What happened to SB (story)?

[Vexander]

Because the devs seem determined to keep the Garleans losing battles in the most ridiculous manner.

Part of me suspects come 4.1 we'll see a new character from Garlemald show up in Eorzea as an emissary of the Empire with a message like...

"On behalf of Emperor Varis and the Garlean Empire, we wish to extend our thanks to the Eorzean Alliance, Ala Mhigan Resistance, and Doman Liberation Front. I can see from your expressions you are confused. For some time now the regions of Ala Mhigo and Doma have been a resource drain on the Empire, worth less than the cost of maintaining. We left Doma understaffed on purpose, with the idea that eventually someone would take it off our hands. As for Ala Mhigo, we knew what Zenos was like to do with that territory when he was appointed the Viceroy, and knew that his actions and nature would hopefully lead to someone disposing of him for us.

"Ah, I see your shock. Tell me, do you think the Emperor would want a man like Zenos to have succeeded him as the ruler of the Garlean Empire? That was far from our interests. Far better that he should die on the field of battle and a more competent heir be groomed to succeed Emperor Varis. That said, while by necessity there must needs be retribution for the death of the heir to the imperial throne, for now we shall be observing a state of mourning for his loss. When this has concluded, the Empire shall be looking into more worthwhile lands for expansion, a Campaign in honor of Zenos' memory, only proper. Your Scions of the Seventh Dawn have proven quite capable. Perhaps Sharlayan will be a fine target. Their vaunted magical wards are not like to hold up against the Resonant. However, for now, rest upon your laurels and rejoice in your victory."

[MuseTraveller]

That's a lot of text. People have different tastes. I enjoyed the ARR story, I loved the 2.55 finale, I enjoyed HW but it left me feeling very devastated and not... happy at all. SB, I loved to bits. Everything in it. Every character, music and moment. I feel like the build up to 4.0 was poorly done however. The 3.x patches felt like they dragged too long wrapping up HW and left little room to build up the setting to SB.

[Malzian]

So much to address... I'm going to bring this down to some main points you brought up since I can't possibly addresses it all, starting with...

The first thing to rage about was being asked by Alphinaud what you thought on the Ala Mhigan rebellion. I was given three VAGUE options. I picked the one I thought was most in character with how I had answered questions in HW and ARR. And guess what? I get a 'sorry you feel that way' response. Not only did the response not fit any of the answers, I had now chosen a response that felt like I was playing Fallout 4. I didn't mean to say anything that implied what that response implied I said. The other times you choose words to say would mostly follow in that Fallout 4 'But I didn't want to say that!' feeling.

This is unfortunately true, as the WoL the things we get to say in reaction are terribly limited and don't often convey what we really want to say. However, you do have to remember that XIV's story is little more than an interactive book, while there is some flexability in things ultimately the story will play out in exactly the way SE wants to tell it which means they can't really give us "impactful" choices. On top of that, they have to code all of this in and they only have limited resources to do that, so they give us the best they can while still adhering to the previous limitation.

Then facing Xenos for the first time. He takes you down without effort and one of the characters states how useless everything you went through before is. Your esteemed allies and practiced soldiers just lose to everyone, even the foot soldiers of Garlemald. Seriously, what's the deal? You're trying to reset the novice feel? Why? Why on earth would ANYONE do that in that way, after building us up that much, now we're nothing but helpless to ONE PERSON who is HUMAN and equipped in armor that isn't that different form people we've already defeated? That was the moment where I felt further from this game than I ever have. And quite frankly, it broke my suspension of disbelief. Everything that happened afterward failed to connect with me because I was constantly thinking, "The devs want it this way, it's gonna happen this way."

You're right, the Devs wanted it that way, they wanted a couple things actually:
1. They wanted us to look at Zenos and wonder what the heck he actually is.
2. They wanted to show that there is a LOT of things about the world and about the Echo (which is what makes us the WoL) that our characters, the Scions and ourselves don't know.
3. They wanted us to HATE Zenos, more than we've ever hated anyone before.

Rhalgar's Reach, after 20 years of not being spotted, magically gets attacked. There is no reason for this. None. There was specific interest in quelling these rebels yet none of Xenos' men had located it despite trying. So tell me, how did they know? And don't give me that 'Fordola knew where it was' excuse. If she was blind enough to support the empire then she would have outed them years ago with the zeal she has. This is a plot hole, and it's the ONLY REASON we decide to head for Doma.

