Brevity is the soul of wit: Request to fix the horrible writing on XIV's quests

[Lebannen]

My biggest problem with FF xiv is that my char cant talk at all. Or rather doesnt.

[Quisi]

I hate npc's dialogue in LL. It all I aarrr am arrrr a piaaaarrrrrr. Hate it so I don't even bother to read it there. Main reason I deleted my LL char and made one in Uldah.

[Cendres]

Thread title is misleading, the writing in this game is excellent in fact. That it is long is another thing, I suppose they could let us manage how much dialogue we'd like to actually read. Personally I have to read all of it and in such games with trees like Mabinogi and Bioware games I end up clicking through every possible choice... So to me the way FFXIV does it is fine.

Your character is not mute, you're supposed to fill in the blanks in your own head. Welcome to old school RPGs where the game let's you use your imagination, a dying breed.

[Pollyanna]

Your character is not mute, you're supposed to fill in the blanks in your own head. Welcome to old school RPGs where the game let's you use your imagination, a dying breed.

This could just be me, but there's an issue of technology and presentation at work when it comes to filling in the blanks. If I take an old title like Final Fantasy 4, there are a lot of blanks to fill. The dialogue is concise to the point of being representational. The characters don't really move. The graphics represent what's going on...they don't show it exactly. But when I think back on the scenes and characters, they're fully realized because the game excited my imagination. You don't ask "why aren't they moving?" because they're moving in your head. You don't think of the characters as pixels, but as people.

But FF14 isn't like that. There's comparatively little gap between its vision and reality. In FF4, you don't complain that a character is making the wrong expression, because you're making the expression for them in your imagination. In FF14, you would notice if they're making an expression you don't agree with. In a scene where everything is moving and everything looks real, if a character makes noises, but doesn't say any words, they come across as mute. The closer a game is to reality, the more noticeable the "unreal" parts are.

Kind of a tangent and just my opinion, but I wondered if other players felt this way.

[Denmo]

I'm all for lore, but when I walk up to a ! over an NPC and get a diatribe of Old English in my face telling me his life story where all he's essentially telling me is that he needs me to deliver some parcels - I feel like the game's writer took his job a little too seriously.

It gets really bad when you can't tell the personality of one character to another. Everyone just vomits these paragraphs of ye olde English and it feels forced. For good writing, it should only take a sentence or two for players to get an idea of who they're talking to, what they're like, and what they want. Not everyone you meet randomly on the street will just give you paragraphs of info without any provocation.

At least make it a conversation, if you're going to.

Huh, XIII, XIII-2 and Versus XIII (thus far) has good writing, just because you dislike it doesn't mean it's bad.

You made me nearly spill my morning coffee.


(see kids,? one sentence and you know 3 things about me already. that's good writing)

[Rane]

The NPC need to be a bit more concise. They are so verbose and fond of circumlocution, full of platitudes and roundabout ways of saying the most simplest of statements that might otherwise have been conveyed in half the words and a quarter of the time. It's such a waste of my time. Mine and yours.

Maybe if they add more voiceovers, then it will encourage the writers to pull back a little bit.

It gets really bad when you can't tell the personality of one character to another. Everyone just vomits these paragraphs of ye olde English and it feels forced. For good writing, it should only take a sentence or two for players to get an idea of who they're talking to, what they're like, and what they want. Not everyone you meet randomly on the street will just give you paragraphs of info without any provocation.

At least make it a conversation, if you're going to.

I completely agree with both of you.

I think there are several problems with NPC conversations and the way in which they are presented. I'll focus on just one, though.

In addition to unnatural verbosity, NPCs tend to use language more suitable for written as opposed to spoken English. That goes for word choice as well as sentence structure. I don't feel like I'm being spoken to. Rather, I feel like I'm reading an essay.

Take this example from the quest dialog in the OP:

"Ever since our founding, we have endeavored to archive all extant knowledge, that man might learn of his origin and destiny both."

This is a beautifully written sentence! Beautifully written. Nobody talks this way--not even very smart, very important people.

It may look OK on paper, but just try saying it out loud. Suddenly it's confusing and hard to understand. That's just not how people order their ideas when they talk. Furthermore, while I would expect that character to know the word "extant", it's unnatural to use it when speaking.

I think our localizers have an excellent command of the English language--much better than mine. Perhaps that's why so many of our NPCs sound like they're reading lines out of an essay from a graduate-level literature class.

[Renshi]

I don't catch the problem... I'm Swiss and I can undestand every word I'm reading.

[Naqaj]

I don't catch the problem...

...

I'm Swiss and I can undestand every word I'm reading.

...

..

. -_-



Sorry, couldn't resist

[LukeSelintl]

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn." ~ Hemingway
"The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly." ~ Orson Scott Card
“Cellar?” “Gate to, uh … hell, actually.” ~ Ronald D. Moore
And many more here for your brief reading pleasure: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html

I agree with the OP; brevity is beautiful. This topic has nothing to do with the complexity of the vocabulary. What complexity? This is perfectly understandable by anyone literate. This topic is not about lore being thrown at our faces--you tl;dr folks can still skip it. But for the players like the OP and me, whom like to read the lore, the delivery is terrible.

It's certainly not pervasive. I loved the Gridanian opening and the main storyline has been great, but ever since the Grand Companies came out...

[Climm]

I'll be honest... No FF for me has EVER made their world and lore feel believable for me. It has been more about the characters (and what you experience with them) than the setting. I feel like XIV lacks said characters that add that believable feeling to the setting and make the whole story feel complete. although classic FF games have somewhat laid back and common writing styles, I'm OK with the complex Shakespearean language. However, i agree that there are too little quests with interesting subplots to back up that writing.

In my mind, Final Fantasy Scripts have been all about going from one epic set piece to the next, with the context between each of them becoming better with each game....Well, until a certain point where the amount of epic moments got dumbed down and transformed into worthless text, cheap philosophy and cheesy melodrama of girls with Australian accents (cough, thirteen, cough). I mean, HONESTLY, all Final Fantasy stories are RIDICULOUS! Hell, some of them are laughable and filled with cliches. However, as i pointed out before, it's not about the plot or the setting, but the characters (well written ones) and what you experience with them what make these games so special in our minds.

...also, pretty cutscenes.

IN OTHER WORDS (TL;DR): XIV NEEDS BELIEVABLE CHARACTERS, CUTSCENES AND INTERESTING/EPIC MOMENTS EVERYWHERE......also humor....LOTS OF IT



also, #@$% realism.... this is final fantasy people...jeez