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

[Graeham]

I did not believe the place I visited was Garlemald. It is the biggest city on the world map, many times bigger than Limsa. When I go there are oil pipelines, one train station, a few broken buildings, and one tower. Everyone ran away after the possessed soldiers attacked. But I have seen many bases bigger than this, and this is the main city.

When I go to Sharlyan, it is not only a big city, but has an underground greenhouse with artificial weather. How is it possible for them to have advanced technology more than the greatest country in the world?

[Jagick]

I did not believe the place I visited was Garlemald. It is the biggest city on the world map, many times bigger than Limsa. When I go there are oil pipelines, one train station, a few broken buildings, and one tower. Everyone ran away after the possessed soldiers attacked. But I have seen many bases bigger than this, and this is the main city.

When I go to Sharlyan, it is not only a big city, but has an underground greenhouse with artificial weather. How is it possible for them to have advanced technology more than the greatest country in the world?

This bothered me too, but it's yet another of example of the game's regions or "overworld" being extremely compressed for the sake of game play. But it is absolutely comical in its execution. For a more concrete example of what I mean, just look at Ishgard as you wander that city. Look out beyond its boundaries and the city seems absolutely MASSIVE both in width and height, something that would take days to full explore were we given more than two tiny zones you transition between in seconds. Then leave the city into Coerthas Central Highlands and fly your mount past (over and past) the the gate supposedly leading to the steps of faith. What you will see is an absolutely tiny and narrow cobblestone walkway connecting to a doll house not much larger than the watch towers already scattered around that zone, and that building is supposed to be the city of Ishgard and the path leading to it are The Steps of Faith, something absolutely tiny and considerably bootleg looking compared to their instance version. It sucks, but expect plenty more zones to get this treatment going forward.

She singled out this thread as an example of trolling on the forums in a livestream she did on twitch. I wonder what she would feel if a fundamental issue she cared about like say Viera hairstyles had a megathread and then along comes another streamer or prominent individual that brands it as an example of trolling too.

Anyway I'm taking a break from arguing in circles and working on a total rewrite concept of the missing Garlemald expansion and a new take on what Endwalker could have been. I don't promise anything as in-depth as the Meracydia expansion concept I did a long while back but hopefully it'll be a more entertaining read than how some of the last few pages of this thread have been.

I can already sense the replies telling me that what I've written is too dark or emotional to be palatable to a playerbase that was enamoured by the slice of life scenes of Endwalker, or too political in the style of Ivalician storytelling with not enough meme sequences. Please look forward to it! With any luck those threads will be called out live on stream as well.

I absolutely look forward to this. Please change nothing in an attempt to make it more digestible for the squeamish. This story could use a little more grit if you ask me.

[Lauront]

This bothered me too, but it's yet another of example of the game's regions or "overworld" being extremely compressed for the sake of game play. But it is absolutely comical in its execution. For a more concrete example of what I mean, just look at Ishgard as you wander that city. Look out beyond its boundaries and the city seems absolutely MASSIVE both in width and height, something that would take days to full explore were we given more than two tiny zones you transition between in seconds. Then leave the city into Coerthas Central Highlands and fly your mount past (over and past) the the gate supposedly leading to the steps of faith. What you will see is an absolutely tiny and narrow cobblestone walkway connecting to a doll house not much larger than the watch towers already scattered around that zone, and that building is supposed to be the city of Ishgard and the path leading to it are The Steps of Faith, something absolutely tiny and considerably bootleg looking compared to their instance version. It sucks, but expect plenty more zones to get this treatment going forward.



I absolutely look forward to this. Please change nothing in an attempt to make it more digestible for the squeamish. This story could use a little more grit if you ask me.

It annoyed me with the Steppes as well. Normally they'll use visual tricks to at least add an illusion of grandeur, but you had entire tribes there in these itty bitty little settlements. While one wouldn't expect giant metropolises, neither would you expect them to amount to a few dozen individuals or so.

[Raoabolic]

It annoyed me with the Steppes as well. Normally they'll use visual tricks to at least add an illusion of grandeur, but you had entire tribes there in these itty bitty little settlements. While one wouldn't expect giant metropolises, neither would you expect them to amount to a few dozen individuals or so.

It's not that shocking considering when there is a "crowd" in any cutscene. I guess more than 2 and less than 10 can be considered a crowd, lol.

[Jagick]

I don't post to prove myself to be right. I post to put my opinions out there in the hope that I might encounter people who share similar concerns for the direction of the game's narrative as well as reinforcing the idea that they're not alone. I also hope that the thread is being read by someone employed by Square Enix who may very well pass feedback along to someone involved in the story.



I imagine many posters have all sorts of different takes on what would be 'valid' or 'reasonable' on any given subject. Ultimately we're dealing with a fictional setting which is primarily there to entertain. It can't please everybody but that's precisely why many favour more variety across the board in terms of how elements within the story play out.

Someone rooting for House Stark in Game of Thrones is going to have very different expectations than those who roots for House Tyrell or House Lannister and so on.



It's why I'm drifting back to single player games for my immersion needs. It never fails to impress me every time I enter Novigrad in The Witcher 3. It's one of the more immersive cities I've seen in an RPG to date. Equally, as far as MMO's go I'd say Divinity's Reach in Guild Wars 2 is a good example of what FFXIV could do if it really pushed itself to its limits.

