Originally Posted by
JCharms
Way too much time filler pushed in for what could easily be reduced to 5 missions max.
If I were the head of the studio, I would of allowed the player the choice of heading up to the gates of Ishgard after finishing Praetorium, with a pop up pointing them to the inn so they could watch the relevant plot changes to that point, and do the same with HW, allowing players to progress to SB after finishing Aetherochemical Research.
While I agree with the option of allowing the player the choice after finishing Praetorium...
I would love to hear just how you'd reduce 2.x to 5 missions.
Wall of text incoming (going to hide since it will contain spoilers) as to why I think the idea it can be "easily" reduced that much isn't feasible and misses the point of that section of the story:
In short - there's a lot of stuff that happens in 2.x that's actually important to the ongoing plot or relevant to ongoing character development, without even taking episodic story pacing into account. You have the crew wanting to get out of Thanalan and into neutral territory - the Scions acting as a neutral third party organization with its own "army" of sorts ends up being important to the story, so you can't very well remove that. Minfilia not wanting to leave because of rumors about her adoptive mother and needing to seek her out isn't as strictly important, but it does make for some nice character development (again in the episodic sort of way - introduce a character in a smaller arc so you can use them more effectively in a bigger arc <--this happens quite a bit).
While each primal does sort of feel like a "monster of the week" annoyance, they also use them to introduce additional information and aspects about how primals work in Eorzea and more about how the metaphysical side of Hydaelyn works. With Good King Moogle Mog XII, we learn that myth can be made manifest into a primal and it doesn't take an established essence of a deity. With Leviathan, we learn about how the Echo can transcend mortality and transfer souls between bodies (information that is used later to defeat Ascians). With Ramuh, we learn that some primals can maybe be reasoned with to a certain degree, but that also once a primal is created its essence can carry memories between summonings. With Shiva, we learn that a mortal can summon a primal into themselves and if they have the Echo not be tempered by it (also reinforces the idea that it doesn't have to be an established deity). Those elements tie into dealing with Ascians at the time, Ravana later, as well as the Warring Triad, and continue to be relevant to our conflict with the Ascians.
The refugee stuff, both Ala Mhigan and Doman - you see the plight of the Ala Mhigans even more than before, and with it the political turmoil in Ul'dah that is tied up in it, and obviously that is important to setting up the betrayal by Ilberd and ultimately our moving into Ala Mhigo in the first place, as well as events after the liberation revolving around the Sultana and Rauhban. You meet the Domans and are introduced to their trouble while they are also being established as a stalwart ally, such that when we decide pushing to liberate Doma in a bid to distract the Empire and give the Ala Mhigan resistance time to recoup it doesn't come out of left field and is instead us looking to help the people that have stood by us since before we even thought about setting foot in Ishgard. A lot of that is setup for a believable way for Eorzea to get dragged into fighting to free Ala Mhigo - they hadn't done anything for 20 years and had clearly expressed a hesitance to engage in anything that the Garleans might perceive as an invasion (so as to avoid retribution), so really only a story arc that puts them in a political and military situation that drags them into unwillingly (through the machinations of one who has been established as one who will do anything to see Ala Mhigo free) is one that will feasibly work...and that's what we got. Good luck trimming that one down.
Then there's the lead-in to the Dragonsong War - we weren't going to just waltz into Ishgard and say "hey what's up Dragon Pope?" They'd kept their doors closed for sometime at that point, so the story needed a viable reason for us to be trusted enough to be allowed to enter. Dealing with bleed over from the actions of heretics and the dragons into areas outside of Coerthas, as well as the friendly diplomatic elements (with a non-city state aligned third party - not the only part that element ends up mattering in how the story plays out, plus giving the story creators more freedom with what the Scions can do) with Aymeric, serve to do just that, setting the stage for our dramatic assistance at the Steps of Faith...an act worthy of earning the sponsorship (with a bit of help from Haurchefant) of House Fortemps so that we can enter the city at all.
Mixed in there's various character moments to help establish or continue development of various motivations or personalities and such, and the occasional actual filler like assisting the newer members of the Adventurer's Guild in Mor Dhona by showing them how it's done, fetching tea (though this is clearly meant to be used for both pacing coming off a more action oriented bit and for some comedy - of course the hero of the hour shouldn't be running errands, but gosh darn it everyone is busy and Tataru asked so nicely, right?), and there's a lot of connective story tissue in 2.x...
So I'd really love to see how that would "easily" be trimmed to just five missions, without removing any of the important stuff and without the story playing out like the abridged children's book version of a Disney movie (if you've seen them, you know exactly what I'm talking about). Honestly, I'd love to see it done and being allowed to remove 50% of the important story stuff.
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