Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker
The fourth expansion to Square Enix’s ten-year old MMO (or thirteen-year old MMO - depends on if you count version 1.0) that served as the fourteenth installment to the Final Fantasy series (or the seventy-second installment - depends on if you count, like, Final Fantasy VII Snowboarding for mobile phones circa 2005 and whatnot), Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker was, I suspect, meant to be the last expansion for Final Fantasy XIV.
Please note that I have zero interview or other bits of hard evidence to support this position. My basis for assuming this is:
The post-Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers patch content involved wrapping up pretty much all of the remaining loose threads in the plot, including concluding the arcs of two villains, each of whom could have had whole expansions dedicated to them.
This expansion involves fighting the Final Days, which is kind of the sole remaining foe in this setting at this point.
FFXIV is getting long in the tooth (the game is as old as Final Fantasy XI was when FFXIV launched, now).
In order to get to the new content, new players have to play through the story content from all the previous expansions, which is enjoyable, but also an endeavor spanning hundreds of hours. This tremendous tower of content is only going to become more of a deterrent for onboarding folks, and the issue is probably only going to get worse over time.
The expansion is called ‘Endwalker’.
and indeed! Endwalker does, in fact, finish the plot. The story is now done. GG, folks, pack it in. Surprise, though - FFXIV ended up getting really popular during the pandemic, and SE’s 2020 profits were nontrivially buoyed by the game’s revenue. As such, the show must go on. I’m not super sure what this will look like in, like, 2028, and frankly I’m a little nervous to find out. They really should wrap this up and release FFXIV-2 or somesuch. Perhaps that game would have antialiasing, which is such a weird thing for this game not to have.
They’re apparently doing graphical updates on some of the older assets, although graphical aging does hurt FFXIV less than other MMOs (antialiasing not withstanding), since a big selling point for the base game in 2009 was that they went really hard on the graphics (a little too hard, in places - version 1.0 apparently contained this bridge that had an absurd number of polygons for 2009 and it tanked the framerate of people who walked over it). As such, a lot of the old assets still look pretty fine. They’re looking less fine than they used to, though, and they honestly hit the upper graphical limit of this engine years ago. While I do like the transmogs in this game so much more than WoW’s (read: robes actually look good and chest pieces are 3d models rather than being, uh, a texture), but newer games, even in the MMO genre, are well past FFXIV in terms of triangles and texture quality. Also: fog. The fog in this game just looks like they reduced the draw distance. I hate it. It makes the game boring to look at. I get that’s how fog looks in real life, but I don’t care. Give me rolling volumetric fantasy fog like in ELDEN RING. I also don’t care if you melt the GPU of anyone playing on a PS4.
Anyways, the actual expansion. It’s good! My main gripe is that the antagonists in this one are comparatively ~meh~ relative to the ones we’ve gotten previously. The previous expansion (Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers) gave us an immortal asshole who was fond of taking naps, hanging out, and had a pretty understandable reason for wanting to murder everyone. I loved that guy. He was great. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker gives us an immortal asshole who wants to murder everyone because… he’s kinda weird that way? Not really a fan of that guy. We only properly hung out once, and that was when he invited me to dinner and wouldn’t even let me eat the food. Very rude. The previous guy would’ve been a much more gracious host.
The gameplay is still your standard MMO faire, nothing unexpected. The place where the game shines, however, is in presentation. The animations here have always been slick and well done, but the new classes (and the new abilities for the old classes) are real shiny and nice. Though, of the two new jobs, I’ve only played Sage, which has become my go-to healer because I am now intimidated by the number of buttons Astrologian has. If you’ve ever played an MMO and felt disappointed by how few buttons you get at max level, FFXIV is great because almost all the jobs have so goddamn many. Which is actually becoming kind of a problem, because with every expansion every class gets more mechanics and it becomes somewhat hard for me to keep them all in my brain and my UI workable. This game supports playing on a controller, and I don’t know how.
Speaking of presentation, the music, always a priority for the development team, is as fabulous as always. Last year I was soloing Tomb of Sargeras from World of Warcraft: Legion and I was struck by how little Blizzard seemed to care about the music that played during their big dramatic confrontation (‘WoW has music?’ is a not-uncommon joke in the community). Creative Team III, conversely, cares so much. From the excessive bombast of the part where you fight anti-god to the subdued melody of a cursed radio network to the slamming guitar riffs that accompany the final climactic fight, there’s a reason there’s a bazillion YouTube covers of these tracks. My favorite is the music that plays in the final zone - it starts out muted and simple, but grows as you progress through the area and the situation grows ever more desperate and lonely. Eventually you’re standing atop of this place, alone but with this fucking track going full tilt in your ears and yes I did shed a tear thank you very much.
The Bottom Line
In the end, I’m pretty happy with how Endwalker turned out. It did some things that I didn’t quite agree with (I do still think they need to bring this game to a close), but since it’s still going it would seem I’m ride or die for this game and its delightful melodramas.