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

[SaitoHikari]

Two expansions after Shadowbringers would have let things sink in a little longer, but considering Oda said that the story would've been the same, the people in this thread would have had the exact same criticisms of Garlemald being destroyed off-screen and the issues with Venat.

The story being the same does not mean the presentation would have remained the same, which is what we're really arguing about. Garlemald would still be destroyed in the end, but it's likely that if the Garlemald arc wasn't basically condensed into a single zone, a lot of what happened wouldn't have been off-screened to make way for the Final Days arc. I personally find the Venat arguments a bit overdone too, when such arguments are most likely a consequence of her arc being just as condensed. Who knows how much cut context we're missing from both sides of the expansion as a result?

(Also, I sincerely hope that the devs never make another multi-expansion villain like Zenos ever again, or at least one we already fought coming back from the dead and undercutting other plot threads older than his introduction the way he did.)