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spoilers for ew ending: the zenos ending is a huge resolution lol, its you who got that moment versus zenos who refuses to take that moment on its own terms and still doesnt see life as inherently valuable, just the mad scrambling of basically animals.
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Dec 20, 2021 13:02
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| # ? May 25, 2024 21:31 |
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Crossposted from the other ff14 thread:Popoto posted:I’m about to enter zone 6, and so far I would rate my FFXIV list as follow, from best to worst : I’m excited for the end, but so far not necessarily because of the big plot points.
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Dec 20, 2021 13:44
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So post-EW I'm going back and playing side content that I didn't have time to finish before. One of those is the Omega raids (I finished Alphascape 2.0 last night) and I can only assume that (EW spoilers) the people complaining that dynamis wasn't foreshadowed/seeded early enough didn't play them either.
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Dec 20, 2021 13:45
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Endwalker really is a story that expects you to be as excited about all the characters it hauled out for the curtain call as it is, and if someone can't get past their dislike of so-and-so to get to the underlying thematic effort underneath, it is probably going to fall flat. Shadowbringers was sentimental within the confines of a tighter story, Endwalker is sentimental with all the limits ripped off and the Final Fantasy poo poo dial cranked to 11, and that sort of is what it is. I am fortunate that I generally like all the characters in the story, and a lot of the negative perspectives I've seen on Endwalker have at least been in part "the story made me spend time with Character I Hate, so gently caress it", but the story was probably always gonna do that, so welp.
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Dec 20, 2021 13:47
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mostly it just seems like there's people who wish endwalker was the story they wanted to write instead of the story the writers wanted to write. like the writers clearly love zenos and think hes a rad villain. and hes used pretty effectively in endwalker. but if you hate zenos then him being used like that is gonna annoy you. but that doesnt mean its bad you just dont like him as a personal taste thing
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Dec 20, 2021 13:49
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Popoto posted:Crossposted from the other ff14 thread: I'd honestly place Endwalker below Heavensward if the metric is strictly for plot. Of course I'd also place ARR over Stormblood under that metric so ymmv.
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Dec 20, 2021 13:53
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Endorph posted:mostly it just seems like there's people who wish endwalker was the story they wanted to write instead of the story the writers wanted to write. like the writers clearly love zenos and think hes a rad villain. and hes used pretty effectively in endwalker. but if you hate zenos then him being used like that is gonna annoy you. but that doesnt mean its bad you just dont like him as a personal taste thing The writers are correct. Also stormblood is sick
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Dec 20, 2021 14:04
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Personally I think the way they used Zenos works perfectly even if you aren't a huge Zenos fan.
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Dec 20, 2021 14:06
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Endorph posted:mostly it just seems like there's people who wish endwalker was the story they wanted to write instead of the story the writers wanted to write. like the writers clearly love zenos and think hes a rad villain. and hes used pretty effectively in endwalker. but if you hate zenos then him being used like that is gonna annoy you. but that doesnt mean its bad you just dont like him as a personal taste thing Endwalker took me from rolling my eyes and being annoyed whenever Zenos was on screen (post-Stormblood at least) to being an unironic Zenos fan and for that I will never forgive Ishikawa and co.
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Dec 20, 2021 14:08
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I put EW so far above HW if only because writing a satisfying ending is more difficult than writing something in the middle of the story. Its super fanservicy a lot of times, but hell thats exactly what I wanted from the story
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Dec 20, 2021 14:09
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Regy Rusty posted:Personally I think the way they used Zenos works perfectly even if you aren't a huge Zenos fan. As a certified Zenos Hater(tm) I actually agree.
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Dec 20, 2021 14:11
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My personal expac ranking is just reverse release order. I preferred Stormblood to Heavensward because I vibed with the theme a lot more.
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Dec 20, 2021 14:11
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I am not to Endwalker yet but my distant memory of Zenos is I enjoy kicking his rear end, and otherwise he’s just one of those JRPG villains. So potential is there imo and I look forward to finding out!
