i think it's because every expansion strikes a balance between worldbuilding and vibes, and stormblood represents the last expansion where the emphasis was on the worldbuilding. shadowbringers veered hard into vibes and we've only just started pulling up out of them
and like obviously every expansion has both worldbuilding and vibes. like, objectively equal amounts. but it's about how they interact, how one services the other.
1.0 and ARR were really lavish in their exploration of the setting. Eorzea, its culture, its history, its politics, its neighbors, its internal divisions. heavensward and stormblood were continuations of this- filling out the context immediately beyond what 1.0 and 2.0 had been exploring. looking at the things that directly contributed to, or were directly shaped by the core of the work. Coerthas, Dravania, Gyr Abania, the Far East- in every place, more deep-seated grudges, more politics, more alliances, more trade, more governments, and always, the Empire, looming as the dark culmination of our journey.
and then Shadowbringers arrives and turns the cosmology of the world on its head- literally, spending its entire first act giving a presentation on how actually, darkness is cool, light sucks, and that good and evil are like, opinions, man. this isn't your daddy's FFXIV. we don't care about alliances. we're about how fucking sweet it would be to wield a sword of darkness and kill an angel. just kick down the doors of heaven and stab god in the heart. maybe you're gonna have to, man. maybe you've been played for a fool this whole time, man, and it's time to kick some ass. that was a fantasy. that was a vibe.
there was a world invented to go along with it, but it wasn't rooted in the geopolitics of Eorzea... at least not how previous expansions were. this new world wasn't a sovereign entity already implied by the lore, but something revealed from behind a curtain we never even knew was there, revealed as a reflection we didn't even know we had. it was different, and used that difference to expand not the geographic, but the metaphysical boundaries of the setting. we're not even gonna bother with cooking up totally new lands; everything beyond Eorzea's slightly twisted reflection is dead and gone. instead, Shadowbringers was an expansion in a completely different dimension; the idea that people and places alike had echoes across other timelines, and the suggestion that the most defining characteristics of those echoes- the thing that linked them across realities- was not their individual histories but the soul they had in common.
and then endwalker rolled around and said actually, bitch, it's heart that matters, not soul. and the two argued for a bit, but in the end the story literally ended in a place where emotions and desire dictate physical reality. but that didn't happen only in Ultima Thule, oh no- that was the vibe the entire time! our promised duel with the Empire never happened; the actual battle with the Emperor himself, a literal dream we had back in Shadowbringers; Garlemald, a mere suggestion, the ruined husk of a city stripped of its menace and barely holding on to its identity. no final show down, here- only a lesson on Endwalker's treatise on human connection. the Moon- the god damn Moon in the Sky!- a lesson on love and the ways it can endure. almost every grudge and rivalry from the past ten years settled in one way or another and the world remade in the spirit of cooperation and mutual support.
dawntrail took a stab at building a new world, but it's still vibes all the way down. the kinder, gentler world at the end of Endwalker retroactively applied to the whole of the New World, and our story once more ends in a construction dictated by sentiment.
i dunno where it's going next. anyway i liked the storytelling more back when it was a bit more grounded. Oof...! My energy... is getting low... if I don't get H.POTION soon, I... I might not make it...!