#this game is killing me endwalker is so good

[devotedlystrangewizard]

character hyperfixations suck actually because theyre the only way i can be invested in media but also they will have me going "hey where are they" "i wonder how theyre doing rn" right up until either the character or my interest dies

[eemamminy-art]

You have turned me from a Zenos hater into a Zenos ambilaventer keep posting and you might manage to turn me into a Zenos lover

If you already hated him though is me drawing him really going to make that big of a difference? 😩 Like I know I give him a fat ass and extremely delicious nose in my artwork but now I feel compelled to give you my tedtalk on why I like zenos lmao

This is about to be really long and also contains spoilers for stormblood, shadowbringers, and endwalker

This might surprise you but I like Zenos for his characterization and storyline in the game itself! The fanart is just kind of a bonus. He's one of many examples in Stormblood of a character that is shaped by their experiences, though I think it's not told as successfully as it is for like, Fordola, Arenvald, or Yotsuyu, because a key part of his backstory was locked to a short story in a print-only book (which I think is out of print now). The most you see of it in the actual game is this blink and you miss it line from Lyse at the very end of 4.0:

(Dialog from the quest "Stormblood", patch 4.0)

What really, really appeals to me about Zenos though, is that he is the personification of depression and that really resonates with me. He has anything he could possibly want, he has accomplished a great many things, but he feels completely hollow inside. He's miserable. He slaughtered countless Domans including their leader and felt nothing, commanded to do it by his father because (as shown in that short story) he only ever was acknowledged to even exist to his father when he practiced violence. So it's a given now, that's what's expected of him and that's all his life is. He's completely desensitized.

He finds one thing that makes him feel alive, that is the warrior of light challenging him, and it becomes his sole focus. Nothing else matters but chasing that high, because every single other thing is a low. After being bested by the warrior of light for the very last time, faced with probably prison for his crimes, he decides to die by his own hand on that high note rather than go back to the drudgery and misery that is everything else.

It's why in endwalker he can be swayed to do something good at the very, very end. He doesn't have a moral compass because he was shaped into an attack dog by his father, he sees "righteousness" as an excuse for war. Because I mean, what else is Garlean propaganda but righteousness from their twisted perspective? He asks Jullus if he would be happier had he a good reason to kill so many garleans after killing his own father— he makes it plain that death is death and there is no justice or good or evil in his eyes. He did have a reason, and it was that his father's use of black rose would likely kill the warrior of light, the only person or thing that gave Zenos any joy in life. Later, it was that Fandaniel dangled the idea that the warrior of light would be attracted to the slaughter and would come running to stop him so he killed more people during the civil war after the emperor's death. But he doesn't need to say that that was why. The reason doesn't matter, he knows the action would not change no matter how it was justified. Even if it was a "good" reason, death is death.

(Dialog from the quest "The Time Between the Seconds", patch 4.0)

(Dialog from the quest "As the Heavens Burn", patch 6.0)

I often see people take Alisaie's part in that scene as her convincing him to be a better person but that's really not what happens. He knows if he takes that action that others perceive as good and helps to stop Endsinger, he could have that high again in facing the warrior of light one more time. He could find joy and meaning, even for a fleeting moment. Then once again end it all because he fears returning to the low monotony of life. It's all over his dialog, especially in Endwalker. The dialog at the very end where he asks the warrior of light if they feel fulfilled, I know is meant to be a bit more of a meta question toward the player themselves, but I'd like to think it's Zenos comparing how different his outlook is to the warrior of light's. The warrior of light has many things keeping them going, whereas Zenos is drowning in despair with only one bright spot that he is constantly chasing time and time again.

(Dialog from the quest "Friends Gathered", patch 6.0)

those three tiny lines can hold so much zenoswol yearning in them AAAAAAAAAAAAA I AM not well

I personally still feel like there was room for him to survive that and to be gently guided into more and more good and try to undo some of that conditioning but I think he might be too polarizing of a character for him to become a permanent ally in canon. Much as I would love to see that! I have to wonder if the mentions of him in the 6.X patches that bounced between positive and negative were testing the waters, but I will leave my tinfoil hat aside because this post is already WAY too long lmao

I understand why people dislike him: they think he enjoys murder because he does it without "a good reason", they don't like how obsessive he becomes toward the warrior of light who is an extension of the player themselves, they don't like that in Fandaniel's scheme in "in from the cold" Zenos is the one inhabiting the warrior of light's body. Totally get it, totally understand.

I'm just saying I see the complexity to him and I find it compelling. Just as I found the overwhelming grief and despair that motivated Nidhogg or Emet-selch or Elidibus to be compelling. I think what people miss though when you like an antagonist is that feeling empathy toward them means you don't feel empathy toward the people they harmed, or that you somehow agree with what they did. But really, I just love seeing these characters that are faced with such tragedy or misery that they start to lose sight of right and wrong. They're driven entirely by emotions. For a story where emotions are literally power, I think it's a really interesting angle to take with the antagonists of that story.

Man, where was I going with this? 😂 I just love Zenos... I don't think I will be convincing anyone to like him who doesn't already, and that's not at all my intent. I just thought I'd share my perspective a little bit after getting this ask!

[ragnarokalypse]

I am usually a lurker. I don't really post anything...ever, anymore, but I am so incredibly disappointed by this expansion that I felt the need to chime in my sentiments, just to get it off my chest.

I am one of the few people that loved ARR, before the "streamlining." I was hooked in the first 10 levels and the game had me in a stranglehold all the way through Endwalker. Everything after 6.0 was...eh...but I love the game so I stuck with it. I also loved Stormblood, and I've walked away from Dawntrail loving it even more, because hoo boy, does Wuk Lamat give me a new appreciation for Lyse.

I don't have a problem with low stakes. I don't have a problem with fetch questing, building my reputation, and just generally doing menial tasks even when people should be acting with a little more urgency. My beef with this expansion isn't that it's "new", "low-key", "a reset", or anything like that. My beef is Wuk Lamat.

This entire expansion is basically the Wuk Lamat show. The WoL does not really forge any new relationships, they don't really explore anything, they don't really do anything, and when they do, it's hijacked by Wuk Lamat. I swear I think my character was introduced by name to a citizen maybe...once. Instead, we have to sit there watching Wuk Lamat do everything that I want to do in a story that is supposed to be about the character I've spent years investing time and emotional effort into. I want my character to be the one making friends, exploring new cultures, and building a positive reputation with the people. When the first half ended and we FINALLY got to go do something without her, I was excited. I was willing to forgive the first half because it felt like the REAL journey was just getting started.

But nope, back to Wuk Lamat. Back to her being the main character and my character, the character I actually love and have painstakingly developed over years, being sidelined. In the final battle, I was again excited because FINALLY, a good old fashioned WoL vs The Enemy showdown. But what's this? Oh, Wuk Lamat again. In the epilogue, everyone celebrated for three days and three nights to "hail the Dawnservant's victory." Like, what? She shows up in that last 20% and gets the credit? Excuse me? I don't dislike Wuk Lamat even if I do deeply dislike her type of character, but I do resent the massive amounts of space she takes up in what is supposed to be my character's story.

Maybe I'm selfish, maybe it's just a me problem, but I play MMOs to tell stories about characters in fun worlds that I get to craft to my liking. If I wanted to play a game of pre-existing characters and watch/experience their journey, I'd go boot up literally any other Final Fantasy game. I have seen people liken this expansion to World of Warcraft, and I agree, to an extent. However, even though WoW doesn't have your character be center stage, I have always felt like the world was expansive enough for you to tell your own independent stories in the background. I have a whole host of characters in the WoWverse that I've developed over the years, and I never felt like I was held back from being creative because of the overarching narrative choices made by the game because, ultimately, my character was not a central figure and I could do what I wanted.

