1987: At the Gates of Heaven

Back to “reality” for Andie and I now, and we’re both closing in on the finale of the main story quest in Heavensward. It’s been a pretty spectacular journey up until this point, which I shall endeavour not to spoil to a significant degree in this post, largely because I don’t yet know how it all ends.

Heavensward has achieved that which I wasn’t sure it would be able to do: it’s surpassed A Realm Reborn in almost every possible way, but particularly when it comes to the main story. While A Realm Reborn had a solid narrative that chronicled your character’s humble beginnings up to their awakening as the Warrior of Light and beyond, taking in their victories over the fierce Primals of Eorzea and the Empire’s ultimate weapon in the process, I found the Final Fantasy XII-style political manoeuvring that made up a significant part of the plot to be less interesting than something a bit more, for want of a better word, “JRPG”.

Heavensward, meanwhile, feels more like a “Final Fantasy“. This isn’t to say that A Realm Reborn didn’t feel like Final Fantasy at all — I described it as one of the best new Final Fantasies in recent years back when I reviewed it for USgamer, after all — but Heavensward feels more like a traditional Final Fantasy.

It achieves this in a number of different ways. For one, it tones down the political machinations that gradually built up over the course of A Realm Reborn, and which came to a rather shocking climax at the end of patch 2.55, Before the Fall, which acted as a prelude to Heavensward. These narrative threads are picked up and explored further — though some look as if they’re going to remain unresolved until a later content patch — but for the most part Heavensward is an all-original story.

For another, the narrative feels more like an epic journey. In A Realm Reborn, you spent a lot of your time going back and forth between the three main areas, and, aside from the initial quest where you leave your starting city to go and visit the other two, it didn’t really feel like the typical JRPG journey of gradually getting further and further away from your starting point, with more and more outlandish things happening as you go. Heavensward, meanwhile, does adopt this style of journey, beginning in the familiar snowy wastes of Coerthas, some of which we had the opportunity to explore in A Realm Reborn, but before long giving way to the lush forests and rocky mountains of the Dravanian Forelands, the otherworldly floating islands of the Churning Mists and the Sea of Clouds, the mysterious abandoned city of the Dravanian Hinterlands — an important location to Final Fantasy XIV lore as a whole, as it turns out — and, ultimately, a final region which doesn’t feel at all like a typical MMO field, instead very much feeling like an authentic JRPG The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.

The journey you undertake throughout the narrative is emphasised by some lovely narration from David Warner upon your first entry to each area. A Realm Reborn had plenty of florid prose, but Heavensward refines this with some almost poetic writing that gives the game a very distinctive voice and tone throughout. It feels strange to compliment the writing in an MMO, a type of game not particularly known for stellar storytelling (Hi, World of Warcraft!) but Heavensward really doesn’t skimp on this front, and it’s all the stronger for it.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how the story ends — and, of course, getting involved with what comes after that. It can’t be long now until the launch of the new raid dungeon Alexander, and I’m very intrigued to see how all that fits in with the overall lore. Previous raid The Binding Coil of Bahamut turned out to be extremely relevant to the original game’s lore — and even more relevant to Heavensward, as it happens — so I’m looking forward to experiencing Alexander’s encounters and story to see what happens.

For now, though, I’m still flagging a bit after all the excitement of the weekend, so I think it’s time to get some sleep.