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Dec 20, 2021 14:12
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Cao Ni Ma posted:I put EW so far above HW if only because writing a satisfying ending is more difficult than writing something in the middle of the story. some of the critiques I've seen of EW seem to want to treat it solely like a self-contained story, even thought everything about it screams "finale to a 250-hour jrpg". e.g. (maybe EW spoilers, definitely ShB spoilers): people have griped that the WoL isn't really directly threatened at any point or doesn't hit a real low point and it's like, yeah, that happened in the last expansion, the explicit lowest point in the characters story where you almost die at the bottom of the ocean on a different planet, which would directly cause multiple apocalypses. it's absolutely doing something much different and harder than heavensward (which cuts away basically all known characters but two or three so it can tell a perfectly self-contained story, setting aside the much more controversial ARR follow-up, at least). and yeah given that it feels like every major ongoing story in a genre property lately has failed to end well, sometimes ending so poorly it retroactively taints the rest of the work (GoT, new star wars), I'm impressed the ending worked at all, let alone appears to be as widely liked as it is. Theris posted:One of those is the Omega raids (I finished Alphascape 2.0 last night) and I can only assume that (EW spoilers) the people complaining that dynamis wasn't foreshadowed/seeded early enough didn't play them either. Don't remember whatever specific bits you're talking about here and would love to hear more (maybe in the spoiler thread for ease). Valentin fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 14:18
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FeatherFloat posted:Endwalker really is a story that expects you to be as excited about all the characters it hauled out for the curtain call as it is, and if someone can't get past their dislike of so-and-so to get to the underlying thematic effort underneath, it is probably going to fall flat. Shadowbringers was sentimental within the confines of a tighter story, Endwalker is sentimental with all the limits ripped off and the Final Fantasy poo poo dial cranked to 11, and that sort of is what it is. For me, this is pretty accurate. It doesn't help that almost every single one of my ten or so favorite characters in the game was relegated to a bit part (Lyna, for example) or is in side content I haven't gotten to yet (Yugiri is in the ranged dps storyline from what I've heard, but I main WHM, for an example of this). So a lot of the big curtain call stuff fell flat for me, because there were characters I wanted to spend more time with but couldn't (yet, for the role story characters). I agree 100% that this is by far the most Final Fantasy that FF14 has ever been. And for me, that's a problem, because I generally do not like Final Fantasy, I like FF14.
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Dec 20, 2021 14:21
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Zenos chat: I was mostly relieved that they didn't do the expected thing and make him another trial fight. Obviously that was his intention with Zodirak, but it didn't happen, and then when he talked about finding another god to hijack I was worried that he'd take over Hydaelyn, but that fight was blissfully uninterrupted by him. I don't think it made sense in that world for the WoL to be so uninterested in fighting him that we just let a murderous psychopath continue to exist when he was right in front of us multiple times, but whatever, the last fight was cool. Did it take away from the moment? Maybe a little, but tbh I don't think Endsinger was as strong of an end boss as Hades to start with (though I did have Metreion pegged as either the last dungeon or trial boss from basically the second she was introduced), so I was pretty content with the extra bit of spice at the end there.
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Dec 20, 2021 14:21
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Cythereal posted:For me, this is pretty accurate. It doesn't help that almost every single one of my ten or so favorite characters in the game was relegated to a bit part (Lyna, for example) or is in side content I haven't gotten to yet (Yugiri is in the ranged dps storyline from what I've heard, but I main WHM, for an example of this). So a lot of the big curtain call stuff fell flat for me, because there were characters I wanted to spend more time with but couldn't (yet, for the role story characters). FFXIV is pretty darn Final Fantasy, it must be said. What about it in particular is it that you like, out of curiosity? (Also condolences on your favs being minor players, from what I've been able to tell you are sufficiently gay for the ladies that all this Final Fantasy Hot Dude Nonsense that everyone's crazy about is bound to leave you cold. If I have one emotional criticism to level at FFXIV is that it has not given us a female character that's as starry-eyed and romanceable as the catboy or as tsundere with history as rat grandpa. I can respect it's approach to feeding my particular gaming demographic but they should strive for true self-indulgent equality!)
