What happened to SB (story)?

[Quite]

That quote about selling the stocks? That was from the initial release.

Yeah, I just understood that and edited both my initial post and my first reply to you. Thank you once again for enlightening me. I appreciate it.

[Tillie]

I liked the story a lot--sorry you feel this way.

I was surprised to actually take down Zenos in the end, but am now excited to see how the subsequent patches are going to go. Our seemingly greatest foe of this expansion has already been destroyed--so now I wonder if there will be a Nidhogg-esque situation where he comes back like forty times. Remember, the first time we "killed" that ass of a dragon was in the Aery.

I thought the voice acting was phenomenal, the dialogue perhaps a bit corny at times, but whatever. I'm a sucker for theatrics. Only wished they could have expanded more on Azim Steppe, and hope to see more of it in the future. I'm a sucker for Xaela lore and the tribal aesthetic.

One thing that I do have a complaint about, though; during the segment right before Castrum Abania, when Alisaie fears for her brother's life? Felt like it was completely swallowed in the melodramatics of Conrad's death. Conrad who, tbh, felt like he was made for this expansion, to die in this expansion. And honestly, wasn't he the only major death of a character (on OUR side) with more than twenty voice lines? Felt lame. Was disappointed to see we got teased with Gosetsu's death and he wasn't even dead. And we have to tolerate more of that witch who uses her own abuse as an excuse to kill hundreds of innocent people. Those were my only real gripes... otherwise, loved it.

[Jybril]

My problem with the story is, it's rushed into hell and back.
We unified 2 places in a single patch.
Ala Mhigo should be half the expansion, and Doma the next half
(Like they did with the Dragonsong war thing and WoD in HW)
That's what bothers me. I care not for Zenos because he barely had a part and he's dead.
I'm hoping there's much more to it than this.

The only thing that actually was a fair pace was Azim Steppe.
The Ruby Sea is kinda sad, the Xaela shined completely but the Raens basically get nothing.
(Pretty bland for RP purposes...In Balmung I see more people in Xaela than Raen, hoping this expands later.)
HW had a better pacing. Something really big needs to happen with the expansion because I feel like
the meat of it is over.

[Kaedan]

I can't agree OP. I liked SB's story far more than I liked HW.

[Texa]

I found the story in the post-game patches to be much more interesting than the main game with ARR and HW, so even if SB kind of felt half-baked it still feels like there's a lot of potential that they can play with over the next two years.

[Verdan]

It's... mostly pacing. We had too much to do, and that left no room for any space for us to breathe. Consider how many zones we went through to just TALK to the dragons in HW, and then consider how quickly we picked up allies in stormblood. That's why nothing felt real, we didn't have time to process it. But that's not all, the characterization of the Garleans was very inconsistent, or at the very least very dissonant. We know them as a space-faring empire that's capable of bringing down satellites to destroy whole continents, and the people under their rule justly terrified and unwilling to resist. But we basically just tip over their colonies, which were under the rule of a mentally scarred woman and a completely insane monster.

Now that's okay. That's actually a very interesting twist, if it was played up. If the Garleans are less Brittania occupying Africa in the late 1880s and more late period Rome, with a ton of infighting and no real dominant technological advantage, that's a huge shift in the tone of the story. It's maybe the only real change in our worldview in this expansion, but it's mostly ignored. If everyone came outta stormblood going "wow, the Garleans ain't shit" and the population and countries seeing them less as a terrifying overlord and more of a empire ready to collapse, that'd be a really big deal. But instead, it's just the player. Instead, the player smashes through crazy robots and watches them get cut down out of the sky and goes "this is what we were afraid of, for real?" and no one else seems to notice.

So instead, everything feels really hollow. Like it was too easy, like it wasn't as big of a deal as it should've been.

I do think there's plenty of room for growth and resolution, and if you've ever played any 4X game you know the issue isn't taking territory, it's holding it.

But also, there's a point you bring up that is very important: this is warfare. These were wars of liberation, but we started them. Aren't we mystic defenders of the mother crystal? Aren't we servants of Light itself? Don't get me wrong, Garlemond sucks and should be destroyed. But where's the mystic tinge to all this? There was a wonderful mix of the magical and the concrete in ARR and Heavensward, but it's totally gone here. Remember, we didn't just go to Coerthas to deal with Dragon Problemz, we went cause our blessing of light was destroyed. Sure, some people hate that. And sure, with the way the Warriors of Darkness were handled... maybe we wanna stay away from that. But yo, that's what we ARE in this game. Where was it?

[Quite]

It's... mostly pacing. We had too much to do, and that left no room for any space for us to breathe. Consider how many zones we went through to just TALK to the dragons in HW, and then consider how quickly we picked up allies in stormblood. That's why nothing felt real, we didn't have time to process it.

I will agree with you there and with the rest of your post. And argue that the pacing may be the reason the writing sucked. I've read dozens of stories that rushed things and botched the writing as a result. Though the Ruby sea was bad level design, in my opinion.

[Kaedan]

It's... mostly pacing. We had too much to do, and that left no room for any space for us to breathe.

That was intentional, I believe.

IMO, we were meant to feel rushed and not given "time to breathe". [spoiler]The Ala Mhigans were on the brink of defeat and we had no time to waste attempting to get the Doman's help.[/spoiler] And that was something I quite liked about the story. I didn't ever really feel any "impending doom" in HW, or at least what was there wasn't very effective.

[Quite]

@Furiea. That's the right source. I didn't post it because I'm not used to this forum (you can tell this my first post here, right?) and didn't want to post a link since some forums discourage them. I adjusted my post to be more accurate, thankfully the article wasn't the point or all this would have been pointless. I thanked Ilenya for the info.

And thank you for helping me out so much. No idea if I'll start a new thread any time soon, but I'll try to remember your advice if I do.

[Krokov]

You do realize the Stormblood storyline it's not completely over yet we still have more patches more storyline content.