Review of 6.3 Story Content

[aveyond-dreams]

The past few patches felt like filler arc, I think this is good thing. We just came from a long storyline that took years to resolve. A filler arc until 6.5 is not a bad thing.

That’s the thing though, why should a filler arc mean that they can get away with subpar storytelling like what we’ve seen in these patches so far? I think they should absolutely be held to account on how they’ve been dropping the ball lately. At any rate, I long for a return to an era where we don’t have the sort of writing issues we’re seeing now let alone 700+ page threads arguing about the story.

If 7.0 can at least avoid that it’ll be a massive improvement, but I don’t trust them to not try to get all philosophical and preachy yet again. At least in the past Maehiro was more concerned with entertaining than using the game as a platform for whatever themes and beliefs these other writers have been quite blunt about shoving in our faces.

[Saraide]

Here I am one of them who enjoyed EW and would not want to go back to a Heavensward styled expansion. (Not as if that expansion was the definition of dark anyway) I would not want to lose out the fluff and slice of life "nonsense" because that is something which makes the darker parts of a story hit harder. If everything is always just grim dark than the grim dark loses its meaning. Its the nice scenes, the scenes of friends sitting together, enjoying life that makes a tragedy more tragic.

Bascially you want a story that is far away even from real life. Because even in the darkest times, even in war...where its like the end of the world for the people being in the warzone, they find joy in it. That what makes us human. A teenager sitting at a piano playing songs while the people listening are dancing and clapping, always in danger that the next attack will hit them. A little girl sitting in a bunker singing a frozen song. This "nonsense" you speak about is a big part of our humanity. Taking it out of the story is the sign of a bad writer imo!

I want to add to that. Grim dark settings fundamentally do not work. They will always devolve into boring edgelording with shock value for the sake of having shock value (which actually erodes the effect of it). The only universe that manages to escape this is warhammer 40k and it only does so by going so ludicrously over the top that no sane person can take it seriously anymore.

[KageTokage]

I'm not inherently against levity and feelsy moments, but the amount of it in EW was a bit...jarring to me compared to what was previously presented in XIV.

It feels like there's been a definite shift in the style of storytelling for better or worse.

[aveyond-dreams]

I'm not inherently against levity and feelsy moments, but the amount of it in EW was a bit...jarring to me compared to what was previously presented in XIV.

It feels like there's been a definite shift in the style of storytelling for better or worse.

Precisely this. I don't mind a single moogle segment like we got back in Heavensward but in Endwalker the story treated me like some kind of baby having to pause and take breaks with nonsense like the burger scene or the Loporrits after killing Zodiark. I'd like a story written for adults instead of kids please.

[Hurlstone]

Precisely this. I don't mind a single moogle segment like we got back in Heavensward but in Endwalker the story treated me like some kind of baby having to pause and take breaks with nonsense like the burger scene or the Loporrits after killing Zodiark. I'd like a story written for adults instead of kids please.

Fun things or moments of levity between story beats are good I think. Despite what some may claim, I personally think Endwalker was one of the darker expansions overall, what with its notions on mortality, the Blasphemies being born ect. so it needed moments of clarity land humanity like that. It may not have always struck the right tone for every player sure, but hay, there are those who say Heavensward or Shadowbringers did not either!

I think its a shame when media nowadays is reduced to things like 'dark = adult, fun = chidish' as its a really restrictive way to look at fiction and what stories it can tell. Media and art suffer when we cannot conceptualise and analyze its layers.

That would be neat! Our teacher could be the Twelve themselves and they each could teach us how to use a small portion of their power in order to protect the realm with their assistance without them not having to break their own rules and get personally involved. :3

Oh that would be so cool! (Assuming that they are not killed/leave in the final part of the raid… you never know!) Would be a great way to get even more detail on their particular areas. Perhaps it could even be another 'limited' job that you have to complet the raid story to unlock? May give them more leway in giving said Job more story then the new ones get. Unlikely to happen I know, but its fun to speculate!

Yeah, its a long shot. But then again, the devs have shocked us before. The new Summoner is a perfect example of that, so at least there's a small possibility they could pull that off at some point. Especially with, as you said, the 7.0 reworks possibly making jobs easier to better tinker around with without so much spaghetti code getting in the way. Though, I really hope the new summons later on will be more than a cosmetic update. That'd honestly would be disappointing.

That would be the dream if one day I get to summon Good King Moggle Mog XII in battle!

[MikkoAkure]

I'm not inherently against levity and feelsy moments, but the amount of it in EW was a bit...jarring to me compared to what was previously presented in XIV.

