Quote Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur View Post
Its probably time for you people to wake up and smell the mun tuy beans because Shadowbringer's plot wasnt that great to begin with.
Shadowbringers entire plot was literally "Okay we kinda want our villains to stop being saturday morning cartoon cackling maniacs, especially now that we have a character thats actually more fun in that role than they ever were". It wasn't anything emotionally groundbreaking or innovative. It was still, imo, best story of all expansions, including Endwalker, but people way overpraised it when it was just "decent general writing". Tumblr sexyman Emet Selch and a tease that "what if light evil" that simply was something to ponder rather than a real plot thread was more than enough for people to fall in love with expansion story and expect some deep dark grey morality all over the place going forward, when even that at admission of writers was 'darker than they normally want to go'.

Shadowbringers wasn't something 'special' or 'groundbreaking'. It was a big step up by ff14's storywriting standards and it was a pretty good story, and Endwalker was a good followup, but people expected everything to get WORSE and more dark and more serious and more deep when we all but knew that absolutely wouldn't happen because it was directly acknowledged even before Endwalker that Shadowbringers is probably farthest things will go in that direction. Also yes, 90% of expansion was filler, as really the only things that mattered in grander scheme of arc of The First is how we stop Emet/Elidibus, and everything else was just anticipation buildup to that.