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Dec 20, 2021 14:31
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Valentin posted:Don't remember whatever specific bits you're talking about here and would love to hear more (maybe in the spoiler thread for ease). A running thread throughout that whole quest line is that Omega can't understand how you - and other organic beings it has previously fought - consistently outperform its expectations. It recognizes a correlation between the degree of overperformance and the subject's emotional state, but can't figure out the mechanism behind it. (because it is not aware of dynamis)
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Dec 20, 2021 14:34
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FeatherFloat posted:(Also condolences on your favs being minor players, from what I've been able to tell you are sufficiently gay for the ladies that all this Final Fantasy Hot Dude Nonsense that everyone's crazy about is bound to leave you cold. If I have one emotional criticism to level at FFXIV is that it has not given us a female character that's as starry-eyed and romanceable as the catboy or as tsundere with history as rat grandpa.) and also lyse is pretty into you, when she shows up in her new outfit at the end of stormblood there's a lot of obvious tension
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Dec 20, 2021 14:36
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FeatherFloat posted:What about it in particular is it that you like, out of curiosity? It feels like a very lived-in world, I think is the biggest part of FF14's appeal for me. It feels like a world inhabited by real people that they would plausibly build. It's the human moments that have always been my favorite part of this game - Endwalker, to its credit, made me like Urianger a whole lot more than I did before. I never disliked him, I was merely lukewarm, but Endwalker's time with him to humanize him is one of the expansion's highlights for me. Also, all of the third zone except for the second half of In From The Cold (the moment you-know-who turns up, it goes from my number one favorite quest in all of FF14 to a shitshow in my eyes). The more erratic, weird, and, well, (and I am so sorry for using this term) anime the game gets, the less I like it. The other big thing I adore about FF14, and here I do sincerely like Endwalker, is how optimistic and hopeful the game is. The number one thing that drove me away from WoW was how bleak, lovely, and full of war crimes and fascist apologia that game is.
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Dec 20, 2021 14:37
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Cythereal posted:The more erratic, weird, and, well, (and I am so sorry for using this term) anime the game gets, the less I like it.
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Dec 20, 2021 14:40
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Theris posted:A running thread throughout that whole quest line is that Omega can't understand how you - and other organic beings it has previously fought - consistently outperform its expectations. It recognizes a correlation between the degree of overperformance and the subject's emotional state, but can't figure out the mechanism behind it. (because it is not aware of dynamis) ah RIGHT I had, as with so many other things, written that off in my head as "yeah yeah, power of humanity, the indomitable will of the human spirit, etc. etc." and forgotten to actually look at it critically or remember it for later at all. funny how dynamis seems to be a real stumbling block for people when "power of emotions yadda yadda" is so widely accepted as genre convention that it's just background noise if you don't slap some jargon on it so people know to pay attention. Valentin fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 14:40
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I hate Zenos and I think he should have stayed the gently caress dead back in SB. I hate Zenos so much that even with all the trust Ishikawa and the team has garnered with ShB, I was 100% certain he was going to, if not outright ruin EW for me, at least be the cause of a "I loved it except for Zenos" disclaimer when talking about EW. I was dead wrong and I'm so loving glad I was. They stuck that particular landing in a way I wasn't expecting but holy poo poo did they stick it.
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Dec 20, 2021 14:42
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Is DRK still the worst feeling tank to sync lower level content due to the loss of TBN? Is there a tank that feels best? My tanks are all over level 60 but I haven't played them since EW.
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Dec 20, 2021 14:52
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Endorph posted:we had an entire beach episode with tataru Lyse is great but she's off doing her stuff in Ala Mhigo! Now if she were back in the party, here to help be the punchy-fighty contrast to all the brainy folk, I'd be pretty jazzed! Tataru is also fantastic but also kind of team mom, and the whole lalafell thing is likely a dealbreaker for many. Tho honestly to dip into Endwalker spoilers I feel that Venat is a fantastic character, one with that built-in historical link to the WoL, and I really appreciate what the story did with her narratively and emotionally. She hits some of the same notes as other big popular FFXIV characters, at least for me. I think, also, that contrast between genuine human moments and bombastic anime bullshit is a combo that works well for me. I really love this game's approach to story, and definitely prefer what it's doing over the murky mucky morally-unpleasant mess that WoW persists in being. Also the game itself is still fun as hell to play.
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Dec 20, 2021 14:52
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Endorph posted:we had an entire beach episode with tataru Yeah but like 95% of the fanbase (minimum) actually refuses to treat lalafell like adults.
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Dec 20, 2021 14:53
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Kyrosiris posted:Yeah but like 95% of the fanbase (minimum) actually refuses to treat lalafell like adults. They do look like Cabbage Patch Kids.
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Dec 20, 2021 14:55
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90 trial Zenos' line when he showed up at the end dispelled any annoyances that he was still around. "Is this your prey? Why does it still live?" is possibly one of my favorite lines in the whole game. I just started cracking up.
