What is with the constant mistreatment of the Garlean story?(6.1 Patch spoilers)

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Originally Posted by ElizanderNorisse

Despite the Nerva issue, I’m actually looking forward to what the devs have in store. I’m sure they’ll redeem Garlemald somehow.

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You have far more faith remaining in them than I do. :)

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Originally Posted by Lauront

You have far more faith remaining in them than I do. :)

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Some things may have been questionable, but I'm actually glad Garlemald wasn't wholly destroyed as a nation like Allag. There's always hope for Garlemald.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

There's no over-the-top antics and slapstick humor in the MSQ.

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Meanwhile just this patch there’s Yshtola doing a magical girl impression and talking like a baby….

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Meanwhile just this patch there’s Yshtola doing a magical girl impression and talking like a baby….

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https://c.tenor.com/tak81oypS98AAAAd...antasy-xiv.gif

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Meanwhile just this patch there’s Yshtola doing a magical girl impression and talking like a baby….

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What are you talking about?! You also had the "haha, sleepy catgirl!" moment as well. :^)

And Estinien being dragged off for experiments.

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Originally Posted by Lauront

burger cutscene

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Man, this whole cutscene was just incredibly unnecessary.

Man chomped down on that burger like it was his last meal.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

I will summarize the Garlemald ending in 2 words:

Catastrophic mismanagement.

With the same level of care that was given to Hrothgar wigs this patch, it seems.

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Preach it louder brother.

There's so much wrong done for its story that everytime I have to explain why I give Endwalker a 7/10, two whole points gone are dedicated to Garlemand atrocious writing.

I'm pretty sure the new relic weapon will be entirely in Corvos. Likely with us having to deal with the abominations that remain, fleshing out the region and G'raha's family along with how people were treated, and likely bringing in some NPCs from the neighboring countries because you know as well as I do they aren't just going to forgive and forget. Meaning I want some serious region politics at play, with us trying to avoid the remaining nations ganging up on the Garlean survivors (because you know as well as I do that they will).

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Meanwhile just this patch there’s Yshtola doing a magical girl impression and talking like a baby….

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I don't think a single goofy line or a guy eating a burger with gusto is the equivalent of being blasted to the moon, dancing with gentleman zombies, Hildebrand dressing up as a teenage girl and then a geisha, or old people falling asleep mid-attack falling out of the sky.

It's really weird to get hung up on those few moments from the MSQ and compare it to something that goes WAY out of the way to be comedic. It's more in line with comedic relief moments from the rest of the Final Fantasy series and nowhere near as bad as a lot of FF7 where we have gems such as Cloud being put in a dress to sneak into a brothel, Cloud stealing Tifa's underwear, or a giant stuffed toy animatronic as a party member that uses a megaphone as a weapon.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

??

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Yeah man, people who don't share your opinion are weird. Great take.

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Originally Posted by kpxmanifesto

Yeah man, people who don't share your opinion are weird. Great take.

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Y'shtola literally gets 1 funny line per expansion. Her saying something silly while summoning nixies isn't new and we had her threaten Alphinaud to forget seeing her naked body and "Little Sun". That being compared to a quest line where a greased-up old guy is summoned by a dance and chases down and suplexes his son to looney tunes sound effects is a little goofy. Especially goofy is saying that the one funny line is proof of the game's downward spiral when there's a bunch of much more valid critiques.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Y'shtola literally gets 1 funny line per expansion. Her saying something silly while summoning nixies isn't new and we had her threaten Alphinaud to forget seeing her naked body and "Little Sun". That being compared to a quest line where a greased-up old guy is summoned by a dance and chases down and suplexes his son to looney tunes sound effects is a little goofy. Especially goofy is saying that the one funny line is proof of the game's downward spiral when there's a bunch of much more valid critiques.

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Yet she had numerous in shb and ew. Lets not forget her whole spanking thing. We had the scions getting sick in thavnair with them all making silly faces and being nauseous. We had Estinien being harassed by alchemists etc. It was one goofy moment after another yet this expansion was supposed to be oh so scary and serious yet every other moment its either slice of life or goofiness....yeah totally doesnt take away from the threat or immersion lmao.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

I don't think a single goofy line or a guy eating a burger with gusto is the equivalent of being blasted to the moon, dancing with gentleman zombies, Hildebrand dressing up as a teenage girl and then a geisha, or old people falling asleep mid-attack falling out of the sky.

It's really weird to get hung up on those few moments from the MSQ and compare it to something that goes WAY out of the way to be comedic. It's more in line with comedic relief moments from the rest of the Final Fantasy series and nowhere near as bad as a lot of FF7 where we have gems such as Cloud being put in a dress to sneak into a brothel, Cloud stealing Tifa's underwear, or a giant stuffed toy animatronic as a party member that uses a megaphone as a weapon.

