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she was so fucking right...

Snare fleas are WAAAAY scarier than most think. They are LITERALLY giant centipedes that suck you off until you die

The real reason I’m not impressed is my yellow rabbit headgear isn’t high definition…it’s still pixelized 😭

Dawntrail really suffers from the WoL having basically no meaningful dialogue options. To be fair, so did the other expansions but recency bias makes me feel like this time it was even worse, especially considering the WoL was supposed to be a kind of mentor to Wuk Lamat. While personally I didn't mind Wuk Lamat that much after she starts to grow after the festival, but I would have liked it if we were a bigger part of her growth through our dialogue. Having the float and festival be a solution to the poor crops was neat in a magic and world building sense, but having Wuk Lamat just randomly decide to hold the festival and it working felt unearned and very MacGuffiny. Regarding Sphene, I was so disappointed when it was revealed that no matter what we said, she was not going to change her mind. G'raha even pointed out how unsustainable her plan was in the long run, but there was no response to that and the game just moves on. Ever since Sphene first revealed her plans, I was thinking that it was unsustainable and was waiting for someone to point it out, since I wasn't going to be allowed to(I want more dialogue options that actually impact the story dammit!", and when G'raha pointed it out I was so happy, but nothing came from it, which is somehow worse than if it wasn't mentioned at all. Overall, after the festival I enjoyed the story, though by the time I got to Living Memory I was enjoying it less and less. Personally I think Dawntrail has the second worst MSQ, above ARR.

yeah DT story is trash

The way I see Dawntrail's Flaws are as follows: 1) Wuk Lamat sucks up all of the air right before she talks, causing everyone around her to suffocate in her presence. This suffocation means no one else gets to shine, and more infuriatingly, she never leaves our side except for the Cowboy Land. 2) The (English) Voice Direction in Dawntrail itself was terrible. Sena Bryer did an acceptable job as Wuk Lamat, but SPHEEEEEN! was done in the one part of the story we will inevitably end up playing repeatedly because of Trial Roulette. I very much doubt that part will ever be given a Retake, so anyone who has Voices set to English will have to suffer that particularly grating performance for the rest of FFXIV's life. 3) The writing itself just... wasn't there until we hit Arcadion. I didn't give a damn about anyone besides the Ja Ja's in this new world, and even then Bakool was only interesting because his plight was understandable, but until we got to that point in the story he was just cartoonishly evil. By The Western Frontier I started skipping cutscenes because I just did not care anymore and wanted it to be over, which is ironic because the story actually picked up after we got past Yeehaw territory, but then apparently fell on it's face in Living Memory (which by that point I was so checked out I didn't even register I was committing Mass Unalive because I just wanted to be done with the story and unlock the Expert Dungeons to get gear for the upcoming Raid series)

I've never watched, but anytime I've asked someone about this anime they kinda sink into this thousand-yard stare where they're looking at me but I can tell they don't see me anymore. I think a lot of people really wanted to like it.

You hit the word 'bitch' so raw at the start. She really hurt you...

I feel like I should just bite the bullet and watch franxx at this point and great video by the way

Ive had darling in the franxx in my backlog for the longest time and the more I hear about the more im unsure if its even worth wasting my time on

I feel like trigger are reliant on the style since they cant write a good story long term... the more you watch the less you like them. Kiznivers, franxx, lwa (series) and like you said about the trigger formula. Fun charecters dont matter if the story has no substance. I watched GL > klk > kiz>lwa>franxx>edgerunners each I liked less and less. Trigger is bordeline overated

Great video! You hit on several of the issues I had with the expansion. One thing that bothered me about Living Memory is actually that the inhabitants were written too well! It was really hard to convince myself that these beings were mere simulacra being fed memories from a database that runs off human souls. They had new experiences and came up with new ideas. These were PEOPLE. One way it could have been improved was if they paid reference to the RPGs of the 80s and early 90s, where NPCs were notorious for repeating the same single box of dialogue. NPCs already do this in 14, but we ignore it as "game design limitations". But if you build a voiced cutscene where that happens and the party hears it and questions it, then it becomes real. And then the inhabitants are clearly just memories playing on a loop. Also, the slow and boring start to Dawntrail really shined a light on how bad FF14's cutscenes have always been. Most of them are two or three people standing facing each other in still frames while their lips silently flap. After 10 years they really need to find a new way to tell stories.

im so proud of myself for dropping this show, thank you for validating that

That cackle at the end... hahaha

Haven't seen the anime yet as I put the pro in procrastination... but I like how you format things and your commentary is pretty ace. Threw you a sub and a follow on twitch. Hopefully we can make livestreams happen soon!

