1st half of the story is basically The Amazing Race with Wuk Lamat as the main character. I had to force myself to get through them - it was as bad as the ARR post-patch content excluding the 'red wedding' stuff. Wuk Lamat is basically Lyse as a furry. Unlike Lyse, they did show a bit more growth in character for Wuk. Lyse was like "like we need to totally fight the empire, why aren't you fighting?" and then she gets to lead the entire resistance because she's got moxy. Wuk is sort of the same, although she becomes more confident I guess. Problem is Wuk Lamat says the same damned thing like 100 times but using slightly different words. The twins and Krile didn't even need to be there because they got to do nothing. Even Erenvelle barely factors in. And your character feels like a fucking WoW character with you just watching main characters do stuff while you twiddle your thumbs - which would be fine if this was WoW, but the core premise in FF14 is -YOU- are the main character. Our ass got reduced to special guest star role.
After you finish the Texas zone, then the MSQ gets interesting. The whole Altered Carbon thing they had going was pretty cool and the twist with Sephene was handled well - the player knows something is up, although we hope things are as they appear on the surface. Sarul Ja or whatever had a pretty dumb premise - like Thanos dumb. "There will be peace if I fucking murder half the planet!". And somehow he found another iksar in Solution Nine to bang and produce a kid.
However, the Living Memory thing made me frustrated because it goes against how the game has handled this situation in the past and this expac revealed a solution for the Endless, which they promptly ignored. Sir Otis (robot) was memory AND soul in a robot vessel - as far as we can tell, he did not depend on Living Memory to exist or function. For sure I thought they might use that as a solution - they've got thousands of robot soldiers, they could literally dump all the memories and souls from Living Memory into them and the problem is solved. Sure, they could have said something like "the technology to do that was lost" or whatever, but they never even approached the subject for whatever reason. Maybe they will revisit that in future patches, but it seems extremely odd that you introduce Chekov's Robot and then it never becomes a plot point ever again.
Which brings us to the memories. This game, over multiple expansions, has mused about what makes someone alive or makes someone a specific person:
1) Yotsu lost her memories and we get into the debate of "if an evil person commits evil acts, then all their memories are expunged, do you still punish them? Who is the evil person: The physical body, or the mind behind those acts?
2) Crystal Exarch effectively died, but his memories were put into present day Gra'ha and we functionally treat him as the same person as the Exarch even though they aren't his memories, they are the memories of an alternate timeline version of himself. Granted both are Gra'ha, but still.
3) Ultima Thule if you do the Omicron quests reveals that even though the beings there have no aether and are just memories supported by dynamis, they are functionally alive
The same admittedly has also handled how souls are handled a bit differently - they have confirmed in game that some souls have certain core memories or personality traits embedded within them. Like Azem is an adventurer that likes to make friends everywhere. But they have also mentioned most souls are just blank slates - memories get erased over time and then the soul/life force basically is part of the Aetherial Sea and may or may not get reborn as another person.
So for Living Memory, unlike Emet's recreation of Amaurot, the people there are the actual memories of the people represented. While the soul giving them form isn't their original, all their memories and personality are intact. Prior xpacs would have treated them as living things, or at the very least, given more consideration. And while the story does somewhat of a superficial "is this the correct course of action?", the MSQ effectively turns us into Meteion/Endsinger and we exterminate an entire world/realm, because not just the memories are going to be gone, but all the actual living plants and animals that depended on the system to support them. It's like reverse Endwalker lol.
That whole part of the story might have felt a bit better if they handled it a bit differently - as is, none of the people really got a choice in deletion except Calchuia and Krile's birth parents. Maybe if they pulled a Good Place and the people in paradise were longing for oblivion after existing for millenia, but no one really seemed to put any actual weight in the decision except Erenville when he gets mad in the garden (which was the single moment of the entire xpac that got me a bit emotional - his initial reactions were a lot more realistic for someone who is effectively going to lose their parent/loved one). Because "they're not real".
I suppose they may revisit it - they had that single image of the Queen's Crown, which they previously confirmed was a special regulator. And we have the Mcguffin key that lets you travel to other shards now.
Final thoughts:
1) Less is more: Wuk Lamat being a main character is fine, the problem is she becomes THE main character at the expense of everyone else. The other characters barely had time to breathe or grow. Outside of Krile and Erenville in the 2nd half, all the other Scions were underutilized and even Koana was underutilized. Gra'ha gets a couple moments, but that's about it.
2) The story felt like a lot of rehash of prior stories in parts. Living Memory = Amarout, Sphene = Ascians wanting a rejoining to restore their people, Wuk Lamat = Lyse, Sarul Ja = Zenos. Not that I mind Ascian stuff, but if you're going to use Ascian plotlines at least involve Ascians.
Maybe it will be like Stormblood and the post-MSQ patches salvage the story. Actual Stormblood MSQ was kind of meh I thought, but the post patch stuff was pretty darn good.
