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

[KizuyaKatogami]

That all was still hardly enough to fill an expansion. Despite the massive revolution that happened in Stormblood, they still had to throw in three extra zones to fill up all the space, and we all know how poorly paced that was. Garlemald, meanwhile, was mostly empty and destroyed by the end of ShB. All we were left with were story beats that nobody really cared about until EW made them think about what could've been.

Now, maybe if Garlemald weren't reduced to a shell of its former self by the end of ShB, you'd have a point. But I know for a fact that if we took a detour to Garlemald- empty and desolate or not- after all that was set up in ShB, people would be just as if not more upset at EW because it wouldn't have flowed logically from what the story was focusing on at the time. That's why I think 5.0 was the time for a Garlemald expansion. The idea of going to the First frankly came out of nowhere and nobody would've liked the expac were it not for the Exarch, Emet-Selch, and the Ancient lore drops that happened. And the latter two didn't make much sense to be so prominently featured on the First to begin with.

As others have mentioned though…Ilsabard is huge. It’s not just Garlemald. Garlemald could be the focal point sure, but there’s so many other areas there to explore. Hell, if we actually were going to get a garlemald expansion then what happened to it in ShB might be different who knows. Fact is they had a lot to draw upon. Especially if you take into account the whole gabranth storyline as well.

[AziraSyuren]

As others have mentioned though…Ilsabard is huge. It’s not just Garlemald. Garlemald could be the focal point sure, but there’s so many other areas there to explore. Hell, if we actually were going to get a garlemald expansion then what happened to it in ShB might be different who knows. Fact is they had a lot to draw upon. Especially if you take into account the whole gabranth storyline as well.

ShB would've had to have been a lot different for it to work out. At some point we're just going to have to admit that ShB did not take the story in a good direction just because it was amazingly well-written in a vacuum. As great as it was in that vacuum, it was extremely short-sighted in how it handled story threads.

I'm also pretty sure Ishikawa didn't know that we'd not have a Garlemald expansion until after ShB's main story was done, so it was already too late.