Perfect Ten: The biggest moments in Final Fantasy XIV’s storytelling

As has been noted before, Natusko Ishikawa is a treasure. Reading an interview with her about her work on Final Fantasy XIV’s latest expansion reminded me of just how good the expansion story was. But why stop there? It also reminded me of how good the story is in this game period, not just when it comes to shadows and the bringing thereof. And that meant coming up with a list of the top moments in this game’s story, which was… well, it was difficult only in the sense that the list could just keep going.

However, because the title of the column is Perfect Ten and not Perfect A Couple Dozen, I’ve narrowed it down to an appropriate number of entries in chronological order. Bear in mind that this column will thus contain spoilers absolutely by design, as hinted at by the fact that the entire topic of the column is about story that will thus be spoiled to all heck. Of course, you have no excuse at this point not to be through the end of Stormblood. Heck, why aren’t you through Shadowbringers, too? It’s been almost three months.

The point, though, is that there will be spoilers. But not spoilers for everything because even limiting it to ten… gosh, there’s a lot.

1. The end of the world

This is the one bit of story that players can’t currently experience. If you start playing the game now, you’ll know this only from legends. But those last moments of the game’s original form were a bizarre form of ludonarrative, a swirl of chaotic events buffered out by the promise that something new was coming even as the world seemed to collapse around us.

Also as the world literally collapsed around us from server disconnects. Let’s be real here.

2. The massacre of the Scions

It took the team a little while to really get the pace of storytelling in this game just right, but this was a foreshadowing for what would come in the future. You finish up one of the most tedious strings of fetch quests imaginable, one that’s even lampshaded in the game. That culminates in fighting a pretty tough boss at that level, but you did it. You stretch, give yourself a pat on the back, head back to the boring old Waking Sands again, and…

Oh, look, the Empire walked in and literally murdered almost every NPC in your headquarters and abducted the rest.

It’s a sudden and sharp turn for the narrative that both makes the stakes of the game clear and lets you know that winning won’t always mean getting anything you want. It’s one of the many times that the game has used a sudden, sharp break to remind you that there are things to be lost here, and as the game continues it only intensifies.

3. The fall of the Sultana

The end of the 2.x series is where lots of people remember sitting up and saying “oh, wait, this is some storytelling.” And boy, is it ever a sharp break. Over the course of several lengthy cutscenes you watch yourself be betrayed by those you were once allied with, a nation’s leader seems to die, and all of the NPCs you hung out with over the course of the story seem to die as well. Instead of riding in to adventure in Ishgard, you wind up slumping in there as little more than a fugitive.

I still love this. I love the audacity of it. I love that to cap off the first go round of storytelling that the game decided to ramp things up, and that was at a point when I didn’t even like most of these characters very much. It’s a shame that a lot of it gets walked back, but the sheer chutzpah of sending off the next expansion with “you’re a fugitive and all your friends are gone” is bracing.

4. Hraesvelgr Explains It All

Not all of these require fighting. Sometimes the most emotionally fraught scenes are ones wherein you just… stand there and have a big old dragon explain to a sympathetic NPC that she is functionally living a lie, that your quest is pointless, and that the big war you’re trying to bring to an end is never going to end so long as both sides live. The end! No moral.

5. “A smile better suits a hero.”

And sometimes you get this. You won! You finished a difficult dungeon, you’ve defeated Nidhogg (thus ending that war, and with a whole lot of time left), and now you’re chasing after a villain, and then…

Haurchefant dies. He pushes you out of the way of something that had murder on its mind, and he dies.

I had been playing through the expansion waiting for Haurchefant to turn on the player. It just seemed like such an obvious setup to me. He was so obsequious and polite and friendly that it felt like a clear setup for someone you like until he stabs you in the front. And that meant this hit me like a ton of bricks; the whole time I had been reading his candor as a front, and now here was this unendingly loyal character dying while I’d been watching him for betrayal. It… still kind of messes me up.

