Final Fantasy XIV doesn't actually have that good of a story

[hydralus]

The game and its story is really lengthy so I give it some benefit of the doubt but I agree, for the most part. Some moments are great. But I just find myself bored or annoyed at the progress, most of the time. The characters are largely dull and have no life outside of their involvement with you or whatever the villain of the expansion is, the major enemies have little time to be built up, and they use cheap relationships and revelations that make no sense to try and give the story more impact at the last minute. They've gotten better, for sure, but I'd still say about 70% of the game is just downright bad writing. ShB's MSQ was great, don't get me wrong, but after that it's been a return to mediocrity.

I've been playing Genshin Impact up to the latest release and I'd say it blows FFXIV's story outta the water in storytelling. The characters are more dynamic, there's poetry and philosophy, and they make sure to tie it into the story so it all has relevance in theme and atmosphere. Not to say the side-quests in FFXIV don't have their moments, but again it's sparse moments of greatness spread out between things that are generally lackluster.

And yes, all just my opinion, yada yada. I'll go to my grave saying several of the main antagonists have been written horribly, though.

[DreadCrow]

I mean take Zenos as an example. We killed him and he returned as not one, but two person, one who used his body and the one who actually came back from the dead. And they did the same thing with gosetsu and yotsuyu like i just said. And now i feel the same about dying characters. I don't care anymore, whenever i see a dying character i always think like they are gonna come back and end up not caring about it, like at all

The number one rule of all fiction; if you don't see a body, the character isn't dead. Even if they realistically should be. I mean, this is a fairly common trope, even in things like Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire, which have a reputation for killing off characters quite a bit.

And in Zenos' case, we knew the Echo allowed people to cheat death like... Back in the Seventh Astral Era arc, back in 2.2? If some literally no-named sahagin can come back to life by possessing his underling, why on earth couldn't a named character?

[Kolsykol]

The thing about the quality of any story, is it's highly subjective. While I can't speak on TLOU2, since I never played it and never will, the reason I'm not going to play it is because I didn't like the first game.

For all the praise the game's writing got, I found myself disappoint. Joel and Ellie had good banter, sure, but it wasn't anything markedly better than what you'd find in a Bioware game, and the supporting cast all came off as shallow to the point their sole purpose was to be used as props for the two main characters. Most tragically, I felt, was the fact the antagonists in the game made the raiders in Fallout 4 seem deep... And the raiders in Fallout 4 were written to be pretty much "always chaotic evil". Hell, the one time you think you're going to run into an antagonist who might actually have some depth... They literally give him the most despicable trait. So... If TLOU2 has a great immersive story, I'll never know... Since TLOU1 sort of made me not care.

Also, if you think you need voice acting to get into a story... Please read more. I don't care if it's coming books or manga. Just read.

I actually often feel like voice acting makes for worse writing because things have to be dumbed down to make it faster.
A lot of the dialogue in Bioware games feels pretty inhuman because the voice actors have to record so much ( sometimes multiple characters ) that they just can't read longer dialogue.
It often feels like people are rushing and just don't want to talk to you.

I don't really get the hype for a lot of the Sony exclusives either I think a lot of it just comes from people being all like '' wow it's like I am playing a movie ''.
None of it is really anything new, the sad dad trope and throwing kids into stories has been done to death just because it's in video game form doesn't change that.

Easily my favorite part of the FFXIV story tho is how it handles empathy.
To some extent it is a bit tropey that it's all like '' bad guy isn't the bad guy afterall '' but I really feel like they don't lean into it super hard either.
It's not about the villains being the good guy or getting redeemed it's more about understanding and treating them like actual people and not moustache twirling villains.

Often I feel like when writers want you to feel sympathy for a villain they just redeem them fully.
FFXIV doesn't really do that.

[Reap00]

Do people realize humans posting on a public forum are complete strangers? If a stranger walking down the street offered you their opinion about anything would that opinion really have any value whatsoever? The XIV story is amazeballs. That is my opinion. I don't care what anyone in this forum thinks. That is the end of the discussion. Why do people think their opinion matters? It simply doesn't.

[BaconBits]

Do people realize humans posting on a public forum are complete strangers? If a stranger walking down the street offered you their opinion about anything would that opinion really have any value whatsoever? The XIV story is amazeballs. That is my opinion. I don't care what anyone in this forum thinks. That is the end of the discussion. Why do people think their opinion matters? It simply doesn't.

XIV story sucks, wanna throw hands?

[hydralus]

Do people realize humans posting on a public forum are complete strangers? If a stranger walking down the street offered you their opinion about anything would that opinion really have any value whatsoever? The XIV story is amazeballs. That is my opinion. I don't care what anyone in this forum thinks. That is the end of the discussion. Why do people think their opinion matters? It simply doesn't.

This is sort of a paradox since you're trying to convince people of your opinion about how stranger's opinions don't have value.

[Theodric]

Can I get some more game lists that supposedly have kick ass stories? This is really nice!

My recommendations would be:

Vagrant Story, Shadow Hearts, Forbidden Siren, The Legend of Dragoon, Grandia 2, Ghost of Tsushima and Final Fantasy 12.

[Fellgon]

XIV story sucks, wanna throw hands?

well ff14 have a better story than 50 shades of gray, or any romance books of amazon. thanks Disney haven't bought FF14! if 14 was a amazon book would be like this: FF14: the CEO reborn!

[BaconBits]

well ff14 have a better story than 50 shades of gray, or any romance books of amazon. thanks Disney haven't bought FF14!

I was just mindlessly shitposting but being better than a cheesy romance novel or 50 Shades of Ugh is a hilariously low bar.

My actual opinion on 14's story is that it's alright. It's not God's gift to man as some people would have you believe, nor is it the worst thing to ever exist. I have my gripes with the story such as Shadowbringer's tagline being misleading (Become the Warrior of Darkness except you never actually use the Darkness, in fact you win solely because of the Blessing of Light letting you eat Lightwardens for breakfast), Varis getting sidelined for more Zenos, Garlemald being all but guaranteed to be a ruined shadow of it's former self before we even reach the dang place, and other things that I don't really feel like elaborating on right now.

It ain't the worst, but it certainly ain't the best either.

[van_arn]

It's pretty good, but it's been getting too long for a long time now.