Storyline Prior to Game

[whoopeeragon]

I didn't read all posts, but the dragon, the big one, is known as the "Keeper of the Land".. It's still there in Mor Dhona right in the center. It's not a summon but the "Dragon King" if you will, if you check the big cloth map that comes with the EU LTD Edition it tells you that.

Also, Ishgard doesn't summon dragons, they're a city that's at war with Dragons, the landmass above Coerthas, which isn't yet in the game, is dominated by dragons, Ishgard is ever at war, so much as to have a guild within the city that recruits hunters to traverse into these lands to slay them!

As far as the Summons go, I forgot their actual name, but they were summoned by a higher diety, not the dragon. You do come into contact with it VERY briefly in stories and a cut scene within the storylines Plot.

There's my 2 cents.

Abraxai, do you happen to have that cloth map? Because all versions of the map I have bear no justice to the transcript in the very bottom right, labeled under "In One are Twelve".

Summons are done by the beastmen tribes under influence by the aetherial crystals; the only currently known one is Ixal -> Ifrit. Speculation also surround the Sahagin and Leviathan.

I would say some advancement jobs will be located in Ishgard e.g. DRAGOON.

[Aramil]

Personally I don't think the empire was fighting a city in particular during that cutscene. The way the dragon are reacting, the absence of other people, it kind of look like the empire happened to fly near a dragon nest and was attack by those dragons. At least that's the impression i have.

The important part of the cutscene seem to be the crash. Between the land that was ravaged to look how it look now, the pillar of light and the primals who went to different place of Eorza, i think that the primals were sealed in Mor Dhona and freed by the crash. Still with the current cutscenes in the game and the little bits of story, there's no way to really know what exactly happened.

[Abraxai]

I do have the map! However any picture i take of it would be limited to 1.3 megapixels :P I remember seeing a high-res one online when I first started the game, bare with me I'll link it once I find it!

[whoopeeragon]

Yay, thanks! Right now, it's so hard to decipher blurred up pictures of the transcript there...I can only manage the 3 lines in bold; everything in between gets faded too much to grasp the entirety of it.

Anyone want to guess what summon the Sylphs are aligned with? Since they bear a prominent role in the storyline, the summon for them should also be revealed sooner or later. I'm guessing either Garuda or Titan; they are found in the Black Shroud, which is more based around the woody aspects, hence either wind, earth or water. Water is taken already by the Sahagin, so it's those two left.

[Abraxai]

Yeah, there it is.

http://www.ffxivcore.com/wiki/Eorzea

It reads:

- In One Are Twelve -


"A map is as precise
As the malms walked in her making,
Yet I fear these feet
Have but far too few between them


May she serve faithfully
Any who would employ her for good,
And shun all who would fill
Her borders with blood


Twelve see the steps taken
By those who heed her humble guidance
Ensure her legacy endures


Roddard Ironheart
Year 1506 of the 6th Astral Era"

[Betelgeuzah]

The groundwork for the story surpasses XI's by a mile. Even the current story is better than XI's generic vanilla crap, even if the execution is poor.

While it can seem introductory so did all of the expansions in XI (aside from maybe RoTZ) which were hard to grasp at first but made sense later on. I can imagine this story getting so damn epic once few things go down;

1) The battle with the primals begin (I figure this is the first part SE is working on currently).

2) We take part in Ishgard's fight with the dragons (I figure this comes after the primals).

3) Finally we make it to the Ala Mhigo where things get nasty and we learn something shocking about the Garleans (laying out the groundwork for the first expansion).

It seems the lore is already set on a three-lock war between the dragons, primals and eorzeans. Who knows what happens once Garleans come into picture and we get to see their hi-tech stuff.

The lore of the game is not an afterthought, even if in the game's current form it is not being used effectively enough. It will end up being one of the strong points of the game, just like in any Final Fantasy. No generic fantasy that is tackled together at the last second (PLAENS OF TELLARRA, EXILD RELM OF ARBOREE, TOWER OF ETERNITYZ).

Of course a good set-up won't make the game, and these other games do the game part better, but that's not what we're talking about here.

[DavidLocksley]

Betelgeuzah I agree with you that the storyline is not an afterthought. I just think they need to make stuff solid. We need to KNOW the story, not guess at it. This stuff is helping me figure things out though. Thank you guys for all the posts. I hope this helps others as well since I don't think many people get the storyline yet.

[whoopeeragon]

@Abraxia: Woot, I got the first lines of each paragraph right! Thanks for that!

I hope 1) comes first....it will certainly mean access to the Eikons. I wonder how you'll able to receive your summons, and if your elemental affinity will be a factor...

[Abraxai]

The groundwork for the story surpasses XI's by a mile. Even the current story is better than XI's generic vanilla crap, even if the execution is poor.

While it can seem introductory so did all of the expansions in XI (aside from maybe RoTZ) which were hard to grasp at first but made sense later on. I can imagine this story getting so damn epic once few things go down;

1) The battle with the primals begin (I figure this is the first part SE is working on currently).

2) We take part in Ishgard's fight with the dragons (I figure this comes after the primals).

3) Finally we make it to the Ala Mhigo where things get nasty and we learn something shocking about the Garleans (laying out the groundwork for the first expansion).

It seems the lore is already set on a three-lock war between the dragons, primals and eorzeans. Who knows what happens once Garleans come into picture and we get to see their hi-tech stuff.

The lore of the game is not an afterthought, even if in the game's current form it is not being used effectively enough. It will end up being one of the strong points of the game, just like in any Final Fantasy. No generic fantasy that is tackled together at the last second (PLAENS OF TELLARRA, EXILD RELM OF ARBOREE, TOWER OF ETERNITYZ).

Of course a good set-up won't make the game, and these other games do the game part better, but that's not what we're talking about here.

I think you're right.

FFXI's city quest storylines we're extremely one dimensional and generic. But I think they redeemed it with Epic and PHENOMONAL expansion set story lines.

I think this game is going to be epic from the off. Once SE actually pad out the lore of the game, give it some depth, history and relevance. As well as some areas for us to explore to actually look into the lore ourselves, as in, Ala Mhigo, Ishgard and Garlemald, it could actually look quite nice.

The story up to the Rank 46 mission is pretty good. There are a couple of missions that are blatantly just "Filler", but it's to be expected. They just need to build on that and start adding more!

They definitely have the ground work in for this to be an epic-ly lored game, as the poster I quoted suggests.

[whoopeeragon]

I hope they also expand into Dravania, and Sharlayan along with it. It'll be interesting to take into account the dragons of Eorzea, since beasts seem to play a prominent part in this game.