Awfully weak story... or is it? [WARNING:SPOILERS]

[LloydShade]

Hello folks,

After taking some time to digest the story of FFXIV:ARR and confirming its weaknesses until the very end of the credits, I came to a conclusion. Something is not right.

I have a friend, who was a player from FFXIV, from beginning to the end. Every time we have an argument about the story, he inevitably ends up stating something from FFXIV that is not present in FFXIV:ARR.

I did my share of researches. I also own the collector edition of this game, so I have access to the blu-ray with detailed information on Eorzea and the meaning behind the cinematic opening. Even with that, something is not right.

For instance [WARNING:SPOILERS]:
Gaius van Baelsar is awesome.
-He is noble, proud, compassionate, honest and honourable.
-He is a strong warrior and a conqueror.
-Not only does he plan to conquer Eorzea, but before even engaging the battle, he thinks forward to the Primal threat for the people and how to stop them efficiently.
-He knows how a lot of people are suffering and wants to bring peace and order.
-When he acquired a power strong enough to crush the Primals, instead of just attacking Eorzea with a superior force, utterly destroying Eorzea's armies and imposing a reign of fear, he actually gave a chance for a peaceful surrendering with terms that were so tempting that all 3 grand company leaders were about to accept until a kid shown up with a childish speech (and most likely charming magic) to turn them against the Empire.
-He helps loyal supporter of the Emprie even though they are not pure-blooded Garlean.
-When he wanted to destroy the Scions of the 7th Dawn, he organized a very quick and precise strike. Only the Scions were killed/captured, leaving the city they were in alone and doing absolutely no harm to anyone except their enemies. Kill the opponents, leave the innocents alone, the mark of a true villain.

How am I suppose to hate that guy!

Grand Company leaders are generic, useless and immoral.
-You have the scared veteran soldier, the compassionate healer woman and the cold-hearted trigger-happy woman captain. Note: all of this is suppositions based on a few dialogs and rumours in the game. We were never shown anything in the main story that remotely looked like that. You get to know more of Merlwyb in the lvl50 armourer quest than all of main story.
-None of the grand company are able to deal with the Primals. You have to do it yourself because there is NO ONE ELSE in the entire Eorzea that could help you fight. Also, only three Primals shows up in the story, one for each grand company. There are more Primals out there and three is already too much. Also, Maelstrom is directly responsible for the summoning of Titan.
-None of the grand company are doing much to protect Eorzea as they are very prompt to use adventurers to do that useless job.
-The three grand company leaders are somehow able to decide the fate of Eorzea, risk the lives of everyone, decide for all-out wars, but they are not the ones actually ruling their city-state.
-The world of Eorzea is full of problems, authorities are all shorts in man-power and yet, the grand companies don't help.
-They decided to strike against the Empire using a sneak attack manoeuvre, attacking without responding to the Empire who gave decision time for their offer of surrendering without unnecessary deaths. The mark of civilized and honourable folks.
-When the Empire is defeated, all of a sudden, life is good, problems that were never actually solved are ignored and it's time to go into a peaceful and prosperous age, as if the Empire was the one behind every issues. In reality, the Empire had nothing to do with the bad state of Eorzea. Eorzea is in such a bad state that they mostly just settled themselves, took their distances and observed. Anybody else assumed a lot of soldiers died fighting the Empire? Wouldn't that just throw Eorzea in a worst state than before and now the authorities AND the grand company are understaffed? I assume they know soldiers are not produced like machines. Do they?

And I'm suppose to side with these folks?!? Where do I sign up for the Empire?


Sure, you also have the evil being (Ascian) which is trying to manipulate the Empire into doing it's own business. Yet, Gaius was preparing for being betrayed (he just didn't know when it would happen). It's not really manipulation when the one you are trying to manipulate is working on counter-manipulating you because your manipulation attempts are too obvious.

Next goes the Scions of the 7th dawn. It would be more accurate to say that they work for you than you working for them. They only do easy tasks or small investigations and you handle the rest (which is more or less everything). Also, for people that openly goes against the dark forces of the world, they are rather defenceless against frontal assaults and endangering the innocents that live around them.


This is from FFXIV:ARR, and only from FFXIV:ARR. On the other hand, FFXIV apparently got build up for all these characters mentioned above. This means all the observations I made could have been significantly wrong. It feels like I'm playing a sequel, but it's not suppose to be a sequel.

