What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[jameseoakes]

I vividly remember (anyone can google this, in fact) people who didn't like Hildibrand back before Endwalker describing the comedy as cringe and/or "too anime". I like Hildibrand but I'm not as interested as I used to be because the type of humor and anime comedy shenanigans that used to make it stand out from the rest of the game is now present in the comedic scenes of the MSQ.

Yeah I'd been thinking that as well, with it now feeling closer to the comic relief in the main story than something distinct. For me I just haven't been finding the humour funny this time round as well

[aveyond-dreams]

If people want to have Hildibrand content there's nothing wrong with that. But when you turn the relic into a joke after chasing out the fleshed out plotline we had going for it in Bozja that we didn't even get to finish, the Alliance Raid is turned into little more than a joke as well, the MSQ can only alternate between long stretches of boredom broken up by the occasional slice of life/comedy scene, and the moon is set to become a circus with singing rats like the movie Coraline then it all becomes way too much.

FFXIV needs to get serious already and contain Hildibrand humour to the Hildibrand questline.

[Midareyukki]

But when you turn the relic into a joke after chasing out the fleshed out plotline we had going for it in Bozja that we didn't even get to finish

We did technically finish Bozja's story... in post-it notes.

Bozja being free was something Gabranth expected bc he wanted someone who liked the Garlean rule to make a constitution.
Sicinius gets arrested in Dalmasca, blabs about what he did to Dabog Invisch and several other Hrothgar, then he's busted out by Pagaga and Lyon.
Gabranth dies and Lyon is blamed for it (at least publicly).
Thanks to Sicinius realizing he can transfer memories to another Hyur's body and disfigure it to look like him, Gabranth is being spotted all across Dalmasca despite being "dead".

The next thing we need to know is what Gabranth wants to do after. Which ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ is up in the air. Yasumi Matsuno's gone, so we don't really know if they will or won't do the next chapter in Dalmasca.

I for one would certainly prefer the game take on a more serious tone. I would like to see lasting consequences, tangible losses, and removal of the plot armor protecting the primary cast. I'm not saying I believe they should start killing characters just to kill them, but I do find the knowledge none of main cast are ever in any real danger detracts from my ability to enjoy the story. Throwing Hildebrand in on top of this was not something I particularly enjoyed. Perhaps the humor would've been more welcome had there been a darker overall tone for it to contrast.

That they chose to forgo the usual means of acquiring relic weapons in favor of something so asinine was just the icing on the cake, I suppose. Not to mention the relics being virtually worthless.

Last time we had a thread asking for that, people started complaining that the story being edgy, angsty or too serious made it boring and they couldn't focus :s

[KageTokage]

It does kind of bug me a little that we're essentially being denied both a trial storyline and a relic storyline due to them now being baked into the MSQ and Hildibrand respectively.

Hopefully it's just a temporary thing and not how they intent to structure the content going forward.

[Absimiliard]

I for one would certainly prefer the game take on a more serious tone. I would like to see lasting consequences, tangible losses, and removal of the plot armor protecting the primary cast. I'm not saying I believe they should start killing characters just to kill them, but I do find the knowledge none of main cast are ever in any real danger detracts from my ability to enjoy the story. Throwing Hildebrand in on top of this was not something I particularly enjoyed. Perhaps the humor would've been more welcome had there been a darker overall tone for it to contrast.

That they chose to forgo the usual means of acquiring relic weapons in favor of something so asinine was just the icing on the cake, I suppose. Not to mention the relics being virtually worthless.

[redheadturk]

Not sure if we are allowed to link other sites here, but. . .https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXIVAncientfans. Just wanted to drop an alternative to the big reddits here for the Ancident fans who may be on this thread.

[Saraide]

When was the relic questline not a joke? As far as I'm aware drunk smithy the kettlemancer has been in all of them. Did he skip eureka relics?

[Vyrerus]

When was the relic questline not a joke? As far as I'm aware drunk smithy the kettlemancer has been in all of them. Did he skip eureka relics?

