Final Fantasy XIV All Cinematic Trailers Reaction

"This man can't catch a break!" This could be the tag line of FFXIV's campaign.

So a bit of perspective on the 2nd trailer. The first version of this game had so many problems that they actually shutdown the game servers and completely remade the entire game. No one knew what was going to happen just that the game was done. As soon as the shutdown happened this played and blew everyone’s minds.

"I'm about to look up this OST" Have fun, it is the current Guinness World Record holder for most original pieces in a video game (350+ tracks).

Few moments: 1. Old guy, Luisoix, was a very powerful wizard. When Garleans dropped the lesser moon Dalamud on the plains of Cartenau, releasing Elder Primal Bahamut (in FFXIV summons are called either Primals or Eikons depending on country + extra round - in one specific place they are called Eidolons (like in FFIX)), he gathered power left from summoning The Twelve Gods and changed himself into Primal Phoenix. In this world Primals have two goals - perform wish of their summoners and gather as many followers as possible, even if it means - bending people's minds to their will. Even if it turns people into mindless slaves. Permanently. Luisoix, becoming Phoenix, got only one goal - to bring rebirth to the Eorzea, ending cataclysm that became known as Seventh Umbral Calamity (yes, there were 6 calimities of similar power - endless ice and snow, massive flood, huge earthquake etc.), bringing Sixth Astral Era to its closure. From that goes: 2. You got Bahamut right. 3. The Knight on the Horse is Odin. He has two forms - Standard boss-fight (or "Trial" as game calls them) and World-boss. World-boss variant has little quirk - when it appears next time, it uses appearance of the player character who dealt killing hit to him during previous fight (it is heavily implied that Primal is not warrior itself, but their sword - Zantentsuken and warrior is - whoever picks up the sword). 4. Since the game is MMO, they needed someone to represent players. Initially it was entire party, but later they ended up with single plain looking midlander. You have 8 races to choose from, each race has 2 clans, which can be quite different from one another (especially Hyurs, Roegadyns and Miqo'te) 5. 2nd expansion was heavily inspired by Dragoon storyline from Realm Reborn and story was going onward with it and was dedicated to war between Holy See of Ishgard against dragons. Funny enough, while Protagonist shows off Dragoon relic armor (The Dragonlancer set), Dragoons were in the game almost from 1.0. Instead expansion added three different jobs - Dark Knight (like Cecil from early FFIV - tank with massive sword1), Machinist (something like Edgar from FFIV - Damage dealer with a gun and many other types of devices that include a flamethrower, a shotgun, circular saw and a battle robot) and Astrologian (healer that uses astronomical globe and cards to give buffs to party members) 6. You got him right. White-haired dude is the Cid of this FF entry. 7. Stormblood expansion was mostly centered on war against Garlean Empire in Eorzea and Far East. It added some unique looking places aside of Japanese-Chinese-styled fantasy, like Deep-Sea Gungan-esque bubbled settlements or literally Fantasy Mongolia. You've ever seen Fantasy Mongols? Now I can say that I have. 8. Would you be surprised if I say that Shadowbringers is fan-beloved? It hits VERY different tone than previous expansions. 