What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[TheGrimace]

Bozja story and gameplay is great, though Delubrum Reginae needs to be adjusted to make it easier for casuals to queue into. Endwalker story is good.

[Caurcas]

The Ivalice narrative in XIV was better than the main line narrative in XIX outside the Misijia parts. Certainly better than EW.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

What storytelling? There was no story. Ivalice was a giant exposition dump masquerading as a story, a confusing and barely comprehensible exposition dump at that.

Just because you dislike more involved and narrative-heavy storytelling that focuses on world-building as much as characterization, doesn't mean it had no story.

People like you are the exact reason that storyline will never get a proper conclusion now.

[Vahlnir]

What storytelling? There was no story. Ivalice was a giant exposition dump masquerading as a story, a confusing and barely comprehensible exposition dump at that.

So basically you weren't paying any attention at all and skipped all of the cutscenes. Got it.

[aveyond-dreams]

Return to Ivalice is still probably the best of the Alliance Raid stories, but it appears that both its fight design and its story content were underappreciated by many.

[YukikoKurosawa]

Just because you dislike more involved and narrative-heavy storytelling that focuses on world-building as much as characterization, doesn't mean it had no story.

People like you are the exact reason that storyline will never get a proper conclusion now.

No I like the story to be shown rather than told. 90% of Ivalce is standing in the airship being given history lessons, using names you would not be familiar with if you never played Tactics. It's very difficult to follow because it's just a tidal wave of information that seems to expect me to already be familiar with what they're talking about. It was just boring. Info-dumps aren't storytelling. Ivalice was just badly told and some of you need to accept that. I never said it was a bad story, just horrendously presented. I thnk there was a potentially good story there but it was weighed down by the ludicrous amounts of exposition which made up the vast majority of the questline.

[YukikoKurosawa]

So basically you weren't paying any attention at all and skipped all of the cutscenes. Got it.

Actually not only did I read watch every cutscene and read everything, I went over the same scenes / dialogue multiple times over and still had trouble following it. To this day I still don't entirely understand it. It speaks to you as if you are already very familiar with the subject matter and characters/lore. I get that there are people who enjoy this type of storytelling but Ivalice was poorly recieved for a reason and it's not because people were too stupid to understand it. It's just a poorly told, unengaging story far too reliant on 'member-berries from another game. I unironically think it is worse than ARR writing.

I'm only halfway through Bozja though and I've enjoyed it so far.

[Skyborne]

Return to Ivalice is still probably the best of the Alliance Raid stories, but it appears that both its fight design and its story content were underappreciated by many.

Yes.

The only thing that killed it for me was our lad Ramza being hit by a lobotomy beam to change his personality. Guess no one is allowed to be spicy or mildly dickish...

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

No I like the story to be shown rather than told. 90% of Ivalce is standing in the airship being given history lessons, using names you would not be familiar with if you never played Tactics. It's very difficult to follow because it's just a tidal wave of information that seems to expect me to already be familiar with what they're talking about. It was just boring. Info-dumps aren't storytelling. Ivalice was just badly told and some of you need to accept that. I never said it was a bad story, just horrendously presented. I thnk there was a potentially good story there but it was weighed down by the ludicrous amounts of exposition which made up the vast majority of the questline.

Funny, I've never played Tactics and only played halfway through FF12 many years ago (not for lack of enjoyment, I just had a lot of games at the time to play and was also young, with a short attention span), and I didn't find it hard to follow nor felt I was missing out on anything due to not having played source games.

I do agree that the overall Ivalice story had its ups and downs, both the raid series and Bozja, but was still a cohesive narrative that took as much time to expand on world lore as it did characterization. It was also better told - despite those problems - than the rushed-out, poorly paced mess we got in Endwalker. And I say this as someone who generally enjoyed most of the expac despite its issues.

Maybe you need to realize just because you don't like a certain method of storytelling, that it doesn't mean it isn't a genuine method of storytelling that other people greatly enjoy? Maybe you need to accept that just because you dislike something, it doesn't mean it's 'garbage' that didn't deserve a proper conclusion rather than getting axed because certain people can't handle storytelling that deviates from FFXIV's usual methods?

And yes, this same argument could be used for Endwalker in some respects.

[Brill_]

My biggest issue with Endwalker is it didn't feel dire. We're supposedly in the final days and we're sitting around sipping tea with our comrads before running off to the final zone. I would liked to have seen something that gives you more of feeling like the end of 1.0 had just before the servers went down. I enjoyed the story, but the reason I just mentioned is what keeps it from beating Shadowbringers.