Revelations from NA Fan Fest (July 2023)

[Magikazam]

Yeah, this is an unfortunate consequence of how FFXIV's been writing its story: it clearly has a lot of sympathy for its oppressed and victims, but the fact that it's had two major villain groups that mainly aim towards total domination and destruction of their opposition--and have succeeded in doing that several times--means that those oppressed voices often get left out of that narrative. If I'm being kind, I feel like people who want to explore Ilsabard to see the remnants of the Empire aren't doing that because they care about the Empire, but because 'the Empire' is the only noun we've got for the area, and if we learned that there was a population in Ilsabard composed entirely out of clones of U.S. President James Buchanan they would instead be clamoring for us to visit the Buchanans, because we all immediately know they're the ones with the more compelling and sympathetic story.

As an aside, I suspect this is also a secret sauce for why Emet-Selch worked so well: his story let them take one of those villain groups based on total domination and destruction and write them with that sympathy for the victim, without taking away that villainous role, so they get to have their cake and eat it too. And they never have to think about the Ascians' victims in this whole equation, because they killed all the people in Skalla, so they don't have a voice in the discussion anyway.

But the truth is, FFXIV doesn't need that problem to exist anymore. The villain groups that created the problem of 'we want to be sympathetic towards victims, but the villains kept completely destroying their victims' are gone now. There's no need to reinvent or reintroduce this problem, we can just have villains who don't commit total genocide before we have the chance to meet their targets!

I just want to see more Garlean stuff (not as a big part of MSQ too) cause we legit barely know about them for how much present they are as antagonists. And the moment we go to Garlemald, well the society collapsed so, there that. Other than that, they just throw us a bit of lore to point out that they ain't just ''evil bad guy empire'' but that barely reflect in game as they are always used as meat cannon low tier antagonist. Minus like, Gaius and Zenos.

[Lyth]

We know lots of little details about Garlemald, including their historical link to Goug. What previously limited them lorewise was the fact that Emet reduced them down to a puppet dictatorship under the thumb of the Ascians. Given that the follow-up likely will be tied to deeper links in Ivalice lore, I suspect that Matsuno's input will be required to progress further on the Garlean side of things.

The one thing that worries me somewhat when I see new areas being revealed is this need to 'get through' large swathes of geographical area. When you think about it, Aldenard provided us with enough material for two and a half expansions. In contrast, Northern Othard was over in about half an expansion. The entirety of the First was over and done with in a single expansion (granted, the argument was that everything else outside of isekai Aldenard was destroyed, but still). Even major cities seem to be no exception to this, with places like Radz-at-Han and even Garlemald seeming much smaller than what their concept art would suggest.

I would much rather see them take their time and focus down on one area at a time. My ideal expansion experience would probably be to spend the entirety of it focused on a single large city and the environs around it. You can still have 'urban' combat zones, much like Labyrinthos in Sharlayan, but they effectively expand the feeling of scale while serving a dual focus.

[Cassar]

I've always had an interest in the Imperial Legions and their agendas, and I've been keeping track of each of them and the ones that haven't been mentioned (I even wrote a thread on this forum with all I could collect!)

As for Dawntrail, I strongly doubt we'll see the Empire in the same way we've seen them before, as antagonists. However...
Out of all the Imperial Legions, there are three that have never been even briefly mentioned in any moment of the game or any other canonical medium, such as books (as far as I know). Those being: VIII, IX and XIII. We also have the V and X, which have only been very briefly mentioned in Endwalker, and then there's XI, which was only mentioned in a field note in Bozja.

What I'm trying to say is, I think it's very possible, even probable, that one of those legions is located somewhere in the New World or in Meracydia (yes, I think we'll visit Meracydia in this expansion, but we can talk about this another time). But, I don't think we'll confront them as enemies, I think we'll get to see them now that their nation has fallen. Maybe they completely forgot their duties and now live as peaceful residents in their own village, or maybe they're just as miserable as the people in Garlemald, who knows?