Here, I'm trapped. I can't say my character is off doing something else because she's literally tied to Wuk Lamat through the entire expansion and the shard key will probably be important later. I went through 3 days of cutscenes and walked away with pretty much nothing that I feel inspires me creatively or gives me any new material to build my character's story. Instead, I'm left feeling like I'm having to struggle to explain why she's being so passive and out-of-character. Is it trauma? Is she drunk? You got me. I'm still figuring it out, and figuring it out is a struggle that I have never experienced in this game. It isn't fun, which kills the creativity even more.

I might have been more forgiving of the story if it were reframed around the characters I actually care about and I got to experience the world instead of sitting back and watching Wuk Lamat experience it for me, but as it stands, I didn't really enjoy any of it save the American old west town where we got to hang out with Erenville, blissfully Wuk Lamat free. I swear they're the only people in the story that actually talked to us and learned our names. I think the best example of how little I enjoyed myself is in how many screenshots I took. I took almost 3,000 screenshots throughout my first Endwalker playthrough. Here, I took less than 100.

I will continue to stick with XIV for a while to see where it goes from here, but if this is the new story direction and philosophy - tell a story through other characters first - then I may just have to sadly resign myself to the fact that my character's story ended with 6.0, and go off to greener pastures where I can craft characters and build stories in ways that are more to my liking.

Overall, 1/10. I can't even rank it amongst other expansions because even the lowest ranked expansion for me is one that I love. Dawntrail is in a league of dislike and resentment all its own.

[senespera-ffxiv]

also this is the only time I'm gonna post twice in a row but I finished up my thoughts about dawntrail in my media list so I'm posting them here completely unedited

//spoilers for like all of dawntrail

a more detailed rating is that this is like a 4.7/5. It’s a solid story, if a bit boring and cliche for some of the first half. I do enjoy how clear-cut the story is in terms of thematic content, though, and how through and through it is an exploration of differing cultures and the ways in which you can understand them

The second half was also an interesting continuation of said exploration as it gives you a culture that is in direct opposition to you with ways that are so alien, and yet continues to ask that you understand them while also criticizing the more inhumane effects of those cultural practices

making it about me again but it’s basically just my stance about criticizing China. A lot of the criticism becomes extremely sinophobic because it simply rejects the culture without first trying to understand it. It’s a bit easier for me since I’m deeply steeped in said culture, but I do think it’s possible for someone who isn’t Chinese to criticize China in a non-sinophobic way

Idk just a lot of the way Wuk Lamat and the others handled their reactions to Alexandria felt like a good way to do that to me

Like it’s nowhere close to being as insanely character-driven as shadowbringers and endwalker, nor is it as interestingly politically technical as heavensward, stormblood, and certain parts of endwalker, but it’s still definitely Good. Just not as good in comparison to the rest (and even then I’d rank it above Stormblood lmao I didn’t have any moments where I was actively annoyed at the characters for losing brain cells and shit jksdlfhskldjf)

My ranking for the expacs would be something like this

Shadowbringers > Endwalker > Heavensward ≥ Dawntrail > Stormblood > ARR

Gameplay-wise, though, oh my God this Fucks. This Fucks So Hard. Way better than Endwalker.

I imagine this is kind of what it felt like to play this game back in Stormblood and early Shadowbringers where things were much more complex and messy on the player side, except this time the complex and messy stuff has bled into the normal content boss design and I am enjoying it so goddamn much

(disclaimer: I started playing at the very tail end of shadowbringers so while I still remember some shit like old monk back when it had positionals on all of its buttons, I am mostly A Young'un. I did not have to experience the dreaded TP management, nor have I gone through all the stages of grief with Summoner getting reworked every fucking expansion lmao)

Part of the reason why I love doing EX trials is because at that difficulty level they aren’t afraid to do some just batshit things that would cause you to lose it in normal content

and now it’s bled into normal content hell yes

For reference my two favorite EX mechanics so far are the Biting Halberd combo from Zurvan EX (death puddle under boss → giant cone → baited aoes → tank cleave) and the add phase from Hydaelyn EX (both tanks get an add and have to pull them away from the glowing crystals while party dps’s them, rotate once the glowing crystals are dead)

Like obviously I’m biased cuz I’m a tank and those are largely tank mechanics (cuz yes if you forget to move properly in the Zurvan one as MT you just kill your entire party so I kinda count that as a tank mechanic) but more importantly I like them because of how dynamic the movement is.

And they’re dynamic in different ways, like Zurvan’s is extremely rigid. You will dance in this specific manner (back → tank right, everyone else left) or else you die. Hydaelyn on the other hand can be a bit looser and you have at least a bit of room to do different strategies (ideally it’s a “everyone focus down one crystal at a time” situation but the like three-five times I’ve done the fight the positioning has always been very loose as long as none of the glowing crystals are getting tethered).

And a bunch of fights in Dawntrail are doing stuff like this that feels like a dance

Like the first example I can think of is Ar1/R1/whatever we’re calling it when the boss flings out a sequence of like 8 aoes across tiles before hitting you with an uppercut that sends you flying into the air and in order to not die from said uppercut you need to position yourself so that you land on an uncracked tile

The second iteration of this where it’s the clone that does the uppercut and the main boss is hitting you with line stacks is my favorite because that’s where the amount of stuff you do starts to offset how slow the actual mechanic is to make it feel like you’re in a time-sensitive dance and if you step wrong you’ll fuck things up

Another good example is the final boss The Queen Eternal which just. aughhhh I love that boss. There’s so many fun ideas being thrown around in there lol. You can really tell that Zeromus from the Endwalker patches was intended to be a test run for some of the mechanics in this fight because both occasionally devolve into randomized Chaos as you try your best to just Not Get Hit by aoes can you tell I loved the mechanic when she deploys her drones lmao

LIke okay last thing to yell about but Absolute Authority is literally just a mini Relativity mechanic from E12S/Big Bang from Zeromus but more chaotic and I absolutely loved it

Plus the more chaotic nature of the mechanics in this fight serve a bit of a narrative purpose, especially when you consider how desperate Sphene is at this point in time

Like she doesn’t give a shit about keeping up appearances she will kill you as best as she can, “random bullshit go” included

And both of those mechanics also force you to do more dynamic movement, only now it's typically erratic and panicked compared to the more methodical and freeform dances of Zurvan and Hydaelyn EX respectively

We need more insane shit in the gameplay of the normal mode stuff keep doing it Yoshi-P

[aotopmha]

I have Endwalked!

The scenes that got me were the scene with Alisae, G'raha and Krile before Ultima Thule and the final scene with Meteion.

The scene with G'raha, Alisae and Krile felt so sincere in its concern for you. I just thought it was super sweet.

With emotionally evocative stories that are created under the wing of huge companies and/or related to massive franchises like FF, I always have this sense in the back of my mind going off saying that it's all product and it's really there to butter up the customer, but 14 really does feel sincere to me.

(While still sometimes buttering up the customer.)

If the writers don't believe in what they are writing, then I think they are at least thinking about what the characters believe in from an emotionally sincere standpoint.

I think stories that delve into these nuanced and difficult topics have to have some form of empathic human behind them.

And well, even if there isn't, they sure make me believe they stand by what they write.

(Which, I think, in itself is a characteristic of good writing: people believing in it.)

And my favorite part about the final scene with Meteion is that the answer she arrives at, the answer Hermes was looking for, is a substantial, clearly spelled out belief, which is also backed by ten years of story context.

It is one of my favorite thematic focuses for a story to begin with, but even without the ten years behind it, I think just how the prose expressed this idea is what made it so powerful to me.

The phrasing/expression of a sentiment itself can go such a long way to make age-old concepts powerful. (Which technically is just the fundamental truth of good writing, isn't it?)

