The Dawntrail MSQ Isn't Very Good | My Honest Thoughts

[@sharlayanforum]

Posting this here to state the obvious; This video is not me telling anyone who enjoyed the story or MSQ of Dawntrail that they are wrong; If you loved it, I'm glad you did! I enjoyed parts and pieces of this MSQ experience, and I enjoy the OVERALL story of Dawntrail so far. However, the MSQ faced serious issues, to me, including pacing, character writing/development, and a lack of engaging battle content outside of Dungeons. I'm very hopeful for the patches of Dawntrail, and I'm excited to see where they take the few loose threads that they left dangling!

[@MissKashira]

The thing that makes Emet-Selch sympathetic is he's attempting to undo an apocalypse. We are made from his people's parts. We can not fault him for attempting to get back what was taken from his people and handed to us. We can't let him take it back cause we need his people's parts to live. But we can get why he'd want them back and we know in his position we'd do the same thing. In DT, Sphene isn't Emet-Selch. We are. She wants to use our parts to maintain her people. And we pulled a full on, "I do not consider you to be truly alive, ergo I am not guilty on murder if I kill you," on the Endless. Which again is what makes him so empathetic, because when put in his position we become him and don't even lose sleep over it. We were wiping out the Endless between boat rides and ice cream.

[@sharlayanforum]

Absolutely! I think Emet is probably the most sympathetic villain we've ever had, for the sole purpose that he's essentially acting as a foil to ourselves, trying to bring his people back from a calamity that left them broken, much like the ones we prevent multiple times. I think Sphene fails because she lacks any time or writing to allow our sympathy to build for her. Imagine if the first half of the story was only 2 or 3 levels, and we spent an extra 3 or 4 levels getting to know Sphene, see her be an amazing ruler for her people, slowly peel back the layers of Alexandria and the Shard they come from. Then we get the bombshell that Sphene is an endless, and that she's been working with Zoraal Ja only because she lacks the ability to gather souls for her people, who we learn are all Endless who are being sustained by these Souls. We learn that Sphene doesn't agree with the way Zoraal Ja uses military conquest to gather them, but she can't deny its effectiveness. This gives her a lot of opprotunities to defend her own views and defend Zoraal Ja from us, which makes both of them more compelling villains.

[@MissKashira]

@@sharlayanforum While I do agree it's rushed, even if Sphene explained her motives to us for the next 12 years they'd be impossible to sympathize with because they are both selfish and dumb. Wanting to kill us to give her people more time is at it's core selfish. We all got our one life. The Alexandrians already get a bit more time with their tech, but they are being greedy and wanting everything forever at our expense. That'd be like wanting us to sympathize with Eulmore as they lay around and do nothing to help anyone. Emet-Selch is different because he's not stealing, he's repossessing. He's taking back what was taken from his people. And it's more reflective of real life conflicts where a lot of times there aren't 100% bad guys and 100% good guys, just people who are attempting to take care of their own and sometimes there is little option but for that to be at the cost of someone else. Like the Surge Wars, every society needed electrope to not die because of the changing environment. People weren't being selfish or asking for special treatment, they were just trying not to die. The other problem is what she's doing isn't sustainable. No matter how many worlds she destroys, she's only delaying the end. There is only so much life in the universe for her Endless to feed from. And given we're aware of other immortal beings like the Omicron, Nibirun and Ea, we know there are ways to continue on forever without destroying entire worlds and we offer to help her find those ways. They have VR, why not stop trying to make them physical with lifeforce and let them live in a VR world instead? There were options. It's hard to sympathize with someone doing something selfish, stupid and ultimately doomed to fail. This should have been given it's own entire expansion and while we work to help her find a way to save her people, maybe she gets too close to running out of power, so she wipes out an island for enough lifeforce to buy the Endless a year. Then we are faced with do we keep helping her even though she did something monstrous, but if we solve the problem she will no longer have a motive to harm people (like we did with the Mamool Ja). Or do we kill her knowing doing so would destroy the Endless? Those are some heavy decisions that needed way more breathing room than one zone. And her going from love and peace to I'm going to just delete my personality and destroy worlds was utterly ridiculous.

[@sharlayanforum]

Agreed 100%, I just mean to say even some simple structure changes would make her better. I don't think she'd ever be fully justifiable, of course, but she could be made much more interesting.

[@MissKashira]

@@sharlayanforum Yeah, there are sooo many pacing issues with DT. Also, not getting preachy about the Endless would help. We're told they are unnatural, just a facsimile, part of a twisted mausoleum by a character we are meant to like. Which is completely contrary to how the beings in Ultima Thule are treated. Why should we feel for her when we're told she's a program that is doing something disgusting and wrong? By contrast when the Scions find out why Emet-Selch is doing what he's doing, Y'shtola admits it's only logical from his perspective and Alisaie admits in his position she'd be doing the same thing. We can't let him do it because we don't want to die, but we GET why he's doing it. It's really hard to get why Sphene is feeding her servers lifeforce. All I can conclude is Alexandrian scientists were terrible at their job. They set up their servers to run off people. They made them so anyone could just walk up and pull the plug deleting tens of thousands of people with no guards, no password protection. Why do the ziplines have more defenses than the servers holding swathes of your population? If they weren't all dead I'd insist they be fired.

[@sharlayanforum]

@@MissKashira maybe this is SE's way of slam dunking on AI lmao

[@lostwoodsstudios8270]

My engagement to the story went on a STEADY unchanging decline as I progressed. By the time I got to the last zone, I was like "Jesus Christ... the world is ending. I don't have time for putting on plays and looking at animals. Can we just shut these things down and save this place already?" If there was a drinking game for every time WUK LAME-AT clenched her fist, or the WoL just nodded his head in solidarity, the entire FFXIV player-base would die from alcohol poisoning.

[@sharlayanforum]

Okay, Wuk Lame-at is funny.

[@Knucklehead4327]

I swear every single point of this comment is me. The only exception would be shaaloni (w/e it's called) which was my favorite zone by far. Curiously the least lamat-y.

[@michielmanders9766]

The WoL just decides to put a catlady she met 5 minutes ago on the throne of a massive continent. That pissed me off so much, becuase of how morally wrong that is. WoL even meets Koana who is clearly a better candidate, but we needed scion competition so we go with the braindamaged catlady. This honestly ruined the expansion before it even came out.

[@Zniled]

I may be in the minority, but i expected more from Ketenramm when he got introduced to the story. Him being the legendary explorer we have been hearing about since Arr, and he was just there to tell a bit about Krile, hopefully we'll see more of him in the patch quests. Also his voice is one of the standouts alongside Otis which they did dirty btw.

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah its insane that out of all the sidelined characters they picked Eorzea's most legendary explorer and the only character in the entire Alexandria arc that had any personality at all.

[@ThisismineIguess]

tl;dr - Wuk Lamat sucks. Dungeons are great, story is assssssssjeaaaaaans. *TOO MANY WORDS BELOW* Regarding the Taco Trial, there's also the fact that as her BLOOD FATHER, he's not fit as an arbiter because of that blood relation. He even shows bias by giving her some wink-wink nudge-nudge advice to steer her in the correct direction, meaning he essentially interfered for his daughter's gain(and sure enough, the other two lose because they didn't get the same hint!) This is pretty unacceptable, tbh. It was a missed opportunity in the EXTREME to not have Jajajajajaja paired with Wuk, forcing them to at least stomach one another and maybe even learn a little more about one another(and setting up Ja Ja's future feelings, because he 180s so hard that it was basically character assassination. Only Zoraal was handled worse.) Koana undergoes more actual development than Wuk Lamat which is equally unacceptable and downright pathetic. For that matter, her mentioned "nuance" is a footnote at best. She's puddle-deep and then some, and they overdid it to the extreme in having her beat out the 2nd, 3rd and 4th characters with most script lines COMBINED and yet have jack all to say, never receive comeuppance, ever truly overcome adversity or even permanently cause some kind of irreparable damage she must come to terms with and gets praised for everything over you(she conquered Valigarmanda, not you! Zoraal Ja didn't matter either despite helping!), even with Wuk Evu she states something that you and Alphinaud deduce and SHE's the one who gets praised and immediately sucks it up rather than admit she didn't actually figure out the parade float's true purpose. She even hijacks the final fight, does more DPS than the WoL themselves, has a super special OC power Limit Break that's 3x as powerful as the WoLs melee LB3, it's just... everything about her was badly done. She gets various power boosts throughout the story with no development behind them(after getting kidnapped by BANDITS she somehow solos all of Bakool's men AND him a little later? how?????) Her JP VA performance was generic but still good, and her NA performance was a 2/10 at best. The lack of emotion behind the reveal of Regulators eating souls and brushing it off with "it's their culture" is infuriating. Not a single Scion raises a stink about it because it's ~cultural~, and if you said during EW era that they'd have that kind of reaction to such a thing literally no one would believe it, it's that out of character. Having multiple Scions forced out of Living Memory is another trash decision, never mind forced to make no attempts to figure out if there's a way the Endless can persist SOMEHOW. Also, the Endless ARE alive as per Ultima Thule's various conversations with Jammingway even stating that those memory manifestations of Dynamis are actual existences, meaning you killed everyone(though it's likely they can be brought back "online" lol, but until then they're dead. Even Cachuia was able to grow despite her situation, had wants, learned a skill and explored the world outside.) All the FF9 references were trash-tier memberberries and Hiroi should feel ashamed of himself for cramming all that shit in there, it's basically a spit in the face to the incredible world that IX is, never mind aping the "remember us" of ShB for the Yok Huy AND the endgame with Sphene. Krile gets pissed on and learns critical info offscreen. Erenville has to suck up something super-emotional and heart-tearing at lightning speed. At least we're geared up to have a godly raid tier and Pirate Bozja.

[@sharlayanforum]

No lies detected. All hail the Bermuda Triangle Bozja though, that mess sounds insane

[@b.h.4249]

I'm so glad someone else is talking about the writers sweeping the consumption of souls under the rug. Hell, even after the death of Sphene the denizens of Solution 9 are still shown to be using them while showing neither awareness of nor remorse for their actions and still talk about it as an essential part of their culture. I can't even begin to comprehend how someone can write such a thing completely straight. Spoilers for normal raids: And then the raids focus on the physical toll that the use of feral souls is putting on the users while handwaiving the origin and the pain of the beings whose souls are being bastardised. I just. Why. They could've used any kind of power-up, we literally have differrent kinds of aether for use. Why insist on souls? How could anyone look at this and give it the okay?

[@ikanuhm]

I agree completely to all of this except the raid. The songs are bangers and the fights are fun, but I can't seem to accept the bosses. We come from killing gods and interdimensional beings in the other raids and here we get a set of furries. It doesn't make sense at all.

[@Gharon]

I didn't skip any cutscenes, but for the first time since i started playing 10 years ago in ARR it actually felt enticing to do so near the end. The last zone fell SO incredibly flat for me. I didn't really get what the game wanted me to feel. Compassion because the Endless felt so much like living beings? Pity or animosity because in reality they were just data that was sustained by actual souls? We talk and spend time to learn about them (way too long just like in almost every other zone) just to unceremoniously turn them off right afterwards, one quadrant at a time. I've cried numerous times in pervious expansions, but here i just felt nothing. I just wanted it to be over. But instead we apparently have all the time in the world to do menial fetch quests and eat Popcorn "since Sphene is rebooting anyway, it's fine", which completely killed any of the world ending urgency the situation should have. The final nail in the coffin was when Sphene actually does reboot and you confront her but she doesn't utter a word about what you just did. Am i supposed to believe this incredibly sophisticated AI that was overseeing the whole system which is hellbent to erase all life just to keep her "people" happy for eternity did not notice we just deleted her whole reason of existence? And even if for some idiotic reason she has the computing power of a calculator and didn't realise it yet... how about WE TELL HER? Come on... If i wasn't already mostly checked out at this point i definitely was after this. The whole final confrontation felt pointless, as cool as the fight itself was (minus Wuk Lamat).

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah, this is the first expansion where I struggled to stay engaged. After 10 years, it's a bit disheartening.

[@bamboozled_again]

@@sharlayanforum after 10 years i became a story skipper, it is incredible disappointing to a point where i will not buy future expansions until i have seen who the writers are and what the story is about. tho i enjoy the new dungeon n raid Battlecontent it can't save the game for me because i think the combat in 14 sucks, snapshot stinks, gcd is making the game feel very slow to me and not having builds in the game like other mmorps and the missing option to craft gear with stats that i want on my gear is awful, materia and overmelding doesn't do it for me, pictomancer is cringe and i'm done for good with the game if 8.0 is not a complete banger, RIP 10 years of ff14... game ended with Endwalker, cya

[@RicardoSantos-oz3uj]

Is the first expansion that I regret watching the cut-scenes.

[@MarcusMaybenot]

@@bamboozled_again You're being extremely overly dramatic, the game has had stumbles with the story before ( *cough* StB ) and DT even if we only go by the fanfest announcements and there's always more would make DT the most content packed expansion we've ever had by the end. And there's content they haven't even announced officially yet like we're getting completely new battle content we haven't seen before they have yet to announce officially and 24 man savage. The APM of Jobs in FFXIV is also pretty much the same as in WoW and faster than a lot of other MMO's it's not actually slow in reality it just revolves more around ogcd's and purely gcd. Snapshots are rly not an issue either that just makes it sound to me like you don't understand how it works in the game, how the castbar and animation are not the same it's actually something I like in the game and also lets you do things like slidecast which you can't in other MMO's. If you could craft gear with any stats it'd unironically make for less variety in gearing too if anything it might even result in some crafted pieces just being BiS so you'd run around with 710 pieces instead of 730. Builds in MMO's aren't rly a thing anymore either, you use the meta or you don't get invited if you don't play according to the meta in WoW people will actively be toxic towards you and insult you and call you a shitter etc. You don't rly have choice, it's an illusion of choice. PCT has also been widely loved it's literally the most played Job right now, you just sound kinda out of touch with both the game and the community tbh especially your comment on snapshots makes me think you don't even understand how the game works.

