Quote Originally Posted by Auro_Seldaris View Post
This started in Endwalker due to its rushed nature, there's odd pacing everywhere.

Remember how we kill Zodiark and we're barely given 10 minutes to ponder the ramifications of what just happened and what the weird voice was before LOL MOON RABBITS SO RANDOM!
I still think this was a result of cramming two expansions into one. If they'd gone with the original Garlemald-centric plan, then Anima as a trial, followed by Mare Lamentorum as the final zone, leading to Fandaniel (perhaps as Amon the Undying) as the finale would've followed the pattern. The goofiness with the lopporitts would've been a standard x.1 patch falling action where the story is taking its breath before building up the next problem. Then we'd start seeing signs that Fandaniel's not dead yet after all, leading to the x.3 patch and the fight with Zodiarc as a closer for the story. Next, in x.4-x.5, we'd have signs of strange monsters appearing, with Vanaspati as the x.5 dungeon as the Final Days begin in earnest, setting up the next expansion.

But, since they crushed two expansions and a patch series together, everything has a weird lurching pace of either being so rushed that the story has no time to breath, or stopping dead in its tracks for something that could've been done in a third of the time (or just been a side quest, like showing the lopporitts around Sharlayan).