That came out of nothing...and also ignited some deep seeded dissapointment x.x

It's been 5 years. It's time to heal and let go. (I'm still mad about mahoromatic's ending, fuck gainax forever)

My opinion of the story is that the devs tried having alot of side storys but all of them melded to much into the main story and took a back seat, which is why krile got done dirty. The 2 story writers in charge of this expantion had alot of ideas but not enough time or budget to get there ideas across. Wuk lamat not a character i enjoy, but some of her plot points fall flat like the reveal of her bio dad was just dropped and we basicly got 5 min of dialog about it but it does nothing to move the plot, change wuklamat outlook at all. Its very much "oh cool you are my bio father... anyways im hungry."

When I did my playthrough I got choked up at living memory and even though my opinion of the expac wasn't very good overall, I considered that a good section but the more I think about it the worse it is. My biggest issue is the fact that we are told that there is absolutely no moral problem with shutting everything down but then the game goes out of it's way to try and make us feel sad for the characters we are killing, it's completely backwards. If shutting the place down truly has no meaning then why don't we just march up to the console and turn each one off? Why hang out with Krile's parents if it's only an echo of them? Why honour Erenville's mom's wishes if her 'life' is worth nothing? I've seen comparisons to Amourot but I think they're really not equivalent. In Amourot, the shades of the acients are essentially on a track that they can't deviate from, they have no idea that they are not alive (other than hyth) and even see us as children because they're essentially just following a script and going about their lives as they would have before the final days. Living memory is different. the people there understand their situation and can form opinions on and it make new memories. Hell a couple even wants to hook up after waiting to be reunited in living memory. The way the game presents the citizens of Living Memory makes them come across more as ghosts than recreations despite what the game tries to tell you in the text. Now does that mean that their continued existence at the cost of other lives is justified? Probably not but I think this would have been a much better angle to take the section instead of pretending that shutting them down isn't an issue.

Good video overall, but i had the exact opposite experience with living memory. It was the only map that i felt was worth something other than aesthetics

Sphene might be back her crown is focused on and mentioned by Yoshi P.

I think that in the next few expansions we're going to make allies with people like Wuk who will return to fight by our side during the next big calamity kinda like we saw the dragons help us in Dawntrial.

Remember Yoshi said that there is gonna be competition between the scions? Yeah....

at least we now have it confirmed dawtrail takes place 3 years after ARR and the twins are now 19

The Death of the Dawnservant was a mirror of the death of the second Lich King in WoW... all the scions stand there and look at it happening like morons.. a total mirror of the Lich King's Death in the blizzard cinematic.. the moment someone took a breath in Icecrown the whole of the ebon blade including the Death Lord(the player character) would be on their ass(wow players would know). When his death happened and the scions didn;t even move and our character was like "mkay, that happened.. i can split a mountain in half but i'mma gonna watch this happen .. mkay!"

Wuk lamat is easily the worst character in final fantasy and ranks as one of the worst I've ever had to endure in gaming! Dawntrail overall was a forgettable expansion in the history of MMOs and doesn't deserve anything over a 4/10, it brought nothing new to the world of MMOs.

I was expecting Krile and Erenville to receive character development after Endwalker, but I got an annoying furry instead.

One thing that i have yet to see ANYONE address, in my mind the biggest plot hole in ff14, why does Galool Ja exist? I mean, really think about it, he is the greatest mystery in terms of lore. Who is his mother? As far as i know there are no mamool ja in Alexandria, plus Mamool Ja lay eggs, they aren't mammals. The Alexandrians have no technology pretaining to the flesh, only the soul, so he can't be a clone. Plus why would Zooral Ja want a child? He only does things that would further his goals, so why be a father? He even admitted that Galool Ja isn't his son and doesn't consider himself as his father but in the end, still passed his status as king. So once again, why does Galool Ja exist?

