering in a bad way. Venat goes against the majority will of her society to seek a different path. Those decisions lead to us, and we stop the end. Remove that chain of actions that make up the plot of the game and Amaurot ends like everywhere else.
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Dec 9, 2021 02:04
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Fister Roboto posted:Also, compared to a lot of other long running series' endings, that it mostly stuck the landing (but kind of stumbled) is impressive to me. Especially compared to series like, say, Mass Effect, that not only didn't stick the landing, but also fell over and poo poo their pants for good measure. This was, by far, the most important thing for me. I remember mass effect, and game of thrones, and a number of other series that all culminate the same way - years to a full decade of capturing the imagination and drawing out a complex, involved storyline of intersecting plots and character arcs only to ultimately collapse under the weight of their own ambitions, let down by the failings of the people telling the stories. I had a lot of faith in the writers of FFXIV after Shadowbringers but the fear that they wouldn’t stick the landing, after all this time, was perched on my shoulder from the very moment they announced the expansion. They did, though. To me the fact that they carried a consistent thematic arc through the campaign, did justice to the many adventures we’ve had and characters we’ve met, paid off many plot threads left to dangle since early days…. That honestly and legitimately forgives every fault for me, every single one. I have criticisms, yes, but they all pale against them sticking the landing, against all odds.
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Dec 11, 2021 23:58
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KazigluBey posted:Just finished Zone 5 I would offer the following comment of how Zone 5 wraps up: Meiteon is responsible for the Final Days but I honestly don't think she's the true antagonist of the expansion, that's Hermes. Quests in Elpis lay out in the starkest possible terms that Meiteon is literally incapable of not feeling the strongest emotions of whoever is in closest proximity to her. This is the person that Hermes decides is the best option for a sentient space probe to go out and explore the universe without any kind of support because he himself is grappling with existential depression and looking for an external solution to his problems. That it completely blows up in everyone's faces is more his fault then Meiteon. This is all feeding into a greater thematic argument that EW makes in general which revolves around perseverance in the face of utter nihilistic despair, which has already been highlighted in Garlemald, Thavnair, and even previous expansions. It'll carry forward from this point on.
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Dec 12, 2021 02:23
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Regy Rusty posted:Yeah that's definitely setup for future story. Could well be that 7.0 is gonna take us to Meracydia due to Estinien and Vrtra's investigation. This is actually reminding me of something I had first thought of earlier on: What happened with Tiamat? In 5.5 we cure her tempering and she's definitely fine with helping us considering her presence in Pagal'than, but she's utterly missing without a single reference as far as I can tell in the entirety of EW. Did I miss something from late ShB talking about where she's off to?
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Dec 14, 2021 03:24
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Quotey posted:Ultima Thule should be instrumental. Zodiark's theme is keeping 100% in pattern for what is normally "expansion end boss" battle theme, a dramatic orchestral and choral remix of the primary expansion themes in general. Thordan has a remix of the Ishgard theme, Shinryu remixes the Stormblood theme, Hades remixes Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I took this as just another method by which they are throwing the player off balance - "we're fighting Zodiark at 83? Isn't he built up to be the final boss of the whole game?? Isn't this final boss music???" Also it owns, sorry, it owns really hard. The EW theme is great and the odds that Final Fantasy XIV wasn't going to have a dramatic rework of that theme was 0% without qualification, and it's just as awesome as all the other times they did it.
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Dec 15, 2021 22:31
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Cleretic posted:Speaking of, an important question: Standout Endwalker VAs? I found Hermes' first real monologue about his problems with Elpis after you show him the flowers to be really affecting. The VA puts a lot of palpable anguish into it.
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Dec 18, 2021 04:36
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Honestly the three responses to Zenos before the fight starts do an excellent job of being able to sum up every possible reaction a WoL might have to Zenos from "hell yeah best friend sick fites are the best" all the way to "I am not tolerating this rear end in a top hat for one single solitary second longer" which I appreciated for how easily it can fit into any player's personal story leading them there Kyrosiris posted:That... would actually be hilarious, and I'd appreciate that a lot more than the "your soul is the same color~" bullshit. (yes, I know, the game has a lot to say about soul reincarnation not defining who you are and etc. but I still am extremely lukewarm on the entire idea) Alas we have firsthand reports from the Elpis trio of the existing Azem so it's unlikely. The offhand comment about "running headfirst into an erupting volcano" is actually expanded in one of the short-form stories they did for one of the anniversary celebrations: A volcano is erupting and Azem is running into it to concentrate the fire-aspected aether into an actual, tangible entity - which they will then destroy, dissipating the fire aether and preventing the eruption. They are doing this because it's taking place on a temperate island known for a unique variety of wine grapes, and they like the wine and don't want it destroyed forever. In short - they're exactly the same whimsicaly charitable murder hobo that we are off to do crazy poo poo just to help people and maybe get some fun rewards in the process
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Dec 21, 2021 19:37
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Shogeton posted:Were the grapes perhaps uniquely low polygon textured? turns out there were four unsundered from the ancient days, three ascians and one grape polygon, already too simplified and perfect to be further divided
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Dec 21, 2021 19:42
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Begemot posted:Yeah, he kinda of grumbles but goes along with it, and is like "I bet my plan would've worked better!" at the end. Then you can just go do BA for fun, if you want. Notably, if you actually clear Baldesion Arsenal and go back and talk to him he says something along the lines of what you learned from in there implied his plan wouldn't have worked anyway and he admits you made the correct decision, admits he was wrong, and is reasonably chill about it.
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Jan 3, 2022 18:11
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Jetrauben posted:"Yeah let's ditch this all along with all buildup and characterization and go back to being a lovely level 20 murderhobo with no connection to the past" sounds like the most transcendentally unappealing course this game could take. I am expecting (hoping, anyway) that the next expansion will be something along the lines of Heavensward. Us, going into a brand new area and culture, exploring it's problems, and helping to fix them. When we walk into Ishgard we are definitely an outsider which allows for a lot of good exposition and worldbuilding to feel natural - but our past deeds still inform our presence and how people react to us. Killing (assumed at the time) Baelsar is a starting point for how people see us but we're not automatically hero and savior to the locals and have to work our way up to that. Even the end fight of Heavensward isn't really about Saving the World (although I guess Thordan could have gotten to that point) more than it is resolving the last bits of a painful, thorny, long-running problem that's ensnared the entire region which works better as a payoff to all the themes the expansion went in to.
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Jan 6, 2022 18:17
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