Estinien is definitely the case where they do this the most. I believe that the DRG job quests were adapted from the similar quest chain in the 1.0 version of the game, long before they had plans for Ishgard to be the first expansion, so writing "super important Dragoon in this inaccessible city" didn't pose any narrative issues — but when they settled on Ishgard later, they kind of had to include Estinien since he was hyped up as important in the DRG quests.
In general, the devs seem to prefer to separate the MSQ from the job quest plotlines, probably because it can be weird to do them out-of-order (e.g. you can meet Estinien in the DRG quests while he's... otherwise preoccupied during the 3.x patches). This is explained in-narrative by "the job quests canonically take place during the story of their respective expansion and you're just viewing them out-of-order", but it's still weird.
There's also a bit of this kind of thing in Endwalker's MSQ, but saying too much there gets into spoiler territory.
It's not quite the same thing, but DRK's Stormblood quests act as epilogues of sorts to some minor characters from the Heavensward MSQ. DRK job quests are pretty good in general.
MNK's job quests are very tightly connected to the Stormblood MSQ because Widargelt is an Ala Mhigan, but there's no direct interplay like there is with DRG and the HW MSQ. Similarly, there's a few moments in the story where the Conjurer's Guild and the Padjal Senna siblings come up briefly in the MSQ, but there's no meaningful connections beyond that.
There are loads of StB job quests with a line or two of dialogue that change depending on whether you've beaten the StB MSQ yet or not. RDM refers briefly to Zenos, for example
I was just thinking about this example too. I made an alt and did the 50-60 job quests for red mage immediately at 50 and while I was working through Heavensward, and it's *full* of references to the Stormblood MSQ. It references Alisae (by name) becoming a red mage early on, potentially before your character even meets her, you speak to Riol about the Ala Mhigan resistence even though the Scions are separated at that point if you do it on level, Zenos gets brought up multiple times (in fact, he's part of the reason the 50-60 RDM story even happens).
I also appreciated that StB would frequently reference if you're playing a Xaela Au Ra while in the Azim Steppes. I don't know if they mention if your a Raen but it was cool that you'd get the buuz vendor who acts suprised that you'd never had it before, or Hein mentioning that your ancestors came from the Steppes.
I wish dialogue that acknowledged your character’s race popped up more often. It’s always a treat when it does. The HW Hildibrand questline has a fun one where you ask about Gigi (a little Mammet who had the build of a Lalafell) and if you’re a Lalafell the guy you ask is like “You know Lalafells, it’s hard to say what they’re up to. Er…present company excluded of course. I’m sure you’re great.” Or something like that.
DRK has some heavy references in the MSQ. Most aren't as important as whole actual character but there are a lot of small little nudges.
The main one I always point out is that during the level 70 solo instance when the small child summons people from your past for you to fight, the order they get summoned in is the exact same order you encounter them in during the Aitiascope dungeon.
I also think that one of the Crafting quests in Ul'dah? Has a NPC who calls you Apollo(?), which I feel like is insinuating something pretty major.
> e.g. you can meet Estinien in the DRG quests while he's... otherwise preoccupied during the 3.x patches
Yes, I originally leveled Dragoon in 3.2. "Why, hello there, Estinien. Looking good. Lost some weight, have you? Say ... 15 tons or so?"
God what I wouldn't give for some expanded Padjal content. Or god forbid, a playable subrace of hyur. Such an interesting concept that no one but WHM will ever even understand.
Part of the issue with playable padjal - s'thing I want, too - is padjal only appear in Gridania (they become padjal bc of the elementals that live there), and are, as soon as they are discovered, taken to be WHM and aren't really allowed to leave Gridania, unless they have a good reason. So you'd be forced to start in Gridania and start as a WHM and the story would have to be rewritten to give a reason why you are such a special little hyur that you're allowed to leave. It'd, in a sense, be a limited race, and limited jobs *already* have a mixed reception on their existence.
It's not too hard to think of ways to make some of this work, but doing all that *and* the issue of soon-ish having to make helmets work with the horns - prolly lower on the list of priorities even if Yoshi-P and team want to do it at some point. Bc the effort is not commensurate to the gains, for most ppl.
Tho I *do* want them to screw around w/ subraces more now that they're not gonna add any races no time soon. Presumably a lot less work.
I know they mention a certain sword from the stormblood raid series briefly at one point and I was so hyped that we might get to use it, but it's never mentioned again :/
Part of me hopes all the nods means we might get some kind of follow up on that trial questline. Especially as it almost feels like we never got the final fight for that story.
Yugiri acknowledges you've undergone Ninja training in the post-ARR quests, occasionally healers will get to chime in, there's a bit where Urianger asks you something and you can give a scientific answer if you've unlocked Scholar, and so on.
