What is with the constant mistreatment of the Garlean story?(6.1 Patch spoilers)

[Schwarzwind]

Tbf, whether it is popular or unpopular, i’d argue against it not adding anything to the longevity of the game. It’s a nation in the world. It’s a nation that has been a pretty big factor since the start of the game in 1.0, with many plot points and story elements of not only itself, but other nations attached to it as well.

Again I have to say that tastes are different. There are more than enough players that are fed up with Garlemald and want to explore other regions or shards instead of dragging on with the Garlemald plot for another year or two.

The only thing I can agree on is that the story overall would have been better, had they gone through with a Garlemald expansion. But I can at least understand the points that led to what we have now.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Honestly, when it comes to nations being mistreated or neglected by the narrative, I think it's the Gridanian fans that have far more a case than anyone else, lmao. (I would like to note that I am not, in fact, a Gridanian fan. But yikes!)

Gridania never really had much for problems set up in the first place. The Ixal were resolved with the other beast tribes (and even when they were a problem, it was mostly in Coerthas), and the elementals only really came up in the white mage story. And while they mention being xenophobic and prejudiced against Duskwights and Keepers of the Moon, it never really mattered outside of the lancer story and one or two quests around Buscaron's Druthers.

[MoofiaBossVal]

Gridania not being touched after 2.0 is probably a blessing at this point. Seeing as how the pirate nation was stripped of its piracy, the thing that made it interesting, a Gridania story written today would probably strip it of the elementals too.

[Broken_Wind]

i mean... they wanted to end it in 7.0... but they decides it would be too stretched out. so they ended it in 6.0. the result? 30% more story with a lot of things happening but also missing out of a lot of things. i assume zodiarc would have been the final boss in 6.0 and several maps for garlemald would have been on the table.

I can understand a Garlemald expansion being a tough sell after ShB.
In much the same ways as SB being a tough sell after HW. While SB obviously had its own issues (I still liked it overall), the Dragonsong War was just so much cooler than the 'evil empire'. Much as the ShB storyline, and its expansion of the ascians, is also so much cooler than the 'evil empire'.

I dont doubt that they could have told a really good story and I would have preferred they try, but I can see why the decision was made

[Kyrj]

I can understand a Garlemald expansion being a tough sell after ShB.
In much the same ways as SB being a tough sell after HW. While SB obviously had its own issues (I still liked it overall), the Dragonsong War was just so much cooler than the 'evil empire'. Much as the ShB storyline, and its expansion of the ascians, is also so much cooler than the 'evil empire'.

I dont doubt that they could have told a really good story and I would have preferred they try, but I can see why the decision was made

This is dangerous thinking on SE's part. You risk going down the WoW route of "The next expac has to be bigger! More bigger threat! More BIG!".

[KageTokage]

I'm mostly curious what they intend to do with the rest of Ilsabard given their seeming disinterest in continuing anything Garlean-related.

The remaining legions are very much capable of being an issue still as less then half of them have been either wiped out or decided to cooperate with the Eorzean Alliance, and while they could serve as an easy reason to have us get involved with matters over there (Like they were intending in the original draft of the story), at this point I'm feeling like they'd rather send us to Meracydia instead.

This is dangerous thinking on SE's part. You risk going down the WoW route of "The next expac has to be bigger! More bigger threat! More BIG!".

They specifically mentioned that they don't want to do that and that people should expect the story going forward to be more grounded.

[Gameovers]

Man I was wondering when this topic was going to be brought up. I said in the beginning of 6.0 that Garlemald got the short stick. But I can see why, I honestly never thought going there was a thing and thought people were just screaming to go for reasons. I say this because everyone complained about them in stormblood being one note villains when they were always one note villains. It's just funny seeing that SE finally cave and said " Fine, here's your Garlemald But we killed it and made it ruins!!!" It really does feel like they did it out of spite and nothing is going to change my mind about that.

Yes I'm saying they did it out of spite. I don't agree with that but it REALLY feels like they did.

[MikkoAkure]

Gridania not being touched after 2.0 is probably a blessing at this point. Seeing as how the pirate nation was stripped of its piracy, the thing that made it interesting, a Gridania story written today would probably strip it of the elementals too.

Funnily enough, all that has already happened a decade ago.

Limsa Lominsa was stripped of its piracy in 1.0 when Yoshi-P took over the story and the Grand Companies were created. As a Lominsan, there was even a quest where you get chastised for trying to steal junk from the Ul'Dahns and Merlwyb declares piracy over. Then ARR came along and got rid of the original Marauder's Guild, where you are a pirate and do pirate things and the guild spot was a pirate ship with a bad-guy bar and a woman playing Answers on a harp.

Gridania lost its elementals in between 1.0 and ARR. In 1.0, if you broke the Hedge (the barrier of the forest) without permission, you would begin accruing woodsin and the elementals would start sicking the whole forest on you from wolves to treants. ARR quests mention how the Calamity greatly weakened the elementals to the point where they can't do all of that anymore like they used to. On a side note, ARR seemed to also stop mentioning that the rest of the world has elementals too and they live in EVERYTHING. There was a quest once in 1.0 where you take a letter to some conjurers to ask them to ask the elementals about the writer and the elementals of the ink talk about the mood the writer was in when they were being put to paper.


Back on topic, it feels like part of the reason Garlemald was done dirty is because the devs admitted that they had revealed too much in Shadowbringers and hastened the end of the main story. As well as that, it feels like a Garlean-themed expansion would have been Stormblood all over again and personally I don't think it's interesting to continue to do the same war and liberation thing over and over for both the audience and the writers. Then on top of that, we kept having crazed Imperials thrown at us over and over with Nael, Varis, Zenos, Varro, Asahi, Livia, Aulus, and Yotsuyu and at least for me, I'm tired of the character archetype and especially tired of Zenos as a character. A Regulus-type Imperial who was moderate, but loyal and understanding would've been good but also would have cheapened Regulus since he existed for such a short time and that was the only characterization he ever got.

Then there's also the fact that the story has been getting LONG and unlike FFXI, there's no way to just jump into things in new expansions without having to do everything else first. I think they really needed to end things so that we can have a secondary starting point, especially with how many new players are coming.

I think it could've been done better, but ultimately when you have the original emperor of Garlemald himself admitting that the whole thing was purposefully designed to create as much destruction as possible while at the same time being so politically fragile that when he "died" it falls apart with violence and chaos, it wasn't going to end pretty for the Garleans.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I'm mostly curious what they intend to do with the rest of Ilsabard given their seeming disinterest in continuing anything Garlean-related.

The remaining legions are very much capable of being an issue still as less then half of them have been either wiped out or decided to cooperate with the Eorzean Alliance, and while they could serve as an easy reason to have us get involved with matters over there (Like they were intending in the original draft of the story), at this point I'm feeling like they'd rather send us to Meracydia instead.



They specifically mentioned that they don't want to do that and that people should expect the story going forward to be more grounded.

Tbf they say a lot of things….like when they said we’d be taking the fight to garlemald before 5.0…

[KariTheFox]

I'm curious about what more people could want done with Garlemald that hasn't been done already. They've been the focus of several story arcs, we've had loyal Garleans, idealistic Garleans, power-hungry Garleans, Garlean defectors and Garlean collaborators. They're among the most plentiful and developed set of characters in the story, and it's more than likely we'll be seeing more of them in the future.