[Spoilers] Garlemald is a wasted opportunity

[Antoine_Lenheim]

I am utterly disappointed about how they pictured Garlemald. I actually hyped SO much about finally going there, to see that dystopian, technologically advanced city with ceruleum powered vehicles in the sky, advanced machinery, amaurot-like city with tall buildings and dark, gloomy atmosphere. Expected to experience some of that Garlean "modern day" magitek feel that all of the little visits to various Garlean bases involved - but in a more civilian setting.

And what did I get? Coerthas 2,0? Snowy wasteland? Wtf is that? You can say that well, Garlean Empire is through a civil war but although Garlemald was destroyed, even the debris is disappointing. It was probably the most hyped up area of all time since ARR and it didn't meet those expectations, which is an understatement.

Character development on the Garleans was absolutely poor too, It's incredible how so much bloodlust over the years has just been swept under the carpet, I'm hoping patches 6.1 and above address the blatant racism between Garleans and Eorzeans.

Also Garlemald in particular look a bit unfinished and definitely re-uses a few assets from other areas in the game.

It's all just an ultimate boner killer for the rest of the story. Can't stand how poorly they treated such an important zone that we waited so long to come to.

[iheartlove42]

Character development on the Garleans was absolutely poor too, It's incredible how so much bloodlust over the years has just been swept under the carpet, I'm hoping patches 6.1 and above address the blatant racism between Garleans and Eorzeans.

They did address this. Some of the Garleans outright refuse your help. A lot of the Alliance nations don't want to help Garlemald at all.

The Garleans are now a completely decimated people. Many have chosen suicide. They realized they were taken advantage of by the Ascians. You are basically walking into Berlin in 1945.

[Antoine_Lenheim]

They did address this. Some of the Garleans outright refuse your help. A lot of the Alliance nations don't want to help Garlemald at all.

The Garleans are now a completely decimated people. Many have chosen suicide. They realized they were taken advantage of by the Ascians. You are basically walking into Berlin in 1945.

Right, I think it was convenient for the writers to destroy Garlemald because development of the story around the Garlean Empire and its people as a whole is sorely lacking. I suppose they did put the Ascians in the forefront permanently as the main enemy in ShB, when they made it so that the Empire was formed by an Ascian and the one pulling the strings, which was shoddy writing and makes me think they just wanted to sweep the Garlean Empire under the rug.

Despite the Garlemald disappointment I think the rest of EW ties up the story well and the subsequent zones somewhat make up for it.

[MikkoAkure]

The zone itself also felt really small to me. Thing is though, is that unless they made it a city zone it was going to have enemies everywhere. They could have made it like Peaks 2.0 where there’s a corner we can go to that’s still built up and the rest has enemies, but the writers seemed very insistent on blowing it up and killing most of the civilians off.

The zone still exists though so unless the 6.X patches decide to completely ignore the new zones, we’re going back and the majority of the city exists just out of reach in the background and could theoretically be rebuilt just like how Doma Castle was destroyed.

I just hope that they give us a third eye glam piece. They didn’t even bother with making a new model for them and most Garleans are still elezen with hyur ears or straight up midlander.

[Bright-Flower]

The racism part on the side of the Alliance was explained pretty well. The group was basically volunteers in the minority that wanted to help. They make it clear that for every one person willing to go there were at least 10 who refused. This was a hand picked group for the mission.

On the garlean side, there was plenty of it. From the group at the one house who refuse to accept that you're there to help to the point of the two sisters fleeing in fear and dying out in the cold rather than accept your aid, to the legatus committing suicide rather than letting go of the past and accepting aid, to many of the soldiers you can talk to while in their subway base etc.

[redheadturk]

Also a lot of it from the Sharlayans, who were going to

leave the Garleans to die in the final days

with no regrets

[Antoine_Lenheim]

The racism part on the side of the Alliance was explained pretty well. The group was basically volunteers in the minority that wanted to help. They make it clear that for every one person willing to go there were at least 10 who refused. This was a hand picked group for the mission.

On the garlean side, there was plenty of it. From the group at the one house who refuse to accept that you're there to help to the point of the two sisters fleeing in fear and dying out in the cold rather than accept your aid, to the legatus committing suicide rather than letting go of the past and accepting aid, to many of the soldiers you can talk to while in their subway base etc.

I know all of this and yet it still felt poorly done.

The Garleans got the shaft almost as much as the empire in FFXV where the whole "Empire", an Empire that conquered more than their fair share of countries, becomes nothing in the backstory.

And when we do get introduced to it, it's a husk of frightened frozen soldiers and unreasonably stupid civilians.

[Bright-Flower]

I know all of this and yet it still felt poorly done.

The Garleans got the shaft almost as much as the empire in FFXV where the whole "Empire", an Empire that conquered more than their fair share of countries, becomes nothing in the backstory.

And when we do get introduced to it, it's a husk of frightened frozen soldiers and unreasonably stupid civilians.

Seems to be a recurring trend. I never played XV but the Magitek Empire in VI was the main antagonist through the first half of the game. Then Kefkak ills the emperor and screws up the world and the empire is just gone save for one random surviving trooper, and much of the capital being repurposed for Kefka's final dungeon.

Type 0 is kind enough to wait for you to actually fully defeat the Empire before the doomsday shows up.

[Abomination713]

Yes. The whole area was a waste and it's a damn shame. The Empire that we have been fighting since the beginning and all we see is a broken city and worthless people. Even the writing of the main quest there was pathetic. We had so much to see and learn there and we got nothing. I would have liked to have seen at least 1 more zone dedicated to Garlemald. We could have learned what life was like when it was normal, help conscripted soldiers, learned more about their technology.

Hell, we know they were making copies of Ultima weapon when we played as Estinien. Where are they? Where are their airships?

I don't know if they told us of Garlean history before this expansion, but the fact that they kept throwing garbage in our faces like "they were chased from their original land" and "it's really cold here, like all the time even though that has never been mentioned once. Feel sorry for them yet?" just made me hate the area even more since they were trying to get us to pity them for no reason.

[Bright-Flower]

I don't recall where it was said before, but their homeland being very cold and unforgiving and being driven there by others was not new information in EW, pretty sure we knew that as early as ARR or even 1.0.