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

[Karthunk]

For a MMO this story is amazing.

[Darthgummibear]

And yet, it seems to be a common practice here on the OF.

That's pretty much every gaming forum in existence, and one of the reasons you should never take forums as gospel for the pulse of any game.

[Heather]

The OP is certainly welcome to their opinion but i strongly disagree. As compared to other MMO's this game has some pretty good storytelling a second best would be ESO. As far as TLOU2 that game had some really bad story telling and just seemed to check off boxes that didnt need to be checked. I really liked the original TLOU though. The story dynamic between joel and Ellie was great.

[Gothicshark]

Agree, and disagree. Yes FFXIV has down times in the story, as it is actually an MMORPG, so it has a lot of MMORPG moments. But it is a Story Driven MMO and frankly of the 2 big MMORPGS the other one has lore but no real story, while FFXIV has to build world lore, story, and has to grow it's characters from scratch something the other major MMO didn't bother with.

Is the Story great yes, is it the best in Final Fantasy Story, no. That crown goes to 6 or 7 or 12... or insert the first FF game someone played because yeah, this is one subject no one can agree on, except maybe 15 where most say it was one of the weaker stories although they did great world building for it.

Now when compared to other Video Games, there is a line that needs to be drawn. As over the last 10 years Cinematic Story telling video games have become a thing (although they tried the concept in the 1990s ... but it failed to take hold then) FFXIV can't compete with a cinematic story game, no RPG or MMO can, not really. Those games are basically movies where you control the predefined protagonist.

FFXIV is not a Movie made as a video game. It like most RPGs is a Video Game first, and a Story second. The game Mechanics is an important part of a RPG, Cinema Video Games the game mechanics are something to do between mini movies. But when you compare FFXIV to other RPGs and MMOs, it is one of the better stories, not the Best, but it's in the top ten contenders.

My list of best RPG stories: (not in order, and counting some games as a group ie Tactics and 12 although technically not the same world they are both Ivalice Stories and fit together as one. Ironically as FFXIV take a lot of Tactics and 12's lore it could fit this as well, but it stands on it's own merit IMO.)

• Mass Effect (1,2,3)
• Dragon Age (1,2,3)
• Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
• Final Fantasy Tactics
• Final Fantasy 10, 10-2
• Final Fantasy 14
• Fall Out New Vegas
• VTW: Bloodlust
• Elder Scrolls Oblivion
• Xenogears

[Elladie]

It's funny you talk about how "normal people" speak when referring to the writing in this game. I don't know where you are from but I have never heard anyone say things like " 'Tis no ordinary woman who can face a primal and emerge the victor! " and "Mayhap a brief summary of the situation would help clarify your thoughts on the matter" or how about "And all not afield will aid the fight from afar"

The writing is used to make the events and things said seem more sophisticated and grand. Here, I can do it too if you really like:

"Please go to the store to get some milk"
can be turned into:
"If you are so willing, go henceforth to the store and procure me some milk"

Both say the exact same thing. Which one was easier to read and understand? Which one sounds more like how people actually speak? You think that just because a character uses long words that it is more adult?

As for the characters, if they are so memorable, give me some defining character traits of say, Minfillia or Yshtola or Alphinaud. For all the time we have "interacted" with them, we know hardly anything about them. I know more about Sylvie from the Conjurer storyline than any of the Scions, despite having done a fraction of the quests with her.

Really? Of course it's not how people speak now. Because it's not set now. It's set in a medieval /Elizabethan fantasy universe with some unexpected techie advances and a lot of magic that lets the inhabitants do cool stuff. People now can't teleport either; do you object to that being in the game too?
The language people use in a story is part of the world building process. When Hilary Mantel wrote Wolf Hall she didn't have people going round saying 'hey, bro, sic shades', people spoke in a way that was as close to Elizabethan English as was able to be understood. Similarly Tolkien had his characters speak in a more formal old fashioned manner that fit with the world picture he was trying to create
I'm not calling Oda and Ishikawa, Tolkien, but the principle is the same.

