If you played the prologue, then the flow of the story and character introductions felt natural. However, after the prologue and the first meeting with Xion, everything changes. Almost all remaining story "quests" are simply cutscenes with the very rare combat scene, or the exceptionally rare full story mission (there was only one in Episode 1 about two thirds of the way through with Melfonseana). I'm assuming this is because we're way behind on content compared to the Japanese version, but it removes a lot of the context and actual joy of progressing through the story naturally. I didn't realize until I had finished most of Episode 1's event scenes, that the story-only characters would actually show up in the lobby and would have different things to say depending on where I was in the story. Story is a big deal for me, and so I created a new character on a different ship in an attempt to try and unlock expeditions, ARK missions and client orders that more coincided with the events of the story, but your progress it tied to your whole account, not just the server or character you're on.

Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely ecstatic that we finally get to play an official English version of this fantastic game at all, but there's actually a ton of story and character development here, which as a fan of the original single player games back in the day, is where my passion for this series really lies, and this current set-up feels extremely disconnected and ultimately falls short of delivering the story experience it seemed eminently capable of from the Prologue mission.

My sincere hope is that this is simply due to starting us off with access to all of the expeditions, races and classes of the first 3 episodes. When we eventually get access to Episode 4, hopefully, we'll get to play through the story the way it was originally meant to be played.

Anyway, still tremendously in love with this game, but as a fan of story and character development, I'm hoping for full story missions in the future episodes.

Actually, this is the way it is on the Japanese server currently as well.

The version of Ep1-3 that we currently have are what was at one point referred to as Omnibus Quests, condensed version of the story meant to catch new players up since the original Matterboard system was a slough to get through; the Matterboard required searching for drops and cutscenes in Quests outside of the Story Quests and said Story Quests often had to be repeated for you to find a branching point that was only there after you found another cutscene out in the field.

They eventually removed the Matterboard version of the story and restructured it so that the Omnibus versions were the de facto version of Ep1-3, and Ep4-6 follow a very similar structure, though with more playable segments.

Oh really? I imagine the story scenes feel less disjointed then moving forward.

Thanks for the info!

Story quests where fine, and replaying them was of course plot related since the matter board allowed the main character to time travel without messing things too much. I really hope they are restored in the future and the omnibus is not the final form for episodes 1-3.

@landman said in Will we ever get to actually play through the Story again like in the Prologue?:

Story quests where fine, and replaying them was of course plot related since the matter board allowed the main character to time travel without messing things too much. I really hope they are restored in the future and the omnibus is not the final form for episodes 1-3.

I hope so as well, as currently I do not realy feel much for running the story cutscenes as they feel completely disjuncted and do not explain a lot of lore if you ask me. That they had to restructure them to get rid of the grind outside the story is fine by itself, but getting it cut up like it is now is certainly not good.

They not only cut the grind and the action, they also cut a lot of more miscellaneous encounters, they can be watched in your room in the Japanese server, but seems like that option is not there in the NA Beta, I hope they didn't cut it just to save on localisation...

I'm just a bit upset that no one will ever see the matter board system again. It was truly a unique quest giving system in comparison to any RPG past and present. Since it was a "Quest Tree" system.

@landman said in Will we ever get to actually play through the Story again like in the Prologue?:

They not only cut the grind and the action, they also cut a lot of more miscellaneous encounters, they can be watched in your room in the Japanese server, but seems like that option is not there in the NA Beta, I hope they didn't cut it just to save on localisation...

There is quite a bit of stuff missing, all those missions you had to do twice because the first time you made the "wrong" choice. I personally really liked. A lot of scenes feel disjointed and it's obvious there's stuff missing from it.

@SirDoodlesAlot said in Will we ever get to actually play through the Story again like in the Prologue?:

@landman said in Will we ever get to actually play through the Story again like in the Prologue?:

They not only cut the grind and the action, they also cut a lot of more miscellaneous encounters, they can be watched in your room in the Japanese server, but seems like that option is not there in the NA Beta, I hope they didn't cut it just to save on localisation...

There is quite a bit of stuff missing, all those missions you had to do twice because the first time you made the "wrong" choice. I personally really liked. A lot of scenes feel disjointed and it's obvious there's stuff missing from it.

And a lot of the scenes where you seem to just b e talking to random people was actually done through the ARKS Quest / Exploration modes originally. By fulfilling certain conditions you would suddenly run into the NPCs while doing a quest and have a cut-scene mid-quest/mission.

@coldreactive said in Will we ever get to actually play through the Story again like in the Prologue?:

@SirDoodlesAlot said in Will we ever get to actually play through the Story again like in the Prologue?:

@landman said in Will we ever get to actually play through the Story again like in the Prologue?:

They not only cut the grind and the action, they also cut a lot of more miscellaneous encounters, they can be watched in your room in the Japanese server, but seems like that option is not there in the NA Beta, I hope they didn't cut it just to save on localisation...

There is quite a bit of stuff missing, all those missions you had to do twice because the first time you made the "wrong" choice. I personally really liked. A lot of scenes feel disjointed and it's obvious there's stuff missing from it.

And a lot of the scenes where you seem to just b e talking to random people was actually done through the ARKS Quest / Exploration modes originally. By fulfilling certain conditions you would suddenly run into the NPCs while doing a quest.

Running into NPCs in the expeditions helped the world feel alive. The main story quests being acutal quests was also nice.

Hmmm, not really THAT immersive? you didn't bump into them, you just saw a shiny monolith rotating there, then got sucked into cutscene dimension while your party was either waiting or finishing the mission, that was for me the only negative part about the Mater Board, hunting for guaranteed drops that were actually decent affix fooder was fun to me.

Guess the closest we will get for explaining what and how some of those disjointed cutscenes fit together is the anime Episode Oracle. But to be honest this change really put a dent into my drive to play the game, with the whole cutting of the story progression feel. Next to some weird choices of translations.

Though I hadn't perfected my method at the time, my channel does have the original version of the story in a playlist. It is interspersed with regular gameplay though so you'll have to jump around but I do have it (along with the times I had some outbursts.) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz-kA-Y8m7w_smaFypn1r8kbubGTDxFaJ

I'm also disappointed with the story mode... I would have rather seen the matter board kept intact, just separated from group play (as a single player mode).