This is a fairly unstructured and unfiltered blog post, like some of the earlier pieces on this site. I’ve mostly used it to sort through my mental processes and just touch on a few things to whoever cares to listen. As such, it’s not been closely edited and I’ve not put the usual formatting into it. In short, there’s a wall of text ahead.
Allow me to assuage this by providing a soundtrack for your reading, courtesy of the actual best thing to come out of Endwalker.
You’re welcome.
As I said repeatedly in covering the games I liked of 2021, Endwalker was not among them. While the gameplay and mechanical changes remain as solid and enjoyable to play as ever, the core of Final Fantasy 14’s appeal has long been its quality story. As such, even the strengths of its latest expansion were increasingly hard to just simply enjoy for me, built as they are on a foundation of sand and rot. There are better games that I’ll just play for the sake of play; what makes Final Fantasy 14 (and particularly the Shadowbringers expansion) one of my all time favourites is that it transcends the sum of its parts. I fully intend to go through and do a thorough breakdown of Endwalker’s narrative flaws in an article.
This is not that article. This is an article that I am largely using to get my thoughts in order and put a voice to why this process has been such a struggle for me.
There’s two main reasons why the Endwalker critique has been slow going in its writing and development. The first is a matter of scale. There are so many problems in Endwalker’s narrative that to accurately and effectively cover them all is a massive undertaking. Even if I only get the larger ones, that still entails a lot of research. I’m always going back through my notes and screenshot folder from both Shadowbringers and Endwalker, and having to source other examples when references go back further than that.
Furthermore, a lot of the aspects that I’ve written in my coverage so far aren’t Endwalker specific. It’s more a critique of writing styles in general. I’ve tried to demonstrate the importance of narrative consistency and worldbuilding cohesion. I’ve attempted to cover why pushing a message or theme at the expense of consistency ends up making for a lesser experience than having it both ways (like Shadowbringers did). That last one is especially common in a lot of media properties nowadays, where a narrative’s setting and characters are effectively co-opted to make a political statement for our world at the expense of the fictional one’s cohesion.
All of these are writing decisions that Endwalker makes a lot of. The combination of covering these general points in addition to going over the many and varied issues of Endwalker’s plot specifically is a massive and daunting undertaking.
But the difficulty of the task ahead of me is only the first reason I’m struggling. The second is far more personally daunting. Simply put: I am so in the minority for my dislike of Endwalker’s story that I am now basically a pariah as a result. People who were happy to sit and discuss the intricacies and nuance of Shadowbringers’ plot with me for hours now refuse to hear my negative stance on Endwalker. Discussing my points in various Discord chats has seen plenty of snide comments and ad hominem responses rather than actual good faith conversations. Those that do humour me exist, but most just don’t share my viewpoint or seem to get where I’m coming from, no matter how many specific points I make.
Endwalker has been incredibly well received, by players and critics alike. I’ve not seen a single content creator actually sharing my sentiments or acknowledging the points at all. The only place where like minded observations are being made are among a handful of my friends, and then very occasionally on the official forums or Reddit. Even then, those points and arguments are usually met with scorn or an endless wave of counterarguments (sometimes on both sides) and then downvoted to oblivion.
In short, I’m standing directly in opposition to the overwhelming public opinion. And no matter what kind of viewpoint or belief it might be, that is always an impossibly daunting place to find oneself in.
I’m no stranger to having some comparatively controversial or less widely favoured takes, but I’m usually doing so from a position that is easier to understand or many on the other side. I don’t think The Last of Us 2 is particularly good about telling its story, but there has been an endless back and forth on that topic since day 1. I routinely state that I don’t think Skyrim is a particularly good game due to a total lack of depth, no matter how much dopamine you can wring from its simple and accessible loop of adventure and exploration. That’s probably the one that gets me in the most arguments, though every further re-release of the game sees more people start to see the merit of it.
Fighting against the tide of popular opinion on Endwalker has me feeling incredibly frustrated. Worse, it has me feeling alone and ostracised from many, and closed off places of conversation that I previously would’ve enjoyed. And it’s not like I’m trying to hate the thing out of spite or for unfounded reasons. It’s not just that I don’t like it as much as Shadowbringers — that’s an incredibly hard act to follow, and I get it — but I actually feel like Endwalker is the worst story of any FF14 expansion. The reason I am trying to put so much effort and thoroughness into my critique is because I do care. It’s not because I want to hate it, but because I feel betrayed by something I care for. This is a world, characters, and storyline that has resonated increasingly well for me over the years, but now it’s just turning to ash.
Yet people are still vibing with it. Is it just because the themes are fundamentally good ones, even if the execution is contradictory or wrong? I just don’t know. I’ve tried to revisit it and give it a fair shot, or see if there’s something I’m missing. But if anything, those efforts only exposed even more issues on closer revision than I noticed my first time through Endwalker’s main story. It’s a goddamn mess. It just boggles my mind that more people are unwilling or unable to see even some of the issues here. Instead, it’s being endlessly praised by so many people. And the biggest dread of all comes from feeling like that sentiment is going to return to the writing team and have them just double down on these fundamental issues, further damning any future story developments in upcoming patches.