This is actually due to how Zenos is as a person. Simply put, he didn't view the resistance as a threat so he had no reason to worry about putting them down. Actually letting them carry on served his purpose because Zenos wanted one thing above all others: A worthy opponent that could make him feel -anything-. Zenos only was able to experience emotion when he was in the thick of battle, kill or be killed. He was a true psychopath and the WoL was the ideal person who could stand against him as a worthy opponent. Had there been no resistance in Ala Mhigo then it's entirely possible we would not have had a reason nor the ability to invade Ala Mhigo, and Zenos was not going to invade the rest of Eorzea as he was under orders from the Emperor not to do so. The only way for him to get the fight he wanted was to have us come to him, and the resistance served that purpose perfectly.

The next disappointment is the Ruby Sea. Look, the underwater parts were amazing, but it felt smaller in scope than Sastasha. To be specific, the location of the entrance to the Ruby Toll was so close to Doma that an entire sea was shrunk down to the size of a river. It felt like a river. Not a sea, a river. I just don't understand. Why did the map have to include the shore to the mainland? It would have felt so much bigger if the Ruby Sea was treated like the various maps in the Sea of Clouds: One section of many others. A new second map wasn't needed, just the illusion that the part where map was was only a small section of a larger archipelago in the middle of the sea. Have an ocean view instead of the Doma shore.

I agree that this zone was technically smaller than it should have been, but I decided that this archipelago was the Westernmost portion of the sea and that entrance was just a boat ride between Kugane and the Ruby Toll.

Now, until this point, a lot of my complaints could be a result of the development process not being completely in sync. However, Yotsuyu is completely on the writers. She had a legitimate reason to betray Doma, it's how she - an abused and tossed away girl - could make money and scrape out a living that was more dignified than that of a whore. She also developed a sadistic side. But no, the entire focus of her story was how all Domans deserved death and she spoke to her subordinates like she knew we were listening. That's meta (acting upon knowledge the character shouldn't have) and a poor excuse for giving her an air of mystery. I actually thought that she was born in Garlemald for how distant she seemed from "her people".

I think there's more to Yotsuyo's story that we don't know yet and will get in later story as we progress through the patches.

And what about Yugiri tossing all her patience to move the plot forward? She has never been that excited about anything, not even finding her master. But suddenly throws all caution to the wind for the sake of plot when it comes to attacking Xenos. I can't help but feel that 'standing up to Xenos' scene could have been accomplished more effectively (and believably) by chasing that young kid in the orange attire after hearing that he is attempting an assassination of his own.

This was because Yugiri lost her patience with their people of Doma and she was dedicated to saving her master's life, even if it meant throwing away her own life. She doesn't want Hien to die, and she doesn't want him to die because the people don't have the courage to fight. Also, remember, that up until this point Yugiri hasn't had any real "skin in the game", as it were. She wasn't in her homeland before, but she is now so everything is much, much more personal here.

Then we free the nation of Doma... but it really doesn't feel like it. The map is still just as quiet as when we got there. Anyway, back to Eorzea.

No arguments here.

Where I genuinely don't care for the story anymore and just want to get it over with. My suspension of disbelief is gone, I'm expecting a disappointing conclusion, and just want to get to the EX trials.

The conclusion was actually fantastic, except everything that led up to it was less than the outcome. I wasn't fighting Xenos in the end, I was fighting a primal. So all that build up and hype, and now the final villain needs a boost to keep up with us? When did we get so strong? I can't tell because we didn't actually fight a ton of big monsters beforehand. We fought enemies that everyone knew we were better than and only pushed our capabilities twice before that. 2+2 suddenly equaled 103 and I missed how we got there. When did we add 99 to that?

We always turn the dial up to 11 like this... Nothing new here.

And now it goes back to my initial issue. Remember that dialogue choice I talked about? I gave the vague answer that most sounded like: "What about the ascians? I'll fight in this war while nothing else comes up but we really should be putting effort into finding them. This may be a good cause, but we ultimately have bigger issues." This game lost sight of the original plot and tacked on a conversation with one ascian at the end. What happened to all the primals they were summoning to make things hard for us all throughout ARR and HW? Why is the entire base story of an official expansion I paid extra for nothing more than a sub-plot? The ascians literally did NOTHING but wait for the Emperor's scheme to take place in a success via failure conclusion.

Yoshida was very clear that this Expac is NOT about the Ascians (even though everything eventually comes down to Ascians... I'm not saying it was Ascians... But it was Ascians), but more about Garlemald and dismantling more of their influence.

That's about all I have here, I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the story, I found it quite enjoyable, but you really needed to understand the subtext and the character motivations in order to know WHY things happened the way they did. I hope you find things more enjoyable in the patches to come.

