Love this video series so far! Really appreciate how you're able to have your finger on the pulse of the narrative as well as intentions behind it and contrast it with your familiarity of the game and story at this point while still finding things to appreciate. I've been seeing a lot of people rip this expac to shreds because it didnt cater to what they prefer but there is soooo much quality worldbuilding with lots of foreshadowing and hints of past unresolved things that they're laying the foundations to evolve imo. The way you stop to examine this stuff makes me really look forward what you'll pick up on or what will be of interest for all of the potential plot threads going forward!
The 9 out of 10 loss due to disease reminds me of the fact that it's estimated that up to 90% of native population died due to the diseases and exploitation from when the European arrived. I think it was very much intended to be this reference.
This is also part of where the trope of "ancient abandoned civilisation" comes from. Disease from first contact was apocalyptic and resulted in abandoned cities very well preserved as the populace had been wiped out so recently. That coupled with assumptions by explorers that the people currently living in the area couldn't have been responsible for creating the cities they encountered.
Not to be that person but the 90% was an exaggerration to downplay the intentional atrocities done by the Europeans, let alone the intentional spreading of diseases.
@@MrCarlWax I don’t think that has to be true though. If 9/10 people die from illness but you had a population of 10M there are still a million people left to be subjected to the atrocities of colonialism and imperialism.
Yea compared to SHB and EW it is abit toned down. But it was to be expected. Also i kinda had to chuckle when Mike said its like a story for 12 year old. the gaem is 13+ and in gerany rated 12. x)
@@AbigatorM I'd say even compared to Stormblood - ignoring Lyse's narrative role, it's a pretty nuanced exploration of colonialism and how people under imperialistic regimes react to that situation. Dawntrail just... doesn't have that.
I think its also the rigid MSQ structure as well. These issues were always there in the MSQ but people were invested in the story more. But taking like 4 hours to get to any combat is just not gonna cut it anymore. They need to mix up the MSQ structure and make better quests that arent talk to Wuk Lamat 10 times at different locations. In my opinon they nailed it with the dungeons/trials (and of course the music). Now they have to get the MSQ up to that level again.
The Romans always justified their conquests in the name of "securing peace" for Rome, I found that part pretty credible. Excited to see what you think of the latter half of the story!
@@necroguy11not exactly, the excuse is multifaceted, but iirc the actual casus beli was annexation of already majority russian eastern region that did vote to join Russia but their referendum was not accepted by the Kiyev government.
I think even calling it high school is a bit too generous. A lot of the early succession trial stuff feels more like elementary aged children’s programming; “can you spot the person that may need a poncho?” “Yay, you did it!”
The whole dawnservant trial has a bit of a kids show "lesson of the week" vibe where our main protagonist Wuk Lamat and her friends learn a little something about tolerance and other cultures. Personally, I didn't mind it, I actually enjoyed a lot of the characterization, even if it's very on the nose. Beyond the story though, Dawntrail doesn't get enough credit for how beautiful the zones are and how the boss design in dungeons is quite a step up, even just for MSQ stuff.
The visuals and battle content were amazing this expansion, I have absolutely no complaints on that front. But having just now finished the MSQ, I think the story lacks subtlety and proper focus. In my opinion, it's slightly better than Stormblood MSQ. That is to say, it's fine but with certain glaring issues in writing.
Yea I don't know how people can just ignore the zones, the music, the dungeons, and the trials and base the entire MSQ experience on the narrative. Actually not even the narrative but like a couple character designs they don't like. Really? That's the only thing that matters?
Agree with this. MSQ was super cheesy, literally "Peace and Happiness!" 4 times over, which is why I don't connect with Wuk Lumat, she really doesn't have an arc or really grow in any way, but like you said, a kids' show. And happy cheese is sometimes okay. And yeah, every other aspect has been great, I'm loving the graphics update, my characters eyes shine so nicely now, and I've loved the music, the dungeons (well most of them) etc.
Legit everything about Dawntrail ASIDE from the writing is good. It's a shame that the writing is so bad, but at least all the time im now looking forward to every piece of battle content. I never had that in endwalker or shadowbringers where im actively thinking "God i cant wait for the next dungeon/trial"
@@keremcantarhan which imo its a good start as this is basically the ARR of the new tenure. I am expecting the next patches to flesh out more stuff. So far its a good intro imo
Dawntrail story is really not bad at all on paper but it falls back on old JRPG and anime problems of “tell and not show” which can be serviceable but it’s clear that sort of thing doesn’t cut it for the quality that’s expected from the story of FF14. Even if you take into account Wuk Lamat is 20 or probably 19 it’s kinda jarring and if you mix that with the “forced by your parents to take a tour” vibe a lot of the expansion has its no surprise people are mixed on it.
I think your point on the "tell and not show" is pretty close to my issue with DT's story. The ordering of how they structured the narrative for each section was backwards in my opinion. Rather than telling us about the lore first, I wish they had just thrown us in, let us form our own theories, and then given the explanations afterwards. For example, with the stone pillars, it would've helped a lot more if Wuk Lamat gave us the history lesson AFTER we got the stone tablets, or even as we visit each area. ie. Wuk Lamat telling us the story of the Lay of the Reeds, when we are trying to figure out how to resolve the problems with the Hanu Hanu. This ended up having the story be just mid. It's definitely not bad writing, but I can't say it was good. It was "ok"
You say "Show, don't tell," but then we have chatters constantly incapable of SEEING what they are SHOWN. It takes literally a minute to walk around the Hanuhanu village to see that, oh yeah, some of those houses don't got a roof, and one of them straight up has ruined pillars that will take AGES to fix, of course they're not bothering with prettying up a festival float or even doing a festival at all. People are also incapable to actually SEE what's going on with the characters. Wuk Lamat isn't annoyingly repeating canned phrases because that's what the writers want to tell us - she is repeating these canned phrases to deal with her insecurities and fears. Zoraal Ja likewise is someone that is deeply introverted, shares thoughts with no one, and keeps everything bottled in - so it's no wonder he believes what he believes or does what he does. I could keep going about things that just the first half of the story is showing, but the average chatter is bafflingly, annoyingly blind to. Bonus points for then calling such things headcanon, because they weren't directly told by a chracter in the main dialogue... Show, don't tell only works when the audience is actually ready to engage with the piece of fiction - consider what's going on, reflect on what we're not quite seeing, pondering why it might be so, why things are the way they are and what runs counter to what the characters say. If they can't be bothered, tells are the only thing they respond to, and even then the chatters manage to misread or forget the previous sentence in a voiced cutscene.
@@thesunthrone I mean ... we just came off of Shb and EW where they utilized show don't tell much more frequently and they are beloved expansions. I don't think the playerbase just got collectively dumber from one expansion to the next here.
@@slashthedancingwalrus1510 No, the reason why it wasn't an issue in ShB and EW is because player character was front and center and therefore people were much more charitable to the leaps in logic. We had just as many moments of childish nonsense - entirety of Il Mheg and lopporits just to name one from each expansion. Playing around with fairies and bunnies had very little to do with the actual storyline and could've been skipped entirely without any loss of story significance, but it wasn't a dealbreaker to most because people had hopes the story will kick into high gear right afterwards and it was about THEIR character as the chosen one that can save these worlds. I fully understand the narrative pacing reason of lopporits and truly don't mind them much, a portion of cute, low stakes stuff to diffuse the tension of just having slain Zodiark and condemning the world to horror. But that's a charitable read that Dawntrail isn't getting, and it's solely because the story isn't revolving around our character.
Having heard what Preach says at around the 12 minute mark, about how this feels like how you would write a story for younger people... Now that i think about it, as someone who watches a lot of anime and manga. This section of the game is pretty much a Shonen type story, and considering that a big percentage of players are - probably - working adults in their mid twienties or upwards, a shonen type story will not resonate at all.
Yeah, my wife and were making Naruto references the entire time in Yak Tural lol. I'm in my 30s and appreciate the story for what it is, and quite frankly, is pretty much exactly as advertised. People complain that WoL is at the front and center and just along for the ride, but that is kinda the point.. we're here to watch these characters struggle, learn and grow, and only really intervene when necessary. If we just did everything, it would be like Gohan fighting in all of Pan's fights at the world tournament in the Buu saga.
@@Saieden I just want to say... no it was not as advertised. It was advertised as a type of low stakes, a vacation or dividing the scions but nowhere was it implied to have Wuk Lamat as the big main character and side lining the WoL. Neither the trailer, benchmark nor the fanfests or live letters implied that. I get liking the story and even the reasoning for having the WoL in the back (even though I don't agree) but it was not advertised in that form.
In a game that had Heavensward with us traveling to the dragon's lands and teaming up with the "enemy" of Iceheart to learn about them and empathize with their plight or Lyse learning the horrors of a post war subjugated nations first hand to redetermine their resolve, the storytelling has felt like children's history lessons that has been wielded very bluntly.
I am curious if people recognized that its presented less as a story and more of a history lesson. Because the setup to this arc is very much a field trip for each of the children of in the "class" to go around learning and the WoL is a chaperone. I dont want to say too much for story spoilers but i can understand why people were not into the msq bits that are effectively long lessons.
SQEX has always had a retro-style immature kind of humor. They said that they had a bunch of new and younger writers and...I think they just don't get it. The sillyness without the retro aspect doesn't work. There is a reason we all laugh at cloud in a dress but not Wuk Lamat's antics. There's a certain kind of nostalgia in the way its stylized that even though its immature it makes us smile. When its done properly it's brief, feels a bit out of nowhere, and doesn't interrupt the story or change the way we see the character - they move on from it completely in the very next scene and it's like it never happened. But they attached the immature sillyness to the character with Wuk Lamat and that's why people are having a tough time enjoying her on screen. If the new writers don't understand this they should just not writer immature scenes.
I'm not sure if it's been discussed, but Ishikawa has taken a step back from actually writing, I think she became more of the manager of the writers in Endwalker where she was the MSQ Writer for Stormblood and Shadowbringers, but then became the Lead Story Designer then the promoted to Senior Story Designer in the Post EW patches. I'm not sure how hands on she is now in the actual MSQ story writing?
She wrote some of the MSQ for Stormblood (specifically the Doman arc) but was the main scenario writer for Shadowbringers and Endwalker. She's now in a supervisory role and oversaw the writing for Dawntrail in order to let newer writers take the lead. Even though other writers are in the lead, she still plays a big role in editing, apparently.
Totally agree with you on the writing so far. I feel that despite it being a JRPG, FFXIV has usually struck a surprisingly mature tone. However Dawntrail feels a lot more childish and it's a stark contrast to previous expansions. I think this is underrated as a reason why the expansion isn't resonating with a lot of people. MMO audiences tend to be older and will find a lot of this messaging cringeworthy. If you will recall, WoW has recently had this exact same issue with Dragonflight.
Something struck me when you were talking about the lack of maturity in the storytelling: For about a month, there has been an animated FFXIV ad that pops up in my youtube videos occasionally that is very childish. It feels like it is aimed at a junior high school or younger audience, not unlike your MSQ observations. I wonder if there has been some change in the staffing that is causing Square to pursue a much younger audience for the game. Seems like really weird choice, but it's an interesting congruence between the story and the advertising.
I think you might be giving the player base a bit too much credit for getting that understanding does not mean agreement. Yes, we can understand someone's motives and still disagree vehemently with them. The "Emet-Selch Did Nothing Wrong" and the "I can fix him" crowds are VERY loud out there, so they might feel that they have to go a bit more on the nose with things or players can, will, and HAVE missed the point.
The whole story is immature. These writers are completely oblivious to the fact that the average gamer is 35+. Previous conflicts have been resolved in a far more believable way. We try to stop a thousand year war between the dragons and Ishgard and even though we know the truth, we ended up having to kill the leaders of both sides to stop it. We got a cutscene of Aymeric getting stabbed. Then someone poisoned us so they could try to start a revolt. They acted stubbornly and stupidly, just like humans do in bad situations. In Endwalker, We approach people locked in a final struggle for their own survival in the ruins of their homes. We offer to help them and extend a hand. Children run out into the snow to get mauled by animals and freeze to death rather than accept and Quintus literally put a gun in his mouth. In Dawntrail, generations long conflicts end in 5 minutes because one of the worst and most insipidly written characters talks about how she stands for peace. The voice direction is horrible, the writing is juvenile. I don't hate wuk lamat, her problems are writing and voice direction. She is literally the worst filler episode versions of Naruto. This was the first MSQ I was actually looking forward to the end of just to not have to do it and that fact made me a bit depressed and upset.How they let this through to the final script is baffling to me and it feels like it is firmly infested with "modern western politics".
