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Macaluso posted:I absolutely loved the part where all your friends come into your room with a bunch of food and your WoL and all their friends are talking and eating. I loved the little bit with Graha and Alisae with their burgers This was an exceptionally good cutscene. That, the dinner with the rest of the Scions, and the hug were highlights of the expansion imo. Just wonderful humanizing moments to help keep you grounded between dealing with cosmic conflicts.
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Dec 13, 2021 21:47
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Charles Get-Out posted:Macros are for attaching edgy party chat messages to every one of your DRG abilities. I want to do this now, but just random yells and grunts, so every fight is a constant stream of YAAAAAA AAAAAAGH HURG in /party. Going for those negative comms!
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Dec 13, 2021 21:48
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Antivehicular posted:I want to do this now, but just random yells and grunts, so every fight is a constant stream of YAAAAAA AAAAAAGH HURG in /party. Going for those negative comms! Make sure to add sound effects for maximum annoyance.
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Dec 13, 2021 21:52
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Re: expansion length - It feels like the equivalent of shadowbringer 5.0 through 5.3 in terms of length and narrative weight. It's nice to get closure in the story on the base game, but it very much feels like some poo poo was rushed to get to the narrative breakpoints they wanted to hit. I have done bigger thoughts, but for spoiler sake I'll hold back and /or take it to the spoiler thread to analyze it.
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Dec 13, 2021 21:55
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I got to say that I was really impressed with this cutscene given that they had to make it look good for every possible character model. (If there is one disadvantage to going in unspoilered it's not knowing when you need to have your finger on the save screenshot button.)
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Dec 13, 2021 21:58
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Lord_Magmar posted:To answer the question Probably either as the final trial of expansion 1, or the .3 patch trial. The former gives more time to build up towards the poo poo the end is coming stuff. Maybe the first blasphemy becomes the .3 trial, the latter would be more close to how the expansion stories normally work where .3 is the last of an expansion and .4 is the build up towards the next. You could also plausibly put it in .5 so that in universe you get the immediacy of the End of Days Endwalker gives. But the patches would cover rebuilding Garlemald and preparing for the oncoming End of Days, reaffirming allies and making sure we’re ready for whatever the true nature of the calamity is. I could certainly see this working, if some of the events would require significant reshuffling. I think Zodiark as the x.3 boss would make sense. I wouldn't want 5 patches of "final days" as that would be depressing and would make all other activities feel extra ridiculous to be doing during the apocalypse. (It's funny if you pause the MSQ before the final zone to work on crafting/gathering. Just hanging out in Thavnair/Garlemald during the apocalypse, gathering some wood.) With this, you'd need to introduce the moon prior to the end of the expansion, since they don't add zones in patches like WoW does. Which would make for the Garlemald through moon portion to be a bit funky. If the final boss of Expansion 1 isn't Zodiark, who is it? Anima? Fandaniel/Zenos? We would need to go to the moon for some reason before the end of the Expansion 1 if we're going to return in the x.3 patch to kill Zodiark. And I do think Zodiark being the x.3 boss makes far more sense than the Expansion 1 boss. I think Expansion 2 is a lot easier to conceptualize. You could easily add another zone to the World Unsundered, then greatly expand the scope of the Final Days zones. Add Corvos as a zone too. Reflecting on this thought experiment - What I've come to realize is that everything from level 84-90 feels like an entire full expansion in and of itself. Which means the 80-83 feels like the "extra 30%." If we were to split this into two expansions, I think the second of the two expansions would be universally thought of as "the best thing they've ever done" and then the first of the two expansions would be like "a big step back from Shadowbringers and at the level of Stormblood." The first of the two expansions would suffer the most from the split. I love speculative thought experiments like this.
