For those who don’t know, Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 and all its story content are inaccessible in the modern game. When FFXIV relaunched for A Realm Reborn, it replaced most of the content, story, and quests.
But one dedicated player has attempted to preserve a transcript of every quest, story mission, and other text logs from the game’s original version. Twitter user sounsyy, ala mhigo enjoyer (@mirkemenagerie) posted a link to a comprehensive set of Google Docs on Aug. 28, the same day as FFXIV: A Realm Reborn’s 10th anniversary.
This document is genuinely incredible to browse through. On top of all Main Scenario Quests, with dialogue for the nine different Path Companions (A selectable NPC who did the talking for you in most cutscenes), there are all the Grand Company Quests, Side Quests, Class and Job Quests, and NPC dialogue, and even newspapers.
This alone is hundreds of hours of dialogue handily compressed into a well-formatted and ordered set of documents. What’s particularly impressive is the way each quest is set out, almost like a stage play, with some context and description about the cutscene.
FFXIV 1.0 lore can all be found in one place
The archive is a gold mine for lore fans, those with fond memories of 1.0, or people desperate for more juicy FFXIV content. Just a quick dive has revealed a more scorned and bitter Gaius van Baelsar serving under Nael van Darnus, the fact your Path Companion automatically hails from Ala Mhigo, and even some familiar faces and names in recent content from The Rising. This bit about the rumors that Garleans have spread about Urianger has fans laughing and wondering what other funny bits lay within the massive archive:
Of course, players can still find elements of 1.0 in the game today. Not everything was replaced, and some parts are still the same. The Aurum Vale and Cutter’s Cry dungeons are both homages and reuse elements from 1.0’s 8-man content, while the Dzemael Darkhold and The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak were preserved for A Realm Reborn.
Even some of the primal fights survive, with Garuda and Ifrit, in particular, surviving in almost an unchanged form. And apart from much more snow on the ground, much of the early Dragoon job quests are practically identical.
Still, there’s something slightly uncanny about 1.0 content, perhaps because it seems so different from the current game. While players today don’t need to stretch their imagination too hard to think of a game with an extra resource bar or a few different abilities, 1.0 looks like an alternate reality version of FFXIV when watching videos or looking at screenshots. At least this series of documents is helping many players get a lot more context on the lost version of Final Fantasy XIV.