If FFXIV:ARR just builds on the top of FFXIV and assume every new players knows Gaius, the Grand Company leaders, the Ascians, all the core Scions members... Wait a minute, this is pure stupidity. There isn't a professional story teller that would build awesome characters just to end up and not saying/showing a thing about them and expect everyone to know them.

This can mean only one thing. Game development decided to cut/exclude important cut-scenes, leaving only the skeleton of a good story to save some money. This concept is so crazy, it's like a Micheal Bay film without explosions and sexy girls. A Final Fantasy title that decided to save money by cutting on story elements?

[coffeeking]

it's a decent story line, normally S E makes the best story lines ever..

[Linadae]

To be honest, you answered your own question when it comes to the Empire and why we're not rushing to sign up.

They are FORCING change on people who don't want to change. They don't just want to get rid of the primals. They want to get rid of the Twelve, who like the Primals, they consider false gods. They indocternate the children of any country they take over so within one generation they are Garleans and have forgotten their own culture.

Look back in our own history and you will find many instances of the same thing. From the Spanish Inquisition to what the Europeans did to the Native Americans, to the purposeful destruction of the Cajun French language in the 50's. One side believed they were 'saving' the other side. While the side being 'saved' thought of them as villains trying to change a way of life that had served them well.

[Tupsi]

It's weak - It's a glorified tutorial as is the rest of the game leading up to end-game. It wasn't "bad", it just wasn't what I'd expect. Never have I played a FF game that sent me on pointless fetch quests and grind quests that wasn't relevant to anything - Even the broken VII's sidequests were relevant to at least characters/the world.

Slaying 5 marmots doesn't teach me about Dalamud nor did fetching laundry.

[LloydShade]

To be honest, you answered your own question when it comes to the Empire and why we're not rushing to sign up. They are FORCING change on people who don't want to change.

To be fair, nowhere in the game it is presented that the people of Eorzea doesn't want this change. It is well presented though that the situation in Ul'dah is critical, with way too many homeless, jobless. People are hungry, desperate, while the rich folks in Ul'dah are shopping for a new pair of shoes. Primals are messing the minds of a lot of people and the only cure is death.

They indocternate the children of any country they take over so within one generation they are Garleans and have forgotten their own culture.

My friend said the same thing. Problem is, it was never shown in game and I'm almost sure it was not even stated (or so quickly it's super easy to miss).

[Arriverderci]

The only time the game gets going
is when the Scions got kidnapped.
[Spoilers.]
Which was 40+ and from there on.
The story before that were trash. How disappointing.
Even FFXI looks like it had better characters and stories.

[Vantol]

Even FFXI looks like it had better characters and stories.

FFXI had the best characters and stories I have ever seen in my 25 years of gaming carreer (excluding, maybe, Mass Effect and Silent Hill), so it's not really comparable. And yeah, if you read carefully last part of main story, it's pretty clear Gaius was not only a honorable man, but also his actions, was he succeed, would actually save and evolve planet. So, yeah, I would sign for an empire in a heart beat.

[Naunet]

And I'm suppose to side with these folks?!? Where do I sign up for the Empire?

I agree whole-heartedly!

There's also the whole Thancred thing, which is quite possibly the greatest missed opportunity in story-telling in this game. Stupid freaking emo-ass Thancred is so stupid and emo that he just can't keep himself together and ends up getting everyone killed. And then we have to go rescue the guy? The entire time, I was begging the screen to just let me leave him behind to die. His character would have been so much better if he had been an actual villain and not some male damsel in distress. A plot where Thancred has been secretly double-crossing the Scions all this time, funneling intel to the Garleans or, even better, the Ascians to further some greater plot? Yes, please.

But nope.

[Enkidoh]

I have to laugh whenever people raise FFXI as an example of quality storytelling when it took five years for the storyline to truly get going - at the start it was, surprise, surprise, just a bunch of fetch quests til about level 20 when you were finally entrusted with more important matters of state. And even then you couldn't even do the story missions until you spent time killing stuff just to get enough crystals to trade for Mission Rank Points.

Yes, XI has an awesome storyline (at least until the addons ruined it), but for the first five or so quests it was lackluster and handled poorly. FFXIV's story is also very well written, the problem is not the story itself but the execution - as it was decided to have questing give exp, therefore the storyline had to broken up into separate quests in order to facilitate leveling. And that involved stretching the storyline out with filler like the dull fetch quests that eventually led to the Titan fight (arguably the most boring part of the game). But then, a lot of RPGs are like that (including other FF games), so FFXIV is hardly unique in that regard.