The big problem with Wuk Lamat for me was not that she wasn’t developed, because as you pointed out, she was. Nor was it that she was a huge part of the story. It’s that the development she did get didn’t feel earned. The first half of the story was her being bad at things and being bothered by absolutely everything, then meeting some people and going “Wait, what if I wasn’t completely incompetent” and then suddenly being good at things. I’ve seen some people say dynamis/akasha explains her sudden combat ability, but I don’t buy that as an explanation as it’s a copout answer because she doesn’t narratively earn it. On Alexandria, as someone who has only played FFXIV and FFIV, I can tell the Alexandria reference was ham fisted because I could still tell it was a reference to something.

Crap it never occurred to me that Dawntrail basically left nothing to build on for future expansions outside of Azems magic piss cup. Koana and Wuk Lamat are stuck being leaders to their nations, and after the latters reception, are absolutely not coming back. Like at the best it’ll feel like there’s gonna be a bunch of individual plots that are just gonna be ‘new shard discovered, save world from new bad guy, repeat’. Personally, I don’t have anything else I can add that this video didn’t already cover. Dawntrail right now feels like a massive low point in the game, failing to reach the standards the other expansions, heck even ARR, reached. Especially for an MMO that’s been going on for a decade. It’s an expansion that had so many good ideas, but instead it almost constantly pratfell, tripped and dug in its heels when it really shouldn’t have.

Really like your speakin style, hope to see more vids :D

The Crystal Overlord is BACK! Love the new model.

Erenville has outstanding knowledge of animals. Perhaps he could well be the one to introduce us to the limited job, beast master. …wish it wasn’t limited ugh! 😩

31:20 Ahahahaha. But Alexandria WAS destroyed in the FFIX's story. But this comparison still holds because for some reason, this version lacks the emotional weight FFIX did when that happened

Ok i thought about this long and hard. Firstly, the boys at SE did a small brain when the wrapped up literally every plot point by the end of EW. (This is terrible for continuity) gods slain, gaurdians slain, void solved etc. The scions should NOT have come back after their sacrifice at the end. If they remained dead, then the whole sacrificing themselves would have held so much gravity. We could have come back into a very serious sad tone into DT with Krile. That, and the DT concepts were very cool, but the writing very shit. Just go back to your roots and weave your tales as you did in the past that was meaningful, made us theory craft and cry. The bad writing makes those small mistakes that would have been forgivable, unforgivable.

i'm on the fence i thought it could have been a good story its just very poorly told

Excellent video with some great points, though I personally feel you went a bit easy on some parts, but thats probably my personal bias, I didn't like this expansion overall (I rate it better than ARR, but worse than all the others) and I got a lot of flack from people in my FC because I really, REALLY didn't like Living Memory, I didn't get a lot of the FF9 references (never played it, don't @ me) so to me it was just an absolute slog of references I didn't get, Krile (one of my favorite characters) getting done absolutely dirty, a dissonance between the story (We need to move quickly before she activates the fusion, but spend 5 hours walking around talking to people about stuff you don't care about first) and, as you already covered, once you finish the zone there's nothing there to explore/interact with, it's just a husk. I didn't even spot the attempted parallel with Ultima Thule. I also got really annoyed about the Scions being really badly treated, both in terms of their appearance/interactions in cutscenes/events, but also that they seem to have just forgotten stuff and people we've met with previously. Just one example off the top of my head is why wasn't our first port of call once we understood Sphenes plan and why she was doing it to contact someone like Cid and the Ironworks team, or even Omega, and ask for help for a way of supplementing the power/aether they needed to keep living memory running? Even if the end result is its just not possible to do so, at least it would feel like we tried something instead of just being along for the ride. Wuk'lamat coming into the boss fight for a magical friendship ending really annoyed me too, I agree with you 100% that that should have been our moment to shine, not hers. She didn't need to be there. I remember summarizing my feelings to my FC as "I feel like I spent £50 to be mugged off". I came away from the expac so disappointed that I let my sub lapse, and I'm in no rush to pick it back up any time soon :/

"Is it because G'raha fans will get mad if he doesn't get enough screen time?" As someone who's good friends with a RABID G'raha fan, I can tell you that answer is definitively yes.

you kept my attention for like 30 minutes good video alright here

Living Memory should have been slowly shut down over the entire expansion... Krile got RIPPED off with seeing her parents for 5 seconds before they vanish. The only other character I've seen robbed this hard of their story was Ace from One Piece.

