What's your opinion about the game's story?

[Nestama]

Point number 1! also snip

Glad to see other people find the awkward pauses and close ups to faces changing expressions to be jarring. Especially when it does a close up for three or more characters. SE, either have the camera angled so every character is seen reacting at the same time, or don't do it at all. It's silly to imagine everyone is reacting one after another every two seconds.

I'd really like to see less of Alphinaud in future storyline's.

[Lemuria]

Oh, of course the Fantasy Pope is secretly evil. Oh, of course the Fantasy Church is restricting people's access to information (see as an example the Galileo plot copy of the AST quests, which gets the whole Galileo thing wrong anyway because the Church actually funded his research quite happily). Oh, of course they have "Inquisitors" who are pretty much universally and exaggeratedly cruel and harsh about their judgments. Oh, of course Fantasy Religion are the bad guys and us Pure Spiritual Outsiders are going to make everyone see the light. I could go on, but to sum it up: it's a cheap ploy to set up another Big Bad. They could easily tell the story of the Ishgard-dragon war without turning Ishgard into an obnoxious and stereotypical caricature of Catholicism.

You must be new to RPG's, the religions are always the bad guys. It's not hard to understand why though. A lot of fantasy games are set in a world where swords and sorcery are rife. Going back to our own history when witchcraft and warcraft was believed in more than science and technology, this was pretty much the case. I see it more as setting the period rather than stereotyping, since the stereotype itself comes from historical fact.

Maybe it is a bit overdone, but considering this is a Final Fantasy game which has always had a 'religion is bad' undertone (you regularly fight evil deities and religious institutes in just about every game), it's not really unexpected. It's just another part of the FF package, like chocobos.

[Dualblade]

Of course, a villain with the balls to tell the ascians to sod off because they're badass enough to get the job done without help would give that villain a lot of weight. Specially if they do get incredibly close to winning on their own.

Suikoden II's Luca Blight (AKA the posterboy of villains without superpowers) is testament to this being a valid approach.

While such a villian (hopefully) would be a good one, I believe Thordan's way wasn't all that bad either: Accept the Ascians help to further his goals only to gain the upper hand and take them out. Igeyorhm via us and Lahabrea via himself. And even with that he showed himself to be a "dark" shade of gray instead of black like the Ascians.

On Final Fantasy and religon/churches: While X has the higher ups ultimately be corrupt and all that, what remains of it in X-2 is shown to still be somewhat significant even after it was exposed AND that there were those taking charge both to restore its good name and insure it doesn't fall to that corruption again. While I don't think we will follow to much more of that after Scholasticate is done I don't think Ishgard will ever not have its religon dissapear.

[Nestama]

snip

You're actually rather wrong in that regard. Final Fantasy has actually treated churches as a place you revive KO'd party members. A church was also a place where you first meet a certain flower girl. X, Lightning Returns and XIV are probably the only Final Fantasy games where "world religion" is treated as evil or corrupt. Leaving out cults, as even in real life they tend to be evil...

It might not be common for churches to be corrupt in Final Fantasy, but in JRPGs in general, it's VERY overused.

[gastovski]

You know why story sucks? because there isn't any romance whatsoever. But what would i know, i'm a simple newbie.

[Alleo]

I get annoyed with how many times the church is the secret bad guy in Final Fantasy, but I actually think Heavensward is an exception. Yes, the pope and his closest advisors, and some of the high priests, were pretty much evil. Their motivations do make sense, especially since ending the Dragonsong War was effectively impossible. (Incidentally, I think we had way too easy a time with that. :P )

Yes not everyone was portrayed at evil but maybe it would have been nice if even the pope turned out to be more grey or even go to our side..(They could have him being betrayed by the heavensward or something like that..maybe a little twist) but if I remember it right as soon as he was seen in a trailer people were already saying "he must be evil". I just sometimes hope that FF14 takes some more twists on things and dont go along the line of other FF titels or JRPG games.

They for example could have used that priest to show that the church and their members have still good people in them and that they help the poorer people by giving them shelter..yet in the end he only did this to have some nice victims and he even threw that girl off the tower..I just really cant remember any good member of the church.

And yes I agree the end of the dragonsong war was way to easy and fast. I just hope that this wont be the last we hear from Ishgard and that maybe we have some more conflicts along the way since I am quite sure that not every person is fine with the way it is and I hope that this will be part of some sidequests maybe even some more focus in the scholastice quest.

[Lunavi]

Dw people, next expansion we are going to fight the militant atheist empire who are hell-bent on destorying all deities again. Please, look forward to it.

[Voltyblast]

I was wondering something: if you had the choice, would you side with the villains or simply go for the bad guys (think it of Republic vs Empire thing)?.
I personally would: there's only so much "goodness" I can endure before I get annoyed to be the "good guy/girl"

[Lufir]

Dw people, next expansion we are going to fight the militant atheist empire who are hell-bent on destorying all deities again. Please, look forward to it.

I hope not. Seems like a return to 2.0 ARR though, where we get to deal with another Garlean official with the same motivation.

[Reynhart]

Personally, I think the story is good...for a MMORPG.
You have to jump some hoops to include the massive number of adventurers without sounding too much silly, so, it's ok.

What I'd like is less linearity. The beginning of HW was a nice change of pace, since you could chose which zone to start with. It didn't have any impact in the end, but it would be interesting to use split objectives more often (And the cool reminder of FFVI and the 3 plots near the beginning)
With more phasing, I also think they could also go a little further to make the world revolve more around your character. WoW does it since it's 2nd extension, it shouldn't be that difficult...

On a sidenote, I play the game in french, and the voice acting, without being stellar, is quite enjoyable, and don't bother with too much convoluted phrasing. It's also fun to recognie some voices, like Ramuh who has the same french voice than Kain in Soul Reaver, or the WoD who has the voice of Kaneda from Akira and Riku from Kingdom Hearts.