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

[AutoWhit]

I honestly think it's among the best story lines in any mmo....and I've played most of the classes in SWTOR to max level, considered by most to actually have the best story lines in mmos.

[Alleo]

In addition to the many good points (character mimic, boring characters, mild plot), I would like to point out, that it is almost always a bad idea for an author to break his own rules. For example: I remember, as I first played the Heavensward main story, there was a quest where Raubahn slowly lost his health. I was stunned at how much HP he lost with each tick and quickly calculated his max HP pool. HP wise this guy would have been able to take the ultima weapon alone. And this guy had his arm cut off by some mere palace guards? This seems not very likely to me. There are several other occasions where I thought: "Not very likely..." but the post is already long.

One point I want to underline too is, that I really don't feel like the warrior of light is something special. Telling me I'm something special while I just have to go into a dungeon and see at least 3 other people who are also "special", I feel kind of trolled. Just scratch that and make it something else.

Yeah its was amazing to have Raubahn fight against us but at the same time you kinda wonder why nobody of those characters help out with threats. The leaders cant just go around and do things (only if your name is Aymeric, even with a newly built state which should mean lots of work, you can still find some time to help..) so I am kinda okay with them but the scions, especially Yda, Papalymo and Thancred (and the others who were able to fight the WoD..) are skilled warriors and yet there are barely there to help..why was Y'sthola not here at the fight against Nidhogg? They all could have fought against the other dragons and helping the knights while we take on the big bad one..and yet the only ones that went with us were Alphinaud and Aymeric..

Well I know its not 100% completely canon but we are alone in most dungeons. The other three or more are just there for gameplay but in the story itself we are alone most of the time. There are some places where its said to gather other adventurers by NPCs like Alphinaud but it would not make sense to have them there..There is only one fight where we 100% sure had help and this was steps of faith. We had to go around and ask NPC adventurer for help and at the end after winning you will see those that said yes next to you in the cutscene. Having other people with you would not make sense if you for example fight solo enemies like Gaius..I mean beating up one single person with 7 other people is really not that great and at least in the german translation the text of the enemies are in singular, so there is only one person there. (The English version seems to be different and seems to hint at more than one..) They did say that we will lead other adventurers..but my headcannon is that we went with them inside and at a certain point they will stay behind and we go on alone. (Which is exactly where the dungeons start imo) This would also make us and all other people look way better because after the fight against Ultima and Gaius we are the only ones that get out with the mount and we are also the only one that they are worried about. That would be really mean and evil if we still had other adventurers with us.

The primals are really just defeated by us. Before Ifrit for example it says that we should get help but that does not make sense. How big is the chance that not only they forget to bind us but that the lake would have a way outside and that on the other side of the lake would be a good npc..if we were truly able to escape that way, why exactly did we not call for help? What does one lonely soldier do out there far away from the city? How exactly did we find other skilled adventurers in that short amount of time that also had the echo (we did not know about tempering at that time..) and were willing to help us? How would we get back unnoticed with more people in tow and why did we not free the others if we had reinforcement? All of this makes no sense so we are only able to go outside because its a gameplay feature since you could forget about that fight for weeks and do other things and that in story we were probably in chains and nobody came to help..we are also the only one in the cutscene that is not tempered and Ifrit also only talks about us.

And why, if there are so many skillfull adventures running around to help us with primals, are we the only ones that are special? And seeing how many npc adventures did not want to help us against dragons..I just cant see so many adventurers that are willing to go against primals and have the echo too.

Lets see some other examples (sorry I love talking about this ^^'):
To get to the aery we only had two small ships to get there. One was for us the other for Estinien. There was no place for other people.
After bismark we are caught by the Ascian, if we have other people with us why do they not help us?
Against Ravana the only person that went with us was Ysayle. Since she was defeated and hurt we could not just go outside and look for help so we fought alone (the same can be said about the Chrysalis..its not like we could just left Moen behind to search for other adventurers while hoping that the hole wont close.)
Everything on Azys Lla was done alone, since this was not common knowledge and we were the first to get there.

It might be that we had some help in dungeons that we did for side quests and I do believe that we might have help with the 24 raids (but I dont think that we are truly 24 adventurers..I mean so many skillful adventurers in one place that are not part of the scion?) but who knows maybe we completely go through every single instance alone. (Which would make us a nice opposite to the WoD) I mean the devs could come out and say that we are the only WoL but at the same time had help in all those dungeons/trials but even if I have to accept this I will gladly point out, how it would not make much sense and would make the WoL and the scions look like horrible people..

[LineageRazor]

Unmarked spoilers ahead!

