Quote Originally Posted by Abriael View Post
Why do we need a flat storyline with no emotional engagement when we could have BOTH a flat storyline with emotional engagement and storytelling AND our storylines based on interaction with other characters?
One doesn't exclude the others.
I'm saying there is absolutely no point to it and it's a waste of time, not to mention shows that the developers have their priorities completely wrong. They should be encouraging interaction between players, not interaction between NPC's. Interaction has nothing to do with emotional engagement either. No FF game thus far has had any sort of interaction between you and the NPC's. You have always been the bystander, yet the story has been emotionally engaging regardless. That's the FINAL FANTASY tradition.


The current storyline already limits you if you want to keep it in account. The character (as flat as he is) already takes decisions on his own, and has behaviors of his own, that the player may not agree with. I found myself disagreeing quite a few times with his behavioir, and if you found yourself in agreement 100% of the time, you've just been lucky.
It's so few and far between that it's completely irrelevant. They better keep that in check though.

Giving a choice in personalities would actually *increase* the compatibility of the main story with personal storylines built with other people.
No it wouldn't, because the premade personalities =/= your own personality. That's a damn given.

Which is quite obviously different from other MORPGs, given the importance it gives to storytelling.
Yes. Not just event-based storytelling, but interaction between human beings.



There's absolutely no reason why we can't have both. Especially considering that we *already* have both. The scripted storyline simply could be a *lot* better than what it is now.
You add something to it, you take something away from it. This is not a case of "they could do it if they felt like it". It's a case of "we have X number of resources to spend on this feature, and we need to choose what we want to do with it." And to be frank, I don't want them to lower the quality of the quests just so I can insert an artificial "choice" to the story at pre-determined spots when something superior already exists for me.

Having a scripted storyline that's engaging, character-driven and emotioally deep doesn't in any way interfere with your freedom of creating your own.
And having a storyline that has no interaction does not in any way interfere with the story being engaging, character driven and emotionally deep. Unless you're saying that every movie, FF and other story-based single player games with no personal interaction ever made have not been engaging, character driven and emotionally deep.