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

[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.

[Lewtskie]

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.

Don't forget that we are doing this by assisting the hidden rebel forces, with our rare gift probably ultimately being the key to victory in the most dire moment.

[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"

[Kallera]

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"

At times, I do. I kinda wish there was more choice to our actions, or ability to affect what happens to our character. The game's story is at its best when I can relate to its characters and their motivations(3.3), and at its worst when I disagree with doing or saying something, but I'm dragged along the road regardless of my objection, or get no chance to object or say anything at all.(2.55) This has caused me to not like the Scions at times as they seem to be a regular source of this. Being the unstoppable respesenative of Eorzea/Hydelyn/whathaveyou has me pining for things that shake it up or change that, which makes me sad for the WoD's departure.

I also hope Garlemeld gets to be more than a literary paper tiger this time around.

[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.

[Squigley]

Well... As the 2.xx storyline was nearing its end I became a cutscene-skipper. I had followed most of it. In Heavensward I wanted my money back because the story took a huge dump on the way how I liked to play up to that point (gatherers & crafters first so that I could make HQ gear for myself). It was forcing me to go battle classes first and making my DoH/DoL efforts worthless. It was probably partially because of that why I didn't enjoy the HW story at all and was mostly just angry at it. I didn't like any of the HW characters and I couldn't care less what happened to them.

ARR: Ok
HW: Annoying, blocking me from doing things I enjoy in the game

[Belisaire]

I enjoyed Heavensward a lot more than I enjoyed ARR. One thing I can't stand about how this game handles plots though is that everything is often very disjointed with several plots going on simultaneously. Cid needs to prep the airship or whatever, and so we go off to embark on some other plot chain that has nothing to do with the one we were just on. Or there is still stuff like fetching Kan-E-Senna from Moghome... we've just been told that we are the first people in a thousand years to be in the Churning Mists, and immediately we leave, and bring in someone else. It's a... confusing roller coaster, to say the least.

The villains I feel zero threat from are the Ascians, which are also supposedly the biggest of the bad. But the worst thing I ever see them do is stand around, lurking, talking about how everything somehow is going according to their plan (and yet, every opportunity we're given, we stomp them). It's bizarre and confusing why we are supposed to actually feel intimidated by these enemies. Doesn't exactly seem like their plans ever work.

That and... characters are very stale. They don't really have complex backgrounds that are delved into, which is unfortunate. And sometimes characters get introduced (Hilda) that really have no real reason to be there. It's confusing to figure out what we should care about, and why.

[Morningstar1337]

And it's NOT based on historical fact. Historical fact is that the Catholic Church subsidized and enthusiastically supported Galileo and his research into celestial mechanics. They welcomed his study on the universe with open arms, as they viewed understanding it as a way to better perceive the glory of God. Historically, the Church has been a huge supporter of science endeavors. They turned on him because afterward, Galileo decided to write some treatises specifically denigrating the Church, which was of course against doctrine - but it had little to nothing to do with his actual science. And yet, the Astrologian quest is quite obviously supposed to be referencing Galileo and his story - only taken to this weird extreme.

Being aniti-science isn't the only thing Christianity was accused of that may or may not be false. Just saying.

[Belisaire]

Additionally--I want the stupid parts of the storyline to go away. Meaning the worthless detractions. Actually, I'd love to see the vast majority of sidequests go away (those that do not unlock content, or actually contribute meaningful lore). I find that there's an outrageous amount of dialogue in this game spent talking about nothing.

Replace the majority of sidequests with things like Clan Hunts. Or hunting logs. Stop wasting my time with meaningless dialogue chains--if you are just trying to find some mundane reason to send me off to kill x number of y monster. It's not interesting, and no one is being fooled by it being called a "sidequest"... it's busy work. I miss the days when sidequests would actually give you meaningful lore on something and justified their existence by having that lore be interesting.

[Jandor]

Start of 2.0 was pretty good in my opinion.
Slows down pretty hard in the middle with Titan and Garuda, but games still new so whatever.
Picks up again towards the end of 2.0.
2.X patch story is all over the place, mostly it's just there tbh.
3.0 was pretty great, sucked a bit in places but overall it's a definite improvement.
3.X patch story is again a bit of a mixed bag. Wrapped up the expansion nicely though.