And I get that this is inevitably going to sound elitist; like I’m among the only handful who sees the issues, and therefore that makes me correct, oh woe is me. Believe me, I’ve been struggling with that too the entire time I’ve been writing this. But that only further accentuates that kind of mental conflict I’ve been facing while trying to properly compile everything. As I’ve said, there’s a lot to cover; there’s also a lot of counter-arguments to my points that I am also preparing rebuttals for, because I’ve seen a lot of those responses and have points to make against those too. It just… sucks. It sucks a lot, feeling that something I love has turned out so terribly and the points I’m trying to make are either ignored or disregarded without being really being engaged with or considered. And all the while I’m doubting myself or wondering if I’m the broken one, not being able to see what clearly must be good if so many are enjoying it.
The real trouble with critiquing Endwalker is, ultimately, that the vast majority of people who have played Endwalker don’t want it critiqued. They’re not doing it themselves, or only doing so in a positive and flattering way. But criticism and discussion of such media — even the greatest examples of it, and things we love — can and should be carried out. It’s only by looking at these things and properly analysing how something does or doesn’t work that we can use that to further grow and develop our own undertakings. We don’t learn or grow in a vacuum, and everything we do is built on the backs of the communities around us that help us hone our craft.
So there’s my dilemma. As it stands, I’m always constantly questioning myself on whether or not I should continue my games media work or even just abandon writing of any kind. I love what I do, but my finances do not, and I have to judge whether or not pursuing this kind of stuff is worth the headache when the returns are non-existent. Normally, that would be a no-brainer of a question: the value of my writing — non-fiction and fiction alike — is worth more to me than any amount of money. I get value out of what I do even if nobody else reads it or participates.
But if we then apply this to specifically the Endwalker critique, I then have to evaluate it further. It’s a topic that brings me little joy and pleasure even if I’m not yelling into the uncaring void with my arguments. The deeper I dive, the more issues I find, and the more it starts to stain even my experience of just playing the game even outside of Endwalker specific content. And I’d ultimately only be writing it for the benefit of a half dozen of my friends who already largely share my views to varying degrees, because few if anyone else seems willing to actually engage with it or me on the matter. Is there still value to it if no one enjoys it and nobody is actually willing to use it to grow and improve, themselves? Maybe, but the struggle to find out has been really taxing.
There’s always that consideration of “Well, people clearly don’t want to hear it and they’re enjoying themselves. Should I really ruin their fun?” And part of me says no, because I don’t want to bring people down or make everyone miserable because I think we’ve got enough of that in our hellscape of a world as is. But on the other hand… if my points about the story are enough to shatter your personal feelings about it and damage your experience, then maybe it should be evaluated if you ever really thought strongly of it at all. We should be able to look at things in detail and still get the emotional highs; they need not be mutually exclusive.
Something shouldn’t be entirely reliant on immediate emotional resonance to gauge quality, after all; things we revisit usually don’t have the same appeal. The very best and most well-constructed media out there ends up becoming timeless and continuously uplifting to experience for just that reason, though. When I revisited Shadowbringers, it still held up just as well, and the nuances that I was now able to spot only added to the experience rather than bring it down. There’s incredible quality in the craftsmanship and detail there, not just my feelings carrying me through to an unearned payoff.
If nothing else, I want to point these things out so that more of us can aspire to reach those highs, rather than settle for whatever “design by corporate committee” work is in vogue at any given moment.
Book of Boba Fett is not very good, by the way, despite some compelling moments and individual scenes. Just as an aside.
Ugh. So yeah, that’s how I’m feeling about the whole thing right now. And no amount of people telling me “Oh come on, the story isn’t that bad” is going to stop it from actually being that bad. I really cannot understate the magnitude of problems to cover, let alone fathom how this story came about in the wake of everything previously. And even attempting to go through it all or try to engage with people about it just makes me question if it’s even worth doing so.
Endwalker spends a hell of a lot of time trying to force the message of “You’re not alone, we’re in this together” into my face at every opportunity. And yet here I am, feeling completely alone and left a social pariah in a sea of people who just don’t want to hear or consider what I have to say. Go figure.
If nothing else is ever said by me about Endwalker again, then let my review be summarised by a quote from the best character in it:
Well, that’s me at least trying to put these feelings into some semblance of order. Now if you actually do want to talk to me about Endwalker and have such a discussion, please do so. I would honestly, genuinely relish it no matter how much we end up disagreeing on things. As for the rest of the critique and analysis, well… we’ll see how that goes. It really isn’t a well-written or constructed story at all and I’m guaranteed to miss things even if I do tackle it. Until that time, I guess!
Delfeir vs. the Backlog 