6. Azys Lla

In hindsight, it’s kind of a weakness for Heavensward how the plot turns so suddenly, and Azys Lla is kind of out of nowhere as a concluding area. But everything about this zone, from your arrival to the last moments, is a trip. You learn about the First Brood and the depths of Tiamat’s despair (while leaving her there in what feels like it could be a big old unresolved plot hook). You watch Ysayle’s last moments in a a moment that only avoids being the most heartbreaking sacrifice because of Haurchefant’s just before. And you get to see more about Allagan technology and society in subtle ways.

Also, Regula has his best moments at this point. He kind of got abandoned by the end of the story, sadly.

7. The Time Between the Seconds

It’s harder to highlight specific moments from Stormblood’s story sometimes, but that hardly means it lacked them. Case in point: this quest. Yugiri is in the depths of despair after realizing how Doma doesn’t just lack freedom but the will to fight for it, and she sees a chance to take out Zenos and Yotsuyu at once. You join her, and after having been powerfully stomped by Zenos at Rhalgr’s Reach, you’re actually winning this one.

And then… the fight just changes.

It’s really hard to convey a sense of despair mechanically, especially in an MMO when you know that loss is only meant to be a setback and not a true death sentence. But fighting Zenos and watching him just really flex and basically turn nigh-on invulnerable is a crushing moment. You’re fighting in a holding pattern, hoping for some eleventh-hour fix, some way of breaking through his seemingly endless power, with a storm raging around you and every sign turned against you.

It’s such a deep pit of despair that the hope spot at the end feels even more earned. And if there was nothing else good in this story (there was), the sharp delivery of seeing your saviors finally roll in to rescue both you and Yugiri is worth it on its own.

8. “In darkness blooms the spider lily.”

Redemption is a difficult path. Not everyone walks it. Yotsuyu and Fordola exist in contrast to one another, both victims of an unjust and unkind world that hurt them to the point that lashing out wasn’t just understandable but justified. But at the end of the day, Fordola embraced the path to redemption. She realized that whatever her goals, whatever her pain, however justified she may have been… she went astray.

Yotsuyu, though… we see her get close. So painfully close. You can see that she’s right on the cusp of redemption, even as she’s offered the chance to fall further. And when all is said and done… no. She can’t. The pain just runs too deep, and she has to make the people responsible for it pay.

And ultimately, that means that you are enemies. In the last fight with her, even she seems to regard it less as a fight she wants so much as an obligation. It’s a heartbreaking tragedy that wrings out so much pathos from a villain who deserved better.

9. The fate of Tesleen

This was the scene when I knew that this expansion was going to be something special. Tesleen is set up as a pretty nice but ultimately not resonant NPC. She feels like someone who’s going to wind up dead because, well, she’s likable and nice but not invaluable. And you see what’s happening with the Sin Eater and for a moment it looks like she’s getting established as being more capable than you think.

Then you know that she is definitely going to die. And then… you see tears streaming down her face and you get one of the most effectively horrifying moments I’ve seen in a video game.

As soon as this scene happened, I knew what we were looking at from this expansion. It was a moment of horror that was compounded by the fact that this woman was dying to save the life of someone who you knew was already dying, a parallel to the situation you found yourself in with the First as a whole. It’s a beautifully horrible scene, sad and frightening and audacious as one of the first scenes setting the tone of this entire expansion. It’s how you know that this is going to be an expansion full of horror, despite that light shining down.

10. After the fall of Innocence

You beat this boss, and…

Actually, you know what? I can’t.

I can’t summarize the next several hours of gameplay that had me gritting my teeth with an absolute iron-clad determination that right now I had to get through this, I had to set right things that had been set so desperately wrong, especially when everything had been so close in the first place. All I can tell you is that this was a point of buckling down and barreling on because this can’t end here.

And all of this is not mentioning so many other scenes in the game. The first reveal of Titania. The Royal Menagerie. The negotiations with Garlemald. Shinryu vs. Omega. The dedication at Falcon’s Nest. The Final Steps of Faith. And even that is still only talking about the main scenario!

A lot of people weren’t on board for the game’s story after the early beats, and I don’t blame them. There’s a lot of filler in the first main scenario, story beats that don’t land well or are wholly extraneous, and the characters aren’t there yet. But there’s also enough good that made it worth pulling through that… and once you get into the good stuff, it just keeps coming.

Here’s to more story for the next patch and onward.