Guide to Potentially Disturbing or Upsetting Content
|
Spoiler Warning : This article contains spoilers! |
“This is a role-playing game in which players assume the role of an adventurer exploring the fantastical world of Hydaelyn. Players travel across various lands, interact with characters, and engage in battle against humans and fantasy creatures (e.g., hyena-/jackal-like animals, demons, skeletons). Players use swords, spears, and magic spells to kill several opponents. Combat can be frenetic at times, accompanied by clashing sounds and brief yells. Cutscenes also depict instances of violence: an extended off-screen sequence in which a character is stabbed; a man shot off-screen while crawling away. Dark blood stains appear on the floors of one level. The game includes some suggestive/sexual material: female characters dressed in revealing outfits; camera angles that pan suggestively on bodies; women offering companionship to men in a coastal city; dialogue that states “[s]tay clear from them two. Gave me the crotch rot, they did!” Players occasionally encounter characters who consume alcohol (e.g., “Jussone more cup, littlemann! Hic!”). The word “sh*te” appears in dialogue.
Introduction
Final Fantasy XIV contains several scenes that may be disturbing, upsetting, or frightening to some players, as well as scenes which may trigger phobias or medical issues (Motion sickness, photosensitivity, etc). This guide is intended to provide warning of what to expect and when to players who wish to be warned in advance, while trying to avoid spoiling more than is necessary to provide said information. This guide is a work in progress, so feel free to add more.
Please note that everyone is different; what disturbs one player may leave another unaffected. Many players will be able to view all scenes listed below with no significant distress. Players who are not particularly susceptible to being affected by dark, heavy themes, and who do not have medical issues such as photosensitivity or motion sickness, are advised to not read further, as some important plot points will inevitably be spoiled by necessity.
Final Fantasy XIV is rated as follows:
- ESRB (North America): Teen 13+ (Language, Mild Blood, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence - This is for A Realm Reborn, the ESRB does not have an Endwalker-specific page.)
- PEGI (Europe): 16 (Violence, Drugs)
- USK (Germany): 12
- CERO (Japan): C 15才以上対象 (No searchable database of ratings could be found)
- ACB (Australia): M (Mature themes and violence, online interactivity)
- TMW/CO (New Zealand): M (Stormblood - Violence), PG (A Realm Reborn and Heavensward - Violence & coarse language), no Shadowbringers or Endwalker specific ratings listed
A Realm Reborn
Level 16 dungeon 
Sastasha: Sex Slavery
The second portion of the dungeon features several characters enslaved to the pirates in the dungeon. Some are Lalafell.
Level 34 main scenario quest in La Noscea and Thanalan 
All Good Things: Mass Murder
Several defenceless characters are massacred by gunshot and stabbing.
Level 50 dungeon The Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard): Horror
The duty is set in a crypt where a dark ritual is in progress, as creepy music plays throughout. The final boss is a voidsent (demon), and upon defeating it, a character falls into a pit after candles light her robe on fire.
Level 50 feature quest 
Corpse Groom: Horror, Jump Scare
This is the quest that unlocks the above dungeon The Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard). After completing it, a character sees a ghost (With a jump scare) and runs away screaming.
Heavensward
General Advisory: Heights
Many areas of the expansion take place at great heights, i.e. mountains, floating islands, tall buildings, and airships overlooking clouds or vast chasms below. This includes the main city, several zones, and several instanced dungeons, trials, and raids.
Level 57 main scenario quest in Ishgard A Knight's Calling: Murder
An important character is killed with a magic bolt in a cutscene.
Level 60 patch 3.1 endgame main scenario quest: As Goes Light, So Goes Darkness: Child Endangerment, Attempted Murder
A minor is thrown from a tall building, but is rescued mid-fall.
Level 60 
White Mage job quest Hands of Healing: Racial Persecution
A character recounts crimes committed against her people because of their race.
Stormblood
General Advisory: Military Occupation, Oppression
Stormblood is set in regions that are under a brutal occupation by a foreign military power, with atrocities committed against the occupied population. The story is about the rebellion against the occupying power.
Level 60 main scenario quest in The Peaks The Black Wolf's Pups: Beating, Oppression
A helpless character is brutally beaten, and the player is unable to intervene.
