Almost exactly two years after I started, I’m through the post-ARR content. I don’t know how much of this to credit to the MSQ streamlining that occurred with the 5.3 patch or whether it was simply the case that the 2.4 and 2.5 content always boasted much better story content, but I’ve really enjoyed it. Which is not something I think I conveyed well in my last post.
Not to dwell on it too much in this one, I do want to clarify the walk-away message I meant to provide with that post is that FFXIV needn’t be an MMO to be enjoyable. I’d have just as much fun with it as I’m currently experiencing it, even if it wasn’t.
Back to the topic at hand for today… Lordy. What an ending. And that post-credits scene! I’m struggling to find much to say of the non-spoiler variety. Oh! Although I can tell you that I think the main theme song (I believe) of FFXIV ARR, ‘Answers’ might be, if not the, then at least right near the top of my list of favourite Final Fantasy music tracks.
The Flames of Truth version of the cutscene is the first place that I remember hearing the song, but it also plays while the credits roll — so I figured this to be an excellent time to bring this version of the cutscene to the attention of anyone who hasn’t yet seen it. It’s the same as the game version you might be familiar with until about the 5:34 mark — then it takes off, figuratively and literally. You’ll see.
If you’d like to hear “Answers” without the cutscene background SFX (or see the lyrics), you can do so here.
In any case, back to my feelings after wrapping this portion of the game…
“Just wait, it gets better!”
I mean, yeah… It does. In a big way. Like I mentioned in the last post, it wasn’t that I disbelieved the people telling me how good things got in Heavensward and beyond. It was just that, at the time, the future promise of an engaging story wasn’t enough to keep me going when I had so much else on the gaming backlog still hoping to get an edgewise look in.
I had a look at the timings involved. According to the estimates I’ve found, before the 5.3 patch, where I did the vast majority of my play — it took ~65 hours to reach Heavensward. Now, if you were to start today, it’s ~45 hours. Main cuts being to the number of filler quests that used to exist. It sounds like 2.1-2.3 in particular which used to be quite a chore — and were ultimately what drove me from the game — are no longer nearly so tedious to get through.
But 45 hours is not an insignificant investment to demand of your players to reach the point of greatness it has to offer. Whether that’s worth it or not is going to be up to each individual. But I would say the story of ARR wasn’t bad. I was onboard with it almost all the way through.
It was really only the pre-5.3 streamlining version of 2.1-2.3 which, I think, gave the ‘The Horrible Hundred‘ its name. So much teleporting. So much talking. So little happening.
I’m SO Glad I Came Back Though
Because 2.4 to an extent, but definitely 2.5 picked up incredibly. The stakes are higher, the story has momentum and it’s so much easier to become invested.
The Heavensward Trailer gave me a spoiler on one of the events that would happen but actually seeing it all unfold. Feeling that sinking, ‘Oh no…’ in the realisation that the time had come… And seeing the aftermath and reactions of the characters involved…!
*shakes head*
It’s almost hard to reconcile this as the same game as the one I was playing two years ago.
I’m really glad that I came back and gave FFXIV another go and made it through this time. I’m exceptionally excited to get started into Heavensward and see where the story goes from here. I’ve seen the trailers for each of the expansions so I have some rough ideas of the direction of the broad strokes but the level of knowledge I had when I last saw the trailers was far less. It wasn’t likely I’d be spoiled (in a way I’d recognise or remember) about anything terribly specific.
I think that’s not true now. I know enough that watching the trailers again would be dangerous.
So from here on out, I’ll just see the cinematics as the game presents them to me. :)
Congrats on getting through ARR. Now it’s time for the good stuff! Hope you continue to enjoy!
Thanks! I would argue even 2.5 was pretty good stuff, so if it continues to rise from there, then dang! :D
I’m one of those people who never particularly felt ARR was all that bad, to be honest. I guess I don’t mind slow burns.
I will admit there were more fetch quests than there needed to be back in the day, and I felt patch 2.1 in particular was really slow going after coming away from the ending of 2.0 (I swear I remember there used to be a quest a long time ago that forced you to do Guildleves before you could progress in MSQ!!!).
But we didn’t have Heavensward to look forward to, and these patches were being introduced to us as new content at the time. So I guess my point of view was quite different coming through the patches as they dropped!
For the 2.0 ARR, I actually agree. Bit of a slow burn to start as you mentioned, but nothing really ‘bad’ about it.
2.1 and 2.2 changed that opinion for me. As both a barrier to ‘the good stuff’ and the insane amount of fetch-questing… Lordy. But I suspect a lot of the most egregious parts of that are gone now post 5.3.
Also agree I probably would’ve perceived it differently had I experienced them as ‘current’. They still wouldn’t have blown my socks off, but they also wouldn’t have felt as bad as they did coming in late.
It’s been so long, but I want to say so many other things were releasing at that time. Like the first Alliance raids. Coils. New dungeons. Hildibrand. Housing. The first EX primal fights. So story was weak in those patches while the rest of the content really took the fore-front. Not an excuse for crummy story, but I think the team was focused on pumping out end game content and spreading the kind of content to do around.