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Context matters. Yes cloud dresses up as a girl to sneak into a brothel, a brothel and group that is known for human/sex trafficking and to also get info on the potential of a mass murderous event.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Y'shtola literally gets 1 funny line per expansion. Her saying something silly while summoning nixies isn't new and we had her threaten Alphinaud to forget seeing her naked body and "Little Sun". That being compared to a quest line where a greased-up old guy is summoned by a dance and chases down and suplexes his son to looney tunes sound effects is a little goofy. Especially goofy is saying that the one funny line is proof of the game's downward spiral when there's a bunch of much more valid critiques.

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Lets be real. which is more weird? the person who gives a non-extreme opinion about the game or the person who tries to attack someone personally for giving that opinion?

can someone sum up what have been talked in this thread?

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Originally Posted by AmpelioB

can someone sum up what have been talked in this thread?

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Nerva being build up all throughout SHB only to end up being a reused miniboss model in a random side quest. Garlemald being destroyed off screen. Varis getting a half assed designed fight. etc etc

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

That's one of my main complaints with Heavensward and while I thought it was well written and good storytelling, I hold it in lower regard than others do. That expansion managed to make even moogles feel heavy. People give Stormblood a lot of grief, but I thought the balance there was much better and they did successfully lighten things up instead of it just being one bad thing after another like Heavensward. I'm eager to see how XVI turns out but I do have concerns since it's the HW story team working on it.

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I feel the opposite. This is one of the reasons HW is my overall favorite expansion. EW was particularly jarring with the abrupt and over the top comedic relief. It felt especially inappropriate after Zodiark, as such the moon is probably my least favorite zone. It's so thematically inconsistent. I would have otherwise liked the lopporits, but following the WoL being duped into bringing the Final Days back, for real, give me some time to process before throwing cartoon cuteness at me.

I feel like EW being developed during covid really hurt the story in more ways than one.

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Originally Posted by kpxmanifesto

Yeah man, people who don't share your opinion are weird. Great take.

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Yep. Really not sure what's hard to grasp about my earlier statement outlining that Hildibrand was deliberately locked away in side quests because that style of humour was considered to be jarring for many and inappropriate for the MSQ's.

I'm also not sure why the poster in question is trying to gatekeep what is and isn't a 'valid take'. If she wishes to agree to disagree? Fair enough!

I don't mind a bit of humour here and there, though I'd rather fit the context and theme of what is going on at the time. In the unlikely event that one of the Scions died for real, I have my doubts that their fans would be happy if the game just immediately shifted into something tonally bizarre straight afterwards.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Yet she had numerous in shb and ew. Lets not forget her whole spanking thing. We had the scions getting sick in thavnair with them all making silly faces and being nauseous. We had Estinien being harassed by alchemists etc. It was one goofy moment after another yet this expansion was supposed to be oh so scary and serious yet every other moment its either slice of life or goofiness....yeah totally doesnt take away from the threat or immersion lmao.

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Uh ... is FF14 your only Japanese game or media you have ever seen? This is not a FF thing, it's a Japanese/anime thing. They always have these kind of goofy thing irregardless of how serious the story is. I had watched anime, read manga and novel, live action move that have the core story 100x more serious than FF14 and the characters still gonna have their silly moments. Heck, even if you take something like Warhammer 40k and give it to a Japanese developers, they will make even a lord inquisitor or primach have their goofy moment. That's part of the culture of the medium.

Complain about goofy moments in a Japanese game is like complaining why water make you wet.

Does the goofy moment make sense and is consistent with what is going on at the given moment in the story? No? Then that's where the problem lies. The expansion about the literal end of the world was more of a joke than an epic finale. Not every Japanese game is incapable of sticking to the subject matter in the way Endwalker was unable to.

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

Uh ... is FF14 your only Japanese game or media you have ever seen? This is not a FF thing, it's a Japanese/anime thing. They always have these kind of goofy thing irregardless of how serious the story is. I had watched anime, read manga and novel, live action move that have the core story 100x more serious than FF14 and the characters still gonna have their silly moments. Heck, even if you take something like Warhammer 40k and give it to a Japanese developers, they will make even a lord inquisitor or primach have their goofy moment. That's part of the culture of the medium.

Complain about goofy moments in a Japanese game is like complaining why water make you wet.

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FF games are japanese games, yet they know when to have funny moments and when not to. 14 does not know how to handle this distinction and thus it just takes away from the story. Not to mention other ff games also have consequences for the main cast so the light hearted moments actually feel like more of a relief. Whereas nothing ever happens to the main cast to warrant needing any sort of relief in this game.

