Endwalker story rant

 Hello everyone and here is another blog entry about not BlizzCon. Have to throw these out as BC is less than four days away and after that gaming media will focus on them till the Fan Fest in mid May.

Anyroad our current topic is the story of Endwalker. Of course with Endwalker wrapping up a story about eight years in the making it is hard to talk about it without spoling everything before. So I won't even try to avoid that. Seriously, don't read after this point if you haven't reached patch 5.4 and maybe want to play the game. Gonna put in the logo just so you don't accidentally read spoilery stuff.

Sooo where was I? Ahh yes, the story. So one of the strengths of the FFXIV story is that not only are the expansion stories connected, but those connections usually make sense and neatly connect with what you did previously. If you are a fan of the Matrix series you are likely familiar with the scene where the Merovingian ruins the pacing of the Matrix Reloaded by talking about causality way too long. Well causality is important here. So what happened since Yoshida took over?

In 1.X the Empire attacked Eorzea for enlightenment, or cultural genocide, depending on your view of the Empire. Good old fashioned warfare didn't work, so Legatus Mulan van Darnus decided to grab the effin Moon and yeet it into Eorzea, Pretty straightforward. But, to the delight of Star Wars fans, Dalamud wasn't a moon. It was a space station. With a very pissed dragon inside. Things went tits up and it took a five year timeskip to make thing normal again.

In 2.X it turned out that all that moon grabbing and dragon release unearthed some interesting things. Like way too advanced ancient superweapons. Midget version of Gordon Gecko really want those for political reasons, so monarchs are assassinated, allies are betrayed and the Hero is forced to flee to the only place not affiliated with the Empire or greedy midgets.  That place being Ishgard, a theocracy at war with dragons.

In 3.X in exchange for refuge you help Ishgardians end the war with the dragons, which includes peaceful talks with those who listen, and murdering those who don't. Very democratic. Anyway the very evil and very strong leader of the bad dragons is killed. Things is, dragons store their power in their eyes. Instead of squishing them we just throw them into a bottomless chasm. Turns out the chasm had a bottom where the badguys found the eyes and gave them to a revolutionary who used them to attack a border with the Empire in hopes of starting a war. The war does get started and since you can't stop it you go there and make sure the war is won.

In 4.X you do a very good job fighting against the Empire. Too good in fact. So to solve this problem, the founder of the Empire decides to kill you with a chemical weapon. Genius. What he couldn't forsee is that in the future the few survivors open up the raid from 2.0 and release a friend who was chilling there ever since. Said friend, who is now very long lived, helps the descendants of the survivors gather data from raids we did in 3.0 and 4.0 to figure out how to travel in time and between paralel dimensions. This not only helps wrap up a different subplot from 3.0 (Arbert and his friends) but saves our sorry arses as the First is being flodded with Light. If it is consumed the light will overflow into the Source (our dimension) and the chemical weapon hits stronger the more light a world has.

And we finally got to 5.X where we currently are. We saved two worlds and killed the leadership of the Ascians (people with scary red masks, dark hooded cloaks and spikes everwhere for decoration. Yep, they are the villains for this story arc). What can go wrong? Well we killed the leadership so the whole faction dissolved into Anarchy. And just as The Beach got ruined the moment the Hatter died and Aguni took the helm, with no Emet-Selch or Elidibus to control all the nasty little buggers murder began. Fandaniel is now free to pursue his life goal, which is to reenact the end times that the old Amaurotians could only solve by sacreficing half their population to summon the god of darkness. Even worse, he manages to do it.

Sooo what do we know of the story? Not much really. It is all hush hush and Sqare Enix would be stupid to spoil it. Somehow Fandaniel's towers help recreate the end times, and we will at one point for some reason go to the Moon. The real one that is still there, not the one Mulan yeeted in 1.X.

What has me most curious is how does Fandango know how to cause the apocalypse? Supposedly he isn't even as strong as the original Fandaniel. Plus the end was a mysterious sound from beneath the earth that messed with the rules of reality. the Amaurotians couldn't figure out what it really was. And we are talking about people that can conjur up totally inhabited cities just to prove a point. There is something really fishy about that guy.

Another key point to consider is that the Ascians pretty much won. Onlyfans of course wants everyone to die, while the ascians as a whole want to resurrect Zodiark, and ask him to bring back the convocation. The convocation being the 14 Ascians leading them back in Amaurot. So what can happen with the end days? There are four possible scenarios ranging from grimdark to teddy bear tripe.

1. They can't figure out shit and everyone dies.
2. They attempt to summon Zodiark to solve the problem again, but since they are not as strong as the Amaurotians, all their life force is drained and fule the summoning, so everyone dies.
3. Zodiark is summoned succesfully which was the end game of the Ascians since the Yoshida era began.
4. Some convenient plot device allows the good guys to avert the end times without summoning big Z and with very little loss of life. One or two major characters, tops.

Only number four would be a defeat for the villains, but that sugar coated nonsense would make me cancel my sub, uninstall and go play Yoko Taro games instead. Seriously we solve too many problems with major deaths. Shadowbringers sort of gets a pass as the whole expansion was the undoing of mass murder. So who will die? Likely not Thancred as he is the muggle. The average character we need to help us in a group of weird magic using nonhumans. Obviously we won't die, because Yoshida is already planning 7.0. However Zodiark coming back isn't that unlikely. Not only did Fandaniel suggest to Zenos that he should hunt Zodiark, but the new 8-man raid for 6.0 will feature Lahabrea. A character who has been riddiculously dead since 3.0 Like not even Rasputin would have survived that, dead. His soul was absorbed into a dragon eye that had its power drained like two times before it was squished. Yet he is back to have a proper bossfight with the Warrior of Light and maybe get his own theme song.

In short it seems highly likely that the Zodiark VS Hydaelin arc will end with a fight against Zodiark himself. And I bet whatever Fandaniel is hiding will shock us all.

Due to the nature of the story, this blog entry was more about what we already know than some new stuff, but hopefully you enjoyed this recap of why we are where we are in the story. Or you spoiled youself but got interested in the game in the process. Anyway, see you after BlizzCon.