What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Theodric]

I'd be very surprised if the story went right back to making antagonists out of Garleans again. Uniting the survivors and crowning a new Emperor would be a pretty cool direction for Garlemald to go in. I'd rather not see it lose its claws and fangs altogether, though there's plenty of room for the Garleans to invest in magitek as a means of securing trade deals to justify further interaction between the various different nations. Thavnair and Hingashi are neutral towards Garlemald already and it'd make sense for the provinces that prospered and improved under Garlean rule to not necessarily desire breaking away.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I'd be very surprised if the story went right back to making antagonists out of Garleans again. Uniting the survivors and crowning a new Emperor would be a pretty cool direction for Garlemald to go in. I'd rather not see it lose its claws and fangs altogether, though there's plenty of room for the Garleans to invest in magitek as a means of securing trade deals to justify further interaction between the various different nations. Thavnair and Hingashi are neutral towards Garlemald already and it'd make sense for the provinces that prospered and improved under Garlean rule to not necessarily desire breaking away.

What’s sad is i could see them totally building up the long awaited Nerva as the antagonist for it…Since for some reason the antagonists always need to be ascians or garleans. I hope i’m wrong though and Nerva proves to be more of a Larsa-like figure from ff12 and helps unite the people.

[KageTokage]

Since for some reason the antagonists always need to be ascians or garleans.

The Garleans have long been the only significant source of strife on the Three Great Continents outside of civil wars like those in pre-occupation Ala Mhigo, so unless there's some closet military power hiding in Ilsabard and waiting to make their presence known, I have trouble thinking of who/what else could realistically serve as the antagonist for an Ilsbard expansion barring the introduction of some new supernatural threat as a consequence of Endwalker's events changing the natural order.