"Welcome to Endwalker"'s moment would probably be the final scene with Quintus. It's pretty much the exact moment the empire was truly dead as we know it.
I'd say the entire Garlemald Sequence counts as that moment. From finding those two girls, to dealing with Quintus and watching him spiral, the whole sequence is just as harrowing. And then it is topped by "In From The Cold".
As one of streamers said "Hitler in the Bunker vibes" for that one. I would agree that that scene really hits hard (like entire Garlemald arc, ngl, but that one is truly powerful)
Welcome to: ARR: Returning to The Waking Sands Heavensward: The Vault Stormblood: Doma Castle ending cutscene Shadowbringers: THIS Endwalker: THIS IS THE LV. 83 TRIAL?!
Thinking about the sin eater that turned her in terms of revenge is probably the wrong way to look at it. That eater was also once a person, and whether they turned during the Flood or following the Flood by another eater, they're still a victim of the Light
For me, Welcome to Endwalker was when you kill what you assumed would be the final boss at 83 and cause the apocalypse and it's still surprising even though you were told he was created to hold back the apocalypse. EW made me feel like I kept coming down mountains with bad news. "God is dead. The world is ending."
It's not just that. The biggest threats in the game are resolved by that point. (Spoiler break) . . . . . . . . . Tempering is resolved with the Porxies and the Warding Scales. The Empire is gone, and we see the last shot of the war. Bosses that could have been Trials unto themselves fall at the end of the 81 and 83 dungeons. So when we hit the level 83 Trial, and we hear that final boss music... *Where do we go from here?!*
For me it was when Zenos body snatches us and says "I'm gonna go kill all of your friends wearing your face, toodles!" and you have to fight and claw and naw your way back to the Scions (before it was patched to be easier)
No scene that came after Tesleen came even close to those levels of horror or viscerality, but the fact this is both one of the earliest scenes in the MSQ and basically your proper introduction to Sin Eaters make it one of the best tone-setters in XIV It doesn't matter how relatively tame the rest of ShB was- you saw a white creature, you thought of Tesleen
To be fair, there might not of been as strong, but there is other scenes that do have the undertones of horror about them. Such as the soylent green moments in Eulmore. Or the Fairy kings feast. Or post patch "Burn out the bad" But Welcome to shadowbringers is very much a quick gut punch rather than the undertone route that the game tends to prefer. (Looking at the rape dungeon Sestasha, Or the Edda story, Or the treatment of prisoners of the Garleans for some examples.)
@@Eclypsia13 the mjol scene is exactly why I mentioned "viscerality" It wasn't as visually grotesque, but I'd be damned if it didn't shake me to my core. Anyway, my point wasn't that ShB didn't have horror, it's that they didn't need to rely on constant gut punches because of that insane first impression
and she always rises again and again everytime you do the dungeon xD that would be cruel...so i think of it as "a story retold again and again with other characters"
Another part of why it hits so hard is we see Tesleen save Halric by cutting off the sin eater's wing tip thinking it was the wing in whole initially. We also think that will give us the chance to finish it off, that it will flee, wounded, or that Allise would rush in and finish it.
I love that you pointed at Hildibrand there. A lot of newer players don't realize how important his questline is to the overall game. Not from a story aspect, but from a technical aspect. The number of design tricks they were able to figure out has been extremely important. With the Hildibrand quests, its ok if its a little janky, but in the MSQ that same jank can spoil a big moment.
Remembering that this scene was actually toned down from initial intention made realize that there are still people who really want to make T-rated game actually T and not glorified E (or as for movies where rating PG nowadays means "Practically G") This scene singlehandedly made me feel that Shadowbringers is something special - realistically other expansions had powerful moments but this one hits like a truck also because it's the second time we see Alisae joining forces with us yet being unable to do anything to save someone we like (like it happened with Gabu).
The fact about this scene is that it emphasizes what EVERY eater transformation is like. It really makes you think about Vauthry forcing this transformation and the slaughtering the resulting eater for dinner. Let alone how this very fate almost becomes yours in what I presume would be an even worse transformation. We needed to see the monsters and feel that in order to understand the gravity. That's why, while things like Quintus unaliving himself and Zodiark popping up at level 83 are argued for Endwalker, I actually felt the closest to this at an unexpected moment: Vanaspati, when the mother loses all hope, transforms, and then causes a chain reaction for her children to transform too. You could also argue the final boss, since he was a character we met and helped out, only to become a blasphemy, but we didn't see it happen sadly. So I'm left not feeling that one the way we do with Tesleen. And yes, that is a weaker Welcome to Endwalker moment, but it and Matsuya's near transformation stuck with me, since it showed what we were fighting to stop.
