I haven’t been shy talking about liking the role quests that are currently available in Dawntrail. Indeed, I think that Final Fantasy XIV has finally hit on a good tone for the role quests, and the actual mechanics of those quests are good. So I think it’s important to note right up front that I am not, broadly speaking, anti-role quest. I think that role quests are good and the developers have clearly worked hard to make these quests fun and engaging, and I definitely think that there’s a benefit to having this instead of trying to manage an ever-increasing number of bespoke job questlines.
That having been said… I also do think there’s a problem that starts right alongside when the role quests started to be the way that the game was handling what had previously been job quests, right when Shadowbringers kicked off. But it was also something that started in Stormblood to a lesser extent, and you can argue it’s not a big deal, but it matters to me in wake of the game’s history.
There is no Samurai Guild in the game.
This is not entirely true. The Sekiseigumi do kind of occupy this state. They are an organization consisting basically entirely of Samurai, your primary job trainers are linked to the Sekiseigumi in various ways, and it makes logical sense to frame them that way. Except that’s not correct because the Sekiseigumi barracks are a separate organization. There is no proper Samurai Guild out there.
In a way, this represented a break for the game because prior to that every single job had an identity. It was a bit faster and looser with Dark Knights, but it was clear that there was more to being a given thing than just picking up a weapon of choice. Gladiators were very specifically a kind of fighter designed to endure the spectacle fights of the Bloodsands. Lancers were specific Gridanian soldiers designed to hold the line against invading beasts. The list goes on.
You could, of course, argue that the difference is that most of these guilds were much more focused around classes rather than jobs. Indeed, there are only two purely job-oriented guilds (Machinist and Astrologian), so that holds some weight. But because all but one class only has one job, it still feels like a functional throughline.
More directly? You are not special.
The story told for each job does tell you a more singular tale, yes, but at the fundamental level you get shown – and definitely feel – like you are part of a larger whole. Being a Warrior in the Marauder’s Guild is significant, but it’s definitely a feeling of having “made it” more than anything else. Others could get to a similar point; you are a part of a larger organization in how you interact with the world. There’s a texture to feeling that your foundation is set upon a group of people of all broadly aligned skillsets.
Now, it’s not as if FFXIV has abandoned the idea that every single job has a place within the larger world. Gunbreakers are very specifically using techniques honed by bodyguards to Queen Gunnhildr, for example. Vipers are utilizing a Turali hunting style designed to slay vicious beasts. Reapers are a style of Garlean combat using voidsent to compensate for a lack of aetheric prowess. It’s all there, in the quests and so forth.
But the Lemures don’t really come up again after you finish your initial Reaper questline, and to a certain extent they can’t because it exposes the back-filling involved in “oh, yeah, there was a criminal organization full of Garlean expats that we just never talked about in Ul’dah, so we should have had scythes around way sooner.” Which, to be fair, is not something that should be drilled into. But we as players still notice this stuff.
Even though many of these jobs do get NPCs of some importance who use the weapons in question, there’s no sense of a larger organization. No, I am not wondering why we do not have a fixed Bodyguard Guild with a bunch of Gunbreakers standing around waiting for someone who needs that service… but I also am wondering that. Why wouldn’t we have more NPCs roaming around using these gunblades which are, it seems, actually reasonably common around the world now?
It’s nice to see how the huntmasters in Tural are pretty consistently Vipers. But even if we aren’t getting quests from them, shouldn’t we have some kind of central organization for Vipers, which are apparently really important there? How do they interact with other disciplines? What difference does it make that both Gulool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja chose to take up that art specifically? Is that why Vipers are so respected as hunters of beasts? Is it a coincidence?
My general preference toward role quests is ultimately pragmatic; I would rather have five good quest lines as opposed to 21 questlines of wildly varying quality. Even more importantly, I suspect the writers were struggling even by Stormblood to come up with a totally new storyline that involved the same basic pool of NPCs after we had already solved some problem last time. It makes sense to give every job a 10-level questline (enough time to establish and ultimately solve a problem) and then have us move into the more straightforward business of role quests, putting the more specific business behind us.
But one of the things that I always liked about the game was placing jobs very firmly in the context of the larger game world. Some of this is just inevitable because… you know, the game has been running for a long time now and you can’t make the new job that was added in this expansion feel as if it has a decade of history. Especially as things go further and further afield.
“There are people who use greatswords as weapons; we just haven’t seen them” is a perfectly reasonable lift when your game has two years of history. “Sure, there are lots of people wielding a paintbrush as a weapon” is a bit more of a reach.
But even if it is an entirely comprehensible and perhaps predictable change, I still find myself wishing that we could dial back and get more firm representation in the larger world… and yes, I do miss having class lines that extended and helped us anchor our jobs within the realm of Etheirys. While the change was necessary when we moved onto the First for a whole expansion, it has persisted, and thus the only real sign we have of Sages being a thing is just Alphinaud gamely trotting along beside us. And I like to think I may not be the only person who feels this is a bit of a loss, even if an understandable one.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, I want to compare and contrast how FFXIV tells its stories compared to Final Fantasy XI’s preferred structure, looking at the way that both structures benefit and hamper the games in a larger sense. Because there are definitely both in action.
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