[@amichau]

My thought was that the rite of succession should somehow have replaced the patch story and the Alexandria stuff should’ve been the entire patch. I think the frustration really started getting to me when I was meeting “the resistance” for the first time at level 97/98. That’s too late to be introducing whole factions.

[@sharlayanforum]

Agreed, totally.

[@bigtimetimmyjim6486]

The funny thing is that the story pretty much sidelines the resistance as soon as it is introduced, we know so little about it that it is basically a non-factor in the events of the plot, which is a real shame.

[@qamarqammar7629]

Good point. Actually, there were no factions. Not in the sense that Stormblood had factions, or even the city of Ul'dah or Limsa from the first day you arrive in Eorzea. There was no political depth or complexity on this continent. And no conflict that a Good Meal couldn't solve. I don't know what story they were trying to tell. There were certainly good bits here and there. And I legit enjoyed some of the playthrough. But it didn't add up and the more we all think about it the bigger the cracks in the foundation look.

[@Cavthena]

Agreed, the rite should have been the patch story. However, I feel Alexandria should have been completely removed or at least only an element of the larger plot with the story around the Twelve being the focus. Seriously, twelve Gods made by Hydaelyn to look over all of humanity and had concerns of returning their aether to the star, and they only get some Alliance raids. Oof. They could have shown how they looked over humanity on the entire Star not just Eorzea, thus introducing areas like in DT and more. They could have delved deeper into aether and built a story of how the elements created by Hydaelyn (Shards, gods, etc) are now going to shit because she's gone, and the star is at risk of literally taking the equivalent of 6 calamities at once. The Warrior of Light and the Scions have to regroup and attempt to stop or control the aether and prevent or control the merging of shards. They have 10 years to build the story. DT needed to be just a taste, an introduction to the growing threat. The ending should feel like you've made no progress (Empire Strikes back) or only temporary progress (A New Hope). Hook us. Make us want the next patch and expansion now! Instead, we're more interested in savage drops.

[@iantaakalla8180]

Heck, even the fact that Alexandria’s story is now basically being told in normal raid content also proves this should have been patch content. It is not to say that we do not know what Alexandria is about, we know that they are yet another people from the past under the hardest of dilemmas, but from the obverse side of the Ascians in that their solution to the vicissitudes of time are to become immortal (as opposed to the solution of the cruelty of immortality being inflicting death). Yet it is only in normal raids that we really explore what overusage of souls really is like, and why they needed to make a massive push to take over The Source, which usually would have been integrated very smoothly into stuff otherwise, and the consequences of a new upcoming thing are fully explored in patches. This would be equivalent to figuring out Omega’s motivation in raid content, but that was intentionally held back because Omegas was a third huge issues besides the twin liberations of Doma and Gyr Abania. By the own storytelling of FFXIV itself, to really explore the conundrum of Alexandria would have required all of the patches, and while it is true that there is usually a primary villain and a secondary villain, Bakool Ja Ja was set up to be the primary villain. Zoraal Ja, having a slow-growing ambition that overtakes him, could have been the hidden villain. This also has the benefit that the issue of the two-headed Mamool Jas are explored very well, and that Wuk Lamat, Koana, Bakool Ja Ja, and Zoraal Ja all have stuff clearly spelt out as to why none of them are fit to be the Dawnservant and also why the combo of Wuk Lamat and Koana is the best approximant that also serves to get away from stuff. As all four are explored, the suffocating Wuk Lamat is spread out a bit more, meaning Valigarmanda is a legitimate threat and helping people realize that there is far more at stake more naturally than shown, both to us and to Wuk Lamat who thinks she is going to talk every situation out. But on the Alexandria side of things, Queen Sphene comes from a different reflection, her issues are unique, and the casual overusage of souls is a point for great philosophical pondering and can slowly build up to the fact that Sphene is a machine that has to keep her people alive. This also can give Krile the ability to do something by having her Echo trigger and see what they feel about the world so as to push that creepy fake-perfect world vibe until the point where Sphene has to fight everybody because she is programmed to take over The Source. Alexandria is rife to be the perfect setup for something creepy, and they ruined it.

[@thristanebben8902]

If a petition to bring Ishikawa back as main writer starts, i’t’ll have at least 1000 signatures before it even posts

[@sharlayanforum]

I'll sign it 10,000 times myself

[@Keira_Blackstone]

hell, I'm considering leaving my subscription off unless I hear they've brought her back. I had a TON of goodwill toward the story in this game due to how much I've loved what came before. I did not expect them to burn through all of it so incredibly fast.

[@RicardoSantos-oz3uj]

I don't think a petition would work because the way Japanese corporations and regulations work. They are not fast to change. We are stuck with the writer.

[@TheDapperDragon]

@@RicardoSantos-oz3uj On the other hand, the japanese fanbase is just as pissed off. They HATE Wuk.

[@maxmagnus377]

There are more good writers out there, they just hired an absolute stinker for this expansion, and were probably too far into the process before they realized (they MUST have) that they fucked up.

[@lonelykangta]

pretty much i had the same feelings as you. once we hit the last zone its like "im just going to delete all of this so why even care about it?"

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah, it's hard to think it's going to be important when it's just going to be wiped out in an hour.

[@iantaakalla8180]

And you can restore the look of the place anyways, meaning that both Heritage Found and the deletion of Heritage Found is unimportant.

[@Horstveratu]

The zones look amazing, the dungeons are nice, everything is good, but they fked up with the Story... It started with the bad setup patch and the hamfisted beginning of the Story, They should have leaned into the Vacation thing heavily and set this up like the One Piece Arabasta Arc and let us stumble into the wuk lamat story during a beach episode in the first Zone/City, and then give it a Westworld turn with it all being a simulation to lure us there, the story telling needs waaay more action it's basically a graphic novel that gives you gameplay every 3-6h... The WOL not having a "Goku taking off his weights" moment is fkn criminal

[@sharlayanforum]

Trueeeee the fact that we finally get to do something and then Wuk ends up diving in to save us is such a bummer.

[@yasureyabetcha]

@@sharlayanforum It's woke female power crap is all it is. It was designed to upset people like us, and alienate us. And bring in the new generation of woke weirdos to make more money.

[@hache-hiwattan7848]

That part of the second arc i agree, the Alexandria arc really feels that was the "original" concept for DT MSQ and the sucession part was either put in later because i am not sure if was a choice from Yoshida or the writing team on focusing on Wuk Lamat. But really feels both put together rapidly, and is all over the place, and overall it if they wanted a "Main character" outside of our WoLs, it should have been Krile's expansion, makes sense, she has a connection with us and she could have been the bridge of a new arc while our characters just start as adventurers again leaving the "heroes of the star" behind. Something like that, so many posibilities more interesting than this.

[@Killerb567]

I totally agree with you about just getting to a point of not caring. Id find myself skipping cut scenes after awhile after i felt like they got the point across. Some scenes would drag on for no reason after they made an important point.

[@sharlayanforum]

Right!? Like half of them could've been 30-60 seconds long and just went on for 5 or 6 minutes instead

[@pumpkinheadx3715]

yeah being sideline wasn't cool

[@soniccactuar8566]

omg yes. all the times they repeated a theme or motif WITHIN THE SAME CUTSCENE was mind numbing.

[@pumpkinheadx3715]

@@sharlayanforum yeah why i ended up skipping almost everything casue it was the same thing over and over, but sidelining the WOL for a crappy asf character was stupid that sweet baby inc doing there

[@MurakamiTenshi]

I never skip cutscenes in FF14, but I was forced to with Yawntrail. The culture with the tribes mirroring Latin America is great, but the quests dragged on with little input from WoL. Wuk Lamat getting the alpaca offscreen is an aggregious error. But the biggest sin is shoving Wuk Lamat in our faces 97% of the story time. For all of half of Shaaloani, we got a break from her--only to go on a quest for her goddamn bracelet. Krile and Erenville were supposed to have storyline, but it got pushed to the back of MSQ. I was already checked out by the time I got to Heritage Found. Wuk Lamat soloing the final boss and stealing our thunder was the worst. We didn't even get our advertised fight against the Scions.

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah, I saw someone say a phrase to the effect of "The problem isn't really that the spotlight isn't on us, but that who it's placed on and when makes no sense" and I think that's super accurate.

[@RicardoSantos-oz3uj]

Yes that part was. Cool we get to do all this work for a minigame after. Nope. It was WL alone.

[@yuina88]

1/10 story, but 9/10 content if the dungeons/trials were bad and there was no graphics update this would've been a disastrous launch

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah, they really came out swinging with the content and art, so... overall I'm still super happy with DT, I just didn't enjoy the MSQ

[@lostwoodsstudios8270]

Agreed. Amazing visuals and fight mechanics. Story as bland as wet cardboard.

[@RicardoSantos-oz3uj]

I give it a 6/10 on content. Too many mosters just being reskin of previous monsters. Story, I guve it a 3/10. Mostly because it could have been saved by cutting 50% of WL.

[@makisbizarreadventure4669]

THe problem with the story is the bases altogether. It should have been a Krile story. It should have been her retracing Galuf's steps to learn more about him then mid arc would be her learning about her parents after finding the gate where she came from. We'd be more invested in her and have some more agency as her ally since we've known her for so long. Only thing i disagree about is the final zone

[@SuperRamos619]

I think the 'story' of Dawntrail is quite good. However, the 'storytelling', imo, is where it falls short. What we do learn is interesting, in both halves of the story. But i think many parts are over explained, and uneccesaey, while other story beats are rushed to conclusion, without much breathing room. Also so many cutscenes that should have been voiced were not.

[@sharlayanforum]

The cutscenes thing is a huge true. There were some scenes where I was actually shocked that VO never started playing

[@Cyraneth]

I think the idea with Wuk Lamat is that we're supposed to take the mentor role and she's our protégé, but her growth is haphazard at best, we don't seem to have much influence on it per se, and when she finally shows that she's achieved her "final form" in the last trial, standing at the front and tanking the boss for us, it feels rushed and unearned, which in turn means we as mentors failed. And that just feels bad.

[@sharlayanforum]

Bingo

[@samoth5161]

Hard to be a mentor when you're a mostly mute blank slate player stand in

[@sharlayanforum]

@@samoth5161 true and real

[@nomnomnom298]

I'm ok with boring, i'm ok with slow. What I do not like is overly childish conclusion to complex topics and overly handwaving/simplifying of complicated situations. If we are already going to go slower pace, why not spend more time with these topics? Why gloss over everything with power of friendship (looking at you second half of yak tel/giants story). Also reeds thing and us literally watching the dad die in front of us were just silly. And also the main character of this expansion was not my cup of tea, she was annoying and once again childish rather than funny and cute. Second part of the expansion while more interesting and exciting was just rushed, choice of us not trying to do anything with the gate after we discover it was weird, scions being teased and yet not really being part of the story was questionable, Krile not getting the spotlight in the expansion was a missed opportunity, just soo many of these little things. While overall experience and story elements that were there were good, just the writing was god awful. Also, the solo duties could have been utilized as a storytelling element more. Soo many chances where i'm like "let me fight! let me do SOMETHING". Could have done without the solo instances with dad and shade of dad since it did not make a impact in the story imo and that effort could have been used in things like defense of the city first time around even if it was a lost cause and also during the setup before vanguard. Overall a "meh" story. Felt very childish. There is a way to write a lighthearted story for the adult audience (since demographic of this game is mainly adults). But this was just not made for adults, heck I have watched disney movies for kids that are much better at dealing with difficult topics than DT.

[@sharlayanforum]

Agreed! I think its criminal we didn't get a solo instance on the train and a solo instance of fighting Zoraal Ja in the throne room after the invasion. For as much as they wanted to use the stealth/follow missions, you'd think they would've done a mission ala In From The Cold where we sneak through the enemy infestion Tuliyolal saving civilians and getting to the throne room.

[@lostwoodsstudios8270]

As far as Living Memory goes. My opinion is: They should have made us do this area in REVERSE. Like... we get to the "Golden City" ...and it's just ... all gray. Everybody is shocked. Then instead of shutting everything down to progress, we have to OPEN EVERYTHING UP!!! ...Make it come back to life and THEN we figure out, why Spene fights for what she fights for!. I was SO pissed in this zone. Like, this glorious city (I'm sure took a lot of time to develop) turns into a .... drab, lifeless... depressing area. At the very least, it couldn't have possibly been any worse if they had written it that way.

[@canticledrawl]

Pray tell return to speak with Wuk Lamat!

[@sharlayanforum]

A lot of pray

[@Forren236]

I immediately caught on to the AB testing aspect when I got to Shalonii or however its spelled (I call it Shoshoni cause that's a real place I've been to multiple times). The writing got a whole lot tighter but was dragged down by the weight of the first half where I, as the player character, had no real agency in this story. I started to feel like I had agency again. Only for that feeling to be dashed as soon as the invasion happened and we went back to being fourth fiddle, not even second or third, to Wuk Lamat. I suspect, but can't confirm, that the overall plot was written by one person, then handed to two underlings who wrote the actual story structure in each half. And then a few months ago during playtesting, just before JP Fanfest I suspect, they discovered that the story wasn't in the best of shape and brought Ishikawa (DRK, SB Doma, ShB, and EW writer) in to do a fix it pass to make a passable story. That's my theory at least on the writing. If I'm supposed to be Lamat's mentor, then let me actually mentor her. Let me tell her when she messed up and what she should take away from that leason. What we have is not mentoring, it's enablement. We are enabling her to not grow as a person beyond only partially disliking alpacas from hating them with the rancor of a thousand suns. Or promising to not put on the false bravado routine, only for her to do it in the very next cutscene. Collecting the 7 Chaos Emeralds isn't really character growth for her. I was genuinely relieved when Gulool Ja Ja told me that none of the claimants were worthy, as I realized I wasnt going insane and I had been wrangling a special needs child for an actual reason: to try to help her grow into a worthy claimant. Only to find myself frustrated in that I couldn't help her grow at all. The Arcadion is a better story that I'm already invested in, and it has only been around for a week at this point. I took one look at the tournament arc there and thought "Wow, a tournament arc I actually want to do!" I want to cut promos for my WoL, it's that engaging. Content wise, from the zones to fights and music, this expansion has been awesome. But with Ishikawa working on XVII (It is suspected that is where her efforts are currently focused), we're likely stuck with the current writing team for a bit longer, and that means sub-par storytelling. Sorry for the jumbled thoughts, writing this in pieces on a phone is not conductive to quality.