First half was entertaining, but not gripping like we'd expect of XIV. Second half is much better, but honestly not "incredibly memorable" like ShB or EW. Still very enjoyable. Maybe I'll give them a pass on this being a new slate building up. But my money's on the Post MSQ. If you ask me, SB was sleepy to OK on main MSQ but insane on Post MSQ, so I am down to wait.
This is honestly how I feel about the HW MSQ. I never really came around on the Stormblood story but Stormblood had good story in its raids and side content
I think you expressed something that I had not quite put my finger on. The writing was very juvenile. It's probably why I couldn't get invested, there is a lot of redundant moments, a lot of explicit blatant declarations, it's almost like they are scared that people won't comprehend the story otherwise, so they dumb it down like an LFR raid.
Friend and I were of the opinion the folks that did the Hildebrand quests were more involved with the MSQ. There is some serious stuff but then the joke bits pop up and they’re very Hildebrand. Not bad, but very “obvious” in how it stands out. I did like this zone. Valigarmandas framing in the ice reminded me of Ghidorah frozen in the ice. Agree with the bits about things just being unnecessary, they feel a bit ham fisted. A lot of naivety and stuff in the MSQ. Dungeon and trial were cool though.
There’s a lot of audio humor with blinking and cartoon noises that take me out so bad of some scenes. It also doesn’t help Wuk Lamat because it makes her feel like even the writers don’t respect her. Those things can be cute when sprinkled at the right time like when she eats the spicy food in the 6.5 patch but a lot of these feel out of place.
The increasing Hildibrandification of every storyline indicates (to me, at least) a team of writers that's increasingly insecure about the quality of what they're writing. When they start throwing in dumb little cartoon sound effects and exaggerated body motions it communicates to me that I'm not supposed to hold the story in high esteem because the writers don't.
@@ngwoo My overall feeling about the writing for DT was definitely that it felt insecure. The cartoony stuff is certainly a part of it, but I'm mostly fine with it. The lack of subtlety, a tendency to overexplain stuff, and an unwillingness to commit to a unified mood- be it dark or goofy- certainly screams "insecure writing" to me.
As someone that feels Hildibrand is one of the best things to come out of FF14, I did NOT enjoy what they did with the MSQ. The MSQ is supposed to be the main story. As such, it does need to have a certain level of seriousness to it. Sure it can have its fun moments, and in fact needs such lighter moments to break things up from time to time, but you can't take it too far. I like Hildibrand because it's the right time and place to have that silly fun cartoony zany antics. I like that stuff. However there is a time and place for such antics, and the MSQ ain't it. That said, I feel that was the least of the MSQ's problems this time around.
As hamfisted the message was in this section, I really enjoyed it more than the Hanus, but I think it would have been better if we got more Zarool Ja Ja time. How does he reject the conclusions of the giants? How does he reject the dumb giants he knows he will rule over?
Did you not see that, despite him being first on the top and already having beaten the giants' elector, he remained there to stand and stare at his father's and the expedition's gravestone? It's a very clear showing of him considering that he needs to not just repeat, but surpass his father's deeds. The message that the giants once ruled, only to retreat to the mountains and therefore the nature of all conquests doesn't matter to him at all - he thinks only about comparing himself to his father and having an even bigger stone built with his deeds. And then, very conveniently, Sareel Ja finally catches up to the rest on the summit. Seconds later, with him still in the shot, we hear that Valigarmanda was freed - clearly arranged by him so that Zoraal Ja could increase his lead. Yet contrary to Sareel Ja's expectation, Zoraal Ja wants to fight the beast. There's Zoraal Ja's shot at glory, to do what his father couldn't do and finish off the tural vidraal. Of course, we're there to dilute his victory - and so it doesn't really count for him as proof of success, even though for anyone normal it would, so he just walks away, even more annoyed than before.
@@thesunthrone I saw all of that. I wanted more. I haven't finished MSQ. I'm just a bit after this video. We know he wants peace through conquest, we know he has anger and destruction in his heart via Krile. We know he wants to surpass his father. But we don't necessariy know that the message of the giants means nothing to him. People and characters can have multiple reasons for doing things. I mean, sure it could be very 2-D that he just wants to succeed his father and that he looks down on everyone for what he perceives as their naivete. but like, we don't *know*. We're all guessing and assuming his intent b/c he only says a handful of things. You are interpreting a LOT out of searching for his father's sepulchre. That said you could be 10000% correct. I'm not saying you are wrong. I cannot conclude that yet, but there could be dialog later that confirms everything you said. And what you say doesn't answer my questions. How does Zarool Jaja Keep his justifications? How does he he see himself different from the red giants? Like, he could have good or bullshit reasons, but I want to know them.
@@heylookitsnana Well, we can't really ask characters in fiction, so our best bet is to just engage with the story and fill in the blanks. That's the part of the "show dont tell" mantra that's being haphazardly called in that we have to accept - engaging with the text well beyond what's just plainly written, because you clearly expect there being more than just what's explicitly told. There will always be some guesswork. It's possible to guess wrong or misunderstand a character's motivations even when we have them clearly spelled out for us in undeniable terms - just look up any Emet-Selch vs Venat arguments... And even if we know a character's motivations, we could still find them BS and stupid. That wouldn't make that motivation bad, either. People just believe in stupid things sometimes, act in stupid ways for reasons that would make any reasonable person bewildered. As for your questions directly, Zoraal Ja is just a deeply introverted character (voiced by Jotaro Kujo's VA in Japanese even, who is a deeply silent and stoic character in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure) who barely displays any emotion. Both Koana and Wuk Lamat say that he rarely shares what he's thinking, and ever Gulool Ja Ja is shown to just accept this part of his son and not even try to get any answer from him when speaking to him at the throne room at the beginning of the story. He has stated his beliefs, but it's up in the air whether he truly believes what he's saying, if that's truly why he acts the way we acts. Wuk Lamat was also putting on a front, same as Koana - all the Dawnservant's children seem to be intimidated by their father's legacy and feel inadequate next to it. Characters like that are just extremely difficult to write, because people like that are extremely difficult to get to know in reality. How do you get into someone's head that doesn't want to share any of it? Well, you observe what they do and guess.
@@heylookitsnana RUclips ate my reply, so I'll be brief. Zoraal Ja is a deeply introverted character, and does not talk about himself much, something that both Wuk Lamat and Koana state as him always having been that way. With such characters, we can do little but infer from how they act their motivations, because they simply will not explain themselves in much depth. People like this are often incapable to do so - as the less you share your thoughts with others, the less able you are to communicate them even when you finally choose to do so. But should you pay attention to the circumstances surrounding him and the nature of his people, you will find your answer.
@@thesunthrone You will find A answer. In my experience trying to assume the intentions of introverts, one is often wildly wrong. That said I ain't saying y'all are wrong. Just I can't conclusively agree with you. Also, I'd be disappointed if your interpretations were correct.
"everything was obvious" Thank god, I thought I was going crazy as a lore-nerd who's several encyclopedias deep into crackpot theories. I predicted almost every storybeat in this story and it just infuriated me.
I'd certainly say her mental age is more like a 16 year old than her actual age. I put this down to being sheltered. She's also clearly not interacted with a lot of different people despite the city being so diverse, so it makes sense that she's quite immature to start with but puts on bravado.
@@temisu_namisu She does say she assumed she understood her people because of living in Tulioyalal but was shown to be wrong. The people in Tuliyolal are not the traditionalists generally so they didn't impart everything to her.
Preach.... from minute 11:00 to about 13:00... speaking from team America... you will be surprised how many people don't get that basic understanding of being able to talk to understand to people. But yeah, I am curious on you referencing a lot of your past thoughts as you get along
Yeahhhhhh while "peace is kinda good and maybe we should get along" might feel highschool level to Preach, a whole lot of the world right now is incapable of understanding why using money you could use for building hospitals and building missiles, then launching them at other people's hospitals is not a great idea with long term prospects... Supposedly adults, too. I suppose the problem is that fiction has to actually make sense, whereas real world cannot be demanded of such luxury.
My overall impression of the early content was a heavy focus on world building with a bit of character development on the side. I was promised a great vacation so that's how I engaged the content, and that's what I got throughout the early sections of the story.
Yep. I was seeing the sights, learning about the culture and relaxing my shoulders from NOT having the entire world resting on them - even if I did feel an urge to go and finally murder something during the whole Pelupelu trade saga. But otherwise, I very much enjoyed learning about the way these people lived, and I could very clearly see the overall theme of it all - to learn of this peace that's worth protecting, before we inevitably have it threatened in the second half.
12:30 One thing I wanna mention, that she didn't had echo. So unlike WoL, she can't learn anything from others, like emotions, motives, history without interacting to each other. The echo is just too convinient, and we quite forget about that. However, she always trust people in the first place, which I don't encourage our children to do. But her will to protect and do good promote her greatly.
You touched on something that has bothered me. Long term immunity doesn't apply on the First for some reason. That reflection existed for millenniums, so surely there would diseases there not present on the Source. The same could be said for the 13th. Exposure to Darkness causes a corruption of the soul....but that's different from qualified immunity to disease. Yet, the concept comes up as a plot device relative to the Giants. Or, maybe it doesn't. Let's see what Mike thinks about that after a few more jaunts in Tural.
I think that would be quite a pain if the WoL went to the first, immediately caught a cold they didn't have immunity to and had to spend a week bedridden, or even if the other scions did get sick I can't see that being a very interesting plot thread, so I am glad that's not something they explored 😅
@@Naoto-kun1085 Oh, I agree 100%. MMO's can't get bogged down in minutia of reality. BUT, they, also, have to remain consistent. I would argue that they did so if you look close at the Giant's plight, but won't elaborate since Mike didn't get there yet.
"Guys just because I keep bringing up the acolyte and keep seething at every plot point in Dawntrail doesn't mean I'm transphobic there's no correlation between these two things this is real critique."
On the war of the worlds point. I'm pretty sure the reference is more towards the real life history of South America where the Spanish conquerors brought a plague that killed 90% the population
Weird, I only enjoyed the second boss of the dungeon. I remember it being a menace on day 1 with the donuts insta-wiping parties sometimes. Everything else is too slow and obvious. But I also really liked the first boss of Strayborough Deadwalk so maybe that says something about me.
Tbf game is rated T. But I do agree after finishing the MSQ its the Disney expansion. Thats why its so divisive to people who became fans because of the more dark adultish fantasy of past expansions. And what i find depressing people are becoming overly critical or omitting important context in their “criticism” to single out this expansion. It reminded me of the transition between FF7/8 to FF9 and how much backlash there was because of the tonal shift
Tactics Ogre, which YoshiP has cited as one of his favorite games, is rated T. Matsuno has explicitly highlighted the Yugoslav wars as his inspiration there, and in that game you’re allowed to commit a serious war crime in the very first chapter. That is to say, there’s a spectrum even across ‘T for Teen’ content. You’re likely right about the curse of prior expectations; I’m not surprised that fans of dark fantasy were drawn to CBU3’s work, and I’m also not surprised a lot of them don’t know what to do with Dawntrail.
I love your videos generally but I had some feedback, there is some gameplay that is inserted at inopportune moments. I saw this here with the emet scene when you were trying to show the displate on camera, and I saw it in your video about yoship's interview where I would have liked to see the expression on yoship and your faces while talking about stuff but the seto scene was on screen for too long. Hopefully this is helpful, I am currently catching up on your msq streams and watching these summaries afterwards and having a blast!
