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

[MikkoAkure]

It's also possible for multiple groups of people to have a valid claim to a specific bit of land - though there's really no real reason that the game could not push for a compromise and have the Garlean survivors integrate into Corvos and return to their roots as farmers. The only reason it did not, I suspect, is because the game has ever been one sided in terms of how it goes about 'liberation' stories. An unfortunate consequence of the protagonist centred morality at play as well as the broken aesops. Incidentally, the Garleans are very similar to the Ancients in that regard. Both are races which were subjected to horrific atrocities, had to get their hands dirty in order to survive and then are blamed for not just rolling over and dying for the convenience of the self proclaimed 'heroes' of the story.

The option was presented in the game to have the Garleans relocate to Corvos, but they said that given the fact that Corvosi rebels just kicked them out in the wake of the Final Days, it wouldn't work out well for either side.

There's no chance for either the Corvosi to accept Garlean rule again, and the Garleans themselves in that questline absolutely refused to be ruled by anyone who isn't Garlean.

There's no going back to Locus Amoenus, either. Wrack and ruin... Those are our only options.

Rebuild Garlemald? No, there is no point in entertaining so lofty a dream. And we would sooner die than suffer life under the rule of another.

The Garleans lost their homeland 800 years ago and at this point the people living there had nothing at all to do with it. They lost their ties to the land and it's not theirs anymore and now they're the ones who are the bad, conquering force. The Garleans aren't some innocent force for justice taking back what is rightfully theirs, they're weaponized resentment purposefully managed by an Ascian in order to cause trouble in the world. The average citizens are victims in this to be sure, but that doesn't mean that they or the people they conquered would accept a compromise and it doesn't mean that they deserve to have space carved out for them from someone else's land. It would have been one thing to have tried to come to a peaceful agreement initially and it's a whole other thing altogether to just come in with troops and plant your flag.

Oh, well I guess the Garlieans should move aside for all those allagans who are displaced. :^)

The Allagans are gone but G'raha's Miqo'te tribe were still there and came there after being displaced themselves. The Garleans aren't even from there either and came from somewhere else before they were displaced. At least one of the proto-Garlean tribes created the city of Goug before the city exploded and they had to move.

[Raoabolic]

The Allagans are gone but G'raha's Miqo'te tribe were still there and came there after being displaced themselves. The Garleans aren't even from there either and came from somewhere else before they were displaced. At least one of the proto-Garlean tribes created the city of Goug before the city exploded and they had to move.

Then if we allow everyone to claim land on a first come first serve basis then Limsa has some 'splanin to do. Besides, if that is how things worked then we would have a sweet game of musical chairs with land, lol. At this point the Garleans are displaced and the Miqo'tes can claim their land back. Would that give the existing Garleans casus belli to then take back said land? Now that I think about it, that sounds like a pretty sweet new storyline the game can go but I know the current writers won't touch this angle of the story with a ten foot pole, lol.

[aveyond-dreams]

Well here’s my filled-out chart, not nearly as scathing as I’m sure some would expect but it makes my feelings on these characters clear enough:

G'raha's people held the land thousands of years ago during the time of the Allagans so I don't think it's as simple as that. Fourchenault even says as much:

Ok so to recap: Magic putty from the sundering -> evolves and moves to/builds the Clockwork City of Goug -> Ramza battles Subject 6 and destroys half the city in the process -> the city is abandoned and the survivors move to the (seemingly) hospitable Corvosi lands -> magic wielding races push them further and further north until Emet-Selch intervenes.

Given how these events played out, it seems that the means of building and maintaining Goug’s machina was lost over time which led to the Garlean people having to revert to a life prior to that technology’s existence. Now as farmers who are unable to wield magic, they don’t exactly pose a threat to anyone. Then come in the other races who can wield magic and use to displace them, a clearly antagonistic action that was eventually returned in kind.

For a game that preaches on and on about helping and saving refugees it sure seems that they were unwilling to extend the same mercy to the Garleans in their compromised state after Goug’s fall, and then continues to paint their retaking of Corvos as evil when the Corvosi were, in fact, the first to aggress against them.

I also strongly suspect that the final role quest was pieced together rather quickly at the last minute because the development team realised that having a storyline about the Russian inspired race reclaiming their ancestral homeland at the same time as their real world equivalent engaging in a 'special military operation' had the potential to be controversial.

Which sucks, since I don't think real world events should be influencing the direction of the ongoing story but I get it when accounting for the sort of black and white morality large swathes of this game's community cling to.

It might even explain the weird decision to tie Hildibrand to the relic weapon this time around, especially if Corvos was originally planned to be the Bozja and Eureka equivalent. We might still go there at some point though it was name dropped far too heavily and it does seem as though the writers are struggling to figure out where, exactly, to take the Garleans next. That we haven't heard anything in regards to content equivalent to Ishgard's reconstruction efforts is suspicious as well. Other than a passing comment before Endwalker.

