Yoshida's latest interview, Comic Exhibition Taiwan 2025

[Hallarem]

Garleans suffered from the same twirly moustache villain syndrome writing ascians did in ARR. We didnt get much nuance to them until Gaius and the Bozja storyline. But I get it, I think the destruction was inevitable even in a full Garlemald expansion, but offscreen lol?

I feel like that about the ancients too after watching their incompetence, especially Hermes. Im glad they got nuked.

[Hallarem]

They were written to fit the theme of the expansion down to their personalities (unless they were named like Emett etc and looked like a bunch of todlers in the end.

Much like the population of Solution 9 now. Again. If they arent named. They should start writing believable societies instead of "muh themes" in the future.

[Daralii]

Yeah, no kidding, the only regret about them being blasted offscreen was that we weren't given the option to glass them ourselves. Would have been an interesting capstone for being the "Warrior of Darkness" that we were finally done humoring their nonsense.

That should've been the climax to Elpis. Imagine how many problems could've been avoided if we just killed everyone there.

[Aniise]

Damn, I knew it. So sad that they actually confirmed EW being a rushjob, we knew it already anyways but now it's a hard fact.
And not only that, a Garlemald Expansion would have been soooo good. We were robbed. Massively. T_T

[Hallarem]

Damn, I knew it. So sad that they actually confirmed EW being a rushjob, we knew it already anyways but now it's a hard fact.
And not only that, a Garlemald Expansion would have been soooo good. We were robbed. Massively. T_T

The most baffling thing was "we were super successful... lets do a rush job" I dont get the logic.

And looking at how the rest of the interview Yoshi P contradicts a lot of their dev teams actions just confirms that he's not a trustworthy individual.

[Oizen]

If we got the Garlemald story we still wouldn't know the eldritch horrors of Wuk Lamat

[Auro_Seldaris]

People are acting like Garlemald would have sucked and been all about a bunch of moustache-twirling idiot villains who were just gung-ho for genocide. Ignoring the fact that the Populares existed. Ignoring Gaius' change of heart. Ignoring the fact that anything written with thought and care would have been a lot more nuanced than "hurr hurr we all Nazis". People and societies are more nuanced than "we are all the same". Not every German soldier in the Wehrmacht was all about Nazi ideology, not every Union soldier in the Civil War was all about freeing slaves, and not every Confederate soldier was an evil racist who wanted to enslave "black people" forever.

Beyond that, though, I think people are forgetting that , prior to Shadowbringers, the Ascians themselves were just moustache-twirling villains who were just gung-ho for genocide and chaos.

Remember that. Shadowbringers has so thoroughly retconned the Ascians/Ancients that I think people forget that the Ascians initially were just crappy Organization XIII knockoffs with seemingly no plot in mind for them. They were literally just cartoon villains til some thought and care was put into them. I'm sure the same could have been done with Garlemald, too.

[FuturePastNow]

The Garlean Empire got the ending it deserved. It would be nice if some side content kept following the survivors and their rebuilding / moving on. Nero on the moon? Hello?

[Hallarem]

People are acting like Garlemald would have sucked and been all about a bunch of moustache-twirling idiot villains who were just gung-ho for genocide. Ignoring the fact that the Populares existed. Ignoring Gaius' change of heart. Ignoring the fact that anything written with thought and care would have been a lot more nuanced than "hurr hurr we all Nazis". People and societies are more nuanced than "we are all the same". Not every German soldier in the Wehrmacht was all about Nazi ideology, not every Union soldier in the Civil War was all about freeing slaves, and not every Confederate soldier was an evil racist who wanted to enslave "black people" forever.

Beyond that, though, I think people are forgetting that , prior to Shadowbringers, the Ascians themselves were just moustache-twirling villains who were just gung-ho for genocide and chaos.

Remember that. Shadowbringers has so thoroughly retconned the Ascians/Ancients that I think people forget that the Ascians initially were just crappy Organization XIII knockoffs with seemingly no plot in mind for them. They were literally just cartoon villains til some thought and care was put into them. I'm sure the same could have been done with Garlemald, too.

The whole of ARR had some great worldbuilding, for every nation and area. But damn were the villains whitebread. Down to the "nyahahaha" laughter. It was so comical I couldn't take it seriously, the whole banquet betrayal and Heavensward brought nuance to the writing.
Yeah people are kind of conveniently disregarding that the ascians were equally cringe to the Garleans, until we got all the side content and Gaius. Bozja was very nuanced on the Garleans, the royalty in Dalmasca and Bozja treated the commoners like crap, Garlemald gave them opportunities and even plucked out orphans into schools. Some were against the empire, others took the opportunities. HECK, the Bozjans even adopted some of Garlemalds policies into their new constitution because they WORKED. Populares are a thing. Every legion might've been completely different. Heck, Gabranths legion seceded from the empire to fight for a new land of equal rights without looking at race, creed or religion.

Garlemald deserved to be extinguished in its current form, but they deserved the screentime and to be treated by a writers pen, not an offscreen eraser. We can clearly see in the current material that they are struggling to write anything with nuance. Tural barely had any strife and Solution 9 is full of themebabies that just follow the theme of the expansion or whatever the plot demands of them, they aren't actual living breathing citizens. "Oh now I fear death" "Oh now the Queen is back yay"

[Daralii]

People are acting like Garlemald would have sucked and been all about a bunch of moustache-twirling idiot villains who were just gung-ho for genocide. Ignoring the fact that the Populares existed. Ignoring Gaius' change of heart. Ignoring the fact that anything written with thought and care would have been a lot more nuanced than "hurr hurr we all Nazis". People and societies are more nuanced than "we are all the same". Not every German soldier in the Wehrmacht was all about Nazi ideology, not every Union soldier in the Civil War was all about freeing slaves, and not every Confederate soldier was an evil racist who wanted to enslave "black people" forever.

Beyond that, though, I think people are forgetting that , prior to Shadowbringers, the Ascians themselves were just moustache-twirling villains who were just gung-ho for genocide and chaos.

Remember that. Shadowbringers has so thoroughly retconned the Ascians/Ancients that I think people forget that the Ascians initially were just crappy Organization XIII knockoffs with seemingly no plot in mind for them. They were literally just cartoon villains til some thought and care was put into them. I'm sure the same could have been done with Garlemald, too.

Ishikawa's even acknowledged that and said that everything around Amaurot required them to soft retcon most of the existing Ascian lore.