I think that's another reason why the scene with Moenbryda's parents hits so many despite Moenbryda being a character from one patch back from years ago.

The issue with [insert trope here] never was the idea itself. It's always whether you can believe in the trope via the writing. Stories are made up of so many different aspects: context, story length, plotting etc. I think all of that kind of melts away in the face of powerful dialog itself, and in turn even if everything else is good, bad dialog can also take away a lot from a story.

I'm so happy whenever a long-running story ends on substance and I don't have to deal with awkward prose in its most final moments.

(Attack on Titan fan screaming in frustration here.)

Speaking of substance, though, I'd also like to bring up the few Alisae lines I've been really eager to talk about in relation to the story's exploration of emotional suffering.

I love this because it is just as much relevant to Alisae as a character and her relationship with her brother and their support for each other than it is thematically for Endwalker as a whole.

Again, it might lean into the age-old "power of friendship" trope, but I think It's such an important nuance to include in stories like this.

The sentiment of "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" is not actually true and with so many different beliefs in the story having this element, I think getting this detail as one of the final sentiments regarding this thematic idea is very good.

What is true is that everyone handles emotionally painful moments differently and as long as there are other people in the world, nobody is destined to suffer alone. Others are here to carry our burdens with us, so they aren't so heavy.

We just really need to work on understanding and patience towards those who are suffering.

I have so much more to say about the final stretch of the story, which I'll probably go into in much more detail in upcoming posts, but for a little bit more basic analysis of the game content itself, I loved the Dead Ends dungeon and the Endsinger trial.

Dead Ends had some great mechanics in there for bosses as well as fantastic narrative aspects. Might be my favorite "big moment" story dungeon.

And I love the planet positioning mechanic of the Endsinger trial. It's super satisfying to resolve right for me.

Actually finishing Endwalker has cemented FF14 as a whole as one of my favorite games ever.

In terms of Endwalker itself, I love the jobs at their full depth, but starting from Stormblood I've really liked the dungeon content and starting from ShB, even the solo duties have been ranging for solid to great! Only the expansion trials can be a little hit and miss for me (I think the trial series themselves have all rocked starting HW).

So it is onward to patch content, Alliance Raid and Raid series for me. Also Role Quests, Variant/Criterion dungeons and many other bits of content I haven't done yet. (Finally planning to try and go for a house since I have saved up a bunch of gil!)

[brineffxiv]

Still can't believe, the first Trial of Endwalker is freaking Zodiark. What is happening. Where the heck do we go from here!?

My brain keeps trying to figure out what the missing bit in the middle must look like for the top half to connect with the bottom half.

Gotta say though, great design.

Ahaha! Victory is mine! I have triumphed over the oldest and greatest of primals! Well, 8/14ths of Him, at least.

GTFO of here Zenos. Don't you dare steal my moment. (Aren't you glad you didn't become this god? It would have suuuucked, let me tell you.)

Goodbye Fandanny. Enjoy an eternity of imprisonment inside Zodiark. Let's hope it puts you mentally in stasis as well as physically, because otherwise that might be a tad crueler than even you deserve.

I'm sorry, what? Your plan was for me to defeat you? I thought you wanted to die. You'll note, you're still alive.

Oh what the fuck. He's tearing his own heart out.

Y'know. I wasn't surprised when Fandaniel betrayed Zenos and stole Zodiark for his own plans, surprised exactly what happened, yes, but not the betrayal. But this. Despite it all. I never did believe that what Fandaniel said he wanted was actually the truth. But it apparently is? He truly does only want to die and take everyone with him?

But, I feel like I'm missing something. I don't understand why execute this convoluted plan?? Does he have some personal, Ascian-related reason for wanting Zodiark to die??

How interesting. G'raha was right: you do retain attachment to your prior life as Amon. Why else would your soul retain this form?

What made you like this, then? What mysteries are you taking to the grave?

Goddammit Fandaniel. I swear. If you did all this because of Xande's existential crisis I'm gonna... kill... you?

...Little late for that, I guess.

Oooh that... Doesn't look good.

THE FU-

Wha- Oh fuck. What is happening?!

You mean to tell me.

That all this time.

The Final Days never ended?

That Zodiark was actively protecting us.

You mean to tell me, that the solution Hydaelyn's summoners thought was not enough, that solution, not only worked, but continued to work. For thousands of years. Even sundered.

*flails*

*speechless*

I... I don't even know what to say.

I... We...

We've been keeping, not just Zodiark, but the souls of those that died to summon him. We've been keeping them in a perpetual purgatory. For thousands of years. Because doing it was protecting us from disaster. And we did it. We did it intentionally. We did it knowingly. This isn't a surprise to the Watcher. Hydaelyn knew exactly what She was doing. If Fandaniel hadn't come along, we'd have done it forever. Because we killed the only people who were fighting to free them. The only other people who knew the truth. We never sought alternative solutions. We never looked into what could be the underlying cause of the problem of the Final Days. How could we, when Hydaelyn has done everything in Her power to obfuscate and hide the truth of our reality from us. From even Her chosen.

And if that wasn't enough, now the problem has returned to bite us in the ass. If we had known the truth. That this problem wasn't ever solved, only mitigated... We could have been working on this. We could have had centuries of our brightest minds working to solve this problem. Instead of... nothing. We have nothing. And the Final Days are upon us.

Zenos, I do not have the spoons required to fight you to the death right now; I am having a crisis of faith.

(Also, yo, game, let me get a good look at his monster form. I wanna seeee!)

No you don't. You might think that's what you want, but if there's no hope then there's no reason to fight you. I may as well lie down and die. You want me to come at you with everything I have? Then you want to be standing between me and everything I have a reason to fight for. Hope is the impetus for a good fight. Despair is the opposite of what you want.

This probably wasn't supposed to be funny. But I found it very much so. I'm just letting him casually walk away. The guy who destroyed an entire empire's worth of lives. Just. Walking away. Passing by close enough to touch. Off to find a new and unfathomable source of power. See you Zenos. Good luck on your villain quest.

I enjoy the tension between us. It's clear there's a very deep and personal connection, even if I might not want it to be there. Maybe we really are friends.

Speaking of friends, mine meet me in the Watcher's Palace. Things in Garlemald are not exactly good, but they have been brought under control.

The Watcher and I fill in my friends on what has transpired on the moon, including Zodiark's demise and what the results of that will be. After a brief rest, the Watcher tells us what little he can of the Final Days. The information is much the same as what we already know, save few interesting details.

While ultimately unable to discern the source of the problem, the Convocation developed a method to predict where the outbreaks of destructive phenomena would next occur - where the celestial aether currents were weak and stagnant. Thus, to treat the symptom of the disease afflicting our star, they sought to harness the animating power of Darkness - activity and growth - and so invented and summoned Zodiark.

I understand that the accidental sundering of the world rather disrupted the plan that Hydaelyn's summoners had in mind. The part where they identified and addressed the cause of the Final Days. What I do not understand is why, in the thousands of years that followed, Hydaelyn did not bother to inform any of Her followers that we were living on borrowed time. Ask for help. Tell anybody about anything at all.

Perhaps it's not Her fault, though. Perhaps She is constrained by the limitations of Her summoning? After all, She is a primal. If Her purpose was to restrain Zodiark, perhaps this kind of forethought is beyond the scope of Her ability? Her power is, after all, stasis. It might go against Her fundamental nature to plan for future change.

UGH! And just like that I'm angry again. I had completely forgotten about Hydaelyn's original explanation via Minfilia in the aetherial sea. At the time, I lacked the context for what I was being told to really be able to understand it.

And I realize this is likely a retcon, and the writers' way of smoothing over a story that likely changed slightly in the years it took to tell it through this game.

But in the context of the game... Hydaelyn has lied to me. Deliberately and blatantly. Not just by omission. And the purpose of that lie was to make me believe I was on the righteous side. To make me not question why certain actions had to be taken. To make me not sympathize with those who opposed Her.

