The Hildibrand quest chain is probably the best written of the quest chains in FF14. For spoilery example....



You're chasing a person who can change their appearance with magic. One of the characters -- Inspector B. -- tells you that the bad guy -- this Man with a Thousand Faces -- has near perfect mimicry skills during an early cut scene that gives you a long, lingering view of Inspector B's face and his distinctive red ear clasp.

Later, Inspector B. tells you that the bad guy's plan has been thrown in disarray and the villain has had to don a hasty disguise, with another long, lingering view of the Inspector's face, this time with a gold colored ear clasp.

This is deliberately shot this way to set up the player to think: "Aha! The bad guy has swapped with the Inspector!" Instead, the game has tricked you, the player, into falling for the writer's trick, all without once even acknowledging later that the character's model had changed ever so slightly, and so slightly you'd only notice it by zooming in while walking around or thanks to the two, long, lingering views juxtaposed with what the character was saying as a subtle: "Hey, you. Player? Pay attention."

In case you think this is just a coincidence, later, the characters are going over the facts they know about the Man With the Thousand Faces. And Inspector B. mentions that the bad guy is wearing gloves to disguise an injury, just as Inspector B. emotes using a gloved hand to push up his glasses, then cutting to a long view where you clearly see the character's gloved hands at his side while another character talks.

It's so perfectly well executed, fourth-wall, meta-trick on the player, that I wonder why the people who wrote this stuff weren't allowed to write the rest of the FF14 main quests.