The MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV is known for its extensive story that continues with each expansion. A player has decided to write it down.
What kind of undertaking is this? Reddit user Eriyu shared in the Final Fantasy XIV subreddit that she is working on a complete script of the game. Such transcripts of JRPGs from the PS1 era “saved her life,” and she was surprised that there was still nothing like this for Final Fantasy XIV.
So she took the matter into her own hands, Eriyu said.
To give the uninitiated among you an idea of how massive this undertaking is: Final Fantasy is extensive enough to occupy players for hundreds (and thousands) of hours. According to Reddit user Cyberfunk3, the cutscenes of the main storyline have a total length of more than 100 hours (via Reddit).
And that’s exactly the problem: Although the cutscenes can be viewed in the book The Endless Journey, navigating to specific text passages or scenes is not that easy. That’s where Eriyu comes in.
Almost 300,000 words are just the beginning
What exactly does the script include? So far, Eriyu has written down the main storyline of A Realm Reborn and the “Crystal Tower” raids. At the moment, she is working on the Heavensward expansion. The text includes all cutscenes of the main quests.
The player has already announced that she will also include optional dialogues, side quests, and removed content if she ever reaches the current state of the main storyline.
Already now, the document encompasses almost 300,000 words. Since the website where Eriyu hosts her script caused a security warning for some Reddit users, we will refrain from a direct link at this point and instead refer to the Reddit post.
Eriyu, however, seems to be already looking for other ways to host her work.
How is Eriyu doing this? By playing the entire game on an alternative account and writing it down. While she can copy a large part of the text from the events tab of the chatbox, formatting it is still a lot of work.
While other 3rd-party services also offer quest dialogues for reading, Eriyu explains that some scenes are missing there and some errors have crept in. Therefore, she would derive “99% of the text” directly from the game.
Why all this? Mainly, probably just out of love for the game. Practically, the script can be searched with the key combination Ctrl+F to find the exact wording of a cutscene, read up on certain story moments, or simply to find out how often souls are mentioned (130 times so far!).
The work and effort that gamers put into projects about their favorite games is always impressive. A fan of the loot shooter Destiny 2 took it upon themselves to produce their own series and raised almost 56,000 euros via crowdfunding for it.
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