Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker is an emotional culmination of a decade-long journey
The easiest way to describe Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker is to call it a game about hope. That’s not really a unique descriptor since, to some degree, all Final Fantasy games, MMORPG or otherwise, are about hope. (NotFinal Fantasy VIII, though — that game is about child soldiers and hot dogs.) However, despite Endwalker’s unflagging commitment to “the power of friendship,” it’s the game’s unvarnished look at the other side of hope — oppressive and omnipresent despair — and the real strength it takes to maintain that hope in the face of such despair that makes it the best Final Fantasy experiences I’ve had in 30-plus years of the series’ existence.
Major Endwalker Spoilers throughout
To all of my children in whom Life flows abundantTo all of my children to whom Death hath passed his judgmentThe soul yearns for honor, and the flesh the hereafterLook to those who walked before to lead those who walk after
In Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, the latest expansion of the Final Fantasy XIV MMORPG, your character and their rag-tag group of mercenaries for hire masquerading as a benevolent, non-governmental organization are tasked with averting the second occurrence of The Final Days, an apocalyptic event that sundered the world and all its people a millennium or so previous. Through the events of the previous expansion, you learn that the malevolent force Zodiark is key to unlocking the mystery of why the Final Days have returned, necessitating a trip to his prison on the moon. Because this is a JRPG and a Final Fantasy game, besides, the plot isn’t as straightforward as that. Though this quick and dirty plot summary and Endwalker’s trailer would have you believe Zodiark and the moon are your end goals, you conclude that plot in
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