Quote Originally Posted by ellohwell View Post
CGI is a waste of time.

I liked the intro.

It's not supposed to make sense, it's supposed to pose mysteries (a story can't be compelling if there is no mystery).

The opening cutscene set up the world in the following ways: it introduced the concept of adventurers, aetherytes, and guildleves all in the space of a few seconds, even showing the map of Eorzea. It then went on to develop the concept of the echo and the Garlean threat. It introduced the war between the dragon horde and Ishgard, as well as the Primals, and also the power of the aether and the Starshower.

All these elements form the spine of the story in FFXIV, and it may have seemed like information-overload at the time, but it slowly begins to make sense as you progress through the game, and I think that's the point of great mysteries.

Maybe it could have been better, but I think it got the job done.
Also important to the telling of the story is how the information is delivered and, to me, that's where XIV's opening movie falls very short. Throwing a bunch of visuals at someone - the way 14's does - without context, meaning or explanation doesn't create mystery (perhaps curiosity) so much as it creates confusion.

Seems to me the opening movie for FFXIV was intended primarily for the "ooooh.. ahhh" effect, and not so much to introduce a story.

You describe it as "information overload", but beyond that, it's information overload that at the beginning of the game we don't even understand yet. I didn't even know what was going on was the Echo until after it was introduced in the game itself and I went back to watch the movie again.

Opening movies, generally, will set up the scene, set up the world and provide all the background information necessary to give what the players do context, so they understand something about the world they're about to enter, and the adventure they're about to embark on.

XI's did this as well, as does XII's and X's, etc. etc.

XIV's just seems like a cacaphony of information all thrown at you at once with no clear connection to each other - especially if you're a brand-new player. It's not so much a story as it is a mash-up of a bunch of things you'll see in FFXIV, only you have no way of knowing that, or what's-what until well after you've started playing.

I guess I'm just hoping the new one they're working on does a better job of story-telling than being a "teaser" as someone else described it earlier in the thread.

Someone mentioned the opening movies for the 3 cities - those are definitely very well done, all 3.. But those are more about introducing your character to the world and the circumstances of each of the individual cities, not so much the game's setting overall.

Heck, for all we know, Tanaka and co. didn't even really have a complete or firm idea of where they wanted the storyline to go back when the first opening movie was made.