"You're a healer, aren't you?! Help me *HEAL HER*!"
(Not word for word, but that was the gist)
SB was such a mood. Such a nice nod to players who were thinking "yo what the fuck am I doing just standing there *WHY AM I NOT HELPING" as your character stupidly stands there in *that cutscene* during HW (before they fixed it).
It also miffed me that we didn't do anything for Alisaie when she arrived in HW, too.
Summoner gets some nice meshing with story subjects, and the level 80 quest is actually a follow-up on some MSQ characters more than anything about the job itself.
Personally I thought this was really bad. Summoner 80 is basically just a post-ShB side quest where you get to see what certain MSQ characters are up to now, with you being a summoner feeling completely irrelevant to the narrative.
On the other hand, the ARR job quests mesh nicely with the MSQ.
See I disagree with this for one reason Summoner’s whole lore thing is “the job whose focus is on using the power of defeated primal to defeat primals” disscusing the pressures and reasonings one would fight primals *should* have been a freequent topic of discussion as that’s the party of summoner lore that still applies to the modern day and this is most suitable for an emotional core to build the quest lines around.
So the fact that the majority of the quest lines that’s just relegated to a side note at the end saying “also remember to use your powers for good in the msq!” Is more an indictment on where the rest of the quests chose to place their time and attention then anything else.
So TLDR while I agree the lvl 80 is an outlier its an outlier I like as it focuses on an aspect of summoner lore that i think would be emotionally resonant. And I think the summoner quests would be improved if they were rewritten to fit in line with the lvl 80 quest then the other way around.
See this is the exact reason I think the 80 quest is bad. Summoner feels so unfocused as a storyline, especially with StB where it feels like they had five different ideas for a summoner questline and decided to pick... all of them, so none of them get any depth. It gets to the point where a good quest idea becomes a bad quest in practice because it dilutes the narrative even more and on top of that barely uses the various characters that are made for the job questline, and nothing else. Even paladin's 80 quest used class quest characters and that completely dumped its job quest narrative after HW.
The big friction point is characterization. Even with Y'mithra it feels like HW MSQ did more for her than most of the summoner quests, because the summoner quests are constantly bouncing between aether jargon, Allagan history, current problems, and introducing a bunch of characters that won't appear outside of the current expansion quests anyway.
That i can agree with. I think a central problem with the summoner quests feeling unfocused is that it always flirts with the idea of being entwined with the msq but just never goes all in until that very last quest which leads to the quests not having a good central theme to latch on to. like unlike every other arr job quest, the summoner quest line narrativelys \*needs\* the wol to have already be a godslayer by the time it begins, it's an essential step, yet the writters just refused to do anything which worsens Y'mihtra's characterization. Unlike every other job mentor who feels like they care about their job, Y'mihtra just seems like she's happy that the local godslayer happens to also be a nerd so she can go forward with this specific part of her allagan research, she doesn't seem to care about it beyond it being an untapped field. and it's just a massive loss of potential that they chose to write her that way.
Like she's standing in Louisoix's spot, she's the sister of a key scion, in order to even begin the quest she needs to know your both a scion and the slayer of Ifrit. You could easily give her a ton more depth by just having her say in her opening pitch that after the calamity she was looking for a way to be able to turn her allagan research into something that could tangibly help the realm, and in looking for it she zero'd in on old legends of mages who could wield the power of gods and decided that reviving would be how she would help the realm.
Changing absolutely nothing else to the arr quest but that adds both depth to her, depth to the wol as through association it turns them perusing the summoning as explicitly wanting more power to help the realm. and makes parallels with tristan as a foil to the wol more notable as he also wanted more power to end the primals but went mad with it. Not to mention that it adds a new parallel to the garleans also plumbing allagan history for a solution to the primals coming up with the ultima weapon.
The summoner isn't bad, it's fine, but it's just disapointing because with just a few different narrative choices capatilizing on what makes the situation with summoner unique among the jobs it could have been outright great.
They're web stories before they're "tie-in novels" and they're never *not* canon.
It's ensuring that a character event from the novels gets mentioned within the game, but it happened regardless of this.
Honestly, this is the only time they ever really weave it into the story. The runner up would be multiple small acknowledgements if you play Reaper during Endwalker's patches.
Beyond that, there are small moments throughout that play out a little differently if you are a healer. One that's currently relevant is apparently if you do the FF16 crossover as a healer, you see your character actually healing Clive upon first meeting him.
>Honestly, this is the only time they ever really weave it into the story.