Hydaelyn's biggest flaw, the largest strike against Her in my eyes, is how she deals with control of information. She has been, historically, the only one able to tell the story of our star's history and what happened upon it. And time and again She refuses to tell the truth, instead selectively sharing the facts - and now blatant lies! - that paint the picture She would prefer.

It's all very well and good for Her to love us, but we need to know the truth in order to freely choose to love Her.

I should not have found out the truth about what She was and our history from Emet-Selch. I should not have been forced to fight Zodiark not knowing that if I killed him we'd all die. We should not be in this situation right now because we should have been working on a way to resolve this issue a LONG time ago.

In order to learn from history we need to remember it. The good and the bad. The tragedy of Amaurot and the ancients cannot be undone, but it could have been learned from. It could have saved us. If Hydaelyn had allowed us to know about it.

Look, I'm not saying Hydaelyn is the bad guy. Far from it. Clearly we owe our continued existence to Her. She is our champion and is on our side in this. I'm just saying... I don't like how She handles information. It feels like She's afraid we'll turn on Her if we know the truth, and so she's decided we don't need to know it. It's... infantilizing. Surely you can understand that, Y'shtola? You of all people must understand the frustration of having vital information withheld from you: you've never met a mystery you didn't want to solve.

Hydaelyn asks a lot from us. She asks her chosen to give their lives in service to her. I'm not comfortable writing Her that blank check, especially now that I know it's not just lies of omission She's been telling.

That... is a very good question, Thancred.

Well fuck me. We're in even more trouble than I realized.

The Watcher takes us outside to show us something; the strange building across the chasm has lit up. Hydaelyn feared what would happen in the event of Zodiark's demise, and so built a contingency plan (ah, how interesting, so she can plan for the future...) which has now been set into motion.

The moon is a spaceship. A spaceship designed to save the people of our star in the event of the Final Days.

The Watcher is going to take us to meet its pilots.

[tankclub]

how would you rate the expansions so far?

it really depends on the criteria. overall i think that ffxiv has gotten better with every expansion, even if i dont always like all of the changes.

more details and rambling under the cut

ok so i broke it out into a few different categories, and i'll rate the expansions on each one:

X.0 MSQ

stormblood

endwalker

shadowbringers

a realm reborn

heavensward

here I'm just talking about the basic MSQ as it launched for the expansion. I put stormblood much higher than most people because I loved the lesbian road trip arc and I loved the azim steppe. the expansion certainly has flaws, but the strong points were really strong.

endwalker tops shadowbringers for me because the elpis section was the only thing that really got me to care about the ancients/ascians, and i think it was necessary context for the whole story arc of the game thus far. endwalker has some issues with pacing and with weakness in the downtime sections (and they clearly didnt know what to do with garlemald, a casualty of the game's shift in focus around shadowbringers).

the others i think are relatively straightforward. i've posted in the past about how i dont like the heavensward story, i think that it kind of botches its themes and the writers got too horny for killing women (in this case ysayle) to tell a good story. it also absolutely squanders the 2.5/55 setup with the ul'dah stuff.

Patch MSQ (X.1, X.2, etc.)

endwalker

a realm reborn

heavensward

shadowbringers

stormblood

endwalker is miles ahead in this category. although its patch story has weaknesses, being able to tell a whole coherent story from 6.1-6.5, without having to have the weird "second climax" for the X.0 story in X.3, puts it ahead of the competition.

ARR scores highly mainly because of just how well the banquet/ul'dah/crystal brave stuff hits. they wasted all of these story threads in heavensward, but especially at the time they absolutely worked.

heavensward makes third because i think it's the only expansion that really made the "x.3 climax" actually work, which is partly down to how the themes of the story worked with "oh and theres more even after you win the climactic battle".

shadowbringers is pretty low for me because i think that its a casualty of the change in narrative leadership. elidibus had been being set up as "the ascian you will talk to", so introducing emet to take that role left him kind of at loose ends. ive played the patch storyline several times to try and understand why people love it so much, and it just never landed for me.

stormblood patch story is the worst this game has ever been. i would put it lower than last if i could

Raids and Jobs

I kinda combined the experience of endgame play into one category, so I'm rating both job design and raid quality here. as the devs said recently, these things are linked, so i didnt think it made sense to separate them. more than the other categories i think this one is influenced by my personal circumstances

shadowbringers

endwalker

heavensward

a realm reborn

stormblood

shadowbringers takes the top spot for my favorite job design (in my beloved shb summoner), a top-class raid series in eden, and the best ultimate raid in TEA.

endwalker i think is really good and a step forward in many ways, but i think the issues with the centralization around 2m burst and inflation of boss hitbox size hold it back from the top spot for me. however, i do like a lot of the additions like criterion, and i hope they continue a lot of what theyve done in this expansion.

i had to put heavensward above arr because it's a straightforward continuation of arr, and also had my second favorite job design in the history of this game (in heavensward warrior, which was broken, goofy, and always fun). also alexander is a fantastic raid, even though coil is more nostalgic for me personally.

stormblood takes the last spot because i didnt enjoy the way the jobs played during that expansion, and mostly skipped it. i was unsubbed for a substantial portion of it, and really only started playing again in the leadup to shadowbringers. possibly i should leave it off this list altogether, simply because i couldnt have evaluated it properly.

Overall

so, i if i combine all of those ratings (weighted equally), i end up with:

endwalker

shadowbringers

a realm reborn

tie between stormblood and heavensward

which i think summarizes my opinions fairly nicely, although as you can see each of the expansions has their strengths.

overall im very excited for dawntrail, and i think it has the potential to be (and likely will be) the best expansion the game has had to date.

[ooeygooeyghoul]

I definitely wasn't expecting them to kill Thancred out of nowhere like that but I'm not as distressed as I would have been if I didn't see him in the Dawntrail trailer ahaha. I'm sure whatever happens next will still not be fun, but I do so look forward to the pain this game will continue to inflict on me. I cannot wait to get back to my computer and finish this thing.

On the plus side, these upsetting series of events further validates a lot of things about Shiun's canon and personality. Thancred and his fucking sacrificial tendencies, I swear. I'm getting so many good ideas for more angst art and storytelling. If Shiun was not okay before, he is soooo much worse now lmaooo. Thank you Endwalker.

[iamluzgar]

I finally finished FFXIV Dawntrail and I have many many thoughts about it. So, spoilers, and bare with me.

I had a lot of troubles to get into it at first, but I always feel that way for much of the extension I've played so it didn't change much. I pushed through, and I'm glad I did. I loved the theme of discovering new people and cultures to get to know them, and to like them. Which was an ongoing thing.

I liked Wuk Lamat a lot as a character. She's a bit immature, but she has a lot of potential, as you say to Gulool Ja. Loved having Thancred and Urianger against me for a change, especially in that dungeon. I got into it more and more, wanting Wuk Lamat to succeed because there were many hints showing she would do well (like for example with the bandits, I saw another post on tumblr mentioning it, but she directly thought about a system failiure problem, rather than thinking the people were bad). She adapted herself to the best of her ability to the culture she met with an open mind, even when she was afraid, unsure or disagreed with it. The VA did a fantastic job imo for her voice.

Of course the rest of the gang was here too and it was incredible. I loved how Erenville finally got the spotlight he so deserved. I wasn't a fan of Krile, but now I do like her and that's the power of FFXIV imo.

Anyway, the first part was great, and it was an important part because the WoL can finally indulge in some "selfish" actions like battling big dudes, deities, eating stuff, traveling, meeting people, doing the good old Azem and I think they'd be proud. The game keeps pushing you Emet, from what he said to you on the last expansion, and I liked that, it keeps him alive. I obviously missed Venat, Hythlodaeus, Elidibus and Emet a lot from this expansion, so it was nice to have some mentions of them. However, especially with the second part of the game, you realize how the shadow of the Ascien still fly above us and all of the reflections. Because I am persuaded they had a hand in the creation of electrope and the key.

