Narrative Exploration: A Garlemald Expansion

[DPZ2]

Given the context and flow of Endwalker, and the buildup to that expansion in Shadowbringers, there was no way we were going to march into Garlemald as conquerors.

Given the nature and declared goal of Fandaniel, there was no way any nation, including the Garleans, was going to be left untouched and untempered.

What part of Varis's "parlay" with the Eorzean leadership led anyone to believe it would be that simple?

What we got was the logical resolution of those towers popping up everywhere. This wasn't a Garlean invention to take over the world. This was Fandaniel preparing for the End of the World.

The "what ifs" and "what needs to happen to make those what ifs true" goes back well before A Realm Reborn. To think that things could be retconn'd by not-so-subtly redirecting Shadowbringers towards that end would have made for a rather blah expansion.

I'll make it even easier for the retconn: Zenos dies in Stormblood. Period. No need for grand themes. Varis is still alive and has purpose. Black Rose is utilized during the Garlemald expansion that follows, since we do not go to the First. We die when Light floods the Source. The end.

[SaitoHikari]

Given the context and flow of Endwalker, and the buildup to that expansion in Shadowbringers, there was no way we were going to march into Garlemald as conquerors.

Given the nature and declared goal of Fandaniel, there was no way any nation, including the Garleans, was going to be left untouched and untempered.

What part of Varis's "parlay" with the Eorzean leadership led anyone to believe it would be that simple?

What we got was the logical resolution of those towers popping up everywhere. This wasn't a Garlean invention to take over the world. This was Fandaniel preparing for the End of the World.

The "what ifs" and "what needs to happen to make those what ifs true" goes back well before A Realm Reborn. To think that things could be retconn'd by not-so-subtly redirecting Shadowbringers towards that end would have made for a rather blah expansion.

I'll make it even easier for the retconn: Zenos dies in Stormblood. Period. No need for grand themes. Varis is still alive and has purpose. Black Rose is utilized during the Garlemald expansion that follows, since we do not go to the First. We die when Light floods the Source. The end.

Yeah, this is basically it. It's why I disagree with a lot of the OP's proposed changes.

I feel like the only real problem with the lack of a Garlemald expansion is just how abrupt our journey there ended up being, a lot of suspension of disbelief for us going there without even thinking of bringing some of the major Garleans in Eorzea along or making contact with one of the other remaining Legions (it feels extremely out of character for Gaius to not tag along), and even worse, that the story just continues to off-screen them after the fact (with details in the final role quest basically giving the writers a potential out for us to never even visit Corvos if plans don't pan out in that direction). It's like they completely ceased to exist as an actual faction the moment Emet-Selch was introduced and Zenos came back from the dead.

There should have at least been an extra zone before going there, where we try to make contact with at least one of the other Legions.

Of course, none of this would be a problem if there's an actual follow-up in the story that actually ties everything up, but instead the topic of the day has immediately shifted to the 13th shard. Us going back in 6.3 for a brief time doesn't really count because things are still more or less the same up there, though the twins at least acknowledge that the situation entirely depends on whether the other nations care to continue supporting their efforts. We'll probably have to wait until 6.5 to see if anything will be done at all (or if we immediately screw off to another shard or sail across the seas instead), since 6.4 is likely going to focus entirely on concluding the 13th shard arc.

[TaleraRistain]

I wonder if a Garlemald expansion would have ended up feeling a bit derivative and samey after Stormblood.

I do feel things could have been expounded upon a bit but I also think they have a good place to start from here. Instead of exploring and understanding the Empire, we could delve into the roots of the Garleans and learn who they really are. I'd love to see some things going back to Goug. Like why can't they use aether? Was it always that way or did something happen way back in Goug? It doesn't seem to be the conflict that created Ridorana since IIRC they were using tech before that. I feel like there's a lot of rich story SE could give us from where things currently are that would be much better than what may have felt like a rehash of Stormblood.

[Rufalus]

Instead of exploring and understanding the Empire, we could delve into the roots of the Garleans and learn who they really are.

Yeah that's the kind of future for the game that I was imagining when we were still in 2.x/3.x patches. In some future expansion we would rid Garlemald of its tyrants / dark influence, new neutral leadership is installed and we then get to explore the city safely and learn Garlean culture. It would've been something like Archadia, the seat of FF XII's empire, with esoteric technologies that aren't found anywhere else.