[@Asin24]

The zone split itself could of worked fine if they had the split zone help establish more the other Promises. It could of had little competitive bits there along with having the introductions of the different promises combined with introducing the different cultural elements at the same time in a fun way. It would of been a far better way of getting an idea of the contestants in a much more 'show don't tell' way.

[@sharlayanforum]

Oh yeah, I have no issues inherently with splitting a starting zone choice, but you have to do something with it if you're going to do it. I think they just handled it wrong here

[@Tony-nt5zd]

I love the trials and most of the dungeons. I love the aesthetic of Tural. I could honestly never see a scifi/futuristic zone in XIV again and it would be too soon. I think if Bakool Ja Ja started out an evil fuskwit and then grew more steadily into a good person while Zoraal Ja came off as a "honorable but harsh" type at first and descended into his obsessed state over time it would have been better. I think most of the trials could have been way more interesting than they were (I'm looking at the parade, alpaca wrangling, and cooking show in particular here) and that they could have made a whole extended segment on the realization of the Mamool Ja practice of mass infanticide that could have cemented Bakool Ja Ja's and Zoraal Ja's moral flip as they come to different stances over the practice. As far as Heritage Found/Solution Nine/Living Memory, I honestly don't care about any of it. I get where they wanted to go, but they spent nowhere near enough time to give me reason to like them. DT isn't my least favorite part of the game, ARR still holds that card despite the changes to it over time, but I definitely feel like they rushed too much stuff that needed more attention, didn't make the stakes very exciting in the first half, and I really couldn't deal with the second half at all because of how sharp of a turn it took everything. Edit: Also who the hell hired the 4Kids/Funimation people to voice act for the Shaaloani characters?

[@sharlayanforum]

The voice acting/direction in Shaaloani literally made me take a break. It was like that meme of the guy taking his headphones off with a digusted look on his face.

[@XXLPIakat]

The first half of Shaaloani was actually my favorite, because it was finally just us being an adventurer and not a glorified camera man. I liked the last zone, because I liked Erenvile, Krile, Otis and G'raha and they had all interesting parts there. The last trial, I was hyped when I saw my wol pull out Azem's crystal and I was so excited to play it, and then in the middle of the trial Wuk appeared and compeltely ruined the single best moment and I skipped all cutscenes afterwards.

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah I really think it's such a shame that the last trial ended the way it did. We spent 75% of the expansion being an errand boy who stands around and nods, we finally get to be strong adventurers and play some content, and even then they let Wuk Lamat swoop in to steal the spotlight after she's existed in it for 40 hours. Such a bummer.

[@SgtGitaroo]

The craziest thing about Living Memory to me is how none of the endless defend their existence. They either say nothing or actively want to be destroyed. The complete lack of a conflict, complete lack of emotion, really made the whole thing fall flat for me. I feel like the game wanted me to cry, but I felt nothing except boredom. The most excited I got was for the breadcrumbs of Lalafell lore (the thing completely unrelated to the story occurring).

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah it's wild that the most interesting part of Living Memory was just random unrelated lore.

[@Barnuses]

I didn't skip any cutscenes, in fact, I not only did every single side quest, but I talked to every single NPC. I even read all the speech bubbles of the ones I couldn't engage directly. Every item description and even F.A.T.E. descriptions and dialogues. The world building is really good. There are some very interesting NPCs in side quests. I will say, it seems everyone who rushed through the story had a much harder time than I did. I had early access and slowly worked through the story and it took me about a month to finish it(literally just finished yesterday) I also took a break to do all the role quests as soon as they became available, and cleared all maps of all quests and Shared F.A.T.E.s before leaving each zone. So the pacing wasn't so harshly felt. That's not me excusing it, it's just my perspective. Contrived is very much an apt way to describe this expansion. Events don't have a natural flow to them. Many times it felt like things just happened just to progress the story. It's like they had the ending written and had to force the journey. Where each prior expansion had a more natural flow to them because they didn't know where it was going and thus a 10 year epic journey unfolded. But with Dawntrail it seems like they just wanted to get to the end part where the music plays and we cry over a tragic villain. It's like when a television show has a new director who has never seen it, but they read descriptions of the most popular episodes and just try to jam familiar things into the story expecting it to have the same emotional impact without the arc building up to what made those popular episodes so great. It's like, "Here's Wuk Lamat, she's kind and wants peace, so you like her." "Here's Sphene, she's like Emet-Selch, just trying to protect her people. So you like her now. Plot twist, she is actually kind of like Meteion because she is just an out of control A.I. collecting remnants of a fallen civilization. You still like her and you also feel bad about defeating her." Motivations were also so vague. Zoraal Ja was like Zenos if he had even less of a personality. He even killed his own father who was the leader of the faction like Zenos. Zenos wanted to cause suffering in hopes of forging worthy prey. At first Zoraal Ja wanted people to know war so they could appreciate peace. Then he wanted to kill everyone so he could rule them? Then he just wanted to prove himself better than Gulool Ja Ja? He has like five lines of dialogue so it's kind of hard to discern exactly what his deal was. Bakool Ja Ja was just a Snidely Whiplash-esque cartoon villain. I'm surprised he didn't tie Wuk Lamat to train tracks when he kidnapped her. And his face turn was abrupt and unnatural. Sphene was just an A.I. that was designed to make paperclips and concluded that the iron in human blood could be used to make paperclips. Overall, the world building, environments, mechanics were fun to experience and explore. The story and characters were competing with ARR in their flatness and lack of development. Definitely weakest expansion in my opinion.

[@sharlayanforum]

Excellent read, and I can't say that I disagree with basically anything here. Thanks for checking out the video and leaving this banger!

[@Asin24]

Sphene as a villain was great to me. It's really not a villain type that you see too often. The type that hides behind a veneer of kindness but in the end has others do her dirty work for her as if to absolve her of what she is doing. A villain who likely very much tricking herself just as much she is others that she is benevolent. I just feel her writing much like the rest of DT could of been executed better with the end scene of the last trial I feel being meant as a 'forced to face the truth of what she is rather then hiding from it' moment.

[@sharlayanforum]

Sphene could've been super cool, for sure. I think they didn't give her enough time to make her convincing or enjoyable.

[@Keira_Blackstone]

@@sharlayanforum honestly, they gave her plenty of time. they just didn't use it well. Sphene and Zoraal Ja are very much the two worst major MSQ villains in my subjective experience.

[@iantaakalla8180]

The thing is that Sphene had the perfect set up. Somebody is backing Zoraal Ja. It’s this random queen, but she live in a literal perfect society. Then the walls crumble; the immortality is made by soul usage, people can’t conceive of death and they therefore have no issue doing lethal stuff. Except some do because their souls supply has run out. But everybody love Sphene anyways, but she collaborated with Zoraal Ja for a time. Then you learn her kingdom is so soul-hungry. And there is enough for Sphene left to suggest that she herself suggest she be killed, but she also thinks she has to devour The Source because she is programmed to and also justifies that. Then, her boss fight. And the worst part is that is roughly what happens, so it really is just pacing.

[@silvernode]

There were a few characters I really liked but they're dead before I got a chance to truly develop relationship with them, thus defeating the purpose of accepting loss.

[@Aegeah]

Enjoyed listening to your takes! I've got a lot of thoughts that I'd like to say, I apologise if this is structured a bit all over the place. This is the first expansion where I've really just zoned out, the plot never really ended up hitting for me except for one part right after the level 95 dungeon where we finally reached the golden city and I perked up thinking something was going to happen. Unfortunately, DT had a real issue of showing us something cool, then immediately taking it away from us, or us away from it. This was SO egregious with finding the golden city gates only to yoink us right back to Tuliyollal to sit through a bunch of super long cutscenes. Like yeah, they had to wrap up the Dawnservant part of the MSQ, but it really felt like a slap in the face to be like, "hey here's this cool thing, too bad you don't actually get to do anything with it for another whole zone." The other huge instance of this was with Living Memory, because we had like zero time to actually enjoy the zone and properly appreciate it before it gets shut off for good. Like you said, I get that the point is about learning to let go, but that just doesn't work if you never have a fair shot at getting attached in the first place. There was so much talking in the zone as well that I could not care when we turned off those terminals, nor did I care much about the characters that we lost. For me, the most redeemable part about that zone was the gondola ride with G'raha Tia which kind of felt out of left field. It was a highlight cutscene for me out of the whole expansion, finally giving me something to latch onto characterwise, but honestly it was a damn shame it came from G'raha who has expansions' worth of character development, and not Wuk Lamat who is sorely lacking in that deparment outside of really basic character traits and quirks. The time we got to spend with Erenville was really nice and felt like a good break from Wuk Lamat being at our side the whole time. I'm kind of ambivalent towards her, she's got pacing issues WRT her power scaling throughout the story and there's the obvious meme of "Talk to Wuk Lamat" quest objectives but I didn't actively hate her. She just needed a lot more development and a lot less fetch quests and walking from point A to point B only to speak with her for the 3rd time in the same quest. There are other things which are brought up and just dropped, like you said with the trial guy (don't even remember his name) being Wuk Lamat's biological father, it's used for one quest and literally never brought up again. There was also that whole thing about Ketenramm getting jumped and I literally though he died because it was so unclear that it was super jarring when he just appeared in the next cutscene? Additionally, Dawntrail really could've benefitted from being shorter in my eyes. It's a new ARR, so it should've compared its playtime to ARR rather than EW. They've really set themselves up to have to make a massive amount of content in the next expansion, and now they have to go into it with a shaky sense of trust from the playerbase regarding the story - it's going to be a really hard sell to get people on board with 80+ hours of story after what they did with DT so they gotta really pick it up with the patches. And speaking of patches, I'm of the opinion that Zoraal Ja needed to be the final boss of DT. We lacked understanding of his worldview outside of that he wants to purge the weak and start things anew with the strong as the rulers, we didn't get any time to interact with him outside of being an enemy in one regard or another (they really shouldn't have gone with the easiest option of Koana + Wuk Lamat on the taco test because it would've given us so much many more interesting interactions if we were paired with Zoraal Ja). Plus there was a whole (I assume) scrapped thing with his lackey who just got thrown off the side at the golden city gates and we get no resolution about whatever he was scheming? But really, Zoraal Ja being the big boss could've still given us some information about Alexandria and introduce us to Sphene, but let us have more time with her throughout some patches. More development for Zoraal Ja, fight is more impactful narratively; more development with Sphene, we can find her struggle a bit more tragic or at least get some time to enjoy her as a character for a while, so her boss fight is a lot more emotional. If Living Memory was kept throughout a patch or two, we would also get to spend more time admiring Living Memory and actually feel bad when we have to destroy the beautiful scenery and the people inhabiting the zone, especially Cahciua and Krile's parents. I've yapped enough now, but this plot was just really poorly handled and it felt like they couldn't make up their minds what story they wanted to tell, and how. At the end of the day though, PVE was so good especially the raids, and the zones were gorgeous - just should've been utilised and handled better.

[@sharlayanforum]

Agreed 100% with this. There's just some serious dropped balls I'm DT. It feels like they start to draw 10 different really cool pictures and then just ran out of time and had to finish them with stick figures

[@Moonvesper]

to all the people putting ishikawa on a pedestal over this: she is like, still the boss. In fact, she is in a higher position of authority than she has ever been. It’s not like they wrote Dawntrail under her nose and she just had to shrug and accept the outcome lol The lyrics to that song everyone hates, Smile? pretty sure she wrote them I’m not saying that her involvement means you ought to love Dawntrail or anything, far from it. It’s just that I think there is something more systemic wrong with the MSQ writing process. I didn’t like Endwalker either, and part of that was because i felt from the outset that the story had been changed many times to accommodate demands from outside the writer’s room. I get the same vibe from DT. I feel like it’s precisely because Shadowbringers exists and is so beloved that we won’t get another Shadowbringers.

[@sharlayanforum]

I hear ya, but it should be mentioned that Ishikawa is not credited as a writer in either EW or DT. She was promoted to a more senior position, but that position is as Story Designer, not a more senior Writing position. It could be argued that while she has more sway over the overall direction of FF14 now, she may have less granular control of the individual story beats. I agree that the issue is systemic, but I don't think it's because of Ishikawa's absence, just a classic lack of good pacing or last-minute rewrites

[@Cadugaming]

Unfortunely for me, my enjoyment of the game is direct conected to my enjoyment of the story, so even doing savage, everything feels worthless to me.

[@sharlayanforum]

I hear that a lot, and I'm bummed for those people for sure.

[@dolmapacket]

Obviously, since I'm not on the writing team, I can't say for sure this is the case, but the MSQ this time felt like it suffered from way more corporate meddling than any of the previous expansions. It's most noticeable that the Scions are featured front and center in the trailer, yet have so little impact on the narrative that they may as well have not been there. It feels like so much was held back on because the marketing department decided that including characters we already like and playing it as safe as possible was the only way to sell an expansion, which feels even more bizarre when you notice how the encounter design DID take some risk and became better for it. Tbh I was cautiously optimistic because imo the writing quality really took a dip around 6.2 or 6.3 and hasn't recovered since. I wasn't expecting anything to blow me away, yet somehow they still managed to disappoint me. Also, I see a lot of people pointing out how "this is supposed to be ARR 2 so it's unfair to expect much," which is kinda fair, but I still can't get behind that reasoning completely because ARR was developed under completely different circumstances. I don't think they could've faithfully simulated the starting experience 5 expansions later, at lvl 100, no matter how hard they tried, and so I'm going to critique it based on it being an expansion just like the rest of them.