In my opinion, the 2.0 storyline was fairly weak, but this was largely because they were saddled with all these characters from 1.0 that they had to do something with. The Scions just aren't all that interesting, to be honest, and it was made even worse by the fact that their manner of introduction had to partly cater to 1.0 veterans who'd already met them before and didn't really need to be reintroduced. Cid was a particularly noteworthy example. Just why do we care so much about this hobo in the cemetery? For 1.0 vets: "It's Cid! We've finally found him again!" For everyone else, "Huh... I guess this guy is important, or something?" They were also, for the most part, very static characters who never really changed or developed over the course of the story.

The villains, too, had a sort of, "Well, they were in 1.0, so we gotta do SOMETHING with them" vibe to them. The Garleans just didn't seem all that menacing - in part because the actual in-game enemies were so easy to defeat. It was hard to believe they were this terrible, world-dominating threat when your hero could wade into a Castrum and slaughter everyone there without breaking a sweat. It also didn't help that they were so very cliché and obviously evil; aside from the occasional show of villainous valor, there's really no shades of grey to be found among the Garleans.

Probably the highlight of the 2.0 storyline was the exploration of the spoken races' relationship with the beastmen, and the resulting Primal summonings when those relationships went south. The Kobolds were a particularly good example; it was hard not to feel conflicted when you stomped in and killed their god, knowing that they'd summoned the thing because Limsa Lominsa was blatantly breaking the peace treaties they'd signed with them. The Kobolds were very much the victims - but we still had to stop them, simply because Primals are too dangerous to be allowed to exist.

The Heavensward storyline was VERY much improved, and I think a large part of it was due to the fact that they cast these legacy characters to the wayside and focused on characters that had been created specifically for ARR and the expansion. The villain, Thordan, was portrayed as a sympathetic villain who'd inherited a terrible burden (knowledge that Ishgard was at fault for the war with the dragons - but knowing that revealing that fact would weaken the nation and allow it to be overwhelmed), and wound up making terrible decisions to deal with it. Nidhogg, too, was a grey character, albeit a bit on the dark shade of grey; he was justified in his rage, but not in his chosen victims (plus, he was clearly a bit of a human-hating dick even before everything went south with Ratatoskr's murder).

Estinien was possibly the best "man driven by revenge" character I've witness in just about ANY piece of fiction. He constantly surprised me by being a REASONABLE PERSON, even as he was devoted to ending Nidhogg's life for the tragedies he'd inflicted upon him. Ysayle was great, as well, a woman whose convictions had been shaken by the fact that the dragons she admired were just as capable of unreasonable cruelty as humans are.

Even the Scions finally got some quality character development - particularly Aphinaud, but the others, as well. Thancred's guilt over his perceived failure to protect Minfillia was interesting, and even bland-as-cement Y'shtola had a bit of her rebellious youth revealed through her interactions with Matoya. (Too bad she doesn't show more of that fire in her adult life!)

So, to sum up, the 2.0 story was fairly weak, but the Heavensward story was much improved. At least, in my opinion!

[Johaandr]

I wish our character could talk and had same voice as the voice we picked in the caharcter creation.

[Dualgunner]

snip

I can agree to a lot of your points lol. What I bring up is merely a defense because a lot of people seem to think the Warrior of Light is an invincible genius in this game. We're actually quite fallible, and while I don't like feeling weak I do like feeling fallible.

I would argue however that because we were caught flat footed by the WoD we'd have been destroyed. Remember it wasn't just us who was getting defeated; Knight of Darkness rekt Y'shtola's shield and Ranger of Darkness was kicking Alphinaud and Krile about with the constant arrowing as I recall the scene. Especially because if we did get into a fight, and assuming we won, we'd have been caught flat footed again...cuz they'd get right back up. But yes, when we did meet them on equal terms we came out as superior for the most part :P

[Belisaire]

Unmarked spoils incoming.

The Scions lose a bunch though. The HQ gets invaded by Garleans, Thancred gets possessed, the Syndicate pressures them out of Ul'dah, Moenbryda is killed, Alphinauds GC turns on him and at the end of 2.X they essentially stop existing as an organization for the expansion.

The HQ gets invaded by Garleans, but instead of that really feeling sad, we're sent on a click quest of picking up bodies and hauling them over to a carriage to a guy complaining about how the bodies are really starting to smell body and wants us to hurry up. It should have been a heart wrenching cutscene, of you carrying the bodies of all those you couldn't protect, instead it was "click this body, click this body, click this body" while some NPC makes some quips. And WoL does nothing, shows no emotion to said quips. Punches should have been thrown, but our character is an empty shell.

Thancred getting possessed turned out to be not a really big deal, there was pretty much no consequence to it. Ask yourself, if we had just fought Lahabrea at the end of 2.0 sans Thancred... would there really have been any change? It's also never really entirely explained just how and why he gets possessed, just somehow that it happens. The Scions moving out of Ul'dah was their own choice in the end--they were pursuing neutrality. Moenbryda dies but... she had only been around for an expansion and a half? I can't quite say I felt that sting much. It seemed like they invented a character to die in place of one that we cared about.