It feels like there's been a definite shift in the style of storytelling for better or worse.

You say that as if the story about the never-ending cycle of hopelessness, war, death, and revenge didn't have Moogles suddenly appear right before the climax of that part of the story and bar our passage until they were given enough kupo nuts. Or cartoony catfish people (who eventually got an IRL children's book) who get drunk off tea weren't squatting in an abandoned mansion in the middle of a bombed-out hellscape.

I wasn't a fan of those, nor the placement of the Lopporits in the story (or taking up half the moon zone), but they aren't new things.


If you or someone else is going to bring up burgers, other food scenes, or moments of levity between the Scions, then how would you yourself make the players feel for the main characters of the story if they were just cardboard cutouts that were each just there being serious all the time? Moments of filler are necessary for character development and making a group of characters come together. Y'shtola is commonly referred to as not having much personality and then as soon as the writers give her 1 haha moment, threads appeared about it with people being angry which says enough about this forum.

The writing changed in that it's focusing more on building up the main characters together and that began in earnest in ShB, but I don't remember anyone having a problem with it back then. It's more noticeable now because there's more downtime in the plot due to it taking place over a much longer period of time instead of ShB's couple of weeks or so as well as the fact that the gang was all united from the beginning of the story instead of spread out. Even then, ShB still repeatedly brought us back to the inn room for quiet contemplation of the previous arc and story time with Ardbert with occasional appearances by the Exarch's picnic basket.


The creative director has obviously been static this whole time. Oda created the current lore for everything and has been on the writing credit for ARR and each expansion. It doesn't feel like they're purposefully altering the story to suit some sort of agenda or anything. They've just been writing it without a clear focus to the end, accidentally struck gold with part of the plot and characters in ShB, and seemingly haven't been able to recreate that in EW to the same degree.

As far as styles, HW was specifically mentioned by Yoshi-P as being written to be "dark fantasy" just like SB was obviously written to be a war story, ARR/ShB are heroic fantasy, and EW was a mix of them all with a dash of sci-fi. People are going to have preferences for one of those genres more than the others, but they have long since made a creative decision to dabble in a lot of things.

Personally, I'm a little exhausted of the heroic fantasy and hope the next thing is something different, but I'm still going to play it.

I think its a shame when media nowadays is reduced to things like 'dark = adult, fun = chidish' as its a really restrictive way to look at fiction and what stories it can tell. Media and art suffer when we cannot conceptualise and analyze its layers.

+1 to this.

The Graveyard Book and Coraline are both very dark books intended for children, but on the other side you also have fun things like the Discworld series that (depending on the book) are for adults but are almost nothing but levity that may have some darker moments.

The Gentleman Bastard series (which I highly recommend to literally anyone and everyone) is intended for adults and has a blend of pure dark moments and pure fun moments just like EW does but I've never heard anyone say its for babies or that it's a comedy series.

If you're looking for something that's dark and serious all the time, Final Fantasy isn't the place to go. No matter how dark the game, cutesy mascots like moogles, chocobos, and cactuar will show up that clash with the rest of the design and themes of the game. Even FFXV had Kenny Crow and FFXIII had a baby chocobo that lived in a guy's hair and grew up to be a scantily clad mascot human who sold potions and ghysahl greens.

It's also really strange to expect "a story written for adults" when you can play as a three-foot-tall cutesy munchkin.

[Vahlnir]

Fun things or moments of levity between story beats are good I think. Despite what some may claim, I personally think Endwalker was one of the darker expansions overall, what with its notions on mortality, the Blasphemies being born ect. so it needed moments of clarity land humanity like that. It may not have always struck the right tone for every player sure, but hay, there are those who say Heavensward or Shadowbringers did not either!

I think its a shame when media nowadays is reduced to things like 'dark = adult, fun = chidish' as its a really restrictive way to look at fiction and what stories it can tell. Media and art suffer when we cannot conceptualise and analyze its layers.

Eh. I feel that Endwalker wasn't dark enough. And the urgency wasn't really there. By the time we head out into space, the Final Days had hit 2 zones in the entire world. Fire in the sky and everything. I think that it should have gotten more widespread as the story progressed. Even if the story's events weren't taking place in certain areas, I feel that the skybox should have at least been changed to reflect the coming apocalypse. Maybe set some random trees in the Black Shroud on fire too while they were at it. Something. Anything. The Final Days were not really as big of an issue as they made it out to be. I've got my fair share of gripes with EW, but this is my biggest one I think.

