FFXIV director addresses controversial story skip feature in Dawntrail

The Final Fantasy XIV director has addressed the controversial free story skip feature in the upcoming Dawntrail expansion later this year.

Final Fantasy XIV has finally finished its 10-year story. Starting all the way back with the original game launch, the MMORPG has come a long way in terms of story, characters, and general gameplay across its multitude of expansions. The final of which was Endwalker, which acted as the conclusion of its first story arc.

Scheduled to release later this year, Dawntrail will be the start of a whole new journey for the Warrior of Light. With new friends to meet, new foes to face, and a new adventure to be a part of. This in theory means players should be able to jump into the story without too much trouble, as most of it should be wrapped up from before.

There was definitely talk around the community about the potential for a story skip feature to arrive in Dawntrail, assisting new players to get into relevant content. This means they could skip the 300-400-hour story beforehand, letting them get right into the Dawntrail story as soon as they get into the game. However, the director has addressed this feature, and the outlook isn’t great.

Final Fantasy XIV won’t be offering a free story skip just yet

In a recent interview with PCGamer, Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) was hesitant to add a feature that skipped the story.

“For the story, we are not currently planning any kind of new skip feature,” the dev explained. “This is something I’m constantly torn about, and we have already finished implementing a feature that allows players to learn about the story, setting, and characters even when they skip the story.”

This mainly came from the concern that the option to skip would diminish the experience of the game.

“I’m concerned that if the globally acclaimed storyline can be skipped through a function, the value of the FF14 game itself will be diminished.”

With that being said, Yoshi-P is still thinking about implementing this feature, saying that he would “think about it some more,” meaning there may be an option for it down the line.