Quote Originally Posted by Xlantaa View Post
On the other hand. The climax of the story has been already done, so it is natural to understand that the next stories will be just adventuring. That is not lowing the bar. The game can have the same quality despite if the story is not as epic as the previous one. The story will escalate again, probably, as it was escalating from ARR to EW.
While shadowbringers did have some references, storywise its almost completely seperated in the events. And this created 1 thing that i considered one of the better features a game often fails to do: A fresh situation. The start of shadowbringers felt fresh, no known characters, no idea who to trust and not, the enemy isnt known yet. You are exploring the story fresh, and thats what to me makes it feel good from the start.

Constantly building on an earlier story will limit things a lot. Not being bound to those anymore can often make the decision making fresh. Sure, reference points can be used, but when an issue is completely new, in a unfamiliar location, there is still a lot you can discover.

I suspect the story will be similar to stormblood on that. More about diplomatics and a build up for a longer story that can expand acros multiple expansions. And while it isnt as interesting, it doesnt always have to. But this has to go along with good dungeons, scripted fights, trials, raids, and potentialy other world events or side activities. But in this case i do hope they arent constantly going back to the old scions and now focus more on the locals. That was something that they did well in Shb, even though the scions were still there. They just couldnt be there all the time as they each had their own task keeping them busy, so locals were used to cover things instead.

A lot of new characters then can also mean that a few of the settled ones could die, or just locked up in a side activity causing them to rarely be seen again. Lyse was properly purged from the scions that way. And while its not as dramatic as a death, it at least kept room open for someone else (whether that was an improvement is an other discussion though).