Zim they do explain what happens after Final Fantasy XIIIs ending. You need to actually finish it before conjuring up a full analysis of the title.

Here I was, reading this topic, enjoying myself because people are throwing around they opinions like it ain't a thing, that shit is water off a goose's ass, and then BAM! THis post. THis post right here.

Could you explain what you mean by the bolded? Could you qualify what you're talking about?

To be honest, I don't really think that post requires an explanation. Lol. I'll come back in a bit and explain if no one else chooses too.

I think the game is great. Haven't completed it yet I'm far from it. I think people are criticizing the series (Fabula Nova Crystallis)  a little too hard. The reviews were even off cause the scores were around 8 to 9. I don't understand how games get so much hype then when the time comes people are disappointed.

I realise they will explain it eventually. Doesn't mean it isn't awful writing. The whole Snow went off.... why didn't Serah go too?.....err well erm.... PLOT DEVICE?!

The complete retconning of FF13's ending is a way out for bad writers. The gameplay, areas, towns, pacing etc of FF13-2 are all much better but god the dialogue and story. It actually annoys me that Noel who so far seems like quite a good and interesting character is actually fairly unlikable because he is just completely forced into an unrelated story and from the events of FF13 there is no reason for him to be there. The disconnect between the two games is almost comical. They couldn't even be bothered to keep the same world rules between games! It should simply have been Noel's game.

The dialogue honestly makes me wonder if the game was written for children as well.
*mild spoilers* 
So we go into the Historia Crux and travel to 5AF, we can see it's 5 AF. Serah knows she is traveling through time, Noel has told her about a gazillion times. She gets there and is then surprised she traveled through time...... okay.  A guard tells them the pulse elevator has been built. BUT WHAT that wasn't meant to happen for 2 years exclaims Serah. The guard states it happened last year. Serah is confsed but guesses that this must mean they traveled to the future. Noel then further summarises that he would guess 2 years in the future. 
The game has just been littered with nonsense like this so far. Everything you know will seemingly be reiterated a billion times while the characters knowledge of it will seemingly waver in and out depending on the conversation i.e. Serah talks about Valhalla in absolute certain terms, then in a later piece of dialogue has no idea what it is. 

I literally couldn't believe that conversation happened. It was as though Serah and Noel had both magically transformed into Fi from Skyward Sword and decided to tell you things you knew a million times over. 

I cannot begin to tell you how much you should not bother

Lol u thought it was actually true?

I apologise for the delayed response. with repect to The Fury's post as well, but in particular coming back to your point on how the stories in the FF series are maturing. i find this somewhat debatable.

If we bring this back a moment to FF4 (we could go to FF2). i actully found that story was very well written. in the sense of the underlying tones. there were was a deep story driven with believable characters. Rydia comes to mind based on the loss of her mother, as does Edge, for the loss of his parents. (there are many more things we could go into). pehaps the most interesting was Kain, his personal jounery of friendship, lonelyness and eventual redemption is a major driver for the games events. thats why i thought he was featured on the box art rather than the main character Cecil. the story was coherent and did deliver a statisfying fantasy tale with some great plot devices and unexpected plot twists.

we could go much further into FF5, 6, 7, maybe 8, 9 etc. i'm not going to go into FF7. my point is the deep storytelling has always been there, but what has improved with each installment is the presentation levels of that story. so 3D models, to eventual voice acting and full body and facial motion capture. so in that respect i agree the presentation of the story is becoming more and more sophisticated, FF12's writing and translation is proof of that.

Zen has actully taken a very critical look at the presentation of the story in FF13/FF13-2. so voice acting and writen dialogue are some of the things he criticised. i'm not sure why there are lines like 'hold on baby your hero's on the way'. its not fair to look at the SNES games, or FF7, as the levels of detail in the dialogue are no where near the level of FF13. so the sophistication in something like "what number am i dr Hojo" is somewhat misleading because we dont know if it was meant to have that type of physcological undertone when it was originally written.

what is near that level is FF8 and FF9, which contain huge amounts of character dialogue. but looking at FF9, the characters fit into certain charachers, but the dialogue never becomes silly in that respect. Zell can say things like that, maybe even other characters in FF8 can say things like that, which is why i can see how that team without Sakaguchi came from FF8, to FF10, FF10-2, Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, The 3rd Birthday and FF13. in this respect i find that the sophistication of spoken dialogue in the FF series appears to be diminising. barring of course FF12, for obvious reasons.

looking at FF13, the inital FNC concept is very interesting. the Fal'cie, L'cie etc. but was it necessary for Toriyama, Wantabe, Kitase to leave that concept unexplored. in 6 hours of cutscenes (FF13) a lot of the plot points are repeated unecessarily. i mean how many times do we hear "its our Focus, Serach said so". is it necessary for the main objective of the game to be this? for this plot point to be repeated more than once during 6 hours of cutscenes leaving the FNC concept is largely unexplored.

i wanted to give FF13 a chance when it came out, i tried to love it. but i think on a written level Toriyama et al. are not compitient storytellers, not without Sakaguhci anyway. a game like this needs to be balanced, we cant have 6 hours of cutscenes dealing with character emotions, rather than focusing on a coherent story. for example. the party decide to go to Gran Pulse to get rid of their brands (or whatever). in that whole time on Gran Pulse, nothing is explained, the purpose of the brand, the Fal'cie and L'cie are all left unexplained. we are left with our brands intact. was it really necessary for Toriyama et al. to force us to going to Gran Pulse for 10/15/20 hours to learn barely any new information, only to return to Cocoon again.

i dont think this is sophisticated storytelling to be honest. and this thing with FF13-2, where time travel dosent follow a rubrick of some sort. why? we cant have a wishy washy rulebook to storytelling we need rules to create the illusion of believability. if we dont ground our story in sometype of believabilty, it dosent feel coherent, it dosent feel like a well writen story in my personal opinion. this is why i think some reviews are slating the hell out of the story.

so i'm not criticising you at all, i havent played FF13-2. but i really think that the storytelling needs to improve on a written level to be honest. other seems to think it also needs to improve on a presentation level which could be a key point of concern as well. i cant overlook this, because of this team just came out of The 3rd Birthday, which has equally been slated the hell out of. its not a coincidence in my opinion.

Your reply is good to read, points out the inconsistancies in FFXIII's story better then my (shorter) post. Just wish I had the ... will to go through it again to try and understand it. If only I didn't have to read datalogs.

I agree 13's story was horrible.
Not the story itself, but on how it was delivered.
I still don't know some of the references and I'm playing FF XIII-2.

Square-Enix got me by the balls, but that's ok because I don't play much games anymore.
I'm pretty much a fanboy but I know 13 is not as good as it could be. 13-2 it's better than 13 so far, but not by a lot.