The scenes near the end where the WoL is near to bursting with light, their very soul almost cracking from too much aether.... that was us fighting off Tesleen's fate with every inch of willpower.
"Let alone how this very fate almost becomes yours in what I presume would be an even worse transformation." I think this singular thought was what made me fear for my WoL's life when the Crystal Exarch, the only one who could save him from the corruption, was kidnapped by Emet-Selch. Just the idea of my WoL dying in excruciating agony like Tesleen, or even worse, and the visual of looking outside the inn room window and seeing the light returning, rendering our efforts as meaningless was enough to make me bawl my eyes out and be unable to continue the story for a full 2 h after that.
Truly is the "Nina" moment, if one has watched Fullmetal Alchemist, they would know what I mean. I do love horror, didnt expect it in a Final Fantasy game (at the time, I only played this one, played more now.) But despite other Final Fantasy games having dark and scary moments, this comes to the top in my head.
I think it is important and GOOD that only Shadowbringers has a true and agreed upon "Welcome to ShB!" moment, because that was the whole point of the expansion :) Shadowbringers as a whole is an expac about subverting the norm (light is evil and darkness is good, heroes caused the calamity and villains end it), so it needed a clear breaking point where it shows "this expac is gonna be DIFFERENT and have a different tone" in a way that the others just don't require. And that isn't to say there aren't emotionally resonant and important moments in other expansions, ofc there are, like the Banquet, the Vault, Moon Bunny patch, a certain gun and flag moment, and so on. But those don't fundamentally upset our expectation and they aren't meant to be, they are meant to feed into the larger narrative and enhance it, not upset it. If anything, I'd say the closest an expac has come to needing that kind of moment again is Dawntrail, because since it is hailed as a new beginning, it needs a moment that makes it clear "ah, this is the new direction we are heading towards from now on". But I'm still playing through it, so I have no opinions on that topic yet 🤭
Endwalker has a lot of moments like this in different ways. The suicide of Quintus, the Final Days coming to Radz-at-Han comes to mind most consistently. Though generally speaking Shadowbringers all the way leading up to the end of Endwalker's main MSQ is an era I don't think we'll get to see again, and if we do it wont be for awhile.
I think it's unfair to say nothing like this happens before this when Rhalgars Reach being attacked followed a similar formula and, in my opinion, pulled it off even better being the 1st unwinnable battle and introducing Zenos.
@@rightwing707 Wuk Lamat is amazing though. Not SE's fault players didnt listen to anything they said before endwalker even dropped, nor what emet said during endwalker before the final dungeon, nor paid attention to what dynamis is.
Another thing that makes it so impactful is that it is a fate worse than death being inflicted on a person who absolutely did not deserve it. Tesleen was a gentle soul in a dying world and that , in my opinion, is what truly makes the absolutely gruesome transformation stick.
i mean, it appears very late into heavensward though. tesleen's death appears very early in shadowbringers, especially if you go check on alisae first instead of alphinaud
Oh no no no..... end game was the beginning of its post apocalypse, everything before was like an open scar that would not heal, with the way light works in the game they where basically in a slow 100 year apocalypse nearing its end, the pain in a moment a scar forms hurts like hell, they had that hurt for 100s years, the post game was finally the healing process, the post apocalypses. As Alphinaud said, the people of the first are F****G resilient, that was literal hell on earth!