9. When music in the trailer changes to violins while camera makes flyby around Crystal Tower and city, it plays "Eternal Wind" - overworld theme of Final Fantasy 3. Also level 50 Raids "The Labyrinth of the Ancients", "Syrcus Tower" and "The World of Darkness" are heavily based on the ending of Final Fantasy 3 and Shadowbringers main story partially based on some concepts that FF3 brought 10. In addition Shadowbringers trailer showcases main additions to the game with that expansions. Aside of massive storyline it revamped some core characters, shifted focus on them and changed their Jobs. Thancred became a Gunbreaker (tank that uses Gunblade), Urianger (the Elf guy) became Astrologian, Y'shtola (the woman in dark dress) became a "Sorceress" (kinda like Black Mage but not really) and they added Dancer job along with Viera race (funny moment - at the time Viera were female-only race, but since Endwalker male Vieras were added, now we are only waiting for Female Hrothgars (possibly in next expansion) so True Catboys won't have to feel so lonely anymore) 11. Oh, no-no-no-no, DO NOT call Zenos discount Sephiroth. Not in front of Zenos' fans. It's ok to call Ardyn from XV discount Emet-Selch, but Zenos... No. Just no. You're not ready for the fan rage, that I can assure you. (to be more realistic, Zenos does look a bit like Sephiroth visually, but in a same way as Ascians at the start look a lot like Organisation XIII from Kingdom Hearts - some visual similarities, but if you go deeper, it's nothing alike) 12. In general XIV has some of better cinematic trailers not just for FF or MMO games but like... Probably some of the best cinematic trailers at this time. Considering that XVI has dropped cinematic trailers completely, XIV might be last Final Fantasy game to get new fully pre-rendered CGI trailers from Square Enix in visible future. Other points: game has very generous free trial without limitations on playtime and only limits available content by what is available in core game and first expansion. When new expansion is released, previous one gets delisted but you have to only buy latest expansion in order to get everything so price for full game is $60+subscription fee. While game is, like WoW is sub-based and has cash shop, that cash shop only sells level boosts/story skips, cosmetics, mounts and emotes. Nothing that can be gained in game is purchasable in the store and even opening store in game (and even then it only opens hyperlink to the store page in your web-browser) requires almost arcane knowledge because it's not shown explicitly anywhere. Game is not designed for any addons and all content can be finished without 3rd party tools You can get game for Windows, Mac (although client has not been properly updated for Apple Silicon Macs and still uses Intel-based code), PS4 and PS5. It has full crossplay and Playstation players are playing on the same servers as PC players. If you're playing on PC, you can use gamepad, if you playing on Console, you can use Keyboard and mouse Game has 20 combat jobs, 3 gathering jobs and 8 crafting jobs. Every job is considered as full-blown job with special abilities and gameplay (yes, including crafters). You can select your job at any time as long as you're not in combat or not in dungeon/raid/solo instance Aside of like 7-8 different Chocobo types, game has over 150 different mounts, which include but don't stop at: Dragons, Magitek Armor, Airships, Horses, Wolves, Birds, Elephant, Giant Tortoise, Seat carried by Moogle and even more bizzare things. It has Triple Triad minigame from FF8. People love it, new cards are added with each new patch. Each patch adds large chunk of content, including new story content and quests and new gear, dungeons, raids etc. Hence amount of content in this game is somewhat staggering. There is entire video series about references to other Final Fantasy games in XIV and even with its massive size, some of the references are omitted due to how many there are. And not only Final Fantasy - game had crossovers with Garo TV series, Monster Hunter and Nier and has massive references to other TV shows, anime and games.