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Dec 13, 2021 21:58
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Antivehicular posted:I want to do this now, but just random yells and grunts, so every fight is a constant stream of YAAAAAA AAAAAAGH HURG in /party. Going for those negative comms! Speaking of this I had a male viera machinist in one of my roulettes and every time he hit Hypercharge it was basically 10 seconds solid of uninterrupted overlapping screaming
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Dec 13, 2021 22:01
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Shadowbringers is still my favorite expac but in my opinion Endwalker's pacing, to its credit, works in its favor.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:02
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For my bit, I prefer concentrating all of EW's beats into one expansion rather than splitting them into two. I like a finale that goes all in, that toes (and arguably goes across) the line between intensity and overload. (MSQ 83 onwards including ending) What we see of Garlemald is less than I expected as well, but a) what we do see tells a lot, and b) I wouldn't be shocked if we see more moving forward. The obvious move is an iteration of Ishgard Restoration, but I'm leery of that both due to the idea of a rehash and the weird implications of carpetbagging. That said - and my opinion might change over time - right now, I hope the next expansion dials back the pathos a bit. Not quite slice-of-life all the time, more of a focus on recovery and discovery. Not a reboot, but a palliative renewal. In other words, extremely limited amounts of 
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Dec 13, 2021 22:02
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The (83 trial) Zodiark fight is cool BECAUSE it's not the final boss of the patch!! In fact neither Zodiark or Hydalen is the final boss. I think that rules. The idea of splitting up this story into multiple patches or even multiple expansion is insane to me. I thought it all flowed very well outside of the very small amount of times when the "between action" parts went a little too slowly Macaluso fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Dec 13, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 22:04
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Macaluso posted:The (83 trial) Zodiark fight is cool BECAUSE it's not the final boss of the patch!! In fact neither Zodiark or Hydalen is the final boss. I think that rules. 
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Dec 13, 2021 22:05
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Hmmm (83-84 stuff) Zenos on the moon seems like an obvious final trial for an expansion about dealing with his tower plans and Garlemald, and lets Fandaniel sneak away to finish weakening the bindings of Zodiark for .3 to do the fusion jump. I could definitely see room for Reaper Zenos as a full trial boss who uses a completely new moveset to prove he’s “worthy” of your attention, ending in him disappearing for his plot line where he wants to keep fighting us but we’ve got bigger things to deal with. Note, as I said I think what we got is the better option regardless, the 83 trial as it stands is super rad. It just feels like the 81-83 stuff has very little room to breath overall and that the pacing of the expansion as a whole kind of gets wonky, which to me suggests indeed that something went on with the expansion design. The other option is they put the .1-.3 story into the game, which also makes sense to me as a way we got Endwalker the way it is instead of a hypothetical different Endwalker. In which case (end of expansion stuff) Hydaelyn would have been the end of expansion trial, and maybe Anima the 83 with Zodiark the 87. With the Endsinger being in .3 and trying to reach her being the patch plot. Again though this is all speculative, not intended to be better than what we got. Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Dec 13, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 22:06
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Mordiceius posted:For me, the power in Endwalker hasn't necessarily been (full game spoilers) the cosmic battle vs nihilism (though that is v. good), but it has instead been the little character moments. There is so much in this expansion but we've still had plenty of time to just sit with characters and just have moments. Seeing all my friends from the last 8 years reach the culmination of their personal arcs is incredibly powerful and inspiring. My favourite line in the expansion comes in the cutscene after the final dungeon/before the final trial. Zenos rocks up, takes one look at the Endsinger, and goes "But why does it still live? Surely it is no match for you." That one line, to me, says more about that idiot's opinion of you than almost anything else in the entire game.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:09
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I would be happy if the 6.x patches were nothing more high stakes than a romp around the world, looking for shiny new dresses to wear, strange new gods to kill, and even bigger fish to catch. There will probably be some big fancy story hook, but there's a lot of potential places one could lead to.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:13
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Macaluso posted:The (83 trial) Zodiark fight is cool BECAUSE it's not the final boss of the patch!! In fact neither Zodiark or Hydalen is the final boss. I think that rules. It also really raises the stakes in an epic level campaign way, the primals you'd usually be fighting as trials are dungeon bosses and even the two gods of the world who've been built up sicne 2.0 don't make the billing as the final boss. In a way it does feel like an acknowledgement in the story that the WoL is a very high level now and at the point in regular Final Fantasy game where you'd be doing all the important major boss fights against the big movers and shakers in the plot
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Dec 13, 2021 22:14
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On the topic of other Level 83 things (pre-dungeon), imagine being so rear end-blasted at the idea of needing to compromise with another nation that you would genuinely rather kill yourself, even though your people are freezing to a slow death in the middle of a wasteland. 