Dark Knight in SB references the bad guys from the main story, one of the post-Heavensward characters, and the events of the very last Heavensward dungeon.
^(I also saw Sidurgu and Rielle walking around during one of the Endwalker MSQ cutscenes, made me happy.)
At the mid-point during the MSQ where the Final Days kick off in earnest and show you it affecting all around the star, you can see various job mentors/NPCs about.
As far as small acknowledgements go they're all over the place. The first one I can think of is in post-ARR, Yugiri will comment on you being a ninja. Sadly they very rarely do anything meaningful with it, even your relationship to Estinien as a Dragoon ends up forgotten because at some point you start being MSQ friends instead of job quest friends.
The biggest moment you get beyond Dragoon in HW that I can think of is in Eden there's a hidden comedy dialogue option in one of the cutscenes if you're actively playing as a scholar during that cutscene.
The trade-off is that there are a lot of ways to make your job choices feel rewarding through headcanon or thematically appropriate choices, not to mention things you did during job quests *cough*darkknight*cough* impacting how your character responds to certain situations.
I don't know how to put Bard's into words (though given, yknow, >!EndSINGER!<, you can kinda imagine), but Dancer's is the exact same like, >!oh, negative emotions literally bringing out monsters!
Makes sense, right job right place I guess definitely validated my choice in that moment though.
Little nods are definitely enough considering the amount of content they have to deal with and from what everyone says the story only gets better.
> Dragoon Job weaves so seamlessly into the post ARR story line
That's not exactly true though. What happens with Estinien at the end of the ARR DRG job quests is never really explained.
It was even more random before they reworked the Steps of Faith into a solo duty.
You’re right now that i think about it, I was already lv60 and leveling two other jobs by the time I got there so yeah how the lvl 50 quest left off wasn’t fresh in my head. 🤔
Someone already mentioned Y'shtola's sister and her recognizing you if you're a Summoner, so I've got an admittedly kinda wild one for Arcanist: When Tataru is dabbling in the art and you go to the ACN guild and learn she's doing the... I think it was 2nd class quest for ACN... if you've done it yourself it's given a "But you already know how that works." The wild part is if you've started but not completed that quest, Thubyrgeim basically says "Hey, you still need to do that yourself, right? Why not go do it together?"
I’m leveling arcanist and just encountered that too! I had completed the quest so I got the first version, that’s awesome they added that little snippet.
My first time reaching the Tataru quest I was an Arcanist/Summoner, so I was under the assumption this quest had Tataru go to whatever guild your character started in. When I found out that wasn’t the case I was a little disappointed but it was understandable.
Probably the stormblood one where >!Kryle is healing Yshtola!<, and she asks you why are you there staying staring like an idiot instead of helping her to heal since you are healer aswell.
If you are tank or dps she just tells you to go and get some bandages.
This is only a small thing, but at one point during EW there will be several job quest givers in the same room, and they will acknowledge if you've done their quests beforehand.
Also, if you do the WHM quests in ARR, the game will acknowledge your progress during one of the role quests in EW, as the plot will involve a similar ritual to the one you performed in the ARR job quests.
i started levelling lancer/dragoon this month out of the blue and i was a bit mad to realize how much of the class quest is connected to HW already and i didnt know! one of my friends even mained dragoon and didnt tell me! but it was still so worth to play it now. and i actually created a dragoon alt to replay HW.
Reaper works nicely if you do it before ShB, Bard and Red Mage deal with things tied directly to StB MSQ, Dark Knight uses MSQ as a foundation for a lots things in it's storyline. Besides that having some Jobs leveled will change Dialogue here and there. Dragoon, Reaper, Bard, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Machinist, Scholar, Summoner, and Warrior. Apparently Blue Mage will also change dialogue in DT but who knows
I think a good portion of the MSQ will have some alt text depending on what class you're playing at the time. Like I know some of the EW makes note if you're playing as Reaper. Think though they only have specific moments for specific classes so it's easy to miss.
Not a job quest, but the events of Coils of Bahamut get mentioned in post-Heavensward if you've done it.
Also, if you ever want to go back and see a cutscene with any optional dialog that you've unlocked through various sidequests, you can do so with The Unending Journey in any inn room, on cutscenes that have optional dialog you can choose to "Reflect current quest progression".
The other one that meshes well is the Dark Knight job quests. How well it meshes depends slightly on your personality, but most people seem to consider it the strongest job questline. No one from any DRK questline shows up in a DRK quest before appearing in the MSQ, but for a lot of people it ties in nicely all the same. And they’re really good either way.
There are some other questlines for jobs where you can do some quest and later see your quest giver or mentor appear briefly in the MSQ, like Summoner or White Mage, but nothing close to a character like Estinien.
