Who Are FFXIV's Dawntrail Writers Targeting? A Deep Dive into MSQ Audience
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- Опубликовано: 16 окт 2024
- In this video, I delve into the narrative of the Main Scenario Quest (MSQ) from the latest expansion of Final Fantasy XIV, Dawntrail, raising a crucial question: Who exactly are the FFXIV writers targeting? While the storyline is compelling, I've noticed a tendency for the writing to seem geared towards both 10-year-olds and 50-year-olds simultaneously, failing to strike a true balance. This is particularly noticeable in the portrayal of certain characters, such as Wuk Lamat, whose interactions often feel overly juvenile given the serious context of the plot.
If you're interested in how major gaming sagas handle their scripts and their impact on different age groups, this video is for you. Don't forget to leave your thoughts in the comments, like the video, and subscribe for more detailed analyses.
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FF14 Dawntrail : A happy story for 10 year old children
FF14 Dawntrail : Requires playing through Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers and Endwalker
FF14 HW, SB, SHB, EW : Death, Abuse, Revenge, kidnapping, implied SA, war, body horror, emotional nervous breakdown and utter despair, multiple versions of the end of the world through war, disease and apathy.
you know...for kids!
...DT has racism, eugenics, suicide ideation, dehumanization, and multi-dimensional genecide...
Final Fantasy 9 a happy story for 10 year old children. Until like in FF14 it goes into any area other FF games never have and goes into life, death, what it means to be alive, etc. I get why people don't like it. They think every in Final Fantasy has be like FF7, FF8, FF10, and FF6. Yet when Hironobu Sakaguchi says FF9 it the one he likes the most and is a love letter and elements of that game are in the 2nd half of Dawntrail. I enjoy it because Final Fantasy 9 is my number one Final Fantasy game.
@@evacody1249 Bro, what? FF's been getting into darker shit for decades. Just a couple examples from my favorites:
FF4, allies constantly sacrificing themselves to save the party; while most were okay, Tellah dies because he can't contain his hatred for Golbez and need for vengeance. Also, Cecil massacres Mysidia and is responsible for the near genocide of Mist, and the first chunk of the story is of a reluctant war criminal trying to redeem himself. Plenty of contemplation of life and death because everyone is constantly on the brink of throwing their life away for a greater good.
FF6 saw the genocide of the espers by Kefka. Kefka who also poisons a kingdom leaving the sole survivor (Cyan) with massive guilt that manifests later as demons fight to claim his soul. Kefka who then goes on to commit regicide and brings the world to its knees. Locke's history with Rachel. The likely scenario of Celes failing to save Cid your first time through and seeing her try to commit suicide, and failing before finding a reason to live. Life, death, and what it means to be alive? That's all there.
FFT was basically Game of Thrones: Ivalice. Shit was dark, and unlike FF4, everyone is dead-dead.
Also, FFX is literally about death and the human psyche. Societal doom spirals, everyone living each day never knowing if it might be their last because Sin might show up and delete their village. Summoners take Sin down knowing they're giving up their lives in the process just to buy the world a moment of peace.
@@Savashri I was confused by listing 6. Two of the playable characters in 6 attempted suicide and one succeeded.
There is no reason to ever cater this game to an audience of children as the average age of the MMO gamer is between 30 and 40. From a business perspective also, it makes no sense to cater to an audience that cannot regularly pay for their sub.
Not to mention an MMO with a Mature rating
this reasoning is stupid and gatekeepish. Thinking that FF is some form of elevated writting.
@@MauricioPlaza what part of what I said is untrue or unreasonable? Who am I gatekeeping from the game?
@@RED_Theory038 the poor children who cannot pay their own sub that's who!
@@hotsplayer2207 This game has always been catering more towards late teens, adults. People like me have been subbed for almost a decade. You don't just throw us out to try and bring in 7 year olds. Especially when this game does have adult themes in it.
This is a pretty accurate description of a problem I have with the story as well. Because there are some pretty dark and mind teasing concepts in the story. Like it touches on the paperclip principle, technology run amuck, fatherhood and the legacy we leave behind, what is the value of a soul, are we the sum of our memories? etc. But its all packaged like an episode of Sesame Street. Wuk Lamat is the goodest good to ever good and Zoraal Ja is the baddest bad to ever bad with a laughably unsatisfying explanation as to why.
i don't think every hero needs to be an anti-hero and every villain needs to be thanos. it's always people like you that complain about character design, no matter what.
@@oem4444 That's so far removed from what I said you're not even in the same country. I'm not asking for arch-types like the anti-hero or a conflicted villain or even characters with complicated motivations. My issue with the msq storyline is not just the lack of sophistication. It's the lack of communication of the character's clear and concise motivations. Like... Zoraal Ja wanted to become Dawn Servant to teach his people the importance of peace by going to war? F***ing... what? By the time we got to his exposition dump after his fight I just wanted him to hurry die already so I could move on to the next trial. I did not know who this character was and I dont care what he has to say. I heard it... but it was far too late for me to give a shit.
Wuk has a similar issue but in a different way. We spend more time with her than any other character in the game and we know fuck all about how she plans to rule tural or what her asperations are for her nation. Her motivation is to make her people happy... OK, great. How? What's your platform? How do you plan to do this? We spend too much time with her for it just to be friendship and rainbows. Or for her to be such a simplistic and static character. It can be done... but in an adventure story writing a static main character is difficult to get right. Why? Because the adventure is a vehicle for a character to accomplish a personal journey and is usually a reflection of that change and themes. But Wuk Lamat doesn't change hardly at all. She's the same person she was as when she started. Contrast that to Alphinaud- He wasn't an anti-hero or had complicated motivations. He was a snot-nosed know-it-all who set out to do good but his ego and naiveté proved to be his downfall. Alphinaud now would never make that mistake again.
The worst part is, we've had the "young naïve ultra-idealistic saviour" already. His name was Alphinaud and his character only became interesting and not grating when he finally got slapped down by reality at the end of post-ARR.
@@NabsterHax There's a lot to unpack why alphi's story worked and why wuk doesnt. That's definitely one of them. Can they do something in the post DT msq to make her work and dealing with her in DT worth it? Maybe. But All signs point to the writing team shelfing her like Aymeric. He did his thing and he left the story.
I was honestly so tired with their BS, I just wanted to be done with that family at the end. These people are supposed to be tackling the future of an entire country spanning half a continent, and they have the rationalization of teenagers.
I completely thought Erenville would take over as POV NPC after the coronation; he and Krile also had far more connection to the latter story, but of course Wuky had to be the one who goes "sPhEeeeeEEEEnE" to the end. I honestly would've preferred running a Tuliyollal-foundation story with Two-headed Lizard Jesus instead of his adopted kids.
I don't think there's anything particularly wrong about telling a simple, straightforward story like Dawntrail's. The problem lies in HOW that story was told. In Dawntrail's case, it almost completely disregards the audience's ability to interact with and interpret a story in the first place.
Let's consider Wuk Lamat in the earlygame. The story presents her to us as the next Hokage: a plucky, energetic shonen protag who has a knack for getting along with everyone, yet clearly has much to learn about how the world works. Her ability to bridge divides is what makes her stand out next to her peers (Zoraal Ja's ruthlessness, Bakool's brute strength, Koana's cold intellect). This character trait is fine, because we expect that her naivety will be tempered somewhat by the trials ahead, and she'll come out a wiser person as a result.
But Lamat never has to learn from the consequences of her actions. Bad things happen TO her, but we and the gang are always ready to prop her back up on her feet. She never has to learn from her grief and push on ahead herself, with her peers supporting her instead of doing the lifting for her. The worst example of this is when she decides to head back to the Moblin village and gets kidnapped. We know she's the highest-priority target on the continent, yet we don't offer to escort her back. After we save her from Bakool, nobody scolds her for making such a stupid decision. Lamat learns no lesson. She undergoes no character growth. We just go on our merry way to the next zone.
The frustrating thing is that fixing this storytelling problem wouldn't even require the writers to change much (if anything). I'll spitball a few examples:
- When we meet the Hanuhanu: Wuk Lamat tells the chief how much she loves the windboat festival. The chief is flattered, but when Lamat goes on to tell him that she thought it was some kind of carnival, the chief is mildly offended. He explains that it's much more than fun and games; the festival is an ancient tradition that the Hanuhanu hold dear, and that Lamat should acquaint herself with the cultural significance of the materials used in making the boat. Humbled, Lamat is somewhat embarassed, but then asks you to help her learn more about the gems, feathers, etc. that make up the boat. The Hanuhanu are honored that Lamat actually put in the time and effort to learn about their culture, instead of disregarding them like her opponents did. After completing this side area, Lamat says she learned a valuable lesson: to rule a diverse populace means learning about its many cultures, and that by participating in the windboat festival, she has a better understanding of what makes this tribe of people tick.
- When Lamat almost gets ripped off by the Pelupelu: this could have been a valuable lesson for Lamat. Erenville and the WoL just let Lamat slide, though, and we continue with the contest. What I think SHOULD have happened was that word would quickly spread throughout the village that the young princess is a fool. Talking to Pelupelu throughout the village would prompt them to say that they can't trust a queen who's easily cheated out of her money. How can they expect an easily duped leader to have their best business interests in mind? The trading quest would then prove to the Pelupelu that their profits are indeed safe with her, partly due to her shrewd business sense and partly because she has the know-how to gather a council of wise traders around her. I mean, Zoraal Ja's warmongering would set the markets in peril; Koana is more of a bookworm than a merchant; and Bakool clearly doesn't care about money. Lamat is the clear choice to be a leader, and she's won back the trust of the Pelupelu. Lamat is, once again, humbled... but she's also learned that you can't apply your own standards of good leadership to all of the people you rule over.
And that's just for the first few hours of the game. I was shocked to see that the WoL, despite being Lamat's mentor, NEVER pushes back on her idiocy. Instead of coddling her, we should have had the opportunity to tell her that she was flat-out wrong about something in the story, or that we had made similar mistakes in the past that she should instead learn from.