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Dec 13, 2021 22:17
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Staggy posted:My favourite line in the expansion comes in the cutscene after the final dungeon/before the final trial. I agree with this take.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:21
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Staggy posted:My favourite line in the expansion comes in the cutscene after the final dungeon/before the final trial. I took that line as partially sincere and partially an attempt at a friendly jab, showing that Zenos has actually exhibited a tiny little bit of growth. It was a really good line regardless.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:22
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I feel the important thing to understand is that all of these suggestions for how to split endwalker in two all sound loving lame as poo poo and extremely boring, whereas the endwalker we got rules extremely hard and the realization that Zodiark is only the level 83 trial is extremely loving hype.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:23
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Thundarr posted:I took that line as partially sincere and partially an attempt at a friendly jab, showing that Zenos has actually exhibited a tiny little bit of growth. It was a really good line regardless. Thinking about a slightly different world where Zenos was born as literally anyone else other than Varis's son and could have been our Vegeta rather than our Frieza 
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Dec 13, 2021 22:26
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I burned through so much of the MSQ yesterday. The story really takes off towards the end of the level 84 section and just doesnt let up.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:26
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It's been a hot minute since I played and I just found out there are whole frameworks built to emulate addons for FFXIV. Bless the folks that made that real.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:30
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Blueberry Pancakes posted:On the topic of other Level 83 things (pre-dungeon), imagine being so rear end-blasted at the idea of needing to compromise with another nation that you would genuinely rather kill yourself, even though your people are freezing to a slow death in the middle of a wasteland. It's probably one of the strongest moments in the game. They pull no punches. Facism and imperialism are a helluva drug. In all seriousness though I'm glad they didn't back down from showing what this kind of imperialist, nationalistic brain poisoning can do to someone. The leaders have all got Qanon level brain poisoning. The average citizens are just brainwashed by a lifetime of fascist propaganda.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:31
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Thundarr posted:I took that line as partially sincere and partially an attempt at a friendly jab, showing that Zenos has actually exhibited a tiny little bit of growth. It was a really good line regardless. I also see it as an indication to just how powerful Zenos is that he instantly recognizes what the Endsinger is. It makes me wonder if Garleans are particularly adept at seeing/manipulating dynamis as a result of their inability to manipulate aether.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:33
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Mordiceius posted:It's probably one of the strongest moments in the game. They pull no punches. Facism and imperialism are a helluva drug. Commiting suicide in your bunker, it was certainly the 'downfall' of Garlemald alright
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Dec 13, 2021 22:33
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multijoe posted:Commiting suicide in your bunker, it was certainly the 'downfall' of Garlemald alright 
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Dec 13, 2021 22:36
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IMO the plot has always suffered the second the Garleans are on screen, and EW is about the only time where this isn’t the case. Part of the reason I disliked Stormblood so much is just that I think they’re real boring antagonists to try and carry an entire expansion’s plot on. Plus I just think the fascist nation getting eaten up from the inside as a result of their own indoctrination of the heirs and leadership is more interesting and powerful than toppling them in a war. Them going out in a whimper under their own bullshit is a far stronger statement.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:36
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Mordiceius posted:It's probably one of the strongest moments in the game. They pull no punches. Facism and imperialism are a helluva drug. Yeah, the whole "It'd be better for them to die in the wilderness than be tainted by your magicks" thing felt uncomfortably real.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:40
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Thundarr posted:I took that line as partially sincere and partially an attempt at a friendly jab, showing that Zenos has actually exhibited a tiny little bit of growth. It was a really good line regardless. See, I took it as completely sincere. For me, it was a reflection of how single-minded Zenos was, how little he had changed. As a character, his flaw was that he was ultimately unable to change except in reaction to the WoL and not for his own sake/at his own impetus - his monologue post-fist fight being his own realisation of this, beyond the simplistic idea that the WoL gave his life meaning. The tragedy (not forgetting all the destruction he had brought about) was that he realised it only when it was too late. Of course, your reading absolutely works too. And it was just a great line in general.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:43
