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

[SpitbreakFTW]

Ah, but you see, if they brought in the expendables, someone might have actually died and we can't have that.

I was half joking about most of that lineup, but it is REALLY baffling no one got Gaius involved. From an in-universe perspective, he's a tremendous swordsman and a man of great focus and determination. He'd be perfect to bring along to a fight in Emotionscape. From a meta-perspective he'd be perfect to bring because MAYBE I could believe for five seconds that any sacrifice he committed would actually stick. But the writers just kinda FORGOT the guy existed ever since he was written out of the Garlemald invasion.

Estinien is also pretty good at jumping

That's a fair point, I apologize. Still don't know how that is supposed to help subdue berserking zombies though.

My gripe with this complaint is that invading Garlemald had to happen, due to the existence of the Tower of Babil, and I got the impression that they were trying to minimize unnecessary casualties. I agree that expecting hostility without a single casualty would be unrealistic, but military operations with the goal of minimizing them has always been a thing.

My initial understanding was likewise that the goal was to MINIMIZE casualties, particularly to tempered Garleans that were otherwise civilians. And I was totally okay with that. But then we got the scene where Estinien drops some Garlean grunt and Y'Shtola chides him for even INJURING the guy because the two teenagers have said we aren't supposed to kill ANYONE. And then throughout the gameplay in that segment everyone I crack over the skull with my big ole honking axe just falls down with a boo-boo.

Instead of writing anything remotely intelligent for how our characters smartly minimized casualties, they just had The Plot Itself declare that NO ONE DIED LOL. It could be said that I'm being very uncharitable in interpreting what's being shown in that Y'Shtola and Estinien clip, and that despite it suggesting the opposite, the understanding among the characters and in the plot is that there were casualties, and we simply tried to keep them to a bare minimum. But there is still no excuse for no one bringing up the Conquerer's Chain. That is a mistake literally none of these characters could conceivably make.

Yeah, to be honest, the game constantly forgets the Linkshells exist. Every time a mission goal involves "Fast-travel to X location and talk to Y character", I have to question why linkshells suddenly aren't an option for the character.

The game forgets anything that could be a hindrance to either the plot or the padding exists whenever such a situation arises. It's laughably bad writing for any story, but particularly bad for the video game medium.

Can't wait to see what an absolute clown show FFXVI is gonna be.