To say that Final Fantasy XIV has a plethora of story content is underselling it by a few miles.

In a genre where storytelling is often left by the wayside, especially in MMORPGs, XIV is instead guided by its story. Volumes of the game are locked off until certain storylines are complete, including access to daily quests and end-game raid content. Not a lot of games do that. No games do that, really. At least at the degree that XIV takes it.

It’s a bold move to make. And even if you were to skip every cutscene, it’s still a ton of loading screens you’re seeing instead. Unlike many MMOs, it’s possible to say you’ve “beaten” XIV, since it follows a storyline so closely. For example, the patch that polished off the Stormblood expansion’s storyline came with a credits roll that lasted for at least half an hour. Yet despite that, there’s loads more story content that many players might never see. Even crafting jobs like goldsmith and leatherworker have storylines that follow a coherent plot.

One such optional storyline, the rogue’s, takes everything that is used throughout XIV’s other storytelling endeavors and sort of flips it around and spits it back out at the player.

Where other class and job storylines can, at times, feel copied and pasted with a find-and-replace method of giving context to the player, it’s the class storyline for rogue that feels intensely unique in such a huge game. And as far as I can tell, it’s never replicated elsewhere in XIV.

It’s a storyline that doesn’t hold the player’s hand. Instead, it encourages them to use context clues – not just to figure out what’s going on or how to win, but what the characters are saying and what meaning is meant to be gleaned from them.

Piracy, and by that I mean the classic fantasy idea of pirates, has always been a strange thing in XIV’s world, and it’s almost unfortunate that the storyline takes place in a city called Limsa Lominsa, since it’s the home of dozens upon dozens of pirates. The thing about pirates in XIV is that they also have a manner of speech that is often difficult to parse. Lots of apostrophes. Lots of missing H’s. But you can generally understand what’s being said. Usually.

Your mentor throughout the brief storyline, Jacke, is a pirate and leader of the Rogue’s Guild. He isn’t voice-acted at all, but you can hear him. He has mannerisms in his speech that, at first, are off-putting, but with enough time reading (and re-reading multiple times in some cases) you start to sort of figure out what’s going on. It’s a strong play for the game’s writing to make: an entire storyline’s worth of unique dialogue, in the sense that similar words are not used anywhere else in the game, that asks the player to figure out what it all even means.

The writing behind it works though. Through the use of context clues and repeated uses of the same word used in the same idea, the player is kind of given some ownership in the dialogue. When the player starts to pick up on it from that perspective, it starts to make sense. It starts to feel like you’re getting deep into the lore whether you want to or not.

You, as the newest dagger-wielding rogue in the guild, don’t slip into the shadows. Instead, you slip into the darkmans. You’re encouraged not to pull your stabbers out in the lightmans. That’s no place for a rogue.

Things aren’t good, they’re bene. Men are rooks. Women are morts. A cove is a thief.

I think?

That’s the fun part of the storyline. It’s all kind of up to the player’s interpretation of the context given.

A paladin might be told that a villainous thief is robbing villagers, please help them! A rogue is told “to find out why the rook’sre cloyin’ from honest folk.”

The best part about that direct quote is that it came from the ninja storyline, the job you play which comes after the level 30 rogue quest. At around level 60 or so (a good chunk of real time to reach that point, especially since they are blocked off by game expansions), the same storyline elements come back. And the ninja storyline is better for it. Then again, ninja’s story isn’t bad. But maybe that’s for another time.

But the rogue storyline doesn’t just work in how it’s presented to the player, but in how the player is asked to experience it.

At one point, you’re given an ability that allows you to throw daggers at a far-off target and then are suddenly whisked into a battle. I failed my first attempt in that fight, like level 15 or something, because I didn’t, for lack of a better term, “get” it. The things I was fighting were hitting way, way too hard. Other such battles, or duties as XIV likes to call them, often have NPCs fight alongside you who are capable of healing. Not in this one though.

The monsters walk slowly enough, and hit hard enough, that you’re encouraged to kite (uh, think of running away with the bad guy’s attention if you’re unfamiliar with the term) your foes and sling daggers at them until you win. The game doesn’t outwardly tell you to do this. It has some hints in the dialogue during the battle, but you largely have to figure it out on your own and on the fly. Or fail. Like I did.

At another point in the story, you’re given the ability to slip into the darkmans and essentially become invisible. You’re tasked with sneaking through a busy seaside port and are told to not be spotted at all costs. At the same time, you’re also given an ability called assassinate.

