The Story In Missions

Ok, technically there's so many quests and things that technically anything can be considered a "story", an arc that characters go through, but I feel pretty sure that the missions are the main big thing where some writers put their effort into, and ... naturally there's things like opinion, people can have different views, but now that I'm going through all the missions (I still have to finish Wings of the Goddess and Rhapsodies of Vanadiel) I notice how very different they all are. Very different stylistically.

[this is my personal bias, sorry if I offend anyone if I say something in an undignified way)

Nations 1-6: Simple Shadow Lord stuff, no real major conspiracy, just a straight forward narrative, and I'm ok with that.

Bastok: Issues with race and corruption, which are not entirely resolved by the end, but the future is looking brighter

Windurst: Emmm Star Sybil rules over the kingdom, but she's not very confident, but she's got people who trust her, which helps the kingdom in the end???? (sorry, had problems getting the point here)

San d'Oria: ... lack of comunication... the Elvaan are really dense. (HEY, I'm an Elvaan and a San d'Orian! This was dumb!)

Rise of the Zilart: sort of a continuation of the Shadow Lord story. I didn't like a lot of stuff here, but I felt like it was an okay continuation

Chains of Promathia: So mysterious and fascinating, but by the end I was just scratching my head, confused who sided with who, asking myself "hey guys.... this all started with Bahamut and those weird Promyvion dungeons, right?"). Eh, at least I liked Prishe and ulmia, that's for sure.

Treasures of Aht Uhrgan: Much simpler.... I got the jist of everything, and while I did not love it, I felt perfectly ok with the story.

Wings of the Goddess: Uhhhhhhhhh what? There's Cait Sith and Lilisette, and time travel too and..... maybe it'll make sense to me later, but for now it's just weird.

Seekers of Adoulin: This one was sort of frustrating and confusing to me, but by the end I got the deal and liked it.

Rhapsodies of Vana'diel: Ok, perhaps normally I'd judge, but this is definitely the final story in FFXI, and I feel like it hits some very great notes as a final storyline,even managing to motivate me to go through all the other story missions.


Eh basically I write this wondering how people feel about the storylines that were delivered in the game. HOPEFULLY WITHOUT SPOILERS, even if I beat almost all these missions... ya know.

Rank missions are boring, doesn't matter where you're from.

Rise of the Z is the exp I like the least.

With Chains of P it starts getting good, but the story is a bit convulted and has a poor delivery.

AU is maybe my favourite. It's self-conclusive, it has an interesting lore, the characters are very good.

Wings of the G annoys people cause it involves time travel, but I think it's a good story and Lilisette is a likable character. But the real strong part of wotg is the nations storylines, those are excellent and tie in perfectly with the amazing lore that this game has built.

Seekers of Arciela is okay. I think it has a huge lot of wasted potential that I can only guess it happened due to poor production time and cost.

Rhapsodies of Iroha feels a bit too dismissive for me. Probably it feels better if experienced while doing other missions as it was intended, as a matter of fact the ending felt almost like the only really interesting part. It came along with Aloha Iroha though that is the best thing ever and should have existed since day 1 of the game!

Some thoughts:

- Why did the Zilart princes, who were the ageless rulers of the richest country in the world(?) pick a fight with anybody? Like ***, you bros already won the game, just sit back and like, do anything other than start trouble.
- I still have no clue what Lion's personality is supposed to be.
- CoP is so long and convoluted that I forget at least half of it. Remember that hobo Galka? Yeah, me neither. I'm sure there was also an excusereason why we went to the Sacrarium but who the hell knows.
- I know SE thinks Balamor is the greatest cuz they put him in like everything since his introduction, but its still weird that he's full of tricks like traveling through dimensions yet also hanging out in Ra'Kaznar staring at a wall cuz he gave up.

After the Crystal War, and Jeuno ascended to the height of its power, they got bored and let their accounts go idle for a long while. They decided to reactivate upon hearing about the new expansion, but--while their gear and abilities were still top-notch--they just ended up getting pwned by the new content and rage-quit. (Only to reactivate again, later, after CoP, and again for HTMB.)


Lion was created during those early formative days of SE's MMORPG character-development-methodology, and the mixed priorities show in her character. Only years later, with the advent of SOA, would players finally be given a direct interactive choice of whether to just stare at an NPC's boobs or at her ***.


Fomor panties.


I would think...

I enjoyed all the stories, but Chains of Promathia was the one I enjoyed the most... teary eyed at the end cutscene, haven't felt that kind of emotion from a cutscene in a game... in a long time. But as for my feelings in a little more detail.