Sorry for the long comment but... man, I'm just not feeling Wuk Lamat. I do think the voice acting is... not the best at times, but beyond that, I think her character just didn't see a whole lot of evolution. See, one of the reasons I really like Alphie, is that he was an uppity kid with dreams of grandeur back in ARR and he was humbled HARD. He was at his worst at the end of 2.55, and he slowly built himself back up through HW. This kind of character arc really grabs me. I want to see a character struggle with their inner turmoils, I want to see them grow. I just didn't feel much of it in Wuk Lamat. She starts off as the well-intentioned plucky character and pretty much ends the story the same way. She's a bit more toned down by the end of the story and that's kinda that. This isn't to say a character with positive ideals/outlook is necessarily a bad thing. I've seen people compare her to Luffy, and obviously a lot of the comparisons stem from the whole "I'm gonna be king of the pirates!/Dawnservant!" thing... but it's not actually that bad a comparison. Thing is, Luffy's is a rather static character, but you still get the sense that his character is nonetheless TEMPERED by the events of the story. I feel like I didn't see much of that in Wuk Lamat... That aside, I also feel a bit of vindication regarding the Scions. Before this expansion launched, I groaned at the idea of having them around for it. I feel like their character arcs are pretty much DONE and while I don't think they ought to just vanish forever, I really rather have had them show up here and there as minor characters in patch content or something. They are just not all that interesting to me at this point, and it feels like no further development can be experienced. Estinien, Urianger, and Thancred really were there just to have a good time... The twins are just.... there.... and that was that, but the thing is, as mentioned just now, what else could you want?? These characters are DONE. Their struggles surmounted, their arcs resolved. Oh, sure Y'shtola is still trying to get back to The First, but that's not really much more than just a goal. It doesn't reveal anything new or interesting about her that we didn't already know. The exception to this is Krile. I think the devs did a great job in providing her closure regarding her origins, but I feel like she still has room to grow as a character, considering how little we'd had of her in the time before Dawntrail. Moving on from the old cast, Erenville was great, to be honest, and his characterization, his coming to terms with..... what happens in the second part of the expansion, was handled very well. A comparatively minor thing, but I also really like how little he kisses your ass in this expansion. He really comes off as a chill dude who KNOWS you're strong as all get out, but just kinda... lets you be. It's an element of his character that stands in stark contrast with how much G'raha slobbers all over you. It's refreshing, honestly. All in all, I really do wish the cast had more fresh blood in it.
I got the same impression from the story. I think they're aiming at a younger crowd. The old arc is done - the WoW refugees have stayed or gone - and the bosses want to bring in new blood. Get those subs lined up for the next saga. What better time than the start of the new adventure? It feels a lot more like a mainline FF story here to me, and those are notorious for being meddled with so they can appeal to teens.
Story is a 7/10 for me, but the battle content has been great, you can really tell they're trying new shit and making things a but harder which i appreciate. Story wise, i guess if youre not used to shonen anime tropes and humor, its not gonna jive with you. Hope the writing team takes this as a learning experience
I'm just a bit prior to the giants stuff and I think the this story is starting to lose me. Maybe it was the part where they just ignored the Aetheryte in the background when Wuk was freaking out about going on a boat back to the main town, but the whole thing just feels less thought out. And frankly, if they are trying to aim this at a younger crowd by talking down to them, they will just lose that crowd to something that doesn't treat them like kids.
I think you stated what I had a difficult time explaining myself about the story, something just felt...off...compared to previous expansions. Fortunately, as Yoshi-P said, this is an experimental expansion. It's fine to experiment just as long as it sorts itself out in the end.
Even heavensward and stormblood had introspective themes with Estinian seeing himself in his enemy and yotsuyu being evil by the cards life had dealt her. Dawntrail is cookie cutter which is super dissapointing for ff14 standards.
Even the most complex of cultures and characters can be turned into caricatures and parodies on a dime, and a lot of chatters and commenters are doing exactly that, even Preach here in this video. The whole point of the red-armored faction of giants acting like stubborn gatekeepers and us needing to practically force to help them is BECAUSE PEOPLE ACT LIKE THIS, especially people in highly isolated communities that had once been mighty conquerors. It is a documented antrophological fact shared across many, many mountain tribal cultures that they are very honor-bound and distrustful, and quick to offend and hold grudges. It looks silly but only because we do not live under the same paradigm where scarcity of resources make honor and holding grudges something commonplace. In such communities the only way to even try and win them on your side is to sacrifice for them, something they still might reject. These giants literally ruled the entire continent in the past, but are now reduced to hiding on the hillside of their ancestral graves, are lorded over by some outsider lizard king that now sends random tourists into their sacred places for a rite that chooses who is their next ruler. They might as well spit in their faces far as they're concerned, and the fact that they still go back and forth on accepting their aid after Wuk Lamat and Scions helping shows just how distrustful they are. Even then, after this scene is over, they scurry off and warn not to go into their lands, because this DOESN'T make them friends, contrary to what Mike is saying - and the red-armored giants are enemies that will attack you on SIGHT. I swear, content creators sometimes just make a mockery out of the things they talk about, because they're paying more attention to entertaining the stream audience than actually paying attention to what is going on in whatever it is they're playing. Anything feels worse to experience when you have an audience jeering at every turn, and some of these streams are extremely grating to sit through.
@@Plasmacat1 For like 10 minutes of exposition that's mostly there to establish that the giants are not of one mind and some of them are extremely petty and distrusting of outsiders, but might be willing to budge if you appeal to their honor by making them feel indebted? The execution is fine, this is straight up nitpicking. This is like going to Il Mheg, talking to the Nu Mou for the first time and act like that's it, there is nothing to them but that they like being petted and called good boys. Reductive, petty, dismissive.
@@thesunthronenah it’s really poorly done because it’s not just the giants it’s everyone you get to know so that’s why it gets repetitive. Obviously the game suffered from this before like Lahee zone with the bunny girls is exactly the same thing as this but then you have the shadow people who are handled better when you literally see them practice their religion so you go “oh I get it” they show you not just spew exposition to you which is Danwtrails problem. I don’t hate it and I enjoyed parts of it, it’s way better structured than Stormblood 4.0 at least but it’s a definite step back in the quality of storytelling and execution with really weird inserted Hildebrand style humor that ends up being annoying rather than cute.
@@Plasmacat1 I see it differently cause, as in almost every expansion, unless you dig deeper you get only surface level. If you do the aetheryte quests (which you are assumed to do) and follow op on yellow chains from them (which tend to become ASQ/Tribe quests in future patches) you get more detail and they shake up very differently. I don't think it's bad writing that the depth and nuance of particular situation are optional, with you being guided to them
You're not wrong that this section of the game hits players over the head with certain themes, but despite that it's surprising how many players totally miss thematic elements as they reoccur throughout Dawntrail's story.
The terrible voice acting really throws it off tbh. Hard to focus on the themes of the story being told when the actors sound like they don't care, kills immersion hard
not really a case of players missing thematic elements. more of a case of most of the playerbase being fully grown adults being beaten over the head with themes of friendship, understanding, and peace that we've already absorbed in our younger years, and thus it's just... not very compelling to spend hours and hours immersed in these juvenile themes.
@@pinkkite9794 I’m primarily discussing points that come up later in the expansion, but am not going to go into any detail to avoid spoilers. I’ve seen a great many reddit posts from people who very fundamentally misunderstand major thematic elements of the story, and-while slow and deliberate-these earlier moments in Dawntrail lay a foundation for what is to come. That’s not necessarily to defend all of it, but some people DO need to be hit over the head with these themes, and STILL miss things. For an example which comes up right after the content in this video: many people somehow missed that Sareel Ja, not Bakool Ja Ja, came up with the plan that leads to the circumstances of the trial fight. And that’s not even representative of some of the more important thematic motifs that reoccur later in the story.
@@pinkkite9794 If you think that those are themes of the DT you clearly read only the surface stuff. The DT expansions uses similar philosophical framework, like every FF expansion and uses it as perspective/lense for what it talks about Which here is quite a lot of things, the most basic one is the messiness of family, that caring about someone doesn't mean the relationship is healthy, especially if that is funneled through cultural and familial expectations - including situations when expectations are self projected by child/prodigy. There are few other big things going Some of them, interestingly enough, similarly to SHB seeming to have nods and little love letters to 1.0 devs (the whole Graha speech at end of 5.3) this one might be partially talking about dangers of trying to follow up on past stories
I think it’s good they rotate writers, the worst thing one can do is elevate just 1 and even then she has some issues on how she presents stories. Overall their biggest concern imo is they need to rethink how they package and present their quest design because it did no favors to the story of Dawntrail.
@@Plasmacat1 you're gunna be surprised when you realize that the quests format is generally the same throughout the entire game, go here, talk to someone, click one something, maybe some mobs spawn, go back, ect..
She is the narrative director, her name is before the scenario writers. And before anyone says that just means she isn't involved as much, in a Japanese company being in charge means she literally is the one responsible for everything people below her do - and she is also the one that will be taking the criticisms on herself.
I am a Elden Ring player too. And yeah my first thought was Godfrey the first elden lord. Even two of his mechanics reminded me about Godfrey. the earth rip up + one of his aoes.
Weird how you went to War of the Worlds as your reference point instead of the real world Europeans giving smallpox to the native Americans. Seemed like a much more obvious touchstone imo.
I didn't really like Wuk'Lamat to be honest. I mean, her attitude is ok, and she's trying to learn while having a positive vibe etc. That's fine. But she comes across as incredibly naive and very...stupid. Not stupid like people make mistakes and sometimes do dumb shit. But stupid like... "Hey, we can't get through this wall here, what should we do?" Wuk: "Easy! let's just go through the door!", "But Wuk'Lamat, future leader of my people and country/continent, there is no door here" Wuk: "Uhhhhh, right. Sorry". Also, the story feels way less personal to our scions and our WoL. And not threatening at all (We have been to the end of the universe, defeated embodiment of the planet itself, enemies which embodied the very energy around us, gods... etc. How is any of this just not another chill Thursday?). We're just a glorified bodyguard, and the scions are just there for... Having trust buddies for dungeons? I dont know.
It definitely feels like they made it with child/young-teen audience in mind. The kind of audience whose parents don't allow them to watch DBZ or whatever the modern equiv is. Can't deny it worked for the Pokemon franchise, but it's definitely a tonal shift. The idea the giants conquered out of fear is such a surface-level analysis. Like they've taken war propaganda and considered it fact. And while Wuk was tending to his man, the giant could and in a prior expansion the likes of Ranjit probably *would* have tried to attack her. It would have been rational from his perspective, while they're distracted, yet he doesn't because... that's not the vibe they're going for? To quote matrix: "Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program."
wait for the stupid thingsa you will get at 95-98 (spoiler!!!! ... ... bad dude: Come, gathere your alies, find me in my fortress and fight me. you do that. bigbad: oh, you cheated, you are scared to fight me alone. me: ??????????????????
The first two areas just feel like a filler, the conflict between the two groups in the jungle was pretty good and the giant section was ok. Wuk is a 6/10 companion for me. Her childlike demeanor is a bit to much and she is way to often the comedy relief. She is the candidate for the next country leader for fucks sake and she does not feel like it at all till the very end. Quest are also very very boring and often uninteresting
He says that it feels like it's aimed at 8-11 yr olds. Well funny enough Anime has this Genre called SHONEN which literally translates to "Young boy". lol
Yeah, but Shonen is targeted at like 13-18, with older readers often kept in mind in the case of series such as JJK and many others. Wuk Lamat's arc seems at times to be geared for actual children.
I was thinking the same from the start. It feels like a shonen anime story. And Wuk Lamat is the shonen anime main character. But overall i very enjoy the MSQ. Maybe cause i still watch few shonen anime. So i got used to things like this what is in the MSQ right now. Ofc i understand some peoples complain.
@@garychat3480 Pokemon is a SHONEN. They don't call it that but that's what it is. So geared towards kids is it's thing. They just so happen to be making more for Teens right now.
Finally some takes I agree with. Some of my expectations were upended and its a good thing but certainly not up to the quality ShB ones. Which is what I expected when they announced who was writing DT's story. Their previous work was on the job role quest which we all know were some low and high tier ones.
its not the same writers as sbh and ew, its not about feeling, its true. but its also a different style of writing that requires deep though about story and how it relates to the world,
Check the damn credits. The beloved writers are still there, in senior narrative designer positions, with two new names as writers below them. Per Japanese custom, they are directly responsible of the good and bad in the story, just as how YoshiP sees himself personally responsible for the entire game.
I get the sense that he didn’t care much about that part or have anything to ponder or speculate about it. It does fit in the section of “Wuk Lamat and Koana started collaborating. Yep, ok”
We got a chance to go through our maturity journey and now we get to mentor others to go through theirs. It's surprisingly pleasant, and I get the sense that this is all going to pay off handsomely later on. We're investing in the future!