[Hurlstone]

Eh. I feel that Endwalker wasn't dark enough. And the urgency wasn't really there. By the time we head out into space, the Final Days had hit 2 zones in the entire world. Fire in the sky and everything. I think that it should have gotten more widespread as the story progressed. Even if the story's events weren't taking place in certain areas, I feel that the skybox should have at least been changed to reflect the coming apocalypse. Maybe set some random trees in the Black Shroud on fire too while they were at it. Something. Anything. The Final Days were not really as big of an issue as they made it out to be. I've got my fair share of gripes with EW, but this is my biggest one I think.

Thats fair. I actually thought similar when doing the Job quest, that despite the horrors of the Blasphemies the threat did not really seem as heavy as it could have been. Would be nice if they had shown the Final Days effecting wider zones, bit like how they added the towers in after the 5.x Patches. I suppose it may have been too much effort for just immersions gain. I do think it hit the right tone in dealing with its darker elements, the scene of the Blasphemies turning in Radz-at-Han really does not get the praise it should for the level of horror we see in my opinion. Then again, EW is also a story about hope against despair so they could only go so far.

As far as styles, HW was specifically mentioned by Yoshi-P as being written to be "dark fantasy" just like SB was obviously written to be a war story, ARR/ShB are heroic fantasy, and EW was a mix of them all with a dash of sci-fi. People are going to have preferences for one of those genres more than the others, but they have long since made a creative decision to dabble in a lot of things.

Well said on all counts. When people say FFXIV is a 'theme park' game I think that should count for its lore too. Its crafted in a way that each expansion does deal with its own fantasy sub-genre, which I think is a very good thing. Means more themes and types of story can be told. Not everyone will vibe with each expansion true, but you will never be able to please eveyone all the time.

[MikkoAkure]

Eh. I feel that Endwalker wasn't dark enough. And the urgency wasn't really there. By the time we head out into space, the Final Days had hit 2 zones in the entire world. Fire in the sky and everything. I think that it should have gotten more widespread as the story progressed. Even if the story's events weren't taking place in certain areas, I feel that the skybox should have at least been changed to reflect the coming apocalypse. Maybe set some random trees in the Black Shroud on fire too while they were at it. Something. Anything. The Final Days were not really as big of an issue as they made it out to be. I've got my fair share of gripes with EW, but this is my biggest one I think.

Yeah, this is still one of my problems with EW. If we had the starfall throughout parts of the world and maybe even changed or removed the BGM, it would've made a noticeable impact to the feelings of dread everyone was supposed to be having. While the Endwalker trailer didn't have that in the part of La Noscea the twins were in, things were at least on fire and there were blasphemies. Changing the skybox for part of the MSQ would've been the simplest thing and it's not like they didn't do that in ShB.

Pokemon Arceus had a much more compelling "end times" feeling.


While EW could have been helped by being darker, I don't think that removing burgers or "froth and foam!" would have helped anything. It went to darker places than other expansions did but they also set our expectations up with a worldwide disaster in the trailer for the expansion, only for it to just affect 2 brand new zones and one of those was an empty bombed out wasteland to begin with. If we had starfall or a sense of danger in zones we've grown familiar with for a decade, then it would've increased players' sense of urgency a lot more than the job quest blasphemies did for us.

[Alleo]

Fun things or moments of levity between story beats are good I think. Despite what some may claim, I personally think Endwalker was one of the darker expansions overall, what with its notions on mortality, the Blasphemies being born ect. so it needed moments of clarity land humanity like that. It may not have always struck the right tone for every player sure, but hay, there are those who say Heavensward or Shadowbringers did not either!

Honestly I also look at people saying that Endwalker was not dark enough and question if they just dont mean "Endwalker did not kill enough named main NPCs" because that expansion was dark. The transformations are on par with the sineaters and with the hints that their souls might be gone too it was even more horrifiying than just people turning into monsters. I always remember the poor old lady that got transformed simply because she was afraid for her grandson. Or the family in the dungeon...doing that with the scions and seeing their reaction to that too...man it hit deep into the feels.

Then you have people being eaten alive, a child being turned and stomped on while the father is forced to watch. Us being too late to save the two parents and having to watch our fearful friend running for his life with a little baby in his arms. Until he was save I was so on the edge because they have shown before that they are able to kill younger characters.

And all of that happened in all of Eorzea and other part of the world.

Then you have Ultima Thule and its races who all came to a cruel end, some of it even done by their own hands. You have who knows how many souls that suffered for thousands of years inside of Endsingers egg. You have Meteion her self who has suffered greatly. (And all the other emotional stages in this expansion like for example Elpis and its fate)

And all of that is seemingly not dark enough because the main scions survive and because we dared to eat burgers together.