Other random story points I would have liked to have seen:
- Koana character development: We know he's a shy catboy who had some traumatic experiences with his old tribe. But so far, we know nothing about the man himself. What if he had a hot streak beneath his cool demeanor? For example, when his sister gets kidnapped and we interrogate the bandits, what if Koana pulled his gun on them and we had to talk him out of killing the bandits on the spot? Then, he would apologize and thank us for cooling him down. He'd tell us that while he normally puts on a cold exterior, he's nervous deep down because he always has to prove himself. His love for his sister is his weak point, and he loses his cool if she's ever threatened. He promises to control his temper better from now on; after all, a king who acts irrationally when under pressure is no king at all. Then, when we rescue Lamat, we see him apply his promise in real time: instead of shooting Bakool Ja Ja, Koana pauses for a moment, and then shoots into the air to get everyone's attention. Bakool Ja Ja doesn't negotiate anyway, but at least we'd see some character development in the Koana department.
- Erenville and his mom: Sure, seeing her go is sad. But, apart from Cahciua being a generally likeable character, we don't really get a good sense of the relationship between Erenville and his mom-bun. What if we got a little side segment where Erenville talks about how his mom taught him everything he needed to know about tracking wildlife? What if she had instilled in him, as a boy, a sense of wonder and respect for the natural world - and that he should avoid disrupting that natural harmony at all costs? Then, later on, Erenville could reveal the source of his anxiety to both the WoL and to his mom: by becoming a Gleaner, he felt he had failed his mom's teachings. While he had become a successful gleaner, he also knew that many of the creatures he had captured would eventually become test subjects in Labyrinthos, or they would become pets for wealthy nobles. He would have a bit of an emotional breakdown... but the ghost of Erenville's mom would reassure him that he had not abandoned his principles, and that she forgave him. Erenville would finally get closure. We'd also be shocked, because we would have just witnessed a recreation of a person's soul expressing genuine empathy for a living being that's supposed to be her son. Our decision to shut Cahciua off, then, would be even more heartrending than it already is.
- After the death of Gulool Ja Ja, Gurfurlur should have given Lamat a chance to commemorate her late father in stone. She and Koana would, together, carve an engraving in a Yok Huy stone to remember the great ruler. Afterward, Gurfurlur would turn to us and ask us if there was anyone we would like to commit to stone. The player could then make a decision to choose between beloved dead characters: Moenbryda, Papalymo, Emet-Selch, Hydaelyn, Zenos (lol)... the list goes on. Then players could have argued on twitter and reddit about who the best person was to commemorate! Wow, social media marketing!
Anyway, I just wanted to pretend to be a story editor for a moment. Many of DT's problems are easily fixed, but the fact that they even needed to be addressed at all is disappointing.
I've made very similar comments to my friends about these points. The issues in this expansion are so glaring that the playerbase is able to fix them on the spot. They threw away EVERY opportunity for Wuk to learn about her own character flaws, and they shut every case when previous expansions would have left them open to touch on them later. I think at this point, a good way to save it would be for Tuliyollal to become engulfed in Alexandria while you're away doing a fetch quest, and you come back to a time-skipped Wuk Lamat who's jaded and learned the ends of ideals. Her father was an incredible ruler who united the nations but couldn't keep them that way forever... she should suffer a worse fate and a bigger lesson, IMO. If they don't pull something like that, the entire expansion was just a fucking waste.
Epic comment
What's weird to me how they seem to challenge their own previously set-up questions, but then completely avoid engaging with these subjects. The entirety of Alexandria and Living memory so obviously seem to evoke themes that were present in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. What does it mean to be alive? What form does life take? It seems like it juxtaposes Emet's challenge to the players. That we, as pale imitations, ephemeral and utterly devoid of meaning, ARE in fact worthy of life. In Endwalker we once again go into this, nicely encapsulated in a speech by G'raha to the memory of an Omicron. He proposes that it isn't who we were, who we are now, our memories, or even our form, that determines what makes us human and alive. As long as we have aspirations to keep moving forward, we ARE alive. They go even further in the tribe quests, where the fragments of emotion given form by Dynamis at the edge of the universe start to build a new life for themselves.
We then get to Living Memory and completely sidestep any moral complications about these living memories. They're just copies, given form by stolen souls. They're not *truly alive*. Even though these memories can hear, feel, think. They can experience new things. They can change beyond the memories they are based on. That's how Living Memory is presented to us. For some reason only G'raha entertains the theme here. How he sees these people as real, and there's people he would also want to bring back. But the ends don't justify the means, as their existence is a danger to all other life. There's a clear 'us or them' present, which would push us into Emet's role in Shadowbringers. Not 1:1, but he also needed to destroy a civilization in order to salvage his own. If ever a moment to mix in some Emet flashbacks, it was in Living Memory. It's basically Aumarot 2.0.
But the writers seem to think creating some moral ambiguity isn't something the players can deal with, so they immediately attempt to make it as black and white as possible. The red carpet is rolled out. Every character we interact with seems to be perfectly fine with erasure, while others remain blissfully unaware until they are unmade. I hate the final two zones, because it tries to tell this story, but then treats me like an absolute child.
Thank you so much for expressing what has been on my own mind for days! And for bringing up specific instances of the nuance they previously brought to these questions - what is life, what is a soul, what is memory? Ultima Thule seemd to me to bode well for the future of the MSQ as they gave us no easy answers to these questions and suggested that as the MSQ progressed, complexity and nuance would continue to be part of the story. How soon I was proven wrong.
Living Memory is indeed Amaurot 2.0, but it was an Amaurot verging on parody. On the one hand the writers want us to feel sad for the passing of these people, on the other we are continually reassured that killing them is ok because as Emet once said to us - you are not really alive, therefore I am not guilty of murder if I kill you. This MSQ feels less like a new start than a deliberate erasure of everything we have experienced before. Including the character of our Warriors of Light who have now canonically committed mass murder, but a mass murder which is not really murder if the opponent is sufficiently dehumanized ("Not Really Alive") and as long as the WoL feels a twinge or two of sentimental regret. The fact that we are in an us or them situation is irrelevant here - it is the writers who created this illusion of necessity. Amaurot was moving and compelling because it is aware of its own unreality, it is a sad simulacrum of a world loved and lost. One cannot walk in Amaurot without knowing one is dealing with phantoms. Living Memory on the other hand is like a nightmare out of Baudrillard - a fantasy that has replaced reality - meritricious in every way. At first I thought the writers might be playing with these ideas in some complex and interesting way, but as the zone progressed I realised that no, I was supposed to take this at face value, exactly as it was. I was in Disneyland and Disneyland had replaced reality in a game unaware of its own ironies. I was supposed to pull the trigger shed a tear and move on. My Warrior of Light has retired to the Cafe at the End of the Universe and he's pissed.
@@qamarqammar7629 It seems the writers purposely created this dilemma. Since they want us to feel sorry for the living memory shut down by making us feel they are alive like any other person. And logically, they are Alive, but they are a watered-down and unnatural version of organisms that isn't even self-sustained. Because they need the Lifeforce of natural-occurring organisms.
@@qamarqammar7629 Fandaniel said: "Just because I inhereted the Soul and Memories of another, does not make me that person, and neither who I was before. I am neither." Which is more technically true, but as G'raha put is "we are the continuation of who we were" so even memories written on another Soul technically still makes you that person, to a degree, since you lost half of your being. Like 'the paradox of the wooden boat pieces.'
Furthermore, Souls aren't meant to be the same how DT portrays them, like blank pages. They should be like fingerprints--unique. As the Ascians affirmed many times. So memory and soul affect each other, making individuals--Unique. However similar they may look.
@@qamarqammar7629 As for the need of Lifeforce. A Novel I read explained Lifeforce being the binding of Soul and Flesh, though tailored-made for the combo since Souls and bodies are different... But regardless, it was a convenient plot that the Electrope, which can convert Lightning energy into any other type, couldn't create lifeforce... And conveniently, they didn't bother to find other solutions to their problems...
So should they continued to live, the Endless would probably have to create 'Farms' of creatures to extract their lifeforce, as they would literally run out of humans to absorb. A truly bleak dystopian future to sustain pale imitations of life, even far more pale than our soul fragments. Unnatural aberrations.
I think it sux that we had to end the endless and it was a mass termination of life indeed, but nonetheless inevitable, as the endless existence was a death threat.
@@joshanonline I would've been nice if DT bothered to engage with that. I think there was something interesting there. Especially since we're on the end of the 'exterminator' here. In the end it is 'us versus them'. The Endless, alive though they might be, are a threat to all of existece. But in my opinion they tried way too hard to unburden the narrative from the 'I am exterminating these lives to keep them from destroying the ones I love' implication. Which feels cheap and sort of vapid. They could've easily removed the idea that the Endless will eventually absorb all souls to sustain thmselves, and make it just about us forcing Spene to come to terms with the deaths of her subject. That puppeteering their memories isn't for them, it for her. And it's time to let those people go. Instead they try to play both sides to make sure the conflict is nice and easy to digest, and it comes out worse because of it. I know that the whole soul power concept is core to the conflict, but that's sort of the reason why I feel this whole part falls flat.
In trying to write for everyone, they reached no one. The writing is 100% the biggest weakness of this expansion. There were so many cutscenes that could have been instances or even dungeons, yet... it was made into a cutscene instead. So disappointing.
Also, why is everyone not talking about the fact that Krile was hyped up to be a big part of the expansion in the EW Post Patch content, only to get sidelined extremely hard minus 1 part that really could have existed without her?
I feel so robbed regarding Krile. They gave her a new job, she tags along the whole journey, her JP VA is even featured extensively in SE YT contents and she barely plays any role in the MSQ. Even the kid stole her moment to open the door to the "City of Gold"?!!And now her parents are gone and with them her connexion to the shard she originated from... Such a shame.
I agree, they completely shelved Krile’s story until the end and treated her and her situation as a side thing. We’ve known Krile now since Heavensward, so this whole thing with her story is a huge deal and we’re more connected to it than anything Wuk Lamat.
Speak with Wuk Lamat
Speak with Wuk Lamat
Speak with Wuk Lamat
Cutscene
Speak with Wuk Lamat 😂
Quality DT wrting! Where the WoL is a sockpuppet, Erenville and Krile got robbed of spotlight, and we were promised a fight with the Scions that never happened.
