When are we going to infiltrate the Garlean Empire?!

[Cilia]

I do hope they don't screw up and actually succeed at making the world a better place. We need a proper Garlean victory along the lines of Shinra defeating one of the Weapons in FF7. I bring this up a lot around these parts, I know, I'm so weary of the WoL securing victory after victory. Having the WoL fail at something and be saved (indirectly, perhaps) by a Garlean construct would be a pretty neat twist. It's a lot less tiresome and more intriguing than Hydaelyn's plot armour and blessing in my opinion.

With all the VI references abounding on Azys Lla, but in an effort to be original, I'm somewhat hoping Varis inadvertently absorbs the power of the Warring Triad and goes crazy (either from the power destabilizing his mind or because he's become a container for the same things his people despise), and van Hydrus turns on him a la General Leo and allies with us. Either we fail to stop him from using Light of Judgment or lessen the damage, but either way we fail and the world is devastated.

Mostly because they've said 4.0 won't require 2.0 - 3.x completion to jump into it, and while I hate for a Calamity to be used as another reset button I can't currently think of another way to implement this. I can also easily picture a truly desperate battle against a power-drunk/mad Varis with the Black Mages mix of Dancing Mad and, even though I barely played VI much, WANT IT SO BAD BECAUSE IT WOULD BE SO DAMN EPIC. Have us fail in a visceral way, not the "Dalamud's still descending even though we beat van Darnus!" they did in 1.x. Make the failure be our direct fault because we finally found an enemy we couldn't overcome.

... I doubt it'll happen, but I can dream.

[Frederick22]

snip

Or maybe there is another simple way. There isnt a " reset button ", the story will continue like always. Only that for the new players they will have the chanse to skip all this .

[ChazNatlo]

I do hope they don't screw up and actually succeed at making the world a better place. We need a proper Garlean victory along the lines of Shinra defeating one of the Weapons in FF7. I bring this up a lot around these parts, I know, I'm so weary of the WoL securing victory after victory. Having the WoL fail at something and be saved (indirectly, perhaps) by a Garlean construct would be a pretty neat twist. It's a lot less tiresome and more intriguing than Hydaelyn's plot armour and blessing in my opinion.

I suspect we'll eventually wind up working along side a more Moderate Legatus against one that goes rogue in a pointedly destructive way ((In the way that it's clear that they themselves are the problem, not Garlemald as a whole.)) Or with pretty much any of them against a Threat so big that morality comes second to mortality.

I mean, technically speaking the Garleans have had a lot of victories. It's just not shown directly. They control a large portion of Hydaelyn, after all. They also managed to deal with Doma when it rebelled - though the specifics evade us.

Well of course they've had victories. The question isn't if they've won, but if, barring speculation, them winning has made anyone's life better. Perhaps if we infiltrate Garlemald, we'll see that they've improved some people's lives. Just probably not in the Ala Mhigo expansion.

[Belhi]

I'm not sure it's wise to paint the leadership of Garlemald as 'evil'. Driven and heavy handed, certainly, but we do not yet fully understand their reasoning for acting the way that they do and seem to be working towards trying to 'save' Hydaelyn as a whole in their own way. They may very well be misguided, yes, but real world morality is always a dubious thing to apply to fantasy settings as they're not often the same. Magic, for example, as well as Primals, don't exist in the real world - so anything to do with them is by design going to be very morally grey on any side.

The persecution of the Beast Tribes is dubious, I'd agree - but at the same time Eorzeans themselves have done the exact same thing. The destruction of Doma? Again, dubious, but we don't know all the details. How many innocents were slain during the uprising, I wonder? Perhaps the situation was triggered by Domans committing atrocities only to be stamped down by the same forces they saw as scattered and ready to be exploited. It's also worth noting that many Domans willingly sided with Garlemald and that Garlean life may very well be better in many ways. If nothing else it's certainly more advanced in terms of technology.

Though at this point I feel like Doma was destroyed - off screen no less - purely for the sake of the FF6 reference. It was quite quickly forgotten and seemed more like a plot device to get the Au Ra to come to Eorzea. They could have simply decided to travel to the place in bulk due to some other event or decision though...

Forcing women into prostitution and brainwashing youth and having them kill their own family members is a bit more than heavy handed. Dropping a moon onto a continent is a bit more than heavy handed. I would definitely call the current garlean leadership evil. Regardless of their goals, their methods are unnecessarily cruel and brutal and frankly wreckless.