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Blueberry Pancakes posted:On the topic of other Level 83 things (pre-dungeon), imagine being so rear end-blasted at the idea of needing to compromise with another nation that you would genuinely rather kill yourself, even though your people are freezing to a slow death in the middle of a wasteland. It's happened, more than once, in real life. The comparison I keep seeing, that I agree with, is Tokyo circa 1945.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:44
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Staggy posted:Of course, your reading absolutely works too. And it was just a great line in general. Agreed, and I may be the biggest Zenos hater on the forum. That entire setup from Kool-Aid manning his way into Meteion's domain as Shinryu to the "hey bro, what the gently caress, why's it still alive?  " was masterfully done and had me grinning like an idiot even in spite of the initial "oh it's you  " reaction.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:46
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Mr. Nice! posted:I also see it as an indication to just how powerful Zenos is that he instantly recognizes what the Endsinger is. It makes me wonder if Garleans are particularly adept at seeing/manipulating dynamis as a result of their inability to manipulate aether. I mean, he explicitly (post msq) has the echo. He could of had a vision of what you were up to before he crashed the party, hence how he was able to specifically pinpoint you. I have to have a laugh at the current exdr Dungeons though. Like, endwalker Dungeons are the hardest they have ever been in general, but these current exdr ones are PUG destroyers. I've seen so many people eat mountains of poo poo on the first and last bosses of Smileton. That first boss in particular throws out a ton of aoe damage even if they are doing the gimmick correctly. My first time through we had to take the attempts each on both him and the big cheese.
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Dec 13, 2021 22:46
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I think the only 4 man boss that really gave my groups trouble was Vanaspati. The last boss is just sensory overload and I think a lot of players, even myself included, had a hard time paying attention to all the mechanics when they would happen at once. Maybe I just got lucky in all my groups but I never really had an issue. The last boss of Smileton can be a bit tricky and that's only because it's easy to miss which side his laser blast is gonna be. I literally didn't realize it just... said it on his cast bar. I didn't even have a rough group in the first trial. The second trial was the only dungeon that has several wipes to try and understand it. Even the last boss we only wiped once and the second go around we figured out what we had done wrong. Although the planets spinning in the last trial is one of those mechanics that goes a little TOO fast I think The last MSQ dungeon the first boss all three of my party members were like "oof this is a rough one" "I wiped 4 times to this XD" etc. We one shot it. Feelsgoodman
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Dec 13, 2021 22:54
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Random thought: The miniboss theme is better than the boss one. But I admit the boss one 'fits' more for a final boss of a dungeon.
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Dec 13, 2021 23:07
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Ibram Gaunt posted:Random thought: The miniboss theme is better than the boss one. But I admit the boss one 'fits' more for a final boss of a dungeon. Agreed. Miniboss theme is one of my favourite EW tracks.
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Dec 13, 2021 23:10
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Ibram Gaunt posted:Random thought: The miniboss theme is better than the boss one. But I admit the boss one 'fits' more for a final boss of a dungeon. I agree
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Dec 13, 2021 23:17
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I don't think you could plausibly split Endwalker into two expansions, but I do believe that it has basically two vaguely-related stories inside of it and I think that's to its detriment. I think the solution would be to connect the stories together better, and not just separate them more.
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Dec 13, 2021 23:24
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So I understand why they are releasing the Island Sanctuary. After all the poo poo he's been through, my WOL really wants a place to just gently caress off and not be disturbed for once.
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Dec 13, 2021 23:36
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nah everything in Endwalker connects together pretty cohesively you might as well call Chrono Trigger “disjointed” too
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Dec 13, 2021 23:39
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The halves are disjoint in terms of the events that happen in the fantasy narrative but are extremely cohesive in their emotional theming imo
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Dec 13, 2021 23:42
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