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.