This is amazing. You know Zepla just did a video highlighting your same exact point? lol. I haven’t watched it yet, but could we just leave Wuk Lamat alone for two seconds 😭
Dont forget the "Speak with 0/3 citizens"
@@ApocalypzysXIV It's more like Wuk Lamat can't leave US alone. I checked out after the cutscene where we were talking with the Dawnservant after our solo fight with him, and she found out we were hanging out with her papa, and she couldn't stand it. So she shows up to interrupt us, and make us go run an errand while she goes back to her Tacos. Because heaven forbid we have a conservation with the Dawnservant, without her there. After that, I started skipping cutscenes whenever she showed up. I'm 44 years old. Been playing FF since 1987 and subscribed to FFXIV since 2015. I am not here for some childish Disneytrail game. I've never skipped cutscenes before in FF, until now. If they don't pull their heads out of their asses at SE, they're going to lose ALOT of subs.
Square was really excited to feature the female Hrothgar lol.
Speak with 3 people then 4th appears. Then speak with Wuk Lamat.
I think what frustrated me was the villains. We had Bakool Ja who was the most antagonistic character at the first half of Dawntrail, then it became a whole thing with him having a sad backstory as if it was supposed to absolve him of his crimes and make us feel sorry for him. However, they did give him a teeny bit of redemption, but in the short span of time it happened, the redemption made little sense. Zoraal Ja, I am confused on why he became the *actual* antagonist towards the end, and not really sure why he became so bitter towards his siblings or formerly departed ruler. It would have made sense to have some sort of flashbacks in their childhood and see how each of them were raised and it would have made more sense on why each character adopted certain ideologies; they kinda told us over showing us. I mean of course, they gave us more insight on why Wuk Lamat thinks the way she does, but Kona-Shame and Zoraal Ja does not get this much in depth insight to their resolve. Then there is Sphene. . . . She annoyed me the moment I saw her. My thoughts were another Emet Selch. And much to my dismay, I was right. I felt like most of the story for the villains (except Zoraal Ja) was: "They been though some horrible things, don't be too mad at them." No. . . I'm going to be very upset with them! They did really messed up things! Sphene irredeemable! Bakool Ja, also irredeemable even if he showed a change of heart! He still has to answer for his crimes (which was said in the story he'd be punished accordingly but that feels so unsatisfying honestly).
You've managed to address some of the concerns I've been unable to quite explain through my analysis. These are also some of the frustrations that I experienced when going through the main story. The Bakool Ja Ja situation bothered me as well along with the one character who's supposed to be the leader of that zone and managing the Blessed, dude was straight committing atrocities and just changed his mind by the end and everything was good to go - didn't even lose his position or anything. It's just wild to me, I'll be making a video here soon regarding Justice in Dawntrail, because some of this stuff didn't make any sense.
@@ApocalypzysXIV The Bakool Ja Ja situation could be understood where he's forgiven and gets redemption for most of his actions EXCEPT him fully knowingly releasing Valigarmanda, the primal level monster that would have killed thousands if not more had we not been around to stop it pretty much the moment it came up. And he just FULLY gets away with basically condemning thousands to their deaths
@@thewallsspeaktome3507yup, that Bakool JaJa situation was similar to deploying a nuclear bomb then us having to go and deactivate it, and then saying “yeah, no big deal”
@@ApocalypzysXIV You know what that's a perfect allegory for it.
Bakool was, like most of the MSQ, a missed opportunity. He started off as a saturday morning cartoon villain which I thought was fun, then revealed why he felt the need to force such an absurd persona. Then decided that was a redemption arc because they needed to be done and get back to lamat so we could move onto sphene who...did not once ever click for me. All to show that lamat went from baby to gigachad in about 3 days.
I think what they did was play it safe. Dawntrail's story was a bog standard shonen anime/Disney movie/McDonald's Happy Meal product designed to not offend. In doing so the result is bland, lifeless, simplistic, and yes childish.
Did we play the same expansion? It's very uniquely Final Fantasy, and only works because of the lore they've built up over the last decade. I don't know how you guys got this far into the story if you don't like it this much. Dawntrail has been a retread of many of the story beats you experience in previous expansions, shown from the perspective of those who have already had to deal with all of it.
I have no idea how you can see a story that discusses the concept of wiping souls of memories and using them as currency, and how that would affect a civilization at large, and stand around calling it "bland, lifeless, simplistic, and yes childish". None of those words are apt, not a single one.
@@SupaFly-gx1zo I really don't know what you played. I will agree with you that they did a lot of retreading which is well in line with not taking any risks whatsoever. Zorall Ja? He's like Nero except without any of the eloquence or charisma. Sphene? Gender swapped Emet-Selch Lite. Her devotion to her people is inviolate. Invincible. But she actually does like you... just like Emet!
Recycling the dead? Souls as a commodity being hoarded and fought over? This is Religion 101. Welcome to Sunday School.
@@clintmatthews3500 The worst crime of it all was the giant missed opportunity of the politics of all 4 claimants. They only touched on why the people chose to follow certain claimants without ever getting deep into any of it.
That's where the story SHOULD have went and why was it in the interest of the Player Character to see Wuk become the Dawnservant. Nope couldn't bothered to go there. Instead we just get a string of shallow fanfiction-esque writing.
I honestly could have done without Alexandria and Solution 9. It just felt shoe-horned and way out of place for what should have been a Wildwest/New World exploration expansion.
If anything Alexandria+ Solution 9 should have been a 7.3-7.55 landing for the patch...nope.
Then what do we expect getting a bunch of writers with only small bits of writing in non-critical roles. Every Beast Tribe quest has been mediocre at best, boring at its worst. Yoshi P really dropped the ball hard on 'giving a chance' to these guys.
@@SupaFly-gx1zo, uniquely final fantasy? Maybe final fantasy 13, and even lightening's halfassed written story is a farcry from this travesty. This story is absolutely bland. There's a reason there are so many callbacks to the Thirteenth by the other Scions, and when you compare Zero's story and Wuk Lamat's, the latter's is like Disney's Star Wars. Nothing about it is "uniquely final fantasy". Final Fantasy if anything is about complex characters, especially the MC and Villian. Think Cloud and Sephiroth, Squall and Seifer, Zidane and (I forget the dude's name), or Kefka... Dawntrail isn't even in the realm of Final Fantasy.
@@SupaFly-gx1zo We clearly didn't, or you are simply inspired by, through your own admission, that which was "a retread of many of the story beats you experienced in previous expansions". The bones of the story may have been good, but the story telling was crap and cohesion and consistency utterly ignored. Aetherology in FF14 got a whole lot more complicated, and not in a good way, as SE just threw things to see what sticks to the walls and from a narrative perspective it was entirely "tell, dont show", which reduces any story to "bland, lifeless, simplistic, and yes childish" no matter what. But hey, some people are too stupid to chance leaving their response up to them, so writers ought to tell you what you feel, how things are, and gosh darnt we better have an NPC come and explain to use the cutscene we just watched, just in case... I mean, its not like we've run across another worldly power that wants to bring back and preserve its dead at the expense of our living, and intends to do so across all the reflections unless we stop them.
Problem with constantly traumatizing your players with heavy subjects expac after expac, is apparently they can become like hit dogs who don't know what to do when the hand isn't a fist.
It feels like the story outline was written by a professional, and then filled in by an amateur that tried but failed to replicate standout moments from prior expansions while keeping it "light hearted" by padding it with anime comedy tropes. There *were* mature concepts present in this story that were either completely ignored or resolved in a single sentence, which only added to the frustration.
Quite literally happened. The MSQ writer moved up and the back ups took over.
ishikawa wouldnt have let the ball drop so bad if she had full control smhh
@@rhen4057 Rumors say, Ishikawa is working on a different project and never even touched DT...
i liked the last part, but my main complaint is that the Wol feel like a npc in most of this story, and instead we have a bad-written character who take the spot (wuk-lamat). the first part was stormblood tier at best.
No joke. My character agency in this expansion is in the negatives, which is so whiplash jarring from Endwalkers high of character development, even in the patch content.
This has been my main gripe. There are so many darker themes and so much beautiful writing throughout the game, then suddenly they go through phases of what feels like Saturday morning cartoon filler episode writing for 5~10 year old kids. At a few different points it has made me seriously question why I am playing the game.
It is just very bad writing that tries to copy previous success. 0 depth/complexity, cookiecutter story, unimaginative, amateur, filled with filler.
You have 20+ hours to tell an amazing story and it failed in all fronts. They need to hire better writers. Movies tell a complete story in 2 hours. Storytelling is so bad in this game and underutilized with weak outdated quest design and gameplay.
Ishikawa carried, but no longer. Writing is very amateurish. It could be so much better with competent writers.
They do have adult themes in dawntrail, but problem for me is that they are doing the same things again, but little bit different. Last zone goes through the same themes as last 2 previous expansions, so feels like I have already seen and done that, too predictable.I just feel like after Emet Selch, they try to do the same thing again and again.
Talk to 3 people and then talk to Wuk Lamat
Make sure you ask what frozen treats people like and totally not the ice cream you've seen everywhere at every stand
[Spoilers ahead]
I felt an almost physical difference in interest in the two different halves of the story, particularly in after reaching Heritage Found .
While part of it might simply be the fact that i'm a huge Xenoblade fan, and Living Memory and in particular Sphene SCREAMS xenoblade - she's basically Manus and Z combined in a waifu - I also felt a somewhat lack of focus in the first part that made many events hollow.
I actually liked Vuk Lamat, but that doesnt translate to a good experience with her unfortunately. The main issue in her being the main protagonist of this expansion is that we , as players, dont have *any* agency with her. I dont care if it's not my WoL doing all the cool things, but as much as i love a good videogame story, i'm still *playing* a game . Let me play out Wuk's attempt at getting the Alpaca. Let me play out how Wuk gets captured by the bandits, maybe she manages to fend a bunch of them off before being captured.
As of right now, Dawntrail feels like we're an observer, watching an observer see how the adventure goes on.
Accurate. Its a bit like SB, where Lyse is the main character and we take that backseat... Nothing wrong with that but as you said: too much telling, less showing. And also, the villians and side characters ( namely Zoraal Ja and Bakool JaJa were hollow - even if Bakool got more depth later, they didnt do anything with it :( hopefully that changes later...) were seriously neglected...
Yooo, i hella forgot that there are points in the story where they just say "this happened! omg!" but there's no gameplay, it was you waiting at a campsite, or waiting for Wuk to return for apparently hours (where the actual gameplay involved is just interacting 3-4 times with a "wait here" prompt). Those were all opportunities for solo duties with Wuk. completely missed!