The second part was even greater. It started weak with the Western like stuff (I'm not a fan of that and it felt like post-MSQ quests), but then it really starts: not only it brings back stakes (because... Well, I laughed when people made Valigarmanda a "big threat", considering we killed Despair a few months ago in the game), but it also is a pay off from the first part. You grew attached to Wuk Lamat, to Tuliyollal and its people. And now they're in danger.

Which brings us to New Alexandria, with its strange culture of pushing away death. The whole part with Alexandria felt like a metaphore from our own real world. We too, tend to push death away, put people dying away from society and from our eyes, forget them. It really resonated with my experience, especially considering I've been a volunteer in palliative care for a year. The whole thing of accepting death is a main topic in this second part of the game.

We brushed a bit too fast over the identity issues Zoraal Ja felt, I feel, sadly. I wish we could have had a bit more to humanize him.

Then the last zone... It truly touched my soul. We do the exact opposite thing that we did in Endwalker. In Endwalker, we started from nothing, we added music, colors, we reanimated species from death. In Dawntrail, we "turned off" people, we removed the colors and the songs from the places we were visiting. It was powerful to observe it, doing a different kind of walk, maybe even a harder one. Idk for WoL, but it was harder for me. Because we were still "killing" people, and we can only sympathize with Sphene's desires to let her people live more, whatever the cost of it. We hope and pray there might be another way for everybody to be happy.

It brings me back to palliative care in the real world. This world Sphene created, was a metaphor for therapeutic obstinacy and the artificial prolongation of life. At some point, there is nothing you can do, and you have to "pull the plug". You have to say good bye. To your own family, to your friends, to people you knew more or less. What's left of them then? All the memories you had with them, and that's it, and as the Yok Huy's philosophy, they kinda live through you that way.

Contrary to Meteion, our action of killing the people in that zone was not born of desperation of not being able to save them, but from an acknowledgement that this artificial prolongation of life is no longer sustainable, it will give more pain and will sacrifice ressources that could be given to people who still have a chance to continue living. At some point, when there is no chance to sustain a life, we need to make peace with the fact that it's over. That death is a part of life, and might always be. The next day always happen, with a beautiful sunset, new lives, new hopes, new stories, and new adventures, with new people. It's an end, but it's not the end.

As someone who lost my mom when I was a teenager, it was comforting to see those moms having so much hope, love and pride for their children. I could hear my own mom through them. We see a lot of moms, and we have to say good bye to a lot of them, and that was difficult. I both hate and like the fact that FFXIV has a tendency to kill moms or otherwise important female caretaking figures. :( They displayed a lot of different relationships between family members regarding their future death, and that was also interesting. Family, in the large sense of it, was a very big topic of this expansion.

On a gameplay part, I loved almost everything. They upped up the difficulty a notch, and it was perfect. I love how they made new ways of seeing AoE while also still making it clear it's an AoE. Very good ideas there. Loved the last two dungeons.

I was not a fan of the music this extension, but well nothing is perfect. I'm not a fan of FFIX and obviously a lot was taken from it.

Hope that didn't bore you out!

TL;DR Incredible writing as usual.

[littlelordalphinaud]

now i wanna know more about valentina the galvus family makes me go crazy

Valentina is Zenos' eldest daughter!

She was based on the idea of Varis realising that the way he'd treated Zenos had kinda ended the family line by virtue of his son being the perfect warrior but with 0 interest in anything, or anyone, else.

So finds a noble woman of good breeding and arranges a marriage and makes it clear to Zenos that you do your husbandly duty once a week until you have a son.

And so along came Valentina!

And then her two younger sisters and then finally her brother, the actual heir.

Valentina desperately wants her father's love and attention. So she taught herself SAM swordsmanship from watching him, to try and impress him, despite it not being "A ladies place" to do so.

Again, when Solus dies she leaves Garlemald to go to Eorzea, but her drive is that she still wants her Father's attention and care and affection and believes that proving herself a great warrior will earn that for her. And she's aware of Rhan Dei-Ijla, the Warrior of Light who defeated Gaius (who again belongs to @instantbee . We both have character creation problems and enjoy enabling one another)

So up she shows and asks Rhan if she can help!

Valentina has no great love for Garlemald but that's not on any particular moral grounds. It's more simply that her Father is the only person she's ever really cared about, and since he has very little interest in the empire, neither does she.

During Heavensward, while helping Rhan with Bismark, she is reunited with her grandfather, Varis. She's quite excited to see him, while he immediately disowns her and names her 'vaitor', stripping her of her 'wir'. Valentina is surprisingly upset by this, while Rhan and Alphinaud both agreed to keep her identity as the former princess a secret.

Stormblood was incredibly difficult for Valentina. She was excited to see her Father again, only for him to dismiss her, attack her friends, send her flying, and try and kill Rhan. She spent a lot of that expansion in something of a fugue state as even with her disowning, she held out hope that her Father would care about her if she proved herself strong enough, and it just... Never happened.

She does manage to pull out of it, thankfully, and firmly places herself on Rhans side of things, as Rhan and the Scions actually care about her.

Other things about Valentina:

She ends up an Omnicrafter as she finds herself fascinated by how everything is made. She genuinely stumbled into it but it got put into hyperdrive during her 3 years in the First, as she worked at the Crystalline Mean in between helping the guard in Lakeland

Rhan is the reason she figured out she was gay. It took a concerningly long time because she'd never been particularly told it was an option so assumed this was just how people felt about their friends.

Her mother, two sisters, and younger brother all got tempered during Endwalker. Valentina does not know their ultimate fate. She's too afraid to go home and find out.

She was only 19 when she went to Eorzea.

On the boat to Doma, in a somewhat desperate attempt to bring her out of the soul deep depression that was consuming her, Lyse started teaching Valentina to be a MNK. At this point in the game, she's a VPR but still maintains her MNK training to help herself stay on an even keel.

After Stormblood, but before she gets pulled to the First, Valentina starts actually looking into the Garlean Empire properly, and privately vows to do what she helped to do in Doma and Ala Mhigo in every place they conquered.

She's a big part of the Bozja storyline, working tirelessly to help them, never expecting them to warm to her existence but wanting to help them anyway.

Because of her upbringing, Valentina can read music, sew, sing and dance. These are not skills many know she possesses.

Despite the disowning, the Anima fight in Endwalker was a difficult one for Valentina. Unfortunately, with literally everything else that was going on in Endwalker, she didn't really get the chance to process it for quite some time

There we go, that's Valentina, the sweetest princess ever raised by a nation of warmongers!

[xiv-wolfram]

Famous Last Words - Comic Script

Endwalker - lvl 90

Wolfram is dead...

CW: PTSD, Depression, mention of previous thoughts of self harm

Wolfram Saga Comics (Chronological)

This is the script for a future comic. Posting for those who don’t want to wait to get the story. Numbers indicate frame number. A/B mean a frame is split.

Everything is greyscale. Wolfram is standing at the falls in The Fringes near where his home village was. A literal hellhound stands next to him. Wolf looking around in confusion.

A) Wolf frowns - "What…is this?" B) Hellhound barks - "What do you think? You're dying."

A) Wolf surprised - "Dying?!" B) Wolf ponders - "Yes, of course - Zenos had to be stopped… right?"

Wolf worried, asks the hellhound - "Does this mean…I finally…" B) Wolf’s eyes tearing up, looking lost - "I finally killed myself?"

Hellhound snarls - "Of course you did this to yourself. You've been chasing death for years - too much of a coward to do it, expecting the world to. So when Zenos showed up and you were almost out of Aether you welcomed the challenge knowing full well it would be your end!"

