Old city intro cutscenes

[DharmaXII]

Does anybody know why they replaced the original city intro cutscenes in the original FFXIV? They were so much better than the ones we have one.. The ones we have now feels so half-hearted compared to the old ones.

For anyone who don't know what I am referring to :

Ul'dah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-nmgLvTFD0

Limsa Lominsa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlKvZPxNsuY

Gridania
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xnhhJisWNs

[Efrye]

I agree, pretty much all cutscenes are very weak in A Realm Reborn, even the more elaborate ones later on. Boring cinematography and mostly bland standard animations.

Most likely they didn't keep the old cutscenes because they didn't fit the new storyline, and for the new ones there just wasn't enough time to produce quality stuff throughout the whole game. I think at least the openings deserved some more attention though - they just don't give a good first impression of the game.

[ChickensEvil]

Good thing they didn't keep those, they look hideous. :P

Seriously though, these cut-scenes really show the improvements they made to the graphical engine!

[Enkidoh]

Indeed, they were good narrative wise but graphically ARR's engine blows away Crystal Tools.

The reason why the new opening is different narrative wise though is because the original openings were connected to storylines that have since been completed/dropped (Ferne revealed a while ago in the old forum which is archived, that

the original 1.0 opening events for each city, and for that matter, much of the starting cities storylines, were not even actually happening - those events had already occurred some ten years earlier and the player was just viewing them through the Echo, a power they were completely unaware of, like what happens to the player in ARR. Only when the player left their starting city for the Path of the Twelve were they truly experiencing events as they happened.

As the Echo has been rendered in a totally different way in ARR (unlike 1.0 where Echo visions were effectively putting themselves in the past, in ARR an Echo vision is basically like an old grainy VHS video and the player has zero interaction with those events), in ARR the starting city's openings are completely different to 1.0, and aren't really heavy narrative wise.

But then, having said that, the new openings are pretty similar to those in FFXI, right down to the player being asked by a npc what their reasons for being there are and then being dropped off in the main street. Sure they're not narrative heavy, but then you don't want to overwhelm a new player with a lore bomb right away, which sadly although was 1.0's strength, it was also it's weakness in that the original openings were far too confusing as to what was really going on (especially when my first point is revealed).