@@SageTigerStar Yea but could you imagine doing a bunch solo duties as a limited-psuedo-warrior job class? I dont think that's the play. I think simply having a more active role in the story would've helped this.
@@thatwonmagnus338 i’m personally in the wheelhouse of removing half the content she’s featured in (or inserts herself into), in order for the other characters to get more content in general.
@@SageTigerStar I'd be on board with this. It's honestly amazing how much more time is committed to her compared to other characters.
Really love this video - well spoken, thank you!
The story was so great it made me skip the dialog so the writing was just perfect
The dude that did the voice acting for Wuk Lamat is horrendous!
@@gzuskreist1021 sppppp eeeen. listen to mee e. Wuk said calmly.
@@gzuskreist1021That's a dude?
I think this is something they started with EW already: when all the leaders come together and wholeheartedly proclaim "we're gonna send precious ressources to the Garleans, our former arch enemies whom we have fought for the last four expansions (five if we include 1.0), because they are so miserable right now and we wanna help" ... without any conditions tied to it. Thats not realistic. If it was something like the "Marshall Plan" or temporary economic support then sure, yeah, thats would be comprehensible, but sending unending unconditioned support? I dont know how many people here have ever ressearched how so-called "developmental aid" works, or rather how it doesnt (!) work, but what happened there with Garlemald and the Contingent... sorry, "unrealisic" puts it lightly...
It seems DT suffers from the same mentality: that everyone is a plain good noodle and just needs some kind words. Hell, even ARR writing was more solid than that in creating characters like Lolorito or Gaius (yes, we are at a point where even these two have depth at that stage of the story). It was interesting to follow Wuk Lamat's journey, how she finds strength and what she learns, how that will impact her future decisions. On the other hand... every expansion sofar, except EW, has left us with open story lines to be explored in the patch content. At the moment, DT MSQ has set the stage. Nothing more, nothing less, similar to ARR: Wuk Lamat and Koana are the Dawnservants, we have the link to Radz-at-Han and Sharlayan, we have a rift-crossing device in our hands, and a direct connection for any randome person to another Shard (which certainly wont kick our behinds at some point or other...). It seems at the moment, that the Key and this other Shard will take center stage at some point, probably with the 13th.
Hopefully, Wuk Lamat will have overcome her sea-sickness at that point. It kinda overstayed its welcome...
A minor correction. The Marshall Aid was given to Europe with the implicit condition that the countries got money to rebuild and never reached out to the USSR.
As for the last sentence. Screenwriter Guy from Pitch Meeting has told us that audiences love it when the same joke is repeated over and over again until it's no longer funny :p
Can someone tell me why The end of the universe/Final Days are not mentioned by its people once? Not a single line I could find? Gulool Ja Ja seemed like a pretty epic and coordinated communicator and had relations with many across the world over the years. Were there no blasphemies coming for Tural? Was Sharlayan prepping the ark for Tural or were they cast out like they planned to exclude Garlemald since they deemed them bad people? This is bugging me more than anything. How did Tural fare with no Warrior of Light or knowledge of absolute despair coming for them all. Continuity is needed on this...
@@nielsjensen4185 I live in Germany, I know the core reason for the Marshall Plan ;) Still, something similar wouldve made far more sense in the EW setting, imho... As for killing a joke... at least she doesnt have fear of hights... XD
@@Lanntis This. But then again, the Final Days seem all but forgotten anyway, and since nobody of the closer cast died... I dont know about you, but EW didnt leave as much of an impression as it should have. While playing through, sure, you felt what was going on. But with post-EW, everything became a blurr... No sacrifices, no losses... everything had just blown over and in the end everything remained unchanged... One could argue that maybe Tural was just too far removed from Meteon's radius of influence, and that we just dealt with the thread so fast that the corruption didnt spread... It possible to explain it... but it still invalidates the thread the Final Days posed...
The key is obviously just a reason to enable travel between all the shard and the source in future expansion.
Existential dread while traveling with Dora the Explorer. I couldn't tell you who Dawntrail was written for. Edgy ten year olds? Wuk's god awful english VA didn't help the cringe factor either.
I also feel that certain parts of the story would have been better if my character wasn't there at all. You NEVER want to feel like that in a game like this. EVER.
I don't get why people think her VA was bad. I get hating Wuk Lamat's character writing or not being a fan of her character design but the VA genuinely made her character sound excited and happy about everything, which is exactly how the character was written. I think the VA did a really good job bringing to life the shit character she was saddled with voicing.
@Phynastor NO dude, the voice actor is cringe fest
@@john_7000 Ok why? The voice actress didn't write the lines she was given, she just read them off a piece of paper.
Unless you're gonna say the sound of her voice itself was cringe.
@@Phynastor The sound of her voice itself is cringe, yes.
@@Sithalos Hard disagree.
Someone in my Discord group said yesterday that she thought this was the best expansion ever and she loved every single thing about it. I sat there for a good 30 seconds just staring at the message trying to process this as DT clearly has a lot of very obvious and objective flaws, like VA direction and audio mixing. Some of the VA's sounded like they phoned in their voice lines.
Very interesting. Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but Shadowbringers is objectively better than Dawntrail. There is a case to be made for DT on everything except the MSQ.
I refuse to believe that people exist. Every single people I've spoke with, that I have confirmation that they're real people dislikes this expansion. Only random people in forums, maybe in shout chat or something, but no one I can testify is not a bot or something liked this. I refuse to believe they are real 😂
Y'shtola, right? Please tell me I am not the only one who thought Y'shtola sounded like her lines were recorded in a phone call
I would just ask if she played it with jp voices, cuz i know for sure it made it tolerable for me. I switched to english from time to time and gosh i couldnt.
@@mahuk. You refuse to believe someone has a difference of opinion than you? They all gotta be "bots" or "not real" purely because they like something you don't? Yikes dude. Get out of your bubble. I personally enjoyed the MSQ. It wasn't perfect, but it sure didn't seem as terrible as people like you are trying to tell me it was.
Another aspect I feel plays a role in the current state of the game is the Trust system. They have a built-in requirement to have at least 3 other known characters for you to run dungeons with to be on-hand so that the writing has to include them whether they fit or not. In many cases it is 7-8 others so that you can do you + 7 trusts in a trial. This alone pigeonholes the storytelling to include all these scions and other famous npcs so you can run dungeons with them. It lends to forced or tact on situations. I can think of 1 part particular where magically seemly out of no where and with no GOOD way for them to be there.. the extra npcs needed just run into the screen and are like "oh hey we made it so we can fill out the 7 man trust thing". =/
Still think there shouldn't be a way to do the few pieces of story content without other players.
Dps queues are not a valid reason to make the story into a 100% singleplayer game.
Couldn't we just summon them as needed with Azem's Crystal the same way we do our fellow adventurers?
@@greyngo I had the opposite issue. After enjoying playing 90-99 using just trusts, it was incredibly jarring to suddenly have to queue for the 100 trial. DF can be used for roulettes and endgame. If people want to experience the story solo they should be allowed to.
Before you meet the scions, your duty support for dungeons is local adventurers or, at times, members of the grand companies. They literally could have axed bringing the Scions along *everywhere* and just given us a few duties where we could have like...Wuk Lamat and a few locals, or in certain areas, the robots/endless who are totally nonchalant about their "souls". :P
Totally agree. You have perfectly described the vital issue with the DT storytelling. The intended audience.
While playing the MSQ I am filled with rage I have not felt before in FF14 storyline. No matter how boring, how tedious I am always all good with it. But DT makes me feel so humiliated. I felt they did not respect me. Immediately after completing the MSQ I went to the forum to vent my anger and it’s the first in my entire thousands hours of play time. But I wasn’t able to articulate, no one does, in the end all everyone can do is to put a blame on wuk lamat, though undeniably she is the worst written character. Then again it’s not only her. Even koana is horribly written. I am so shaken, by the way they treated the player and it’s no longer about the story. The amount of disrespect just made me very very sad and disappointed.
How I wonder, after 10 years of doing FF14 can they make such rookie mistake? Why does Yoshi P thinks the way the story is written can be green lighted? Which makes me to start doubting his involvement with FF14 MSQ. The raid is still good, but the MSQ way of writing is a total flop.
Anyway, I hope they understand the real reason and that they watched your video. You have the most clear explanation for the issue people are all complaining about.
the TUMBLR people.
I wish more writers knew that you could tell a happy story and still have it be nuanced and complex, appropriate for a range of audiences. Just because it's happy doesn't mean it has to suddenly break out into gospel singing and have butterflies fly out of people's butts. The tone change in FFXIV from Endwalker to Dawntrail wasn't the mistake--dumbing down the writing was.
Weirdly, the thing that annoyed me the most was the constant flashbacks in the story, as if players can't remember things for 5 seconds and that the story needs to hold their hands so they get the point (while just rushing through the more interesting things). There's one point where Wuk Lamat talks to a person at the bottom of the stairs in Tuliyollal, walks up the stairs, and has a flashback memory of the woman she JUST TALKED TO.
There doesn't need to be doom and gloom or Super Big Baddies all the time, but insulting the players' intelligence is not how you write a story without those things.
I'll say it. Dawntrail's MSQ wasn't good.
We are lead into the expansion with the expectation that there was going to be some sort of political drama over a right of succession for the throne, and it just turned into a shonen-style, Pokemon-esque journey to collect badges from different regions. There was no depth to the different claimants. There was no depth period. There was no political intrigue. It was just us following Wuk Lamat around for half the expansion all the while her exclaiming "I'm going to be the next Dawnservant! Believe it!"
Asking their target audience is a very good question. If they want to go after a younger demographic that this style usually appeals to, why is it after 4 separate expansions with a completely different tone.
I'm just completely floored that Yoshida signed off on this. Was he and his A-Team too busy on FFXVI when this was being developed to see how out of place this was going to be?
The second half was better, but they wasted too much time in the first half to allow for the characters and themes of the second to fully develop.
This whole expansion's MSQ is rife with missed opportunities to the point I think they had two expansions worth of ideas and cut them down to fit into one.
Like what was the deal with Sareel Ja? He seemed to have some ulterior motives, but gets killed before anything interesting can happen. And what was the point? To show that Zoraal Ja was bad? Why didn't he kill Ketenramm then? The game made it seem like he was dead, but then he shows up a few cutscenes later and just says he was jumped and knocked out. Why?
