People seemed to enjoy this game, but it seems like they had a budgetary look at expectations; spend millions on the intense CGI action scenes and voice acting, get tens of millions back. It even seemed to come forward in their interviews that they “needed” this one to be epic and unmissable.

I’ve never felt that’s a winning approach to games though. Comparing to XIV, you just never know when your major hits are going to come forward.

I will say this much; Shadowbringers and Endwalker felt like that creatively exited the theme of building up to a fight against an unknown and evil god, and had very strong story themes to their conclusion. Sometimes the final boss still registers as a “god”, but that’s not the reason you’re fighting them.