Final Fantasy XIV is known for its long-standing story, which continues with each expansion. Here are the first part of the absolute highlights that MeinMMO author Irina Moritz has compiled after many sleepless nights.
The story of FFXIV has stretched over 10 years, consists of nearly 900 individual quests, hundreds of hours of gameplay, and countless cutscenes. At times, it can be really tedious and lose its thrill, but its highlights left many a FFXIV player and even the boss himself in tears and emotionally completely exhausted.
In this two-part article, I have compiled the top 10 moments that left the strongest impression on me and that I thought about days later. Most of them are based on the fact that by that time, you had already taken a long journey through the story and had grown fond of the NPCs within it.
It wasn’t easy to choose just 10 from the many moments that really stood out as the best. Therefore, I focused only on the main story without side quests and on 2 moments per expansion. It’s also not a ranking, as we would still be here until January. Here’s the first part.
A Realm Reborn: Attack on Sunwind
The attack on Sunwind, the headquarters of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, was a pivotal event in A Realm Reborn and was well implemented in terms of timing. The player character is traveling for a long time beforehand to complete a lot of (sometimes annoying and meaningless) quests.
The player characters look for wine, pass arbitrary trials, and travel across half the narrative world just to face the Primals Titan. But when they then defeat him and return to Sunwind as great victors, they find it completely devastated. For in their absence, the enemies didn’t just sit around rehearsing their evil monologues.
In a flashback, you see the brutal slaughter that took place in the headquarters in the absence of the Warriors of Light. At that moment, it becomes clear that you are not dealing with the cliché “Mwahaha!” villains who are as dangerous as Team Rocket.
The attack on Sunwind was the first major shock moment in the story and remained memorable for me. Even though I didn’t have a particularly deep connection to the NPCs at that time, the whole “Save Eorzea” thing became 100% personal afterward.
A Realm Reborn: The Bloody Banquet
While the story of FFXIV is ongoing and the expansions build on each other, they still have an “ending” and a transition to the next expansion. A Realm Reborn laid the foundation for this when it transitioned to Heavensward with patch 2.55 over 8 years ago.
And what a transition it was. A Realm Reborn was good at deceiving the players into thinking they were in a perfect world. They were the hero everyone admired and whose deeds were sung about. The Garlean were driven out, Primals defeated, everything seemed perfect. It was almost boring.
But slowly the feeling began to creep in over the course of the patches that something was off. This culminated at the end of the storyline in the biggest betrayal within FFXIV. The players’ own comrades turned against the Scions and the player character was accused of the murder of the Sultana of Ul’dah.
Within a few cutscenes, FFXIV took everything away from me. It was by far the bitterest defeat I had to endure as an FFXIV player. Not only was the Sultana dead, but her loyal follower and good friend Raubahn had his left arm chopped off live and in color.
During the escape, all friends stayed behind one by one to hold off the pursuers, just so the player character could escape. Even long after the bloody banquet, it wasn’t clear whether they were alive or gone forever. The waiting time between A Realm Reborn and Heavensward was therefore really not easy.
Heavensward: The Death of Haurchefaunt
The developers of FFXIV are good at introducing NPCs into the story who seem completely inconspicuous at first glance. They give the player a few quests, maybe they play a role in some cutscenes, but you assume that’s all there is to it.
Accordingly, I and probably hardly anyone expected that Haurchefaunt would not only quickly become an important NPC but would also cause many tears in the FFXIV community.
His story directly ties into the brutal end of A Realm Reborn. He ensures that the players find refuge in Ishgard and stands out with his positive demeanor and support. In the end, he sacrifices his own life to save the player character.
At this point, the developers also use the death of a character to make things personal for the player. Although the noble goal in Ishgard was to end a thousand-year-long war, it only became personal after Haurchefaunt’s sacrifice.
I also think that very few players expected this death. After all, it had turned out that the Sultana was not poisoned after all, and the situation seemed to improve slightly.
This shocking moment caused many FFXIV story fans (myself included) to become paranoid. Even years later, popular characters were feared to kick the bucket at any moment, like the Exarch.
Heavensward: The Liberation of Estinien
The patches with the number X.3 have been something special in FFXIV for years. They are always top-notch and mark the final conclusion of the story of the current expansion. I always look forward to these updates eagerly, and many others feel similarly.
It all started with the bombastic patch 3.3 of Heavensward, which laid the foundation for this. In the story of 3.3, the decisive battle against the vengeful spirit of the dragon Nidhogg, who wants to annihilate the nation of Ishgard, takes place.
To do this, he takes control of the body of Estinien, a good NPC friend with whom you embark on a journey in Heavensward.
In an epic duel on the bridge to Ishgard, the brothers Hraesvelgr and Nidhogg first fight each other, but after Hraesvelgr is defeated, the player character steps forward in a “badass moment”.
But the real shock moment follows after the victory over Estinien, who is possessed by Nidhogg. In a desperate attempt to break the dragon’s control and remove its eyes from the armor, the player character receives unexpected help.
The two deceased characters Haurchefaunt and Ysayle, who had sacrificed themselves, return one last time to save Estinien. It remains one of my favorite moments in the story of FFXIV after 5 years and a worthy conclusion to an epic storyline.
Stormblood: The Storm on Doma
The Stormblood expansion had the misfortune to come after the extremely popular Heavensward and is not highly regarded by many FFXIV players. I am also not a big fan of Stormblood, but it still has some moments where its story really shines.
One of them is the liberation of Doma from the rule of the Garlean and especially the cruel Viceroy Yotsuyu, who torments the people there daily and seeks to break their will. Yotsuyu’s development as a villain succeeds with her first appearance, and by the end of the cutscene, I was looking forward to giving her a piece of my mind in the future.
The final battle for the castle of Doma was therefore a highlight. You stormed the dungeon, explosions were everywhere, buildings collapsed, and you would soon finally settle accounts with Yotsuyu.
The battle was won, but not without a high price. The allied character Gosetsu, who accompanied the players since A Realm Reborn, was buried under the ruins of the castle of Doma along with Yotsuyu.
I liked the storyline around Doma and its characters much more than the Ala Mhigo part of the Stormblood story, and the bitter victory over the Garlean was the absolute highlight of it.
More highlights from Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker will follow in the second part of the list on Monday, June 13.
FFXIV: The most important item in Endwalker stems from an ancient myth that we all know