I didnt mind the msq until about halfway through where my patience was gone. Theres no real deeper meaning to things, wuk lamat is used way too much for a mmo that is great at showing off multiple charactera stories and opinions, like almost none of the other characters do anything. At the end i just wanted it to be over since a lot of reasonings where missing or disnt make sense, very pre-heavensward writing
@@necroguy11 not revelation, just not one dimensional stuff. Real people are complex, as is real world, and when everything is simple in a story, it's really hard to emphasize with it.
First half is mid at best and cringe at times, second half gets really good. I hope its a Stormblood situation where the msq is mid but content is great
@@GrandMagusDK i concede that the first half of the story is very “friendly”, but the second half I wouldn’t call it grade school at all. That said, the writing was very questionable over all, even for a light plot like this one.
I gave up and started skipping when I got the gist of what's happening. Just when it says "we need to get X but random person Y asks for a favor so we can do X then I sometimes just skipped Y's favor."
Big disagree, I was more interested in the early zone dialogue way more than spots in other expansions. You can’t seriously tell me that places like Ruby Sea, Sea of Clouds, and Labyrinthos were substantially better than any of the DT zones.
@necroguy11 not necessarily better but since they felt more connected to an overarching goal it felt way more important and therefore interesting than most of the early regions like the alpaca region or the festival one. I honestly couldn't care less about getting to know a fantasy culture where I know I will never really meet the characters again and they will never matter again. It's important for Wuk Lamat but it didn't matter one bit to me.
So far, Preach is expressing the same feelings I had through the MSQ. I overall like the expansion, giving it a 7 out of 10, but its not a good Final Fantasy 14 expansion. Overall I wanted some more adult themes rather than these kid show/after-school special. I needed something big and this adventure felt so small. This probably should have been the after expansion patches before something truly big. As a FF14 expansion, this was a miss for me.
Where did the brave, confident, but naive Wuk lamat of 6.55? I went back on my alt recently, and they don't even feel like the same character. The short time I knew Wuk Lamat in Endwalker, I loved her character and was the main reason I look forward to DT. This feels like the case of dumbing down the character to fit the story.
It's a fake persona. That's the whole point. That's why she overdoes it there, but stands there frozen with fear when a bird talks back at her - she acts confidence to hide the fact she is absolutely terrified and insecure.
@thesunthrone sure, I know it's a fake persona. But she was knowledgeable (explain history of Tural), express emotional intelligence, and most of all, seems like she know what she is doing most of the time even if she is scared. The letter that was shown to her by krile was immediately identified as not written by her dad, not because of arbitrary "oh this is not his handwriting." But actual knowledge of her homeland, how their language and writing system comes about. You telling me a person that know that much don't know how her neighbors says hello?
@@nguyentrung-ui4mf A sheltered princess can be knowledgeable of the court proceedings, but completely ignorant of anything past the city walls. She knew what the pillars meant and could recite a story - but soon as she stepped outside the city, her knowledge proved to be surface-level. Aside from what her teachers had told her, she knew nothing about the Hanuhanu, Pelupelu and other cultures of Tuliyollal - and the whole Dawnservant rite was arranged by her father to teach her the real knowledge of her land.
@thesunthrone a sheltered princess grew up surrounded by warriors and their first suggestion to get to know some one is to go hunting? In the wild? Of a place she barely know? Wuk Lamat is either sheltered princess or Warrior princess seeking the thrill of the hunt. Can't be both.
@thesunthrone and if I have to assume something for the story to make sense, then it is failure on the writer part. Clues can be given without explicitly telling me the plot, but the moment I have to guess how a character should act based on no given prior knowledge, then it becomes a problem.
I dont think the lack of dark or complex stuff is really bad at all. Theres nothing wrong with some “light” storytelling where everything is good and happy go lucky etc. Its especially helpful to reset the tension and stakes. And it just tells a feel good story about people coming together. Just had 2 xpacs of straight of doom and gloom. We are on vacation now lol
Babysitting a preachy nepo-baby, doing menial tasks for her, as she stumbles her way to unearned success while everyone smiles and nods at her like a bunch of robots. Worst vacation ever.
Seeing you play it and react with a lot of 'I'm sure this will pay off later!' reminds me what a come down this story is compared to every other expansion (even ARR and Stormblood). This entire thing is a Naruto filler arc. Nothing more.
sbh is a filler expansion, the events on the first have little to do with happening on the source (related to the garleans) at all other than "oh well you have to save us because it affects your world as well".
Yo DT to me, hot takes ok 😁 they could go One Piece story instead they going Naruto 😂 wuk lamat is annoying to me, i know the world is at a bad situation rn and we need a vacation yes but i dont need one more annoying one like wuk lamat , i hope i dont get to see her next expansion thankyou
90-93 is not supposed to be deep but rather the opposite. It's like a city tour during vacation. You want it to be chill and little exciting now and then, not stressful. Does that mean you need to like it? No. I get that people starve for more story. Sections like this have no place in a book/movie/series. This is an mmo though (that wants to start from a clean new slate).
Why are you trying to compare this expansion to shadowbringers? Shadowbringers earned the right to dive into the super dark shit after 3 other expansions, we just started a new arc, shit can be happy for a bit before everything goes to shit.
Ok but i genuinely enjoyed the story despite some issues i had with some parts of the story and thought it was good. Its a little thing called an opinion. I dont think other expansions were significantly better than this one they all had aspects I liked and disliked.
@MidnightEkaki you enjoyed the story doesn't mean it doesn't have many issues. Again people like you are incapable of being critical about the game. Yall will be happy with whatever and will defend it. But sure.
Wuk lamat is just poorly written and the voice actor didnt have enough range(or direction or both) for a character who was clearly supposed to have very high highs and very low lows. Its a shame and it really doesnt help that its a lyse 2.0 story again, they didnt change the naive ignorant would be ruler story at all in premise. IMO HERE if they absolutely wanted to try doing the lyse story again but better they should have done it with a male character and have the idealism not be colored by stupid childish flaws
@@TheManaTree777 is that all you took from my post?? She's literally just Lyse again with a different coat of paint. We didn't need the exact same story as the MSQ foreign expansion again, they could have at least changed it from being about a naive ignorant princess to a more interesting premise, or at the very least swapped the gender and focused on more mature idealistic points and not childish bullshit
I think the story had to be overt and obvious here because, even from some of the comments here, the connections to the themes in the first half to the second are STILL lost of people.
Yeah I'm honestly shocked how many people are saying shit like "this never pays off" when so many themes in the second part of the story directly related to or mirrored the first half.
The big takeaway I got from this is, you're not the hero of this story. In all previous expansions the WoL is the central character. You're Titan's Bane, you killed the Ultima Weapon. You ended the Dragonsong War (ok, Alphi helped), you united Doma and Ala Migo, you save two world from calamity and finally, you defeated despair itself. Here, you're not much more than a side character, awkwardly standing around while Wuk does her stuff. I really think that may be reasons for the "Mixed reviews" on Steam.
Exactly why story contrivances and conveniences that worked in the previous stories suddenly don't here for a portion of loud folks - it just isn't about them, therefore annoying, boring and bad.
Personally I liked that aspect a lot, it’s fun being the mentor for once. And a super underrated part of the expansion IMO is even meeting all these different ppl you personally never have to prove yourself because everybody recognizes your strength.
@@thesunthrone bro Wuk just sucks ass. There are so many good, great, or at least fun characters: Koana, Bakool Ja Ja, Krile, Erenville, Zoral Ja, his minion etc. etc. I would love to travel with Koana (who actually learns something instead of consistently mary sueing every problem with some preachy power of friendship asspulls) or just anyone else really. Wuk ruins every scene she's in, talks all the same wishy washy points again and again and again and *never* loses or is forced to make tough decisions. She sucks out all complexity from everyone in proximity and I hate her for that. She was kinda cute in a dumb way until maybe 93-94, then she becomes absolutely insufferable. WoL is a piece of wood with 3 animations anyway, we physically can't be the main character and we never were. Stop with this nonsense.
the MSQ was definitely written by someone in the East because we over in the west can't stand the Luffy/Naruto/Asta/Emma archetype for longer than 5 seconds. Those types of characters need to fall from the top very fast and build their ways back up as an underdog, not get positive reinforcement for 20 hrs. If DT was a movie, the Western Audience would leave in the first 20 minutes and that's a shame because WL becomes a decent character in the second half. But by this point of the story I stopped caring and was so over her.
![I Solved RACISM In 2 Minutes - Dawntrail MSQ - Day 4 [LEVEL 94 SPOILERS]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HnSezcUrRw8/mqdefault.jpg)
I dig these section-by-section reviews, but man I can't wait til you hit the later stuff Preach.
Love this video series so far!
Really appreciate how you're able to have your finger on the pulse of the narrative as well as intentions behind it and contrast it with your familiarity of the game and story at this point while still finding things to appreciate. I've been seeing a lot of people rip this expac to shreds because it didnt cater to what they prefer but there is soooo much quality worldbuilding with lots of foreshadowing and hints of past unresolved things that they're laying the foundations to evolve imo.
The way you stop to examine this stuff makes me really look forward what you'll pick up on or what will be of interest for all of the potential plot threads going forward!
The 9 out of 10 loss due to disease reminds me of the fact that it's estimated that up to 90% of native population died due to the diseases and exploitation from when the European arrived. I think it was very much intended to be this reference.
Def since Tural is based on north/south america.
This is also part of where the trope of "ancient abandoned civilisation" comes from. Disease from first contact was apocalyptic and resulted in abandoned cities very well preserved as the populace had been wiped out so recently. That coupled with assumptions by explorers that the people currently living in the area couldn't have been responsible for creating the cities they encountered.
Not to be that person but the 90% was an exaggerration to downplay the intentional atrocities done by the Europeans, let alone the intentional spreading of diseases.
Yeah there is not subtlety about that.
@@MrCarlWax I don’t think that has to be true though. If 9/10 people die from illness but you had a population of 10M there are still a million people left to be subjected to the atrocities of colonialism and imperialism.
The story beats and overall concepts aren't bad imo, but the way they are executed is certainly less mature than previous expansions.
I took this as the Disney expansion.
Yea compared to SHB and EW it is abit toned down. But it was to be expected. Also i kinda had to chuckle when Mike said its like a story for 12 year old. the gaem is 13+ and in gerany rated 12. x)
@@AbigatorM I'd say even compared to Stormblood - ignoring Lyse's narrative role, it's a pretty nuanced exploration of colonialism and how people under imperialistic regimes react to that situation. Dawntrail just... doesn't have that.
I think its also the rigid MSQ structure as well. These issues were always there in the MSQ but people were invested in the story more. But taking like 4 hours to get to any combat is just not gonna cut it anymore. They need to mix up the MSQ structure and make better quests that arent talk to Wuk Lamat 10 times at different locations. In my opinon they nailed it with the dungeons/trials (and of course the music). Now they have to get the MSQ up to that level again.
The Romans always justified their conquests in the name of "securing peace" for Rome, I found that part pretty credible. Excited to see what you think of the latter half of the story!
Same shit we hear from the west nowadays
Hell, without getting into politics it’s basically the excuse Russia gave for invading Ukraine.
"they create a desert and call it peace" Tacitus c 100AD
@@necroguy11 so wrong. So absolutely wrong. But sure
@@necroguy11not exactly, the excuse is multifaceted, but iirc the actual casus beli was annexation of already majority russian eastern region that did vote to join Russia but their referendum was not accepted by the Kiyev government.
I think even calling it high school is a bit too generous. A lot of the early succession trial stuff feels more like elementary aged children’s programming; “can you spot the person that may need a poncho?” “Yay, you did it!”
The whole dawnservant trial has a bit of a kids show "lesson of the week" vibe where our main protagonist Wuk Lamat and her friends learn a little something about tolerance and other cultures. Personally, I didn't mind it, I actually enjoyed a lot of the characterization, even if it's very on the nose.
Beyond the story though, Dawntrail doesn't get enough credit for how beautiful the zones are and how the boss design in dungeons is quite a step up, even just for MSQ stuff.
The visuals and battle content were amazing this expansion, I have absolutely no complaints on that front. But having just now finished the MSQ, I think the story lacks subtlety and proper focus. In my opinion, it's slightly better than Stormblood MSQ. That is to say, it's fine but with certain glaring issues in writing.
Yea I don't know how people can just ignore the zones, the music, the dungeons, and the trials and base the entire MSQ experience on the narrative. Actually not even the narrative but like a couple character designs they don't like. Really? That's the only thing that matters?