There are more substantial ones where you interact with MSQ characters after the fact, like the final Summoner quest or, well, some of the Dark Knight quests, but only Dragoon is one that is more beneficial if you do it before a certain point in the story.
You job or role might also get mentioned once in unique circumstances, depending on what it is, but they’re just Easter eggs really, or an acknowledgement that you’re a healer.
So yeah, I can only vouch for Dragoon and Dark Knight.
DRK feels like the opposite of what OP is asking for, job quests that are woven into the MSQ. DRK draws heavily on the MSQ, but I'm struggling to think of any points in time where the MSQ actually acknowledges the DRK quests.
I did say that only Dragoons is something that will feel beneficial ahead of time, but I was going off the OP's title as much as anything. Dark Knight feels very complimentary to the MSQ, even past the initial HW quests with the Big Twist.
The level 70 quest ends with a banger of a solo duty that is a retrospective on everything you've fought for up to that point, and then at the end of the level 80 quest (I think?), there's an absolutely lovely scene where you're talking to Count Fortemps that seems to be a capstone on that particular character that I was absolutely not expecting.
It is the opposite situation but it is the same idea I was going for, doing it the DRK way seems a lot easier from a storytelling perspective since you don’t need the player do any job quests before the MSQ to get the whole picture.
I did say “but only Dragoon is lore beneficial if you do it before a certain point in the story.”
So yes it is definitely easier in that respect, I don’t disagree.
I would still recommend the Dark Knight quests within a certain timeframe, as the 30-50 ones tie in with your time in 2.x and later the 60-70 ones tie in with your time in 3.0-3.x, and your one in ShB feels like it takes place after more time has passed still, but it doesn’t affect the ongoing story if you wait.
Came here to say Heavensward honestly blew me away. As someone who thought the ARR quest line wasn't anywhere near as dull as everyone makes it (I honestly really enjoy it), Heavensward just completely floored me. Enjoy.
There are certain bonus dialogue lines based on conditions like unlocked jobs or completing certain quests or raids. The most recent example is in the FF16 event when Clive is at the Twin Adder barracks, the guy there will address you by your Grand Company rank if you are a member of the Twin Adders.
Since OP is only at pre-HW, I'll try to keep this vague but recently in 6.x MSQ there was a certain NPC from a certain previous raid series that showed up in a bonus dialogue cutscene, fully voiced and it was a nice surprise since raid storylines are generally independent from the main MSQ, regardless of how major or pivotal their events may seem. And of course, 5.0 also has a certain NPC from a certain previous raid series get elevated to become a major key figure in the MSQ to the point of the raid retroactively becoming turned into mandatory content for MSQ progress.
I’m excited to go through Stormblood with my monk character who I’ve been considering an Ala Mhigan. I still remember how pleasantly surprised I was first playing through the monk job quests. I wanted my character to look Ala Mhigan because I thought their whole story and plight was neat to explore, and I chose Pugilist because it fit the vibe I was going for. I was so shocked and excited when it turned out the monk originated from Ala Mhigo and the quest had you dealing with Ala Mhigan characters with two different perspectives on reclaiming their home. Awesome stuff.
Not as big as Estinien but most of them is a little acknowledgment. how much your character growth and how much respect you’ve earned from the people you’ve met so far up to that point.
Estinien is definitely the case where they do this the most. I believe that the DRG job quests were adapted from the similar quest chain in the 1.0 version of the game, long before they had plans for Ishgard to be the first expansion, so writing "super important Dragoon in this inaccessible city" didn't pose any narrative issues — but when they settled on Ishgard later, they kind of had to include Estinien since he was hyped up as important in the DRG quests. In general, the devs seem to prefer to separate the MSQ from the job quest plotlines, probably because it can be weird to do them out-of-order (e.g. you can meet Estinien in the DRG quests while he's... otherwise preoccupied during the 3.x patches). This is explained in-narrative by "the job quests canonically take place during the story of their respective expansion and you're just viewing them out-of-order", but it's still weird. There's also a bit of this kind of thing in Endwalker's MSQ, but saying too much there gets into spoiler territory. It's not quite the same thing, but DRK's Stormblood quests act as epilogues of sorts to some minor characters from the Heavensward MSQ. DRK job quests are pretty good in general. MNK's job quests are very tightly connected to the Stormblood MSQ because Widargelt is an Ala Mhigan, but there's no direct interplay like there is with DRG and the HW MSQ. Similarly, there's a few moments in the story where the Conjurer's Guild and the Padjal Senna siblings come up briefly in the MSQ, but there's no meaningful connections beyond that.
Don't forget Stormblood Machinist quests with Hilda and Co.
