LPT: Do NOT watch the char select AFK video

[Tolmos]

This is a tip for any of you new players coming into the game:

There is a video that plays if you leave your game logged in and just idling at character select. The video shows a dude walking in the snow with a big axe on his back.

This video is one giant spoiler for some of the best parts of the ARR storyline

There is apparently no check to see whether you have completed the relevant story quests on any of your characters to play this video, so it will happily ruin the crap out of a lot of really big stuff if you watch it. For some of you this may not matter, but for those that it does matter to, I wanted to give you fair warning now since the story in this game is actually pretty well done and I'd hate to see it ruined for anyone.

Good luck!

[Enkidoh]

It's the opening scene to the Heavensward expansion though... which is why it has said spoiler. And given the fact what happens in that scene even by the time of Heavensward's launch was already pretty much common knowledge, SE must have just accepted that it's like Aeris's death in FFVII at this stage - as it's pretty much well known by most players what happens, trying to hide it would just look silly.

It was also previously available on Youtube months before with a spoiler warning, so again, I guess they must have just felt everyone would know by now. Either way, it's really not relevant anymore.

[Frizze]

Yeah, this is only if you have the expansion. If you dont have the HW expansion installed and registered on your account, the cinematic that plays if you idle out the main menu is the calamity one(armies clash, meteor crash, bahamut blast, loisoix cast, etc). Which is also spoilery - i guess - but for the events that happened before the current game. The HW cinematic includes the stuff that happened before that expansion. Yeah, if you arent there yet a few of those bits are spoilery. I do personally feel bad for anyone who had surprises ruined by said video, but the images you see should mean a lot more when you get to them in the proper context - and thats if you even remember that you saw them before.

[Niwashi]

It's the opening scene to the Heavensward expansion though... which is why it has said spoiler.

Which would be fine, if it only showed for people who had reached that point. But the game and expansion can be bought together as a bundle, plus there are people who want to play Au Ra characters, and either can mean brand new players just starting the game may already have the expansion on their account.

(There are also a lot of players who register it as soon as they hit 50 in order to keep getting XP, but they haven't been through the 2.x patch stories yet.)

what happens in that scene even by the time of Heavensward's launch was already pretty much common knowledge

common to people who were around at the time, which again doesn't pertain to brand new players. The issue is in showing it to people who don't have any of that knowledge you're referring to as "common" because they just got the game. Putting a video in that opening cinematic means that it happens before ARR even starts. That's when people are going to see it.

If you dont have the HW expansion installed and registered on your account, the cinematic that plays if you idle out the main menu is the calamity one(armies clash, meteor crash, bahamut blast, loisoix cast, etc).

So what happens to that one when you do have Heavensward registered? Please tell me we don't lose it entirely. If the two openings alternate, or if the older one is moved to a selectable option, that's one thing. But if registering Heavensward means we can never see that original opening again, it might be better to avoid the entire expansion.

[Enkidoh]

So what happens to that one when you do have Heavensward registered? Please tell me we don't lose it entirely. If the two openings alternate, or if the older one is moved to a selectable option, that's one thing. But if registering Heavensward means we can never see that original opening again, it might be better to avoid the entire expansion.

It's still available, just now it's selectable on the main title screen under 'Movies' (it's listed as 'Answers') - you can also view the original opening movie that plays when starting ARR for the first time after creating your character (you know, the one which meshed scenes from the 1.0 opening with End of an Era/New Beginning with Louisoix doing a story recap for new players?) there too.

Which would be fine, if it only showed for people who had reached that point. But the game and expansion can be bought together as a bundle, plus there are people who want to play Au Ra characters, and either can mean brand new players just starting the game may already have the expansion on their account.

(There are also a lot of players who register it as soon as they hit 50 in order to keep getting XP, but they haven't been through the 2.x patch stories yet.)

common to people who were around at the time, which again doesn't pertain to brand new players. The issue is in showing it to people who don't have any of that knowledge you're referring to as "common" because they just got the game. Putting a video in that opening cinematic means that it happens before ARR even starts. That's when people are going to see it.

Although you raise a fair point, again I think SE just regarded that as an acceptable loss due to the reasons I mentioned before - with social networking and even the official trailers all but already spoiling that, it's pretty difficult now not to keep every little detail about what happens later in the story secret, especially so long after the 2.55 patch went live (that was nearly a year and half ago now).

Also when you think about it, that movie scene doesn't really give that much away, at least as far as context goes - Nanamo seems to drink some bad wine that disagrees with her? Raubahn suffers an injury and is sneered at by Lolorito? Derplander is chased through Ul'dah? That could mean literally anything. Really I think that movie spoiled more about the events of Revenge of the Horde with the Final Steps of Faith than it did spoiling the events of Before the Fall.