Agree with this. MSQ was super cheesy, literally "Peace and Happiness!" 4 times over, which is why I don't connect with Wuk Lumat, she really doesn't have an arc or really grow in any way, but like you said, a kids' show. And happy cheese is sometimes okay. And yeah, every other aspect has been great, I'm loving the graphics update, my characters eyes shine so nicely now, and I've loved the music, the dungeons (well most of them) etc.
Legit everything about Dawntrail ASIDE from the writing is good. It's a shame that the writing is so bad, but at least all the time im now looking forward to every piece of battle content. I never had that in endwalker or shadowbringers where im actively thinking "God i cant wait for the next dungeon/trial"
@@keremcantarhan which imo its a good start as this is basically the ARR of the new tenure. I am expecting the next patches to flesh out more stuff. So far its a good intro imo
Dawntrail story is really not bad at all on paper but it falls back on old JRPG and anime problems of “tell and not show” which can be serviceable but it’s clear that sort of thing doesn’t cut it for the quality that’s expected from the story of FF14.
Even if you take into account Wuk Lamat is 20 or probably 19 it’s kinda jarring and if you mix that with the “forced by your parents to take a tour” vibe a lot of the expansion has its no surprise people are mixed on it.
I think your point on the "tell and not show" is pretty close to my issue with DT's story. The ordering of how they structured the narrative for each section was backwards in my opinion. Rather than telling us about the lore first, I wish they had just thrown us in, let us form our own theories, and then given the explanations afterwards. For example, with the stone pillars, it would've helped a lot more if Wuk Lamat gave us the history lesson AFTER we got the stone tablets, or even as we visit each area. ie. Wuk Lamat telling us the story of the Lay of the Reeds, when we are trying to figure out how to resolve the problems with the Hanu Hanu.
This ended up having the story be just mid. It's definitely not bad writing, but I can't say it was good. It was "ok"
@@lmpoknyathe incorporation of some simple archeology mini games or more visual story telling will help a lot
You say "Show, don't tell," but then we have chatters constantly incapable of SEEING what they are SHOWN. It takes literally a minute to walk around the Hanuhanu village to see that, oh yeah, some of those houses don't got a roof, and one of them straight up has ruined pillars that will take AGES to fix, of course they're not bothering with prettying up a festival float or even doing a festival at all.
People are also incapable to actually SEE what's going on with the characters. Wuk Lamat isn't annoyingly repeating canned phrases because that's what the writers want to tell us - she is repeating these canned phrases to deal with her insecurities and fears. Zoraal Ja likewise is someone that is deeply introverted, shares thoughts with no one, and keeps everything bottled in - so it's no wonder he believes what he believes or does what he does.
I could keep going about things that just the first half of the story is showing, but the average chatter is bafflingly, annoyingly blind to. Bonus points for then calling such things headcanon, because they weren't directly told by a chracter in the main dialogue...
Show, don't tell only works when the audience is actually ready to engage with the piece of fiction - consider what's going on, reflect on what we're not quite seeing, pondering why it might be so, why things are the way they are and what runs counter to what the characters say. If they can't be bothered, tells are the only thing they respond to, and even then the chatters manage to misread or forget the previous sentence in a voiced cutscene.
@@thesunthrone I mean ... we just came off of Shb and EW where they utilized show don't tell much more frequently and they are beloved expansions. I don't think the playerbase just got collectively dumber from one expansion to the next here.
@@slashthedancingwalrus1510 No, the reason why it wasn't an issue in ShB and EW is because player character was front and center and therefore people were much more charitable to the leaps in logic. We had just as many moments of childish nonsense - entirety of Il Mheg and lopporits just to name one from each expansion. Playing around with fairies and bunnies had very little to do with the actual storyline and could've been skipped entirely without any loss of story significance, but it wasn't a dealbreaker to most because people had hopes the story will kick into high gear right afterwards and it was about THEIR character as the chosen one that can save these worlds.
I fully understand the narrative pacing reason of lopporits and truly don't mind them much, a portion of cute, low stakes stuff to diffuse the tension of just having slain Zodiark and condemning the world to horror. But that's a charitable read that Dawntrail isn't getting, and it's solely because the story isn't revolving around our character.
Having heard what Preach says at around the 12 minute mark, about how this feels like how you would write a story for younger people...
Now that i think about it, as someone who watches a lot of anime and manga. This section of the game is pretty much a Shonen type story, and considering that a big percentage of players are - probably - working adults in their mid twienties or upwards, a shonen type story will not resonate at all.
Do shonens even do such type of stories anymore? 15 years ago sure, but afaik modern ones are much more edgy.
@@xviii5780 Damn you are right, and I think that makes it even worse
Yeah, my wife and were making Naruto references the entire time in Yak Tural lol. I'm in my 30s and appreciate the story for what it is, and quite frankly, is pretty much exactly as advertised. People complain that WoL is at the front and center and just along for the ride, but that is kinda the point.. we're here to watch these characters struggle, learn and grow, and only really intervene when necessary. If we just did everything, it would be like Gohan fighting in all of Pan's fights at the world tournament in the Buu saga.
@@Saieden I just want to say... no it was not as advertised.
It was advertised as a type of low stakes, a vacation or dividing the scions but nowhere was it implied to have Wuk Lamat as the big main character and side lining the WoL. Neither the trailer, benchmark nor the fanfests or live letters implied that.
I get liking the story and even the reasoning for having the WoL in the back (even though I don't agree) but it was not advertised in that form.
In a game that had Heavensward with us traveling to the dragon's lands and teaming up with the "enemy" of Iceheart to learn about them and empathize with their plight or Lyse learning the horrors of a post war subjugated nations first hand to redetermine their resolve, the storytelling has felt like children's history lessons that has been wielded very bluntly.
I am curious if people recognized that its presented less as a story and more of a history lesson. Because the setup to this arc is very much a field trip for each of the children of in the "class" to go around learning and the WoL is a chaperone. I dont want to say too much for story spoilers but i can understand why people were not into the msq bits that are effectively long lessons.
SQEX has always had a retro-style immature kind of humor. They said that they had a bunch of new and younger writers and...I think they just don't get it. The sillyness without the retro aspect doesn't work. There is a reason we all laugh at cloud in a dress but not Wuk Lamat's antics. There's a certain kind of nostalgia in the way its stylized that even though its immature it makes us smile. When its done properly it's brief, feels a bit out of nowhere, and doesn't interrupt the story or change the way we see the character - they move on from it completely in the very next scene and it's like it never happened. But they attached the immature sillyness to the character with Wuk Lamat and that's why people are having a tough time enjoying her on screen.
If the new writers don't understand this they should just not writer immature scenes.
I'm not sure if it's been discussed, but Ishikawa has taken a step back from actually writing, I think she became more of the manager of the writers in Endwalker where she was the MSQ Writer for Stormblood and Shadowbringers, but then became the Lead Story Designer then the promoted to Senior Story Designer in the Post EW patches. I'm not sure how hands on she is now in the actual MSQ story writing?
She wrote some of the MSQ for Stormblood (specifically the Doman arc) but was the main scenario writer for Shadowbringers and Endwalker. She's now in a supervisory role and oversaw the writing for Dawntrail in order to let newer writers take the lead. Even though other writers are in the lead, she still plays a big role in editing, apparently.
@@omnicbuddy4543 So basically what I said? Thanks! =)
Just correcting some details.
Totally agree with you on the writing so far. I feel that despite it being a JRPG, FFXIV has usually struck a surprisingly mature tone. However Dawntrail feels a lot more childish and it's a stark contrast to previous expansions.
I think this is underrated as a reason why the expansion isn't resonating with a lot of people. MMO audiences tend to be older and will find a lot of this messaging cringeworthy. If you will recall, WoW has recently had this exact same issue with Dragonflight.
Something struck me when you were talking about the lack of maturity in the storytelling: For about a month, there has been an animated FFXIV ad that pops up in my youtube videos occasionally that is very childish. It feels like it is aimed at a junior high school or younger audience, not unlike your MSQ observations. I wonder if there has been some change in the staffing that is causing Square to pursue a much younger audience for the game. Seems like really weird choice, but it's an interesting congruence between the story and the advertising.
Sqenix and weird choices go hand in hand
I think you might be giving the player base a bit too much credit for getting that understanding does not mean agreement. Yes, we can understand someone's motives and still disagree vehemently with them. The "Emet-Selch Did Nothing Wrong" and the "I can fix him" crowds are VERY loud out there, so they might feel that they have to go a bit more on the nose with things or players can, will, and HAVE missed the point.
The whole story is immature. These writers are completely oblivious to the fact that the average gamer is 35+. Previous conflicts have been resolved in a far more believable way. We try to stop a thousand year war between the dragons and Ishgard and even though we know the truth, we ended up having to kill the leaders of both sides to stop it. We got a cutscene of Aymeric getting stabbed. Then someone poisoned us so they could try to start a revolt. They acted stubbornly and stupidly, just like humans do in bad situations.
In Endwalker, We approach people locked in a final struggle for their own survival in the ruins of their homes. We offer to help them and extend a hand. Children run out into the snow to get mauled by animals and freeze to death rather than accept and Quintus literally put a gun in his mouth.
In Dawntrail, generations long conflicts end in 5 minutes because one of the worst and most insipidly written characters talks about how she stands for peace. The voice direction is horrible, the writing is juvenile. I don't hate wuk lamat, her problems are writing and voice direction. She is literally the worst filler episode versions of Naruto. This was the first MSQ I was actually looking forward to the end of just to not have to do it and that fact made me a bit depressed and upset.How they let this through to the final script is baffling to me and it feels like it is firmly infested with "modern western politics".
First half was entertaining, but not gripping like we'd expect of XIV. Second half is much better, but honestly not "incredibly memorable" like ShB or EW.
Still very enjoyable. Maybe I'll give them a pass on this being a new slate building up. But my money's on the Post MSQ. If you ask me, SB was sleepy to OK on main MSQ but insane on Post MSQ, so I am down to wait.
This is honestly how I feel about the HW MSQ. I never really came around on the Stormblood story but Stormblood had good story in its raids and side content
I think you expressed something that I had not quite put my finger on. The writing was very juvenile. It's probably why I couldn't get invested, there is a lot of redundant moments, a lot of explicit blatant declarations, it's almost like they are scared that people won't comprehend the story otherwise, so they dumb it down like an LFR raid.
Did you forget the second half of the third zone and the last two zones? I wouldn't call any of that juvenile.
Its written like a shonen anime for 10 year-old kids except the playerbase are all adults.
Which is funny because players probably love those shows as well.
@@fayte0618 Shounen is on a scale to very child like to shows like hxh2011.
Preach is sure in for some.....dialog and....cutscenes when he gets to the desert area.
Friend and I were of the opinion the folks that did the Hildebrand quests were more involved with the MSQ. There is some serious stuff but then the joke bits pop up and they’re very Hildebrand. Not bad, but very “obvious” in how it stands out.
I did like this zone. Valigarmandas framing in the ice reminded me of Ghidorah frozen in the ice.
Agree with the bits about things just being unnecessary, they feel a bit ham fisted. A lot of naivety and stuff in the MSQ.
Dungeon and trial were cool though.
There’s a lot of audio humor with blinking and cartoon noises that take me out so bad of some scenes. It also doesn’t help Wuk Lamat because it makes her feel like even the writers don’t respect her. Those things can be cute when sprinkled at the right time like when she eats the spicy food in the 6.5 patch but a lot of these feel out of place.
The increasing Hildibrandification of every storyline indicates (to me, at least) a team of writers that's increasingly insecure about the quality of what they're writing. When they start throwing in dumb little cartoon sound effects and exaggerated body motions it communicates to me that I'm not supposed to hold the story in high esteem because the writers don't.
@@ngwoo My overall feeling about the writing for DT was definitely that it felt insecure. The cartoony stuff is certainly a part of it, but I'm mostly fine with it. The lack of subtlety, a tendency to overexplain stuff, and an unwillingness to commit to a unified mood- be it dark or goofy- certainly screams "insecure writing" to me.
As someone that feels Hildibrand is one of the best things to come out of FF14, I did NOT enjoy what they did with the MSQ. The MSQ is supposed to be the main story. As such, it does need to have a certain level of seriousness to it. Sure it can have its fun moments, and in fact needs such lighter moments to break things up from time to time, but you can't take it too far.
