I can't connect with the Memories of Vanadiel

They view the game as a Final Fantasy themepark and have expressed extreme enthusiasm for bringing together the different final fantasy games in FFXIV. I'm not talking about Yoshi-P either; their various designers have talked about this as well.

Their reasoning is that everyone's definition of Final Fantasy is different. If they made it like FF9, people would say it's not like the "true" FF7. If they made it like FF7, people would say it's not like the "true" FF9 or FF10 etc. So their answer is to have isolated references to different ones throughout the game.

I agree that taking inspiration and outright copying are different things. That was part of why the Star Wars 7-9 films were bad. They couldn't tell the difference between inspiration and copying. It seems they aren't the only ones to fall into that storytelling pitfall.

In SE's defense though, if they flat out copy the lore entirely, I tend to think it's so that they can say "here is this boss again, but in 2025 with modern graphics and fast combat". It's a world of difference to how they could make bosses in a 2D or partially 2D game.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

The fact that he survived Zoraal throwing him into a bottomless pit at all made me close my eyes and contemplate closing the game back in 7.1. Why make the framing the hallucinations of a lizard realized through electrope when Shantotto and Iroha have already shown up before?

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the writers are creatively bankrupt for one. for another, they also probably tossed the a.raid storyline to some junior writer 'cause side content' and it was the best they could come up with.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Why make the framing the hallucinations of a lizard realized through electrope when Shantotto and Iroha have already shown up before?

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That's the part that annoyed the hell out of me. We know that the XI universe is out there and travel between Vana'diel and Eorzea is possible. But they just had to ham fist an easier way to describe things as "OH BRO, THIS ORE IS GOATED."

tbh I forgot what the whole story is because the patch cycle is so absurdly long.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

They view the game as a Final Fantasy themepark and have expressed extreme enthusiasm for bringing together the different final fantasy games in FFXIV. I'm not talking about Yoshi-P either; their various designers have talked about this as well.

Their reasoning is that everyone's definition of Final Fantasy is different. If they made it like FF9, people would say it's not like the "true" FF7. If they made it like FF7, people would say it's not like the "true" FF9 or FF10 etc. So their answer is to have isolated references to different ones throughout the game.

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It's nice that they're enthusiastic about it, but at the end of the day I do not care.

In my personal opinion it is a terrible design idea.
If your game is just a bunch of disconnected "content islands" made up of different FF games I don't feel any kind of connection to your "world" and consequently your game either.

Why would I care about any of the characters if they are just going to be stuck in their small pocket universe?

It doesn't expand Etheirys, it's lore, history, politics, races or cultures.
It makes the world feel incredibly small and uninteresting.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

If your game is just a bunch of disconnected "content islands" made up of different FF games I don't feel any kind of connection to your "world" and consequently your game either.

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They do technically join up the lore to FF14. Like how they joined up Ivalice to the Viera fighting Garleans, or explaining away Vana'diel as another shard that Sareel Ja saw due to being around the portal (which technically expands what we know of FF14).

But whether that's sufficient enough is up to you I suppose. Often they do just take bosses wholesale so they can show this is what a modern version of the boss would be like, in this game's battle system. I think they also want to pay maximum homage to it, so they don't bring in a character from another FF and it be hugely off and different, and huge disappointment to fans of that game.

In a way, proof that this is an issue lies in Dawntrail itself. They took FF9's lore almost wholesale, but because they dared to change it by covering it in "electrope" and leaving it in ruins, I am extremely disappointed as an FF9 fan and would have preferred it was taken wholesale than what it ended up being.

People need to stop with the homage bullshit, that's exactly what every hollywood studio has said to justify their slow decline into soft reboots and fan service. What kind of nauseating, anti artistic dystopian loop of thinking is this even?

I think the big problem with the FFXI raid series for non XI players is that XIV doesn't seem to make any effort to properly explain a lot of the context of the places/people that are brought up, definitely not enough in a way that would actually inform someone with zero prior knowledge. They also weirdly choose to have these bosses and events go completely out of order from how they happen chronologically in FFXI... like we have some CoP stuff presented BEFORE Zilart stuff and even within the respective expacs the order of events is all jumbled. I don't know why they couldn't have at least summarized and organized the fights so newbies could get even a smidgen of understanding of what the storylines were.

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Originally Posted by Gaddes

I think the big problem with the FFXI raid series for non XI players is that XIV doesn't seem to make any effort to properly explain a lot of the context of the places/people that are brought up, definitely not enough in a way that would actually inform someone with zero prior knowledge. They also weirdly choose to have these bosses and events go completely out of order from how they happen chronologically in FFXI... like we have some CoP stuff presented BEFORE Zilart stuff and even within the respective expacs the order of events is all jumbled. I don't know why they couldn't have at least summarized and organized the fights so newbies could get even a smidgen of understanding of what the storylines were.

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Didn't they try that with the Ivalice raids and the result was walls of text?

Which I didn't mind that much but I think others did. At least there seemed to be a coherent story that fit with XIV, unlike Nier.

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Originally Posted by Valence

People need to stop with the homage bullshit, that's exactly what every hollywood studio has said to justify their slow decline into soft reboots and fan service. What kind of nauseating, anti artistic dystopian loop of thinking is this even?

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Much easier to use the abomination of AI when there is already loads of extant text.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

The fact that he survived Zoraal throwing him into a bottomless pit at all made me close my eyes and contemplate closing the game back in 7.1.

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I didn't even remember who the guy was when he turned up in the Jeuno cut scene, had to google his name :)
It was so absurd. Zoraal Ja can basically fell a raging bull with one single swoop, but this nameless powerless guy survived getting backstabbed by Zoraal Ja /smh
One of the many narrative low-points in Dawntrail. But as in every sunday morning cartoon show, everybody comes back, all the time, over and over and over. Except the only well written character (Gulool Ja Ja), I'm sure he will stay dead forever.