Wolf worried/lost, a tear falls, looking away in shame, only half believing what he's about to say - "No-no that's not true! He's hurt so many people without remorse. Killing is a game to him. I couldn't let him return to Etheirys!"

Wolf looks back at the hound, quickly concealing his emotions and rubbing a tear from his eye - "…And why are you taking that form? You're no voidsent."

A) Hellhound growls as it begins to change shape. B) Younger (21 years old) Wolfram stands where the hellhound was. He's covered in scars and bruises and splattered in blood, tears falling down his face - "So you'd rather I look like this? The real you?"

Wolf clenches his jaw, glaring - "That's not what I look like - you miserable bastard! I'm more than that. I've changed. I’m -" Voice off frame - "Hey! Don't yell at him!"

A very tall woman with the same skin, hair, and eye color as Wolf stands beside the younger Wolfram. She addresses older Wolfram - "He can't help what he is."

A) Wolf surprised B) She smiles at Wolf!21 - "You poor boy…"

Azem hugs Wolf!21, smiling comfortingly - "You didn't deserve any of it, you know."

A) Wolf!40, annoyed - "He did…I did. We’re monsters." B) Azem faces Wolf!40, smiling with her arm wrapped around Wolf!21 - "Neither of you did! And you don’t honestly still believe that ‘monster’ bollocks do you? After everything we’ve done?"

A) Wolf suspicious - "Who are you?" B) Azem grins and winks "Spoilers! Let's just say I want what's best for us and thought you may need someone on your side…"

Azem points to Wolf!21 "Since this one isn't exactly the most helpful fellow. Is he?" Wolf!21 pouts "... helping his pain end is a kind of helping..."

Azem laughs and pats his head "Alright well that's not what we're looking for right now, dear."

A) Azem points to Wolf!21 addressing Wolf!40 - "I did not have all of this awful stuff happen to me…so I'm a good deal more impartial." B) Speaks smugly - "So how about you think of me as your untraumatized self - just with great tits." 

Wolf WTF face - "What in the seven hells is happening right now?!?!"

Azem smiles comfortingly - "You're deciding if you want to live, dear." Wolf!21 grins - "You're *finally* deciding that you want to die."

A) Azem, awkward smile - "Or rather, come back to life. You are very dead right now." B) She smiles - "But it doesn't have to stay that way!"

Color returning but still desaturated. A) Wolf confused - "That's…something I can choose?" B) Azem smiles warmly - "Well of course, dear! You've been choosing life every day for the past 19 years… longer, if you're being honest with yourself."

A) Wolf!21 rolls his eyes - "Or he's just too much of a coward to do anything else." B) Azem winks - "Does the reason matter if the result is the same?"

A) Azem looks at Wolf pointedly - "It does need to be *for you* though. Our heart-chosen will be alright if you don't return. He's stronger than that." B) Wolf beams - "He certainly is! And entirely too good for me… But despite what my younger self believes - I'm much better than I used to be…and with time I can continue to change."

Wolf smiles - "Well if it's my choice then I think I'd like to see -"

Off frame - "Oh stop wasting time! You already know the answer and I've little patience for your dramatic speeches. You *finally* open this door and it's to contemplate death?! You know you’re not alone in here, right?!”

Ardbert, angry, holding Wolf by the collar - "You useless fucking idiot! I've been trying to tell you. She's still there! She's trapped waiting for you! So I don't care about your bloody feelings - You're not going anywhere until you fix this! Reunite her soul on the Fir-"

Color returned. Wolf's eyes snap open as he gasps for air.

Wolfram Saga Comics (Chronological)

[anneapocalypse]

Dawntrail level 96

Hoo boy.

I got to the attack on Tuliyollal last night and it's still sinking in. This game does just an amazing job with getting you attached to a place before setting it on fire, and I think seeing this beautiful city under attack affected me even more than similar moments in Ishgard or Rhalgr's Reach or the Crystarium. I think in part because all of those places were already at war when we arrived, so seeing them attacked was dramatic but not shocking in the same way. Tuliyollal was enjoying a time of prosperity and peace, and there was such hope that the succession of Dawnservant would be smooth and painless for her people. And then for their own First Promise to swoop in with this terrifying alien (maybe not literally alien-from-outer-space but certain feels alien in this setting) technology, attack his own people, and kill his father in front of his brother and sister... it was heartbreaking to watch. Koana and Wuk Lamat were both great, and I've gotten very fond of both of them as characters so I was invested, but it was Wuk Lamat's reaction that really got me. It was so well-written and well-acted, not only her grief for her father, but her sense of responsibility to her people, her anger and grief at (from her point of view) failing to protect them.

So the question remains: what was in the City of Gold?

While there is dialogue about the outer entrance not looking like any Allagan design our heroes had ever seen... the inner door, the one they didn't open, did look very Allagan to me. I think that is probably not the whole answer, especially since the ships and armor and weaponry Zoraal Ja brings out doesn't look especially Allagan. With all the glowing purple, I do wonder if it might be meant to remind us of something... Mandervillous? It's certainly not a perfect match, but is it possible that this technology comes from an alien civilization similar to the origin of the Manderville family, if not the same one?

And then there's the mysterious woman we just barely caught a glimpse of in the attack on Tuliyollal.

Could be aliens, could be Allagans, could be ancients, could be a secret other thing! I do have a feeling that some kind of Allagan connection is going to be why we finally get G'raha back. I miss him! And Y'shtola, and OH FUCK WHAT IF THIS TECHNOLOGY IS FROM ANOTHER REFLECTION, OR OTHERWISE RELATED TO CROSS-RIFT TRAVEL. That would be a good reason to get her back!

I wish I didn't have Things to Do today because I can hardly wait to continue! 😱

(Also I'm enjoying the fact that Mr. Apocalypse is playing Endwalker while I play Dawntrail, so while I cannot yet yell to him about what's happening for me, I am getting to hear his yelling about Endwalker, and shit's getting real for him just as it is for me, and that's pretty great.)

[thelaughtercafe]

Fandom List!

IF SPOILERS ARE ALLOWED THERE WILL BE AN ASTERISK TO SIGNIFY I'M COMPLETELY FINISHED WITH THE WORK! PLEASE DON'T REQUEST WITH SPOILERS OTHERWISE! 

Asterisks* next to anime mean I'm completed with the anime not manga so please no manga spoilers! Thank you once again! 

Characters are fine but if I don't know someone I won't include them!

Italics mean I’m on the cusp of hyperfixating and bold means I currently am. Please request for these fandoms as I’m more likely to get them out faster!

Please remember the 5 character limit for headcanons, 3 for scenarios(any mix of fandoms is fine!) and I hope you enjoy your stay! 

Anime

Assassination Classroom* 

Haikyuu!!

Fruits Basket*

Brothers Conflict*

Dance With Devils*

Diabolik Lovers*

Angel Beats*

Claanad/Claanad: After Story*

Ouran Highschool Host Club*

My Hero Academia*

Death Note*

The Promised Neverland

Tales of the Abyss*

Avatar the Last Airbender*

Sword Art Online

Fairy Tail

Danganronpa 3: Despair Arc

Danganronpa 3: Future Arc

Danganronpa 3: Hope Arc

Danganronpa 2.5: OVA

Naruto 

Uta no Prince Sama!

Noragami*

Bungou Stray Dogs (Caught up to end of Season 4, including Dead Apple)

Death Parade

Durarara!!!*

Fullmetal Alchemist*

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood*

Angels of Death*

Ghost Hunt*

The Devil is a Part-timer!*

K!

Mekakucity Actors*

Maid Sama!

Seven Deadly Sins*

Violet Evergarden*

Soul Eater*

Yuri!! On Ice*

Akame Ga Kill!

