Merlwyb, Kan-E, Raubahn, Cid: Dead or Alive?

[Abriael]

Yes, he did. Here's the part:

You're misinterpreting it. He's saying exactly what I say.

ARR's main story is based on the grand company story. They planned to make the characters from the original storyline appear in THAT one (the grand company storyline, that we already saw. With former FFXIV he refers to the Tanaka Story, not to what came after it). What they changed was the plans to include those characters and the plans to continue that storyline that were already in place when Yoshida joined, not the story itself that had already happened in the game.

There isn't a single element in the grand company storyline that conflicts with the already published part of the story of 1.0, in fact the essence of the story of 1.0 has been preserved, and nothing has been actually retconned. Most of its characters simply don't appear anymore and the plans that Tanaka team had for expansion were never applied.