I like Hildibrand because it's the right time and place to have that silly fun cartoony zany antics. I like that stuff. However there is a time and place for such antics, and the MSQ ain't it. That said, I feel that was the least of the MSQ's problems this time around.
As hamfisted the message was in this section, I really enjoyed it more than the Hanus, but I think it would have been better if we got more Zarool Ja Ja time. How does he reject the conclusions of the giants? How does he reject the dumb giants he knows he will rule over?
Did you not see that, despite him being first on the top and already having beaten the giants' elector, he remained there to stand and stare at his father's and the expedition's gravestone? It's a very clear showing of him considering that he needs to not just repeat, but surpass his father's deeds. The message that the giants once ruled, only to retreat to the mountains and therefore the nature of all conquests doesn't matter to him at all - he thinks only about comparing himself to his father and having an even bigger stone built with his deeds.
And then, very conveniently, Sareel Ja finally catches up to the rest on the summit. Seconds later, with him still in the shot, we hear that Valigarmanda was freed - clearly arranged by him so that Zoraal Ja could increase his lead. Yet contrary to Sareel Ja's expectation, Zoraal Ja wants to fight the beast. There's Zoraal Ja's shot at glory, to do what his father couldn't do and finish off the tural vidraal. Of course, we're there to dilute his victory - and so it doesn't really count for him as proof of success, even though for anyone normal it would, so he just walks away, even more annoyed than before.
@@thesunthrone I saw all of that. I wanted more. I haven't finished MSQ. I'm just a bit after this video. We know he wants peace through conquest, we know he has anger and destruction in his heart via Krile. We know he wants to surpass his father.
But we don't necessariy know that the message of the giants means nothing to him. People and characters can have multiple reasons for doing things. I mean, sure it could be very 2-D that he just wants to succeed his father and that he looks down on everyone for what he perceives as their naivete. but like, we don't *know*. We're all guessing and assuming his intent b/c he only says a handful of things. You are interpreting a LOT out of searching for his father's sepulchre. That said you could be 10000% correct. I'm not saying you are wrong. I cannot conclude that yet, but there could be dialog later that confirms everything you said.
And what you say doesn't answer my questions. How does Zarool Jaja Keep his justifications? How does he he see himself different from the red giants? Like, he could have good or bullshit reasons, but I want to know them.
@@heylookitsnana Well, we can't really ask characters in fiction, so our best bet is to just engage with the story and fill in the blanks. That's the part of the "show dont tell" mantra that's being haphazardly called in that we have to accept - engaging with the text well beyond what's just plainly written, because you clearly expect there being more than just what's explicitly told.
There will always be some guesswork. It's possible to guess wrong or misunderstand a character's motivations even when we have them clearly spelled out for us in undeniable terms - just look up any Emet-Selch vs Venat arguments... And even if we know a character's motivations, we could still find them BS and stupid. That wouldn't make that motivation bad, either. People just believe in stupid things sometimes, act in stupid ways for reasons that would make any reasonable person bewildered.
As for your questions directly, Zoraal Ja is just a deeply introverted character (voiced by Jotaro Kujo's VA in Japanese even, who is a deeply silent and stoic character in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure) who barely displays any emotion. Both Koana and Wuk Lamat say that he rarely shares what he's thinking, and ever Gulool Ja Ja is shown to just accept this part of his son and not even try to get any answer from him when speaking to him at the throne room at the beginning of the story. He has stated his beliefs, but it's up in the air whether he truly believes what he's saying, if that's truly why he acts the way we acts. Wuk Lamat was also putting on a front, same as Koana - all the Dawnservant's children seem to be intimidated by their father's legacy and feel inadequate next to it.
Characters like that are just extremely difficult to write, because people like that are extremely difficult to get to know in reality. How do you get into someone's head that doesn't want to share any of it? Well, you observe what they do and guess.
@@heylookitsnana RUclips ate my reply, so I'll be brief.
Zoraal Ja is a deeply introverted character, and does not talk about himself much, something that both Wuk Lamat and Koana state as him always having been that way. With such characters, we can do little but infer from how they act their motivations, because they simply will not explain themselves in much depth. People like this are often incapable to do so - as the less you share your thoughts with others, the less able you are to communicate them even when you finally choose to do so. But should you pay attention to the circumstances surrounding him and the nature of his people, you will find your answer.
@@thesunthrone You will find A answer. In my experience trying to assume the intentions of introverts, one is often wildly wrong. That said I ain't saying y'all are wrong. Just I can't conclusively agree with you. Also, I'd be disappointed if your interpretations were correct.
"everything was obvious" Thank god, I thought I was going crazy as a lore-nerd who's several encyclopedias deep into crackpot theories. I predicted almost every storybeat in this story and it just infuriated me.
I think wuk might actually be a teenager, like 16, her Japanese va is really high pitched, and she's minimum height for a hrothgar
She’s 19
As someone said she's 19. There's a line about how Gulool Ja Ja fought Valigarmanda 20 years ago and Wuk Lamat goes "that was before I was born."
I'd certainly say her mental age is more like a 16 year old than her actual age. I put this down to being sheltered. She's also clearly not interacted with a lot of different people despite the city being so diverse, so it makes sense that she's quite immature to start with but puts on bravado.
@@temisu_namisu She does say she assumed she understood her people because of living in Tulioyalal but was shown to be wrong. The people in Tuliyolal are not the traditionalists generally so they didn't impart everything to her.
@@DireFoxIIC She has to be at least 23, no? She was 3 when Gulool Ja Ja took her and that was 20 years ago during their search for the City of Gold.
No Brofist to us all… 😔
The Yok Huy literally have the Roman understanding of peace. Peace in Roman times meant, there was peace because the enemy was defeated.
Preach.... from minute 11:00 to about 13:00... speaking from team America... you will be surprised how many people don't get that basic understanding of being able to talk to understand to people.
But yeah, I am curious on you referencing a lot of your past thoughts as you get along
Yeahhhhhh while "peace is kinda good and maybe we should get along" might feel highschool level to Preach, a whole lot of the world right now is incapable of understanding why using money you could use for building hospitals and building missiles, then launching them at other people's hospitals is not a great idea with long term prospects... Supposedly adults, too.
I suppose the problem is that fiction has to actually make sense, whereas real world cannot be demanded of such luxury.
@@thesunthrone Its also doesn't help the people who started the war are hiding in tunnels under hospitals using their own citezins as human sheilds.
The giants caught covid
My overall impression of the early content was a heavy focus on world building with a bit of character development on the side. I was promised a great vacation so that's how I engaged the content, and that's what I got throughout the early sections of the story.
Same, as well as basically being Wuk’s cool aunt/uncle (which I can understand people not liking)
Yep. I was seeing the sights, learning about the culture and relaxing my shoulders from NOT having the entire world resting on them - even if I did feel an urge to go and finally murder something during the whole Pelupelu trade saga. But otherwise, I very much enjoyed learning about the way these people lived, and I could very clearly see the overall theme of it all - to learn of this peace that's worth protecting, before we inevitably have it threatened in the second half.
My vacation has been very boring so far...
12:30 One thing I wanna mention, that she didn't had echo. So unlike WoL, she can't learn anything from others, like emotions, motives, history without interacting to each other. The echo is just too convinient, and we quite forget about that. However, she always trust people in the first place, which I don't encourage our children to do. But her will to protect and do good promote her greatly.
You touched on something that has bothered me. Long term immunity doesn't apply on the First for some reason. That reflection existed for millenniums, so surely there would diseases there not present on the Source. The same could be said for the 13th. Exposure to Darkness causes a corruption of the soul....but that's different from qualified immunity to disease. Yet, the concept comes up as a plot device relative to the Giants. Or, maybe it doesn't. Let's see what Mike thinks about that after a few more jaunts in Tural.
I think that would be quite a pain if the WoL went to the first, immediately caught a cold they didn't have immunity to and had to spend a week bedridden, or even if the other scions did get sick I can't see that being a very interesting plot thread, so I am glad that's not something they explored 😅
@@Naoto-kun1085 Oh, I agree 100%. MMO's can't get bogged down in minutia of reality. BUT, they, also, have to remain consistent. I would argue that they did so if you look close at the Giant's plight, but won't elaborate since Mike didn't get there yet.
The power of one. The power of two. The power of frieenddshipppp
Bruh...
Those space witches living rent free in so many heads right now.
"Guys just because I keep bringing up the acolyte and keep seething at every plot point in Dawntrail doesn't mean I'm transphobic there's no correlation between these two things this is real critique."
The power of friendship! Believe it!
@@zetton1374who are you fighting with lmao
On the war of the worlds point. I'm pretty sure the reference is more towards the real life history of South America where the Spanish conquerors brought a plague that killed 90% the population
Weird, I only enjoyed the second boss of the dungeon. I remember it being a menace on day 1 with the donuts insta-wiping parties sometimes. Everything else is too slow and obvious. But I also really liked the first boss of Strayborough Deadwalk so maybe that says something about me.
The second part of your comment is the hottest DT take of all time lol
Is this a dungeon name spoiler?
@@AGrumpyWitch yes but good luck making anything of it.
You are the first person I have seen that said they like that cancer tumour of a boss in Strayborough. lol
Tbf game is rated T. But I do agree after finishing the MSQ its the Disney expansion. Thats why its so divisive to people who became fans because of the more dark adultish fantasy of past expansions. And what i find depressing people are becoming overly critical or omitting important context in their “criticism” to single out this expansion. It reminded me of the transition between FF7/8 to FF9 and how much backlash there was because of the tonal shift
Since you mentioned it,
This is also the expac with a crapton of FF9 references so it may be related
old disney is much more mature than dawntrail
Tactics Ogre, which YoshiP has cited as one of his favorite games, is rated T. Matsuno has explicitly highlighted the Yugoslav wars as his inspiration there, and in that game you’re allowed to commit a serious war crime in the very first chapter.
That is to say, there’s a spectrum even across ‘T for Teen’ content. You’re likely right about the curse of prior expectations; I’m not surprised that fans of dark fantasy were drawn to CBU3’s work, and I’m also not surprised a lot of them don’t know what to do with Dawntrail.
I love your videos generally but I had some feedback, there is some gameplay that is inserted at inopportune moments. I saw this here with the emet scene when you were trying to show the displate on camera, and I saw it in your video about yoship's interview where I would have liked to see the expression on yoship and your faces while talking about stuff but the seto scene was on screen for too long. Hopefully this is helpful, I am currently catching up on your msq streams and watching these summaries afterwards and having a blast!
Sorry for the long comment but... man, I'm just not feeling Wuk Lamat. I do think the voice acting is... not the best at times, but beyond that, I think her character just didn't see a whole lot of evolution. See, one of the reasons I really like Alphie, is that he was an uppity kid with dreams of grandeur back in ARR and he was humbled HARD. He was at his worst at the end of 2.55, and he slowly built himself back up through HW. This kind of character arc really grabs me. I want to see a character struggle with their inner turmoils, I want to see them grow. I just didn't feel much of it in Wuk Lamat. She starts off as the well-intentioned plucky character and pretty much ends the story the same way. She's a bit more toned down by the end of the story and that's kinda that. This isn't to say a character with positive ideals/outlook is necessarily a bad thing. I've seen people compare her to Luffy, and obviously a lot of the comparisons stem from the whole "I'm gonna be king of the pirates!/Dawnservant!" thing... but it's not actually that bad a comparison. Thing is, Luffy's is a rather static character, but you still get the sense that his character is nonetheless TEMPERED by the events of the story. I feel like I didn't see much of that in Wuk Lamat...
That aside, I also feel a bit of vindication regarding the Scions. Before this expansion launched, I groaned at the idea of having them around for it. I feel like their character arcs are pretty much DONE and while I don't think they ought to just vanish forever, I really rather have had them show up here and there as minor characters in patch content or something. They are just not all that interesting to me at this point, and it feels like no further development can be experienced. Estinien, Urianger, and Thancred really were there just to have a good time... The twins are just.... there.... and that was that, but the thing is, as mentioned just now, what else could you want?? These characters are DONE. Their struggles surmounted, their arcs resolved. Oh, sure Y'shtola is still trying to get back to The First, but that's not really much more than just a goal. It doesn't reveal anything new or interesting about her that we didn't already know. The exception to this is Krile. I think the devs did a great job in providing her closure regarding her origins, but I feel like she still has room to grow as a character, considering how little we'd had of her in the time before Dawntrail.