[Cenerae]

The only two quibbles I have with the SB story are:

1) Zenos. We go from getting our asses kicked up and down Rhalgr's reach to casually marching in to his throne room and kicking his ass up and down it. At no point in the story do we look into any particular kind of training or devise a plan to deal with a man that's clearly far beyond our scope in power, and I don't buy the level gap as a reasonable excuse. Most of our campaigning involved kicking around Garlean mooks, that's hardly going to enable us to suddenly match someone who is presented as overwhelmingly powerful.

2) Shinryu. Pretty much the same as with Zenos...we are told that we can't possibly stand up to Shinryu and it's too powerful. We need to have Papalymo kill himself to buy time, and then sic Omega on it in the hopes that Omega will win. And yet we casually give this supposedly mighty monster the beatdown without a second thought, the moment it re-enters the story. So Papalymo's sacrifice was pointless, because obviously we were strong enough to fight the thing in the first place. And there was no need to risk everything on Omega behaving.

Again, there was no special preparations or tactics in play here. All we did was level from 60 to 70 without really pushing the WoL's limits at any point in the story save when Zenos gave us the beatdown twice. With no clever strategy or advantage in play, yet we suddenly just run these supposed bad asses over with a truck really breaks my immersion in the story.

I've already gotten over it, mind you, but hey.

[Vexander]

So Papalymo's sacrifice was pointless, because obviously we were strong enough to fight the thing in the first place. And there was no need to risk everything on Omega behaving.

I think the implication of the narrative was that as we progressed through the story, as we encountered new people, new problems, we grew stronger for it. So when Papalymo sacrificed himself, we were too weak. By the time we marched into the Royal Menagerie, we had a chance.

Also for conspiracy theorists, this adds up with the, 'The Warrior of Light brands all he meets and gains power from them.' We ran out of people to brand in Eorzea, so we found new strength in the Far East.

[Avatre]

1) Zenos. We go from getting our asses kicked up and down Rhalgr's reach to casually marching in to his throne room and kicking his ass up and down it. At no point in the story do we look into any particular kind of training or devise a plan to deal with a man that's clearly far beyond our scope in power, and I don't buy the level gap as a reasonable excuse. Most of our campaigning involved kicking around Garlean mooks, that's hardly going to enable us to suddenly match someone who is presented as overwhelmingly powerful.

This is basically why I feel that the story was rushed. Zenos should have been end of 4.1 or 4.2 boss. Everything just seemed...lacking. Was the story good, if otherwise rushed? Yes. Should it have been more flushed out with other concerns/situations? Definitely. Do I think I know why they did it? Probably because of all the people who non-stop complained about the mass amount of filler quests(yes, there were tons, but it could always have been worse...those quests helped build the story...if in a slightly annoying manner).

[Malzian]

2) Shinryu. Pretty much the same as with Zenos...we are told that we can't possibly stand up to Shinryu and it's too powerful. We need to have Papalymo kill himself to buy time, and then sic Omega on it in the hopes that Omega will win. And yet we casually give this supposedly mighty monster the beatdown without a second thought, the moment it re-enters the story. So Papalymo's sacrifice was pointless, because obviously we were strong enough to fight the thing in the first place. And there was no need to risk everything on Omega behaving.

For the fight with Zenos, all I can say is that we learned his secret when we fought Fordola, but I can't say how we exploited it. However, for Shinryu we can say 2 things for certain: 1) Omega did significant damage to Shinryu prior to us fighting him, therefore he was already somewhat weakened. 2) After Shinryu is beaten, Estinian specifically says that the eyes are almost completely empty, which means Shinryu was almost to the point of disappearing -anyway-, so therefore we just shoved him over the edge.

[Cenerae]

For the fight with Zenos, all I can say is that we learned his secret when we fought Fordola, but I can't say how we exploited it. However, for Shinryu we can say 2 things for certain: 1) Omega did significant damage to Shinryu prior to us fighting him, therefore he was already somewhat weakened. 2) After Shinryu is beaten, Estinian specifically says that the eyes are almost completely empty, which means Shinryu was almost to the point of disappearing -anyway-, so therefore we just shoved him over the edge.

After beating Fordola, we knew that Zenos had the same source of power. But we also needed a special device to weaken Fordola so we could best her in combat. We employed no special tactics against Zenos, we just beat him down like anyone else. Which implies that Fordola is far stronger than Zenos (which is not how the story presents it).