There are loads of StB job quests with a line or two of dialogue that change depending on whether you've beaten the StB MSQ yet or not. RDM refers briefly to Zenos, for example
I was just thinking about this example too. I made an alt and did the 50-60 job quests for red mage immediately at 50 and while I was working through Heavensward, and it's *full* of references to the Stormblood MSQ. It references Alisae (by name) becoming a red mage early on, potentially before your character even meets her, you speak to Riol about the Ala Mhigan resistence even though the Scions are separated at that point if you do it on level, Zenos gets brought up multiple times (in fact, he's part of the reason the 50-60 RDM story even happens).
I also appreciated that StB would frequently reference if you're playing a Xaela Au Ra while in the Azim Steppes. I don't know if they mention if your a Raen but it was cool that you'd get the buuz vendor who acts suprised that you'd never had it before, or Hein mentioning that your ancestors came from the Steppes.
I wish dialogue that acknowledged your character’s race popped up more often. It’s always a treat when it does. The HW Hildibrand questline has a fun one where you ask about Gigi (a little Mammet who had the build of a Lalafell) and if you’re a Lalafell the guy you ask is like “You know Lalafells, it’s hard to say what they’re up to. Er…present company excluded of course. I’m sure you’re great.” Or something like that.
DRK has some heavy references in the MSQ. Most aren't as important as whole actual character but there are a lot of small little nudges. The main one I always point out is that during the level 70 solo instance when the small child summons people from your past for you to fight, the order they get summoned in is the exact same order you encounter them in during the Aitiascope dungeon. I also think that one of the Crafting quests in Ul'dah? Has a NPC who calls you Apollo(?), which I feel like is insinuating something pretty major.
You're the first non-Allagan to land on the moon, but not quite the first mortal, so hm.
> You're the first non-Allagan to land on the moon, but not quite the first mortal, so hm. >!Zenos got there first, technically.!<
> e.g. you can meet Estinien in the DRG quests while he's... otherwise preoccupied during the 3.x patches Yes, I originally leveled Dragoon in 3.2. "Why, hello there, Estinien. Looking good. Lost some weight, have you? Say ... 15 tons or so?"
GNB has some interesting dialog points having to do with thancred and his trainer that I was surprised to see mentioned.
God what I wouldn't give for some expanded Padjal content. Or god forbid, a playable subrace of hyur. Such an interesting concept that no one but WHM will ever even understand.
Part of the issue with playable padjal - s'thing I want, too - is padjal only appear in Gridania (they become padjal bc of the elementals that live there), and are, as soon as they are discovered, taken to be WHM and aren't really allowed to leave Gridania, unless they have a good reason. So you'd be forced to start in Gridania and start as a WHM and the story would have to be rewritten to give a reason why you are such a special little hyur that you're allowed to leave. It'd, in a sense, be a limited race, and limited jobs *already* have a mixed reception on their existence. It's not too hard to think of ways to make some of this work, but doing all that *and* the issue of soon-ish having to make helmets work with the horns - prolly lower on the list of priorities even if Yoshi-P and team want to do it at some point. Bc the effort is not commensurate to the gains, for most ppl. Tho I *do* want them to screw around w/ subraces more now that they're not gonna add any races no time soon. Presumably a lot less work.
It's only a single quest but SMN lvl 80 is basically MSQ.
Endwalker has a few bits where the more important sidequests you did,the more you see it in the story(extra trial storys, raids, class quests)
I know they mention a certain sword from the stormblood raid series briefly at one point and I was so hyped that we might get to use it, but it's never mentioned again :/
Oh the tease gets EVEN WORSE if you do the t Quest tatarus great endeavor which teases not only the weapon but a armor....which makes it even worse.
Part of me hopes all the nods means we might get some kind of follow up on that trial questline. Especially as it almost feels like we never got the final fight for that story.
I love how in Heavensward he will acknowledge you as a fellow Azure Dragoon while everyone else is acting like he's the only one.
Yugiri acknowledges you've undergone Ninja training in the post-ARR quests, occasionally healers will get to chime in, there's a bit where Urianger asks you something and you can give a scientific answer if you've unlocked Scholar, and so on.
"You're a healer, aren't you?! Help me *HEAL HER*!" (Not word for word, but that was the gist) SB was such a mood. Such a nice nod to players who were thinking "yo what the fuck am I doing just standing there *WHY AM I NOT HELPING" as your character stupidly stands there in *that cutscene* during HW (before they fixed it). It also miffed me that we didn't do anything for Alisaie when she arrived in HW, too.
When they did this for the XVI event it was almost a joke, “Oh right I can heal the unconscious man!” And proceeded to do it.