All just speculation, though. We'll never know for sure unless they bring it up in an interview.

The trend that I see of CBU3 altering their plans/story content in response to world events is not sustainable long term. If a new disease breaks out, there goes any potential involvement of a plague or anything similar in the story. If there is war and global conflict, then that cannot be used as a plot point either.

It’s a form of self-censorship that I simply do not agree with, and also speaks to a lack of confidence in being able to tackle these difficult subjects in tasteful ways that lean more towards fantasy and less so moralizing. A surviving Larsa or Anastasia-like figure to guide the empire to better days would have done so much more than the overt preaching in the role quest.

In any case the decision to tie Hildibrand to the relic weapons is something that has turned me off from pursuing the relic entirely unless there is something so unique and different about them that I can’t get from any of the relics/crafted/savage weapons that I already own.

[MikkoAkure]

Then if we allow everyone to claim land on a first come first serve basis then Limsa has some 'splanin to do. Besides, if that is how things worked then we would have a sweet game of musical chairs with land, lol. At this point the Garleans are displaced and the Miqo'tes can claim their land back. Would that give the existing Garleans casus belli to then take back said land? Now that I think about it, that sounds like a pretty sweet new storyline the game can go but I know the current writers won't touch this angle of the story with a ten foot pole, lol.

I never said that the Corvosi were right in kicking out the Garleans just like the Limsans weren't right in kicking out the Kobolds but at this point hundreds of years later, the people living there have nothing to do with it. My point in bringing up G'raha is that his people were there before the Garleans were but the Garleans still claim it as solely their homeland, which is not true. The entire Garlean motivation was to take back the "homeland" from the aggressors who took it 800 years ago but the people who took it 800 years ago have been dead for centuries, just as the people who were wronged have been dead for centuries. On top of that, the Garleans didn't stop there and started conquering nations that had nothing at all to do with their original motivation so you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who backs the Garleans anyway.

Considering Fourchenault and Sharlayan are as neutral as you're going to get and the comments he made on the Garleans, I don't think a neutral party would agree that the Garleans have a proper casus belli and right to take back Corvos considering they were the occupying and invading force this time around. Sharlayan was a nation for hundreds of years before the Garleans fled Corvosi aggression so I'd trust their neutral take on things since they're been recording history since before that time as observers.


Like Theodric said, it's possible that the role quest storyline was rewritten after the events going on in the world right now since they're eerily similar to events in the game, but unless it's asked and they actually answer, we won't know. I don't think they would have had the time to redo bits of it in a hurry, but who knows.

[Theodric]

We'll see where they take things, I suppose. 6.1 mostly dealt with Thavnair where the MSQ's were concerned. It seems like we'll eventually catch up with Jullus and the twins again but that could be during 6.2 or at a later point. So long as we get some manner of 'happy ending' for the Garleans that is respectful to their past plight and future challenges then I'll be content.

[jameseoakes]

We'll see where they take things, I suppose. 6.1 mostly dealt with Thavnair where the MSQ's were concerned. It seems like we'll eventually catch up with Jullus and the twins again but that could be during 6.2 or at a later point. So long as we get some manner of 'happy ending' for the Garleans that is respectful to their past plight and future challenges then I'll be content.

Honestly at this point I really don't see how they can do a 'happy ending' for the Garleans there civilian population seems to have been functionally exterminated by Fandaniel so I'm not sure what they'll be salvaging out of Garlemald

[Rulakir]

Well here’s my filled-out chart, not nearly as scathing as I’m sure some would expect but it makes my feelings on these characters clear enough:

I like how I'm the only one who's just outright canceled Scions so far. I didn't think I'd end up being the one harshest on them!

Some of them I've never liked, but some tanked for me in EW. I was probably even too generous with Thancred.

I watched Spiderman: No Way Home today. I wish we'd gotten similar from EW.

Not only does Peter fight to save people who arguably didn't deserve it (which is framed as being the right thing to do), giving them a second chance instead of a guaranteed death, but at the end everyone forgets who he is. Imagine if EW had ended with no one remembering the WoL and having to really start over from zero?

Alas.

[Kolsykol]

Yoshida's comment about people looking too deep into the story is so baffling. He saw people stand and applaud Ishikawa because of Shadowbringers' story... Did that not hint that people care more for the story than he thinks...?

Besides they're the ones who keep putting the MSQ front and center when marketing the game. Why is it surprising there are players who witness the plot in more detail than others in such a story driven game?

I dunno what the exact context surrounding that statement is, but I do think there is such a thing as overthinking things.
You can ruin any story by overthinking it and I seriously doubt that what he meant was '' just don't think at all about it bro ''.
I dunno why we need to have the most bad faith interpretation of everything the devs say all the time...