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah, I think that last point is a super valid thing to remember. Sure, this may be the beginning of something new, but it's also the fifth time we've done this, so it's pretty hard to justify that things would just feel bad because "it's like the first time again"

[@thecrowonyourshoulder]

My biggest concern is what the post patches are going to entail. Is this story going to be wrapped up like a bow and tossed to the side? Or is it going to extend out, making all the first half of this story relevant? The Hanuhanu's birb god should probably come into the picture someway. Maybe as a trial, perhaps. It's stuff like that I am worried about. FFXIV world has so much untapped lore that it can create good stories and content still, and a lot of has been neglected for a long time. (Talking about you, Gridania.) I personally feel every MMO should keep its expansions relevant to each other, even if the story goes into a brand-new saga. It makes the whole entire world of the MMO feel bigger and interesting. Players love finding easter eggs and precious information here and there from a side quest, a mural in a dungeon, or something else. I love it when developers put hints of future lore or content in the expansion and figure out how they can implement it, making it more important due to time waiting for the answer. I just didn't see much aside from the very very very last cutscene after the credits where Sphene's crown was randomly shown, and maybe the great serpent of "what is it doing here" dungeon. It was very few compared to what I found in previous expansions, and that made me very sad and concerned. (I hope I am wrong, though.) I hope they will still do this in the future, keeping everything they built in this game relevant regardless of its age. They can't throw it away just because it's old. I know they are more creative than that.

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah, I have alot of hope that they're going to make things connect in the patches and beyond. Especially with the tease of Sphene's crown and that symbol that appeared on the key when we hold it. There's a ton of threads they can pull on here, but the stuff they delivered on 7.0 launch is just paced and structured so badly that I can't enjoy it, despite the overarching ideas being pretty okay.

[@danmarshall4812]

Thanks for the video - I also felt like something was off this time around. I normally really look forward to that message "please leave sufficient time to view these cutscenes", but in Dawntrail I was like "oh no its even more time I'm not going to be playing the game". Also loving the combat as well though.

[@Puppetalice]

The split zone wasn't a brand new concept. Shadowbringers you have to go to Khoulsia and Ahm Ahreng to find Alphi and Alisaie. Now you can argue that more interesting stuff happens in those two splits, but essentially you are hitting that exact same wall of the plot not moving forward until Holminster Switch.

[@sharlayanforum]

Yes, I know. I would argue that much much more interesting stuff happens in Shadowbringers, which makes the initial split zone choice feel more fulfilling and move at a faster pace

[@iPlayOnSpica]

Not a brand new concept? It was a thing on Every. Single. Expansion. And I don't want to see another

[@Sllandre]

​@@iPlayOnSpicait's done for server reasons, to help divide the playerbase to not overwhelm things on launch.

[@CMReina]

Im glad i skipped out in the desert area, it made finding out the reference to Magus and the Talos people in Shadowbringers feel more natural cause it turns out the msq shoves it in your face that the train staff are the source version of the Talos crew.

[@sharlayanforum]

Subtelty is a lost art

[@riklaunim]

For me initial zones should be full of mini game competitions - race on frogs, catch alpacas while the new king selection system is shown like king wants to fight allies promises bring, while promises are shown they are unable to rule on their own. Bakool Ja Ja shown as commendations/wins hunter. We get fun cutscenes with the mini games and with king fighting other scions or challenging the oracle guy (first promise ally) to like lemon juice drinking contest. Then on final stages we send first promise to Garlemald or 4 lords so his preconception of war gets broken. Kona is easy to break due to single minded focus on tech. Same with Wukla - she should never be able to defend herself or others and be faced with problems that can't be solved with hearts. Mamook should be DoH/DoL content mostly where they want to live in their lands but want to be part of modern world, alive, worth something. Here cool cutscene based on our gil, DoH/DoL achievements up to calling Lolorito through our tomestone phone. Later on the actual DoH/DoL content where we introduce new industries while preserving the zone in a good way, get an instanced personal house! Wild west zone should also be custom - no aetherytes aside of first one. Weather and wild land blocking mini map and quest markers from working normally but quest giving better rewards... No space invasion etc. Base for future exploratory/grind content. The king selection should end with all promises taking a part while the golden city is to be explorer and king actually wanting Krile to work as the key (citizen having access). The golden city should be a mix of Solution 9 and memories where we meet Sphene as some sort of automaton AI that wants to help and save all people but her programming prevents her and our goal is to face logical conflicts so that so she force evolves and we somewhat help with excess thunder aether... With future links to Void and First. Ramuh cameo in a way. Future expansions plot - Emet mentioned golden city as he wanted us to solve the problems with reflections and whatever left of some of them.

[@riklaunim]

And system changes like all fates and side quests give meaningful exp for leveling alt jobs (we got 2 more DPS). Starting to work on making jobs more fun to play as bonus levels and buttons won't cut it any more. WHM got cleave-glare but it doesn't reset out of combat so it's available for some trash packs which makes it meh on usability - and it's only available in high enough level content.

[@drayman101]

This expansion feels like they wrote the expansion from the end to the start: came up with the idea of Solution 9 first, then wrote a reason for it to exist in our world. This became the main plotpoints that are actually interesting, but they didn't know how to pad them out enough to cover the latter half of the expansion's levels. Similarly, the entirety of the first half feels like they came up with everything for the beast tribe content, then didn't have enough time left in development to write a satisfying hook in introducing them. So they did what some of us did in school. And what they did, similarly to how bad students would write academic papers, is repeat and write things in a reiterative manner, to connect a simple point to another point much later on. They would repeatedly ramp up slowly to interesting things, then underutilize them and hurridly move on to the next plot thread (or worse, screech to a halt, drop them completely, and never return to them), while repeatedly focusing to an excruciating degree on minutia. Although I didn't get to the point of skipping entire sections of cutscenes, it was the closest I ever got to doing so since the first half of ARR. I had to force myself to stop pushing MSQ and do some FATEs, or walk away from the game completely until I felt I could sit and give the story a fair shake. It took me a little over a week to finish the story in this way. I stopped pushing the MSQ A LOT. Luckily the battle content has been stellar, and I've started diving into my first ever Savage tier, which has been a blast. Otherwise, I don't think I'd be sticking with this game, that's had its hooks in me for the better part of 4 years now. I have to believe this was them finding their feet and figuring out where to go for the next 10 years, similar to ARR... but honestly, ARR might have been better. If the patch content doesn't lead into some meaty, irresistable storylines, it might be the start of my cutscene skipper arc.

[@sharlayanforum]

Great write up! I agree pretty much across the board, bad writing, bad pacing, and bad buildup to bad playoffs are ultimately the biggest issues.

[@Vokcas01]

Story: First Half: We are meant to be a mentor, to the main character of the story however we never had chance of being a mentor. When we had the 1 provided chance to show our actual abilities the main character was not part of the story; this made the scene quite pointless. Second Half: The main character of the first story should not be involved with any event in this part period. You are the WOL, your team is the Scions; world ending events, gods, primal, this is what you do so why were you effectively replaced by the main character from the first one? Ultimately if the Main character of the story wasn't involved, the story would of happened the exact same way, so what was the point of the character? Krile Story : This could of been really great, we all knew where this way going by the first moment it was addressed, however at every point when we could gained another clue to solving the puzzle it was "Nope, this character is more important". How this story was told was frankly disrespectful to the VA's who play her, FF5 creators and and those who write her dialog. She is a legacy character, she deserved more respect, this was her expansion, her moment to shine and not be put on the sideline and they sideline her for the entire story and then replace her with Raha at the first chance they got. This new marvelous job, she had one scene to showcase it and it was completely overshadowed by Raha. As for her actually story conclusion... "What? so after all of the importance that Krile is or could even be if you read the actual certain dialog it undoes everything we built up and made her basically a nobody. Eren Story: Should been his villain story, has every right and it would of been a better replacement story to what he actually go which was nothing. Characters are meant to grow throughout a story and not at the end quest. I understand why they didn't showcase him as a new job but at least give him a purpose and not just the tag along taxi.

[@sharlayanforum]

Extremely good read. Thanks for the comment!

[@Ultragravy]

I've watched a LOT of reactions from content creators about Dawntrail, and I have to say that yours is by far the one that resonated most strongly with mirroring my own feelings and the flow of the experience. The actual combat content and vibe of the zones is so good that I'm not remotely negative about the upcoming couple of years of playing the game, but I really have nothing good to say about the story and i can only hope the team turns it around in the post patch content.

[@sharlayanforum]

I appreciate it! I'm just glad to get my thoughts out of my brain.

[@dannuck1]

So the thing about splitting the starting zones… They’ve done that for at least the last 3 expansions. Was this one different in some way that I’m not catching?

[@sharlayanforum]

Nope, like I mentioned, they've done it in the past. I think the pacing here just makes it struggle to get off of the ground a lot more than it has in Shadowbringers or Endwalker. I think for the sake of pushing the narrative along, since they are "starting over" in a since, moving to a more controlled experience may have given them the opprotunity to make interesting things start happening more quickly.

[@dannuck1]

@@sharlayanforum Interesting. More railroad, less choice. I guess I could see why that would have allowed them to jump into the story sooner. Less... buffer? I dunno. There's such mixed reactions to this expansion, I feel torn and have to keep reminding myself that I don't need to automatically jump to defending the new content just because I loved the old content so much. It's making me unsure how I would actually rate this expansion, lol.

[@sharlayanforum]

@dannuck1 yeah, I totally get that feeling. When i first finished the MSQ I was defending it pretty hard, but as I've sat on it longer and thought about it, I really think it's just weak. I can understand what they were trying to do, I think they just missed the mark. Content wise? This expansion is an absolute BANGER so far. The zones, music, hunts, fates, dungeons, raids, trials... everything has been top class.

[@d0minican0milan0]

Just cut the succession arc like in half...and it would have been like 50% better. Remember when we hit 94 in Endwalker and suddenly we were fighting Zodiark and everyone was like ohh shit wait a minute already?? (I'm aware it's not the same thing in DT's case) but I'm saying it would have been possible to get through the 1st part of the story wayyy faster. Imagine getting to dig into Alexandria's and Sphene's story at like 95. They would have had more time to let us really dig in to the philosophical questions they were trying to pose, and I think everyone would have enjoyed the MSQ way more.

[@omensoffate]

I knew this story was going to be bad when we first met Wuk Lamat in 6.55. The writing since endwalker has been atrocious

[@sharlayanforum]

The EW patches and this expansion were definitely not my favorite writing

[@changlongwang9898]

I don’t like wuk lamat she is very uncanny and gives off children’s mascot furry vibes like Chuck E. Cheese. her voice is annoying as well. I didn’t like her when she was introduced becuase I thought she was pushy and a bit of a prick

[@Laughingcoyote1213]

Hot take but I warmed up to her goofiness. The only problem I had with her was her English VA. It honestly just fell flat for me

[@raigequitz]

Story - World building is fine. It just needs to be done well. DT was not done well. The quality of the writing was bad. The dialogue was bad. They tried to manufacture the same emotions we felt from SHB/EW. I think SHB was an accident, they don't know how they did accomplished SHB. They say so themselves when they admit that the reaction from the fans shocked them. They have since been trying to replicate the magic. Gameplay/Content - Great quality. They'll get there in the end, but it won't be on purpose. That's just what it's like being a SE fan.

[@cordeliacentauri1737]

Load of horseshit. Stop spreading lies. The whole story written in 5.0 by ishikawa was literally explained in pax west that you can find it yourself here on youtube and yet you spout your nonsense.

[@Maymei99]

I don't think ShB was an accident, it's just that the DT writers aren't Ishikawa and they neither know nor understand why or what made what she wrote so successful. They simply copied her on a very shallow level while also trying to shoehorn in their OCs and what they thought was cool without considering the entire cast and settings (while yet also looking down on us players like we are idiots) so the end result is a sloppy mess of an MSQ.

[@davidank07]

I think ShB was so good because it was so divorced from Eorzea. It was a whole new world, a clean slate, what they wish they had when they made 2.0 instead of a cobbled together generic high fantasy setting.

[@SunburnCity]

@@davidank07 This is the most correct statement I think Ive heard about the world building in FFXIV. The setting of this game is extremely unbalanced. You have way too many conflicting elements in both high-fantasy and even sci-fantasy. Only in ShB does it genuinely feel like a true balanced fantastical story, almost entirely because the setting is tailored from the ground up to fit that mold.

[@youtousim]

ShB had no issues introducing 2 zones. It just feels off when there's nothing at stake at all. They didn't even throw in a little solo duty vs Urianger&Thancred, or Bakool Ja Ja. Which would have made this hour long repetition at the start way more fun.

[@sharlayanforum]

@youtousim absolutely! I think that the split zone start can be done well, just that they didn't do a very good job with this one because the quests that happen in those zones don't push the plot along really and are individually super boring

[@bigtimetimmyjim6486]

THANK YOU, I thought I was the only one who thought the second half of the story was a sinkhole of lost potential, and it saddens because there is a good story in there, but the writers simply chose not to tell it. The first few hours of Heritage Found were fantastic, setting up really interesting ideas involving the consumption of souls that have a real moral ambiguity...and it is discarded for a plotline that is far less interesting and one that relies on appealing to emotions over telling a coherent narrative. Heck, even the appeal to emotions does not really land when one considers that the story is trying to tell a story about loss, yet it is too afraid to kill off any character that the player cares about, or even knows at all (still baffled that we never got a chance to interact with Cachiua while she still lived).

[@walpurgisnight7]

You know shit isn't good when I can truthfully say Stormblood would be a welcome improvement. At the very least, we had the Yotsuyu to Tsukuyomi pipeline. We watched a villain relive her life of abuse and worthlessness, only to then give in when her own brother sabotaged her one last time. She was the unassuming villain I wish Sphene would be; her story gave life to an otherwise questionable expansion. Wuk Lamat is unbearable to me and the story should have been about Alexandria start to finish, seeing as the rest had zero stakes anyways.

