Thread: 3.5/4.0 Speculation & Discussion (Spoilers)

Originally Posted by Cilia

The biggest contention I had with 3.0 was how neatly it wrapped up the Ul'dahn Revolution arc and made everything go back to "business as usual." I don't mind if protagonists die, but don't have fakeout deaths and don't have major things like that have no real consequence. Besides implicitly pushing Ilberd into becoming the Griffin, but that is unsubstantiated speculation as of yet.

I don't think the Garleans were ever intended to be sympathetic at all. The main reason any of them are is because, well... Gaius may have been a power-hungry conquistador, but he had standards for kupo's sake, unlike just about every other named Garlean that's not an expatriate, and had valid criticisms of the city-states' governments. As far as villains go, Gaius had honor and class (until you remember he ordered the Waking Sands raid anyway). Other than that... all we've seen of Garlemald is the stereotypical "evil empire," and while that's overdone and boring to some people I get the feeling that's all they were ever intended to be. Stop trying to force your moral desires onto Garlemald! Just let them be a stereotypical evil empire, for now anyway!

I don't mind recurring villains, but they have to pose a credible threat in the first place and continue to do so. While he posed a legitimate challenge in the first (solo) fight, in our last duel he was an utter pushover (I finished at +90% HP). If you're going to have recurring villains, make them a genuine threat. (And Gaius is almost certainly dead; Lahabrea is ambiguous until the Eye is destroyed but since Elidibus had every opportunity to free him but did not I think it's safe to say even the villains don't really care about his survival any more. Elidibus puts Lahabrea into the same category as Igeyorhm, who we know died, so...)

Yeah the neat wrap up was really underwhelming. It reminds me of FFIV though at least the fake outs there served the practical purpose of shuffling people out of the party. I still find it frustrating as a player since it's basically our emotions being played with for no payoff.

I've never found the Garleans sympathetic personally but that's because I have a passionate hatred of imperialism as a concept. You could tell me they conquered a park bench and I'd be on board for kicking their butts in 4.0 to take it back. From what we've seen so far I get the impression they were meant to be closer to the evil empires of II and VI than the more humanized one of XII but there's room for SE to introduce more grey characters as we move forward.
I do appreciate when characters bring up criticisms of the city states. Y'shtola became my favourite scion when she called out Merlwyb during the Titan storyline. It would be nice to see the city states attempting to improve things like their relations with the beast tribes but realistically I can see those issues persisting through the rest of the game's lifespan to maintain the status quo.

Recurring villains can work for me if they're comedic like Gilgamesh. My problem with serious ones is I can't accept them as an actual threat when they either a) Keep losing and running away or b) win but keep leaving your character alive stupidly due to convenient villain arrogance. So we get a "serious" villain I can't take seriously and that the game won't let me get rid of making me feel like my character isn't accomplishing much at all.
I find it unlikely they'll be back.....but I won't lie. When we first saw the WoDs talking about retrieving the eyes my entire FC sighed and predicted that SE was going to go the route of bringing Lahabrea back. I'm hoping they're just going to try to use the eyes to store aether for their primal or something instead.