I know it's been talked about, but seriously. No Jump Potions, here is why.

[Brian_]

The Garlean empire / Nael van Darnus / Gael van Baelsar
Bahamut / the Calamity
other Primals and related beast tribes
The Battle of Carteneau
The Battle of Silvertear Falls and the entire backstory behind the formation of GCs
Louisoix (and other scions) and all the returning characters from that had pretty significant backstory in 1.0

...and basically the entire framework and world for ARR.

Yep, 1.x was very irrelevant

[Lambdafish]

Yep, 1.x was very irrelevant

Alright I get your point, but the thing is that all of those events are presented to us in 2.0+ as though they expect the player not to have played 1.0. The MSQ tells us about the battle of carteneu/silvertear falls as though we shouldn't know about it prior (and even expands upon them), the primals are reintroduced as though 1.0 never happened.

Also Bahamut was never in 1.0, his first appearance was right as 1.0 ended, in the 'answers' FMV, the calamity is very much a 2.0 plotline (as 2.0 never touches on the cause, other than an offhand conversation within the Praetorium).

Either way, the point I'm trying to make is the 2.0+ assumes that you never played 1.0, do you want 4.0 to assume that you never played 2.0 and 3.0, and explain the garlean empire, nidhogg, and the ascians as though we never encounted them before?

[Brian_]

Either way, the point I'm trying to make is the 2.0+ assumes that you never played 1.0, do you want 4.0 to assume that you never played 2.0 and 3.0, and explain the garlean empire, nidhogg, and the ascians as though we never encounted them before?

They don't have to explain any of that as if we've never encountered them before. Just like when Gaes van Baelsar or Nael Deus Darnus show up in ARR, we don't have some super long cut-scene summarizing their entire story from 1.0. They're presented as somewhat generic villains. For the uninformed, that's enough for them to create a starting point and fill in the blanks from there. For the people with experience from 1.0, they naturally slot in the backstory. Again, I didn't play 1.0 but from the short cut scene before T9, it was pretty obvious to me Nael was a psycho and a Garlean villain.

When you pick up the 3rd or 4th Harry Potter movie, the director doesn't need to explain to you the depth of the friendship Hermione and Ron developed with Harry in the first few movies. They set up scenarios and let the acting explain itself. For characters like Aliphinaud and Tataru, you don't need to explain who they are. You let the dialogue and scenarios paint the obvious image that they're your companions. Maybe if you're feeling zealous you can add NPC text you can read on the side that'll give you some backstory.

For example, you don't need to be told who the Ascians are. A few lines of text paired with their obviously evil appearance is enough to establish what they are. The details can be slowly woven into a player's mind through new events. Nidhogg's eyes don't need a backstory. You just need to make it abundantly obvious they're a relic imbued with an extreme amount of aether. To this day I don't really know what the big deal is with Tupsimati. Yea, it's Louisoix's old staff and a good conductor of aether? I assume there might be more backstory? It didn't influence my ability to understand the story.

As your universe ages and expands, you have to do less and less to actually create depth in your story. You just have to leave it enough room to breath so that the people who really care about lore can fill it with backstory. To the people who don't care, it'll be a simple and straightforward story. If you watch Civil War without any of the other Captain America movies, you'll understand that Steve and Bucky are buds. Yea, there are flash-backs here and there and script references to old lines that new people won't get. Knowing the backstory will obviously add to the relationship. But, not knowing doesn't make the movie incoherent. Not being extremely heavy-handed in your re-introduction of their bond is fine.