Translations (JP to English)

[Ashthra]

One way to make your game shallow is to think up cool places to go just for the sake of it without any proper context to tie them up to the setting. Very Korean.

Everything should start from imagining the setting and the lore. If they are merely tools to justify the existence of a cool landmark (or a feature), instead of the landmark being the tool to justify the existence of the lore it ties in with, the depth of the world will suffer tremendously.

I wish he was reading this thread, as I feel like he's about to make a huge mistake taking the former approach.

For example, the whole vanilla Vana'diel was set up with a Grand Plan in mind when it came to lore. The areas around Qufim were not barren for no reason- the crystallized trees did not point towards the same direction just because it looked cool- Qufim was not shaped like a crescent because making islands a shape of a crescent is "totally AWSUM". The crags, the drogaroga's spine, everything was a part of the setting.

I hope Yoshida takes some notes from how XI was built, but I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't understand.

To be fair, if they get an idea in their head of something that looks INSANELY FREAKING COOL, that would make everyone take one look at it and go, "That is the most awesome thing in the history of mankind," I'm sure they could take that idea, take a look at their already established lore, and see if there's a way they could implement it in a way that makes sense with as few modifications to the AWESOME as possible. Taking your example to heart, you don't know if Tanaka and co decided to create Qufim the way they did because they already thought of the lore, or because Tanaka had an image of a really emotive, desolate area and decided to write the lore of the zone based on the vision he had in his head.

Certainly, no one would want an area/zone shoved into the game just for the sake of it being there with no ties to the story whatsoever. That's what we have currently for about 85% of the game. However, so long as they find a way to tie things into the world lore in a verifiable and understandable way, it really shouldn't matter whether the lore spawned the zone, or the zone spawned the lore. Cool is cool, no matter what inspires it.

[Betelgeuzah]

Certainly, no one would want an area/zone shoved into the game just for the sake of it being there with no ties to the story whatsoever. That's what we have currently for about 85% of the game.

The current areas, as desolate and barren as they are, have still been made with the setting in mind. There is nothing that feels tackled on because of the visual appeal alone. The airship/dragon structure in Mor Dhona is the icon of this sort of design.

The problematic issue, but something that can help the scenario writers in the long run, is that XIV is a Tabula Rasa as far as the setting is concerned. While in XI lot of events of significance had already happened in the past, in XIV we play in the Age where similar events are happening right now.

They can, as such, justify a lot of landmarks by saying "the garleans did it" or "the primals did it". But if they move too far past their original intentions just because they feel that there has to be more landmarks that stand out that may not fit in with the lore they have set up in the long run, it's going to get really shallow really quick.

I can already notice that "the dzemael darkhold" was pretty much made up on the fly (for some part) to justify RAIDZ instead of being planned from the beginning and then designing the raid around the setting.

To be honest, the Archons sound to be the same way. "Guess what could be EPIC random-san?!? 12 iconic bad-ass legendary heroes that came seemingly out of nowhere! Make up something to justify their addition to the lore, quick. Also, make the grand company leaders wear RELIC WEAPONS, holy crap that's kick-ass! Better change their names to EPIC WEAPONS though. Also, let's name our new pulled-out-of-a-hat crafting system MATERIA SYSTEM (FF7 materia, you get it????)"

The list fortunately doesn't go on for that long... yet. But you hopefully get the point. This is a slippery slope and I don't feel like the job system is going to help the situation. They may be able to change the gameplay, but they can't change the established setting without ruining it if they aren't actually paying attention as to what fits and where.

So in a nutshell, cool is cool regardless of where it spawned from, but lots of cool things stacked on without believable lore keeping it all together makes for a very shallow experience. It's like the creationist mindset, except the developers are the God that makes everything fit together naturally and in a believable way. It's even harder when your game isn't trying to be over-the-top but instead classy and somewhat realistic in a fantasy setting, and still make inspiring and "epic" environments.

Fortunately if they can pull it off, it'll be very satisfying. More-so than in a game where you're fed mind-blowing environments and monsters from the get-go. There is never going to be as large of an impact when you get to a really cool looking ,but still somewhat classy area later on. Everything is epic = nothing is epic.

But it does make for awesome pre-release trailers, I admit.