[Spoilers] Garlemald is a wasted opportunity

[kaynide]

I too loved Garlemald. I would argue it was the highlight of the expansion pack for me.

I liked how dark and grueling it was, but after Jullus cried into his mug, given to him by no less than a Ala Mhigan, I was sold.

After he and the Garleans helped defend camp and he questioned why they’d be allowed to keep weapons..and why we were eager to help, I was ready for someone to say “Welcome to the Scions, kid!”

He is a great character, and I’d rather have had the entire expansion revolve around Garland…but as we saw with Stormblood, 2 different ideas are often smooshed together.

[kaynide]

Not only that, but remember that across all of Garlemald, we visit two different train stations outside of it, and travel through a third to get into the Tower of Babil. Even if we assume that train journey to be essentially one stop, the fact the trip necessitated a train line be made in the first place suggests there is a substantial size to the city.

...hell, there's most likely two train lines, given that the one we take into Babil is likely for freight while Tertium is clearly for passenger trains.

I believe in addition to this, the part of Garlemald we see is just one of the outermost districts, with the rest being swallowed up by the tower. This feels especially true when Jullus claims that Garlean philosophy has them build parks first, then the buildings form around it…but there is only 1 park available for us to see.

I don’t have a good way to visualize it, but if we’re talking all of New York City, I imagine we are only seeing the equivalent of like..the northern Bronx. Not even seeing Manhattan island.

[Antoine_Lenheim]

I'm arguably the biggest fan of Garlemald around as some here would probably attest...and I was pretty happy with how it was handled. We've been getting bits of lore on Garlemald as far back as 1.0 - though I, myself, only began playing as of 2.0 and beyond.

Endwalker brought all the Garlean lore simmering in the background to the forefront. There's also plot threads strongly suggesting that there's going to be more to the Garlean story moving forward.

Overall, I would have liked Endwalker to be the two expansions that it was originally planned as being - but there's no reason to assume that we're done with Ilsabard and there's a lot of nuggets of Garlean lore to be found through leves, item descriptions, side quests and the sight seeing log.

Although nothing has been confirmed as of yet, some manner of content similar to Doman and Ishgardian reconstruction is likely to be available through the rest of Endwalker. Perhaps Island Sanctuary may tie into it, somehow.

I'm rather excited to see more of Jullus, at any rate. He stole the show for me during Endwalker. I'm also eager to learn what became of Nerva, since that seems like something that requires closure. He's mentioned in a couple of side quests and he's been name dropped often enough without showing up that it's likely a tease for what comes in the future.

I mean, it's your opinion but I really don't understand how this is a fitting finale for a decade long arc and supreme amount of hype that has been revolving around Garlemald. When it comes to the capital of the empire we've been fighting for nearly ten years of the game's existence, I wish we had seen more. Everything about Garlemald is mediocre, we arrive somewhat abruptly, without much of a sense of time or trave, it lacks scale, the city is too small, this is the Garlean capital, it should dwarf all other cities. Make the whole zone a section of the city, something like a single plate from Midgar.

Writing is... okay, at the best. I liked Julius myself, is a good character to base further Garmelald story on but anything else is surprisingly badly done. For example, the way they reacted negatively to us being who we are and what we've done. That was incredibly odd. Yeah, I get it, state propaganda brainwashing etc. but they were whining about us killing people in their invasion bases? That's not being misguidedly patriotic, that's those characters being written dumb af. Those bases didn't get there by asking nicely, you weirdly written characters, and they people stationed there weren't handing out candy and flowers. And you've been doing that shit for a long ass time to boot, why the surprised pikachu face over the fact that somebody used force back? And then they sort of just get over it super abruptly. I... what? So, for them to invade other countries, treat the people (they're supposedly trying to save by doing this) like shit, kidnap and force a lot of them to do the same to others AND THEN be all "How could you, you monster?!?!" to someone defending themselves? Like they're surprised and horrified by the concept of someone not being into getting killed for resisting assimilation.

Especially compared to the incredibly high writing quality of the rest of the game, suddenly there's soldiers that don't understand that trying to kill someone who want none of their invading shit might get them killed right back and whining about it makes them look comical instead of tragic. There's not being self-aware and then there's how these characters are acting, it's too much, like wtf?

I get what they were aiming for but it's remarkable how thoroughly it misses the mark. They don't look like nationalistic soldiers lashing out because they mourn the loss of their comrades, especially since they get over it pretty damn fast after all that hysteria. Their characterization makes them look cartoony and not even like a children's cartoon villain but like the comically dim henchmen. It's incredibly jarring compared to the rest of the writing and brings the immersion to a screeching halt.

Think I could go on but I already explained my points in previous posts.

[kaynide]

...

I think a big part of what's going on in Garlemald is the almost religious zealotry going on by the people. Your arguments obviously make sense to us, but this is like most of the civilized world trying to tell America that they really shouldn't let their citizens have access to guns en masse. It is an utterly alien concept that just can not be understood by certain groups in there.

