The Old Intros of Final Fantasy XIV ("1.0.") for those who just played ARR

[Tonkra]

Just as a little Retroperspective for those who "just" experienced ARR. Not all was good about "1.0.", but i personally enjoyed the old intros very much.

See how we met characters like "Yshtola", "Papalymo & Yda" and "Thancred" for the first time. Before the "Crash" (Rendering Intro ARR).


My personally favourite is the Gridanian Intro (quiet fun), followed by Limsa Lominsa and the least favourite .. the intro of Ul'dah

>>Limsa Lominsa Intro - ARRR* pirates... and Yshtola<<


>>Gridania Intro - First meet with Yda & Papalymo<< (most funny)



>>Ul'dah Intro - A Fairy Tale about a Gobbue... and Thancred.. ah and.. flowers for all<<



EDNINGS:


GAIUS


NAEL van Darnus (final story cutscenes before "crash")

[RyujinUzikin]

I was pumped watching these back when the game first came out, though I waited till ARR.

[Kerwin]

The amount of time it took to make these cut scenes. The real life motion capture, amazed me. The tacky riding in on a chocobo cart/ship intros we have with the old geezer is nothing compared to these. Thanks for sending me back into 1.0 nostolgia.

[Lanceton]

and yet they insist the 'graphic quality' is better in ARR

[Ryuko]

The graphic quality isn't better, just more efficient AND accessible. Aka, you don't need an amazing computer to run the game. I did like the graphics in 1.0 but I understand why they were changed. I DEFINITELY miss the real life motion capture, though. And it makes me sad that every race holds weapons the exact same way, now. Although your appearance can differ, and so will your emotes, your actual 'motions' don't differ that much from others.

[Vilhem]

The amount of time it took to make these cut scenes. The real life motion capture, amazed me. The tacky riding in on a chocobo cart/ship intros we have with the old geezer is nothing compared to these. Thanks for sending me back into 1.0 nostolgia.

They still use motion capture, but of course 1.0's epic failure was due to the graphics being too intense for an MMO.

They were able to use proper lip-sync as well since they only had to worry about one language: English. There was no split between 4 audios. Very nice cutscenes yes T.T

[Enkidoh]

Yet, even the much lauded graphic quality of the cutscenes was just all smoke and mirrors - Crystal Tools was so badly optimized it could only render a handful of characters on screen at once (the Ul'dah opening showed that all to well, for what is meant to be a parade in a crowded street, notice how there was only a handful of people in the immediate foreground and yet the background area was completely empty, as the engine simply couldn't render more. It was these kinds of short cuts and limitations that contributed to 1.0's demise before it was even born.

I agree though that they did grab the player in narrative wise though, but everything was so convoluted, nothing really made sense (how many players realized at the time that all the original opening scenes were actually in the Echo (and weren't even taking place in 'the present', but were events that had happened a decade before? Not many I'd wager - it was only Ferne actually revealing that fact here on the forum did it now make sense.)

At least ARR's openings, as subdued as they are, do fit into the greater scheme of things and don't overload the player with a ton of narrative stuff they're only going to forget ten seconds later. I guess it's one of those times you can't have your cake and eat it too.

[HakuroDK]

The graphical quality of 1.0 is significantly higher than 2.0. The reasoning for this was due to putting a lot of focus on making things look pretty. So much so, in fact, that 1.0 was much larger and even objects like a single plant pot contributed as much to server latency as a single player due to the obscene number of shaders.

The graphical quality got dropped because 1.0 was meant for very high-end PCs at the time it was out, which caused a lot of players (myself included) to be left in the dust. But as technology continues to evolve at an exponential rate, so does accessibility to higher and higher quality graphics. So it is possible that, in time, FFXIV will look as gorgeous as 1.0 again. It just may not be for a while. Maybe a graphical update with 4.0? #wishfulthinking

[File2ish]

Crystal Tools was so badly optimized it could only render a handful of characters on screen at once (the Ul'dah opening showed that all to well, for what is meant to be a parade in a crowded street, notice how there was only a handful of people in the immediate foreground and yet the background area was completely empty, as the engine simply couldn't render more.

This and the fact that they made everything look as good as possible, not just the character models.

Just as an example; a simple flower pot in 1.0 had something close to 1,000 polygons and had 150 lines code for the shading, which was about the same count for both as a player character model had.

The graphical quality got dropped because 1.0 was meant for very high-end PCs at the time it was out, which caused a lot of players (myself included) to be left in the dust...

And yeah, this. I played a bit of 1.XX, but my computer (laptop) could barely run the game at 6-9FPS (depending on population) on minimum settings and resolution (which made the game look significantly worse, ARR doesn't look nearly as bad as 1.0 did at bare minimum everything AND it runs better). It also remains the only game to make the computer overheat and cause the CPU/GPU to force shut down the computer so it doesn't damage the components.

They dropped Crystal Tools for a new in house game engine made specifically for ARR so they can reach a broader audience on PC as well as make the game playable on the PS3 (which was promised since 1.0). A very wise decision in my opinion, it certainly helped get more people to play the game. And ARR is still very pretty to look at, but it's clear which version had a ton more investment in graphical fidelity (especially when looking at certain textures).

[MiniTofu]

Those cut-scenes are way better in term of animations and camera shots... thanks for the upload.

+ voice over in English is also so much better.