Hildibrand Will Return In. Not Anytime Soon

sorry but i tried. i made it through eight or so Hildibrand quests before deciding i don't need to do the rest. i wasn't much looking forward to them anyway if i'm completely honest. if i ever want to access all the stuff that's locked behind them i'll probably just skip all the cutscenes, and then they'll be ready for me to go through on New Game+ in case i'm ever stoned and want to have a mediocre time

i was beyond relieved to learn a large amount of people don't enjoy these quests and i'm not just a big stick in the mud, although they recently made completing them mandatory for the newest relic weapons so maybe people are just more vocal about it because of that. i don't know man this game can do humor well when it's subtle but Hildibrand just feels like a bad comedy anime people pretend to find funny because they want to seem cultured and/or are twelve. like a Gmod video from 2008. i like Gilgamesh though

that's all the side content i wanted to do! after a couple-week break i'm back on the main story, and apparently a couple weeks is all that's needed for me to have to spend a couple quests getting reacquainted with what da hell goin on. i guess we're dealing with pirates even though this isn't ARR and i'm not level 16. getting some good Merlwyb content though so i won't complain

right into this badtower business. i paused for a second before they showed it, knowing i was about to finally see The Deal with Endwalker. i really had almost no idea what to expect from this point aside from a funny theatre kid villain. after they mentioned the towers were springin up all over the world i went to different zones to look for them, almost like i was holding this game accountable. some guy: these towers are showing up in other places also! me: *goes to another place and sees a tower* :O !!!!!

last time i was at the Royal Menagerie at the end of Stormblood i stuck around while i looked up if i could come back whenever i wanted, because it was such a nice lil area. then i saw something about it only being accessible through New Game+ if i've already done the pre-Endwalker quests. i see why now. theatre kid brings down his big cardboard prop dragon to rain purple all over it, ruining a perfectly good gposing area

Arenvald and Fordola check in here, and i woulda been confused as to why i'm only just now seeing Fordola again if i hadn't recently done the level 80 Summoner quest that involved the two. i guess not much to update on someone who's locked up. was nice to see that was still the case after having just done Sorrow of Werlyt where the bad guy's hanging around all freely and sadly. Arenvald's a good boy though, i hope nothing happens to his legs. again i know almost nothing about Endwalker

after Shadowbringers Alisaie complains about her perceived "lack of personal development". after watching her freak out over getting mistaken for her identical twin i'm not totally uninclined to agree. still i never super understood why Alphinaud took to Estinien so hard, so i suppose Alisaie immediately hating him for no reason balances it out. personally i'm indifferent, if only because he's unnecessarily mean whenever we meet a cool dragon

Stormblood tribal quests are done!! it was a noticeably less painful process than the Heavensward ones overall but i'm still dreading having two expansions of them to go. i learned there's no allied questline for the Shadowbringers tribes because they "didn't want to force it", which clued me in on the Stormblood quests probably having the same villain again. but the story quests were fun enough (((once i finally unlocked them)))

my favorite thing about the tribal quests as they progress is seeing their little base of operations grow. the Qitari in Shadowbringers are especially interesting because i gotta choose my own interpretation of the historical artifacts they find, which permanently affects how the place gets decorated. of course being a stickler for canon i will spend 20 minutes consulting other players' opinions first. and of course i say all this to myself in an attempt to convince myself that grinding tribal reputation is not wholly a horribly boring experience

i was finally on the final handful of quests before reaching Endwalker, and i was definitely feeling just a teeny tiny bit impatient. didn't help that it was mostly stuffy political talk, i just wanna see Sharlayan already bro!!! right at the end we were going from a quest called On Official Business, into Death Unto Dawn, so hopefully i was going to be killing things again soon. but first Daddy Leveilleur shows up, and initially i'm glad to see a lack of daddy issues from the twins, but then brand new daddy issues quickly arise. and now i'm even more impatient to get to Sharlayan so i can go have words

NOOOOO

rad quest to fill in my experience playing as all the Scions, now hopefully i get to play as Tataru at some point. strange that even though they only have a handful of abilities, playing as other characters is always more challenging and exciting. when i play as stupid pinkhair the objective is always "kill things", but other characters have actual functions and specific use cases for their abilities. i'm not used to having to actually pay attention and make decisions when playing solo

i want to reiterate how much i'm not into goofy flying pigs being integral to saving the world right now

boy i've sure done a real good job of building this up in my mind. watched the trailer for Endwalker for the first time and i'm extremely jazzed. also i'm now sproutless nooo!!!! i've lost it a couple times in the past when i reached Heavensward and Shadowbringers, back when they were the newest expansions. but i'm not into the idea of other people now expecting me to know what the hell is going on when playing with me. i've gotten comfortable hiding behind my little plant

"reached the newest expansion" is a funny requirement for not being labeled a new player anymore, when i'm currently sitting at three full months of playtime. granted a fair chunk of that has been spent AFK, especially lately when i've been leaving the game open to write about it, and now i often take naps with it still open. but i used to be much more obsessive about "playtime" stats accurately representing how long i've actually played. in fact, and god this is crazy to think about even though it wasn't that long ago, for a couple years i would obessively track how long i spent playing every game each day. i've since traded that in for another form of compulsive recording, in journaling

when i saw "Clive is now following you" in the FFXVI event i though, oh that's new, i'm sure that's an Endwalker thing and that it'll suddenly be happening every other quest. so far yes that is the case, but at least it's a hell of a lot better than nothingful sniping segments. i like it!! exploring a new city for the first time in years is already super exciting, but getting to turn around to talk to my favorite catboy G'raha and my favorite fake catgirl Krile about it at every corner is delightful