Sphene should have been devastated you turned off the servers but she never addressed it. Wuk Lamat love bomb was too stronk

Unfortunately, this is eventually the time when WoW's story development is better than FF14's......

"the magic dimension piss cup" omg lol XD Also I hadn't realised the Sphene essentially being a discount Ascian connection, so true! :o Personally I enjoyed Dawntrail well enough, but I had no issue taking a break and continuing whenever. Whereas with Shadowbringers for example I was on the edge of my seat, I just wanted to know where the story was going to go and couldn't set it down. Biggest Positives: - You also mentioned this but: I liked how they remained dedicated to Erenville's M.O. - Gleaner with no fight skills but lots of beast knowledge. He was a cool guy i.m.o and I enjoyed seeing more of him. - I enjoyed the new zones and the different cultural feels. Yes, even the final zone! I felt it was lovely, though indeed a shame we had to shut it all down like that. - Seeing the trailer I had wondered how in the world they were going to make that super high tech city work in the story setting, but I think they really pulled that off. - I rather liked Sphene, also the question she asks you if you could've saved those you care about without sacrifice? In a way no one can right? The kind of sacrifices made can differ though.. But that question is a bit of recurring theme that does nod back to the Ascians as well i.m.o. - The world Alexandria came from was covered in lightning sooo 2nd Umbral Calamity?? Does this mean that, even after the botched Darkness attempt on the thirteenth, the following rejoinings of Wind, Lightning, Fire, Earth, Ice, Water and w.e. the hell the element of the 7th Calamity was were also potentially partially botched? Basically the Ascians were just winging it and (especially from the earlier rejoinings) pieces of the rejoined reflections may not have fully rejoined? I thought this was quite interesting.. maybe there's still a lot to learn about the rejoinings' history. - I liked Wuk Lamat as a character, which helped in overall enjoying the MSQ well enough since I can imagine if you hate her it's going to be a long run XD Biggest Negatives: - Even at the end of Endwalker I thought it was weird a.f. that we were asked to support someone we didn't know, in their bid for a throne of a country we knew nothing about and we're just like: "SUUURE sounds fun!" I know the Scions officially "disbanded" and all that, but w.e. happened to wanting to stay politically neutral? As the savior of the dang universe it's pretty irresponsible to so openly support someone in a political campaign i.m.o If considering mingling in the politics of another country AT ALL, I would think it more reasonable if you first visit the place, assess the situation, get know ALL candidates and THEN make a decision. (in which case I would've supported Koana t.b.h.). - I wasn't feeling Bakool Ja Ja's turnaround from bad to good guy. It was too quick and getting a glimpse of his upbringing made me feel it was more likely that he'd snap and do something desperate rather than become a good guy suddenly. That being said, I did like his character.. but I would've liked that arc to be more believable/have a better buildup in some way. - I wasn't feeling Zoraal Ja as the bad guy. He was raised by Galool Ja Ja, same as Wuk and Koana.. so why did they turn out so pleasant and he was entirely dead set on plunging the world into war because people were unappreciative of peace? wut? o.O It was never explained why he wanted to wage world wide war so badly, what was his motivation? What triggered this? Just his desire to surpass his father? Who I imagine has raised him just as kindly and lovingly as the other two? Merely because he felt the pressure due to being the "blessed child"? I had hoped he'd get a bit more explanation... - Massive QQ at the fact that they hadn't exploited the competition aspect of the uhhh "competition". I was looking forward to how they were going to give shape to that, whooping some serious Thancred and Urianger ass, all good naturedly rather than having the fate of the world in the balance. - To go back to my earlier comparison with SHB, Dawntrail lacked mysterie for me, there was no real hook that pulled me in and made me want to see what was going to happen next. It was pretty obvious that Wuk was going to win, the only thing I wondered was how the hell she was going to pull that off. The Alexandrian story was a bit more compelling but it still didn't have me at the edge of my seat. - Wuk Lamat being a candidate for any throne made no sense to me, as we said in our convo with Galool Ja Ja "She's not ready". I placed her in the positive bracket as well cause I like her well enough, but I don't see her as a leader figure AT ALL. She's the dorky, happy go lucky side kick. - Were we deliberately holding back in our (mock)fight with Galool Ja Ja? Out of respect for his position? Cause having any individual mortal be a challenge to the WoL after they've vanquished literal GODS makes absolutely no sense to me... This was a total TLDR post, so no one's gonna read it.. but hey, I got this off my chest XD