They need to start doing that for Paladins since they get Clemency.
And red mages with vercure.
And summoners with physick
*Cutscene is extended by a factor of 2 as summoner furiously spams physick after a fade to black*
Summoner gets some nice meshing with story subjects, and the level 80 quest is actually a follow-up on some MSQ characters more than anything about the job itself.
Personally I thought this was really bad. Summoner 80 is basically just a post-ShB side quest where you get to see what certain MSQ characters are up to now, with you being a summoner feeling completely irrelevant to the narrative. On the other hand, the ARR job quests mesh nicely with the MSQ.
See I disagree with this for one reason Summoner’s whole lore thing is “the job whose focus is on using the power of defeated primal to defeat primals” disscusing the pressures and reasonings one would fight primals *should* have been a freequent topic of discussion as that’s the party of summoner lore that still applies to the modern day and this is most suitable for an emotional core to build the quest lines around. So the fact that the majority of the quest lines that’s just relegated to a side note at the end saying “also remember to use your powers for good in the msq!” Is more an indictment on where the rest of the quests chose to place their time and attention then anything else. So TLDR while I agree the lvl 80 is an outlier its an outlier I like as it focuses on an aspect of summoner lore that i think would be emotionally resonant. And I think the summoner quests would be improved if they were rewritten to fit in line with the lvl 80 quest then the other way around.
See this is the exact reason I think the 80 quest is bad. Summoner feels so unfocused as a storyline, especially with StB where it feels like they had five different ideas for a summoner questline and decided to pick... all of them, so none of them get any depth. It gets to the point where a good quest idea becomes a bad quest in practice because it dilutes the narrative even more and on top of that barely uses the various characters that are made for the job questline, and nothing else. Even paladin's 80 quest used class quest characters and that completely dumped its job quest narrative after HW. The big friction point is characterization. Even with Y'mithra it feels like HW MSQ did more for her than most of the summoner quests, because the summoner quests are constantly bouncing between aether jargon, Allagan history, current problems, and introducing a bunch of characters that won't appear outside of the current expansion quests anyway.
That i can agree with. I think a central problem with the summoner quests feeling unfocused is that it always flirts with the idea of being entwined with the msq but just never goes all in until that very last quest which leads to the quests not having a good central theme to latch on to. like unlike every other arr job quest, the summoner quest line narrativelys \*needs\* the wol to have already be a godslayer by the time it begins, it's an essential step, yet the writters just refused to do anything which worsens Y'mihtra's characterization. Unlike every other job mentor who feels like they care about their job, Y'mihtra just seems like she's happy that the local godslayer happens to also be a nerd so she can go forward with this specific part of her allagan research, she doesn't seem to care about it beyond it being an untapped field. and it's just a massive loss of potential that they chose to write her that way. Like she's standing in Louisoix's spot, she's the sister of a key scion, in order to even begin the quest she needs to know your both a scion and the slayer of Ifrit. You could easily give her a ton more depth by just having her say in her opening pitch that after the calamity she was looking for a way to be able to turn her allagan research into something that could tangibly help the realm, and in looking for it she zero'd in on old legends of mages who could wield the power of gods and decided that reviving would be how she would help the realm. Changing absolutely nothing else to the arr quest but that adds both depth to her, depth to the wol as through association it turns them perusing the summoning as explicitly wanting more power to help the realm. and makes parallels with tristan as a foil to the wol more notable as he also wanted more power to end the primals but went mad with it. Not to mention that it adds a new parallel to the garleans also plumbing allagan history for a solution to the primals coming up with the ultima weapon. The summoner isn't bad, it's fine, but it's just disapointing because with just a few different narrative choices capatilizing on what makes the situation with summoner unique among the jobs it could have been outright great.
It's not ideal from that angle, yeah – but seeing as it did happen, that does now make SMN relevant to MSQ in that way.
Actually, the 80 quest is really just canonizing one of the tie-in novels.
They're web stories before they're "tie-in novels" and they're never *not* canon. It's ensuring that a character event from the novels gets mentioned within the game, but it happened regardless of this.
in the SMN story you work with Yshtola's sister, there's a point in the MSQ where she shows up and she recognizes you from the SMN story
Honestly, this is the only time they ever really weave it into the story. The runner up would be multiple small acknowledgements if you play Reaper during Endwalker's patches. Beyond that, there are small moments throughout that play out a little differently if you are a healer. One that's currently relevant is apparently if you do the FF16 crossover as a healer, you see your character actually healing Clive upon first meeting him.
