Non-Gamer Watches #165 - FINAL FANTASY XIV

"she's a rabbit, and i am confusion" 😭😭😭😭

“Unnecessary violence to dragons.” Ysayle invites you to her party.

Each trailer is announcing the new expansion for FF14, which is a Massively Multiplayer Online game, like World of Warcraft. Each one continues the overall story. For Heavensward, your character is on the run, blamed for the poisoning of the little girl, who is a Queen basically. Taking refuge in a kingdom that has been at war with dragons for 1000 years. Stormblood has your character liberating kingdoms around the world from the evil empire. And Shadowbringers is your character traveling to a literal parallel dimension and saving it. Hope that clears things up a little! lol

As a fiction writer you would love this game, and it's specifically designed for non gamers so there's really no gamer curve to worry about. (P.s. it's also a great way to grow a channel as ff14 fan are constantly chasing a new player experience for our story high...)

Well you see...the story in a nutshell....is....you start out on a chocobo carriage ride...find a crystal....and then, like 300 hours later you go to the store to replace all the tissues you've used up. And that's basically it.

To answer the "why is everyone white" question, it's because the game is Japanese. Japanese people are generally pale, and very commonly depict themselves in art that way (especially anime) because they like pale skin (kind of like how people in the west like tan skin, they intentionally get tans). What we see as "white", they see as Japanese. It's a game for Japanese people first, so most of the characters in the game will be "Japanese" to represent their core demographic. There are many characters in the game that aren't pale, but most of the main characters are. In the game however, you're not playing a character they created, you make your own character (which can be whatever color you want). Also, these trailers are for "expansions" to the game's story, you're not really meant to understand them without having played the game, so don't feel bad for not catching on.

Game has like over 200 hours of story in the game, so yeah they mostly highlight new zones etc. in trailers and the somewhat "overall plot"

As a hardcore FFxiv-er can I just say that was hilarious to watch!! This is definitely one of those games that looks ridiculous from the outside but honestly I love every odd thing about it 😂😂😂

Final Fantasy 14 is a very story-driven game. Dozens and dozens of hours of story in between each expansion and each of these videos is an intro to each of those expansions. So yes, you are supposed to know what's going on in them. So don't feel bad that you don't because there is A LOT going on in this game. These cinematics are also meant to be a bit vague on what's to come because they don't want to spoil much but also want to deliver a visual treat. :)

Haven't even started watching but oh man am I excited to watch her brain have a melt down trying to understand what the hell is going on in this story 🤣

You're just gonna keep getting upset if you expect a strong, simple connected narrative between trailers. This is an MMO game, and each of these trailers are for expansions AKA large content updates and new things to do. These trailers aren't meant to tell an arching story for a new viewer, they're meant as lore recaps for the previous expansion and then showing/inspiring us for the new expansion they're advertising, usually around showing a new zone/area/city and characters we've met in the game before

"I think I'm missing something." Well just a few hundred hours of gameplay, questing, raids, and dungeons. I've been playing video games since I was a wee lad playing Super Nintendo in the early 90s, and started FF14 last year and it quickly became one of my favorite video game stories of all time.

If you want the story, you have to play the game. There are hundreds of hours of story between everything. It's fantastic.

I've noticed some games, like World of Warcraft, largely tell the story in cinematics (so you can watch a series of them and get the through line) whereas others, like elder scrolls online and apparently final fantasy 14, tell the story in game and just have the cinematic to show..general vibes I guess. The second is definitely my preference (it's a game, not a movie) but does lead to confusion if you're only watching the cinematics. Also, these cinematics are mostly aimed at current and returning players.

These trailers are most likely based on the assumption that the player base has already gone through the Main Scenario story in the game, so it's a trick to put out a trailer without giving too much. They mostly introduce new characters, suggest what the story would be about, introduce new locations, and a little bit of reminder of past expansions. I love the confusion that you had, and I hope it intrigues you enough for you to maybe want to go through the story in-game!

"That seemed like unnecessary violence towards dragons." Yeah, that's heavenward lmao

"I feel like I am missing a key component to the story" Yes. The whole thing lmao. Still loving the reaction! They should have just made a movie along with the game

Imagine that each of these final fantasy 14 trailers as a introduction of a book series. Sometimes it starts you from where you left off at the end of the previous book on to the next book of the series.

Yeah you need to realize that they are not going to tell you all the story, given that there's hundreds of hours of story. It is in fact one of, if not THE greatest continuous stories in all of gaming. There are things they set up 10 years ago that they are JUST NOW paying off in Endwalker, the latest expansion. These are EXPANSION trailers. You need to like find videos on the STORY of FF14 if you want more context. There's a bunch of people who have devoted hours and days of their lives to create such videos, you should watch them; but be prepared to spend hours on it. We don't "just go around fighting" in this game. There are friendships made and broken, enemies to make and fight against, grand quests to go on, monsters to slay, Primals to take down, secrets to find, lands full of forests, deserts, beaches and of ice and snow to explore, and even a chain of sidequests with a detective who can't detect but bumbles his way to the correct answer each and every time. You know how in our world we don't know what secrets the Earth holds under water and in hard-to-reach places of the world? In the game world its very much the same; we still don't know everything about the lands we inhabit here now 10 years on. We are still learning new things about old zones and cities. Also for the "white people" comment, you couldn't be more wrong. This is a Japanese game. They have a lot less compunctions and hangups about white/black race relations than the rest of the world does. They just don't get the whole thing. They create races to match the areas they are found in. Furthermore, there's a bunch of races in this game that are multicolored. In character creation you can literally do anything you want with color. There are even races of sentient animals. There are talking (and walking) catfish for god's sake. This is perhaps one of the most MULTIRACIAL games out there. You are taking a very small sample size of people you see in the videos and extrapolating it to the game at large and that's just not proper; especially given that the main character pictured is the same in each video AND they aren't going to show a lot of the characters from the expansions because they don't want to spoil.

-There are a couple of recaps but maybe the best for you is the one the channel IGN GAMES has titled "Final Fantasy 14: The Story So Far" its about 9 minutes only, there are others that last about 1 or 5 hours so i think the short one is the best choice for you. -The same thing as in the wow intros. Game has long fat story, in fact one if not the best on a mmorpg, but the intros serve more to present the new classes and new enviroments. Dont try to find a cohesive relation between them. -Each numbered final fantasy is a totally different story and universe, only certain thins in common like some creatures or the names of some characters.