[Spoilers] Garlemald is a wasted opportunity

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Originally Posted by Gameovers

I was wondering when someone was gonna make this topic. I don't care about Garlemald personally, but I will say with people screaming to go there all the time it is funny when you finally go it's nothing but ruins lol. I actually do like the radio jiggle tho. It's cute but sells how fucked up the mood is there all too well.

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"Fine we'll give your Garlemald but it's destroyed because of you. Happy?'.

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Originally Posted by iheartlove42

"Fine we'll give your Garlemald but it's destroyed because of you. Happy?'.

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Pretty much. `The only thing I kindof want to happen is for us to take alot of that tech back and use it ourselves. I want inlore TVs and radios. Tho it is kindof funny how we fight giant killer robots like we're wannabe Sonic the Hedgehog but get told what a radio is. Like bruh. lol

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

I know all of this and yet it still felt poorly done.

The Garleans got the shaft almost as much as the empire in FFXV where the whole "Empire", an Empire that conquered more than their fair share of countries, becomes nothing in the backstory.

And when we do get introduced to it, it's a husk of frightened frozen soldiers and unreasonably stupid civilians.

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Wha..why did you expect the civilians of an empire with multiple generations of nationalist indoctrination and all of whom are obviously suffering from PSTD to act rationally?

Like, what? Have you seen the way people in the real world have behaved about a certain pandemic? People are stupid and irrational at the absolute best of times. And Garlemald is no where near the best of times even before Fandaniel wiped it out.

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Originally Posted by Abomination713

Yes. The whole area was a waste and it's a damn shame. The Empire that we have been fighting since the beginning and all we see is a broken city and worthless people. Even the writing of the main quest there was pathetic. We had so much to see and learn there and we got nothing. I would have liked to have seen at least 1 more zone dedicated to Garlemald. We could have learned what life was like when it was normal, help conscripted soldiers, learned more about their technology.

Hell, we know they were making copies of Ultima weapon when we played as Estinien. Where are they? Where are their airships?

I don't know if they told us of Garlean history before this expansion, but the fact that they kept throwing garbage in our faces like "they were chased from their original land" and "it's really cold here, like all the time even though that has never been mentioned once. Feel sorry for them yet?" just made me hate the area even more since they were trying to get us to pity them for no reason.

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To me that made it more real.

In 1945 when Berlin fell and the War was lost, a lot of Germany were still in the belief the Allies were their enemy and everyone that had aided the allies traitors to the cause. Soldiers came back to ruins, deserted streets and their entire way of life they had known for the past decade revealed to be one big lie.

It took several decades to undo the damage, to rebuild Berlin and put to bed the ideological insanity that had led them down that path, it wasn't until the 80's that people like Colonel Von Stauffenberg were recognized as heroes...

This is the immediate aftermath of such a regime and they have done it so damn well

My only disappointment with Garlemald was that Gaius didn't come. The explanation he gave about his presence probably just inciting more aggression since he was accused of killing Varis and triggering this whole mess made sense, but I think there were ways it could have been written around.

But I wasn't upset at all with the way the actual plot of the zone was done. For the alliance soldiers, they made it clear in the Ala Mhigo scene that everyone who signed up wanted to help and there were like ten times as many who rejected the offer. On the Garleans' end, if anything they were even more resistant than I expected them to be. I especially really liked how those ones at the mansion were outright scared of magic. It felt super realistic that these people, raised in decades of imperial and colonist indoctrination, would think that others were just as aggressive as them and had come for revenge.

And man that scene with everyone at dinner and Jullus started breaking down crying was so good.

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Originally Posted by Gameovers

Pretty much. `The only thing I kindof want to happen is for us to take alot of that tech back and use it ourselves. I want inlore TVs and radios. Tho it is kindof funny how we fight giant killer robots like we're wannabe Sonic the Hedgehog but get told what a radio is. Like bruh. lol

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We'll probably get them as housing items. There already is some modern day tech stuff for housing btw.

I didn't have much issue with Garlemald, but I have some nitpicks that can't be ignored -

The cars seems under scaled and don't seem like a Garlean could use them.

All the Buildings are empty of any furniture which..is quite odd, like it all disintegrated or something?

Missed opportunity -

They should have added a Subway Underground Map to explore below Garlemald, that would have been interesting for various reasons!

I'd like to hope the empire's future is going to be touched on throughout the 6.x cycle, especially with it being noted that there's still a significant portion of the Garlean legions unaccounted for along with some of them stubbornly clinging to the doctrine despite the capital's fall.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I'd like to hope the empire's future is going to be touched on throughout the 6.x cycle, especially with it being noted that there's still a significant portion of the Garlean legions unaccounted for along with some of them stubbornly clinging to the doctrine despite the capital's fall.

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Likely Dalmasca, but that is hoping they will add more new areas in future patches this point forward (assuming they don't have anymore expansions planned).

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

I don't recall where it was said before, but their homeland being very cold and unforgiving and being driven there by others was not new information in EW, pretty sure we knew that as early as ARR or even 1.0.

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yes it is very old lore established in 1.0 era.

They garleans were basically forced from their original home by countries in Eorzea long ago due to lacking the ability to use Magic either to escape being enslaved or to survive from the other nations taking advantage of their lack of magical abilities.

Emet basically established a system where they found this as justified reason to invade and conquer other nations. However, as we learned in 6.0 it was more than just taking revenge from ancestial actions since Garleans growing up in current Garlemald were being educated to view people outside of Garlemald as savages. They took advantage of lacking interaction with the other nation's people to condition them to naturally hate everyone outside of Garlemald to a point they will rather die than get help from them due to fear they will be enslaved, harmed, brainwashed by magic, and etc.

I event that has been seen before in our world as we look back in our own history.