Black Butler

The Dragon Prince (Up to end of season 3 so no spoilers past that please!)

Ninjago: Masters of Spinjutsu

Miraculous Ladybug*

Banana Fish

Horimiya*

Toradora*

Cardfight Vanguard Overdress!!*

Cardfight Vanguard Divinez*

My Happy Marriage(Up to episode 8)

Spy x Family (Up to end of Season 1)

Legend of Vox Machina (Finished season 1 and know the characters, just no plot past that please!)

Video Games

Final Fantasy 3

Final Fantasy 4*

Final Fantasy 5

Final Fantasy 7/Remake*/Dirge of Cerberus*/Crisis Core*

Final Fantasy 8

Final Fantasy 10*

Final Fantasy 12*

Final Fantasy 13*

Final Fantasy 14*(Caught up to the end of Endwalker, but not post patches yet)

Final Fantasy 15*

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates*

Final Fantasy: Type 0*

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition*

Xenoblade Chronicles 2*

Xenoblade Chronicles 3*

The World Ends With You*

Neo: The World Ends With You*

Kingdom Hearts*

Kingdom Hearts: Re: Chain of Memories*

Kingdom Hearts 2*

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep*

Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance*

Kingdom Hearts 3*

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days*

Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded*

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory*

Undertale*

Deltarune*

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc*

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair*

Danganronpa v3*

Danganronpa: Ultra Despair Girls*

Tales of the Abyss*

Tales of Vesperia

Suikoden*

Suikoden: Tierkreis

Persona 5 Royal*

Dragon Quest 11 S*

Mr. Love: Queen's Choice

Obey Me!

Collar x Malice ( Finished Mineo and Takeru's routes so no spoilers for the others but please feel free to request any character!)

Genshin Impact

Honkai Star Rail*

Ikemen: Sengoku

Ikemen: Vampire

Ikemen: Revolution

Ikemen: Villians

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Fire Emblem: Birthright

Fire Emblem: Conquest

Fire Emblem: Revelation

Resident Evil*/Remake*

Resident Evil 2*/Remake*

Resident Evil 3*/Remake*

Resident Evil 7*

Resident Evil 8*

Baldur's Gate 3

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Stardew Valley (I'm on Year 1 Summer, but can already tell Sebastian and Sam have my whole heart so they're the only two I'm able to write for atm, will update as I finish more)

TV Shows

Blacklist

Criminal Minds

Lucifer 

The Vampire Diaries

Teen Wolf*

Sherlock

Supernatural

Good Omens

The Walking Dead

The Umbrella Academy*

Asian Shows

Sweet Home(currently up to Season 2 episode 2)

Bride of Habaek(currently up to episode 7)

My Holo Love*

Boys Over Flowers*

Cheese in the Trap*

Murphy's Law of Love*

Squid Game*(I'll be picky with these requests probably since it's been a while <3)

Movies

Rise of the Guardians*

Heathers*

Scream*

Scream 2*

Scream 3*

Scream 4*

Hush*

The Little Prince*

Meet Joe Black*

The Princess Bride*

A Little Princess*

Annie*

Rent*

Phantom of the Opera*

Les Miserables*

The Breakfast Club*

Fame

The Santa Clause*

The Santa Clause 2*

The Santa Clause 3*

Spirited Away*

Howl’s Moving Castle*

Princess Mononoke

Ponyo

Iron Man*

Iron Man 2*

Captain America: The Winter Soldier*

Avengers*

Avengers: Infinity War*

Avengers: Endgame*

Spiderman: Homecoming*

Spiderman: Far From Home*

Musicals

Heathers: The Musical*

Epic: The Musical*

Not sure where to put this one so it gets its own category!

Tabletop

Critical Role (Up to Campaign 1, episode 40 atm)

Baldur's Gate 3 Oneshot*

[clownarmy]

Dawntrail Finished (Spoilers)

I finished the game yesterday. Spoilers below the cut.

Firstly, I love the new characters. Wuk Lamat is adorable, but has a consistent character development, and watching her go from idealistic and unsure to empathic and confident is a fun change. I hope we focus on them rather than on the old Scions, but it's too soon to say, especially with where they stand.

The story is essentially four interconnected small stories, and it works far better than Stormblood or even Endwalker does in that regard (both of which were two stories). The interlude between the first and second part was a bit odd – it was a callback.

Their were plenty of callbacks throughout this one, in particular answering questions about some of Shadowbringers' unique elements, which I'm sure that people might be a bit annoyed with. It also answered a long-standing plot hole that people never got closure on in the Key, and opened up the setting for future reflection adventures.

I like the antagonists. Zarool Ja's motivation isn't explicitly stated – it's inferred through his moments, talking about “proving the miracle” of his birth, and wanting to push for war so taht he can make them want peace for seeing the horrors it causes (which is stupid and the other characters repeatedly point out is stupid). His failure and fall into cruelty, killing his advisor and his own former countrymen, as well as his new minions, and utterly disowning his son, is a bit intense in contrast to how loving his father is to all of his children, but is isolation and need to prove himself as good as his father alone is consistent with the narrative of relying on others, both in Dawntrail and in previous expansions with Zenos vs. Our reliance on our friends. I thought it was strong, especially with how his own son is so caring and attentive (due to the others around him like otis and the bunny lady).

I thought the transition between the first and second half was a bit odd. The rite ending and then us going with Erenville to have a wild west Interlude ultimately worked out to transition into the Alexandrian plot, but i think having it as a callback to earlly ARR threw me off at first. Ultimately it did work to make the invasion less abrupt, and also introduce the northern frontier before a sudden shift.

I thought the whole thing was thematically consistent – learning about new cultures, and understanding motivations, and fighting expectations from ones ancestors runs through the whole story, and is handled well. It's a lot of callbacks to Endwalker and Shadowbringers, but it extends from their themes directly and explicitly acknowledges that.

Barool Ja Ja's jerkishness kind of abruptly turned around after he was beaten, and we saw how his bravado and cruelty was a product of the social pressure from his father and people, but even with Wuk Lamat acknowledging that he can't be instantly excused, the story quickly pushes past him releasing super elemental snake. His sudden heroic enthusiasm to defend Tural and hype people up is pretty standard Early Villain shift, and I love that kinda thing, so I liked it.

I like how Oblivion didn't immediately assume we were a threat or that asked us to help, and Geode asked if Wuk Lamat was sure she wanted to fight her brother. It's a different take from most rebel groups being 'please help us fight'.

Sphene was interesting, as was Alexandria's technology and the Endless. I was expecting something like this in later expansions but that it happens in the second half of this one works out for me. The implications of the soul technology and of the interdimensional fusion are played with, and are likely a setup for the next expansion.

Why is there no mention at all of either Zarool Ja or his son's mother? It makes the Zenos parallel stronger, but it's weird, especially since Barool's parallels are so strong but his mom shows up and is the voice of reason (though his dad quickly drops the supremacist act because apparently even he isn't a fan of Lizard Eugenics).

The theme of immortality and dealing with death and loss leads in from endwalker. “I can't bear to exist because someone died” from Cahciua is a strong line, and I like how the regulator giving extra 'lives' is always framed with the question of where the soul cells “come from”. Also that animal souls are used to boost things (along with a voidsent and tempering comparison).

Why do so many people have no moms? Wuk Lamat, Zarool Ja, Zenos, just don't have any mom to speak of. Erenville has no dad mentioned, either.

Also I can't believe they referenced Variant dungeons in the main story, of all things. To address a plot hole that comes up about halfway through about Krile, who muses she should be thinner aether if she

The final area was emotional. The area's theme and design of letting go of the dead and moving forward hit home for me, but was a good design that reflected its arc with how the areas shut down and became empty, and devoid of music, as you closed each of them. The last boss wasn't Necron (which is to be expected since if you expect Necron, it doesn't work), but the last boss was a good design. It was quite similar to the last final Boss – sad woman trying to destroy everyone for people's benefit – and has a similar narrative design that can't really be escaped. Ultimately, it was the last step on the letting-go farewell of the last area.