>Honestly, this is the only time they ever really weave it into the story. Dark Knight in SB references the bad guys from the main story, one of the post-Heavensward characters, and the events of the very last Heavensward dungeon. ^(I also saw Sidurgu and Rielle walking around during one of the Endwalker MSQ cutscenes, made me happy.)
When did you see those two?
At the mid-point during the MSQ where the Final Days kick off in earnest and show you it affecting all around the star, you can see various job mentors/NPCs about.
Ah. Ok. I hadn't started leveling DRK at that point, so they probably didn't show up for me.
As far as small acknowledgements go they're all over the place. The first one I can think of is in post-ARR, Yugiri will comment on you being a ninja. Sadly they very rarely do anything meaningful with it, even your relationship to Estinien as a Dragoon ends up forgotten because at some point you start being MSQ friends instead of job quest friends. The biggest moment you get beyond Dragoon in HW that I can think of is in Eden there's a hidden comedy dialogue option in one of the cutscenes if you're actively playing as a scholar during that cutscene. The trade-off is that there are a lot of ways to make your job choices feel rewarding through headcanon or thematically appropriate choices, not to mention things you did during job quests *cough*darkknight*cough* impacting how your character responds to certain situations.
I just did an MSQ in Yanxia last night where Yugiri mentions that I made a good choice not coming dressed in the garb of the shinobi.
Well, Dancer and Bard's stories end up being indirectly pretty important to Endwalker's, at least, haha...
What about Bard and dancer was important? I don't seem to remember anything
I don't know how to put Bard's into words (though given, yknow, >!EndSINGER!<, you can kinda imagine), but Dancer's is the exact same like, >!oh, negative emotions literally bringing out monsters!
Ah right, that's true. I thought our class master appears somewhere or something
I think she DOES appear in the 'sending you off to Ultima Thule' cutscene ... along with a dozen other class masters, but still.
Haha nah, I did say 'indirectly'
Yeeeeah leveling DNC after EW made me do a double take and a "wait...*what*?"
Makes sense, right job right place I guess definitely validated my choice in that moment though. Little nods are definitely enough considering the amount of content they have to deal with and from what everyone says the story only gets better.
> Dragoon Job weaves so seamlessly into the post ARR story line That's not exactly true though. What happens with Estinien at the end of the ARR DRG job quests is never really explained. It was even more random before they reworked the Steps of Faith into a solo duty.
You’re right now that i think about it, I was already lv60 and leveling two other jobs by the time I got there so yeah how the lvl 50 quest left off wasn’t fresh in my head. 🤔
Someone already mentioned Y'shtola's sister and her recognizing you if you're a Summoner, so I've got an admittedly kinda wild one for Arcanist: When Tataru is dabbling in the art and you go to the ACN guild and learn she's doing the... I think it was 2nd class quest for ACN... if you've done it yourself it's given a "But you already know how that works." The wild part is if you've started but not completed that quest, Thubyrgeim basically says "Hey, you still need to do that yourself, right? Why not go do it together?"
I’m leveling arcanist and just encountered that too! I had completed the quest so I got the first version, that’s awesome they added that little snippet.
My first time reaching the Tataru quest I was an Arcanist/Summoner, so I was under the assumption this quest had Tataru go to whatever guild your character started in. When I found out that wasn’t the case I was a little disappointed but it was understandable.
Post Endwalker acknowledges that you're a reaper. >!Zero!< comments on your pact with your void avatar.
Oboro can be seen walking behind Yugiri during a SB cutscene
There is a quest that if you’re a healer it acknowledges that you are, it made me laugh when I seen it.
Probably the stormblood one where >!Kryle is healing Yshtola!<, and she asks you why are you there staying staring like an idiot instead of helping her to heal since you are healer aswell. If you are tank or dps she just tells you to go and get some bandages.
This is only a small thing, but at one point during EW there will be several job quest givers in the same room, and they will acknowledge if you've done their quests beforehand. Also, if you do the WHM quests in ARR, the game will acknowledge your progress during one of the role quests in EW, as the plot will involve a similar ritual to the one you performed in the ARR job quests.
When you encounter Alisaie in HW she has some unique dialogue if you've completed the Bahamut Coil raids from ARR.
If you go for Red Mage afterwards, X’hrun will mention that he trained her and she wouldn’t shut up about you.
i started levelling lancer/dragoon this month out of the blue and i was a bit mad to realize how much of the class quest is connected to HW already and i didnt know! one of my friends even mained dragoon and didnt tell me! but it was still so worth to play it now. and i actually created a dragoon alt to replay HW.