[@sharlayanforum]

I'm definitely hoping they pull the Stormblood thing here and get some of these characters cooking in the patches. I have a lot of faith that the story here has legs, but this particular batch of quests wasn't too great.

[@Vintus7]

I appreciated the idea of Living Memory. I adore when the game utilizes the medium of video games to impact the story and hit you with a gut punch. I loved that the world you had to shut off is dead and quiet. I just wish the idea was executed better and attached to better storytelling, pacing and characterization.

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah, I think I don't dislike Living Memory in concept, its just that in execution it leaves so much to be desired that I can't abide by it.

[@justinfristad]

I agree that the first half of the story should of been its own expansion like you mention at the 40m mark. I think they should of had the catalyst to start the expansion being Galool Ja Ja's death and you work with Wuk Lamat to follow her fathers footsteps fixing the problems from the fallout of the death of the countries 80ish year leader. They could of had the tribes fall back into their pre union ways like the mamook cat daddy war. The moblins kidnapping people. The hanuhanu losing their faith and starving because of that. The conquesting giants pushing into pelupelu lands. It would have the same story basically but with better more investable stakes.

[@sharlayanforum]

Yes! That would've been a lot more engaging for sure!

[@Ratikal_]

Also, what shaders do you have for the game? I really like how dark Living Memory is for you.

[@sharlayanforum]

It was just a built in gameplay preset in this video, I think! I'm not sure exactly which one though. :C

[@providencebreaker1558]

The MSQ was a miserable experience, but Otis and lil Galool Ja were alright.

[@hockey1973]

IMO the biggest problem, is in a game that has unforgettable writing, in Dawntrail we got writing that's just plain forgettable. I needed time to process what went down in Endwalker. In all my years of playing games, LITERALLY from the Atari 2600 in the early 80's up until now, this was the first time that ever happened. Then Dawntrail came. . . and gave me MSQ writing that's entirely forgettable. That's the problem . . . With all the flak that ARR gets, if it were written like Dawntrail, the Crystal Braves would have never betrayed Alphinaud and his idealism and magical speeches would be all that would be needed to solve world peace and he would never grow from beyond the arrogant know-it-all we see in the game's initial cut-scene.

[@silvernode]

Bakool Ja Ja was written so poorly. One a analogy that I can think of is a ball being thrown up into the sky but caught before it could reach the sky while also not beling allowed to land. Dawntrail: A massive waste of potential. I predicted most of what was going on the entire time. There where mysteries that weren't mysterious because all the world building was rushed and the narrative was seen from a mile away.

[@RemyBop]

I was surprised I found myself wanting to skip cutscenes and dialogue because I LOVE lore and this expansion was packed full of it. But for whatever reason I found myself not caring about quite a bit of it.

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah, I felt the same way. It was pretty shocking!

[@pedromoreira6218]

honostly when a friend asked me what i thought about the story i said "theres so much yaping it feels like im playing Genshin Impact"

[@Dieci-9]

To me personally DT as of 7.0 is a 5/10. The music is great, the gameplay is great BUT the story which is a huge component of the game is so bad that it makes the rest of the content tied to the MSQ suffer for it. I don't know what the writers and the producers of this expansion were aiming for but going from ShB to EW to...this is insulting. I was not looking for reality-ending threats, I was not looking for merging of reflections, I was looking for a vacation as they stated. I was looking for smaller arcs, self-enclosed adventures that would set up interesting characters, factions and events. We got some of that but the downright childish writing really sours everything. I was 100% fine also with being a background character in Wuk Lamat's story...the issue is the story, the characters in it (Scions and WoL included), with a few exceptions (Koana, Ketenramm, Otis), and, worst of all, Wuk Lamat are, IMO, written so badly that I progressively lost any shred of interest. The idea of people using souls to gain extra lives, allow their government to access their brains and delete memories had so much potential and it all went wasted on a story that could fit in a kid's saturday morning cartoon. Everyone is way too ok with it. Even the ones native to the Source that have been there for 30 years; there is no group that said "Fuck that!" and are living without those except the small "rebel" group; everyone accepts that the kid is Zoraal Ja's son just by the way he looks (which is fine) but we get absolutely nothing about the kid's mother (which I assume we'll get later but, given the premise, I am scared about how they're gonna handle that), and so on. And I got a good idea of why that is: they were rushing. By the point we reach Heritage Found (which looks ugly as hell, together with Living Memory, post-MSQ) we're level 97/98 BUT they just started this new arc; we get drowned in exposition and cutscenes because they need to set up Zoraal Ja for the 2nd trial and Sphene but they also need to explain S9, the settlement in HF and the entirety of the history of Sphene's population. They wanted to do so much that they were left with no time for nuance and hardly any time to properly have characters shine individually, which I suspect is also why we still split the party when we venture into Living Memory, there's no time and they know players are going to get bored...yet we waste time on a play while a doom clock is ticking because the imitation of Erenville's mom wants us to learn about people and because learning about people and cultures is the theme of the expansion...like, just no. That's fine and dandy but not when there are real lives at stake...we get a nice moment for Otis out of it, but still wrong place and wrong time. The entire MSQ is riddled with stuff like this. Like, one example I like to bring up is when we defeat Zoraal and he disappears and the "artifact" falls on the ground: we literally allow Sphene, that by that moment had told us that she "had to" harvest souls from the people of the Source to allow the Endless to live longer, to slowly appear, slowly walk among us and the Scions, no one tries to stop her, no one goes and grabs the artifact even out of curiosity (not even our more scholarly allies), we DO allow her to grab the artifact and kickstart an apocalypse, though. Same with when Zoraal Ja kills Gulool Ja Ja: everyone stops and allows the old ruler of a nation to be killed because the plot demands it. I love that when Zoraal Ja is beaten and about to be revived, the device on his head flashes and slowly heals him up and nobody in the room thinks about blasting the device, slashing it or even just remove it from his head before it does whatever it wants to do. I will stop here but just thinking about it pisses me off because I mainly play the game for the lore and story (and the glam) and this expansion left me absolutely unsatisfied and concerned about how they will move going forward because making a good story out of a setup this bad is going to be difficult and if the writing team is the same and if they don't take all the negative feedback, compile it, read it 2000 times to burn it in their brains and learn from it, then this means that the 10 years that Yoshi-P predicted for this game are not for me. TBH, I'm fine with this outcome too. I'd rather the story was still good but I got my arc up to EW, I got what I wanted out of it and I can rest happy knowing that MY WoL is going on adventures and vacations, now that the world can (mostly) be at peace from reality-ending scenarios.

[@FuyuYuki92]

Regarding the first zones, shadowbringers proved that you can write an exciting story even when there's split zones. Endwalker didn't adapt that quite as well, but it is possible, even with a low stakes adventure.

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah, I'd still argue that nothing that catalyzed the plot in a major way happens in those zones, but they were INFINITELY more exciting and interesting with actual reveals of thing that set the background that the rest of the expansion would build out from

[@spetsu1]

I would say the MSQ for dawntrail was decent, I'm not saying good or bad, just decent. Now, with that being said, decent doesn't really cut it for FFXIV, with the quality of MSQ stories we've received this doesn't hold up. Now, for my defense, this is the start of a new storyline, so I think it's expecting too much to expect a shadow bringers or endwalker quality story. That's my peace. You can agree or disagree. That's just my stance on the matter. Edit: before anyone complains about me bringing up the shadowbringers endwalker statement, I've seen too many people compare dawntrail to them when you should be comparing it to a realm reborn.

[@sharlayanforum]

Totally agree! I think that this should be compared against A Realm Reborn or Stormblood, as it's the two expansions that it will end up competing with it either in the sense of a Groundwork story or a Content allowance standpoint. Like I said; I think they did a good job setting up the characters and world of Tural with the base here, I just hope they turn the ship a bit and deliver more interesting and exciting stories in this world going forward. I would have a similar criticism of ARR; pretty boring in a vacuum, but important in context. I hope this ends up being the same!

[@spetsu1]

​@@sharlayanforumI agree, my only concern would be if this ends up being a filler expansion. If that's the case I'll end up having a much harsher critique of the expansion, but looking at it in the eyes of this being a second ARR, it allows me to be more understanding when it comes to the story.

[@sharlayanforum]

@@spetsu1 That's definitely a concern. Like I said, right now I'd give the MSQ like a 4/10, 5/10 if I'm being generous. That number could go up or down depending on the patches and 8.0

[@jademerrydown2943]

This is my stance as well. and I'll admit the moment he said in the video he started skipping CSs I knew it would end up in a bad place.

[@CplVeers]

My ranking of MSQs from best to worst: ShB, EW, HW, ARR, SB, DT. DT was a complete whiff for me. I realized at around lvl 91 that this was going to be another Stormblood. Lots of boring and pointless events plagued by massive pacing issues. SB has an advantage over DT in that it has a cast of characters that move the story forward (yugiri, gosetsu, hien, yotsuyu, zenos) where-as DT has...Wuk Lamat...the story can't be allowed to move forward if the character that has 95% of the dialogue in the expansion isn't present. Distance makes the heart grow fonder and Preach said it best recently, "I can't miss you if you never go away."

[@karateorangutang]

I was telling my buddies that the story felt like the movie Hancock. You get the most slow motion whiplash half way through the story because it resets and has to rebuild.

[@sharlayanforum]

A weird comparison, but not an inaccurate one

[@BubbleSprout96]

I felt exactly like this!! Especially in the cowboy zone. I literally recommended my friend to skip all the cutscenes until you get to the train cause of how boring it was.

[@sharlayanforum]

It definitely felt like it was dragging its feet there.

[@sayt4n]

I went into DT knowing it wouldn’t hit as good as EW and ShB would simply because they were starting over story-wise. You make a lot of good points, I enjoyed the MSQ overall. It was flawed, but I like the journey we went on.

[@sharlayanforum]

And that's okay! I think the fact that some people resonate with it and some people don't is good; it means they're trying something different, and like always, doing different things has some growing pains. I love the zones, music, content, and overarching story so far of DT. I just didn't enjoy the writing of many of the characters or the pacing of the MSQ very much.

[@ManaOni]

I was so bored by the MSQ that my mind basically went numb, so by the time i reached a raid or dungeon i kept dying cause i felt like i just woke up from a nap, gave major brain fog. Ended up not having fun during the one good thing about the expansion

[@luvpotion333]

I share pretty much the same opinion as you, however, even the dungeons fell flat for me and I don’t really remember most of them, because to me they are tied to the story and my lack of interest in the story reflected on the dungeons and trials being forgettable (except the arcadion raids). I do agree that the gameplay and mechanics are very fun and I do recall feeling that way while doing them, but in terms of design and being able to distinguish duties, it all feels like a blur. I’m saddened by the drop in quality story-wise since EW patches, but I’m glad to see I’m not alone in this feeling. I’ve been playing this game with little to no breaks for almost 4 years now and once DT happened I was starting to worry I was maybe getting tired of it or tired of gaming in general, like it’s time to clock out and find a new hobby. But seeing so many people share the same opinion of it being lackluster, it makes me feel less bad about it. I just hope it’s not downhill from here. Watching this after patch 7.1 btw, which, to me, didn’t do much repair either, I’m still not invested and I couldn’t care less about the characters involved.

[@sharlayanforum]

That's all fair! I will say that the direction the story is moving in from the 7.1 patch MSQ is definitely way more interesting and engaging to me than the base MSQ of the expansion. I'm excited to see where they take it with what they've started teasing so far!

[@adognamedsally]

First off, largely agree. This is the summary of how I felt about the whole thing: Start of MSQ: Slow, bad, didn't care, bored, cultures interesting Giants, Mamook: Interesting, spicy despite being contrived Taco Place: Culture was interesting, pacing slow, conflict with Mamool contrived, seemed stupid overall Texas: Inconsequential but a fun diversion without Wuk Lightning town: Finally some stakes, pacing issues but generally intriguing S9: Momentum, love Otis, best character in DT, he got to save his queen, that was touching LM: Personally, my favorite zone in the entire game. I think whether LM landed for you probably came down to how immersed you were at this point. I was starved for some good story after the first half of the game so when we got the invasion and things started happening, I was reinvigorated. I'm an FF9 fan, so the last zone had lots of juicy references + I actually found the motif of turning off the terminals and feeling like you're in a theme park after closing time to really work. It felt hollow and empty afterwards. I longed for the happy fun memories to come back but that's the whole point. It really well illustrated this sense of yearning for the departed to stay with you but then being pulled back to reality where they're dead, and you have to accept that. Buuut, if you were off the MSQ train at this point and didn't care, totally understandable. I don't think the story really earned your care at this point. However, if you did care, I can say it was a satisfying conclusion. Oh, regarding Wuk Lamat, I think my brain started "editing" her out of cutscenes by this point in the story because I was absolutely sick of her. When she shows up in the final trial, I think I was trying to ignore her. She makes no sense as a character. She is almost as naive at the end of the story as at the start, and she is never humbled or meaningfully challenged. The term "marry sue" is dismissive and I think sometimes unfairly applied to female characters who are simply competent, but I definitely get those vibes from Wuk.

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah, I try to be very careful about what characters I call a Mary Sue, but I think Wuk Lamat fully earns the label.

[@thomascranor2668]

The problems of dawntrail are the same problems that plagued stormblood. It's two experiences squished into one.

[@MrCDM6]

I know you didn't touch on the role quests, but I feel like a lot of them had a very similar problem to the MSQ as a whole. For one they feel completely disconnected from the overall plot, like a lot of the early zones do by the end (and I really doubt the big finale quest will fix that when it's released). There's a lot of stuff that happens that either doesn't advance the plot or characters or just does it really inefficiently. And the tone is all over the place. Not even just between the role quests - the Healer and Tank quests feel like polar opposites overall - but even within them. There's stuff that should be big, serious problems happening but they're playing the goofy clown shoes music. The Ranged role quest in particular felt like the game's biggest ever disconnect between plot and tone. It's like... a pack of Saturday morning cartoon villains accidentally became real threats and they just can't decide whether to lean into the threat or the gag.