As I understood it, the Garleans did not believe they were kidnapping or forcing people, but liberating them and offering them a chance at civilized modern life. From their point of view, they are essentially semi-modern era tech with cars, electricity and radios, whereas "we" are mostly age-of-sail dirt farmers. They also see their way as an end to petty infighting. It's rather comparable to colonial Britain's attempts to "civilize" Africa/Asia. To them, we are like the Arabic factions in Lawrence of Arabia.

Not saying it was good/bad/correct/etc, just different points of view.

[thegreatonemal]

I think a big part of what's going on in Garlemald is the almost religious zealotry going on by the people. Your arguments obviously make sense to us, but this is like most of the civilized world trying to tell America that they really shouldn't let their citizens have access to guns en masse. It is an utterly alien concept that just can not be understood by certain groups in there.

As I understood it, the Garleans did not believe they were kidnapping or forcing people, but liberating them and offering them a chance at civilized modern life. From their point of view, they are essentially semi-modern era tech with cars, electricity and radios, whereas "we" are mostly age-of-sail dirt farmers. They also see their way as an end to petty infighting. It's rather comparable to colonial Britain's attempts to "civilize" Africa/Asia. To them, we are like the Arabic factions in Lawrence of Arabia.

Not saying it was good/bad/correct/etc, just different points of view.

The Garleans knew exactly what they were doing. They needed to teach the savages how to live. Also said savages pushed them out of their homeland 800 years ago so they gotta pay for that as well. It's the main reason they think we've come to get our revenge and put the Garleans back in their place. Colonial efforts had nothing to do with helping people and everything with taking all the resources, making the people obedient just makes taking the stuff easier.

[Antoine_Lenheim]

I think a big part of what's going on in Garlemald is the almost religious zealotry going on by the people. Your arguments obviously make sense to us, but this is like most of the civilized world trying to tell America that they really shouldn't let their citizens have access to guns en masse. It is an utterly alien concept that just can not be understood by certain groups in there.

As I understood it, the Garleans did not believe they were kidnapping or forcing people, but liberating them and offering them a chance at civilized modern life. From their point of view, they are essentially semi-modern era tech with cars, electricity and radios, whereas "we" are mostly age-of-sail dirt farmers. They also see their way as an end to petty infighting. It's rather comparable to colonial Britain's attempts to "civilize" Africa/Asia. To them, we are like the Arabic factions in Lawrence of Arabia.

Not saying it was good/bad/correct/etc, just different points of view.

They are not strangers to a concept of "defending their home" by what we learned. So you want to tell me they are THAT stupid that they really thought that Eorzeans are going to follow invaders like blind sheeps, no matter how much suffering Empire brought to them? That when we arrive to Garlemald they blame US for everything, that we killed their brethen? Well, no shit!

[Veloran]

More than the specific story within the zone, I think a lot of disappointment is derived from the near-total destruction of the Garlean aesthetic and culture before we even really got to see it. Half the Garlemald zone is a complete pile of rubble, and the other half is just a snowy wasteland, so there's really no space outside of maybe the subway station to get any hint of their advanced magitek lifestyle and design. People wanted to see FF7 Midgar and instead we got FF6 World of Ruin. The Legions in the area are also either tempered or utterly destroyed, so instead of a situation where we need to make uneasy allies with the Garleans to go after Zenos, which would have allowed us to see the Garlean military from the other side, we ultimately end up just taking pity on some broken and hostile refugees, which is hardly something new to XIV.

And as it stands Garlemald and it's people just appear to be so obliterated that it's hard to consider any sort of story going forward with them. There might be a few Legions left out there, the clearly not-dead Gabranth and Gaius running around, but for all intents and purposes the Garleans as a faction appear to be done for - And we didn't even really get to see or involve ourselves with it's downfall, beyond the notion of a domino effect.

[RyuDragnier]

There's always Corvos, which hopefully will show off their architecture and everything properly. There's no way they haven't made their homeland keep up with their technology.

[KizuyaKatogami]

More than the specific story within the zone, I think a lot of disappointment is derived from the near-total destruction of the Garlean aesthetic and culture before we even really got to see it. Half the Garlemald zone is a complete pile of rubble, and the other half is just a snowy wasteland, so there's really no space outside of maybe the subway station to get any hint of their advanced magitek lifestyle and design. People wanted to see FF7 Midgar and instead we got FF6 World of Ruin. The Legions in the area are also either tempered or utterly destroyed, so instead of a situation where we need to make uneasy allies with the Garleans to go after Zenos, which would have allowed us to see the Garlean military from the other side, we ultimately end up just taking pity on some broken and hostile refugees, which is hardly something new to XIV.

And as it stands Garlemald and it's people just appear to be so obliterated that it's hard to consider any sort of story going forward with them. There might be a few Legions left out there, the clearly not-dead Gabranth and Gaius running around, but for all intents and purposes the Garleans as a faction appear to be done for - And we didn't even really get to see or involve ourselves with it's downfall, beyond the notion of a domino effect.

Sadly it’s just another case of the protagonists prevail and get to rebuild and keep their cities and land with nothing happening to them but the antagonists areas are destroyed and brought to ruin. Really wish this wasn’t the case and i suspect it wasn’t going to be destroyed this soon but since 7.0 got moved to 6.0…Garlemald suffered.

[HappyHubris]

Who know that the world-conquering Garlean empire was really a medium-sized town all along.