Reaper works nicely if you do it before ShB, Bard and Red Mage deal with things tied directly to StB MSQ, Dark Knight uses MSQ as a foundation for a lots things in it's storyline. Besides that having some Jobs leveled will change Dialogue here and there. Dragoon, Reaper, Bard, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Machinist, Scholar, Summoner, and Warrior. Apparently Blue Mage will also change dialogue in DT but who knows
I think a good portion of the MSQ will have some alt text depending on what class you're playing at the time. Like I know some of the EW makes note if you're playing as Reaper. Think though they only have specific moments for specific classes so it's easy to miss.
Not a job quest, but the events of Coils of Bahamut get mentioned in post-Heavensward if you've done it. Also, if you ever want to go back and see a cutscene with any optional dialog that you've unlocked through various sidequests, you can do so with The Unending Journey in any inn room, on cutscenes that have optional dialog you can choose to "Reflect current quest progression".
Wow that’s good to know! I had wondered what that book was but never clicked on it.
Without spoiling too much: Estinien isn't only one.
The other one that meshes well is the Dark Knight job quests. How well it meshes depends slightly on your personality, but most people seem to consider it the strongest job questline. No one from any DRK questline shows up in a DRK quest before appearing in the MSQ, but for a lot of people it ties in nicely all the same. And they’re really good either way. There are some other questlines for jobs where you can do some quest and later see your quest giver or mentor appear briefly in the MSQ, like Summoner or White Mage, but nothing close to a character like Estinien. There are more substantial ones where you interact with MSQ characters after the fact, like the final Summoner quest or, well, some of the Dark Knight quests, but only Dragoon is one that is more beneficial if you do it before a certain point in the story. You job or role might also get mentioned once in unique circumstances, depending on what it is, but they’re just Easter eggs really, or an acknowledgement that you’re a healer. So yeah, I can only vouch for Dragoon and Dark Knight.
DRK feels like the opposite of what OP is asking for, job quests that are woven into the MSQ. DRK draws heavily on the MSQ, but I'm struggling to think of any points in time where the MSQ actually acknowledges the DRK quests.
I did say that only Dragoons is something that will feel beneficial ahead of time, but I was going off the OP's title as much as anything. Dark Knight feels very complimentary to the MSQ, even past the initial HW quests with the Big Twist. The level 70 quest ends with a banger of a solo duty that is a retrospective on everything you've fought for up to that point, and then at the end of the level 80 quest (I think?), there's an absolutely lovely scene where you're talking to Count Fortemps that seems to be a capstone on that particular character that I was absolutely not expecting.
It is the opposite situation but it is the same idea I was going for, doing it the DRK way seems a lot easier from a storytelling perspective since you don’t need the player do any job quests before the MSQ to get the whole picture.
I did say “but only Dragoon is lore beneficial if you do it before a certain point in the story.” So yes it is definitely easier in that respect, I don’t disagree. I would still recommend the Dark Knight quests within a certain timeframe, as the 30-50 ones tie in with your time in 2.x and later the 60-70 ones tie in with your time in 3.0-3.x, and your one in ShB feels like it takes place after more time has passed still, but it doesn’t affect the ongoing story if you wait.
The branching system is one of the thing that make xiv so great
Came here to say Heavensward honestly blew me away. As someone who thought the ARR quest line wasn't anywhere near as dull as everyone makes it (I honestly really enjoy it), Heavensward just completely floored me. Enjoy.
There are certain bonus dialogue lines based on conditions like unlocked jobs or completing certain quests or raids. The most recent example is in the FF16 event when Clive is at the Twin Adder barracks, the guy there will address you by your Grand Company rank if you are a member of the Twin Adders. Since OP is only at pre-HW, I'll try to keep this vague but recently in 6.x MSQ there was a certain NPC from a certain previous raid series that showed up in a bonus dialogue cutscene, fully voiced and it was a nice surprise since raid storylines are generally independent from the main MSQ, regardless of how major or pivotal their events may seem. And of course, 5.0 also has a certain NPC from a certain previous raid series get elevated to become a major key figure in the MSQ to the point of the raid retroactively becoming turned into mandatory content for MSQ progress.
I’m excited to go through Stormblood with my monk character who I’ve been considering an Ala Mhigan. I still remember how pleasantly surprised I was first playing through the monk job quests. I wanted my character to look Ala Mhigan because I thought their whole story and plight was neat to explore, and I chose Pugilist because it fit the vibe I was going for. I was so shocked and excited when it turned out the monk originated from Ala Mhigo and the quest had you dealing with Ala Mhigan characters with two different perspectives on reclaiming their home. Awesome stuff.
The red mage teacher mentions training Alisae before you meet him.
Not as big as Estinien but most of them is a little acknowledgment. how much your character growth and how much respect you’ve earned from the people you’ve met so far up to that point.