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

[Lanadra]

Even a bad open world game like Skyrim

>Bad
>Skyrim

[Haru304]

I think what sells the plot for Shadowbringers is more how the story is presented than the themes present in the story. It's involving, it's immersive and it feels meaningful. Not unlike the story elements and plot devices used to present the events surrounding the Battle of Carteneau and the Fall of Dalamud. In terms of comparing it to the JRPGs it borrows a lot of its themes from, I'm not really sure if it overly holds up that much? The majority of my friends who usually shit on JRPGs says that they love Shadowbringers for the same story elements they avoid JRPGs for? Over the top moments, intense character drama, odd mixing of sci-fi and fantasy, etcetera.

In terms of comparing it to the Final Fantasy franchise (over the last decade) as a whole...

Type-0 was pretty good, poor game play not withstanding and FFXIV borrows a reasonable amount from Type-0.

Generally, yeah, I'd agree the storyboarding for Shadowbringers as a singular expansion eclipses the FFXV, FFXIII and FXII franchises respectively.

This is all purely subjective. (I shouldn't really need to have this disclaimer but hey)

[RyuDragnier]

>Bad
>Skyrim

IMO...they're actually right on that one, but that's because it doesn't have the same spirit as Oblivion, and I still haven't been able to get close to finishing a faction in Skyrim.

[Laphicet]

>Bad
>Skyrim

Someone hasn't played vanilla Skyrim in a while... or played some older open world games.

Skyrim has a lot of problems with internal inconsistencies and overall downgraded lore from previous Elder Scrolls games, as well as lacking gameplay and a gutted skill system compared to past entries in its own series. And that's without comparing it to countless other non-TES open world games even before Skyrim came out that had more depth and better stories.

People are just more forgiving of it due to it being an excellent modding platform as well as nostalgia.


As for this thread itself. Compared to other JRPGs, yeah FFXIV's story is kinda meh. But it's given a lot of praise for being so quality for a MMO, which are typically not known for their story.

Compare it to the story of other SQenix properties and it's... not so good. Only recent one I can think of with a worse story is Octopath and that's moreso due to it's disjointed nature of being 8 mini-stories and not due to being terribly written... and even then it's only marginally worse than ShB's story.

Hell even Bravely Default 2, with it's story that falls apart in the latter chapters, is still a more solid story with more interesting characters and plot than Shadowbringers.

[Haru304]

Someone hasn't played vanilla Skyrim in a while... or played some older open world games.

Skyrim has a lot of problems with internal inconsistencies and overall downgraded lore from previous Elder Scrolls games, as well as lacking gameplay and a gutted skill system compared to past entries in its own series. And that's without comparing it to countless other non-TES open world games even before Skyrim came out that had more depth and better stories.

People are just more forgiving of it due to it being an excellent modding platform as well as nostalgia.


As for this thread itself. Compared to other JRPGs, yeah FFXIV's story is kinda meh. But it's given a lot of praise for being so quality for a MMO, which are typically not known for their story.

Compare it to the story of other SQenix properties and it's... not so good. Only recent one I can think of with a worse story is Octopath and that's moreso due to it's disjointed nature of being 8 mini-stories and not due to being terribly written... and even then it's only marginally worse than ShB's story.

Hell even Bravely Default 2, with it's story that falls apart in the latter chapters, is still a more solid story with more interesting characters and plot than Shadowbringers.

And you know you can trust the opinion of this poster because they're a beloved character from the best Tales game! <^-^>

[Skivvy]

Join Date
May 2021

Yeah, nothing to see here.

Ah yes, lets totally ignore and try to invalidate any opinion a new player may have because they dared to insult the great XIV. Sure, they could be a troll, but they also could not be. And your forum join date doesn't mean that's when you started playing the game, just the date you were unlucky enough to stumble into the hell we call the OF.

But at any rate, I also agree with OP. There is a lot of praise tossed around regarding the story, but Ive never been too enthralled by it (did love the main ShB stuff though). But even my beloved ShB was filled with a ton of fetch quests and useless fluff, so maybe their point still stands...

[lezard21]

Replying to a very obvious troll thread, but since a discussion has formed by non troll people, might as well.

I started playing last year around July/August. A couple of friends had hyped the story and raiding of the game for a while, so decided to join them when the game was on sale. My friends were hurrying me to get to endgame so we could do endgame content, but also telling me to not skip cutscenes because the story was good. Having played MMOs for the past 15 years I was very very skeptical and went ahead and hit that skip button like no tomorrow.

Around February this year when things had slowed down a bit I decided to create an alt and go through the story proper.

Did it live up to the hype? Yes. And no. When compared to single player story driven games like the OP did, there are a lot of other games with far better stories.

However comparing it to them is not fair, since this is an MMO. And within the limitations of the genre, I can say that of all the 10+ MMOs I played seriously + some others I didn't finish, FFXIV has one of the best stories.

The thing that I liked most was that, while ARR was pretty much a self contained story (and who could blame them after what happened in 1.0 they had no guarantee wether the endeavor would succeed or not), everything that comes after is introduced or foreshadowed very early in the story, planting the seeds for the future, and reintroduced patches or expansions later.

What I did not like and I think kinda takes away from the experience for people whom this is not their first RPG, is the use of very abused cliches. For example, even when I was cutscene skipping, as soon as I arrived in Ishgard and saw there was a church I immediately knew that they were going to be evil. It's a Squarenix game, the church gotta be evil. At least to the games benefit, they do not treat this like a huge twist for the player who by that point should have picked up that there was gonna be a twist with Ysayle constantly hammering "you need to know the truth!!1!", but rather it's a twist for the characters. But I just wish they had avoided the church cliche, and think that a better twist would have been for Ysayle's version of the events to actually have been the fake one, without her knowing.

But overall my experience with the story was very pleasant considering it's an MMO. I do wish that people would stop overhyping it though, since it's very easy to backfire.

[RyuDragnier]

Ah yes, lets totally ignore and try to invalidate any opinion a new player may have because they dared to insult the great XIV. Sure, they could be a troll, but they also could not be. And your forum join date doesn't mean that's when you started playing the game, just the date you were unlucky enough to stumble into the hell we call the OF.

We've had a lot of trolls with recent join dates the past year, so at this point whenever we see a thread that feels like bait, we assume it's bait.

[Vahlnir]

The fact you decided to say the last of us 2 was good completely made your point invalid.

And this is where the thread should have ended.

We've had a lot of trolls with recent join dates the past year, so at this point whenever we see a thread that feels like bait, we assume it's bait.

If it looks like bait, sounds like bait and acts like bait...it's totally bait.

It's just GD 101 at this point.

[TaleraRistain]

and then came 3 and you realize nothing you did mattered :P

We do not speak of Mass Effect 3 and its cookie-cutter endings