Why did Sphene team up with Zoraal Ja anyway? Did she really need anything from him after the gate was opened? Wouldn't it have been better narratively to have her kill Zoraal Ja after he opens the gate and call him a "useless tool" just as he did to Sareel Ja moments earlier? Nothing would need to be changed much if this happened. The only major thing being that Zoraal Ja wouldn't be around to kill Galool Ja Ja and make Wuk Lamat want to come with us to stop/finish him.
Why didn't Sphene and the Alexandrians harvest the people of Yyasulani after they merged dimensions? That was their end goal anyway, and Zoraal Ja certainly wouldn't have cared about them. I get that they want to make Sphene a sympathetic antagonist to the player, but delaying her heel turn until the end is neither surprising nor interesting. There was no real motivation on her part to befriend the characters other than to use them to take out Zoraal Ja as he was given full power over Alexandria's military for some dumb reason.
I've been playing XIV since ARR first launched and I've never been this disappointed by the MSQ. I really wasn't a fan of the 6.1-6.5 questline, and I say that as a fan of FFIV. It just felt like an 8-man Trial series that they expanded on because they had no other ideas. I really hope they have something good in the works narratively in 7.1, because with the raid storyline being the Solution 9 Arena and the Alliance Raid storyline being a FFXI crossover, I don't have a good feeling.
Get out of my head. I agree 10000%
I agree with everything however to get into the Spheene/Zoraal Ja relationship. I think the issue was Spheene wanted to do what Zoraal Ja was doing by that I mean the whole conquering the other reflection to steal their soul energy to keep her people alive however she still had the memories of Queen Spheen giving her a moral conscience. So I think it was one of those I don't like it but since I am not the one doing it he is I am not the bad person I am just benefiting from his bad actions.
Thats why after he dies she feels she is left with no other option than to memory wipe spheen so that way she will no longer be bogged down with the moral issues that come with having her memories/conscience and can go about wiping out whole worlds of innocent people.
As for the “why didnt he kill Ketenramm?” point. Its quite possible its gonna be a plot point in either the patch MSQ or some of the side content. There are hints that hes not completely normal. Like hes a Roegadyn and they dont live for hundred of years.
@@legonidasCZ They gave him a unique model, like with Gosetsu... no way hes just your average NPC...
Is interesting how the combat aspect of the game improved so much and yet the MSQ fell so low.
The story feels like a retelling of the Naruto vs Pain story, peace through understanding vs peace through shared pain, at least for Wuk and Blue lizard dude. Except Wuk has a perfect life for the most part and so does Blue Lizard dude so why they developed any reason to be like this makes no sense to me. The second half of the story could have been interesting if it wasn't all colorful, predictable and cliche. Oh and that ending to the final fight was just insulting.
Maybe I would have felt less insulted if the story still focused on my character instead of some copy pasted Naruto/shonen character wanna be.
But your analysis is on point!
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I felt like they zeroed in on the combat since that’s what they were getting cooked on all throughout social media. They’ve known that their best content has historically been the MSQ and perhaps didn’t try as hard thinking and hey had it in the bag, but they fumbled big time.
I was the first person in my FC to complete DT because I had early access and nothing but time. I loved it at first and came to really like the main protagonist of this chapter of the FFXIV tale, Wuk Lamat. She's a character that is learning as she's going and realizing everything she thought she knew was very colored by her own ignorance. I like her. And I had inventive names for the zones in the xpac, Come on Eileen is Tulioyall or however it's spelled was nigh unpronounceable to me. The only truly unique zones were Urgopacha, Kozaomuka, and Shaaloani. The other zones were rehashes of SHB maps and area. The one zone I loved what Shaaloani, which I called West World. That is the demarcation of where my enjoyment of the story ended. We then traversed into Thunderdome, Tron, and then Disneyland. Sphene is a knock off Emet-Selch, even her dialog and attempt to justify her actions. Zoral Ja is a very bad retread of Zenos. Sphene's last word had me throwing myself back in my chair and sighing, "Oh God, it's Shadowbringers all over again." I liked it all the way up to Thunderdome then just suffered through the worst of it to get to the end. Then I stopped playing for two days.
TL;DR, I agree completely with the host and lament the really bad writing of this expansion in a game that has been so wonderful until now.
Their main audience is dialog skippers.
The number of times the same concepts were restated or just flat out repeated was staggering. It made me feel stupid at times, like they must think Im a complete moron that needs the details beat over my head over and over and over and over. It just didn't lend to much of any mystery, intrigue, secrets, wonder, discovery. It was just blandly presented. 2nd half I liked the story and wish they had smartened it up so we could feel invested =/
"Your happiness is MY happiness" followed by the cringe song SMILE, was the climax dor the most superficial, vapid, empty, insulting mantra regurguitated over and over throughout the expansion. It revealed a complete disregard for the existing playerbase for the sake of attrackting a new demographic they didn't even bother to figure out how to approach so they produced a generic soulless corporate box-ticking abomination assuming the playerbase would buy into it unconditionally.
The MSQ of dawntrail is all over the place. I enjoy parts of it many don't and don't enjoy the parts many do, and not for reasons where I think other people are "wrong" or "missing something". Too many good characters didn't get the time they should have because of lamat, and even her story was not very well done. Want to spend time building lore for all the zones on a slow burn? Then why are half of them so rushed and empty? Want to show lamat's growth? She went from 0-100-0-100 at random. Not enough time, despite spending so MUCH time on her, and wildly inconsistent.
I'm not sure who it's going for or from what angle. They seem to be unable to know how to do lower stakes but meaningful and personal.
Its a little too gentle of a review; I think leveling fair critcisms towards badly written characters and plots is fair.
(Yes spoilers)
The first issue is just Wuk. Precisely because she is written in such a way that she seems completely ignorant of even the most basic parts of the nation she supposedly loves and wants to lead. We, the Warrior of Light, must now basically teach a toddler how her own nation works while ourselves also having no idea of how it works.
Then there is Koana. The one we are supposed to feel has ignored his people... Except then it turns out he was right to be aiming for his peoples protection using technology because look what happened with Sphene. So not only is he 'taught a lesson' he apologizes for, but then he gets proven right and no one apologizes to him?!
Finally we have the emotional aspect to the story; this is probably the most egregious writing issue I have. We got through Endwalker. We resolved 90% of every emotional plot point left from Heavensward to then. We walked along a path hearing the memories of each and every person who defended, protected, helped, and who in turn we did the same for.
Oh no Wuks daddy died. Oh no Sphenes people have such a sad life. Its really impossible for me to develop any care for characters on screen for 10 mins to 1 hour when I just went on a 8 year journey to an emotional peak. Stop trying to force empathy into a story where you have developed nothing, its a fools errand.
The writer to me not only looks like they have little respect for the reader but also for the past writers trials and tribulations. Dawntrail would look astonishingly perfect to anyone who joined the game and went straight into just that expansion; it's an expansion that feels like it belongs far more in World of Warcrafts or Elder Scrolls Onlines stand alone expansion model than in a storyboard model like 14.
>She
On Wuk Lamat, she is absolutely unfit to be leader at the start, and the story itself acknowledges that. I don't know how this "character development = bad" became a thing.
On Koana, he is also unfit to become a leader at the start, not because he wants technological advances, but because he wants to introduce such things without respect to Tural's cultures. Once he tempers his innovative angle with a respect for his people's desires, he is universally praised.
To be honest, the only characters I felt any emotion for (besides annoyance at Wuk Lamat) were Krile and especially Erenville but that's because I was already invested in them from previous expansions. Koana I really liked but that was because I found him relatable and I don't often find characters in stories relatable.
Agree so much with the first paragraph about Wuk. I was surprised she didn't know a lot of stuff and history when we get around Tural.
Sometimes I feel like she's this mega-fan of Gulool Ja Ja and Tural but only in hype, not actually in knowledge.
@@antarath517 have you heard of the term black hole sue: from TV Tropes and I quote " The Black Hole Sue: Her gravity is so great, she draws all the attention and causes other characters (and, often, reality itself) to bend and contort in order to accommodate her. Characters don't act naturally around her. They instead serve as plot enablers for her, with dialogue that only acts as set-ups for her response. She dominates every scene she is in, with most scenes without her serving only to give the characters a chance to "talk freely" about her. Most people don't oppose her and anybody who does will either realize their fault in doing so or just prove easy to overcome."
That is basically Wuk Lamat to a absolute T. Her quirks are played off as "haha see she's flawed, so she can't be a Sue"....then you see both Koana and Bakool Ja Ja do complete 180 degree turns all because the plot demands and Wuk demands it.
"This is fairly blatant author favoritism in effect, with the author using his or her effective position as God of the story to carry the character through by her hands. In the rare cases when Sue fails, it will usually be a temporary setback that will either prove advantageous in the end or else just serve to hammer in the point of how special the character is. These failures can often involve just as much Deus ex Machina as her successes, setting up events in which she logically shouldn't fail."
Does the scene where she somehow gets kidnapped, after going through a dungeon with you make any sense? To lose a keystone that she eventually gets back and serves as a purpose of finding out who she really is.
Again there's no character development, its all smoke and mirrors.
Not for me.
edit: Nor their players in general, it seems. With Wuk Lamat filling what feels like 90% of msq, and not even making it to the top 10 most popular characters this expansion. Beaten by Wuk Evu...
Not even the first character whose name starts with Wuk.
They really smoked something bad when they created all those cringy names of cities and monsters. Like “wadewachimeqi” or “heheyiaowkachaka etc I don’t remember none of them
FF16, FF7, FF9. Some of the previous expansions. Dark and adult themes are when FF are at their best (they don't have to be without lighter moments) but shouldn't be without heavy and thought provoking moments. Hopefully they'll go back to that next.
I'm glad to see MC scores going more and more down. It's now at 65% of people either hating it or disliking with only 35% positive feedback. That's the only thing that gives me hope. We'll see what Yoshi-P says in the 29th.
The poor or 'basic delivery' almost completely nails how I would describe it. I also feel like they tried to put too much stuff going on in the 'story' of the last 2 zones. And it takes a while to just get to the point of Heritage Found after you get there, so really the last half of heritage found and Living Memory is SUPER rushed. I feel like if they would have handled that whole story arc in the .1-.5 series of patches they could have made something real cool out of it. But the way it was all just smeared together, especially after the 'basic' delivery of the first 4 zones just kind of showed me they didn't know who they were trying to target.
