Thread: Let's Talk About the Low Quality of Side Stories in this Game

So the Endwalker role quests were bad. Really, REALLY bad. Absolutely atrocious, in terms of pacing, presentation. Compared to ShB, they fall severely flat. While the ShB role quests utilized characters previously established in the MSQ and further fleshed them out and gave them proper conclusion, the EW ones revolved around literal whos who became blapshemies, who I could not possibly have cared about. The stories ranged from bland, to outright absurd. When I did the Ishgard quests and got to reveal about an elezen clone being made into a primal of a Heavensward member then a blasphemy, I actually had to stop for about 3 weeks because of how utterly fucking ridiculous the entire premise of this was.

They barely, or not at all in some cases, justifed the entire reason for needing your specific role, which is the entire bloody point. Instead of being given a narrative reason for the reward at the end of each like in ShB, you just......can dye your job gear at the end. Why not before? Literally no reason.

While the ShB quests make sense to be done post-MSQ (though not really during MSQ) as it make sense for and is established that Sin Eaters still roam around Norvrandt, it makes zero sense for you to do the EW quests during MSQ, and I do not believe for a second that there are still blasphemies roaming about post EW. I don't care what the game says, it flat out doesn't make sense, it's stupid on so many levels. The fact that even with the Blasphemy roaming about you barely see anyone else in the respective questlines turn as well makes the entire thing lack tension and feel low energy especially post-MSQ.


However, low quality writing in non-MSQ story content is a recurring problem with storytelling outside of the MSQ, except rare cases like Hildibrand funnily enough. They are usually, at best, okay. Decent. Alright. At best. At worst, they're horrendous, in some cases barely respecting or outright disrespecting the MSQ, or inserting a Mary Sue OC donut steal character like the RDM quests who you are forced to be BFF's with in the span of 5 minutes because the stories do not often respect the severe brevity of their length and treat it like it's a feature-length story when it's a 5 quest plot. Almost like they let the writers just do whatever the feel like in certain cases. This is also seen in the Eden quests, where Ryne and Gaia just become BFF's in the span of a few quests despite Gaia being annoyed with and wanting nothing to do with Ryne and then all of sudden they're friends.

This relationship would have been potentially believable had the writer been allowed to make the story longer, given that friendship actual time to develop organically. But rather than respect the short length of the story, he forced a relationship to happen far too fast. I like short stories, but you need to understand you don't have the same length to do what you can do in a much longer story and should write around this fact. Trying to shove in an entire novel's worth of character development into a very short storyline does not usually work.

(Continued)

One of the problems I think is the way they're told. Unlike the MSQ, which is a nonstop string of quests with no break inbetween, side stories are generally broken up by several levels in between, or in the case of daily questlines entire WEEKS, which completely destroys the pacing. Each quest ends with you and the designated 2 characters you hang out with going seperate ways for a very long time, then the next quest starts with a recap of whatever the hell they were doing since then, which becomes swiftly formulaic. Hildibrand has this problem of pacing as well, but it doesn't force you to go through a recap each time after a break happens and you can just chain the quests that are already complete like a non-stop story. For a class or role quest you can just wait till you're high enough to do them all together, but for Tribe quests, or in the case of the end of Yorha story, this isn't possible.

It seems the writing team behind the MSQ is not the same as whoever is behind side stories. There is a very, VERY noticeable drop off in quality here. To the point of being jarring. It's as if they just bring in an intern to write them. Had I known how bad the PLD quests would be I would've skipped them and I never skip anything. It leads me to question if YoshiP is even aware of the writing quality outside of MSQ, or even cares. But my opinion is that if they are genuinely just not giving a shit and have nobody to oversee quality of these stories, then they should just stop writing them altogether.

Now I will add that there are notable exceptions, like Alexander, Omega, Werlyt (which I think had horrible pacing despite being a good story). There are actual side stories that work with the short length and do it very well, and are actually just outright good stories. But they are shining gems in a sea of trash.

There is a quality standard set by the MSQ, hell even Hildibrand, even if you don't find it funny they're very well told stories at the very least. I'm not asking for side stories to be just as good, but if they're just gonna be okay at best, then why are they bothering to make them? I don't want okay writing, I want GOOD writing. They seriously need to start putting some sort of quality control over the side story content, they need to consider that having the quests be broken up by levels or entire weeks completely kills pacing and they should stop telling stories this way.

But if we're going to get more of EW role quest quality stories then please just stop and stick to MSQ, raid stories (which are hit or miss), or Hildy.

(El Finito)

As someone who has done every side quest except some of the post moogle and crafter/gatherer quests, the side stories in this game are definitely not low-quality. Even the ones that appear in little settlements you pass through in the MSQ will tell you all about the life story of this one person who needs a fish or some meat, as if SE actually care about story-telling compared to other games.

So the Endwalker role quests were bad. Really, REALLY bad. Absolutely atrocious, in terms of pacing, presentation.

The one thing I will agree with is that I knew I had to kill something, but they acted like I, the Warrior of Light, couldn't kill it and needed to do some sort of preparation first. It felt absurd and like the quests were filler until max level. Some of the role quests were less filler and more engaging than others. Getting to know the characters in each was interesting but when you know it's filler it's harder to appreciate it.

While the ShB role quests utilized characters previously established in the MSQ and further fleshed them out and gave them proper conclusion, the EW ones revolved around literal whos who became blapshemies, who I could not possibly have cared about.

This is not correct. The EW role quests utilized characters previously established in the MSQ including the city state politicians and other established characters like Fordola and Arenvald, and gave them a proper conclusion.

They barely, or not at all in some cases, justifed the entire reason for needing your specific role, which is the entire bloody point.

They took advantage of the expertise of the city state politician, such as how Kan-E-Senna is a healer and have you fill in the gap. I found that the role quests tested some things about the roles, knowledge of tank interrupts or making you actually have to heal.

it makes zero sense for you to do the EW quests during MSQ, and I do not believe for a second that there are still blasphemies roaming about post EW.

I felt the same way, but one of the quests clarified that it would take time for the final days effect to wear off even though we stopped it.

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

As someone who has done every side quest except some of the post moogle and crafter/gatherer quests

You even did The Greatest Story Never Told quest...?

Originally Posted by Bunnycake

You even did The Greatest Story Never Told quest...?

Yes, I did.

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Yes, I did.

You madman!

Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

There is a quality standard set by the MSQ

I mean, you could argue that after EW's MSQ, that the bar isn't set very high considering how garbage the EW MSQ was for pacing, respecting previous concepts, and storytelling. The EW MSQ eviscerated any standard of quality set up by SHB by disrespecting everything that came before it. Oh that dude Zodiark that's been built up to be the most powerful primal? Yeah, he got completely trashed by the lv x3 quests. The final days that destroyed the ancients? Yeah, those happened because some depressed guy decided to chuck a twitter birb into space. The sundering that destroyed the unsundered world? Yeah, the person who did it decided to sunder everyone because they weren't suffering hard enough for her liking. Not to mention, the final days that previously destroyed an entire world succeeded in killing a total of... oh right, ZERO main characters. Literally everyone of value survived the literal apocalypse.

EW's storytelling has been pretty awful overall, not just in the side stories. So let's not pretend like the current MSQ is some shining bastion of quality writing. You might have been able to say that during SHB, but that's nowhere near the case since 6.0.