[Deo14]

The hilarious thing is, everyone said the exact same thing about the Ascians until Shadowbringers came around, and the writers have since admitted that they came up with the idea to retcon Garlemald into being an Ascian tool, by creating Emet-Selch and retconning Solus as one of his identities. Seriously, remember what the Ascians did before Emet-Selch's sudden introduction into the plot. Do you remember anything? Exactly.

You can tell which people on these forums joined the game very late and/or have no capacity for narrative analysis.

So you propose that writers start throwing random elements into story and hope that Ishikawa will manage to salvage it once again ? Yes, it was good call to direct ShB story that way even though it caused serious retcons, but that doesn't mean they should rely on it. If they have some high caliber story involving empire then so be it, but if not, stop investing into garlemald which has nothing more to offer.

[Rufalus]

They could have been an interesting ally had they survived and reformed in a post-ascian age. The magitek industrial city capable of manufacturing titanic warships. Garlond Ironworks could have moved into Cid's homeland and made use of the resources there. Actually it could've become a democracy and ended up with Cid as leader of the city-state by popular vote.

This all leads to us needing to take a huge Agrias-class airship into battle against the Giant of Babil, an FF IV reference that was maybe too expensive for Endwalker. Thousands of dragons join the fight, reminiscent of the Battle of Silvertear Lake except they're fighting alongside the Garlean vessel this time rather than against it. I like to dream.

[SaitoHikari]

So you propose that writers start throwing random elements into story and hope that Ishikawa will manage to salvage it once again ? Yes, it was good call to direct ShB story that way even though it caused serious retcons, but that doesn't mean they should rely on it. If they have some high caliber story involving empire then so be it, but if not, stop investing into garlemald which has nothing more to offer.

I am absolutely in agreement that retcons are not to be relied upon.

My grievances lie with the idea that the Garlemald half of the story basically got narratively sacrificed to save the writing for the Ascian half of the story, by retconning that faction so that they were always part of the Ascian plot all along. I disagree that this was ever necessary. Sure, it gave us some memorable moments, but it may have robbed us of so much more in the long term. And as a consequence, you now have people pretending that the Garlemald half of the story was never worth anything all along, to the point where it feels like the vast majority of the community are outright pressuring the devs to send us the hell away from the Three Great Continents just because 'new arc means 100% fresh start' and 'Garlemald stuff was always the worst part of the game' (where, again, people said the exact same thing about the Ascian half of the story pre-ShB, pretending this wasn't the case is some crazy-ass revisionist history - after all, prior to the release of ShB, a lot of people were speaking of Shadowbringers as if it would be little more than a filler arc because it was taking us to the First shard instead of Garlemald, which likely prompted the devs to include Emet-Selch dropping that stinger line about Hydaleyn and Zodiark being the eldest of primals in that one trailer, in order to dispel that sentiment entire months before ShB release).

I don't particularly care about the overall quality of the game's various plots, my true investment in this game is how cohesive and wide-ranging the game's lore is as a complete package. As such, the prospect that the Garlemald arc just got off-screened and worse, potentially abandoned after the fact without any actual follow-up seriously bothers me on principle alone. If the plot seriously moves forward without addressing that elephant in the room, half the cast starts unintentionally looking like massive hypocrites, considering all the stuff about unity, peace, and forgiveness among the all of the factions before. You seem okay with this prospect, since this is the advice you're offering us...

stop investing into garlemald which has nothing more to offer.

But leaving such a major thread hanging in the game's overall world structure is a massive blemish that flies in the face of everyone unironically claiming that this game is a masterclass in video game writing. I'm not saying that the writing is bad like a certain few contrarians in other threads, but I feel like the overall state of the fanbase since ShB release has gotten so rabid as to willfully blind themselves, and aren't doing the game any favors by overselling it. We've got to be better.

[Rufalus]

But leaving such a major thread hanging in the game's overall world structure is a massive blemish that flies in the face of everyone unironically claiming that this game is a masterclass in video game writing. I'm not saying that the writing is bad like a certain few contrarians in other threads, but I feel like the overall state of the fanbase since ShB release has gotten so rabid as to willfully blind themselves, and aren't doing the game any favors by overselling it. We've got to be better.

Maybe the backstory is the masterclass, but everything the WoL witnesses in the here and now is going to make a mess of that nice lore we had. That took me years to work out. It's the lore history that I love, not the hero's journey.