As for the beast tribes, some of them, such as the Sahagin, are a lot more substancial than we see and the Ixali engineering was more advanced than the Eorzean city states prior to the introduction of Garlean knowledge. The Amal'jaa were actually allied with Ul'dah when they fought Sil'dih. Regardless while the city states and the beast tribes have fought each other a lot, Im not aware of any time in lore where any of the city states outright tried wiping them out. Infact the main time we have seen a genocidal war with the current city states was Ul'dah's war against Sil'dih were they used the zombie dust to turn their enemies population into undead. Even then the current ones aren't and the most important issue is what is happening now. Prior to Garlemald turning up the city states were trading with the Beast tribes.

Also Im not aware of a lot of examples of Domans actually working with the Garleans. Infact the only example I know of was the antagonist of the 30-50 NIN quest and he was seen as a traitor for selling out his village for power.

The main reason I'm arguing this point with you isn't that I don't want to see a deeper story for Garlemald, but that much of your speculation ignores established fact in game and fills in blanks with things that have nothing that supports it. The Garlean leaders as they exist now aren't good people.

Also I'd point out, since you bring Shinra up, that Shinra remained an antagonist all through FF7. The only time they actually side up with the protagonists they then turn around and betray them the very next thing. This is ignoring that most of the problems in FF7 were caused by Shinra in the first place. Rufas fell a long way before he really started holding a protagonist role by Advent Children.

[SuperFlorinjin]

I do hope they don't screw up and actually succeed at making the world a better place. We need a proper Garlean victory along the lines of Shinra defeating one of the Weapons in FF7. I bring this up a lot around these parts, I know, I'm so weary of the WoL securing victory after victory. Having the WoL fail at something and be saved (indirectly, perhaps) by a Garlean construct would be a pretty neat twist. It's a lot less tiresome and more intriguing than Hydaelyn's plot armour and blessing in my opinion.

While I wouldn't mind this, people didn't exactly react well the last time the WoL failed at something and had to be saved by NPCs. I can't count the number of people I heard whining that their character should have carved a path of blood and destruction through Ul'dah instead of running.

I mean, technically speaking the Garleans have had a lot of victories. It's just not shown directly. They control a large portion of Hydaelyn, after all. They also managed to deal with Doma when it rebelled - though the specifics evade us.

They burned the entire country to the ground and killed everyone who didn't escape in the refugee fleet as a warning to the other countries on the continent.

[Cilia]

Or maybe there is another simple way. There isnt a " reset button ", the story will continue like always. Only that for the new players they will have the chanse to skip all this .

Well, that's certainly a possibility, and much more likely (and infinitely more practical).

From many other standpoints it's not the wisest course though. If you just jump to 60 with equipment to match, you won't really know how to play, and be stuck with players who have gone through it all and know what they're doing (or at least should know what they're doing - dummies will be dummies). It's also a lot of story to just gloss over, leaving new players lost. It would also cause some paradoxes, such as the Warrior of Light snapping over the Ul'dahn Revolution arc during the DRK 30-50 line (if they bother to do it) even though that never happened to that Warrior of Light(?).

Additionally, they'd have to make the new MSQ dungeons super-easy to help acclimate newbies. Probably.

The only way I can see something like that happening is if it was narratively-driven. New Warriors of Light being people who refused to give up hope even in the face of devastation and despair is perfect, and having them be survivors of, say, Varis (etc.) using Light of Judgment to devastate Eorzea makes perfect narrative sense.

[Alisa180]

Some clarification: They didn't say the 2.0 story would be skippable. If I recall correctly, they just said 3.x would be, and that additionally they will try implementing a 'digest mode' so that one can be caught up on the story without doing the quests.

[Pence]

I think it'll be XII style. We'll get to visit Garlicmade and interact with NPCs etc. From there we'll probably join up with a resistance made up of Garlicannes and bring the leaders down from within. I kinda hope that they have a 'break glass' magitek Summon prepared, in case they were ever to become overwhelmed.

[Kaiser-Ace]

I think it'll be XII style. We'll get to visit Garlicmade and interact with NPCs etc. From there we'll probably join up with a resistance made up of Garlicannes and bring the leaders down from within..

So basically how Gaius and the XIVth Legion took down Ala Mihgo's King of Ruin.

[Belhi]

So basically how Gaius and the XIVth Legion took down Ala Mihgo's King of Ruin.

There would be a kind of poetic irony in that.