Ngl, I never cared much about them, but even I can tell Garlemald/Garleans got the Ala Mhigo treatment ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I'm also not sure why the poster in question is trying to gatekeep what is and isn't a 'valid take'. If she wishes to agree to disagree? Fair enough!

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Some people are just on a high horse. I've dealt with more than a few people like this on these forums in the past and the best course of action is to point out the fallacious argument and move on. Trying to debate with erroneous logic gives a false air of legitimacy to it.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

It's better than just one long 50 hour slog of bad things happening.

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There's never been a 50 hour slog of bad things happening because the structure of this game naturally won't allow it. Every time we unlock new area, it's basically resetting the tension and gave us a breather.

And "breather" =/= "comedic relief". I'm not opposed to comedic relief, but it needs to be appropriate. The scions got aether sickness when we first go to thavnair? Good comedic relief. Playing with lopporit after killing zodiark? Weird as hell. G'raha eating burger when we have freaking final days? Not as weird as the lopporit one, but still weird regardless.

Plus, I think people's problems with the g'raha scene is how the devs prioritize "useless" scene like that over things that matters more, such as the details of the sundering etc. If the purpose is to give a "breather", they could just give us the WoL taking a break eating in their room then get joined by the scions, then fade to black (no custom animation, minimal dialogue).

If the devs put resources towards a proper cutscene showing the sundering instead of 10 minutes of Venat on a political tirade there'd probably be only 300 pages in that msq criticism thread instead of the 500 it's at now

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

Uh ... is FF14 your only Japanese game or media you have ever seen? This is not a FF thing, it's a Japanese/anime thing. They always have these kind of goofy thing irregardless of how serious the story is. I had watched anime, read manga and novel, live action move that have the core story 100x more serious than FF14 and the characters still gonna have their silly moments. Heck, even if you take something like Warhammer 40k and give it to a Japanese developers, they will make even a lord inquisitor or primach have their goofy moment. That's part of the culture of the medium.

Complain about goofy moments in a Japanese game is like complaining why water make you wet.

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I know right, people keep needlessly complaining about Gundam Seed and Destiny. It's anime, don't worry about what the IP already established. :^)

Well I just hope that we’re going back to Garlemald in 6.2. I’m sure we’ll help Jullus & the twins with whatever they’re going up against in there.

I mean, the off-screen made sense.

Zenos is a bad Ruler and a monster. What did you think was going to happen after he killed his father? By the time we got there he was already settled in and he was letting the other power hungry ones fight it out so that only the strong could lead... Assuming that they could kill him too.

Regula wasn't shafted. His story was fully told.

I just assume they'll bring Garlemald's story back a bit later and they're currently setting it up for now. I remember thinking back when the Warriors of Darkness were introduced that it was completely random and had nothing to do with any part of the story at that moment. Playing through SB even reinforced this thought I had. "Why did those bunch of emo randoms get a whole story patch?" was essentially what I thought. Imagine my shock when ShB was released! I instantly felt bad in assuming theses characters were gonna be one-off and boring. I'm glad they took the time to set them up as far back in HW. So, I'm assuming they'll (hopefully) do the same with the Garleans, but only time will tell.

I agree.

TC wanting side story stuff covered in the main story as much as they desired is odd.

I say give it time. If we do get a sequel to that side stuff then it'll be in side stuff as well and not pushed into the main story as a main theme. It would make no sense as not all players would experience it as its entirely optional. Heck, the requirements to unlock some of that stuff require completing previous side stuff before even being allowed to start it.

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Originally Posted by Tanis_Ebonhart

I mean, the off-screen made sense.

Zenos is a bad Ruler and a monster. What did you think was going to happen after he killed his father? By the time we got there he was already settled in and he was letting the other power hungry ones fight it out so that only the strong could lead... Assuming that they could kill him too.

Regula wasn't shafted. His story was fully told.

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The point is that writing resulted in garlemald getting shelved…I and many others understand what happened. The problem is the writing letting that happen. Regula and Varis are regarded as incredibly close friends, yet we couldn’t even mention him to Varis at the Alliance meeting? Nor could we get a face reveal during the sapphire weapon fight? Varis’ boss fight was extremely half assed, so much so he didn’t even get a proper theme, just the normal ShB boss theme. And then now in EW Nerva who was built up every patch in ShB turns out to just be a reskinned dungeon boss in a side quest story, and the garleans have been shuffled to the moon.

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Originally Posted by Tanis_Ebonhart

I mean, the off-screen made sense.

Zenos is a bad Ruler and a monster. What did you think was going to happen after he killed his father? By the time we got there he was already settled in and he was letting the other power hungry ones fight it out so that only the strong could lead... Assuming that they could kill him too.