It is down to 42% now on steam. It was 44% just a few days ago. Me thinks this is going to get people fired at square.

For me, I didn't like how it was the same maudlin woe Wuk had every new zone. Every other cutscene was Wuk wallowing in her naivete, inevitably getting a pat on the back from everyone else to cheer her up. Bakool Ja Ja is an asshole for virtually no other reason than just to be the obligatory antagonist. Thancred and Uriangier teaming up with Koana for the sake of friendly competition. Zoraal Ja the stoic Gary Stu who fails because he's TOO stoic. Then we have the Wild West zone, a futuristic robot invasion led by Zoraal Ja that aged up 30 years because...uh...reasons. My issue with Dawntrail was that it didn't give any singular concept it introduced time to breathe. It's like "okay, we're in a city clearly modeled after the Incans/Mayans. Walk outside and you're in the Wild West. One more zone and you're in a lightning-infused futuristic cyberpunk zone. The tone shift per zone was neck-breaking. I think Dawntrail should have focused on the Succession, and the Alexandrian stuff should have been post-Dawntrail. In the end, Dawntrail wasn't a *bad* expansion...it just wasn't a **good** one. Shadowbringers set a really high bar, and this one fell catastrophically short.

I'm obviously not a staff writer for SE, and while I do agree on some of your points for story progression, I feel the writers walk a fine line sometimes in writing a good and balanced narrative. If you think about it, place yourself in their shoes and write something that will appeal to the masses and not solely to yourself. Then find out how easy this task can be. For you're G'raha/ Koana example think more of military strategy and you'd see that Koana certainly couldn't follow you to Alexandria. In reality, both Koana and Wuk Lamat should stay behind to defend their city. From a writer's perspective, it made sense to bridge your current accomplishment by bringing Wuk Lamat into the latter half of the expansion. It irks me to hear whining about how the Scions and even the WoL are secondary characters in this expansion. They are to a certain degree, until the true doom and gloom is presented in the last act. I believe Yoshi P said this was the beginning of a new story and direction. Most players seem to want the action and high points in a story. Let's not forget how Stormblood was received overall, but it served its purpose in pushing the story along. Personally, I like to think of the possibilities now since we're technically done w/ Hydaelyn and Zodiark. Did you notice how many times we (not Krile) felt the Echo??

On references: Almost EVERYTHING in ffxiv is a reference. As someone who was only really a fan of Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced, all the references in ffxiv tend to miss me. And it sours the experience for me - I'd love to see more original bits. But ff14 is so chock full of references that it genuinely feels masturbatory, even if it's from a place of respect and love for the series

The world of Sphene most likely already got 'rejoined', they are just a few of the remaining survivors of the calamity of lightning (second umbral era, we already know time does not flow the same).

"Magic dimension piss cup" is now what I will call that thing for the rest of its relevance in the game.

I feel like dawntrail did nothing unexpected in terms of writing. It's a bit cliche, a bit corny, a bit anime and a bit world building. Just like every other expansion too. People act like this never happened before. Especially considering that this expansion had to build itself up entirely on its own AND deliver a somewhat meaningful MSQ ending, I think they did great. No 10 years of story build-up they were able to rely on for this stuff. Personally enjoyed basically every second of it. I just feel like the 6th area was paced a bit badly. You're just there for the final confrontation and you get dragged around from convo to convo as if nothing were at stake at the moment.