[@sharlayanforum]

I've done them, but I'd be lying if I said I watched a single cutscene from them.

[@Canned_Corn_isgood]

I go back and forth on this entire story and it is causing mental exhaustion. I'll defend this game 'til the end, but I can't entirely disagree with the criticism here. I gave it a 6/10 MSQ, 11/10 Battle/Other content. I am so so so so so (add 100 more "so"s) excited for what is to come in 7.1-7.5 and the content/savage/ultimate and other battle content (I am looking at you, Large-scale exploration zone), but I think and I hope the meat of this story will come in the patches, I really hope this was just a shaky start.

[@sharlayanforum]

We're all praying that this is just a bad start, I think. The content that's out now is SO GOOD, like the best I've EVER seen at launch, and I've never been more excited for whats coming next in an expansion... They just didn't hit the nail very squarely on the start line here, unfortunately.

[@Canned_Corn_isgood]

@@sharlayanforum And it happens, I mean to follow-up a huge huge story like we had is hard, and honestly, if I remember correctly, there was talk in an interview that the team had a few options, or that they had a few different routes to go depending on player reaction, but I may have read it wrong. Either way, it is giving Stormblood era of content and that in itself is something to be excited about. They fine-tuned and polished what really will keep people engaged gameplay wise, and that will only go up from here. I think it is ok however, for them to have hiccups narratively, while it is important that they correct it, I think a flaw in story will only allow them to double-down and figure out what they need to do to keep this story alive and vibrant for the next years to come.

[@sharlayanforum]

@Canned_Corn_isgood Agreed, 100%

[@zullie9614]

I was so genuinely mad when Wack Lmao showed up to "sAvE" us in the Final trial. After dozens of hours of being shunted into the background and having Wuk take credit for everything we do I thought I was finally getting a "main character moment" cause y'know, despite not being the MC of the expansion I am one of the most important/powerful person on the goddamn planet. But No! She has to come out of nowhere Zenos style and smash through whatever reality barrier was in the way and steal the focus/spotlight ONCE AGAIN and ruin the last part of the fight.

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeeeah not a huge fan of the "character breaks into the arena and helps" thing when anyone does it. The whole point of these fights is that it's an obstacle for us to overcome. Ps; Wack Lmao is a funny phrase

[@X99-h6r]

Solution 9 is district 9.

[@sharlayanforum]

@@X99-h6r 🍤

[@BiscuitsV2]

I'm pretty sure the community has decided that the correct pronunciation for Shaaloni is Texas.

[@sharlayanforum]

Truuuueeeee brother

[@phweengee]

Agree with your take. Thanks for putting words to my thoughts.

[@sharlayanforum]

Thanks for taking the time to check it out!

[@misterbxiv]

A lot of people giving DT a pass saying “you know, it’s the first part of a new story”, that would be a reason for it to ideally be good, y’know. Cool, we saw Tural, it was kinda generic and pretty lame. The vidraal were relegated to role quests. Zoraal Ja and Bakool Ja Ja lost the rite because they didn’t make good enough tacos. The actual story starts at level 96, and it’s basically Asians again, but a bit weaker and rushed. It’s really dumb.

[@sharlayanforum]

It's definitely a shakey first step!

[@Ventira_Aqanin]

Reducing ZJ and BJJ losing the contest down to 'not making good enough tacos' is grotesque oversimplification. They lost because they didn't bother to learn their OWN damn history. Like, that's the entire point of the rite of succession, to roam the lands of Tural, connect with its people and cultures and become an actual leader.

[@sharlayanforum]

@Ventira_Aqanin I think it would've been a lot more interesting to have Zoraal Ja paired up with us in that trial, where he tries to brute force the competition by forcing information out of people or forcing them to make the dish, while we do our quests and learn. It would add context to his failure in that he ONLY gets to continue the Rite because we did what he considered weak, and would give him more context and opportunities to realize that the path he's on isn't the right way. Instead he gets teamed up with Bakool, where they are obviously going to lose because they both have zero interest in the subtext of the quest line, and then they lose and learn absolutely nothing, which makes the plot point amount to zero within the grand scheme of the story.

[@Ventira_Aqanin]

@@sharlayanforum And this is all stuff I can agree with, my reply was to the other guy who grotesquely oversimplified why ZJ and BJJ lost, which in turn makes me wonder if he even understood the goals of the rite of succession.

[@TheMazzoutlaw]

Very good critique. I felt all these points as well, and you worded it much better than I could. Story and pacing just didn't work. Especially that G'raha and Y'stola scene....

[@sharlayanforum]

"Don't panic, we're the main characters now."

[@ChannelRaznoff]

I didn't like how stupid everyone acted and how the writers treated us like morons. The best example is the resonators and how their explanation is handled. We see one being used in the duel in the palace. We see Zoraal Ja die, it revive him, and then turn red and enchance him with greater strength and speed. We then fight against someone using one while breaking into the dome. The fight goes exactly the same as the palace fight, except the guy turns into a beast monster thing. After meeting the resistance, they explain clearly how they work and then set up a demonstration for how it works, watching a hunter fight a monster. For whatever reason, everyone looks shocked when the hunter dies, gets revived, and then gets more powerful. Did our characters really need the last example? Do we need the example? I got what was going on the first time it happened. It felt like they wrote this story for an elementary school level of reading comprehension.

[@Azeur]

I haven't been subbed for soon 14 months (might be my longest break since ARR), only really checking in on the game with free playtime or my trial account, and I honestly have no real interest in checking out Dawntrail. I love the FFXIV world, but I completely fell off during Endwalker because the story felt disappointing & I didn't approve of where it went, alliance raids were disappointing, and there was basically nothing to do if you weren't savage raiding. Only thing that keeps me interested nowadays is solo runs in deep dungeons. After watching videos like this of Dawntrail, I see that my worst fears just continue to be true. - Disappointing story (Why is the story yet again about saving the world??? and why does Estinen have a cooler journey than the WoL?) - Flat characters who only has visual appeal (rip everyone's personality in the presence of the Black Hole Sue) - Empty zones/overworlds with zero threats (ARR zones feel rich in personality compared to many of the later zones, though threat level is neutered all over) - Older content becoming even more of a joke, so roulette gets increasingly more boring - Crafting & Gathering is really easy and the only challenging is pentamelding At least it sounds like dungeons & raids are more interesting now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is a fluke. Especially since jobs are just continually getting streamlined and homogenized. The game just asks so little of the players nowadays if you're not doing end-game content, it's all so boring. Mobs are not a threat except in excessive numbers, there's rarely anything to Interject/Head Graze ever - so you don't get punished for sleeping on the job, and you don't ever need crowd control. Just mash button and deal damage, unga bunga till you die. It's the biggest reason why I still love doing deep dungeons, because it's the one place where the game still feels like a threat (at the right floors) without you needing a dance guide. There's also Eureka & Bozja, and while I loved my time with Eureka because mobs are actually scary - it's the kind of place you usually do with a big group of people which makes it brainless again. I unironically wanted to cry when I did the final alliance raid in Endwalker, because I had to face the undeniable truth that Yoshi-P had completely lied when he said it would be comparable to The Return to Ivalice. The only positive I have for the alliance raids, is that it was neat when the boss arena expanded temporarily. It still feels so wrong when people were doing meme runs of Aglaia and the others during the first week it came out, and mechanics were being skipped. Didn't help when I heard people were clearing Aglaia faster than dungeon runs, which made it best for exp farming in Dawntrail. I want to be engaged and have fun, but the game feels terrified of "wasting my time" and makes everything trivialised and quick so I can go back to afking or whatever.

[@sharlayanforum]

There's definitely some truth here! I think that we need more interesting design in both jobs and fight mechanics. We're reacing a point where things are going to end up being do or die for the game for people who actually play it. People who are only interested in the other aspects of the game will always be there, but if they want to maintain a more intense player base that actually engages with the game at a level that justifies creating content outside of MSQ requirements, they need to come up with some fresh ideas.

[@Kisuzume]

Dunno if you'll read this, but you say Zoraal Ja's motivation was similar to Emet Selch's and I don't think that's very accurate. It felt more closely related to Varis to me. Unite the world through military might to achieve some form of peace through might. Meanwhile, Sphene, is much closer to Emet Selch. Both are trying to sacrifice living people to save the memory of the people they cared for. Also, I feel like the quests between the level 93 dungeon and trial were the most hair pulling, horrible time I've had. Having Erenville's stupid cursor pointing at the wrong monster and two holes in the ground is beyond dumb, only to be like "Well duh they would go there it's the only place that makes sense." Eugh. Multiple of my friends skipped cutscenes and dialogue when we got to the texas part. I would just read it and TL;DR it for my friends and you didnt miss much. I did screenshare that final cutscene for my friends since they all also got jumpscared. As for the turtle boss, it sucks so bad that I normally ask a melee DPS to LB it, lol. I am also a healer, so I just ask the tank and melees to stay in to attack instead of dodging out. Also, living memory stays dead but you can go back to get screenshots with New Game + and turn it on and off whenever.

[@sharlayanforum]

I try to read and respond to every comment I get! Yeah, I think that my comparison between Emet and Zoraal Ja is more sort of the comparison that they are willing to sacrifice anyone and everyone if it means furthuring their ultimate goal, while the comparison with Sphene is more direct in that they are looking to sacrifice those people for the sake of protecting or restoring their people. I went back and watched the majority of the cutscenes I skipped while playing through the MSQ before I recorded this video to make sure I didn't put my foot in my mouth, but I was still pretty comfortable in saying that it was about 50/50 completely skippable. Thanks for checking the video out!

[@Kisuzume]

​@@sharlayanforumFor SURE you can skip a lot of it. I watched it all out of spite, but I had to grit my teeth a lot of the time. Very well put together video!

[@MortarGuyX]

I don't really understand Zoraal Ja as a villain, he's initially presented as a military man and just morphs into a rabid misanthrope out of nowhere. Also his son, a clone? How? I didnt see a single other mamool ja in any of the zones of the second arc of the xpac. but back to Zoraal Ja, I think they were trying to get at how the weight of expectation of him being the favored son, and how his failure against the shade of his father broke him? It just seemed to be written so sloppy.

[@sharlayanforum]

"Everyone thinks my dad is so cool. I'll show them how cool I am" >loses to his shadow "Well I guess it's time to k*ll literally every living thing on the planet now."

[@emmacatte]

I really enjoyed the analysis, however if i may share something, i think Zoraal Ja's motivation wasnt just doing it to do it. Yeah hes just a guy but from what i understood he wanted to prove that he was stronger than his father, a building hatred that had been brewing over time and exploded when he couldnt best his own fathers shadow whereas others who he saw as weak did. Its more akin to losing his pride :0

[@sharlayanforum]

Sure, that's true. I just think generational trauma and daddy issues are bad motivations for villains, personally.

[@tcxiv3767]

Just because it's a new adventure for the WoL doesn't mean it has to be like ARR or worse,but looks like the devs think otherwise.Nevertheless i'll wait until Dawntrail is completely finished in term of MSQ to give my score tbh.I'm super glad that there's ALOT of players who think like this though!

[@sharlayanforum]

I'm certainly open to the possibility that the patches could MASSIVELY improve this story with context. We shall see!

[@AntonyYTube]

Great video. I am for sure in the minority here, but I think the devs could and should have actually done less with thr MSQ. Dawntrail would have been better if there actually wasn't these huge stakes. No Sphene, no invasion, no crazy Zoraal Ja. Just an expansion of fun, interesting quests and tons more of the good combat sequences, and less of trying to fit it all into some deep story nobody cared about. So many more cool scenarios to show off new mechanics could have been done if the focus actually was on a fun vacation/competition between scions. Instead we got an off brand Emmet/Meteon, a worse Lyse, and 3 locals to talk to.

[@sharlayanforum]

I agree wholeheartedly. I sucks because Zoraal Ja, Wuk Lamat, and Bakool Ja Ja could've been really interesting characters, but they just didn't give them room to breathe and grow and become something more than just "I hate my dad", "I love everyone", and "I'm mad at the world." It's super disappointing.

[@ShxpxRok]

whoever wrote the story should be assisting someone that actually knows how to write. this is not FF14 quality

[@qamarqammar7629]

I was never taken by surprise, never moved by emotion, and worst of all, never laughed. That's a first for me with an FF14 MSQ. And I don't know one person who was taken in by Sphene. She had Final Boss tatooed on her forehead. As I said elsewhere, I certainly enjoyed bits of it because there were entrertaining bits. But it was like playing a spinoff. I can hope for better, but the MSQ is a real time commitment for me (I play all sidequests normally) and I won't be taking off this kind of time in future to play straight through if this is what they keep giving us. I can pick any book on my shelves instead. I will disagree with you about it being fine that we are not the MC. I can't imagine them sidelining the WoL in future to this extent, not just because of the response they got, but because of how difficult it is to write a new MC that could carry an expac. The WoL of light has "started over" more than once in greater or smaller ways. After the Scions are attacked in ARR; when the WoL goes to Coerthas where nobody knows them and forges new political connections and personal alliances; after the bloody banquet when we become a fugitive. We even enter the First alone and gradually reassemble our team. We spend time in Stormblood trying to prove ourselves to people who could care less who we were, yet we had to convince them to join our Cause. So when going to a new place (Tural) they could have built this more deeply had they written this truly as another reset. New places always bring new adventures. People don't normally die when they hit 30 (except in Anime). We could have seen our WoL start a whole new chapter.

[@deice3]

I feel the pacing was just right for Living Memory, It would have been too dark to drag on what amounts to taking an entire civilization off life support. It was heavy enough as is.. Plus, if it wasn't time-sensitive in the context of story, a lot of the criticisms of "why didn't we do anything to save them" would be valid.

[@sharlayanforum]

Maybe I just don't get the empathy for it, but I did not feel that section was heavy at all. I felt more fighting the transfigured townspeople in Vanaspati or Holminster then I did turning off those servers.