I feel like maybe they were just trying to throw a bunch of things out in a crowd and see what people thought was cool/acceptable out of it all, and they plan to go with whatever the audience tells them was cool. With that being said, 'I' have personally seen reviews get deleted criticizing the latest expansion, I have "read" (not personally seen this tho) people have complained about alleged targeting with insults/harassment for leaving a negative review somewhere. And I understand people being unhealthily 'devoted' or supportive of an IP they like, like a lot of people playing MMORPG's in general do get crazy af sometimes, but this just seems different.. especially with places like Metacritic or Steam just deleting negative reviews. Some say it's a character, some say it's a v.a. , some point at the lazy as hell writing, or the comically atrocious dialogue itself.. but a lot of these reviews get targeted as "Review bombs" or borderline 'hate speech'. The ones i've read that have been deleted were a mixture of things, some were pretty bad, others were people legitimately dissecting the expansion and explaining why they thought it was a negative experience.
I have left a review on steam today of dawntrail and it is still there, but I cannot view the review in a normal way and it makes me view only "played on steam deck" as a search criteria, and i cannot remove the criteria, so there is some wonky filtering going on to keep people from seeing the vast majority of reviews in the first place. cheers for the video.
Oh, gods, yes! It's like we were doing Veggie Tales! The vast majority of players I've met are 20+ years old. We don't need you to hold our hand through the whole thing!
I thought Dawn Trail was honestly going to be great. And it started out that way, with so much potential when we got to Tulliyulal. Even the whole quest for the Golden City to decide the next ruler sounded great. But what came after was handled so poorly. There were so many moments that could have been great opportunities for deepening our budding friendship with Wuk Lamat, and the writers just never went there! This character we are clearly supposed to come to care about, who we are supposed to be friends with, and yet it feels like so little was done to establish that outside of some very lazy fluff moments.
Many of the other characters were the same. The train scene later on was cool, but it just didn't resonate the same as it's counterpart on the First. And the reason that scene was so powerful was because we had spent time getting to know the characters that eventually banded together to help us. We came to know their feelings, dreams and tragedies, and that lead to a sense of gratitude when it was their turn to help us.
Also, it was okay for Wuk to be naive, to be untried in real combat and idealistic. But I would have loved to have seen her grow more, and could have done without some of her lines being so cheesy they made me physically recoil. I know they were going for something lighter this time after everything our characters had been through... but instead of turning us back into our 1.0 counterpart, shouldn't some of the story also focused on our character getting some actual time to breath and enjoy themselves? It was framed as a getaway for the Scions after the horrors of the End of Days. Why then were we pretty much pushed to the sidelines? Wuk should have been part of the 'team', not the entire primary focus. Our guide, introducing us to her home like we started off, not the sheltered princess with her entourage.
Spoilers:
Wut Lamet should have died getting crushed by a giant metal hand. I disliked her VA cause she was bland as hell
Agree.
@@Jiffles That's a great excuse and all, but why is it just now becoming a problem? Because I haven't noticed a lack of voice direction and talent in this game like this since ARR.
Not meant to be a jab at you. I'm actually curious.
@@Jiffles Are you serious? The issue with 0 voice direction for an NA studio already happened with ARR, that's why they switched to a UK studio with HW in the first place. And for ARR they had the excuse of a rushed complete remake with almost no budget to spare. FFXIV is SE's cash cow! This is ridiculous!
Yeah the patches with Zero it felt like they are treating me as a 5 year old.
It has warnings...it's not rated on the box for young children and a parent letting a child play FFXIV without guidance would be a really crappy parent because the game isn't written for children, it's not and it says it isn't. Just because children can get access through poor parental supervision doesn't mean any part of it should be softened or dumbed down or that anyone should make the mistake of thinking it or any part of the Final Fantasy series was aimed at young players. Good grief...Sephiroth is not a G rated character. I found Dawntrail to be...sort of sweet warm fuzzy sweater until the last 1/4 of the story...and when it turned dark it did so in a big way that was disturbing in a sitting in a movie watching a plot twist that has you cringing and clutching your popcorn too tight sort of way...which was AWESOME. The theme and content was so elevated and nuanced that it sparked a lot of great conversations through our FC in discord, conversations we're still chatting about from time to time and we're all looking forward to seeing where SE goes from here, because they utterly changed how Dawntrail was playing over the course of the story, and usually the "Big Reveal" isn't set out in the first helping....sooooo (insert suspense music here)
This is a good criticism, I did not like dawntrail for many reasons. Many amount to wuk lamat as a character being written more for a Childs film/book with peace, love, and happiness. As adults we know a ruler cannot rule with these ideologies. Also her complete lacking of knowledge of her people and how easy it was to all a sudden solve some of these issues. Especially the second area how it was just a complete coincidence. If she were to grow, it could never be at the pace it happened and how childish she was when we met her. I also would rate it lower cause they very well know who their audience is and had lots of previous work to go off of. So sadly I personally cannot . Also too many side quests squashed into main quests.
I don't think they meant to gear this towards children but can understand why it seems that way, since children's literature is often, well, badly written. Good children's writing is still complex though. I think they wanted to have a more cheerful and positive story after Endwalker, which some did criticize for being too emotional or sad, and they kind of missed the mark. Hopefully they really take the right lessons from some of the well-intentioned criticism and do better in the future, which we know they are capable of.
i hear lots of bad things about dawntrail which i didnt get to yet. MSQ has been extremely appealing to an extremely large audience. Far right gamers love this game, that's for sure.
It's okay, you can say it's bad.
I don't think 9-14 year olds make a good audience for JRPG. Not if you want to make money. Unless you want to fill the game with idiotic Fortnite dances
Fun fact: FFXIV is rated for 16+ in NA and 13+ in Europe. Even in JP it's rated for 15+, so the writers completely missed their target audience
As someone who is from Malaysia, a multiracial country with diversed culture and beliefs. Dawntrail's story and Wuk Lamat's desire for peace really hits home to me. I love this story and it resonates so much with me. ❤
can only resonate if you are a fucking child.
I was late to the game so when I first heard about the divisive reception, I thought it might be overblown. I understood the idea of a lighter direction for a new story arc and was fine with the idea of my guy stepping back from the spotlight; I was honestly a little tired of the WoL wank--what I didn't know was just how much they wank Wuk Lamat for no reason.
You save the damn planet but you're just this storied dude from across the sea; meanwhile all Wuky did was get adopted by the king and everyone fawns all over her. Her and her siblings' motivations were childish; less so for Koana, but he was stull just a less-abrasive techbro at his core.
The worst part is the story touches on serious themes, but that's only because it occasionally forgets it wants to be a lighter story. It never delves into what itself brought up. Poor Krile had to kill the parents she just met, and the story just completely drops that afterwards.
The writers had a clear idea of what they wanted, but had no idea how to go about it.
It came across like it was testing the waters for "the modern audience" we hear so much about lately.
Maybe I'm wrong, hopefully i am. But it was an obvious failure as quality went down & not up except for combat content.
I just hope we don't get DT 2.0 next, instead of 8.0 because that will be a deal breaker for me.
Mistakes are fine as long they are learned from, & I'm sure Yoshi P will do as usual.
The whole expansion has a layer of themes meant for "modern audiences" but weirdly enough the focal moral learnt by Bakool Ja Ja's people was that the race-mixing between the two tribes was bad & it should stop. So kinda oddly based message there.
The new writer did most of 6.X as well, his name is Hiroi and he did Sorrows of Werlyt.
I did a bit of research and apparently Hiroi did a few quests in 6.X, but wasn't the lead writer, as of course, that was Natsuko Ishikawa. It appears that Hiroi replaced Ishikawa as the lead writer for the entirety of Dawntrail.
Personally i say its too early to make a valid synopsis. Its the beginning of a brand new story. The darkness doesn't immediately kick in or the meat of the story. Probably won't get really into it til the 3rd story patch maybe...i say let it pick up before we get too critical of it...there is a woke feel to it but they shut it down in a sense making it more realistic. It takes more than emotion and empathy to rule, it requires wisdom and open mind to progression and council.
Yup, fair point. Thank you.
1st expansion I ever felt compelled to skip dialogue. Been playing since 1.0. Failed to make me care because it felt so forced with the latter half feeling manipulative and unearned. You don't get to add references to past FF games as a substitute for your inability to write an emotional story/conclusion. Especially if a good majority never played those games.
As playing through the story I kept thinking "a game for everyone is a game for no-one"... I am worried about the future of this game.
Also, the moment I heard the ffvii music, I instantly subscribed
Thank you! Yes, that song is epic! Hope you can enjoy some future content as well.
7.0's story has a lot of issues that made it bland.
-The first half of it exploring the beast tribes of the new region and they don't really serve a purpose to the story after that
-Wuk is a bland character and really didn't have much growth when compared to the other contestants for the competition
-Sphene is easily the worst villain in FFXIV
-We circled back to having The Scions back together by the end despite them disbanding and going their own separate ways
-The Golden City was an interesting concept but I thought the execution was sloppy. Was it supposed to make me sympathize with Sphene?
Wonderful discussion. The use of rubber bullets in the duel in Shaaloani should have tipped me off that this might be aimed at some other audience than the game has targeted before. Considering how much bloodshed we've seen and participated in this was just strange. As you point out 13 and 14 year olds are already reading Shakespeare, they can engage with the tragedy of a King Lear or the madness of a MacBeth. If the writers are really aiming even lower than that in terms of age I agree they should tell us now. It really did seem like a very marked turn from the past. If I know that the story is no longer targeted at me I will accept that and move on. Right now it is simply perplexing. And thank you for taking the time to produce an English language version of your review for those of us who do not speak Spanish.
You sum up very well the issue with this expansion. If you start ignoring how bad Wuk Lamat and many other aspects of the story are, you realize that the overall story was pretty good. New continent, war of succession, the mystery of the golden city, and the conflicts that happened while searching for it. In a VERY broad look, it had all the potential to be great. But as we all know, due to... let's say in a way to avoid spoilers, the small bits that were supposed to make that overall story great failed massively. Horrible character writing, many things that do not make sense in the world of ff14, the issues with Krile and Erenville's stories, and when the story looked serious a childish event would immediately ruin it again. Bad, it's just bad.
The entire MSQ felt like a Disney channel movie, it was THAT bad. Especially that weird music number at the end..shit was FF camp rock edition and it was just ass. The voice acting was also just so cheesy from Wuk Lamat it took be out of being immersed
Square took the Disney aproach to Star Wars.