Original Missions - I liked the tiny bits of backstory we got regarding the northern expeditions, and I appreciated the direct route the story took. It was an earlier one so I mean, wasn't fantastic in its detail.

Rise of the Zilart - I actually comprehended most of this after I finished than I did during. I enjoyed it but the motives of the brothers did throw me through a loop for a bit, I guess I understand their desire to reach Paradise.

Chains of Promathia - The most memorable storyline i played through, beginning to end I loved it. Its been a long time and I did forget some of the finer details of it, but it doesn't really matter... I forget a lot of things. Characters were good, fights were fun, music was amazing, the journey great, MILORD PROMATHIA, and the ending cutscene had me tearing up.

Treasurs of Aht Urghan - The bits with Odin/Alex kinda confused me but its an age old FF thing so I filled in the blanks. I liked Najas character in the "Love to hate" kind of way, the royalty bits weren't the best but I like Aphmau as a character. Don't remember a lot of the motives from them wanting to control Alex but I think it was something Far East War related? Blah?

Wings of the Goddess - Thoroughly enjoyed this expansion, it was a slow start but around the Northland expedition it got real fun. The individual cities quest lines were also very interesting and engaging, I especially loved the one regarding Fenrir. This storyline I remember more than the others, but some things still confuse me like Atomos and his relation to Altana, if he concedes to her wishes like the other Avatars do, and if he does, why did this conflict begin when Altana coulda been like, Yo, don't eat this world. The Rhapsodies CS at one point made it seeeem like he would listen to her... Also, I like how in some of the cutscenes your character actually DOES ***

Seekers - Have not completed yet. So far I like it, but a problem occurs that I wish I could make more choices. I'd like to beat the f**k out of some of those Head-house NPCs.

Rhapsodies - Wish it was a little more in depth but enjoyed what we got.

They desired to ascend to the realm of gods because... reasons. Zilart were in connection with the realm of gods through the dawn maidens and they built Tu'Lia, hoping to be even closer to them. The Celestial Nexus at the center of Tu'Lia was designed as a port to connect to the Crystal Line and through that, they dreamed of reaching the realm of gods.


Me neither. Her background is no more than "she is the daughter of the master pirate, Gilgamesh (who is also underdeveloped)". She is highly adventurous and brave and... yeah, that is it.


I agree that it is convoluted. I don't remember much of it off the top of my head either. We went to Sacrarium because Prishe wanted to come in contact with the magical (presumably made by Zilart) statue of Promathia in the relic room which was recovered by pirates and brought to Tavnazia before the Crystal War. She thought she could learn what the twilight god desires. She raised her amulet in front of the statue, it responded and she had a vision explaining what she wanted to find out.


Yeah, he has been everywhere. He is an interesting character and the devs are just using him to spice up the rushed content. About his appearence under disguise in Ra'Kaznar; he is basically bored and wants the adventurers to entertain him.

It's all Eald'narche's fault. Ever since he snuck into the forbidden room and had a vision of paradise, he caused a worldwide orgasm because of the hivemind.
And so for the following millennia the zilarts have been looking for a way to*** again.

I think the logic was to use Alexander to defend against the Empire's many enemies (beastmen and the Far East). I suppose the subject of national defense would probably be the closest FFXI ever got to having reality subtext.

I actually see some mentions of Lion, and do notice an entire pattern to it all.

The 3 nation missions (first half at least) had Lion, she was meant to be "another adventurer". She then served the purpose of dragging the player to Norg, where the story continued with the Zilart missions. Just a supportive character, but felt like glue to get it together.

Then there was Chains of Promathia with Prishe, who was kind of like Lion, but felt much more fleshed out, and had big importance in the story. You were less of a hero, and more of a supporter of her, but that allowed the story to be more interesting.

We continue on to Aht Uhrgan where ... there was not really a central character, but the closest one was Nashmeira.

Wings of the Goddess has Lilisette, clearly.

Seekers of Adoulin has Arciela.

And Rhapsodies of Vana'Diel has Iroha.

Notice that all these missions have a female character with some great importance put on her.

I wondered about this and thought that... maybe the authors just expect the players to be male, hence they'd want to see girls in the stories for romance, but .... that doesn't sound right for a number of reasons.

Eh, guess I just sort of notice that we've received a bunch of interesting female characters in FFXI. I don't think the execution is entirely perfect or that these are the very best examples of female characters in video games, but given how clumsy this industry can be in that area... I have to give the game a lot of credit.

JUST SOMETHING I NOTICED! PAY ME NO MIND!

Prishe represents exactly one thing:

The Japanese desire for ageless women who are wise and experienced yet also look like they're 12.

SE needs to release an FFXI-themed dating mobile game/NDS game where you can go for the secret ending and hit it with all the heroines.