Even if the city was devoid of life it would have been nice to see, even though I'd prefer to have witness the grandeur and technological powerhouse we've heard about. It kind of makes me laugh now thinking about it, but upon exploring the zone, I didn't feel like I was play FFXIV and exploring the capitol of Garlemald. I felt like I was playing an ancient free-to-play MMO, Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine. Tower looming? Check! Mostly empty wasteland? Check! An area with some building ruins but nothing much else to see? Check! A couple demon- I mean monsters roaming here and there to kill? Check! Pet summoned to help me fight? Check! Low graphical fidelity to compliment it all? CHECK!

It's not that shocking considering when there is a "crowd" in any cutscene. I guess more than 2 and less than 10 can be considered a crowd, lol.

It's even more baffling that they seem to have started just copy and pasting those NPCs in even those smaller crowds rather than making them unique. Same face, same clothes, same colors. Really ruins the immersion.

[Brinne]

It's useful to be able to distinguish - from both a writing and a reacting position - pointing out something Weird about what someone is writing/saying, versus applying that as a judgment to that person's personal character. I can point out that Endwalker's writing Did A Genocide Apologism, Using Classic Apologism Techniques, and that is Really Not Okay, without that meaning I actually think Yoshida and company are literally pro-genocide. There's no way to absolutely know that - but I don't have to know that to think the disingenuous way they went about communicating the story and uplifting a single character felt gross and harmful. Similarly, I think most of this thread can agree we can point out that a lot of the rhetoric used to defend Venat's actions align very closely with abuse apologism, but don't think that means we're specifically pointing the finger at anyone for Literally Being An Abuse Apologist. But using the rhetoric still sucks and is worth calling out.

Not everyone is educated or aware of the ins and outs of the dynamics and history of abuse apologism and such, so - like I hope/think Yoshida and Co. did with EW - don't necessarily realize what they're doing. But the hope is that pointing it out will get them to reconsider that rhetoric and realize what it actually is, like we're seeing at least start out in the Omega quests (and will very hopefully continue.) On the other hand, if there's a stubbornness about persisting with it and doubling down, I don't think anyone could be blamed for starting to raise eyebrows.

FFXIV tries to achieve a very delicate balance between being an escapist, personal power fantasy (both in literal power and in moral high ground power), while also obviously wanting its story to be relevant and thoughtful to complex real world topics, or Stormblood and the Garlemald zone wouldn't have been written the way they were. Because Stormblood obviously put forth an effort to be thoughtful about the Colonialisms, I feel more at liberty to say that it didn't do so well at it, and be able to explain that to someone who would hypothetically insist Stormblood's depiction was flawless actually. So the same should be applicable to discussions of Garlemald and imperialism, or Venat and the lol Social Darwinism nonsense.

Writing is hard, expressing thoughts is hard, interpreting both can be hard, but once again, different people are coming to this thread for different reasons. Some are here to vent and don't want to be challenged, no matter what they post. Some want to discuss and analyze, are here specifically to challenge (and there are a million different ways to go about doing so.) Some are looking for solidarity with other posters, and others are mainly hoping they can make their case to the actual writing team so the story doesn't continue down EW's path. When you have what a lot of people increasingly view as the Central Hub for MSQ criticism all gathering in one place, yeah, those views and approaches are going to clash because they're fundamentally at cross purposes.

I'm not sure how this can be addressed other than, like, clearly signposting for a vent post This Is A Vent Post, I Do Not Want To Be Challenged, or something, or simply splitting the thread - neither of which would probably sit well with a lot of people.

[anhaato]

It annoyed me with the Steppes as well. Normally they'll use visual tricks to at least add an illusion of grandeur, but you had entire tribes there in these itty bitty little settlements. While one wouldn't expect giant metropolises, neither would you expect them to amount to a few dozen individuals or so.

The Steppe was pathetic and definitely the most egregious zone compression pre-EW. For a “steppe” there sure is hardly any flat grassland, and a whole lot of mountains cutting off the northwest and southeast ends. And they put chasms to separate the east and southwest ends from the actual flatlands that went past them. If absolutely any zone is to have a bunch of empty land, stuff that’s far apart and separated by lots of nothing, I would expect it for that. And what’s wrong with walling off zones without having to invent some silly geographical features to do it? Like any of us would care if they put the boundary in ay the end of walkable ground? Tons of games do that!

[MikkoAkure]

I did not believe the place I visited was Garlemald. It is the biggest city on the world map, many times bigger than Limsa. When I go there are oil pipelines, one train station, a few broken buildings, and one tower. Everyone ran away after the possessed soldiers attacked. But I have seen many bases bigger than this, and this is the main city.

When I go to Sharlyan, it is not only a big city, but has an underground greenhouse with artificial weather. How is it possible for them to have advanced technology more than the greatest country in the world?

Most of the city is behind the city walls, we just go to the outskirts. Though I don't know why their senate building is outside the city walls.

As far as Sharlayan goes, it's been around for about 1500 years, has had no wars, and has been constantly doing research that entire time. According to interviews, they've always been intended to be a space-faring civilization going back to 1.0. The Garlean Empire meanwhile has only had magitek for 60 years.