April 30, 2008

Windurst Missions and SOB Quests

Being a “career mage”, I fell in love with Windurst and the mysterious aura of magic that enveloped the city and surrounding ancient ruins. What makes the Windurst missions unique among the nations is the way they tie in so well with other quests, as well as the RoTZ and CoP missions. In particular, the “Star Onion Brigade” (S.O.B.) quests are intricately linked with the events from the Windurst story line, so much so that I heavily debated whether I should make them their own video (about 30 minutes long), or integrate them with the already two-hour long Windurst mission video. I decided that in order to fully understand the sequence of events, the two could not be separated. I also found it important to include cutscenes from the Summoner Flag quest (I Can Hear a Rainbow) and the Fenrir Prime quest (The Moonlit Path). The result is the longest video I have produced to-date, even 20 minutes longer than CoP Chapter 5.

This story is as much about the Cardian named “Joker” as it is about the Star Sybil, Karuha-Baruha, Ajido-Marujido, and the history of Windurst. You also get background into the Kuluu and Zilart, and the origin of summoning magic. Only by combining the various sources described above does the viewer/player understand how Joker comes be resurrected, the rebirth of Fenrir, and the final outcome of his/their promise to the S.O.B.s.

As with the San d’Oria missions, I have omitted those cutscenes which deal specifically and exclusively with the Shadow Lord, as you can get that complete story in my Shadow Lord Missions video. I have also slightly altered the order of the scene from the “magicite” mission since placing it earlier actually explains events in 3-1 and 3-2. I inserted the SOB and Carbuncle/Fenrir quests in the positions I felt made the most sense to the story overall, trying to follow the grand sequence of events of the various characters’ interactions with each other, specifically the Ace Cardians, Nanaa Mihgo, and Semih Lafihna.

This video has been a long time in the making for me. While I completed the Windy missions right after the new year, I have held off completing the recording until beating Fenrir (which I finally did last weekend); I’m now glad I did, as the result is much more cohesive video than would have otherwise been possible.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for all the videos. They've been the best help in my quest to know FFXI's story. Any chance you'll do Bastok?

lawtechguy said...

Bastok has been under consideration for a while, but truth be told the story really blows. I've been having fun just playing and doing the new WoTG quests/missions. I will probably devote my time delving into that story first simply because it's much more entertaining. I won't rule Bastok out completely, though.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the reply. I'll be looking forward to your future releases.

Jack The Lad said...

This is beautiful. Finally someone has put together a compellation of the storyline. It kinda sucks having to explain it to people who are too lazy to quest it over and over again. Thankyou very much, and I'd like to express great interest in your "possible" projects of San d'Oria and Bastok compellations. :D