[@MurakamiTenshi]

Listening to a happy Disney song as we commit genocide is hilariously jarring

[@xkey_blade9558]

🤨Hmm I mean i am really exited for the future Story that the Key and Azem Crystal seem synergis. And also that we go finally in diffrent Reflections. I hope the writer don’t stay or he learns from his mistakes. We know that the old writer left because he told what he wanted tell. You see it clearly that the new writer don’t know his character. I mean I am the Warrior of Light who defeated Gods and then I can’t stop Zoral Jaja from killing his Dad that felt rly weard and there are many moments like that 😅.

[@sharlayanforum]

There's definitely some interesting threads, but the overall story just didn't come together very well, I think.

[@verar2247]

18:00 That's not his motivations, though. Zoraal Ja wants to change mindset of Turali people by means of war because, in his opinion, people of the isle is too delusional and soft minded, that's the outer point of his motivation, more personal depth of his motives is that he wants to prove himself a miracle by surpassing his father because all his life people were sitting on his ears praising him as if he was god like being because his birth, by aaany means, should never ever happened at all. Under the iceberg level is pretty much that: all that praising and expectations ruined his life so much that he started hating his father and his legacy, in destroying everything that Gulool Ja Ja created he seeks to prove himself as something different, because at that point he had serious identity crisis and his Triple Triad card number from Everkeep trial is '404' not just 'because'. There is hardly anything more nuanced than Zoraal Ja character in Dawntrail, but with all nuances it seems writers just couldn't handle him right. I wonder wasn't his concept actually be one of Ishikawa's..

[@sharlayanforum]

"Guy who is angry at the world because his dad is cooler than him" isn't a super interesting character description. It's especially not a good justification for a villain to have the mission of subjugating and crushing the entire world under his heel. You could make that character arc as nuanced and sympathetic as possible, but the goal of "I will make everyone serve under me because I've been made to feel small" is a bad motivation, period. It's even worse than Sphene's motivation, which is about at justifiable as putting nails in my food.

[@verar2247]

@@sharlayanforum But thats not the point? He wasn't by any means feeling small compared to his father, he wanted proof and reason for his existence because he was forced by beliefs of everyone around him to be someone that his father was, to level up the expectations and to 'prove a miracle'.That's personal and selfish motivation born from inner conflict of a man and environment he lived in, one of the favorite themes of FF villains .You can go and read EX2 trial starting quest where 'Yoshi-P' pretty much implies that problems lies deeper. Yotsuyu became the Witch of Doma not because she was le evil, you know, and Hien wanted to change Doma society not because he likes Revolutions by Nobuo Uematsu

[@sharlayanforum]

Brooooo don't tell me you just compared "Everyone is putting unrealistic expectations on me to be like my dad. I should make them all my subjects to show them I'm strong" to Yotsuyu and Hien. Yotsuyu was abused and forced into manual labor and later sex work by extended family who were the only ones who would take her in after her parents died. After she was commanded to spy on the Imperials in the brothel she ran into Zenos and followed him because he seemed strong enough to free her and could sense she had latent powers. Hien watched his entire life go by as his people and his country were crushed by Imperial invaders and occupiers who literally murdered people by the score, including his own father, and channeled that entire lifetime of subjugation and trauma into a righteous cause of leading his people in revolution against a foreign occupation. Zoraal Ja LITERALLY does not hold a candle to these characters. People had expectations of him that he was afraid to live up to and he got so brain broken that he decided to harvest peoples souls and force everyone to fear him through the threat of domination and violence? That shit is as one deminesional as a literal crayon drawing. It's literally the type of thing we see in World of Warcraft villains, which other than Garrosh and maybe Arthas have literally been laughing stocks for 15 years.

[@verar2247]

@@sharlayanforum My man, that's you out there pulling out a tree and not seeing that said tree actually has roots. Yotsuyu hatred for Doma, first and foremost, was not because of what she was forced to do, but because of how people of Doma were indifferent to her suffering. No one came to her rescue because no one cared about her, period. So eventually Hien wanted to change Doma society that people would not remain infantile to each other. With Zoraal Ja the situation is opposite: from childhood he was placed on a pedestal of something nearly divine and the attention to his persona was so great that it leaded him to existential crisis first and to the point of utterly madness later. A similar scenario but on a smaller scale can be seen in different family circles all around the world: when some expectations are placed on oldest brothers and sisters and they are literally forced to be something more than just another child. In both cases we are shown how society harms itself and others with its behavior, and that indifference is just as dangerous as excessive praise. Both Yotsuyu and Zoraal Ja wanted to punish and destroy those who were involved in what they eventually became, but in their own way. I really really REALLY advise you to go through the story slowly, because even though the writers executed main story poorly, nonetheless this story has quite enough details.

[@sharlayanforum]

@verar2247 Yeah man this conversation was never about the overarching story being bad. I even say in the video the overriding story of Dawntrail is interesting and I hope they do something with it. But you literally just said it; the writers did a bad job. You're inferring all of this information about Zoraal Ja because it's all lacking any real, enjoyable and noticeable subtext through developing his character. It's not shown. He exists for a few hours in the game as a stoic, mean-spirited big brother, and then he's a cyber assassin from the future for a couple hours, and then we kill him. That's a shit character plot. It isn't good. Yotsuyu has an entire expansion and multiple patches to grow and show. I just don't think that him saying "I'm tired of living in my dad's shadow, this is my story!" and cutting an image of his entire family and his own child in half is as deep of a cut as you do. The subtext there has all the subtlety of a hand grenade, and it literally just lays all of its cards on the table and says "Here you go." They can be the same motivations or have the same concept all we want; it doesn't change the fact that he was written poorly and his story suffered from it. Not unlike how the entire expansion's MSQ suffered from poor pacing, poor development, and poor writing. That's the whole point. It was never about a lack of details, it was about a lack of exploration and explanation that make those details mean anything meaningful at all.

[@b.h.4249]

During the marketing for DT, I was actually looking forward to a contest for the throne. It's perfect for lower stakes. I was expecting a fierce political battle in which all opponents would have to compete through actual fighting contests, political warfare and alliance-building (a great way to lead into new zones). Maybe you wouldn't have a set mentee from the beginning and eventually decide on one yourself. What if the rivalry between Scions got more tense over time as the differences in political and phylosophical views begot more and more tension until things escalate once the political back-stabbing begins? What if some relationships permanently change, evolve or completely dissolve? Aaah, so much potential and all of it wasted! The Alexandria plot really wasn't needed to make things interesting if they had only had more confidence in one single concept and actually hired competent writers.

[@Dekaar]

I've seen the title, disagreed, but decided to entertain the process of thought, as neglecting an opinion based on keywords ain't fair. Seen partial parts of the areas, watched the overall thoughts part (good videopacing btw adding it as somewhat of a summary) and then the final summary. still disagree - heavily. To add a couple of my thoughts, not all. There will be spoilers but I presume people watching this will have finished regardless: - DT is SB done properly. It's pretty much 100% a copied and evolved Stormblood. However this time we follow a main character (Wuk instead of Lyse) and her main followers / story related rivals / additions and actually see a consistent story instead of jumping back and forth between Lyse and unrelated stuff. - People compare too much to EW, stating that the story was better told in EW, also complaining that DT feels disconnected - which itself, is a big issue to think that way. EWs story was done with 6.0. Beginning with 6.1 we had a hard cut opening up a totally new storyline that had nearly nothing to do with what he had the past expansions. DT itself followed that 6.1 content and concentrated in building a new story rather than working with a fillerstory. So far the only thing we have in common with 6.1+ story is, that stuff will be turning into a multiverse chaos - but that's very vaguely right now. -DT feels like a standalone and with that it actually does stuff right what it does-. We've had an introduced Maincharacter (Wuk), we've had a reason to go there (which is something that most other expansions were either horribly forcing or doing without any context), we've had worldbuilding (deep and careful explanation of cultures) with not only showing the good thing but instead also showing the disturbing things which we were taking for granted (double headed mamool ja), we've had sidecharacters introduced that mattered until the very end of the relevant plot and we've had a satisfactory conclusion of the mail plot of the 7.0 patch - and that was, ironically, not the point where we were doing genocide, which was a rather weak story point of this expansion. Compared to other expansions DT 90-99 story quest was very consistent, logical and did everything right that you would want to have from a proper story. That "half and half" split is in actuality not a half and half split but a heavily intertwined and organically woven story of one point of origin. Only thing that was not really fitting in the story was Area 4, because that area had literally 0 relevant story, and in fact, Area 6, as this was a abstact way to break the good engineered story to this point. If we compare the story to previous expansions, DT actually did a thing that other expansions didn't do - it followed through. HW starts as Niddhy being a big threat, he get's offed relatively early until he returns by a miracle in a later patch being the main enemy of expansion. inbetween that the orthodoxy became the replacement baddie, which ended up being defeated - however after that the whole plot what happened to ishgard and the orthodoxy was only mentioned in shard, if even at all. So that's actually a major miss on the story. SB had a story that lead nowhere at all. We had little to no character development and the whole patchcycle was basically worldbuilding without anything. ShB, while storywise being rather strong, technically only started to become strong AFTER the 5.0 patch or when we entered Tempest. Before we were basically just running around meddling into the affairs of a plane were we don't belong to, forcing our will and rebuilding it to our shaped desire. EW pretty much was the same. We cleaned up the rest of ShB, not really having any other reason to attend and then had a revelation at 87 story which basically threw everything out of the window and turned it into a farce. In DT we had the rite - we've seen why our rivals ticked, what they did, had major character development for them and massive worldshaping. Then around 95/96 we found the innitial goal of the story - but then SE followed through. Instead of saying "woops you found the city, move to story plot 2", scooby gang moves on, never ever returning or mentioning it ever again, which was done in the previous expansions, they actually followed through what happens after - We've seen Zoraal ja also finding it, (creating a potential post patch villain in the process) who by this point, became an antithesis of what the journey actually intended to, creating a new heavily intertwined string in the story, gaining relevance again instead of just being forgotten until patch 7.2 or so which had happened to nidhogg. While yes. Zoraal Ja is not a good character in itself, the story device of him becoming an antagonist and then becoming the main villain with a twist, was handled exceptionally well. They even layed the foundation of him being massively relevant in the following patches, although he's gone. - DT is freaking dark and NOBODY CARES!? We've seen so many massively dark story bombs explode that pretty much nobody ever talks about although they fundamentally change how the world has been drawn. Nobody cares, that we're on the brink of another global war. Compare how much damage garlemald did to the world, which only had a single area. now compare the amounts of damage Tural, a whole continent would've done if Zoraal Ja would've won - nobody cares. We've seen religious fanatics, that pretty much gamble on their unborn children to just have some strong warriorchildren - nobody cares. We've seen pretty much the second of the three promises saying that he wants to throw away his whole culture for technological advancement - nobody cares and we've annihilated, by ourselves, a whole civilization ... nobody even mentions it. Instead people complain that there was too much vacationing (which there wasn't ANY) and no actual story (skip less bruh) - Jobbalance is messed up. Big time. While at first glance the job balance is ok, in a smaller detail the actual jobs are pretty much worse than they were in EW - they were inconsistently approached, some jobs only had minor changed and didn't even get new skills (rdm, war and so on), some jobs pretty much got nothing (smn) and other jobs had so much added, that the lvl 100 job feels like blackmage every expansion (dancer being majorly different from before (more looking at rota optimisation here thanks to new tillana and last dance) - but hey... at least BLM is pretty much dead right now overall : DT managed something that other expansions failed at. The story was a strong standalone from beginning to nearly end. it did everything well when it came to storytelling and executed that very good. We had sidecharacters that were introduced in 92/93 still being relevant in 96/97 even up until 100 (namikka) and also we've had characters introduced late, that had a driving influence on the story early on (Kriles parents). Zoraal Ja developed as a good antagonistic character, to a great expansion leading enemy... while Sphene.... pretty much was the weakest part of the expansion so far... much like endsinger was in EW. If SE decides to only very minimally link expansions from now on following the storytelling of half EW and now DT, then I am all up for it, because the not interlocked stories are actually a good thing to create more memorable, not washed out experiences.

[@sharlayanforum]

Disagreement is good! Thanks for the thought out comment!

[@ninjafoxgamesgeekery]

Hey now, there IS some vacationing. It's just in the post MSQ. We're the freaking Warrior of Light. We defeated DESPAIR ITSELF. If having a bit of fun in a pro wrestling league isn't a vacation, I don't know what is. Sure, there are some stakes beyond just having fun, but compared to the destruction of all life in the universe, they're definitely lower stakes. 😁

[@TheBoEoSoT]

My guess, and what I truly hope for, is that they'll use this DLC as a standalone vacation, a filler story before a brand-new second saga. Ideally, Ichikawa would be diligently writing the grand plot for the next saga over the next seven years. That way, she wouldn't have much time to write the DLC and she have to leave DT to another writer. #cope

[@sharlayanforum]

I'm right there with you, huffing that tank of Grade A Copium

[@starberry2705]

Loved the rite of succession story. Wasn't a huge fan of Alexandria follow up. But overall a good expansion i would say :)

[@sharlayanforum]

Fair enough!

[@unixtreme]

Sound is way too low for listening on headphones outside.

[@sharlayanforum]

Thanks for the feedback! I try to keep my audio around what is common for "industry standards" so to speak, but your mileage may vary based on your listening environment!

[@cherryindil8869]

I enjoyed much time with erenville and doing shenanigans in cowboy zone xd

[@sharlayanforum]

🤠

[@asdsad17]

if you ever watched naruto anime. there will be a long arc of fillers. it's never good.

[@sharlayanforum]

I'm hoping this is a one off and the patches will pick it up

[@raunjisto2925]

I skipped a lot of scenes with that culture of traders and I’m glad I did. Didn’t miss anything there. I met the Pelu Pelu first and… yeah that was boring. So going into the trading thing which had 0 action was worse. The last zone of the game had me so pissed off. I just wanted to shut the damn servers off but Wuk Lamat kept going “wait let’s learn about them first”. Girl, I just want to finish this already. We have to kill them anyway and none of the intended emotional beats are landing with me. The last zone was trying so hard to hit us with this big sad moment, where each zone lost its music and color after we shut it down, but it didn’t impact me whatsoever. We have this whole futuristic golden city to visit and they made it BORING. Also, slightly unrelated, but I see some people comparing us to Emet with not seeing the Endless as people, something I truly disagree with. Emet is trying to bring back a dead society and killing living people for it. We were trying to protect a very much alive society from being killed for people that are already dead. Sphene was much closer to Emet in that sense than we were.