Just a interesting fact I saw when I was looking it up: patch 2.1 introduced the duty roulette (and vote dismiss). Before that, roulettes didn’t exist. :D
One traditional of mine has been upon getting the credit roll on an expansion and then going back and watching that expansions trailer. From this point forward that trailer reveals so much more than you could ever appreciate before “living” through it.
I like that, and may yoink the idea for myself. :) Certainly being able to appreciate more of even ARR’s expansion was true after the fact.
My memory of the HW trailer, the event that it covers from ARR notwithstanding, didn’t seem to reveal to much to me at this point.
Curious whether I will still think so after the fact. :)
My question wouldn’t be about the quality of the story but the method of delivery. Would it have worked less well as a movie? Or a TV show? If you have a great story to tell and cut scenes are where you tell it, do those forty-five hours of key-pressing add anything to it?
Hmm. I wonder if anyone’s stitched all those cut scenes together and put them on YouTube? (Goes to check…). Well, someone’s done the ARR story and that lasts neary three and a half hours! And that’s just using the cut scenes with voice acting from the MSQ. And here’s Heavensward, the same deal… just under 13 hours, ffs! Stormblood is just under seven hours, which is curious. They quadrupled the cut scenes for the first expansion then dropped back to half of that for the next. Finally, Shadowbringers comes in at just under ten hours.
That’s thirty-three hours of voice acted cut scenes so far. Around fifteen to twenty movies or four or five seasons of a TV show. I wonder how that compares with other mmorpgs? Surely none of them get anywhere close?
I was going to say, I would be most surprised if someone hadn’t stitched the FFXIV sections into ‘movies’ — a lot of games get this treatment on YouTube.
Back to the initial question, I think the key beats of this story could’ve worked in any other long form media, e.g., series or book.
Yeah, it could be adapted to movie form too, but I almost never enjoy the result of long-form to short-form adaptation when I go in already knowing the long-form version so I think it would struggle here.
Although admittedly even for something like a TV series or book, it would require further refinement over what it is currently.
As for other MMORPGs, The Elder Scrolls Online would almost certainly have it beat for total hours of voiced content since everything there is voiced, even the side quests. I know not everyone enjoys that, I think (although I could be misremembering) you were one of those who found the VO of ESO to be barely tolerable, but for my part I quite enjoyed it and thought the quality across the board was definitely exceeding average at the very least.
I don’t have anything necessarily unique to say here, but I am glad you made it through the slog to the other side! Heavensward is a treat and you could even conceivably make it through to current content in time for Endwalker (if that is a thing that appeals to you). I’ve been watching Quazii, a WoW video creator, do the MSQ on his YouTube channel, where he posts condensed cuts of the playthrough, and it reminds me a lot of what I really like and value in FFXIV that I don’t get in WoW. The nature of the game as a sort-of MMO actually helps the delivery I think, but I could expand on that a lot more and that might have been more apropos on your prior post!
Enjoy the ride and hopefully Heavensward doesn’t make you cry (it probably will).
Being current in time for Endwalker does appeal! Not sure how realistic it is for me, balancing out all other game titles as well — but it is of interest.
I made quite a hard push over the last couple of days to get to HW, and I’m glad I did.
Will just have to see whether that momentum continues or whether I perhaps make a step to the side for something like Monster Hunter Stories 2 for a bit. ;)
Congratulations!
I don’t think anyone can blame you for having quit during the Horrible One Hundred. Or that anyone would disagree that nicknamed was earned. I think I said it before, but I believe at the time the developers still weren’t sure how to do post-release content patches and were still kinda traumatized by the failure of 1.0. So they were trying different things to see what stuck.
Nowadays they are pretty confident on what they do and the post-content patches tend to not have any filler and just be related to the main story. Any thing that is optional, like new raids, non-related content, etc, is made truly optional and you have to go seek it by yourself.
I think you did mention that re: the developers, aye. And certainly they found their stride before the end there.
2.1-2.2 in particular were intolerable to me at the time, but things gradually got better, until 2.5 where I would say it was actively great.
Just barely getting started in the HW MSQ now. :)
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I don’t think it got better after ARR. (Let’s ignore the post-ARR slog before Heavensward here.)
I was completely happy with ARR and Heavensward wasn’t worse, but not noticeably better for me. I liked the start of Stormblood a lot but it was at 67 when I stopped playing… So it’s really hard to rate them.
Of the opinions typically voiced in our circles you’d be in the minority to be sure but that doesn’t make your view any less valid.
I’ve now started HW, and it very much has reset to a feeling of lower stakes / more classic open-world interaction, even though the events of ARR are still there in the back of our minds.
I don’t know yet how long this state will hold for, I expect a ‘major’ story beat to come along after I’m done helping both of the sons of our benefactor, but I guess we’ll see!