I enjoyed 1.0 story and everything until Dawntrail. Yep even Stormblood.
DT is the first time i've ever felt disappointed in the game. They need to kill Wuk and fire the English voice actor.
If the DT patches end with her getting killed off, that would at least be acknowledging that the fans of the game are right, and she is awful... but I doubt they'll do that.
I find it funny that the same people that are always saying to everyone that ARR, HW and StB are a "slog" and there is nothing interesting there (even tho post-stormblood is literally the absolute pinnacle of storytelling and narrative in the entire game) are the same ones that place EW as the pinnacle of narrative (even tho the story is full of convenient plot devices, inconsistencies and an overwhelming lack of character development) and also praise EW as so "mature" and "dark" even tho Ultima Thule was all about "the power of the friendships we made along the way" while also almost defeated the last boss by showing them flowers.
But hey, I guess DT is the bad expansion after all. It's very hard for me to take people seriously when they say that DT is "corny" and "childish" but EW is none of those things at all. I feel like the only reason people like EW is because they were one of those people who went through an emo/sensitive phase during the pandemic and literally anything made them cry, even tho if EW happened today, I guarantee you everyone would be shitting on EW, especially Ultima Thule.
Endwalker could be boiled down to irresponsible Ancient makes edgy goth girl that was so sad she wanted to destroy everyone. Dawntrail was exactly the same thing, but they did it three times in the same expansion: Bakool Ja Ja had a sad childhood so let's free Valigarmanda so everyone is destroyed... and Zoraal Ja who is so sad he lost the throne so let's destroy everyone... then with Sphene who is so sad she wipes her memory so she can destroy everyone. It's the dumbest, laziest writing.
people that complain about how this story is lighter hearted are just not it man. If you look at the tone and be like "terrible unplayable..." Ya got issues, i like the change up from gloom and doom the last few years. I agree what i have experienced so far, has been a bit underwhelming and i really dislike Wuk Lamat as much as i wanna like her since she is genuinely a good person. But she is kinda unbearable to listen too.
Exactly my thought as well. Considering the stories that came before it - DR story is meh? 😅
Yoshi P said they would continue the story if people liked it so we'll see how they move forward but tbf ARR was a boring snoozefest at least up until Cid showed up but it was terrible at the beginning too.
True, again, hopefully they don’t focus too much on the story itself being the problem, as I think it really is a pacing and writing issue (essentially delivery). The new writing lead may not yet be ready for the task.
Not as terrible as DT.
DT Metacritics rating is BELOW ARR and just a bit on top of 1.0
Game Devs are constantly pandering to the 1% of gamers and ignoring their main audience
And then act surprised when their games do badly
It's made for the shareholders, the journalists, and the people who need to speak to a manager. This 1% has more infleuence than the 99%.
It's written for the youngest siblings out there. Least one contend creator mentioned something like that, Wuk's story resonating with them. Still feels like there would have been more sincere ways to tell the story. Ways less dismissive of the rest of the cast.
Like letting her FAIL parts of the contest.
One specifically would have made more sense if she lost and Koana won.
Sometimes traditions are just traditions and have no deep or useful meaning behind.
I completely agree. The story for me was just meh. I tried to keep up with it the i ended up just skipping all of it. But i also understand that its supposed to be a new beginning but it just fell short. I give the story a 5/10.
There was so much cringe. Absolutely agreed
Dude, your audio balancing needs work. The "background" music is totally overpowering your voice.
Makes little sense to cater to children, considering all the mature and sexual content in this game. Especially when there's a very large community of ERPers (most of whom don't even care about the story), many of these people will target these children. FFXIV already has a groooming problem, we don't need to make it even worse.
Yup, these are my thoughts exactly. I mean how many kids attend FanFest? Looks like a bunch of 20-50 year olds in those conventions. I’m so confused as to what they’re doing.
@@ApocalypzysXIV I share your confusion!
I personally didn’t like it at all, the story feels like it’s for children tbh, the power of friendship, learning about cultures etc etc.
Everything about Wuk Lamat felt forced, that’s mainly why I didn’t like her at all, people said the reason she is hated so much is because she is a happy person, but that’s not it at all, take for example Erenville’s mother, her character was really good even tho she is a happy character, but her impact was way bigger than Lamat by miles, I really hated everything about the story, thankfully the content was good
I think Wuk Lamat is hated for the same reason Lyse was in SB MSQ: she dared to take center stage while our WoL was only in the background. Many players dont like that XD
Don't understand why ppl suddenly are surprised that the power of friendship is a focus in FFXIV.
We literally fixed every problem since ARR with the power of friendship.
Lahabread final moments in ARR ? Power of friendship
Nidhogg ? Power of friendship (especially haurchefant)
Zenos ? Our friend
Endsinger ? Literally Power of friendship shielded us. We spent half the expansion to learn about other cultures in Thavnair and Ultima Thule...
Hades ? Still the power of friendship (especially our friend Ardbert). But also our friend Titania... G'Raha...
We literally befriended every faction we encountered since ARR. From tribes to continental sized nations.
But Wuk Lamat is too much, I guess.
@@Laranga01 Power-of-friendship is fine. It depends on how you wrap it up and present it. FF14 has always had the motto "alone we are weak, only together can we win", just think of Lolorito: we are by no stretch friends with him but we came to a mutual understanding and even some level of disgruntled respect. You can promote this trope without making people roll their eyes until they see their brains, or slam their heads on their desk because its just too much to bear... Wuk Lamat didnt break the camels back, it just too much all at once.
@@markup6394nah her naive and clumsy and “power of friendship and love” character is why i dislike her. Never been a fan of that kind of character presented as a leader and a main character (in books, anime, really anything). And the fact that game gave us no option than to call her by term of endearment when I feel like we were not even friends. Just shove that down my throat why don’t you. Had we even been able to opt out of that, it would have been more bearable. But nope, kept getting worse and worse. I would not have minded sitting back and chilling had the character had not been that unlikable. But alas that did not happen.
@@Laranga01 It’s not the power of friendship that is the issue, it’s the fact that it is shoved down our throats every time any challenge is presented. Heck wuk even keeps repeating that so often that it is her entire personality. Like I do not mind fighting last boss with friends but show me that, get to that point where the friendship makes sense and is enjoyable. If from the start it is shoved down our throats, then there is no excitement when everyone comes together at the end. It plays out like a 4kids shows that I used to watch when i was like 8.
The music is mixed too loud for your voice :)
Yup, I jacked that one up.
The music is too loud and overriding your speech..
Yup, I screwed that up.
The story for me has never been the main appeal, after HW I got bored. Hate the fact they don't kill people off, and the characters they do kill are actually interesting. Thancred and Zeno's both suck
I will never like the story.
Who DT is for? Young furry fans that like kindergarden level stories, clearly
The music is very loud.
Yup, I messed that up :/
writing to me
I’m glad you enjoyed it!
They are targeting FF9 fans.
FF9 fan reporting in, they missed.
Thank you for the English vid! I was shocked that the writing seemed to be aimed at VERY young people. Not the young reader section at the library, but like under 12 year (the young readers section contains Aesops Fables, Alice in Wonderland, Dracula, Robin Hood, and so on; all writing that eclipses Dawntrail in both tone, delivery, and maturity). The other half of the problem are the Apologist player base that either read/comprehend at this reading level (e.g. all the "This if fine, nothing is wrong" people) and those that otherwise support it and opposed criticism of it. We are never going to see another Heavensward or Shadowbringers with those players around. Gone is the maturity jump we got from ARR, its all 4th grade reading level and Disney princess song montages, and we're never going to get more like Shadowbringers with all these people insisting 'this was good'.
The MSQ this time was even worse then the story in "Sea of Stars" another dogshite game with a dogshite story.
The writer's name was "Hiroi" and wrote the Ivalcie Alliance raid storyline as well. Tells you everythign you need to know.
very good point. Writting was targetted to kids, even though you need to go through more mature writting (ShB and EW) to get to DT.
Kids shows don't depict governments actively invading and murdering innocents in neighboring countries, and they sure as hell don't discuss the concept of death or using human souls as a currency. Did you even play the expansion?
@@SupaFly-gx1zo This wasnt about the story, it was about the writing. Let me explain it this way: a good writer can make a bad story awesome, while a bad writer will ruin a good story. Dawntrail is an overall solid expansion with a fine story, but the writing is bad.
@@SupaFly-gx1zo The part where Erenville is dealing with his mother's death while talking to her AI clone, actively asking to kill her a second time. Peak writting for kids too lol. I swear ppl are not reading, and when they are, they're not understanding what they read.
The expansion asking multiple times questions about dead people, their memories and what makes someone "someone" if not its memories, is like the post ShB/Endwalker topics where mourning was a sub-text/explicit topic.
@@SupaFly-gx1zo Anime comes to mind.
Every expansion distills down to "power of friendship" nonsense, which is why we can have Bakool Ja Ja act like an ass and try to murder everyone constantly but have the literal child Wuk Lamat suddenly be fine about him because he has a sad childhood. The explanation we're given for Mamool forcefully have innumerable stillborn is they don't want to be forced to stay in their infertile lands but they could have just... have gone literally anywhere else. We're told the continent is huge and it seems the Mamool as happily accepted by the rest of the people, it's just them being stubborn because story. And don't forget that within one second of entering their area Erenville tells us about the unique aetheric energy the meteorite leaks into the surrounding area but somehow it's been a complete mystery why the ground is infertile for crops. And the solution they come up with is import new plants (which itself is fine) but the easier solution is simply MOVE THE METEORITES.
The first half of the story overall was alright. I liked the general concept of helping out Wuk Lamat learning about the various cultures as a way to earn the throne although I did find the execution of that idea to be pretty bad. I'd have preferred a more adventurous adventure rather than simply walking around talking to people. The brief period of suddenly being a Western was just awful and shouldn't exist. It's dumb. I get they needed a little breathing room to separate the escalation we saw in Act 1 and the story pivot in Act 3, but damn... the Act 2 we got was just disjointed and awkward.