Rammie's hot take on missions, not that anyone cares, but everyone else is doing it:

RoZ: Good times, missions/story were par for the course, but given most of us were also leveling up as we did them back then, it led to some exciting moments and friendships made.

CoP: I love Tavnazia and its history, not to mention the actual location and I have a lot of memories -- good and bad -- of all the missions and the hoops jumped through and alliances made to get through them.

ToAU: Wasn't the biggest fan of the story, and I utterly despise Naja. I found Nashmeira to be super annoying as well, and the various imperial guards inspired in me a dislike of blue mages that I carry to this day.

WotG: I really enjoyed it, despite most people bitching that it's too long, etc. Easily my favorite expansion despite it's dearth of quality endgame group content. I also thoroughly enjoyed campaign, I wish it had more/better rewards to make it worth my limited playtime these days.

SoA: Enjoyed the story. Not my favorite, but still pretty solid, imo. Though I spent a lot of time swearing while watching cut scenes that forced me to react one way when I would have handled the entire situation differently. Ingrid especially; uppity ***, anyhow. She's almost as bad as Naja.

RoV: So far I've enjoyed it, I still need to go about finishing it, November was tough on FFXI for me between Fallout 4 and a few other things.

While I enjoy reading the stories myself, this addon is a godsend for the mule.

Ingrid leads an inquisition, she could have arrested you for heresy, you're in another country and doing some very suspicious stuff with a wanted group of witches too; besides she is put in her place midway through the story anyway.

Naja you just could never do anything about it. She is not only your boss, but you're also working under cover, you really can't screw up. Besides a morgenstern to the head hurts regardless!

Your points are rational and valid.

You have to understand, however. My character existed before XI and continues to exist already in other games/realms. Rammie isn't just my XI character. I've RP'ed him for almost 20 years.

I don't like when a game forces me to act him out of character.

I understand, but other than having a different attitude you couldn't really make different choices.

At the end of the day, you could have talked differently, but not really done things differently.

The thing that gets me about SoA is that it's the first expansion where your character's motivations aren't exactly obvious or reasonable:

RotZ: Prevent the end of the world.
CoP: Prevent the end of the world.
ToAU: Operate as a secret agent for your nation, and ultimately prevent a massive calamity.
WotG: Prevent your timeline from unraveling.
ACP: Prevent the end of the world.
MKD: Help the moogles, and ultimately prevent the end of the world.
ASA: Ohohohohohohohohohoho
Abyssea: Save what's left of an alternate timeline "after the end of the world"
RoV: Prevent the end of the world.

The only outlier is SoA, which eventually gets to "Prevent the end of the world", because that's what you do, but only after four chapters of helping out a continent full of *** who don't really want you around anyway.

Our hero must have been super bored to tolerate all of that.

lol'd

"Couldn't find a ride to other continents, was hoping I could circumnavigate the world going beyond Ra'Kaznar".

Spoilered for people who haven't beaten RoV:

I swear that Teodor genuinely enjoyed hanging out with me at the Mummer's Coalition.

That was one thing that stuck out to me in my limited time with SoA. No one wanted me there, the entire population was fairly xenophobic, and I'm supposed to help them? >.>

I can understand when allies who turn enemy are rude to you, you get to wreck their ***later but random people in the street were talking crap to you. >.> I wanted to torch the entire nation.

Oh i swore the same thing. Arcelia i felt was there for eye-candy and all the other NPCs where just kinda meh.
Kinda want more depth for Hades as a character as well as Teodor (There is such a big missed opportunity here) But Meh.

Balamor tho....

Well, yeah - once you get into the later chapters, everything starts coming together (and yes, they could/should have done so much more with the villains). I just don't get why our hero(ine) slogs through the miles of nonsense to get there. There's no obvious threat to the continent or world when you arrive; why stay and put up with it?

It might be because I did every single Adoulin quest (except the GEO AF and beyond), but I didn't get that "*** off, adventurer" impression you all did.

It was an isolationist country that didn't see visitors(not many at least)for centuries. Then the colonization project starts and here comes a swarm of immigrant adventurers looking for a job, and the locals get mad(also because what you do is considered to bring forth misfortune as they're all superstitious as ***).

Yeah. Wasn't enough in terms of development and then suddenly for !?*& to hit the fan right at the end. Made very little sense in why we would have the incentive, as a hero, to stick around for it.



Wings of the Goddess is still one of my favorite storylines though. Especially when it came out after years of this hype of a War (Even the opening credits showed it) and then we finally got our part in it.
It had a good incentive at the start too. To Save Lilisette's parents, and see the end to the war. Which even after everything in the storyline