i passed out early last night. it was for the best, i reached the final quest and assumed i'd be in for another 2-3 hours of game at the very least. i didn't go out easy, i spent at least an hour rolling in my bed, mind racing because i'd had a stubborn desire to finish Endwalker that day, and publish an abnormally long page to boot. but i can't save the universe unless i'm in tip-top shape can i. and i say that only mostly as a joke; i'm really feeling the 8+ years of buildup since i started playing, and it's hard not to want it to be perfect. so yes playing a video game is not unlike saving the universe, to me. you tell me to get a life but i be collecting 1-ups etc

it only lets me walk from this point. i get it

Emet-Selch appeared then disappeared within a cutscene, not giving me the chance to bother him with small talk. he starts telling me that even though this is the end it's not the end end, reminding me how much left of the world i have left to see, and then sending me a link to preorder Dawntrail. woulda been funny if instead he started reminding me of all the side content i haven't done yet. still not finished Eureka or Bozja huh. and when you are gonna learn greek already

i'm nervous, and i don't know why. before i was nervous because i'd heard very mixed things about Endwalker's story. now, i have no idea. i couldn't begin to explain why i have this overwhelming feeling of not wanting it to be over, when i know it's far from being over. frankly i'm very much looking forward to a cool summer vacation expansion. so that i don't once again end up not finishing this game on the day i set out to, i'm going to stop mulling over this and silence this song already. it's been a fun ride

i completed Endwalker yesterday

normally i would just erase an entry like that if i was too busy being passed out to write past the first sentence, but i think i'll leave it in this case. even now i'm struggling. needless to say going back on meds was a fool's mistake, and i pay the fool's price. please don't mind me if nothing i write for the next few days sounds like anything more than me poring over screenshots and going "mann this was crazy" with a thousand-yard stare

this was crazy tho... i was wondering what exactly a final dungeon would entail, because i feel like this game sometimes forces dungeon gameplay where it wouldn't make much sense or would just come off silly, like in the Aitiascope. but it was pretty terrifying! i was already starting to get pretty despairpilled due to symptoms arising i didn't need universe-spanning existential dread weighing me down even further. for a story about goodfeels vs badfeels to work in this day and age they had to go real hard on the badfeels and they sure deliver

you know. this game has a habit of having instantly-recognizable characters appear, speaking from off-screen or only showing them from the waist down, yet still showing their name as ??? above the dialogue window. but here a massive dragon suddenly appears, and no time is wasted in telling me that by the way this is Zenos -- he turned into a dragon and flew to the edge of the universe because of how horny he was to fight you. easily takes the cake for most ridiculous thing that has happened in this entire game but frankly by this point i'm all in, i just want to see how far we can go

the final boss (narrator voice or so i thought). had to do it as a bard, my starting class i stuck with for so long. it only felt right. also because all the other Scions started getting owned and blown away in the cutscene prior and i realized i'm probably not gonna be able to fight alongside them this time, and i didn't wanna tank this thing

for him it's all for him i do this. rrrghhahaaaahhhr

that fight kinda went on forever, i get it's the final boss of everything and the finalest of fantasies but i just imagine getting it in a trial roulette and going Ahh man really. i would also hate to get it because i likely would not be in the mood to be getting emotional. showing me those cutscenes of all the Scions in the middle of the fight dude i just wanted some exp now you got me cryin in the club at the end of the universe

so now i'm wondering what's the deal with Zenos. is he just hanging out from now on? surely i'm not gonna let that happen. am i gonna kill him in a cutscene or

Buh??? mannn this WAS crazy!!! at this point it's a crime that this game doesn't allow me to replay solo fights, because this was so fun it almost made me forgive the existence of Zenos as a whole. they did it they justified him, with his final final boss fight. glad he didn't stay in dragonmode this time, thought that was kinda unfair back in Stormblood. anyway here's hoping he's dead for real i've kinda had enough of this dude

at the end it transitions to us just fistfighting at the edge of existence and all i could think during this was, i wonder how this looks if you play a lalafell. i looked it up and yes it's funny. sucks that it doesn't technically count as a cutscene since it happens during the fight, so i can't go and rewatch it. wanna make sure he stays down

game did a hell of a job making this feel like the end. really needing Emet-Selch to come back and remind me that it isn't actually super over, because the credits sequence encompassing scenes and music from the entire game up to this point is instilling in me some much-unwanted post-RPG depression. then there's a post-credits scene where Alphinaud writes to his parents that we're "disbanding the Scions......but not really" and i'm desperately wanting to get off this ride, i can't take feeling like it is the end, then it isn't, but then it is/n't

in reality my plans were to sleep for a few days as i cope with withdrawals, both from medication and this game. but when it started zooming out on my character talking to everyone i could only imagine him saying some boring video game things like well i'm going to do some roulettes to level Reaper for a while then maybe grind out some mounts, oh yeah there's the Yokai Watch event going on and i still need to finish collecting all the weapons

i don't know though. really the first thing i did after the credits was go round the world to find all the scattered Scions, because about six seconds later i was already missing them. for some reason i remembered reading that "every NPC" had new dialogue after Endwalker, and i was actually looking forward to spending potentially hours going around the entire world talking to everyone. obviously this was not actually the case and it was only so for the more important characters; the rest were still in five-years-since-the-calamity times. Gold Saucer Attendant no. 8 in fact did not have anything to say about me saving the world

i kind of wanted to start making my way through every sidequest, but there's something about going "back in time" right after such big story events that bums me out, even for 6.0 sidequests. always hated games that after completing them put me back to right before the end if i wanna crank out some completionist stuff. world in a perpetual state of awaiting the end while i'm off collecting gems and whatnot. i'll have to give it a while

in the end i'm glad i waited until now to play Endwalker. can't imagine how voidful i woulda felt if i got to this point and there wasn't yet a trailer for a new expansion out. need to start the 6.1 MSQ pronto lest i continue feeling like i'm in Epilogue Mode. had to look ahead at the wiki to make sure some of the future "quest givers" for the main story included the Scions. at what point do i just sound like a bad person for being bummed out that there isn't some looming world-ending threat anymore

i'm very tired. i've been very tired the past few days, and most of my waking time has been spent curled up in bed thinking about FFXIV. before i go back to sleep i think i'll log back on and quickly get myself out of Epilogue Mode by talking to Tataru. i'm struggling to keep my eyes open after being awake for a total of maybe five hours today. alright