A Storyteller’s Point of View on Final Fantasy XIV

[kindar1]

I thought that here would be a good place to pause and explain how I am approaching my look at Final Fantasy 14

I understand video games will tell a story differently than novels, just like a movie and TV will. Just like visual novels and web novels. Each medium will approach storytelling in its own way.

But the thing is, that they are all telling stories. And stories have conventions that the person consuming them expects to be respected. They don’t have to be respected. Sometimes, not respecting them leads to masterpieces no one ever thought could be made.

Most of the time, it leads to some level of disappointment.

I am only looking at storytelling because that is what I enjoy in any medium where telling a story is present. Game mechanics aren’t something I pay attention to unless they get in the way of me enjoying the game.

One of the core conventions of a story is the plot.

The plot is what drives the story. It is the reason the story exists. Something needs to happen. That something is the plot. It can be simple, it can be complex, but it should be.

I see the plot of a story as the trunk of a tree, where the branches are the subplots connected to it. There can be unconnected subplots, they are saplings growing around this trunk; other trunks, with their own branches. Some branches from one trunk might even intertwine with another. But, if a subplot is important to the plot, it should be directly connected to this trunk in some fashion.

The MSQ is the plot of FF14. There may be other plots around it, sub and otherwise, but since nothing can be unlocked without going through the MSQ, that makes it the plot. What this means to me is that any quest that has information that is important to the plot needs to be connected to the MSQ and any that doesn’t should be turned into a side quest. Anytime a viewer has to tell me, “oh, you need to go there and go through that quest to understand what’s happening here” I consider it a failure of FF14’s storytelling.

The plot must also make the person consuming the media want to continue to consume it. Books with boring plots get set aside and are rarely finished.

MMOs benefit in that they appeal to a variety of people. The gamer probably doesn’t give the storytelling much thought, but I expect they can go on for hours about that one mechanic in the game that bugs them.

A story should include all the information I need to understand what’s happening. That information doesn’t need to come all at once. Actually, it should be sprinkled throughout the story, but it must come in time for me to make sense of those two strangers who barged in on my adventure, make comments, and just leave. Especially if they add nothing to what happened.

[Silvarer]

A story should include all the information I need to understand what’s happening. That information doesn’t need to come all at once. Actually, it should be sprinkled throughout the story, but it must come in time for me to make sense of those two strangers who barged in on my adventure, make comments, and just leave. Especially if they add nothing to what happened.

That information literally will be coming to you though, and it won’t take that much longer from where you’re at now. You say information should be sprinkled throughout the story, and it has been. The problem I’ve seen in your posts so far is that you don’t really seem to have the patience to wait for it and it comes across a lot like you expect all the information to be given to you at once. You also completely gloss over a lot of the cutscenes that do foreshadow things that will happen later or give other information without any real acknowledgement of them. If you want to look at the storytelling imo you’re honestly going about it in the most boring and bare bones way possible.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I was just gonna say, OP explained that he wants that info sprinkled out and explained in due time yet he's being impatient believing that the relevance and info wont be resurfaced again?

[VelKallor]

A story should include all the information I need to understand what’s happening

It does as has been pointed out earlier., I ask again..are you reading quest text.

I saw this at the start

That no one remembers precisely what happened, or who stopped it.

Wrong. They remember who stopped it, they remember the battle, they remember Louisoix, they remember Carteneau, they cant remember the faces of the Warriors of Light.

is that somehow, we are from a place that never heard of the calamity happening. That feels odd,

No. Who we are will be revealed later but this is wrong.

[Iscah]

A story should include all the information I need to understand what’s happening. That information doesn’t need to come all at once. Actually, it should be sprinkled throughout the story, but it must come in time for me to make sense of those two strangers who barged in on my adventure, make comments, and just leave. Especially if they add nothing to what happened.

Here's a concept: introducing something the audience doesn't fully understand at the time, then revealing the significance of it later. They are supposed to be unfamiliar and confusing in that first scene. It sets up a question in the audience's mind that will be answered when they get further into the plot.

No. Who we are will be revealed later but this is wrong.

No, nothing ever gets revealed about "who we are" – our personal character deliberately gets no backstory ever.

Our soul is special, but that says nothing directly about us, besides possibly base-level personality.

It does always feel slightly contrived (and increasingly difficult to believe as we explore the wider world) that we apparently need the concept of aether explained to us as if there are places where it would be unfamiliar despite being as common as atoms. It's like they intended to go the route that you just literally woke up in this world and you're not from anywhere.

[KageTokage]

I could see aetherology being something that commonfolk would not necessarily understand given that formal education is not standardized and its most common practical application is in magicks, which go unused by most of the populace.

If you're starting as a DoM job though...then yeah, that doesn't really make sense.

[Kes13a]

A story should include all the information I need to understand what’s happening. That information doesn’t need to come all at once. Actually, it should be sprinkled throughout the story, but it must come in time for me to make sense of those two strangers who barged in on my adventure, make comments, and just leave. Especially if they add nothing to what happened.

my guess then is that you are skipping cutscenes.

they "barge in", the short one uses some kind of device, and notes the aetheric flow is disturbed there as well, the tall one notes that sticking a sword in a stump usually leads to bad things. provides some backstory about crashing in the wrong place in their airship and causing a problem. the fact that originally you didnt mention anything about the crystal or any of the other things they provide as way of information makes me wonder how you are "critiquing" the story while seeming to miss most of it.

the story is providing, so I am curious as to why you are seeing it. you SAY it doesnt need to provide it all at once, but you seem to EXPECT that it does. especially since it is providing the breadcrumbs you say are missing....

[VelKallor]

the short one uses some kind of device,

Actually Papalymo I think says its an aetheric scanner, Thancred has one as well.

And Kes? I think he is skipping as well as not reading..his comments and posts reflect a huge gap in what is presented vs what he sees.

BTW this guys "novels" are 100 pages each..I aint paying to read even an excerpt to get a feel for this guys "style".

[Kes13a]

Actually Papalymo I think says its an aetheric scanner, Thancred has one as well.

And Kes? I think he is skipping as well as not reading..his comments and posts reflect a huge gap in what is presented vs what he sees.

BTW this guys "novels" are 100 pages each..I aint paying to read even an excerpt to get a feel for this guys "style".

I just find it exceedingly difficult to think he isnt skipping because THAT encounter alone is where you find your first crystal, "meet" Hydaelyn, which he doesnt mention.. at all. given how much he comments on everything else, it is a very telling omission, and leans very heavily towards a "busted" moment

[SannaR]

Exactly. I've said it a few times a lot of his posts come off as someone who isn't reading everything in a quest or doing a poor skim job. As many of the things he complains about not understanding are explained by the quests he's done. He then as others have said feels as though he expects the story to tell him the things he states the story doesn't need to provide it all at once. Then doesn't pick up on the foreshadowing or is dismissive of it due to disliking of characters.

The funny thing is he's actually met the self/author insert. Just that character(s) hasn't had much screen time or interaction in the story yet. That many would agree fit said description better than any of the four mysterious helpers that appear in each of the three city state's intros.