Narrative Exploration: A Garlemald Expansion

[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.