Moving on from the old cast, Erenville was great, to be honest, and his characterization, his coming to terms with..... what happens in the second part of the expansion, was handled very well. A comparatively minor thing, but I also really like how little he kisses your ass in this expansion. He really comes off as a chill dude who KNOWS you're strong as all get out, but just kinda... lets you be. It's an element of his character that stands in stark contrast with how much G'raha slobbers all over you. It's refreshing, honestly. All in all, I really do wish the cast had more fresh blood in it.
Make Erenville the BST trainer, carry on the story with just WoL, Erenville and G'raha, and I'm all there for it
I got the same impression from the story. I think they're aiming at a younger crowd. The old arc is done - the WoW refugees have stayed or gone - and the bosses want to bring in new blood. Get those subs lined up for the next saga. What better time than the start of the new adventure? It feels a lot more like a mainline FF story here to me, and those are notorious for being meddled with so they can appeal to teens.
Story is a 7/10 for me, but the battle content has been great, you can really tell they're trying new shit and making things a but harder which i appreciate. Story wise, i guess if youre not used to shonen anime tropes and humor, its not gonna jive with you. Hope the writing team takes this as a learning experience
I'm just a bit prior to the giants stuff and I think the this story is starting to lose me. Maybe it was the part where they just ignored the Aetheryte in the background when Wuk was freaking out about going on a boat back to the main town, but the whole thing just feels less thought out.
And frankly, if they are trying to aim this at a younger crowd by talking down to them, they will just lose that crowd to something that doesn't treat them like kids.
First half is rather weak. Just crossed the bridge myself.
Also, fuck whoever picked VAs, wuk is exceptionally grating even ignoring the writing.
I think you stated what I had a difficult time explaining myself about the story, something just felt...off...compared to previous expansions. Fortunately, as Yoshi-P said, this is an experimental expansion. It's fine to experiment just as long as it sorts itself out in the end.
Even heavensward and stormblood had introspective themes with Estinian seeing himself in his enemy and yotsuyu being evil by the cards life had dealt her.
Dawntrail is cookie cutter which is super dissapointing for ff14 standards.
Even the most complex of cultures and characters can be turned into caricatures and parodies on a dime, and a lot of chatters and commenters are doing exactly that, even Preach here in this video. The whole point of the red-armored faction of giants acting like stubborn gatekeepers and us needing to practically force to help them is BECAUSE PEOPLE ACT LIKE THIS, especially people in highly isolated communities that had once been mighty conquerors. It is a documented antrophological fact shared across many, many mountain tribal cultures that they are very honor-bound and distrustful, and quick to offend and hold grudges. It looks silly but only because we do not live under the same paradigm where scarcity of resources make honor and holding grudges something commonplace. In such communities the only way to even try and win them on your side is to sacrifice for them, something they still might reject.
These giants literally ruled the entire continent in the past, but are now reduced to hiding on the hillside of their ancestral graves, are lorded over by some outsider lizard king that now sends random tourists into their sacred places for a rite that chooses who is their next ruler. They might as well spit in their faces far as they're concerned, and the fact that they still go back and forth on accepting their aid after Wuk Lamat and Scions helping shows just how distrustful they are. Even then, after this scene is over, they scurry off and warn not to go into their lands, because this DOESN'T make them friends, contrary to what Mike is saying - and the red-armored giants are enemies that will attack you on SIGHT.
I swear, content creators sometimes just make a mockery out of the things they talk about, because they're paying more attention to entertaining the stream audience than actually paying attention to what is going on in whatever it is they're playing. Anything feels worse to experience when you have an audience jeering at every turn, and some of these streams are extremely grating to sit through.
@@thesunthrone I mean it’s still not greatly executed lol.
@@Plasmacat1 For like 10 minutes of exposition that's mostly there to establish that the giants are not of one mind and some of them are extremely petty and distrusting of outsiders, but might be willing to budge if you appeal to their honor by making them feel indebted? The execution is fine, this is straight up nitpicking.
This is like going to Il Mheg, talking to the Nu Mou for the first time and act like that's it, there is nothing to them but that they like being petted and called good boys. Reductive, petty, dismissive.
@@thesunthronenah it’s really poorly done because it’s not just the giants it’s everyone you get to know so that’s why it gets repetitive. Obviously the game suffered from this before like Lahee zone with the bunny girls is exactly the same thing as this but then you have the shadow people who are handled better when you literally see them practice their religion so you go “oh I get it” they show you not just spew exposition to you which is Danwtrails problem. I don’t hate it and I enjoyed parts of it, it’s way better structured than Stormblood 4.0 at least but it’s a definite step back in the quality of storytelling and execution with really weird inserted Hildebrand style humor that ends up being annoying rather than cute.
That's a very interesting analysis.
Antropology should be a mandatory study.
@@Plasmacat1 I see it differently cause, as in almost every expansion, unless you dig deeper you get only surface level. If you do the aetheryte quests (which you are assumed to do) and follow op on yellow chains from them (which tend to become ASQ/Tribe quests in future patches) you get more detail and they shake up very differently. I don't think it's bad writing that the depth and nuance of particular situation are optional, with you being guided to them
FINALLY been waiting for another video xD
You're not wrong that this section of the game hits players over the head with certain themes, but despite that it's surprising how many players totally miss thematic elements as they reoccur throughout Dawntrail's story.
The terrible voice acting really throws it off tbh. Hard to focus on the themes of the story being told when the actors sound like they don't care, kills immersion hard
not really a case of players missing thematic elements. more of a case of most of the playerbase being fully grown adults being beaten over the head with themes of friendship, understanding, and peace that we've already absorbed in our younger years, and thus it's just... not very compelling to spend hours and hours immersed in these juvenile themes.
@@pinkkite9794 I’m primarily discussing points that come up later in the expansion, but am not going to go into any detail to avoid spoilers. I’ve seen a great many reddit posts from people who very fundamentally misunderstand major thematic elements of the story, and-while slow and deliberate-these earlier moments in Dawntrail lay a foundation for what is to come.
That’s not necessarily to defend all of it, but some people DO need to be hit over the head with these themes, and STILL miss things. For an example which comes up right after the content in this video: many people somehow missed that Sareel Ja, not Bakool Ja Ja, came up with the plan that leads to the circumstances of the trial fight. And that’s not even representative of some of the more important thematic motifs that reoccur later in the story.
@@pinkkite9794You just explained all of FFXIV story
@@pinkkite9794 If you think that those are themes of the DT you clearly read only the surface stuff. The DT expansions uses similar philosophical framework, like every FF expansion and uses it as perspective/lense for what it talks about
Which here is quite a lot of things, the most basic one is the messiness of family, that caring about someone doesn't mean the relationship is healthy, especially if that is funneled through cultural and familial expectations - including situations when expectations are self projected by child/prodigy. There are few other big things going
Some of them, interestingly enough, similarly to SHB seeming to have nods and little love letters to 1.0 devs (the whole Graha speech at end of 5.3) this one might be partially talking about dangers of trying to follow up on past stories
Can we have Ishikawa back now?
I think it’s good they rotate writers, the worst thing one can do is elevate just 1 and even then she has some issues on how she presents stories. Overall their biggest concern imo is they need to rethink how they package and present their quest design because it did no favors to the story of Dawntrail.
@@Plasmacat1 you're gunna be surprised when you realize that the quests format is generally the same throughout the entire game,
go here, talk to someone, click one something, maybe some mobs spawn, go back, ect..
She is the narrative director, her name is before the scenario writers. And before anyone says that just means she isn't involved as much, in a Japanese company being in charge means she literally is the one responsible for everything people below her do - and she is also the one that will be taking the criticisms on herself.
@@JustinK0I know and it’s time to change it because it doesn’t help Dawntrail story at all because of how it’s executed.
She's involved. I'd rather have Maehiro back. I want a more intricate, less sappy storyline next.
Did anyone peep during the intro cutscene to the final boss of that dungeon where he does the hoarah loux stance from Elden Ring?
That’s a common wrestling stance.
I am a Elden Ring player too. And yeah my first thought was Godfrey the first elden lord. Even two of his mechanics reminded me about Godfrey. the earth rip up + one of his aoes.
@Niomi_Nia Well I mean, Yoshi P himself said he delayed the expac because of the Elden Ring dlc on stage at fanfest, lol. But I see your point.
There's a mod for dark souls style messages and everyone writes this xd
Weird how you went to War of the Worlds as your reference point instead of the real world Europeans giving smallpox to the native Americans. Seemed like a much more obvious touchstone imo.
I didn't really like Wuk'Lamat to be honest. I mean, her attitude is ok, and she's trying to learn while having a positive vibe etc. That's fine. But she comes across as incredibly naive and very...stupid. Not stupid like people make mistakes and sometimes do dumb shit. But stupid like... "Hey, we can't get through this wall here, what should we do?" Wuk: "Easy! let's just go through the door!", "But Wuk'Lamat, future leader of my people and country/continent, there is no door here" Wuk: "Uhhhhh, right. Sorry".
Also, the story feels way less personal to our scions and our WoL. And not threatening at all (We have been to the end of the universe, defeated embodiment of the planet itself, enemies which embodied the very energy around us, gods... etc. How is any of this just not another chill Thursday?). We're just a glorified bodyguard, and the scions are just there for... Having trust buddies for dungeons? I dont know.
Zuraal ja is the body
Koana is the brain
Wuk is the heart
It definitely feels like they made it with child/young-teen audience in mind. The kind of audience whose parents don't allow them to watch DBZ or whatever the modern equiv is.
Can't deny it worked for the Pokemon franchise, but it's definitely a tonal shift.
The idea the giants conquered out of fear is such a surface-level analysis. Like they've taken war propaganda and considered it fact.
And while Wuk was tending to his man, the giant could and in a prior expansion the likes of Ranjit probably *would* have tried to attack her. It would have been rational from his perspective, while they're distracted, yet he doesn't because... that's not the vibe they're going for?
To quote matrix: "Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program."
Ofc it's made for kids. It's not rated M. Lol
I liked the cultural showcase of the whole trial, even if it did feel pretty slow at times.
wait for the stupid thingsa you will get at 95-98 (spoiler!!!!
...
...
bad dude: Come, gathere your alies, find me in my fortress and fight me.
you do that.
bigbad: oh, you cheated, you are scared to fight me alone.
me: ??????????????????
Funny you mention the story feels like for teens. In germany the Age recommendation is 12 ;-)
The first two areas just feel like a filler, the conflict between the two groups in the jungle was pretty good and the giant section was ok.
Wuk is a 6/10 companion for me. Her childlike demeanor is a bit to much and she is way to often the comedy relief. She is the candidate for the next country leader for fucks sake and she does not feel like it at all till the very end.
Quest are also very very boring and often uninteresting
He says that it feels like it's aimed at 8-11 yr olds. Well funny enough Anime has this Genre called SHONEN which literally translates to "Young boy". lol
Yeah, but Shonen is targeted at like 13-18, with older readers often kept in mind in the case of series such as JJK and many others. Wuk Lamat's arc seems at times to be geared for actual children.
I was thinking the same from the start. It feels like a shonen anime story. And Wuk Lamat is the shonen anime main character. But overall i very enjoy the MSQ. Maybe cause i still watch few shonen anime. So i got used to things like this what is in the MSQ right now. Ofc i understand some peoples complain.
Shonen tackles very deep and complex themes.
This msq feels more like 4kids.
@@garychat3480 Pokemon is a SHONEN. They don't call it that but that's what it is. So geared towards kids is it's thing. They just so happen to be making more for Teens right now.
@@DBellBoi Pokemon is literally not a shonen. They don’t call it that, because it’s not.
Finally some takes I agree with. Some of my expectations were upended and its a good thing but certainly not up to the quality ShB ones. Which is what I expected when they announced who was writing DT's story. Their previous work was on the job role quest which we all know were some low and high tier ones.
You can feel that the writing team is not the same...
its not the same writers as sbh and ew, its not about feeling, its true.
but its also a different style of writing that requires deep though about story and how it relates to the world,
Check the damn credits. The beloved writers are still there, in senior narrative designer positions, with two new names as writers below them. Per Japanese custom, they are directly responsible of the good and bad in the story, just as how YoshiP sees himself personally responsible for the entire game.