The world-building was so good and it makes sense until we come along and radically change everything as a regular habit. Having huge historic events every expansion as a requirement to keep the MSQ exciting just means the story will lose credibility. There's no way it can be cohesive with this structure and tempo. Too much stuff with huge implications gets conveniently crammed into this narrow slice of time we are experiencing.

They're basically telling a single-player FF story inside an MMO, but those things usually end when you save the planet and they don't tend to have sequels. Here we get sequel after sequel with the same characters, routinely redirecting the fate of the star like a superhero squad. Light the way!

[MikkoAkure]

My grievances lie with the idea that the Garlemald half of the story basically got narratively sacrificed to save the writing for the Ascian half of the story, by retconning that faction so that they were always part of the Ascian plot all along. I disagree that this was ever necessary.

I don't necessarily agree that Garlemald was "sacrificed" for the Ascians and if anything, it fixed a few problems that have been present in the game since 1.0.

The explanation that Garlemald was an Asican plot makes perfect sense when looking back at the story because in the beginning you had Solus making whacked out ideas like agreeing to nuke Eorzea by bringing down a whole moon. Then in ARR, we heard about how his indecision to name an heir was causing political turmoil and was the reason why the Garleans weren't reacting to anything and Eorzea had time to gather its forces together. Then later either in post-ARR or in HW we learned about the civil war that turmoil led to. ARR also established that the Garleans were working with the Ascians and that the recent Calamity caused by the Garleans was to the Ascians advantage so them being connected was never a stretch.


Ultimately, the main issue that introducing the Garleans caused to the game's narrative since 1.0 is that they are way too powerful. It would be one thing if this were FFXII where both sides had military airships but that's not the case and Eorzea is completely outgunned.

In a setting where the rest of the world is in its knights and sorcery phase, shooting arrows at each other, the Garleans have magitek, machine guns, tanks, siege robots, and gigantic airships the size of a small city. Their only "weakness" is that they can't use magic but that weakness doesn't feel as strong when the so-called rarity of ceruleum is never really a problem. The only reason Eorzea ever stood a chance is because of deus ex machina like a moon falling and hatching a dragon god or a random adventurer who happened to be born at the right time who has part of the soul of an Ancient of their highest order and is blessed by the most powerful being on the planet. They're also thwarted by their own acts of comic book villain ineptitude like killing their own soldiers or allowing rebellions to keep growing so they can fight stronger enemies.

Unless Garlemald was defeated by another deus ex machina the writers brought out of nowhere, it was always destined to fall by its own hand instead of a conquering Eorzean army. Considering we only went to Garlemald to stop a greater threat to the world, there would have been no reason at all for Eorzea to go there to conquer them anyway. Ala Mhigo's liberation was forced by Ilberd's false flag operation, and Doma's as a gambit to help Ala Mhigo's liberation. Eorzea would stand no chance fighting against Garlemald on their home turf with their sci-fi levels of military equipment. The Ghimlyt Dark dungeon and Bozja zones are confusing when you think about how one side has paratroopers and mecha and the other has "a bunch of heroes who sword good". Both were still a struggle and neither was against the full might of multiple legions defending their home.


But there's been past precedence for Garlemald's worst enemy being themselves and that's exactly what we got. Eorzea and by extension, the WoL, get to roll in with their hands mostly clean of the actual fall of the empire and not as conquerors so that eases things a bit for the narrative to move on with us as helpers and to allow us to care for the remnants of Garlemald instead of going full vengeance.

This all knocks out giving players something of satisfaction after a decade of fighting the empire, a path forward for players rehabilitating their own images of the Garlean people in a way that makes us feel bad for them, ends any chance of them being a problem in the future so that the writers can make something new completely of their own with no ties to the old game, and since this is an MMO there's now a reason for there to be enemies walking around in a Garlemald zone.

The solution isn't perfect. I would've liked an Archades model where Garlemald is at least an endgame hub not readily accessible until near game completion like Eulmore was but that would've also meant throwing away Thavnir/Radz-at-Han and making it more trouble to figure out why we could walk around there so I can somewhat see how they went with this choice.

[Deo14]

Snip

I can't blame you for wanting to do real empire a justice, but what do you realistically think that Garleans can offer? They do some experiments, use modern age technology and that's about it. We've already even seen their capital. At best, story could revolve around ceruleum, aether or yet another ultimate machine or what not. If they end up as allies, we would need to spend significant portion of the story being Alliance's errand boy in their diplomatic politics, and if they end up as enemies once again, we fight yet another ultimate weapon. Which is why I think it's better to put their story to a side and give new factions and new stories a chance.