I am so freaking bored of Shadowbringer's story

[Hezzlocks]

Tbf, I still don't get why the trolley was made a huge deal of. We used it for all of, what, 30 meters, at roughly walking speed, and then just walked from there?

Feels more like we needed a magic rock to depress a floor-switch than an actual trolley.

But *the trolley!* You can't have a track without a trolley! That'd be like having a shopping centre without a trolley! How can you not have a trolley? Madness! Sheer madness! The trolley is what holds it all together! Trolley!

On a more serious note, of course the people of that community values a trolley. They're a mining community. Having a giant lug of a golem pushing around a trolley full of ore is a HUGE thing for them.

[SenorPatty]

To be fair, the trolley bit of the story was not my favorite at all. Then again, I noticed that in every new expansion, there's always that one part that just feels like it's dragging itself on it's knees, while the rest of it happens to be stellar.

[MomomiMomi]

There was definitely quite a bit of filler throughout. Macguffins in every zone. Yes, there was good writing when it came to the actual meat of the story, but let's not pretend it was all good writing throughout.

[Ranhansha]

You can't enjoy every part of an expansion I guess, but saying the Greatwood is entirelly filler :/ or that you didn't enjoy any of the cutscenes :/
different tastes I guess.

[LilySkye]

I've been reading how amazing it was and how it rivals single player RPGs... and here I am, bored out of my mind, just skipping through textbox after textbox. And it doesn't even feel like I'm missing anything. It's just that boring and pointless.

The first few hours were amazing. I liked everything until the Greatwood. And since then it went downhill so hard that I can barely bring myself to continue. The entire Greatwood felt like filler to me - from start to finish. The only relevant parts were the very beginning and the very end. Everything in between had so much padding and felt like dozens of sidequests rather than the main story. And then I got to the desert... and it's the same thing again.

I'm about to start the golem duty, and everything that happened in this zone so far felt like 100% filler. I don't even understand how you can write a 'story' filled with so much trivial, menial and pointless crap. It honestly feels like they are trying to pad the hell out of this zone, as nobody can tell me that getting this golem was the best way to reach that area I'm supposed to go to. Every explanation for why I can't just go the simple route is idiotic and unsatisfactory to me. I just destroyed an entire army of sin eaters. Just let me go to my destination directly and find a more interesting way to extend game time, please.

I can honestly say that I'm just completely disappointed with the story so far. The main beats are there, and they are better than anything before, but the everything in between is so utterly pointless that I can't wait to get to the end of it. And I can say with 100% certainty that I could've skipped every single cutscene from the Greatwood until now and I wouldn't have missed anything substantial. I have absolutely no idea what you guys are seeing here, but to me this has the exact same problems every other expansion had as well.

lazypeon fan spotted

[gumas]

seems to me op is not into lore/info dump story part, he said that the start of SHB hype him up then die down at greatwood. well personally for me anything pre greatwood is all more "actiony", from the first experience of crystarium, the everlasting light, ardbert ignoring your privacy, emotional alisaie, to certain someone getting "makeup" change in amh araeng, a lot of going on there.

then you reach greatwood and suddenly things went uncharted WOL fortune, everything is about lore, background check and a lot of info about the light and the ascian complete with tribal village "inflitration" and hidden ruins and temple of doom.

then the golem and thancred "arc" is really a drama there, and i think OP also not into it.

past that however, the pace seems picking up and for me its not stopping until you reach the final.

OP seems like the guy who will hype at the start of endgame only to get sleepy and bored during the mid part and hype again during the final fight lol. try to keep going OP, at least until you finish the eulmore arc, if things still didnt get you interested then yeah i say you just play other game instead, because after that there will be a hell more of lore&info dump story.

[Granyala]

Well to be honest: parts of Il'Mheg, Rak'tika and the whole thing with the mining village in Amh Araeng did indeed feel like filler episodes.
I didn't mind it though b/c there is more to the world than the main threat.

[Vidu]

I'm wondering a little if the OP did all of it back-to-back and just one quest after the other, potentially for days...

Personally I enjoyed all of the story and thanks to the music I didnt want to leave Rak'Tika, but if they were just doing quest after quest after quest I could see the boredom coming more from that and not so much from the story itself. The story is great, but even I found myself at times thinking "Oh please, can we just get the next dungeon?" after following the quests for hours. My boyfriend and I stopped doing sidequests (except for the aether current ones) hakf way through Lakeland, I think? Because both of us were like "...nope, we cant see any extra quests now and will save them for later when we can enjoy them properly."
Obviously it was our fault for "rushing" through the mainstory like this, but we still got a great sense of enjoyment out of it, even if it involved spending two full days and a couple of evenings doing mainly textbox reading, because the textboxes were good. I still found myself not talking to every NPC each time we had the chance because I couldnt bring myself to that anymore. But that had little to do with the quality and more to do with the quantatiy, that overwhelmed me a little.
Luckly, thats up to everyone who plays the game to decided - how fast they want to go and how much they might want to spice up their story with duties, FATEs, crafting... just my personal guess, but rushing through the story and playing them for hours might actually ruin it for you.

[noxen]

just skipping through textbox after textbox.

There's your problem, cheif.

[Naryoril]

I have mixed feelings about the Shadowbringer storyline. On one hand, it's really interesting for the greater overarching story, it tells us more about the calamities, about splitting the world, Zodiark, Haydelyn (or however she is written) and last but not least the Ascians, who they are and why they do what they do.
But taken for itself, i think the story is pretty boring. The problem is that there are no turns, everything is extremely predictable, and basically always the same. You just go from area to area and kill one light warden after the other, there is no change, nothing happening that forces you to put down what you are doing to solve another pressing issue that requires some time to solve. The other few issues that do come up, are solved really quickly, so you don't get any break from the light warden hunt. And after achieving your goal of killing the light wardens, there is only one other thing to solve, but that was talked about for the past 3 areas, so it doesn't feel like a change of pace either. And honestly, i didn't care enough about the Crystal Exarch to be really distressed by his kidnapping. Even the NPCs were talking about it only as a side note, saving the hero was much much more important for them.

My feeling is that the story of Shadowbringer is basically the setup for the next expansion where we will bring it all to an end. So my guess is the next expansion will be the last one, just from how the story flows. Or it will start a completely different saga, one that isn't about the Ascians anymore. Kinda like Avengers Endgame was the end of an era in the MCU and the overall story will move to new, unfamiliar fields.