I am so freaking bored of Shadowbringer's story

[Fynlar]

This thread has only been up for like, 8 hours.

People sleep, and have lives. Many, many times throughout my internetting career, I've posted a thread on a forum and then gone to sleep, in pitiful, yet hopeful hopes that other people would deem it worthy enough of responses while I'm asleep.

Once it's been like, 24+ hours without any further OP response, maybe then we can make these sorts of assumptions.

As for my opinion on the topic...
If you've gotten this far in the game without yet realizing that the game is heavily text and story driven, and also utilizes varying degrees of "filler arcs" (typically in order to give you additional quests to do and keep you leveled), then you haven't been paying attention. For what it's worth, nothing in SB2 is *nearly* as bad as the whole "Tidus" thing from ARR.

[ScarboroughFairy]

I have mixed feelings about the Shadowbringer storyline. On one hand, it's really interesting for the greater overarching story, it tells us more about the calamities, about splitting the world, Zodiark, Haydelyn (or however she is written) and last but not least the Ascians, who they are and why they do what they do.
But taken for itself, i think the story is pretty boring. The problem is that there are no turns, everything is extremely predictable, and basically always the same.

That's the basic formula of the Hero's Journey, though.



It's predictable because there's only so many ways you can tell this particular tale. Don't @ me, that's a cold fact.

You just go from area to area and kill one light warden after the other, there is no change, nothing happening that forces you to put down what you are doing to solve another pressing issue that requires some time to solve. The other few issues that do come up, are solved really quickly, so you don't get any break from the light warden hunt. And after achieving your goal of killing the light wardens, there is only one other thing to solve, but that was talked about for the past 3 areas, so it doesn't feel like a change of pace either.

We can't pretend that what happened after the Lightwardens didn't make up for further character development.
**Spoilers below**

Finding out that the WoL is Amaurotine and 9/14ths a "complete" being was a major bombshell. While I can't objectively say it was a twist that absolutely none of us saw coming, I can say that it has serious implications for the WoL, the Source, and the two deities. There is a massive problem with Hydaelyn being a Primal and calls into question whether or not we've been Tempered by her, which was something that was asked by Ifrit back in ARR. Bookends abound.

[Alucard135]

lazypeon fan spotted

First thing that came to mind LOL.

[Schan]

so you've basically done this...


and then complained that it's boring...

I don't know about you but I usually like to try things myself thoroughly before I criticize them.

With that said ShB story does have a few low points but guess what. I have yet to see a story that doesn't have low points or boring bits. At the end of every story I ask myself if it was enjoyable in general and I can say that ShB was enjoyable despite the boring bits for me.

[Genz]

Not bored but not impressed either. It's just another chain of events and plot-"twist" on shaky foundations (time travel and dimension travel...), with cut-scenes of random quality and no tie to game mechanics.
Plot for the sake of plot has no value.

[Ruru_Nayu]

Just read...

[Dualblade]

But *the trolley!* You can't have a track without a trolley! That'd be like having a shopping centre without a trolley! How can you not have a trolley? Madness! Sheer madness! The trolley is what holds it all together! Trolley!

On a more serious note, of course the people of that community values a trolley. They're a mining community. Having a giant lug of a golem pushing around a trolley full of ore is a HUGE thing for them.

While I was making some light fun of it when I made my comment starting this little part off I felt like the trolley part really worked well because of the dissonance when we first learn about it and Magnus a little later on. Character-wise it was a pretty powerful part IMO.

If the Scions hadn't been able to get the Talos and the trolley to move they probably would have found another solution, but getting it to work did much more than just get them where they needed. It rekindled hope for an entire community.

[Selova]

I can't even begin to process how you could think one of the most crucial parts of the story that reveals to you the history and backstory of the Ascians as well as their motivations is somehow filler. This honestly sounds like you're being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian because everyone's been singing Shadowbringer's praises. Yes this mentality exists, just go take a look at the salt mine that is the MMORPG Reddit with all of the posts praising the expansion. I'm just having a hard time comprehending the fact that someone thinks that one of the most lore heavy zones in the expansion is somehow filler. Mind blown.

[Enla]

What you call filler, most people would call small moments of needed character interaction and growth. The entirety of the second trip to Amh is a much needed change of pace to deal with a specific set of characters and their storyline, as well as continues to hammer home the main them of grief that's permeated the entire expansion. Yes no big shiny explosions are happening, but in skipping things you're missing out on a good core of the story that will make it harder to understand things later on.

Reminds me of a streamer I watched this week who exclaimed how excited they were for the story even as they spammed 'skip' all the way through Rak'tika and didn't stop to read a single thing.

[Klb600]

Honestly it has its moments in the beginning and the lvl 79+ quest are pretty interesting but a majority of it is boring filler that drags on. The Ill Mheg and Greatwood sections are especially bad.