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Dec 20, 2021 15:01
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Sunday Morning posted:90 trial Zenos' line when he showed up at the end dispelled any annoyances that he was still around. "Is this your prey? Why does it still live?" is possibly one of my favorite lines in the whole game. I just started cracking up. I said this before but it's an all timer
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Dec 20, 2021 15:03
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Sunday Morning posted:90 trial Zenos' line when he showed up at the end dispelled any annoyances that he was still around. "Is this your prey? Why does it still live?" is possibly one of my favorite lines in the whole game. I just started cracking up. Agreed. It's really a culmination of what people claim about "he's interesting when he's excited". If more than maybe 2% of his screentime had that kind of energy and less "OH YOU ARE JUST LIKE ME, THE OTHER SIDE OF MY COIN, MY MIRROR" self-projecting horseshit I would've liked him more before the end.
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Dec 20, 2021 15:05
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Sunday Morning posted:90 trial Zenos' line when he showed up at the end dispelled any annoyances that he was still around. "Is this your prey? Why does it still live?" is possibly one of my favorite lines in the whole game. I just started cracking up. On the other hand, I audibly reacted "gently caress off! I'm trying to have an emotional moment here!" at that bit. To me, the only really satisfying way to end with that character would have been to ignore him and walk away. I hated that even picking answer 2, I was still forced into a fight with him after what should have been the whole climax of the story. It's the first time I've ever felt the need to skip the game's credits because I was that angry at the game.
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Dec 20, 2021 15:07
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Cope. Seethe. Mald.
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Dec 20, 2021 15:08
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Sunday Morning posted:90 trial Zenos' line when he showed up at the end dispelled any annoyances that he was still around. "Is this your prey? Why does it still live?" is possibly one of my favorite lines in the whole game. I just started cracking up. It's actually a really great character moment imo. Zenos, of all people, actually making a half-serious friendly jab? Turns out even he can grow up, just a little.
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Dec 20, 2021 15:08
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Sunday Morning posted:90 trial Zenos' line when he showed up at the end dispelled any annoyances that he was still around. "Is this your prey? Why does it still live?" is possibly one of my favorite lines in the whole game. I just started cracking up. I like that he’s able to instantly recognize what the Endsinger represents. Like despair is getting you down, homie?
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Dec 20, 2021 15:10
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Ibram Gaunt posted:Cope. Seethe. GarleMald.
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Dec 20, 2021 15:12
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XIV seems pretty heavy on the testosterone for specific characters as thirst traps, but I think that’s just its playerbase’s general orientation.Kyrosiris posted:Yeah but like 95% of the fanbase (minimum) actually refuses to treat lalafell like adults. As people they’re obviously adults, but their physical build is too childlike for anyone to go Emet-Selch-style thirst over them.
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Dec 20, 2021 15:12
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Mr. Nice! posted:I like that he’s able to instantly recognize what the Endsinger represents. Like despair is getting you down, homie? After all (still end MSQ) earlier in the story he explicitly says that he creates despair. Of course he knows exactly what the Endsinger is at first sight. He's also just about the only other person in the universe who can help fight it because he's functionally immune to feeling despair.
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Dec 20, 2021 15:15
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Cythereal posted:On the other hand, I audibly reacted "gently caress off! I'm trying to have an emotional moment here!" at that bit. That would be both narratively unsatisfying and very very stupid given what happened last time he was left to walk around and tried to get you attention. He's much like the primals, you can't just let them sit around because they do damage by their very nature. Basically what you want would be a bad story both from a textual and meta textual point of view ZenMasterBullshit fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 15:27
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FeatherFloat posted:Endwalker really is a story that expects you to be as excited about all the characters it hauled out for the curtain call as it is, and if someone can't get past their dislike of so-and-so to get to the underlying thematic effort underneath, it is probably going to fall flat. Shadowbringers was sentimental within the confines of a tighter story, Endwalker is sentimental with all the limits ripped off and the Final Fantasy poo poo dial cranked to 11, and that sort of is what it is. The only character who outright fell flat for me was elfboy whats his name from Heavensward. He didn't leave a lasting impression on me from Heavensward, and he certainly didn't either in Endwalker. His rivalry with the pirate boy fell flat for me as well cause I just didn't care. But that whole thing is pretty minor compared to every single other character thing that I loved
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Dec 20, 2021 15:32
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Perhaps it would be safer to have this conversation (the Zenos one) in the spoiler thread, just in case.
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Dec 20, 2021 15:35
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