[Illmaeran]

Something else to consider regarding "flowery language" is needing to match English speech to the Japanese language mouth movements. Depending on how polite/proper an NPC's speaking "Go to the store and get some milk" can require a lot of "syllables" in Japanese. Milk alone is two syllables "gyu nyu", so the non-Japanese language teams likely had to make significant changes in order to match mouth movement to avoid Old Kung-Fu Movie Dubbing Syndrome.

[Lufir]

I'm gonna say it. FFXIV > FFXV's story.

[Ronduwil]

This is an issue of the hype killing the game. FF14 has a good story but it's not as good as the hype makes it out to be so in the end I was disappointed.

"A good story" is subjective. It sounds like you've experienced many games with good stories, so your bar for what constitutes a good story is higher than average. Keep in mind that much of the hype surrounding the story quality for this game is being generated by WoW players who have unwittingly been mustering enthusiasm for lore that has been retconned from day one. I've never understood the enthusiasm for WoW lore because I've been playing Warcraft since the days when Orcs were unambiguously evil demon summoners and Elves were staunchly allied with the humans to defend their world from the Orcish invasion. Anyone who's willing to shrug their shoulders as the foundation of the world's lore is turned on its head just to balance out the number of races in each faction clearly has a high tolerance for poor story telling. In contrast, FFXIV's story has the following favorable qualities:

• Foreshadowing
• Villains who are motivated by heroic ambitions as opposed to sheer insanity
• Characters who remember who you are, acknowledge you as their comrade from expansion to expansion, express gratitude, and exhibit actual concern for your well-being from time to time
• Story arcs with satisfying conclusions

You'd think that these would be the bare minimum expectations for a video game story, but apparently they're not. The fact that FFXIV adheres to basic tenets of good story telling already makes it far above average in terms of video game story quality. In 1995, I thought that The Wheel of Time was a pretty good series until I read A Game of Thrones in 1996 (ironically, I only picked it up because it had an endorsement from Robert Jordan on the cover). Our standards for story telling are relative to our experiences with stories.

[lezard21]

Having recently finished a replay, I think that the problem with people overhyping the story comes from both nostalgia and context in time.

For example, people like to hype Heavensward and it's characters as being la crème de la crème of storytelling. I could see myself thinking that too if my only contact with any narrative media up to that point had been 1.0 and ARR's story. But to anyone that has ever read a book or watched a movie/series/anime before and is not subject to nostalgia or hivemind cult thinking, Heavensward barely makes it as a passable story.

For being the Dragonsong "War" the world feels pretty much dead when 90% of the story is actively resolved by 4 people (You, Alphinaud, Estinien and Ysayle). The citizenship of Ishgard, which you are later lead to believe you formed strong bonds with, is pretty much apathetic to the whole ordeal save 2 instances (during the Steps of Faith and when rescuing Aymeric).

The B plot of the Ul'dah Monetarist Conspiracy is unceremoniously resolved with 2 quests (that are very intrusively shoved between the plot of the Dragonsong War in a very awkward way ie. "Cid needs time to build the ship to fight Nidhogg, go find Lolorito or sth") with the only lasting consequence being that Raubahn now has one arm, giving the strong feeling that the devs either didn't know how to resolve this conflict while organically integrating it to the Ishgard plot, or ran out of time.

Characters like Haurchefant are good, but nowhere near the "he gave us cocoa when we were sad uWu" memetic veneration status that he currently has. His whole character is he loves the WoL very good much yes. His backstory as a bastard of house Fortemps and how he feels about it is barely explored, which is a shame since that was a well of characterization left untapped. Or how he feels about the whole social hierarchy in Ishgard. Not to mention he barely shows up in the HW story proper after his initial appearance and eventual death. As girl boss as Ysayle is, she also lacks any proper backstory, not to mention her portrayal and actions in post-ARR vs her portrayal in HW are hard to reconcile as the same character.

But the biggest problem with characters as a whole in HW, is that we are later introduced to characters that are exactly the same in every aspect, but done better. Fordola is a better Ysayle, with a proper established motivation as to what lead her to take villainous actions, and G'raha Tia is a better Haurchefant, with active participation towards the story he takes place in and proper elaboration on the reason of his fascination with the WoL. AND both of these characters interact with the world outside the immediate protagonist circle, something the HW characters do not.

[DreadCrow]

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.