I will confess that the end of 2.55 had me thrilled. The thing was the Sultana, getting chased out of Ul'dah, where there was rioting and torches, was really powerful. That was probably the moment I felt the game had turned around. But they utterly squandered that opportunity. Nanamo should have stayed dead. We should have had to take back Ul'dah. Raubahn should have become the new rightful leader of the nation. Instead, the Scions organization is broken up and ceasing to exist over something that was just a farce. It was outrageously irritating for me, to see what I felt was going to be an amazing plot point just completely dropped.

And did anyone really believe for a second that any of the Scions had died in the 2.55 ending? It was just to set up a "Getting the band back together" trope. Which is ironic, because didn't we do exactly that already when the Garleans raided our HQ? And everything was fine then as well, except for a couple of very minor NPCs dying?

And perhaps it strikes me hard because I played 1.0. I got to sit and watch a moon loom in the sky, battling through the impossible, and we still lost. That was powerful.

[Keramory]

I honestly think it's among the best story lines in any mmo....and I've played most of the classes in SWTOR to max level, considered by most to actually have the best story lines in mmos.

Really? I'll have to relook at this game then. Not saying you're wrong cause we're all entitled to our opinions (and I didnt respond out of sarcasm) but holy hell I thought SWTOR's story and how it was delivered was great.

As I mentioned before I thought the story was good until the last patch. Honestly I think FFXI had better storylines, but maybe thats only because they tortured us to get to each plot point.

[Chalbee]

I think it's pretty good for the most part. I had trouble feeling engaged in some of the side arcs (Titan arc blech), but overall I think they do a good job. A few things I would have liked though.

-Bit more exposition. I had to hit the internet and do some research to figure out exactly why it is that primals are inherently bad. I thought we killed them because they tempered people and such, so I didn't understand why we had to go kill Ramuh. (#LeaveRamuhAlone2k16) Maybe I missed it, but the story didn't really clue me in to the whole drinking all the aether thing until much later, after I had already read up on it.

-less disposable villains. I felt nothing when Gaius died. Similarly, I didn't feel much of anything at the end of ARF when two of the paragons eat it. They're just too cartoonishly evil to care. Thordan was a bit better because we had some motives and exposition as to why he was doing what he did; I understood Thordan. I disagreed with him, but in light of his motives, there were actually emotions involved in fighting and killing him.

[Khubla_Kha]

I think the story is pretty solid. I mean it's standard FF stuff.. but that's what people are looking for, right?

I feel like the 2.0 struggled a little bit as it was trying to reconcile the old 1.x stuff with the new ARR stuff and it kinda slogged it's way through at times.

Everything from 2.x through HW has been exponentially better in my view and has only continued getting better up through the end of HW. I'm really looking forward to Ala Mhigo and what will unravel with Stormblood!

PS for the above poster the story does go into the fact that the primals are a threat to Hydalaen in that they drain the aether from the land and what not... it's pretty convoluted and easy to miss as there are so many run around and fetch this or that type tasks tied to those quests. It's very easy to zone out and miss the context.

[Alleo]

I can agree to a lot of your points lol. What I bring up is merely a defense because a lot of people seem to think the Warrior of Light is an invincible genius in this game. We're actually quite fallible, and while I don't like feeling weak I do like feeling fallible.

I would argue however that because we were caught flat footed by the WoD we'd have been destroyed. Remember it wasn't just us who was getting defeated; Knight of Darkness rekt Y'shtola's shield and Ranger of Darkness was kicking Alphinaud and Krile about with the constant arrowing as I recall the scene. Especially because if we did get into a fight, and assuming we won, we'd have been caught flat footed again...cuz they'd get right back up. But yes, when we did meet them on equal terms we came out as superior for the most part :P

Oh sorry than I misunderstood your post. True people are often saying that they want the WoL to loose but imo we are already losing way enough for someone that should be special. We are like you wrote quite often hurt by common people and us being so trusting is kinda a big fault.

Well we cant really avoid echo visions so it was not really our fault and they attacked us while we were still not ready to fight. (I would probably think that this might be good guys because they slayed an primal only to be killed by them as a surprise attack..*laugh*) Krile is also not a fighter. So I give them the points of kicking our ass at the first battle but I am still quite skeptic if this would have been the same if we hadnt had that vision. On the seond and also last meeting we were one person less than them and yet it was only their echo ability that saved them. We could have never truly won since they are like the Ascians and yet we were able to beat them down three times (and damn it felt good) and without this ability they would have lost after the first beating. And after finally being an even number on both sides we were able to beat them again. But in the end the most important thing for me was that we for the first time were able to truly fight them and that this was not one "they beat our asses because they are WoD" but that it was more in favor for us.