Besides, this is just the start of the game's storyline - future patches and expansions will only build on what has been done so far. Once again players are falling into the trap of expecting ten years worth of content at launch - it doesn't work that way.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

Actually, for careful people, the story have setted the base for a lot of side-points to be expanded. I'll talk about this later. Meanwhile, i'll take the time to respond to some points:



on Gaius:
-he is all you said, but still, as you said, it's a conqueror. It's someone who believe what he's doing is right and everyone else it's wrong, and that don't make him a righteous.
-The garlean empire it's far from being a good empire: his emperor it's driven by the conquest, and new territories are made one of them using indoctrination and coercion. This is better explained in 1.0.
-Gaius didn't really offered a peace because it's a good guy: with a monster like the Ultima Weapon in hand the defeat of the city-state would been inevitable, and it was a way to force them to surrender without fighting. Mind you, even we players, if we didn't got "blessed" by Hydealyn would stand a chance. (quotes: read further below)
- isn't a stereotype of a bad guy, but the kind of "different sides" villain: he have good and bad sides, but the fact endangers our home as a foreign conqueror put it as a bad guy, and it's our duty stop him.
-the purpose of Gaius seems noble: conquer Eorzea, purging it by its false gods, and give people the stability they always wanted- at the cost of freedom and their soul, even if Gaius think otherwise

-grand companies:
-I don't know what point you're making in the first sentence
-the primals are powerful beings, and very few amoung men can defeat them face-to-face. Also, it's stated the grand companies are in grave shortage of men: in these 5 year since the Calamity, grand companies and city-states has been busy rebuilding. they couldn't waste time dealing with beast tribes and garleans, that's the reason the territories around them have so much garlean stronghold around. (Expantion: the primals are so powerful even the very same Garleans can't take them lightly. Their advance of 20 yeasr ago was halted by the threat of the primals, or else at this time we would already been conquered)
-And what's the problem about the generals don't ben the lords of the city-states? They are soldiers, not politicians, also it's not that accurate: the Admiral it's in fact the rovereign of Limsa Lominsa, not so sure about Kan-e-Senna. The only i'm sure it's Raubahn, for obvious reasons: the Sultana reign over Ul'dah, even if true power is at hand of the Syndicate.
-wrong: since 5 years they don't do else then helping rebuilding.
-This is hilarius, sorry. The fact we are supposely good don't mean we are fools. The garlean empire alone it's a terrific power, plus an abominion as Ultima Weapon, and maybe more from Lahabrea. Do you really this it would be a wise choice taking an army full of robotic machinas, war airships, and gun-weapons head-on, while the best we have is some magick and a pick on a stick ? please, tell me more.
-read better, they are not ignoring nothing: they know their problems are still there and they have still lot of work in front of them. But they got the evidence if they work united as one they can overcome everything, even an invincible enemy. That's the message the story send.

Now, as i said, there's a lot of hints more or less hidden in the story, which hints of the futures stories: [MAY CONTAIN HEAVY SPOILERS]
-the ascians: first, they didn't tecnically betrayed the empire. Ultima was their triumph card, but Gaius never wanted bring such devastation. He wanted to rule over a reign, not pulverizing. However, the reasons why the ascians deal with the empire it's still unknown, and for now even contraddictory: they stated they need the power of the primals, but they helped the empire which goal is their annihilation.Why, it's still unknown
-also, they stated the balance will be ruined forever if Hydaelyn would be allowed to live. What balance and why ?
-In the cutscene after the credits, we see more of the soon-to--be-released ascians overlord. In their world, they again say they need the primal for awaken the only true god: zodiark
-In praetorim, Gaius hit the mark: the Twelve we worship don't lay an hand in our help, unless we enpower them with aether, just like the primals, and like we did in 1.0 to prevent the descent of Dalamud (failing). Is it possible we are doing it wrong and worship an evil ?
-Always on Hydaelyn, in the cutscene before credits we see with the Echo a purple Hydaelyn. A second mothercrystal? A corrupted Hydaelyn ? In the next story missions, we'll know for sure.
-Take all these pieces together, and you'll understand there's something underway, and we could be doing wrong until now.

further edit: while for many it's the same game, this is both a reboot and a sequel: the story it's a following of the previous 1.0 and that may confuse new players who don't know about it