[@Foxkey]

I didn't care about the culture stuff at all. I actually enjoyed the second part more and wished I could side with Spheme. It looked like they were building a foundation but smashed it to pieces by the end.

[@sharlayanforum]

Fair enough! I think there's some interesting pieces, but the overall package came together very messy

[@markup6394]

the first two zones... they were too long. Think of ShB where we get a feel of the people and their problems. Here we only got an introduction of two (!) different tribes and their situation, by no means an introduction of Tural as a whole. It was too little, or to quote Bilbo: "like butter stretched over too much bread". The story would've been served better if it was either really something like ARR where we explore new cultures and people or if the trial would've been condensed over two or three levels - and not six as it were. The first two zones felt stretched while everything that followed was felt... Then the writing: ARR had a character like Lolorito, someone we needed two expansions till we got a begruntled truce with. In DT everything is just too easy: the Pelu trade was like "putting the square into the square-shaped hole", the hanu was "click shiny thing"... and when we make it to Mamool (loved the Bakool Ja Ja part, though it was too short... again: pacing) everything is just over before we even get started... and then we "find" the Golden City, though "find" is the wrong word: we didnt need to find anything. When we start DT, we get the promise of a beach vacation: okay, I can live without that, we get lovely zones after all. But the second promise from both the trailer and the benchmark is a treasure hunt. I thought we'd actually have to really find the city, and not stumble over it. Also, the Scion bit was totally misplaced, though I expected that (they said the same thing about "meaningfull choices" about the last part of Bozja/Zadnor story, and it didnt matter at all); I didnt expect that we wouldnt see them at all though... Namikka... ... That wasnt about the regulators... That part was the build-up for the reunion in Living Memory. 24:31 --- You lost me here... Why dont you just say that Sphene worked with Zoraal Ja because he is ruthless unlike her, and gets the souls she needs? This has nothing to do with some wicked technology, is has to do with "how far are you willing to go for the benefit of your people?" - which is where Wuk Lamat's story comes full circle. - This is a video about the DT MSQ, its a spoiler video, there is no need to be vague.

[@sharlayanforum]

I don't think I was especially vague. I said she creeped me out immediately because she is not depicted as evil from the outset. I then, in literally almost the next line, talk about how she wants to harvest everyone's souls to keep her memories alive. I think the idea of setting up Namikka for the idea of the reunion wouldve worked better if she had any sort of development at all before she appeared and disappeared from the story. Her total screen time amounts to a few cutscenes that ultimately mean nothing because she dies and then we kill her a second time by turning her off. I think DT suffers a lot from the problem of Telling and not Showing. Wuk Lamat tells me that Namikka is like her mother, she tells me she cares about her, but she's only there for an hour, maybe, of screen time. Unfortunately that's not long enough for me to be shown that she cares and that I should also care as the player.

[@markup6394]

@@sharlayanforum You didnt use names, thats vague in my books... :P The short screentime of Namikka wasnt the issue. It would've helped if she had a more active role in the quest were we get the bracelet back, but since she didnt there was no "bonding". Tesleen had similar screentime, she too was friends with an important character (Alisaie), but we "bonded" with her before her death which made the event more impactful. - In general the story suffers from three things: pacing, writing and unconvincing characters.

[@sharlayanforum]

Absolutely! I think Tesleen's transformation also worked better as a character moment because it was so horrific and it also turned a character directly into a villain that we would have to face off against later in the story. The arc of meeting her, getting to know her tragedy, trying to help, watching her become a Sin Eater, and then killing her later in Holminster was an extremely horrific and satisfying story, albeit short and relatively not important to the overall story. It communicated the stakes of the expansion very clearly and quickly, and also gave the character a complete story that we *saw* each step of. Namikka, in comparison, is mentioned, shown, gets put on a train, dies, and then we meet her matrix brain image and unplug it. There's nothing that puts the horror of her experience on screen, there's nothing to convince me that she deserves to be remembered outside of just being told "She's important to Wuk Lamat, so she should be important to you." I think the unconvincing characters is definitely one of the biggest failures of this expansion. It's even telling that if you look at how many quests each character is involved in, Tesleen is involved in 6 quests, and is even the quest giver of 4 of them. Namikka is involved in 2 quests, 5 levels apart, and is nothing but an objective in the list of one of them.

[@markup6394]

@@sharlayanforum We agree then that the writing is bad... but we understand what they intended ^^°

[@GothaBillsAndDeath]

I'm curious what you thought about lategame ARR and Heavensward. Because it reminded me of the filler quests that interspliced the more compelling parts of ARR, which was anything related to the refugee plight (Ala Mhigans & Domans), politics, and the dastardly Lalafellan nobles. The kindly savior of the smallfolk who ended up being one of the worst backstabbers possible. Indeed, anything related to Ul'dah seemed to be where the political thriller aspects resonated with the fanbase, so much so that they still meme lalafells as the most "canonically evil" or rather deceptive race in-game. Both the ARR lategame that bled into Heavensward cemented the idea that FF14 was more than just an MMO, it had a lot of narrative pay-off and worldbuilding you would expect from one of the better FF games. I was wondering when those sort of elements would come into play with DT but sadly it never did for me at least.

[@sharlayanforum]

I think the the late-game ARR patches, like 2.4 and 2.5, where it was leading directly into the assassination plot and where we were headed in 3.0, were interesting for precisely the reason you said; they started to attach some fibers to pieces of the story and pull them all into focus. I think that FFXIV storytelling is at its absolute peak when there's a tapestry of interconnected ideas that are all slowly drawing in on eachother in order to bring a singular objective into focus. It's what made the transition between Shadowbringers and Endwalker feel so very good, but the transition fron Endwalker in Dawntrail feel very bad. All of that stuff with the 13th, Zero, etc.. It's all amounted to nothing. Now this is only so far, but when we view the Endwalker patches and this Expansions MSQ in a vacuum, they feel extremely disjointed, unrelated, and I don't see a ton of space for them to give is this big, "aha!" moment where things all snap into focus and that plot point from previous story beats suddenly becomes more realized. Everything in Dawntrail had a certain amount of finality to it. Sphene is dead. Zoraal Ja is dead. Wuk Lamat and Koana are the Dawnservants. Those problems are solved. What's left? The Tural Vidraal, the Key, Sphene's Crown, and maybe Gulool Ja... everything else has basically come around full circle. I'm hopeful that the patches will peel more layers, but I'm nervous that it may not be enough to keep it engaging and give it the feeling of beginning to spin those webs like the establishing parts of the H&Z saga did.

[@b.h.4249]

@@sharlayanforum I actually find it funny that Gulool Ja is made into such an important character by becoming the king of Alexandria. Anything happening within Alexandria from this point onwards is essentially unimportant and barely controllable because the time diallation still exist. Characters we know inside the dome will age 30 years within a few Source days. Of course the writers will surely either ignore this in the future or make up a reason for why the effect no longer exists, but it makes engaging with anthing relating to Alexandria after 7.0 feel hilariously unrealistic to me.

[@mitsuhary_chan]

What glam is this?

[@sharlayanforum]

It's the Viper level 100 Jacket and Gloves, some generic pants, I think I'm using the level 50 PVP Warwolf pants if I'm not mistaken, and then the Hyur racial Boots! The weapons are the Lunar Envoy weapons.

[@Eredom]

Opinions are good. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. So here is my opinion: I strongly disagree with your review. I do agree with you on a few points: Kozama Uka is story wise probably the most uninteresting Zone in a good while. I did not care too much for the Hanu Hanu or the Moblins. Also, Shaaloani felt a lot like filler. I DID like however that shaaloani has a lot of characters we saw in Shadowbringers... well, the source version of those characters. I really enjoy seeing those characters and as a result I didnt mind the zone. I do think Wuk Lamat was a bit too much and the scions had a bit too little screen time. Estinien being in the wild west now is a good example. Or Yshtola, coming in, having 2 sentences about the unknown reflection, and thats it. The VA probably recorded from home considering she only had a few voice lines. I really hope they will start focusing on the scions more in the future again, since we love those characters. But I think your main issue is that you started skipping cutscenes, I think you were in a mindset where you were burned by the early story so you lost all the interest and honestly, the final zone could have been the best zone in the world but you would not care. That being said, I don't think you can review a book you only read half of and its the same here. There are valid criticisms for dawntrail, but I think since you lost interest so early that you started skipping cutscenes, I don't think you can give this story a valid review. The first 4 zones are introducing a lot of new cultures, where I am sure they will be used later in the future patches or expansions. Some of them were interesting, others were not that interesting, but in my opinion highlights were the Pelu Pelu, the Giants, and honestly the Mamool Ja with their background on how two headed mamool jas are born [dead baby dungeon]. I think, and I have seen many who share this opinion, that from Heritage Found onwards, the story really picks up, you do spend time with Erenvilles Mother, and I do love the story of them trying to filter/extract souls and use them to revive people. And Living Memory imo is one of the most interesting zones we had so far. Every Zone is about saying goodbye and moving on, but of course it does not hit when you are already in a mindset of "this sucks". I will stand here and say, I cried multiple times in that zone. If it hits you, it REALLY hits you. Also from a lore perspective, I think its interesting since its a new reflection. On Wuk Lamat: I did find her annoying in the beginning, but she does evolve into a character that by the end, I felt like I liked a lot more. Sphene also didnt really hit for me as much as Emet did, but she didnt need to hit that hard. Its the first expansion of a new story, so if she hits about as hard as Lahabrea/Gaius/Ultima Weapon in ARR, thats enough in my book. While Dawntrail does not reach the highs of Shadowbringers and Endwalker, its certainly better than ARR. The Zones are better, the story is certainly still more interesting than ARR, even in its slow sections, and heck, you dont need to travel over the entire continent to deliver wine and then pray return to the waking sands. My personal negative would be that we had TOO many cutscenes and not enough gameplay. And of those cutscenes, not enough were voiced (again, helping to annoy people and bringing them to skip cutscenes). Overall though, still a good to solid MSQ, with the beginning half being a bit slow and everything after vanguard being really cool.

[@sharlayanforum]

I'm glad you disagree! I think if we all had the same opinion, the game would be way worse off. I think I want to give context on why and how often I skipped cutscenes. When I say I started skipping cutscenes in Shaaloani, I don't mean that I unilaterally skipped all cutscenes going forward and never watched another one ever again until the credits rolled. Like I said, I watched all of them to a certain extent, and if they felt important or interesting I would watch the rest. However, some of them by that point in time felt either completely inconsequential or felt like they got their point across early and then dragged on for an unneccesary amount of time. I think the pacing of this expansion is probably the second or third worst in the games history, and alot of the cutscenes are 4-6 minutes long but make a point that takes 30 seconds to get across. It's sort of the personification of "This could've been an email." I also think that saying "I got pushed off of this story so much that I began to lose interest in it and stopped caring about it enough to be invested." is, in and of itself, a review. Gatekeeping reviews only to those who completely invest in something with every fiber of their being will result in nothing but an echo chamber. Much like we should encourage discourse and differing opinions in all things, we should encourage those who just... got bored. That's valuable feedback. It indicates that there's a problem with pacing or interesting pieces of content.

[@TheDeliciousMystery]

Ultimately i think it doesn't work because its effectively the player standing aside to watch another person do their ARR story all over again from dealing with the lizard, bird and mountain people to attacking a fort and fighting a swordsman and a giant robot. For the first time the narrative felt regressive rather than progressive. There are other issues like Koanas backstory going nowhere but that could be saved for patch content it just feels a bit bland to have your character sit, literally, and watch wuk lamat deflect machine gun fire with her axe and just think "is this just operation archon again but i'm not doing anything?" and after shadowbringers and endwalker thats nothing. But its a funny one because the msq is a one and done, meanwhile actual worldbuilding rise Tural is great and doesn't feel tacked on but a part of the world as natural as thanalan or azim steppe. I think ultimately it just feels a bit rushed and maybe the patch will flesh it out but it feels like they rushed us to the end already which made sense in endwalker but this isn't a big finale and i feel like they tried to wrap things up too cleanly and worry they will just dive into another story using the maguffin in .1 and not the next .0 which i hope doesn't happen.

[@sharlayanforum]

Yeah, I think ultimately my fear is that with the pacing they used for Dawntrail and how "cleanly" everything wrapped up, at least in the sense of how final a lot of things were. There's basically two or three loose ends for them to pull on in the patches. It makes me a bit afraid of how they intend to keep this story connected to other stories going forward into the patches and 8.0

[@TheDeliciousMystery]

@@sharlayanforum Honestly part of me wonders if they saw the lukewarm reaction to their biggest genre competitor WoW's Dragonflight expansion which was also the 'summer vacation' reduced scope expansion for that game and decided to course correct late in development and was why they spoiled all of the second halfs reveals prerelease to drum up more hype. I want more of Tural, especially with the post msq maybe alluding to things like the yok huy sharing an ancestry with the ronkans pre sundering but if they basically turn Tural into another Doma we effectively abandon and return to the 13th story i won't be shocked.

[@sharlayanforum]

@TheDeliciousMystery It's possible! To be fair though, as a former WoW player of almost 15 years, WoW could put out an expansion that is a literal 400/10 and the players would still hate something about it. The fanbase there is too fractured and the game has become so much of a maze that I don't think they'll ever make even a majority of the players happy again

[@MarcusMaybenot]

I don't rly agree at all about Namika, I think they spent about as much time on her as we needed without dragging it out ( considering you skipped in Shaloaani you probably skipped stuff involving her too... )

[@sharlayanforum]

That's okay!