I was thinking about how FFXIV progresses on the scale and urgency of the story and how the Gridania start is 10 levels of running around in a real peaceful forest helping people farm and stuff.

And eventually any hero story is going to grow from that, but gosh I just love small-scale small-stake plots sometimes and wish there was a way to roll back to that, even temporarily, in the story.

A few spots in later expansions try, but it doesn't quite work.
I've used this example a few times now: Wizardry 1 is literally about going and getting the mayor's favorite amulet back from someone who stole it. That's the entire plot.

It can be argued it wouldn't even really matter if you failed.

I kind of like that in games sometimes. Stardew does that well, as does Swordcraft Story somewhat. Madou Monogatari 1 is just about trying to graduate from magic school kindergarten too.
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@trysdyn Magical Starsign starts out this way too, maybe not as much. And this one *does* get high stakes by the end, but I feel like Trails in the Sky should be mentioned for being, essentially, a 60-hour prologue that still manages to be an engaging story nonetheless
-F

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