[Devs] Bring Back The 1.0 Style Intros & NPCs

I can't be the only one who loathes the new intros. Beyond the brief little dream where you put on armour and a shiny weapon to confront the Ascian they lack anything special.

Am I the only one who misses all the companions we met in Ul'dah prior to the Calamity who just mysteriously vanished, the amusing banter of Papalymo and Yda after their airship crashed and you stumbled across the wreckage or even fighting along side Y'shtola and the pirates against a swarm of jellyfish? Ul'dah used to open with the Moonfire Faire in full swing, Fl'hammin passing out flowers and dancing before a Gobbue breaks free and causes havoc yet now what do we have? A cart ride and an NPC that says pretty much here's how to walk, bugger off. Gridania involved a stroll through the woods leading up to a battle alongside Papalymo and Yda against a horde of beasts and such. Limsa was a glorious ship ride wrought with danger.

Bring these back and for that matter what happened to Fl'hammin, Ascilia, Popokkuli, Seserukka, Niellefresne, and Greinfarr?

I do miss those as well. While the new opening cut scenes are just "ok". The 1.0 ones were pretty epic and reminded me how awesome Final Fantasy is.

When I saw some of the cut scenes and story/bosses from part 4 of the Lightning event, it reminded me of this. I wish they'd add more story to the game. I don't see why the 1.0 story intros were removed really. Are people just that impatient to start stabbing stuff?

Bad news broseph, those people may be dead. There was this whole nigh on end of the world calamity that changed a few things about Eorzea. That being said, times are different now, bringing back those cutscenes would make little sense as it's built on the precipice that the calamity has yet to take place.

Anyone still remember the npc repair merchant in Ul'dah? Kinda missed him :(


Will buy his soul for 43k gil

It doesn't have to be the same cut scenes, they made you feel apart of the story right from the beginning. It was unexpected and if you started as a DOH/DOL it was quite a challenge too. What I want to know is where is Hildebrand, or his replacement.

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Ul'dah used to open with the Moonfire Faire in full swing,

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It wasn't the moonfire faire, it was some flower festival.

I imagine they felt like the original intros were too long and they wanted to get you playing the game faster.

I don't really miss them but they weren't bad either.

I doubt they are dead, almost all the other notable persons in Ul'dah still live. The Sultana, Momodi, Thancred, etc they're all part of the main story but the others are missing.

The new intros are longer, the old you could skip almost all the scenes. The new ones you're forced to watch for five minutes with no action at least in the old you got to fight.

The new intros are flavorless and repetitive.

I never got tired of the Gridania intro with Yda calling me Nana xD

Yep they were much more... Alive, the new ones are all exactly the same. A ride with an old guy who won't stop talking to you with a minor skirmish and poof you're in town.

The problem is, the original 1.0 intros were designed in that way as part of a greater narrative arc that was never resolved (the irony is the player actually didn't realize at the start that everything they saw at that point was just a memory they were viewing through the Echo - all those scenes were from events that had happened over a decade earlier).

Because the new storyline has scrapped all that, hence the more mundane intro of the player having a dream of the Mothercrystal and an Ascian, and then being woken up on the ferry/chocobo carriage by the merchant who then waxes lyrical about the current state of Eorzea and adventuring in general.

Because ARR is designed with new players in mind, especially those who have never played a MMO or FF game before, Yoshi wanted to have the opening ease the player into the game and storyline rather than chuck a heap of enigmatic, obscure cutscenes at the player and overwhelm them. Horses for courses and all that. (And after all, the player does end up seeing some of the original openings later on in ARR when

they first encounter the Archon for their starting city, they experience the same vision of the starshower from 1.0 where the player first receives the Echo, right down to the lines from Answers, although it's rendered with in game graphics rather than a pre rendered FMV scene like 1.0 had).

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Originally Posted by Wobi

those people may be dead.

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If they are they should at least have a memorial tombstone with their names etched on it somewhere in Eorzea. That would be nice :(

Yes but it butchers the game for those of us who came from 1.0, I mean it really butchers it. We played through all those enigmatic cutscenes and now it's like none of it ever happened and yet our characters still walk the world being called "warriors of light" yet the story is just flung into a now idiotic direction where the new players are given pretty much godlike status. Single handedly defeating primals (according to dialog), etc. They need to bring back some of the originality that the game had and at least explain what happened to all of our companions.

You can't tell me you don't wonder what happened to Fl'hammin and the Sons? Even I to this very moment remember the drunken patrons causing a ruckus and those two tiny Lalafell tossing them out and dragging them off kicking and screaming while Fl'hammin and the other members of the band/dancers watched on in amusement.

It's more just a case of the fact that the story and all the scenes are so mundane now, the intro is just the tip of the iceberg but at least if there was a decent intro it might make the game somewhat better. Personally I'm beginning to loathe A Realm Reborn altogether from the route they are taking with regards to the story, the lack of any real Final Fantasy style, and worst of all the focus on nothing but end-game.