Keep in mind Final Fantasy 14 is, forgive the redundancy, a Final Fantasy game. It is a long-lasting saga of videogames in which they already know how to make a compelling story with character progression, plot twists, big reveals, etc. After all, they have decades of experience making single-player JRPG games, a type of game in which that type of storytelling is expected.
JPRG players won’t accept nonsense like the Retail story in which between major things of the game story happening in outside material like books, for example, Baine’s death.
The problem with the Retail story is that they try to make a big cinematic linear story but they always fail, the result is too much confusing. Good job trying to be a new player in Retail and try to experience all the story in order to understand it. Even if the new player forgets about old expansions and only plays the current one he will have trouble doing it, the game does not give you in which order the story happens. Without forgetting that the ending of the expansion, with Garrosh scaping to Draenor to start the next expansion, is not even in the game, is another example of major plot points of the story of the game that happens out of screen.
And don’t talk about previous expansion. Good job playing for example all the stories of MOP in order from start to finish, since you go to Pandaria until the death of Garrosh. The leveling story yes, you could do it, but once you reach the content that was available at 90 you have the same problem, all the story at that point is available at the same time, with no way to tell what comes first. And then we have the problem of removed story quests that leave big plot holes.
Or minor characters from previous expansions that suddenly are important. That in itself it is not a problem, secondary characters receiving more screen time happens in every media. But usually, there is some sort of character progression, and Retail usually to that off-screen too, like Nathanos. That was a secondary character from Vanilla that become an important one in Legion after a major character progression…entirely happen off-creen. In-game you suddenly see him being important out of nowhere. I am sure most people’s reaction the first time they saw him in Legion was “Who the hell is this guy?”
The problem with the Retail WOW story is that it is a good story that could be enjoyed…if you watch it on youtube, not if you play the game. That doesn’t leave it in a good place.
That is why simplest stories like Vanilla and TBC could be better than Retail because they are not so cinematic, but at being so simple it doesn’t have the problems Retail story has. A good linear cinematic story is better than simple small stories, but simple small stories are better than a bad linearly confusing cinematic story
Thanks for the new word of the day.