Level 70 patch 4.3 endgame main scenario quest Fruits of Her Labor: Implied Sex Slavery, Murder
In a vision granted by the Echo, a character is implied to have been sold into sex slavery. Later, a character murders two other characters by stabbing.
Shadowbringers
Level 70 main scenario quest in Amh Araeng The Time Left to Us: Body Horror
A character is transformed into a monster in a very graphic, disturbing, and painful way. The transformation was explicitly shown onscreen in all its horrific detail, but was later patched so that the camera cuts away from the transformation. The player must later hunt down and slay said monster in the level 71 dungeon Holminster Switch.
Level 70 main scenario quest in Eulmore Emergent Splendor: Self Harm
A character is shown with a bloody, slashed wrist as a knife lay across them on the floor. The scene is repeatedly shown throughout the cutscene.
Level 73 main scenario quest in Il Mheg The Lawless Ones: Jump Scare
The player witness a vision in which a character monologues before a dark background, with fake static and other effects similar to a horror movie. The scene includes jump scares that may startle the player and be particularly distressing to players with anxiety.
Level 80 alliance raid 
The Tower at Paradigm's Breach: Photosensitive Seizures, Eyestrain, Motion Sickness
Several players have reported symptoms such as motion sickness, eyestrain, double vision, nausea, headaches, dizziness, vertigo, migraines, and vomiting from this raid, and a few have even reported seizures. The game has since been patched to mitigate these issues, but caution is still advised for vulnerable players. See the warning at the top of the linked page for the raid for more information.
One section has the players riding up an inclined lift, as the background scrolls by at high speed.
Endwalker
General Advisory: Existential Themes, Dark Story
The Endwalker main story campaign is all about the end of the world and has a very dark tone throughout. It touches heavily on the inevitability of suffering and death, and the meaning of life, especially in the second half of the campaign.
Level 83 main scenario quest in Garlemald Alea Iacta Est: Suicide
A character commits suicide by gunshot. The act itself happens offscreen and is not shown to players, but the lead up shows the character loading a single bullet and pointing the gun at his head, before the game cuts to a different scene. It later cuts back to show a blood-splattered banner, the body, and the smoking gun.
Level 83 main scenario quest in Garlemald In from the Cold: Body Dysmorphia, Body Possession, Forced into Male Body
The player character's consciousness is forcibly implanted into the body of a dead Garlean male soldier, while a major antagonist overtakes the player character's body. The solo duty that follows is protracted and limiting.
Level 83 dungeon The Tower of Babil: Motion Sickness
The players ride an underground subway train, and later 2 elevators, as the background scrolls by at high speed. The players fight trash while the train is in motion, but not the elevators.
Level 85 main scenario quest in Radz-at-Han Beyond the Depths of Despair: Body Horror, Violence
Several characters are transformed into monsters. One is transformed into a small monster, and is almost immediately crushed by a large one.
Level 85 main scenario quest in Thavnair Warm Hearts, Rekindled Hopes: Violence, Infant Endangerment
A mother and her infant are attacked by a monster and thrown into a body of water. The player character is forced to dive in and rescue them, and finds that the infant survives but the mother was killed on impact.
Level 86 main scenario quest in the first Endwalker secret zone Verdict and Execution: Animal Euthanasia
An animal is deemed a threat to the ecosystem and has to be euthanized. The animal simply disappears into aether, so the scene is not graphic.
Level 87 main scenario quest in the first Endwalker secret zone Thou Must Live, Die, and Know: Existential
The story touches on themes such as the purpose of life and the inevitability of suffering and death, particularly in cutscene that concludes your visit to the first Endwalker secret zone.
Levels 89-90, pretty much the entire final Endwalker secret zone: Existential
As with Thou Must Live, Die, and Know, the zone's storyline touches heavily on existential themes.
Level 90 feature quest Who Wards the Warders? in the Pandæmonium quest chain: Suicide
A character commits suicide by telekinetically impaling himself with a sword. The character then dissipates into aether.
Level 85 fishing quest The Wandering Whale : Emetophobia
A character in the Endwalker fishing quests suffers from severe aether sickness. While the vomiting is not shown on screen, it is described in significant detail.
Level 90 dungeon Lapis Manalis: Motion Sickness
For the first segment of the dungeon, the players ride on the roof of a large land vehicle as the background passes by at high speed. This section is short, but requires fighting trash while the vehicle is in motion.