Just played Final Fantasy XI

[Aryalandi]

I'm going to be one of those people for a moment.. it has been.. a year perhaps? Since I set foot in Vana'diel. And nearly as long since I seriously played Final Fantasy XIV for that matter.

The recent repeat of the rhapsody event put it in my head how much I missed FFXI but it wasn't until today.. logging in that it occurred to me even moreso /why/ my memories make me emotional. I got a bit misty eyed just walking around looking at things so here I am ranting because I feel things..

The music.. the immersion.. every area has music that sets the tone for where you are, and you can find random things to just stand and read, bits of lore that don't even have to do with quests.. random amusing things like the books in wondursts library, the flower gardens in Chateau d'Oraguille leading to the late queens tombstone..

The way that when you complete a quest for an npc they remember you and greet you fondly from that point on.. the dungeons that you can just casually explore because they are their own areas rather than an instance that you can only enter through dutyfinder..

The fact that even regular npcs get cutscenes sometimes, have conversations amongst themselves and paths that they walk at times, the way they actually seem to have lives even when some of the ones that net you a cutscene when you talk to them don't even have a quest..

I've quite possibly never just /explored/ a world the way I did XI, everything feels so alive. I suppose I have missed that in ffxiv, it has gotten a bit better with heavenward and stormblood but still.. it may be the nostalgia talking but even now Eorzea just doesn't feel like "home" the way Vana'diel always did, the connection isn't there the same way

I suppose what I miss is caring about the world I'm in and the people in it the way I did every time I met a new npc for the first time.

I remember one of the first quests I ever did in XI the very first time I played it.. it was between a mithra (miqo'te) mother and her daughter, you deliver a ring to the little girl, and there is also a letter to deliver (i didn't read it.... the first... few times.. lol but you can so i broke down, and got called out for opening it XD oops..)

this is almost a decade and a half later and i still remember it fondly.. it's difficult for me to find nearly as much of that though I suppose it makes me more grateful when I do. Possibly one of my favorite things in heavenward are moments like the random npc storylines that you don't even interact with like the Romeo and Juliet-esque story in Ishgard, or the way that if you look around during a storyline you can find npcs related to it in far out of the way places where you really have no reason to look since your objective is the other way like Lucia explaining her favorite food (dodo egg omelettes) to a baby dragon in one part

I crave more if that sort of thing, I am honestly hoping that the trend continues to get more and more immersion like that x.x it would kind of be nice admittedly if I could do a quest for an npc and not be treated like literally nothing changed afterwards for example.