Once again, spoiler free! In a strange turn of events, Aetheryte Radio has the most dissenting opinions that we've ever had! Join us as we disagree cordially over Endwalker!
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First half of Endwalker was 10/10 for me. Second half had terrible pacing and the whole end zone felt like a chore + the villain felt so rushed that the whole blabbering about despair and shit just didn't connect me at all. I enjoyed the start of Elpis a lot because of the lore with the Ascians, but that zone too quickly suffered from horrible quest design and pacing issues imo…
The overall quality of the expansion though (cutscenes, voice acting, the trials, etc) are amazing and lift it up a lot. But purely as a start to finish experience, I feel Shadowbringers is superior and a much more solid and developped story.
Here's how I know the story worked for me. Even at the mid point I was saying to my group, there is no way they're going to get me excited about a Zenos fight. And then they still got me.
Waiting for juicy spoilercast
New chara is definitely a villain
I feel like FusionX is perfectly explaining my thoughts about the expansion! haha
I also only cried once and it was indeed during that Urianger scene. That scene stands head and shoulders above the final zone stuff where they force it so hard to try to make you feel something by having the scions 'sacrifice' themselves with some jibberish about 'hope' while you already know they will be perfectly fine in the end. Because you know this, this has zero impact whatsoever. And they repeat this 4 times…
Shadowbringers was stronger for me. All of its pieces fit together so perfectly. Endwalker is not as tightly woven. There are a ton of callbacks, but they often feel shoehorned in to the point where I think they really needed to cut some of them out (or save them for later). I'm not sure I understand why they wanted to END so many plot threads– did they need to do this all at once?
Even though I found the very end of Endwalker really disappointing, I'm still really interested to see where it goes.
I used trusts once in shadowbringers and haven't since. At least for me I just want the dungeons or trials done as fast as possible xD the extra npc lines are not important when I run them
This was a painful episode to watch… I already finished the MSQ… but half the time i was not sure what everybody was talking about. I think you guys shoulda just done a full spoiler episode with a big warning… whoever hasn't finished the story they can opt to watch it on another time. This was so frustrating lol… but i love you guys.
In terms of the boss fights….OH MY GOD I LOVE THE NEW TANK BUSTER INDICATOR
1:01:58 Don't agree with Rook here. This is not why I don't like the final zone. I'm very much interested in those things, but the final zone doesn't convey those in a meaningful way because it's not well realized enough. It feels way too shallow to be meaningful. It felt like a philosophy buffet instead of a main course.
1:35 The final beat of the expansion was such a HUGE sour note for me. I had the same reaction to FusionX. It left a really bad taste in my mouth.
I think I can speak for all Dark Knight mains. We don't like living dead either. Also what we need is more sustain. Self healing ourselves will help with the complaints. Love the podcast.
Fusiox if you think the next villain would be better than Emet Selch, you would be very dissapointing. But that it doesnt top Emet doesnt think is dissapoiting, you know? The final villian works perfect as a final villian. That its dissapointing beacuse doesnt top Emet, does not make it a bad one made.
I quite dont understand well why you guys didnt liked the final part… honestly..
I think this would have been a much better show had you just Spoiler marked it and talked about everything. It's really hard to follow what you are talking about when you are using generic no spoilers terms for everything. Other than that it was good.
The first half of this show is pretty pointless. Talking about story for two hours "without spoilers" becomes mostly guesswork what you even talking about at best if you have done the msq and actually spoilers at worst if you haven't.
think like this, endwalker does not need a villain, but see a series of chaotic event to an end with awesome telling. ( no chaos pun intended ).
Never want to hear the word "thing" again, lol
Honesly that some peopleare tring to compare EW with the 8th season of Game of Thrones.. are being incredibly stupid and maybe should have payed more attention to the main story.