#arr and other early expansions on NON NEGOTIABLE AND EQUALLY IMPORTANT FOR LATER STORY BEATS

[thefandomexpert]

ok. i see u complaining about how long it takes to get to shb, how are you supposed to get your friends into the fucking WONDER that is shb when they have to get through all of The Other Stuff First

I used to have this problem with Homestuck, people who wanted to skip to the trolls, or pass on the intermissions. I will repeat what I said then now:

The later stuff is mind-blowingly good BECAUSE of the setup slog. which is also fun btw, you’re having trouble selling it because you keep saying it’s a slog. it’s good storytelling! yes even arr and sb (i didn’t say it was the best storytelling!! but i’ve seen way fuckin worse!!!). You need to spend 300 hours with the characters and to watch them grow gradually for a LOT of the little character moments to even register later on, and i’m not even talking about the ascian reveals. estinien is a completely different character. thancred’s deep-seated issues have been brewing subtly since 1.0. the socio-economic political climate of the universe is SO important and SO well set up by the arr random task/fetch quests (BABY INCONSEQUENTIAL QUESTS. YEAH THE STUPID ONES IN THE INTRO PRE-SASTASHA SEQUENCES WITH THE NPCS YOU DONT REMEMBER. THOSE.) and that info is integral to character decisions made in every expansion afterwords, and is built upon consistently. the consistent build-up of the lore is, in my opinion, almost entirely the reason ffxiv’s writing stands out against other games of the genre. and it’s BOLSTERED by the fact that it’s a live service game with a shit ton of expansions you HAVE to play through single file when you start fresh. narrative games are usually 15-20 hours. ffxiv is giving you 500+ in msq alone (won’t get into how much the optional and side quests support the storytelling as well).

It’s like one of those long-running book series. you can’t ask someone to read Just the last book of animorphs and expect them to understand the narrative implications of what’s happening, or to get attached to the characters enough to care. that attachment and understanding is built by spending time and reading the other 1500 books prior. shb should not be treated as a stand-alone. in fact it’d be a bad standalone. it’s good BECAUSE there’s 500+ hours of playtime required to get there.

#this is not on the post bc that person was lamenting the fact that u do in fact have to convince people to play The Whole Game in order #for a proper fandom integration #which i absolutely relate to #HOWEVER #after years of dragging my highschool friendgroup into homestuck by forcing them to read through act1 before they could decide to quit #arr and other early expansions on NON NEGOTIABLE AND EQUALLY IMPORTANT FOR LATER STORY BEATS #this is also why wow doesn’t work. they don’t let you play past expansions. drives me NUTS #meg speaks #ffxiv