Bro this game is literally like an amusement park for Final Fantasy fans, and you should 100% play it with the stuff you catch in these trailers

The guy riding the dragon in the Endwalker trailer is by far my favorite character in the game. His name is Estinien and his story arc is so good.

I love how everyone gets Bahamut right when they see him. "Is that Bahamut?" Yep!

"whys buddy so angry?" heh the game has a entire multi stage raid to explain why bahamut is big angy.

The composer for all of XVI's music is the same composer for XIV, Masayoshi Soken. He is a genius, truly.

Yes, the old guy helped the heros escape by porting them 5 years into the future. So its the same world just 6 years later. The world has had some time to recover.

18:20 - essentually time travel but what really happened was old guy wizard sent the characters (representative of the player) into a pocket dimension for 5 years but for them it felt immediate. Also, the mark on the characters in the final trailer is a tattoed version of a PHD - it shows they are "Archons" and have graduated the Sharlayan university.

Interesting thing of note about Shadowbringers Trailer: The character(The Derplander as many call him, the main character) starts off the scene as a Bard/Archer(as seen in very first trailer), then changes to a Warrior(as seen in 2nd trailer and start of Heavensward trailer), then changes to a Dragoon as seen in the Heavensward trailer, then changes to a Monk as seen in the fight against Lyse(the girl in red dress on top of the giant statue hand), then he changes to Samurai which is seen when he split the bullets, then finally to Dark Knight as the theme of Shadowbringers was of course bringing Darkness to an overwhelming amount of light to create balance. Interesting note about Endwalker trailer. Each of the previous expansion's main themes/trailer themes are featured in the song "Footfalls" that plays during the Endwalker trailer.

The guy you keep seeing is actually the stand-in for the player character. Each expansion, he takes a different class role. In the first trailer he was a warrior. the snowy themed expansion he takes the role of dragoon, and so on. Basically where you see that guy, He is you. You are the hero of the story and everything in the cutscene is what you do, or happening to you.

The beef with the dragons is explained in great detail during the events of Heavensward. If you're interested, Heavensward is part of the free trial. Unlimited play time with some limitations on what you can do in the game, but you can play all content included in A Realm Reborn and Heavensward before needing to pay a sub.

It is absolutely INSANE that you had no prior knowledge of the game, but were able to call a lot of the plot points on visual cues alone. You're very observant, great job!

I've always been a big fan of the FF series but I was never an MMO person, and yet after watching the Shadowbringers trailer on a whim I literally installed the game and here I am, over three years later, with over 200+ hours in the game. It really is just that good! :D

A note on the first trailer: Those little "cards" the character picked up represent "Leves." In essence, "Adventurer Wanted" advertisements offering rewards for doing repeatable sidequests. These are also present in the modern version of the game. You go to the location listed in the Level description, activate the card, and the monsters spawn. There are also crafting (make stuff) and gathering (find stuff) leves. The system gives players a different way to level when they are stuck on the normal quests or just bored; they can also be an easy way to scrounge up gil (money), crafting crystals, and other resources.

The second trailer you watched "Flames of Truth" is actually the full version of the original FF14 Version 1.0 end-game cinematic. The shorter version ends with the old man (Louisoix) appearing to die, then picks up 5 years later to show the heroes he teleported away appearing and seeing that everything was not fully destroyed. The backstory to this is that the original 1.0 version of FF14 was pretty bad, and was such a buggy mess that they decided to just patch it up enough to be playable and not completely bad. By patch 1.20 or so, it was actually pretty decent when the servers weren't crashing. Then with 1.21 they started making the Red Moon larger in the sky until by 1.23b it was fully visable in the sky and clearly was not a moon. A final boss fight was implemented (Riven Road) and then on the last day they devs started spawning monsters in cities and causing chaos, and when the servers were shut down the shorter version of the cinematic was played revealing FF14 was getting a new game with 2.0 called "A Realm Reborn". There's a neat documentary on it by NoClip.

man.. this game is a MUST play mmorpg if you like that style, but even without liking mmos the story, music, world and atmosphere are all beyond amazing. after experiencing the 500+ hour journey and experiencing the end of it all.. i can confidently say it has changed my life forever. its a fresh storyline individual to 14. but its extremely long. i know for a fact it would be a game to sit very special in your heart if youve played those final fantasy games. not necessarily asking for a playthrough as it is very different and long, but even if you play it in your own time its one hell of an experience. free trial allows you to experience all of a realm reborn and heavensward! heavensward is one of the best expansions in the story by far. but every single one of them is amazing and will probably make you cry by the end of the last one regardless of who you are.

Shadowbringers is such a step up over the other trailers... still my favorite is endwalker because of the amount of foreshadowing and because the song is actually the best one for me, it has so many facets and tries to mix differents soundtracks along the trailers and in-game, the lyrics itself are telling you the story of the "Warrior of Light", more like, the mc is talking directly to the world. And we are not even talking about the "Wings of hope" part.