I think the "Welcome to Shadowbringers" is our Emotional Vampire term for "This is a moment we are drawn to that we can get the most out of people's reactions." So, it's easy to pick places that are emotional highs one way or another to be the "Welcome" Moment. I think the welcome to Heavensward moment was the turning point from giving back Hraesvalgr's eye, finding out the truth up to the end of the vault, seeing Haurchefant die, and Edmont lose it knowing he lost his son. If one of those emotional bullets didn't hit you, the other will. We've been running on all cylinders to that point getting win after win. Then we lose. Hard. Stormblood's is likewise, the opposite. We've been on the backfoot almost the entire expansion. People's hearts have been broken by despair, they can't lose again. Yet at that second fight against Zenos, you've lost again, just like before. But then, those dejected Citizens are finally lead to battle. They charge the field carrying farming tools to fight. And that bravery leads to The Azim Steppe, which likewise finishes with the Nadaam, and then Taking that pure joy of seeing those boss mechanics that put you through some trouble in the fight before being used FOR you, and rolling it into the seige of Doma Castle, where we misplace our dommy mommy and haggard samurai. It's very nearly a non-stop rollercoaster from that one moment. And this is the welcome spot, because everything before has been restart after restart after stumble and fall, which honestly taints everyone's perception when the time comes to fight for Gyr Abania. Endwalker's isn't written in the game, there's no words in the game for it alteast, but there's many of contenders for it. But the very first I can think of is literally everyone's face when they realize "Wait, We're only lv83, What the Duck is the rest of this Expansion!?" Editing in: Also, This means another point of peak "Welcome to Shadowbringers" is stepping out of the cave in the Tempest and seeing Amaurot for the first time.
This is the terrifying moment in the game for me. I had basically the same reaction as Alisaie when we both saw Tesleen transform. And just realizing that Tesleen died in EXCRUCIATING AGONY right before our very eyes was just horrifying!
The Sineaters aren't just similar to zombies; they are indeed zombies. It's explained in the healer role quests for Shadowbringers. They're fully dead, they're just being puppeteered by light. It's why the Cardinal Virtues exist to begin with, since they're corpses later raised into undeath by being infused with light.
I think the big difference between Shadowbringers and other expansions is that Shadowbringers starts with everything going bad much earlier. Or rather has gone bad before we as the WoL even show up. Other expansions, it takes like 30-50% of the expansion to get to around to showing the real problem the WoL is having to deal with. So the "welcome to xpack" simply happens far later, not necessarily reducing the impact of their moments, but also coming in too late to set the tone for the entire expansion, as much of it has already happened. DT Spoiler Below: I'm of the opinion the Welcome to DT moment is the Wuk Lamat vs Bakool Ja Ja fight you control. Because I think it underscores what DT is going for: And that is one of hope and positivity. Not only is it one of the cooler moments of the entire expansion so far(damn that Warrior ult was sick). Its also the turning point for Wuk Lamats character where her positivity, passion, and hope gives her the strength to put her ideals into practice. Back up her beliefs, and also exemplify them. People associate "welcome to X" moments as dark moments. But the point of DT is not darkness at all in my opinon, even if it has that in Zoraal Ja and Sphene. Which is kind of why they don't hit as hard as villains as someone like Emet does.
The "welcome to endwalker" moment for me was right after beating Zodiark. You find out that was all planned, and now the end of the world is set in motion. Getting back and seeing fire raining from the sky, hearing the man talking about the sins that will unmake us, the fact the sky was horribly reminiscent of the end of 1.0, that was my definitive "welcome to endwalker" moment Edit: something I noticed that just makes this all even more tragic is when you fight her later, the way she moves implies she's still fighting against her transformation, trying to hold herself back, to stop herself from fighting you but failing despite her best efforts. Tesleen was the most tragic character in the whole game from beginning to the bitter end
To make matters even worse, shes one of the boss level Eaters in Holminster Switch, and hatched from that cocoon nearly instantly Which means all of the cocoons we see in Holminster... We arrived mere moments too late to save those people.
I had a welcome to ARR moment The fate of the Flame sergeant I team up to fight Ifrit, was trully shocking for me, something I've never forgotten The fact that later on a cure for tempering was discovered, made it even worse
I stopped playing for a few years right when Stormblood dropped. I think it was fatigue. Shadowbringers brought me back and then I stopped playing again after completing the Shadowbringers msq but out of the expansions I have played so far Shadowbringers is my favourite. I liked the concept of becoming the Warrior of Darkness and the fact that this adventure took place on the First allowing us to step away from the Source for a moment. We even got to team up with Ardbert. There were plot developments still going on in the Source but exploring the First was like a breath of fresh air. This moment drove home the seriousness of the plight the denizens of the First were faced with and I love the Paradisiacal Predicaments🎵music. It was also great foreshadowing(or forebrightning) for what was to soon become of the WoD. Stormblood was interesting as I had to play through that for the first time also (no story skip back then) but I enjoyed Shadowbringers a lot more. Fatigue was why I stopped playing after completing the Shadowbrings msq. I did not use my pre Stormblood character as a lot of the game mechanics hand changed when I returned. My pre Stormblood character was back from a time where DoWs had to manage TP during battle. Shadowbringers removed TP. I decided to create a new character and pseudo speed run ARR to Heavenwards ending with the first time play through of Stormblood and Shadowbrings, back to back. My welcome to Stormblood moments were Omega vs Shinryu and WoL vs Zenos Yae Galvus, first fight.