It's really a bog standard shounen story (I'll be hokage one day!) with some stuff semi-lifted from FF9 at the end, you know, the good part
The story is meant to be different from previous expansions so surprisingly it is different from them
It’s literally the same writers that have been on the team for years, piss off.
Did Preach just entirely skip over the story with the 2nd half of Kozama'uka or did the wrong video get uploaded?
I get the sense that he didn’t care much about that part or have anything to ponder or speculate about it. It does fit in the section of “Wuk Lamat and Koana started collaborating. Yep, ok”
We got a chance to go through our maturity journey and now we get to mentor others to go through theirs. It's surprisingly pleasant, and I get the sense that this is all going to pay off handsomely later on. We're investing in the future!
I didnt mind the msq until about halfway through where my patience was gone. Theres no real deeper meaning to things, wuk lamat is used way too much for a mmo that is great at showing off multiple charactera stories and opinions, like almost none of the other characters do anything. At the end i just wanted it to be over since a lot of reasonings where missing or disnt make sense, very pre-heavensward writing
Not every story needs to have some kind of great revelation behind it
@@necroguy11 not revelation, just not one dimensional stuff. Real people are complex, as is real world, and when everything is simple in a story, it's really hard to emphasize with it.
I enjoyed wuk lamat and her positivity buy that’s just me
People like you confuse Positivity with Naive
@@7RicolmE7she is both.
She brings fun energy to the team I like her a lot
First half is mid at best and cringe at times, second half gets really good. I hope its a Stormblood situation where the msq is mid but content is great
This MSQ is just pure agony
@@yuina88 Its fucking unbearable and never gets better.
@@GushuGoblinthats not true. It got better for me on the second half, akin to something to the writing we got used to but quite not there yet
The real problem with the msq is how terrible Wuk Lamat is as a character. She is worse than Lyse, and her VA is awful.
Wuk Lamat is literally just a more annoying child Naruto. "I'm going to be Hokage, BELIEVE IT."
This guy faked eviction?
I think the ffxiv team made it very clear that they wanted to get away from the dark stories for a bit.
Sure but they didn't need to make it grade school level.
Yup they said it very clearly yet people are surprised its not as 'dark' (even tho thats debatable)
@@GrandMagusDK i concede that the first half of the story is very “friendly”, but the second half I wouldn’t call it grade school at all.
That said, the writing was very questionable over all, even for a light plot like this one.
It's worse in the second half. Yells in lower case "SpHeEeEeEeEeeeeEeEeeeEEEEEn!"
Been playing since beta and this is the first time I’ve had to talk myself out of skipping cutscenes. MSQ is terrible.
I never skipped anything, even ARR, I had to do the same as you to resist no skipping all the useless dialogue...
I gave up and started skipping when I got the gist of what's happening. Just when it says "we need to get X but random person Y asks for a favor so we can do X then I sometimes just skipped Y's favor."
Big disagree, I was more interested in the early zone dialogue way more than spots in other expansions.
You can’t seriously tell me that places like Ruby Sea, Sea of Clouds, and Labyrinthos were substantially better than any of the DT zones.
@necroguy11 not necessarily better but since they felt more connected to an overarching goal it felt way more important and therefore interesting than most of the early regions like the alpaca region or the festival one. I honestly couldn't care less about getting to know a fantasy culture where I know I will never really meet the characters again and they will never matter again. It's important for Wuk Lamat but it didn't matter one bit to me.
@@ArmoredPandaayour self importance and lack of empathy isn’t the writer’s problem.
Overall I think this expansion is one of my favorites, story and all, just in different ways and for different reasons than previous expansions
This comment section is wilding 😂
3 full days in and your making excuses for a shitty story lol how ppl incessantly gatekeep over this story is so sad lol
Sadly we need those lessons today because for some reason alot of people did not learn them 20 yrs ago when we were kids
So far, Preach is expressing the same feelings I had through the MSQ. I overall like the expansion, giving it a 7 out of 10, but its not a good Final Fantasy 14 expansion. Overall I wanted some more adult themes rather than these kid show/after-school special. I needed something big and this adventure felt so small. This probably should have been the after expansion patches before something truly big. As a FF14 expansion, this was a miss for me.
Where did the brave, confident, but naive Wuk lamat of 6.55? I went back on my alt recently, and they don't even feel like the same character. The short time I knew Wuk Lamat in Endwalker, I loved her character and was the main reason I look forward to DT. This feels like the case of dumbing down the character to fit the story.
It's a fake persona. That's the whole point. That's why she overdoes it there, but stands there frozen with fear when a bird talks back at her - she acts confidence to hide the fact she is absolutely terrified and insecure.
@thesunthrone sure, I know it's a fake persona. But she was knowledgeable (explain history of Tural), express emotional intelligence, and most of all, seems like she know what she is doing most of the time even if she is scared. The letter that was shown to her by krile was immediately identified as not written by her dad, not because of arbitrary "oh this is not his handwriting." But actual knowledge of her homeland, how their language and writing system comes about. You telling me a person that know that much don't know how her neighbors says hello?
@@nguyentrung-ui4mf A sheltered princess can be knowledgeable of the court proceedings, but completely ignorant of anything past the city walls. She knew what the pillars meant and could recite a story - but soon as she stepped outside the city, her knowledge proved to be surface-level. Aside from what her teachers had told her, she knew nothing about the Hanuhanu, Pelupelu and other cultures of Tuliyollal - and the whole Dawnservant rite was arranged by her father to teach her the real knowledge of her land.
@thesunthrone a sheltered princess grew up surrounded by warriors and their first suggestion to get to know some one is to go hunting? In the wild? Of a place she barely know? Wuk Lamat is either sheltered princess or Warrior princess seeking the thrill of the hunt. Can't be both.
@thesunthrone and if I have to assume something for the story to make sense, then it is failure on the writer part. Clues can be given without explicitly telling me the plot, but the moment I have to guess how a character should act based on no given prior knowledge, then it becomes a problem.
I dont think the lack of dark or complex stuff is really bad at all.
Theres nothing wrong with some “light” storytelling where everything is good and happy go lucky etc.
Its especially helpful to reset the tension and stakes.
And it just tells a feel good story about people coming together.
Just had 2 xpacs of straight of doom and gloom.
We are on vacation now lol
Babysitting a preachy nepo-baby, doing menial tasks for her, as she stumbles her way to unearned success while everyone smiles and nods at her like a bunch of robots. Worst vacation ever.
Seeing you play it and react with a lot of 'I'm sure this will pay off later!' reminds me what a come down this story is compared to every other expansion (even ARR and Stormblood). This entire thing is a Naruto filler arc. Nothing more.
sbh is a filler expansion, the events on the first have little to do with happening on the source (related to the garleans) at all other than "oh well you have to save us because it affects your world as well".
I get very disappointed every time he says "i'm sure this will pay off or develop in some way" and i'm like... "No... it doesn't"
Yo DT to me, hot takes ok 😁 they could go One Piece story instead they going Naruto 😂 wuk lamat is annoying to me, i know the world is at a bad situation rn and we need a vacation yes but i dont need one more annoying one like wuk lamat , i hope i dont get to see her next expansion thankyou
90-93 is not supposed to be deep but rather the opposite. It's like a city tour during vacation. You want it to be chill and little exciting now and then, not stressful. Does that mean you need to like it? No. I get that people starve for more story. Sections like this have no place in a book/movie/series. This is an mmo though (that wants to start from a clean new slate).
Just bad writing all around for the most part. Very disappointed so far in the MSQ.
Why are you trying to compare this expansion to shadowbringers? Shadowbringers earned the right to dive into the super dark shit after 3 other expansions, we just started a new arc, shit can be happy for a bit before everything goes to shit.
Oh it's coming, just hold tight.
It gets better, but it doesn't get good. Ff14 fanboys are incapable of being critical about their game.
Ok but i genuinely enjoyed the story despite some issues i had with some parts of the story and thought it was good. Its a little thing called an opinion. I dont think other expansions were significantly better than this one they all had aspects I liked and disliked.
@MidnightEkaki you enjoyed the story doesn't mean it doesn't have many issues. Again people like you are incapable of being critical about the game. Yall will be happy with whatever and will defend it. But sure.
This whole comments section is people being critical lol
so what i'm getting is that 14 used to be deep writing for 16 year olds and now it's deep writing for 12 year olds
Eh more like adults.
But still majority of players are +30yo. Or at least +20.
I'm almost 40yo lol.
@@minuette1752it’s rated T and pegi 16…. That’s not adults.
@@Mrdevdev Sure it is, I am 45.
Wuk lamat is just poorly written and the voice actor didnt have enough range(or direction or both) for a character who was clearly supposed to have very high highs and very low lows. Its a shame and it really doesnt help that its a lyse 2.0 story again, they didnt change the naive ignorant would be ruler story at all in premise. IMO HERE if they absolutely wanted to try doing the lyse story again but better they should have done it with a male character and have the idealism not be colored by stupid childish flaws
Oh boy here we go with the female hating. 🙄
I absolutely adore Wuk Lamat but that is just me. I was fine with Lyse as well, she was a solid character.
I like Lyse more. Both are pretty mid characters, but for me Lyse is 7/10.
And Wuk Lamat is 6/10.
@@TheManaTree777 is that all you took from my post?? She's literally just Lyse again with a different coat of paint. We didn't need the exact same story as the MSQ foreign expansion again, they could have at least changed it from being about a naive ignorant princess to a more interesting premise, or at the very least swapped the gender and focused on more mature idealistic points and not childish bullshit
@@minuette1752 lyse was terrible in base storm blood, the post MSQ story saved that character from going down as one of the worst they had ever done
Not sure if this is a spoiler, but they set up these themes into your head like this so it endures for the later part of the story
I think the story had to be overt and obvious here because, even from some of the comments here, the connections to the themes in the first half to the second are STILL lost of people.
Yeah I'm honestly shocked how many people are saying shit like "this never pays off" when so many themes in the second part of the story directly related to or mirrored the first half.
Wuk Lamat was amazing. Haters gonna hate!
He's talking about covid lmao
The big takeaway I got from this is, you're not the hero of this story. In all previous expansions the WoL is the central character. You're Titan's Bane, you killed the Ultima Weapon. You ended the Dragonsong War (ok, Alphi helped), you united Doma and Ala Migo, you save two world from calamity and finally, you defeated despair itself.
Here, you're not much more than a side character, awkwardly standing around while Wuk does her stuff. I really think that may be reasons for the "Mixed reviews" on Steam.
Exactly why story contrivances and conveniences that worked in the previous stories suddenly don't here for a portion of loud folks - it just isn't about them, therefore annoying, boring and bad.
Yup people with main character syndrome who forget the fact WoL has no personality and the limitations that creates for the writers
Personally I liked that aspect a lot, it’s fun being the mentor for once. And a super underrated part of the expansion IMO is even meeting all these different ppl you personally never have to prove yourself because everybody recognizes your strength.
@@thesunthrone Yes, personally, it was a bit refreshing not to have the weight of the world on my shoulders.
@@thesunthrone bro Wuk just sucks ass. There are so many good, great, or at least fun characters: Koana, Bakool Ja Ja, Krile, Erenville, Zoral Ja, his minion etc. etc. I would love to travel with Koana (who actually learns something instead of consistently mary sueing every problem with some preachy power of friendship asspulls) or just anyone else really. Wuk ruins every scene she's in, talks all the same wishy washy points again and again and again and *never* loses or is forced to make tough decisions. She sucks out all complexity from everyone in proximity and I hate her for that. She was kinda cute in a dumb way until maybe 93-94, then she becomes absolutely insufferable.
WoL is a piece of wood with 3 animations anyway, we physically can't be the main character and we never were. Stop with this nonsense.
This expansion is slightly better than SB. The second half really makes up for it
the MSQ was definitely written by someone in the East because we over in the west can't stand the Luffy/Naruto/Asta/Emma archetype for longer than 5 seconds. Those types of characters need to fall from the top very fast and build their ways back up as an underdog, not get positive reinforcement for 20 hrs. If DT was a movie, the Western Audience would leave in the first 20 minutes and that's a shame because WL becomes a decent character in the second half. But by this point of the story I stopped caring and was so over her.
That you would put Luffy into this group doesn't support your point, but undermines it.
Yes Luffy is a hated character despite being the favourite one piece character worldwide
Yeah... No. Shonens are massively popular in the west
“Written by someone in the east” you are aware this is a Japanese game right?
The east has fallen