Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker

Fascinating conclusion to a very unique narrative experience. Shaky at times due to the philosophical concepts it decides to play with, but comes out the other end with a very satisfying conclusion. Soundtrack makes me wanna cry.

Final Fantasy XIV has grown so large that it has become a Kingdom Hearts unto itself. You WILL yell when Biblo Babo from patch cycle 4.3 returns for their big hero moment. You WILL cry when a character makes a Hope vs. Despair speech for the 20th time that hour. You ARE gonna be frothing at the mouth when it comes to beating the baddie: "Yeah, YEAH LET ME KICK THIS GUY'S ASS." Endwalker delivers on the hype, but XIV has always had higher ambitions than just hype.

Endwalker represents the sprawling finale to a 10 year story arc and it is downright miraculous that it mostly holds up.
However, my Kingdom Hearts comparison is something of a back-handed compliment. XIV is usually more concerned with being a political thriller/deconstructed fairytale, whereas KH is (barring perhaps the first one) just mostly kinda stupid, which I mean as its own kinda back-handed compliment.
What do I mean by this? Well, that genres set expectations. XIV is fairly grounded, KH is a feber dream acid trip. Let's get into the consequences of that.

A problem is that the stakes in Endwalker are on such an intergalactic level (as it tends to be in KH) that a lot of dialogue gets muddled in repetitiousness of abstract ideals. I don't know if it's a Japanese cultural thing, but a lot of writing for mass market Japanese cultural products seems keen on spelling things out for an audience that are either asleep at the wheel or unable to read subtext. When you outright say what the message is so many times, it loses its meaning. Darkness darkness darkness light light light. The last hours of EW are quite guilty of this, and its repetitiousness dulls the very real edge this story has.

As Kingdom Hearts, it's also far too guilty of the fake-out death. We've had so many in XIV that when a character dies for the Greater Good, I am going to assume that they're actually completely fine. Goofy isn't fucking dead, he just got bonked on the head with a rock. It's just emotional fodder for the WoL/Mickey Mouse to clench their fist and say "they'll pay for this."
It doesn't work as well in XIV because it's usually rooted in believable human behaviour. It's not very Mickey Mouse when the refugees you try and save commit suicide because they think you're gonna subjugate them like they have you. (Incidentally, can you tell that my favorite part is the Garlemald chapter?)

I suppose XIV has always straddled this line, particularly in the MSQ. It's anime as fuck, but I've grown fond of its pretensions towards game-of-thrones-ness, and witcher-likenesses. Endwalker tips the hardest into shonen anime, to both my own hope and despair.

There is a lot that Endwalker gets right, though. So many details are handled with finesse and confidence. Somehow, the way the Ascians are treated here makes Shadowbringers even better in retrospect, which is rare for even the best of sequels. The lopporites are delightful little weirdos, what are essentially Gray Aliens dressed up as cute little rabbits trying to learn about human customs. There are far too many examples to list out, just for how huge this expansion is, so I'll just have to say that most of it holds up and leave it at that.

The big takeaway from EW, and perhaps all of XIV so far, is a pronounced rejection of essentialism. Every person or creature from every culture has their own story, and you can only ever truly *know* them by going out there and meeting them face-to-face. This is why each emotional bond feels earned, because it's been made in spite of race, class, religion, blood feuds, generational trauma that divides the people of eorzea. It's remarkable that this ending is able to tap into 10 years of creating those bonds

(Oh, the gameplay? It's alright. MMO fair, you know. I wish they returned a bit to the older dungeon designs, having only corridors for three expansions straight has grown old. Raids too, those old ARR raids are weird. I miss that frictiveness.)