What made my experience so memorable and depressing is having to see Tesleen herself as a boss for the first dungeon and then having to strike her down... :'(
I do feel like they don't really capitalise on the remarkably grim storyline of the sin eaters. It's a warning as what could happen to Tesleen might happen to the Warrior of Light, but I feel as if it didn't quite go anywhere. Possibly because I can't think of any character on our side (sad selch-daddy aside) who actually perish during the MSQ. Properly that is, not just the crystallization. That's not to say it's not a good story, but I wish that there had been a little more heft and cost to it. I still got emotional at most of the story beats, not knowing it was going to be all okay, but I hope that we end up getting another Vault sometime soon. Something that's going to be a real proper gut punch. And I will WEEP. And it shall be good.
A detail that may well be my own interpretation. When Alisaie gets on her knees, I don't think she's meant to be crying. Or at least not only crying. It looks as if she's holding her hands over her mouth, almost as if she's retching. Like have you ever been so stressed and emotional at the same time that you just start doing that weird mix of crying and nearly vomiting? Which I honestly feel is a more apt reaction in this situation than simply crying. It was sudden and it was horrifying. Your reaction to seeing all this first hand is gonna be violent and panicked
it may also be a hold over from their initial plans of the transformation being more graphic. In which case it would be easy to understand a teenage girl retching watching a friend's body slowly turn itself inside out.
Shadowbringers remains peak FF14 writing. I dunno if it'll ever be topped. I still replay that expansion every year or two, just to re-experience what is, in my opinion, one of the best Final Fantasy stories to date (whole franchise included). Judging by the significant decline in writing quality that we just saw in Dawntrail, I doubt we'll even get to Shadowbringers heights ever again.
I mean, the team did say not to expect shadowbringers or endwalker level narrative since Dawntrail is the beginning of a new story. It may take another 8 to 10 years for the new story to get to those levels. It takes time, after all, to build a new mythos that isn't a rehash of what came before
@@RaifSeverence Heavensward was a "first" expansion as well, and it had far _far_ better writing than Dawntrail. Stormblood wasn't a beginning but was worse than Heavensward from a story perspective. I really don't think there is any reason why the beginning of a new saga can't be good. If anything, it _should_ be good to hook people in. But Dawntrail isn't even on the level of Stormblood, let alone HW/ShB/EW. And it doesn't feel like the start of a new saga either. It's very self-contained and doesn't establish anything new to build on for future expansion (no new overarching story so to speak). It's also filled with rehashed narratives from previous expansions, but done in a more "Disney-like" manner, frankly.
@@geekwars3998 I think you're letting the salt cloud your judgement. Most story for the next expansion gets set up in the post MSQ, so the expansion isn't over yet. But even then, they've added an entire new continent with unstable politics (Solution 9 is literally ruled by a child...) and gave us an artifact that allows us to jump between reflections. This is like looking at the end of ARR and saying they could never get to Endwalker.
Heavensward doesn’t really have a “welcome” moment, Stormblood’s would probably be the rhalgr’s reach attack by Zenos. And Endwalker for most would be either the entire garlemald section or the aftermath of the first trial. But Shadowbringers? The stakes are just so different, the feeling is so different. It gets to *everyone* every time, at least from all the reactions I’ve seen and fc folk I’ve talked to. Nobody is prepared for just what it takes to “make” a sin eater, and it happens to someone we’ve gotten familiar with in such a brutal way
My welcome to endwalker moment was level 83 trial :D :D :D :D:D :D :DD:D:D Actually, frankly speaking, I was a bit more creeped out by the moment after the trial than I'd have expected to be xD. And FRANKLY, EVERYTHING leading up to Vanaspati was way worse for me than the welcome to shadowbringers moment.
