Personally I really enjoyed the world they created, but in the grand scheme of things it feels pretty small. And did they ever give a reason for why Lucis is a backwoods hickville area with lots of old and decaying structures with old ass cars while Insomnia is all "modern" and shit? Felt slightly disconnected.
They're not protected by the walls of Insomnia, so they're still suffering the direct consequences of the war. It's more evident in Leide, with how fucked up everything is. You see tanks and Nif ships abandoned in the landscape, visit abandoned war bunkers, the place is a complete mess.
At the start of Chapter 2, there are NPCs conveniently placed around where you park the Regalia in Hammerhead that talk about the invasion, and one of the conversations has a person asking "do you think things will get much worse with the Empire now?", and the other answers "I don't think so, unlike those protected by the wall, we never stopped feeling the immediate threat of Niflheim" (probably not exactly in those words, I'm not playing in english).
There's also that scene in Kingsglaive where two guys talk to each other about something similar, but in the other direction, wondering if things will get better, and the other answers that nothing will change, no matter who's in charge.
Insomnia is the last remaining territory of Lucis who can stand strong against Niflheim, becuase of their magic wall powered by the Crystal. The beginning of Kingsglaive also shows Niflheim vastly overwhelming Lucis' forces, and retreating just to show their dominance. It was a matter of time, I don't think they had any chance of winning this war.
I think they vaguely mention the Lucis thing in a Cindy sidequest? I remember something about it being the result of the war, with only Insomnia being able to make technological advances due to its protection. Made sense.
Yeah, there's a lot of lore and world building from optional stuff in this game. I personally really like it. The world of Eos is very intriguing. And they went the better route of doing that through short radio bits and also short text stuff, not the typical WRPG book that you'll only invest the time reading if you're already really into the lore. With shorter bits of exposition, it serves the purpose of drawing people in better, imo.
At least for me, it worked. Definitely wasn't expecting to find so much attention to detail and interesting lore in this game.
I mean it was some dumb quest about some car product she was interested in because it had been impossible to find outside of the city for years or something, and I already don't remember much, but I think that was the implication.
I might be combining it with some other snippets tbf
That is correct, she says that ever since Insomnia isolated itself, it was really hard to find that stuff in the rest of Lucis, since they concentrate all of the technology there. I believe she mentions 30 years.