As for Omega damaging Shinryu heavily, I want to point out that a relatively long time went by in game time between Omega and Shinryu fighting, and us getting to fight Shinryu. It certainly didn't look very hurt when we went to battle it, and I doubt that it being imprisoned by the Garleans had done more than make it really angry.

I'll take your point about the eyes, though. Though I suspect that Shinryu would have tried to raid somewhere with a lot of crystals, were it running out of aether to stay corporeal.

[Alleo]

Going and getting your adventurer buds to help with whatever fight you're about to take on is done multiple times in both ARR and HW, including for primals. I don't remember every word of dialogue over the course of the MSQ, but I think if I recall correctly it's actually soloing primals that's never really explicitly mentioned, although granted having your friends along with you doesn't make much sense for a couple of primal fights (story Ifrit and story Ravana being the most obvious.)

At the end of the day, the story team tend to leave the dialogue and circumstances open ended enough that you can justify it either way. Although the constant over the top references to your friends in SB makes me think they personally lean towards the 'you're generally not alone' line of thinking.

The story would often not make sense if we have other adventurers with us. Also the lore book states us at going against any primal alone and only the fights in the Garlean base (lvl50) is fought with a group. Also the enemies often talk about us like we are alone. So yes them going back in SB with their hints of having others with us (even in the trial where we should prove that we are a warrior for the Mol) is completely annoying, especially since Doma is quite far away from Eorzea and we only traveled with the scions there.

To OP: I agree with a lot of your points and HW > SB for me. I never felt like we went to war and everything went way to smoothly. I also did not feel that positive about Lyse so that might be one big point for me too. (Why was she chosen as a leader when she is still reckless at the end?)

I also cant believe how Zenos just stomped us twice and suddenly we are not even able to defeat him..no we defeat him combined with Shinryu. I am a bit shocked that they already used the dragon here and not later. As the WoL we fought lots of difficult enemies in HW (after getting to level 60), even the WoDs and the Warring Triad. Yet we somehow did not get stronger with that. But somehow two out of nowhere primals and some Garlean soldiers are enough to make us stronger? Even strong enough to defeat Shinryu? (Also we defeat Zenos in the dungeon with four people, that are nowhere to be seen in the cutscene after that, then we go to fight him right after that with 8 adventurers that come out of nowhere again and are gone again after that..so yes I would believe that it makes more sense that we did those fights alone)

I also kinda question why nobody ask how the settlement of the rebellion was found? I mean shouldnt that mean that there was a traitor? Yet it seemed like nobody cared about this. (And somehow they decided to just stay there..)

I did like the freeing of Doma castle but I was a bit annoyed that we got no party after that. Its just like "well one part done, lets go back". Would have been nice to see a cutscene where everyone parties a bit (Xaela too) and maybe raise their glassed to all the fallen ones. I mean its not everyday that we free a country of their oppressors and one day more would have not changed much. Yet we did not even get that. And somehow even though Tataru (who decided to stay behind, even though she is part of the scions too) only booked for four people, Yugiri can just leave with us (making it five). I am still not sure why Yugiri even went with us, since she was nowhere to be seen anyway, until the last battle, where she and Hien (how did he get there that fast?) fought on our side.

In the end its kind of funny how we go into human made war, even after we learn about all the things from the WoD..Yes there is a big chance that the Ascians have their hands behind it too and yes its our task to stop primals. But its not our fight to help with wars, especially since the scions should know that losing us, would mean losing the battle against the Ascians thus losing all the worlds too..I always feel a bit off when you have world threating enemies exist yet the heroes always just take care of the smaller stuff first.

Unlike HW I am also not looking forward towards the rest of the expansion story. We do not even know what might come and I am a bit sick of war and political situations. I just hope that we suddenly dont have another big bad threat that comes out of nowhere and that is somehow stronger than the WoL..(Echo is really the deus ex machina in this game..it can just be used for anything..)

[Aylis]

This game lost sight of the original plot and tacked on a conversation with one ascian at the end. What happened to all the primals they were summoning to make things hard for us

I do agree, the story started out good and became just convoluted over time as it progressed. I fear it will only become more as time goes on. Just cause once Yoshida took out the Final Fantasy play book and drew most of his inspiration from it and past Final Fantasy games and tried to fit them all together in one game, all to work together in one story. Just my thoughts but I feel he's more focused on taking these elements and putting them in first and bending the story around them instead of leaving the past in the past and just doing his own thing. The primals and Ascions maybe back someday. Once they can fit whatever old FF reference he has planned for them after were done with whatever old big FF reference he's working on for SB.