XIV, an MMO before it is anything else, becomes a stealth-based game like Hitman or something at this juncture. And for a moment, you’re playing like you would a spy game. Sneaking around, waiting for patrols to walk back and forth so you can continue and watching for guards, who could probably obliterate you in one hit, to turn around.

You’re asked to assassinate five coves who are nasty, nasty villains. We’re not dealing with monsters or corrupted demons or anything like that in the rogue’s story like we might in another. We’re dealing with the dregs of humanity. We’re chasing coves who are committing terrible crimes – human trafficking with some deep sexual abuse subtext going on.

There aren’t any markers on the map to direct you for this quest – you’re supposed to wander around in the darkmans looking for your targets. And once you find them, assassinate them. The rest, and how you do that, is up to you.

The thing that rogue does so well when set up against other class and job storylines in XIV is that it keeps you doing something. It isn’t just run here, slay three dudes and you’re done, gg. It’s an adventure.

One of my favorite things to do in XIV is experience a duty that takes place in an area where fighting isn’t allowed. In cities, for example. There’s an expectation of peace in XIV’s city zones, especially since there’s no non-instanced, open-world PVP. Many class and job stories in XIV often have you fighting your duties in areas you’ve already been exploring through by way of other quests. There’s little to no different environment around you, it’s just kind of reused content in zones that you already do battle in.

But rogue is one of the few jobs that has you fighting in such city areas. At two points in the storyline, you’re fighting in Limsa Lominsa - once on the lower decks of the city, where the fishers and rogues call home, and on the upper decks, where the Grand Company of the Maelstrom, Limsa Lominsa’s militia I guess is a good way to describe it, does its thing.

During another time in the story, you’re fighting in an area you’ve likely already experienced in the open world. It’s not a city as much as it is a settlement, but there are no monsters there. It’s a resort with a name pulled straight from everyone’s favorite city in FFVII, Costa del Sol. And you’re tasked with slaying your way through dozens of coves to get information on a stolen treasure.

See, working from the darkmans is completely legal for the guild. They are given the go-ahead from the head of Limsa Lominsa. The rogue’s guild are pirates who police pirates. There’s a code of piracy in the world of XIV. And if you break the code, which is practically sacred in the halls of The Dutiful Sisters of the Edelweiss, where the guild conducts its business, you’ve earned their ire.

Not everyone likes the guild, though. And you’re approached by someone who is essentially a police captain of Limsa Lominsa. They don’t like you and they’re eager to let you know that. They challenge your guild to a contest. Find three treasures that were cloyed by these coves before the Yellowjackets do, or you’re history.

In Costa Del Sol, you’re after the second treasure. And having made away with the first one in the storyline, of course you fail this one.

However, the third treasure isn’t jewelry. It isn’t wealth. It’s a bomb. And the goal of the coves who cloyed it against the code (it’s legal to steal from the bad guys in XIV, but not from anyone else) plan to topple the upper decks of Limsa Lominsa, specifically the section where the government conducts its business.

Again, the game asks you to fight in a city, and again, the rogue storyline has another fun wrench to throw into your works. These bombs are timed, but the timer isn’t active anywhere on the screen. Also, you have no idea where they are.

Everything you have learned up to this point – having been encouraged to continue fighting in the darkmans with your stabbers – goes out the window. It’s a full-on sprint against an invisible clock. It’s not a bene feeling at all, but it’s stressful in all the right places. And you feel like you’ve really achieved something when the cove’s leader goes down.

And that’s where the adventure ends. The evolution of your work as a rogue, the investigation of human trafficking that led into stolen goods that led to an assassination attempt on the admiral of Limsa Lominsa has concluded. It’s time to become a ninja in the world of XIV now.

No other storyline (that I’ve experienced at least) functions the same as rogue. Too often were the pugilist/monk and black mage storylines, for example, offering uninspired quests with the same format that is already given to the player through other more generic quests. Go here. Punch this thing three times. Way to go! See you in five levels for the next time to punch something. Or go to this area, right click something, wait five real-life seconds, do it again another seven times.

Rogue, instead, is essentially an extended tutorial with unique gameplay in a genre that infrequently changes its formula. It’s an entertaining, captivating slice of content that teaches its player how to get better at the game without even them knowing. And it’s all in how the story is presented.