Wow, Wuk Lamat is really single-handedly ruining the DT story...

[CuteBucket]

Endwalker should have been two expansions. I will die on this hill.

The Ilsabard expansion: Cities: Corvos capital, Radz-at-Han.
Zones: Corvos, Thavnair, two other unknown/hidden by clouds currently Ilsabard regions heading north from Corvos, Garlemald, The Moon.

This expansion would focus exclusively on the fall of the Garlean Empire and the sociopolitical repercussions of it. We get to meet the people of Ilsabard and see how differently their occupation looks like from Ala Mhigo and Doma, as many of them have been under imperial rule for much longer, like 40+ years. It's not easy to convince them to defy the Empire, as many don't remember a time before Imperial rule and have much more to lose, and it may come to blows. We spend more time on the Towers that Fandanial put up and the horror of what they really are and what happened to Varis as opposed to the whole thing being a footnote. We get some hints about Fandaniel's plan and Zodiark near the very end, but we dont' fight him until the X.3 patch. We know that something is very wrong, but we don't know what. All of the Scions are desperately trying to find any sort of hint as to what will happen to the planet without Zodiark there now, and we start to get small hints about Dynamis and Meteion.

The Final Days expansion: City zones: Sharlayan, ??? (new unknown city we've never seen yet in Othard)
Zones: Labrynthos, New Eorzea zone (northern Eorzea in Ixal territory? Paglthan proper? Yafaemi? Corthas Eastern Highlands? We still haven't seen all of Eorzea), Nanxia (+ taking more time exploring places hit all around the world by the Final Days and making it really catastrophic + revisiting old zones and companions), New Unsundered World zone (could be part of Amaurot, could be another part of the Ancient world we haven't seen yet like one of the many other cities that we know once existed), Elpis, Ulitima Thule.

This expansion would spend the first half focused on the Final Days returning to the star, and it is NOT isolated to just Thavnair and Garlemald (though it may still start there first). As this is the wrap up of the story arc, we spend some time both in the new zones before everything goes to shit trying to reach out to the nation's leaders as a diplomat to let them know of the coming danger and what to do (which may not go so smoothly). As fire and monsters begin to rain down, we retrace our steps in our journey as the Warrior of Light, doing everything we can to help all the people we've come to know over the past decade of the game get to Sharlayan or Garlemald to evacuate to the moon and grapple with having to say goodbye to the world we've come to love. But then we follow the hints about Dynamis, Meteion, and Elpis to go to the First and seek what remains of Elidibus out to send us back in time. (I know some people hated the time travel, but I'm trying to keep things as canon friendly as I can in my spitballing two game theory here). It takes us longer to find Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus, as we don't get brought straight to Elpis and have to puzzle our way there by learning more about the Ancients and what the place is and how to get there, but we eventually get spotted by the two as we stumble around and things play out more or less the same, but with more time to tell the story of Venat and Hermes and the rest, as opposed to a very confusing "artistic license" not literal cutscene about the Sundering at the very end of the zone. We return to the present with the key to defeating Meteion and go to Ultima Thule to save the universe.