I can't be the only one who finds Hildibrand lame

[FenyxRising]

Exactly how is it funny ? The same joke repeated over and over again ? With next to zero connection to the main story ?

Here's an idea to make it actually good : Put lore into the Hildibrand story that is actually significant and connected to the main story like Scholastic quests. Right now most people I know just skip those quests and I hope the developers track that metric so they know how boring everyone think Hildibrand is.

If they put important lore into Hildibrand even if it's really unfunny it'll at least be interesting to watch.

[Carin-Eri]

No, you're not the only one.

Although, for me, it's not really so much 'lame' as it is predictable, and I don't find predictable funny. I enjoyed it all first, but it quickly became obvious that they just recycle the same humor over and over. I'm at the point where I tend to skip the cutscenes as have very little interest in seeing Hildi fly through the air again, Godbert run around in his underpants again, and bombcat do airheaded things with bombs again.

Each to their own though - I wouldn't say everyone finds it boring; plenty still enjoy it and that's fair enough.

[Cleretic]

They did put 'important lore' in Hildibrand. Constantly. Like, every single Hildibrand storyline has entirely serious and interesting lore outside of 'haha funny slapstick', and it's not even subtle about it; I'd genuinely put it up as one of the real reasons to play Hildibrand. It can't exactly be world-changing, because ultimately it's side-story and the game's written so that it makes sense without doing them, but it really does a lot to flesh out the world we're in. In order...

A Realm Reborn: The big one is the tale of Sil'dih; we have the truth of that in a more serious and modern form now int he Sil'dih Subterrane, but it took most of the game's life before that happened, from ARR patches to EW patches. It's also got the first instance of an unintentionally summoned primal, which would later happen again in Stormblood with Susano. And if you want to count it, Ultros does give an early idea of what voidsent are beyond snarling monsters, and that same Coliseum storyline gave us more insight on what that place is like than we had at the time; the more Coliseum-focused stories came after that, in Stormblood. Oh, and also Gilgamesh, which brings in the Final Fantasy multiverse in a way that helps all the future crossovers make sense; that's all the same stuff that games like Dissidia do, but it's still good to tell us here since not all of us played it.

Heavensward: This one's a little tenuous, most likely because they didn't exactly plan to do it, but there's stuff about aetherology that you can get from this one. To a lesser degree there's Ishgardian stuff, but we weren't exactly starved of that in Heavensward.

Stormblood: Welcome to Politics Zone! It's time for a dive into how Hingan politics work that none of the other storylines focused on Hingashi have ever done, even now! Co-starring surprise Thavnairian stuff: this was to my knowledge the first storyline with a Thavnairian NPC at all, and it's not a small role, it really gives us some insight into what sort of power Thavnair holds, both as a nation and in its independent agents and traders.

Endwalker: This one I'm gonna put in spoiler tags because it's recent, and people might not have done it.

Welcome to the most unexpected crash course on interstellar FFXIV lore since Ultima Thule's fish. We hear about two different alien races here, the PuPu and the Mandervillians; and maybe you'll dismiss the Mandervillians because they connect directly to Hildibrand himself, but I'd encourage you not to, because that's a pretty good window into how the End of Days impacted the rest of the universe that we didn't actually have otherwise; we heard from the Ea that at least one other civilization succumbed to the same thing, but nothing further... and now we have that something further. (And personally I suspect the Mandervillians may come from Deneb III, but that's a different discussion.)

It also gives us a pretty solid window into how more 'common' people see Sharlayan, albeit a bit of a twisted one; we can't take the Thavnairian Truth as actual... well, truth, but he definitely shows Sharlayan's secrecy has led to distrust. Also, more about Dr. Lugae, which helps flesh out some of the political situation in Garlemald.

[FenyxRising]

They did put 'important lore' in Hildibrand.[/HB]

Exactly how is anything you said important lore other than Sil'dih ? I'm sorry ?

And by the way most of the Sil'dih lore came from the encyclopedia, Qarn, and Variant, not Hildibrand I'm really sorry to say.