Regula wasn't shafted. His story was fully told.

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I think giving Regula more screen time rather than just giving us his story would’ve been even better. He had the potential for a Garlemald expansion but alas.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

Plus, I think people's problems with the g'raha scene is how the devs prioritize "useless" scene like that over things that matters more, such as the details of the sundering etc. If the purpose is to give a "breather", they could just give us the WoL taking a break eating in their room then get joined by the scions, then fade to black (no custom animation, minimal dialogue).

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I don't think we got that scene "instead of" the Sundering though. I think they hoped they could get away with not clarifying what actually happened afterwards, because it was always a fuzzy patch of lore and they never answered Q&A basic clarifications like "was the 'new life' that would have been sacrificed by the ancients sentient life?" and "are the modern races descended from ancients or created by them?"

At the time, it seemed like might have been dodging the questions because there were important reveals to be made later on about the answers, but we basically got nothing from Endwalker on this front.

Basically, I think they set up a mystery without deciding the truth beforehand, and couldn't invent a satisfying answer in the end.

TBH, from the writers' perspective, I feel like the whole Garlean story is more of a "ball and chain" that most people have lost interest in. If you think about it, the "one" expansion they focused on the war with the Garleans was deemed to be the "worst" one. I just don't think they want to deal with the story anymore so they tossed it into side stories so a side story writer can just finish it up and they don't need to worry about it anymore in the MSQ.

The war against Garlemald as told in Doma was excellent. The war against Garlemald as told in Ala Mhigo was horrendous, because that region is as colorless as it is underdeveloped. Garlemald and by extent the Ascians represented a strong motivator in the story to get interested in. Now they're gone and while they've teased the void, who is to say that it won't suffer the same fate because the new target audience will "lose interest in it" in favor of more slice of life scenes straight of the FFXIV AU high school manga?

I was under the impression that "slice of life" meant a genre where that was all that happened, not having a few scenes amid a larger narrative.

Also, Hildibrand irritates me and it is definitely not the same mood as the current MSQ.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I was under the impression that "slice of life" meant a genre where that was all that happened, not having a few scenes amid a larger narrative.

Also, Hildibrand irritates me and it is definitely not the same mood as the current MSQ.

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I would say the MSQ is steering itself to become as silly as Hildibrand. The only difference is that there are bigger issues the main characters have to deal with in the MSQ as opposed to the Hildibrand line. In fact, by 8.0 I would bet there will be a dancing segment fully animated and lasting for a minimum of 20-30 seconds featuring some of the main cast while an important plot point gets relegated to a text blurb over spending the time to actually show it in engine because dancing emet meme so funny!

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I was under the impression that "slice of life" meant a genre where that was all that happened, not having a few scenes amid a larger narrative.

Also, Hildibrand irritates me and it is definitely not the same mood as the current MSQ.

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It’s not just a few scenes though. There’s like 3-4 lunch/date scenes with the scions alone. Then there’s the loporrits which are basically slice of life everytime they’re on screen. You have the thavnair starting cutscene, the thavnair alchemists scene etc etc. It’s not just a few, it’s a LOT. Especially if you compare it to other expansions. And again, a large problem with it is where they are shoved into. I wouldn’t really have too much of a problem with it if there were actual stakes and consequences that we needed a relief from. The fact of the matter is that didn’t happen and probably will never happen at this rate.

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Originally Posted by LeonKeyh

TBH, from the writers' perspective, I feel like the whole Garlean story is more of a "ball and chain" that most people have lost interest in. If you think about it, the "one" expansion they focused on the war with the Garleans was deemed to be the "worst" one. I just don't think they want to deal with the story anymore so they tossed it into side stories so a side story writer can just finish it up and they don't need to worry about it anymore in the MSQ.

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I feel this is framing the issue rather deceptively. Stormblood may be widely considered to be the worst expansion (jury's out on that for now) but the Garleans were hardly the reason why. It was mostly the pacing, and constantly jumping to and fro. Made it difficult to properly flesh out regions and the characters we'd meet in them.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

The war against Garlemald as told in Doma was excellent. The war against Garlemald as told in Ala Mhigo was horrendous, because that region is as colorless as it is underdeveloped. Garlemald and by extent the Ascians represented a strong motivator in the story to get interested in. Now they're gone and while they've teased the void, who is to say that it won't suffer the same fate because the new target audience will "lose interest in it" in favor of more slice of life scenes straight of the FFXIV AU high school manga?

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Well said. It more or less complements what I said, and frankly I agree about the Void. Consider it likely too, seeing as how the Scions and the fanbase both aren't very interested in making friends and allies so much as evil enemies to fight and kill.