Quote Originally Posted by Vyrerus View Post
That's fairly interesting. My first time through Stormblood my biggest question was, "But what has Zenos been through that makes him stronger than me?" It never really got answered, he just was. As far as the overall stakes went though, after seeing Omega and Shinryu go toe to toe, or electric laser beam to protostar breath... I thought the dragon Pope had been thoroughly one upped, and I looked forward to finding out how Shinryu vs. Omega concluded. Plus we visited and freed two nations, rather than just one.

Just interesting that people didn't perceive the stakes as being raised. Do you remember some of the explanations/whys for that?
To be honest it's been a while, so I've completely forgotten most of the explanations, except that while I disagreed with them, some of the posts were quite well-written and I could see their point.

One of the things that stuck with me was a post saying that the antagonists (and general conflicts) of Heavensward and Stormblood should have been swapped chronologically, since apparently ending the Dragonsong War and defeating Primal Thordan was proof of "more power" on our part, compared to eventually defeating Zenos and freeing two nations as an aside. I think it was indeed something along the lines of Zenos's power level being implausible when we already triumphed over Thordan (and Nidhogg), so going Gaius-Zenos-Thordan would be a smoother curve of believable power levels. Which, again, implies that there should be an upwards curve of power levels, and thus narrative escalation.