Storyline Prior to Game

[Betelgeuzah]

The groundwork for the story surpasses XI's by a mile. Even the current story is better than XI's generic vanilla crap, even if the execution is poor.

While it can seem introductory so did all of the expansions in XI (aside from maybe RoTZ) which were hard to grasp at first but made sense later on. I can imagine this story getting so damn epic once few things go down;

1) The battle with the primals begin (I figure this is the first part SE is working on currently).

2) We take part in Ishgard's fight with the dragons (I figure this comes after the primals).

3) Finally we make it to the Ala Mhigo where things get nasty and we learn something shocking about the Garleans (laying out the groundwork for the first expansion).

It seems the lore is already set on a three-lock war between the dragons, primals and eorzeans. Who knows what happens once Garleans come into picture and we get to see their hi-tech stuff.

The lore of the game is not an afterthought, even if in the game's current form it is not being used effectively enough. It will end up being one of the strong points of the game, just like in any Final Fantasy. No generic fantasy that is tackled together at the last second (PLAENS OF TELLARRA, EXILD RELM OF ARBOREE, TOWER OF ETERNITYZ).

Of course a good set-up won't make the game, and these other games do the game part better, but that's not what we're talking about here.

[Abraxai]

The groundwork for the story surpasses XI's by a mile. Even the current story is better than XI's generic vanilla crap, even if the execution is poor.

While it can seem introductory so did all of the expansions in XI (aside from maybe RoTZ) which were hard to grasp at first but made sense later on. I can imagine this story getting so damn epic once few things go down;

1) The battle with the primals begin (I figure this is the first part SE is working on currently).

2) We take part in Ishgard's fight with the dragons (I figure this comes after the primals).

3) Finally we make it to the Ala Mhigo where things get nasty and we learn something shocking about the Garleans (laying out the groundwork for the first expansion).

It seems the lore is already set on a three-lock war between the dragons, primals and eorzeans. Who knows what happens once Garleans come into picture and we get to see their hi-tech stuff.

The lore of the game is not an afterthought, even if in the game's current form it is not being used effectively enough. It will end up being one of the strong points of the game, just like in any Final Fantasy. No generic fantasy that is tackled together at the last second (PLAENS OF TELLARRA, EXILD RELM OF ARBOREE, TOWER OF ETERNITYZ).

Of course a good set-up won't make the game, and these other games do the game part better, but that's not what we're talking about here.

I think you're right.

FFXI's city quest storylines we're extremely one dimensional and generic. But I think they redeemed it with Epic and PHENOMONAL expansion set story lines.

I think this game is going to be epic from the off. Once SE actually pad out the lore of the game, give it some depth, history and relevance. As well as some areas for us to explore to actually look into the lore ourselves, as in, Ala Mhigo, Ishgard and Garlemald, it could actually look quite nice.

The story up to the Rank 46 mission is pretty good. There are a couple of missions that are blatantly just "Filler", but it's to be expected. They just need to build on that and start adding more!

They definitely have the ground work in for this to be an epic-ly lored game, as the poster I quoted suggests.

[DavidLocksley]

Betelgeuzah I agree with you that the storyline is not an afterthought. I just think they need to make stuff solid. We need to KNOW the story, not guess at it. This stuff is helping me figure things out though. Thank you guys for all the posts. I hope this helps others as well since I don't think many people get the storyline yet.

[whoopeeragon]

@Abraxia: Woot, I got the first lines of each paragraph right! Thanks for that!

I hope 1) comes first....it will certainly mean access to the Eikons. I wonder how you'll able to receive your summons, and if your elemental affinity will be a factor...

[whoopeeragon]

I hope they also expand into Dravania, and Sharlayan along with it. It'll be interesting to take into account the dragons of Eorzea, since beasts seem to play a prominent part in this game.

[Abraxai]

I hope they also expand into Dravania, and Sharlayan along with it. It'll be interesting to take into account the dragons of Eorzea, since beasts seem to play a prominent part in this game.

I know they will, with time.

But my bigger hope is that when they add these areas there's a bit of versatility to the terrian and landmass itself.

I don't want another zone with 6 Aetherytes and 3 nodes to each Aetheryte and a Landmass that takes 5 hours to walk with absolutely NO difference in texture or terrain from one side to the other...

[whoopeeragon]

Judging by how mountainous Dravania seems to be from the maps, I'll guess that they'll be winding paths all the way through the terrain and high-rise mountains looming even bigger than Mor Dhona's.

[Betelgeuzah]

As for the OP, the dragons exist as real beings, not summons. They are the ones Ishgard is currently fighting. The opening cinematic shows some light about what happened 15 years ago (as it's not a stretch to assume that's when the battle took place) and a) may have something to do with the retreat of the Garlean empire as well as b) may explain how the current summons such as Ifrit and Leviathan were "released" from the Aether underground.

Just like the XI cinematic, it's a method to give some insight on the background of the game's story before it begins, yet doesn't reveal everything about what happened at that time. It's important for the flow of the story. As in XI, you finally figure out what the city was (Tavnazia), what happened there (beastmen attacked, the dark elvaans were wiped out, a huge explosion took place that made the current archipelago the way it is today), et cetera. There wouldn't be anything to find out if we knew all that from the beginning.

Although I think XIV's cinematic is better because they actually show what was going on (we never saw the explosion in XI) and we know the setting before the first expansion (Garlean empire attacking). We also get to see the scene of the events in-game.

There's a lot more to it which can be found in various sources but the problem right now is that all this rich lore is not in-game where it belongs and where we could figure this stuff out through quests and other content, not websites. Everything they need is already written, now they need to build content around it.

I hope they also expand into Dravania, and Sharlayan along with it. It'll be interesting to take into account the dragons of Eorzea, since beasts seem to play a prominent part in this game.

I think that will happen once we've done with the beastmen part of the story (or earlier). There are 5 regions we have no access to, 3 of them being the beastmen regions near the city-states. I don't think it'd be surprising if these areas were opened up once enough content has been made for them. It's not the first time SE has locked areas from us until they've prepared enough content for them to become relevant. Only this time they don't have to store them in the game files for us to check beforehand.

The remaining two regions are probably the region where we get to fight dragons and the Ala Mhigo region where the conclusion of the vanilla will take place. I figured they will be released in the order of beastmen regions > dragon region > ala mhigo region before the end of the year.

[whoopeeragon]

Does anyone think that the light burst with all the 'creatures' blasting from it near the end of the opening movie might be the Eikons? If that's the case, there will be much more, seeing how many of those 'creatures' shot past the Hyur who under the effects of Echo...

[Abraxai]

In the video you clearly saw Ifrit, Titan and Shiva. That's all I know.

I don't think they'll feature as summons.

I think they'll be intense boss fights.