Just as rough having to put her out of her misery in Holminster. They did her dirty twice, after all that she wasn't even important enough to be the dungeon's final boss.
How anyone could say anything other than level 83 is welcome to Endwalker is beyond me. Also just gonna breeze by that one NPC you showed on screen that meets you first when you wake up. It's later confirmed a quest or two down the road that dude straight up died to sin eaters.
This scene hit especially hard for me because Tesleen was my waifu pick of XIV. Even had fanart commissioned with my WOL and Tesleen watching the night sky.
I think what makes this scene so effective is that we're told before that the process of turning into a sin eater is a terrifying, extremely painful process, which is why Tesleen dedicated her life to euthanizing anyone being corrupted by light before they have to undergo it. Then we see it, and understand exactly what the game meant. And worse, by having it be done to a character who has done all she can to make sure others don't have to ubdergo that very fate.
What made this expansion so impact was what Light and Dark mean in the FFXIV universe Up until this point we are taught that: Dark=Bad, Light=Good We need light, and we need dark, existence is a balance And Endwalker shows us what happens when we have neither We become shells, stripped of our memories, our being, echoes of what we once were Not even fit to drift back into the sea, we just... cease to be
I’d argue that the Tesleen transformation was her last vestiges of herself. Most sin eaters really aren’t fully aware of what they do. The Light ruins your aether, body soul and mind. I don’t think they can be self aware barring extreme cases. They’re essentially hollow shells of what they once were in life for those who were turned.
Until ShB, I found it VERY hard to get as invested in a "zombie" trope as I was in Half-Life for the longest time. The writers really pulled out all the stops with the expansion as a whole, but this really was one of the best "hook" moments in the entire game.
Would say welcome to EW for me was when we had the body swap duty. Until then I was kinda sleepy and didn't really care about the plot coz there was a lot of yapping from the forum and I couldn't care less. Garlemald was a fantastic map but by then I was really fatigued by Forum's bullshit.
what makes the entire Tesleen scene worse is that she is one of the bosses in the first dungeon... do it with Alisae and Alphi they stop and Alphi asks if she is ok..
You bring up Hildibrand, and I gotta say, Hildibrand *nearly* ruined the "Welcome to Shadowbringers" moment for me. I very clearly remember my thought process during that moment: "You know, I know they're trying to go for dramatic effect, but the whole G-Mod Idiot Bix facial animations really takes me out of- Oh! OH GODS! THAT WAS INTENTIONAL! AHH!"
Eh, Fordola doesn't really have a particularly tragic backstory... She was doing what she thinks is the best for her people by siding with the Empire, and she's too far down and done too many things to consider other options... Also being rather afraid of Zenos doesn't exactly help her decision making.
tbh, after a such events, playing dawntrail is... Feelingless? You just doing, what you supposed to do from the start. Adventuring, doing normal jobs on the side, with some degree of danger, traveling across the world, discovering new things...But i'm sitting there, with the equivalent of "2000 yarlms stare" Being completely unresponsive. After all this time, all 4 expansions of loss, grief, giving all you've got and still barely come out on top, countless lifes of comrades and common folk that died for different reasons starting with "i just wanted to go after my groceries and then Dragonsong war starded" and enging with "That what the friends are for, right? *DIES*" it feels weird. Why? I assume, that's how normal seasoned adventurer should feel. Not the character who was betrayed by powerful and influential people, fought basicly Gods for breakfast, fought in 2 wars, endend them both for dinner, got Teleported into completely different world which was broken beyond any repair and salvaged it into more or less revoverable and working order for his/her evening meal, and finished it up with saving the whole universe by winning the best song contest at the edge of the universe. No wonder in HD remake my character has entirely different look in her eyes now...
Welcome to Dawntrail is the cutscene on the boat after the storm where you finally see Tural. Doesn’t have to be tragic since DT is about a new adventure and all that. It’s essentially FF14 2.0 2.0 lol ARR but better and more interesting imo
The body horror of this scene singlehandedly secured my every repeat purchase of a Shadowbringers skip so I wouldn't have to see anything like it again
Why did they move the writer of shb away from writing to a management position… Dawntrail is extremely disappointing story wise. Like seriously we got this? Whole of shb and mostly endwalker? Such good writing and story telling, all this to get Dawntrail?