All of the Endless were so chill with being deleted. Every one you meet is entirely on board with you shutting their lives down, and seems to know what you're doing. It's offputting, but they're also all quite aware that they're dead and don't really have any fear of death.

[aotopmha]

And I'm done with the lvl 87 Endwalker quests, ending on the Venat cutscene.

The very first thought that jumps out to me is actually an annoyance: I really don't care for when the story uses jumpscares.

The only time during the game I have thought it was effective happened to be with Edda and it's because the mood was built for it in different ways.

It didn't work with Titania's introduction and it effectively annoyed me with Meteion.

Her transitioning to a grown woman's voice and listing off the dead worlds in a robotic tone was effective enough.

But they just keep doing the jumpscares with her and the more they do the less effective it is for me.

But to transition to some more character thoughts, I love how Hermes's words towards Meteion are also relevant towards Hermes himself.

"Though I gave you these wings to soar the heavens, I did not teach you how to walk the earth."

In the end, as Emet said, Hermes could not see anything good right in front of him on Etheirys. He simply could not find happiness or purpose in his own world, so he hoped to find it in others.

And so it lead to his flawed question and the painful result of it for the rest of the world and Meteion.

He hoped he would find the answer for his quest for meaning in other worlds. Perhaps use those discoveries to pave the way for a more empathic world that did not deny negative feelings. Perhaps to convince the ancients all lives had value. Perhaps to find companionship in his sadness and loneliness.

It was a two-sided issue, as the ancients also worked to not look at negativity, which probably would have had some bad consequences on a bigger scale eventually, no matter how you look at it.

Again, we go back to the idea of mental illness creating tunnel vision. All Hermes could see was the flaws of the society, but the society itself also did not address the issues within. (Or did they, looking at some of the side quests in Elpis?)

Across all of Endwalker, the idea of emotional resillience has popped up over and over again.

And when I first reached some of the parts about emotional resillience while watching someone else's playthrough, I really wasn't sure about the story leaning into the idea of "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger".

Thavnair especially felt this way.

And that perspective is incredibly hostile towards the individualised nature of emotional struggles. What doesn't kill you does not, in fact, always make you stronger.

But Elpis and everything afterwards put in a lot of effort to make it much more nuanced than that.

"As fragmented, imperfect beings, yours is a never-ending quest. A quest to find your purpose, knowing your end is assured. To find the strength to continue, when all strength has left you. To find joy, even as darkness descends. And admist deepest despair, light everlasting."

Might just be the most important quote of Endwalker.

In reality what the game says (at least what I think the writers aim to say and I read the story as) is that we should try to appreciate the good when we have it because it isn't eternal.

And yet we should not look away from the bad and instead digest it in a healthy way.

As I touched on a few lines above, I think the point of the characterisation of the ancients is that negative feelings hurt, but burying and invalidating them will end up hurting more and more and eventually lead to some sort of issues.

Therapy good.

And as the Ascians show us, their tactics just lead to more and more sacrifices, to the point where it started feeling worse and worse and the rift between the two sides of the ancients happens.

The world of the ancients treats mental illness just like our world does and this story is simply commenting on the current mental health crisis, which was even worse during Covid times.

I'll touch on it more in my upcoming posts because I know that Alisae has a few really important lines regarding this idea, but I know I had this criticism for a while and I was really happy the story addressed it.

Another criticism I see Endwalker given is related to precisely the idea that by creating this causal loop the game implies all of this suffering HAD to happen (and that is why it is okay), everyone had to be sundered to survive and thus it fully also excuses Venat's actions.

But to me the nuance here is that while the game agrees with Venat, it never says what she did was "right".

"I create a world of suffering to mire and plague."

She created so much suffering by sundering the world.

And to me that's what makes it interesting. The Goddess of Light, image of "all good" was driven by her own very human beliefs to save humanity, which also lead to much suffering.

Neither side is completely right or wrong and to me that's the most interesting part of this.

Even if affinity to Dynamis was necessary for humanity to survive.

Even if the 13th is an useless void so the full Rejoining was never possible to begin with.

Even if the Ancients just kept sacrificing themselves and were on a path of unsustainable self-destruction, Venat still caused untold suffering with her choice.

And she takes full responsibility for it.

And to me that's a super cool element to the struggle between the two sides of the ancients.

Because on the other side, the Ascians absolutely were driven by love for their people. This was true all the way through.

Duty, love, desire to get back their paradise. There WAS so much beauty and actual kindness in the ancient world, it just had its own struggles, just like the present world gas its own.

Both sides were literally fighting for the same thing.

One looking to the past. One looking to the future.

And I just do not get why people have the need to appoint the right and wrong in this conflict when I think both having their own flaws is the entire point (and far more interesting to me).

I think Venat's manouvering after Hermes uses Kairos goes under this, too.

Her decisions are all driven by her personal perspective as a character (what she believes in, what she gleaned from Meteion's words etc). I've seen her judgements and the memory erasure be criticised as too wishy-washy on a writing level, but I like it because it is so tied to the characters of those affected.

To me her caution and hesitation makes sense considering what is at stake, especially.

I think Emet is the shaky one because I feel he would look into this as deeply as he could. He accepts his memory being gone a little too easily, I think, but I take it considering the biggest tangible loss we see is two familiars (Meteion and WoL).

Finally, I'll comment on the dungeon.

I think Ktisis Hyperboreia is probably my least favourite of the Endwalker dungeons up to this point.

But that also doesn't mean I hate it. I just think we've had so much cooler set pieces and also much cooler bosses with cooler mechanics in other dungeons.

This IS a dungeon in the ancient world with you exploring an ancient facility and you get the ancients as Trusts, which is super cool, but outside of the final third almost being space, it didn't feel particularly unique or interesting to me as a set piece.

I did notice a bunch of bird cages in a room and the notes, but setting aside, the first two bosses in particular were nothing special to me mechnically, either.

The Hermes boss fight did cause some wipes, though. The beams had a very particular pacing a positioning, which caught me off guard and others in the team also had forgotten the fight so we had 4-5 wipes at the Hermes fight, I think.

Overall, though, once again, a very solid bit of story in my eyes.

[azems-familiar]

Hi!! I just consumed the entirety of the emet-selch/g'raha fics that you and avtorsola have written and holy crap??? The way you write Emet-selch is so beautifully haunting I'm bouncing off the walls in glee. Idk how to describe it but you've encapsulated the vibe of a dead man walking? The way he's being crushed by his loneliness and his people and his duty but it's also the only thing that is still slowly dragging him forward? Which is gloriously contrasted with the spark of hope and longing that he allows to shine through the cracks. Ugh. It's too good. Thanks so much for not killing him I don't think my heart could've taken it.

akfdjghkj thank you so much!! this ask singlehandedly watered my crops and sparked my motivation to go back to wrestling with the promptfic i'm working on for them that i've been fighting for the past few days.

i'm really glad all those bits came through - i've definitely been really trying to get that feel of this man who is walking on the edge, who is utterly exhausted by his only motivation, just drowning in depression in the lowest point of his life. it's very much how he reads to me in game! i also think that shb is when we see him tip off that edge; hope is so important but when you're that low, having hope and then losing it can absolutely be worse than never having it at all, and i tend to interpret his actions on Mt Gulg/Amaurot/etc as the result of a really nasty spiral. we were originally planning on killing him but....uh. it didn't happen. so now we have an outline of a whole bunch of things happening in endwalker for him XD

he's going to have a very fun time when we cure his tempering :D