Something that's important lore would be the Omega quests, where you learn where the dragons came from, and learn their history, and then it directly ties to Ultima Thule. Who cares about PuPu ?

Actually if the EW Hildibrand quests used the Ea instead of PuPu maybe it'll be more interesting. Yes they would have to rewrite significant parts of the lore, but I don't know a single person who cares about PuPu really ?

[Cleretic]

Exactly how is anything you said important lore other than Sil'dih ? I'm sorry ?

And by the way most of the Sil'dih lore came from the encyclopedia, Qarn, and Variant, not Hildibrand I'm really sorry to say.

Something that's important lore would be the Omega quests, where you learn where the dragons came from, and learn their history, and then it directly ties to Ultima Thule. Who cares about PuPu ?

Actually if the EW Hildibrand quests used the Ea instead of PuPu maybe it'll be more interesting. Yes they would have to rewrite significant parts of the lore, but I don't know a single person who cares about PuPu really ?

Sounds like you're just drawing the lines arbitrarily to declare your claim of 'Hildibrand doesn't include important lore' to be true. In ways that don't even hold up to any scrutiny: The Encyclopedias and Sil'dih variant dungeon came after Hildibrand's story about Sil'dih and the Trader's Spurn, and the Encyclopedias don't really talk about Sil'dih beyond passing mentions. The Qarn dungeons provide even less... because if you actually checked their descriptions, you'd realized that Qarn's not Sil'dihn, it's Belah'diahn. That's why the scales puzzle in the Subterrane works differently than the Qarn one, because you're recreating a different crest. Hildibrand was genuinely the only Sil'dih story until Endwalker.

It's fine if you're not interested in the parts of the lore that it talks about, nobody would begrudge you for not being interested in everything; I know both Shadowbringers and Endwalker have entire zones I'd readily skip in terms of both up-front story and worldbuilding. But to claim it's doing none of it is ridiculous, because Hildibrand is one of the most reliable heavy-hitters in terms of 'down-to-earth' lore. You put forward the Scholasticate as the chad meme to Hildibrand's virgin in terms of worldbuilding, but in truth they do the exact same thing: using the context of a detective story to take a really grounded angle that other stories struggle to. Using a story about helping individuals and solving mysteries, with very little combat, to shine lights on parts of the game's world that most stories can't. Despite both being Hingan political stories, Stormblood Hildibrand could go places that Samurai's job story couldn't, letting Hildibrand actually serve important worldbuilding purpose.

[SannaR]

We get two Thavnairans in the ARR and HW relic questlines. I know that at least one of them is mentioned in early Radz-At Han stuff.

[Cleretic]

We get two Thavnairans in the ARR and HW relic questlines. I know that at least one of them is mentioned in early Radz-At Han stuff.

Oh yeah, I forgot about them. ...partially because the Unending Journey doesn't let me review those cutscenes, and hell if I'm doing those storylines more than once. Still, Stormblood Hildibrand is the first time we see them as an actual political force of any kind, albeit more in a back-alleys and blackmail sense.

[Elissar]

From development POV, Hild is one of the most important questline in the game. Why? Because they use it as a laboratory to experiment angles, camera and animation. They don't like to work for nothing. We may not like it at some moments or at all but we have convincing characters on MSQ thanks to him.

[SannaR]

Oh yeah, I forgot about them. ...partially because the Unending Journey doesn't let me review those cutscenes, and hell if I'm doing those storylines more than once. Still, Stormblood Hildibrand is the first time we see them as an actual political force of any kind, albeit more in a back-alleys and blackmail sense.

True they both aren't much more than an "Oh hey I'm from that place that dance and clothes are from." for giving us anything really about Thavnir. They're just the first two people in a line of people our favorite weapon smithy grumbles about having to work with.

[Zeastria]

Not a single scene or line in that quest chain was funny to me xD
I guess i dont find such humor funny in the first place..( can be cultural thing too)