The Story

[lackofwords]

Spoiler:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPV8CnMYjwo#t=8m30s

But, yes it feels like the main story is really all over the place. You have garleans, something going on with the echo, then beastmen summoning primals. It might be because Yoshi is taking the story to a different direction that Tanaka was aiming for. Not to mention, it seems like they are aiming to tell a story for changing the entire face of the world when moving to 2.0.

As for allowing players to "parley" in main mission was an interesting touch, but could have been done a bit better. I've always saw it as the non-aggressive solution to missions, such as negotiation. Not all battles should be won by simply slaughtering everyone.

Such as the mission Toll of the Warden, where two beastmen tribes are bickering at each other. You are given the choice to either

1. Talk the beastmen down so they don't kill each other, via parley.
2. Kill all the beastmen

Honestly, I felt it was more morally correct to just talk them down, but it's more fun of course to just kill them all.

Granted, that not ALL situations should be viable to negotiation, such as the last main mission storyline to date. However, there still should be some situation where it is applicable.

There are a few problems with parley which made it not fun

• It requires no character progression, meaning no EXP or leveling for parley
• There are no new abilities you can earn in parley by playing parley.
• It's the same simplistic minigame you play regardless of how advance in the game you are.
• No new challenges arises from the minigame.