The first relic questline in 2.0 was meet Gerolt, who happens to be an extreme alcoholic, but he's the best smith in the land. You go through a serious process of killing a Chimera, Hydra, and the three primals at the time as well as crafting a base weapon yourself in addition to raiding a select beastmen stronghold for the old relic. There's lore about prior relic users, where the relics come from, and it has a serious tone all over, with Gerolt being a smidgeon of comic relief. As it continues, his assistant Drake and the Thavnairian Alchemist Jalzahn are introduced. The process then becomes collecting crystallized souls to feed to your weapon resulting in hundreds of battles killing things with it. There is an optional joke questline afterwards where you can do the same for a kettle, and the complete comedy of it is that Drake makes a better kettle with little effort.


The second relic questline for an Anima weapon involves Gerolt again, because as established by the first questline, he is the BEST smith in the land. That noble kid who I can't remember if he's Hannish or Sharlayan, has you go through a laborious process that is mostly 100% serious that involves all sorts of crystals, soul energy, battles, and eventually imparts a soul into your weapon itself making it a living weapon. Comedy is again kept minor, and mostly relegated to Gerolt wanting for booze or going into debt by getting an extreme amount of booze.

The third relic questline involves the Eureka weapons. Gerolt's back at it again, and Drake's along for the ride again, but now they also have understudies who make the Eureka armor for you. He's working off his debt to Rowena, and there really isn't a lot of comedy in it(more drinky drinky more he ordered a whole crate and didn't account for shipping costs). You have to collect hundreds of elemental crystals and then pieces of the strongest monsters from each Eureka zone for each stage. There's very little story around it, and also very little humor. It's almost solely just the process itself.


The fourth relic questline is for the resistance relics. The Queensguard weapons or whatever from Bozja. Gerolt's back on scene. There's more comedy, but again it's all about booze and his relationship to Rowena. The process for relic creation is gathering memory crystals, soul crystals, and battling a lot of stuff. There's some more comedy interplay with Gerolt interacting with the resistance smith(adorable Hrothgar with glasses), and a little bit of comedy around the people trying to make deals with Rowena's but it's funny due to being about a vicious business tycoon.

Here we are at fifth relic. Same old Gerolt. But now Manderville hijinks are added to the mix. We find a rare meteoric ore. Ok that's pretty serious. Oh but to make its properties come out we need... Mandervilleman Sweat. Oh by the way, here's some naked Highlander man servants to help you with extra makes. It begs the question, what will the next step be? Manderville Spit?
This is much more overt, and while it is mildly interesting if you're interested in perhaps finding out why the Mandervilles are so powerful, it's smacking of possibly discounting every possible serious portion it may have.

We'll have to wait and see, though.

[Striker44]

The first relic questline in 2.0 was meet Gerolt, who happens to be an extreme alcoholic, but he's the best smith in the land. You go through a serious process of killing a Chimera, Hydra, and the three primals at the time as well as crafting a base weapon yourself in addition to raiding a select beastmen stronghold for the old relic. There's lore about prior relic users, where the relics come from, and it has a serious tone all over, with Gerolt being a smidgeon of comic relief. As it continues, his assistant Drake and the Thavnairian Alchemist Jalzahn are introduced. The process then becomes collecting crystallized souls to feed to your weapon resulting in hundreds of battles killing things with it. There is an optional joke questline afterwards where you can do the same for a kettle, and the complete comedy of it is that Drake makes a better kettle with little effort.

The quests in the relic storylines themselves have usually been of a serious nature, but all of the conversations surrounding them have been straight-up humor. The HW ones, for example, almost every quest end/beginning was some kind of Gerolt and that other lad we worked with getting frustrated with each other in a way that we as the observer were intended to find amusing. We haven't really seen much at all of the actual quests in the new EW storyline yet.

[Whalaqee]

When was the relic questline not a joke? As far as I'm aware drunk smithy the kettlemancer has been in all of them. Did he skip eureka relics?

Hes a drunk, but hes great at his work. He owes a debt to rowena because he spent a bunch of his money on booze. Go fetch him some materials and also go field test your new weapon. He also gets assisted by someone else who has some forgotten know how of how to make a weapon. Eventually this becomes the ultimate thing for [class] in [base game / expansion].

Such information distilled like it were a perfect aetheric drop of sweat off a muscular man's body.