I do this all the time and it's something I kinda need to push back against myself with because I have a tendency to overthink and overanalyze everything to a point where I can't enjoy things and where things just collapse.
Not only about story stuff too but if a game, movie or show presents itself as '' realistic '' then dear lawd my brain will just go full steam ahead and overanalyze everything to a point where everything falls apart and feels dumb to me.
I actually kinda have a hard time enjoying media that tries to be realistic for that reason because everything just stands out to me.

I rewatched the LOTR trilogy extended cuts not long ago too and I was fighting myself quite a bit to just enjoy it and not overthink everything lol.
I can do it, but it's a struggle.
The thing is too that if you enjoy something you'll generally be able to look past it or not do it.
But I think that when people don't enjoy or was disappointed with something then they suddenly begin to do this when they otherwise wouldn't.
It's like that for me too because I love the LOTR trilogy I can watch it and enjoy it, but if I didn't then all of that stuff would stand out a lot more to me and become a much bigger problem.

This was actually rather predictable, if you take the focus off Meteion herself and more onto "The Ancients created their own doom".

People were allllll over that in ShB, as far as I can remember.

I mean, I hate it, of course. I would much rather have had the Final Days be a tragedy that randomly befell a fundamentally good people, some kind of Eldritch being/phenomena the Ancients had nothing to do with and no control over. But they went with blaming the victims, of course. Muh (broken) aesop.

I mean in a sense that's the case, it was only Hermes who had a hand in it and Dynamis was a mysterious power they had no to little control over most people didn't even know it existed.
Meteion was a victim of circumstance too she had no real autonomy in it either, it's sorta like she was an unwilling incarnation of the nihilism of the universe.
Imo at least I kinda like that an Ancient was the origin of the problem even if he didn't directly cause it with his own hands.
I like the idea of a deeply flawed Ancient being capable of causing so many problems, a sort of inevitability of a race of godlike beings.

I think it'd be a bit boring tbh if the Ancients were just all essentially flawless and '' good '', and I think that was clearly not the case and not just Hermes but Hermes was definitely especially flawed.
I dunno where you get the victim blaming from tho.
The Ancients were victims and they weren't at fault either, Hermes was the only one that really held any blame.
Why would you blame a whole group of people because of the actions of one person?

[KageTokage]

Honestly at this point I really don't see how they can do a 'happy ending' for the Garleans there civilian population seems to have been functionally exterminated by Fandaniel so I'm not sure what they'll be salvaging out of Garlemald

I feel like the best case scenario would be for an arrangement to be made for them and the other people of Ilsabard to co-exist in Corvos and other provinces that are amenable to the idea.

There doesn't seem to be any indication that that wasn't the case originally, as the G tribe was stated to have lived there since the time of the Allagans, but it's only at some later point that aggressors from neighboring regions chased out the Garleans. For all we know there might be only one specific group that was responsible for that, but the Garleans ended up pursuing disproportionate retribution and decided to make enemies of the entire continent; even those who had no hand in their exile.

Those years of bad blood aren't just going to wash away quickly, though, and I can easily see a new conflict brewing as a result of the remaining Garlean legions desiring to reclaim Corvos after the Final Days largely eliminated their presence in the region. I will welcome such a thing if it's not a simple matter of right vs. wrong and radical parties on both sides of things serve as obstacles to peace.

[Kolsykol]

I feel like the best case scenario would be for an arrangement to be made for them and the other people of Ilsabard to co-exist in Corvos and other provinces that are amenable to the idea.

There doesn't seem to be any indication that that wasn't the case originally, as the G tribe was stated to have lived there since the time of the Allagans, but it's only at some later point that aggressors from neighboring regions chased out the Garleans. For all we know there might be only one specific group that was responsible for that, but the Garleans ended up pursuing disproportionate retribution and decided to make enemies of the entire continent; even those who had no hand in their exile.

Those years of bad blood aren't just going to wash away quickly, though, and I can easily see a new conflict brewing as a result of the remaining Garlean legions desiring to reclaim Corvos after the Final Days largely eliminated their presence in the region. I will welcome such a thing if it's not a simple matter of right vs. wrong and radical parties on both sides of things serve as obstacles to peace.

I imagine after a near universe ending event people would probably be a bit more open to just moving on, especially with Garlemald being destroyed and the Garleans learning the truth.
You're not wrong that there would be a bunch of crap with people incapable of moving on but I don't think it'd be something you wouldn't be able to keep under control.

I mean irl we have a lot of countries with VERY bloody histories that today are very good friends including multiple world wars on top of it all.
People all things considered moved on very quickly from WW2 which I'd say was worse than what the Garleans were up to ( even if the Garlemald was really bad, but they afaik didn't have gas chambers etc... ).
Not to mention that Garlemald had a crap ton of Eorzeans doing a lot of really bad stuff under their umbrella.
I think people would just kinda be done tbh, we've seen it many times irl too at some point things just get so bad that people have enough and just decide to stop.

Garleans I don't think are in any position to do anything either and learning the truth of their Empire I think would be internally conflicting enough to stop any large scale uprising.