Generally, do you like the lore/story so far?

[Ildefons]

Personally, I don't really like Shadowbringers' story and some of the decisions they've made.

The first and most personal is the way they handled Urianger and G'raha Tia's deception. I hated it. They put my character in mortal peril without explaining the risks because they had a backup plan that would solve everything before it was too late (spoiler alert: their plan failed). I felt like I was playing ARR again where everyone just sees my character a tool to be used. Or even worse because at least Minfilia asked us if she could count on us and she tried to explain the risks involved in being a Scion.

That aside, I also dislike the use of time travel and parallel universes because I feel it broke the pacing of the game and it feels like a Shyamalan level twist. "We've been building up to the fight against the empire forever now but first, go indulge this stalker cat and his random quest in another world!". And the use of time travel doesn't make much sense to me.

So, the 8th Umbral Calamity happened, meaning that one of the shards was absorbed by the source because that's why the Calamities are so devastating. That means the shard no longer exists as a separate entity. But people in the future managed to create to a time machine that could also travel across dimensions to a point in time when the First still existed, a.k.a. before the Umbral Calamity. So why not use that time machine to travel thousands of years into the past to prevent, I don't know, the 1st freaking Umbral Calamity?

I understand that traveling to a moment in history when the WoL lives is the whole point because it's our story, after all. But I feel the Time Travel plot point could have been used in more interesting ways if they'd focused on the other calamities. To see the rise and fall of the Allagan Empire in the 3rd Astral Era, the War of the Magi on the 5th, the rise of the theocracies and their crusades that led to the 3rd Umbral Calamity, etc. I would have loved to see more about the history of the world we already know and love, rather than being sent to another world with the possibility that we might never see them again except in random side quests.

Anyway, I hope 6.0 will focus more on the geopolitics and the actual war and they leave the cosmic shenanigans to a minimum.