NPC recognition in Endwalker

[EdwinLi]

This isn't what they do.

If the character is much the same at the start and end of the earlier story, and current events don't rely on it happening, then they can participate in later stories and they'll just gloss over it and not talk about whether it happened or not. Occasionally it will be highlighted as not happening, like Alisaie at level 60 will specifically say that your business at the Binding Coil was left half-finished even though the entirety of Coil happens at level 50 if you've done it.

If you didn't do it yourself, anything that changes as the consequence of a side story hasn't happened yet.

I said certain ones, not all of them. Most of them are like this but I remember a small amount still played out without the WoL but they skip details about what happened but I don't remember which one since there are so many side stories now.

Yes, absolutely, the technology exists and has for a very long time. (Incidentally, some examples I can immediately think of are meeting Tiamat after doing Coils, doing Eden after doing the all-roles capstone quest, and doing Eden, weirdly, after doing Scholar). It is not a question of 'is it technically possible'.

The problem is logistics. Again, with Tank alone you've now been forced to include at least four NPCs, each that have to have conditional dialog based on how much of their respective questline you've done, which in some cases would lead to a drastic change in all of their dialog (if not even further), and in some cases would require different outfits or the presence of entirely different NPCs based on when in that questline the player is at.

And there are a lot of different permutations. The tank storyline has to be written for 'have done every single job quest', 'have only done Dark Knight', 'have completed Gunbreaker, am partway through SB Warrior, abandoned Paladin in HW, and still haven't found Dark Knight', and basically every single other permutation. Hell, they probably need to write a version of the quest that assumes no tank storyline has been done, both to make sure that someone who hasn't done a single job quest and someone in the future with a hypothetical fifth tank released later are both still able to do the story.

Basically, it's really complicated!

Either way we will soon see how the Job role storyline is handled next week. We know certain Job NPCs may appear either way since we seen them in the trailer.

There is also the possibility SE may have the Job role quest option effect on the Job Role quest where at a certain point players are given dialogue option that determine which Job quest characters appear based on which Job quest they finished similar to what they did during that one moment in Shadowbringer MSQ that is determined by how many Job role quest they completed. Of course that may mean that have a special Everyone appears option if players complete all their Job role quest related to that Job role Quest.

[Iscah]

I said certain ones, not all of them. Most of them are like this but I remember a small amount still played out without the WoL but they skip details about what happened but I don't remember which one since there are so many side stories now.

The only one I can think of is the 30-50 DRG storyline, and even then only because it's said or implied that Nidhogg possessed Estinien once before fully taking over at the end of Heavensward.

As a rule, it isn't how they've handled optional storylines in years and I can't see them selectively starting it now.

[EdwinLi]

The only one I can think of is the 30-50 DRG storyline, and even then only because it's said or implied that Nidhogg possessed Estinien once before fully taking over at the end of Heavensward.

As a rule, it isn't how they've handled optional storylines in years and I can't see them selectively starting it now.

Either way we will find out soon. With Endwalker being the finale of Season 1, Yoshi-p and the development team may put a lot of effort into the Job Role Quests as well.

Season 2 may continue the Job Role quest trend but we can't be certain how they handle things during this grand finale to Season 1 so everything are just guesses.