Which leads me to the second half. Joraal Ja originally had some interesting motivation. His point was that a weak country would be vulnerable to an aggressive outside force, which is a legitimate concern. It even seemed for a moment that he cared about the people and his way of protecting them was through having an effective military. Then the writers brushed that all aside so he could be a psychotic murderer for all of the second half. The motivation went from protecting his nation by conquering the world to simply being more powerful at the expense of everyone to let's murder literally everyone. Then we have Sphene who's entire story was just a rushed mess. Again, we see the same problem of "I want to protect my people by murdering everyone else" that has been repeated in every expansion and THREE times in this expansion (Bakool releasing the snake-bird, Joraal being insane, and now Sphene). Leading to the story's climax in the end trial was just bad writing. The reason we're given why Sphere is now a murderous machine is that she deleted her memories so she wouldn't be talked out of her plan... but the reason we don't lose the fight is she suddenly remembers us and decides to have some mercy... WHAT?! The writing is so bad that not even the writers themselves can commit to their own damn story.
Now, let me rant about the arena some. The whole problem with souls and Regulators is that when the regulator triggers (either for a powerup or for revive) it consumes the stored soul. As in that soul now no longer exists. Yet somehow in the arena these fighters can somehow continuously trigger and retrigger the same legendary souls repeatedly (and also recover from physical transformation after they consume said legendary beast soul)? It doesn't make sense and as far as I can tell, wasn't explained. They just ignore the ENTIRE point of why Alexandria was in trouble to begin with.
Been working my way through the role-quests, and they feel of similar tone.
They're well made and enjoyable to play, but if you're looking for any kind of complex situation or intelligent resolution, look elsewhere.
Not for me clearly, it was so bad I quit the game for good. 14,000 hours poof. (obviously it wasn't the ONLY reason, the formula was getting old and the story was no longer carrying it and crumbled)
While basic, I really liked the story. After a story that was streched out over 5 expansions it is nice to have something simple yet good. And tbf, Ishikawa is a fantastic storyteller, it is really hard to reach the quality of her writing. Yes, the pacing is a bit slow from time to time, and sometimes Wuk Lamat is toooo nice and positiv. She recognized her flaws really fast and solved them, that was a bit disapointing. But the story overall, like you said, was really good and we will see what their plan for 7.1 and onward and for future expansions is.
The guy literally said the story was good for 9 year olds lol, did you see a different video ? Stop gaslighting people, the story was garbage trash and even toddlers would cringe on some scenes
Written for western gen Z audience. Looks like they been listening to the same focus groups that Disney uses.
I never read shakespeare and i am 40 and i am doing fine
[Spoiler ahead]
One of the issues with the second part of the story is that our long time companions have capabilities that are directly relevant to solving problems at Solution 9. For example, the ability to manipulate aether in such a way as to cure those afflicted with various forms of aether imbalance. We see a child affected by lightning aether imbalance as we follow Sphene. We are brought to Solution 9 with Alisaie in tow, whose familiar, Angelo, has been used to treat both aether imbalance on the first as well as various forms of primal tempering in Endwalker. Memory manipulation is also not a new concept and is part of curing the tempered. In fact, the ability to cure the tempered is so integral to Endwalker that it greatly impacts the protagonists' strategy for dealing with the first half of Endwalker's main scenario. Curing a child of aether imbalance would not change the outcome of the story, but certainly the dialogue. The memory manipulation feat is easily dismissible as an approach for freeing Sphene of the conservator programming by the timetable involved, being technologically incompatible, or some form of defense being employed.
The author puts himself in a tough spot by including such a character because by addressing those feats, he may find himself trapped into using those devices in such a way as to effect the ending. Especially given this is Final Fantasy, where overcoming the odds is both the norm and expected.
I had the same idea: this is a child with disbalanced aether, lemme fetch my friend, Alisaie, she'll fix this. Maybe this 'll be a story bead in later patches... Or maybe its again not as easy as we think, after all we destroyed several Allagan terminals to get this cure for Tempering, and this child only needs their aether fixed, not their memories. Also, in regards to Sphene, I dont know if our previous achievements could help there since that would require those memories to be sowhere in the system to begin with - which I doubt. Sphene was never "alive" when we met her: she died four hundret years ago, her soul turned into fuel and her memories altered. What we meet is not a real person but a machine pretending to be a person...
@@markup6394 We can treat it. The treatment for tempering is a derivative of the one used to correct light aether imbalance of a child on the first. The only difference between the two treatments is that the one for strictly hitting aether used on the first is much simpler as it doesn't include anything related to memories. It can also be done much more slowly because the patient is not hostile.
@@awerges2205 I didnt mean to say, we cant cure it. I just meant that it might take some more quests for us to adapt your method with Angelo to fit this situation :)
Some good points, which highlight how the lead writer for Endwalker was clearly unfamiliar with FFXIV's story... not even the story that JUST took place in Endwalker. To further prove your point, most of the post-Endwalker story also focused on curing aether imbalance.
Just because the story is simple, silly, and optimistic doesn't mean it's written for children. Adults deserve to be happy and hopeful, too, and some adults are stuck in horrible behaviors as a result of... either trauma or simply never learning different.
Near as I can tell? Disney's six or seven remaining fans, because it sure as hell isn't geared toward their usual audience.
Disney…you didn’t play the game clearly. It’s kind of anime, like EW was. Moreso even. Because of Wuk being the main character. But Disney….nah.
@@DuskWolf99 I've played the game since 1.0. Dawntrail is Disney-level garbage.
@@tek512 you didnt play 1.0
@@dbpx12 Prove it.
This is what happens when you let Sweet Baby Inc into things... Sony's already fallen sway to their blackmail, bullying, and threats. Boycott has to happen.
I'm soo agree with you. This extension is slopy, in French, they miss world on all phrase, it's realy hard to read. The Wuk Lamat caracters is realy poor, more than Luffy of One Piece. I have 35 years old, and I had the feeling to accompany my daughter to a circus. In compare, dunjon is soo harder than a large part of my audience reported to me that wasn't pleasant for them to do this containt. Added to that, the musique dont fit on many map. Many map haven't any visited house, just some warehouse on Tulyollal made map slopy. They are no many new skin excepte for the pelupelu. All the other was skin from previous extension. I'm realy disappointed to this extension, it's not a good new start for me. I realy hope they will do better for the futur.
I recommend to you to put your youtube comment for this video on full verification before publishing to avoid problem and to don't hesitate to ban agressive people, that's what i made on my video, probably too late, just a tips ;)
Have a good continuation !
Thanks for your input and the feedback!
Two words: Woke. Lumat.
CLEARLY a lot of fans have such a big sentimental attachment to the game that It would be impossible for them to even recognize that, for example, a cooking tournament in the middle of a succession event is the cringiest thing and far from a masterpiece.
Make someone who has never play FFXIV play through this msq (as I did myself with my friends) and you will be all the time defending the game and telling them "it will get better later I swear" well it didn't. Before the last boss it had such an annoying stretch, and most of the time it had annoying stretches. Like "hey lets travel by boat, but first we need a driver, oh, you know what I forgot about the food that they are not going to eat, let's talk to this character, but look that old lady".
Shadowbringers was peak, endwalker was peak, this... was not good.
[it was never about the cooking]
The task being a cooking competition was just a backdrop for learning more about their culture, which is why an important ingredient was buried under a war monument. Just how all the tasks were vehicles for learning about that location's cultural importance. Those tasks and their relevance to the local culture was genuinely the only writing in the entire expansion that actually made some sense (even though it had some weak moments). Most of the other writing was just plain bad.
I really hope more people talks about the main story, to SE notices that it wasn't really up to par, sure it couldn't have been as epic as the finalle of the major plot points, but surely it could have been better or at least the same level as Stormblood...
Also, it was very clear that the writers just couldn't get "their own" impressive final bit with the last zone and trial, basically copying what was already done previously but without puting much thought into it because they were just copying what was already done.
If anyone is on this video it means they finished the msq probably so...
Firstly, for the final zone it would be much better if we spend much longer there with more characters, for that zone and "pay off" to work, we would have to have interacted wih many more characters who are Endless and somehow where also acting outside of the servers. More characters like Cahciua, Otis and more, maybe some endless were given a "pass" to go around S9, maybe even outside and further into the continent and story. But that all fails because of the Dome sudden appearance, the closed gates, and the "blitz" done by Zoraal Ja.
Personally I wold have made it so, S9 managed to make small rifts into the source, and have been sending loyal people as scouts, maybe endless due their nature, and somehow due to how reflections and whatnot works, they succesfully are sent to the source, but they can't comunicate back to Alexandria, but since time is wonky they spend decades in Tural, living with the people, disguising their need of souls as adventurers and hunters, leading to maybe a new/old ally being an Endless and we only find out at the end.
Secondly, the fact that Sphene asked for OUR help in case things go wrong, and is Wuk Lamat that comes in, Ryne/Gaia style, to save the day... wtf... It's like they REALLY banked in EVERYONE loving her...
What this showed is that we were really not needed for this story, at all, any other NPC that is strong and has a good fame would have worked.
I don't know about others, but by the end I was so overl ydone already with Wuk Lamat, and was reall hoping we could swap Queens.
Overall, it was written and felt more like someone's self insert fanfic with the Scions in a new zone than a story written from the POV of the WoL.
Sweetbaby inc is behind this, i can feel it lol. j/k
Sweet Baby Inc is LITERALLY in the credits. They pushed this woke DEI nonsense... Groomers voicing main characters? It's so fucking over for square.
No. Actually they were behind this stale ass Disney channel plot.
@@Szriko No they are not in the credits...
The 3rd party contractors includes :
Jia-Hsin Chen
Asuei Ling
Yoshihide Sakida
Takashi Seki
Kosuke Taguchi
Kei Yoshida
ATTIC CO. , LTD
Barehand Modeling Studio inc
CGCG Studio Inc
Dalian first resources technology CO. Ltd
Digital Frontier Inc
Griot Groove Inc. LiNDA Team
Katsugekiza Inc
Marza Animation planet inc
Modeling Bros Co, Ltd
Modeling Cafe Inc
Neo Agency Co. Ltd
OLM Digital
OMNIS Inc
StealthWorks Inc
Studio Nowake Canary Island SL
Villard Inc
Please, stop lying and accusing publicly people of doing illegal stuff.
@@Laranga01 Woke propagandist making shit up to defend Sweet Baby Inc LOL
@@Szriko Just check the credits and give us the proof of what you're advancing then. Go on.
If it's "LITERALLY" in the credits, you can "LITERALLY" give us the proof. Or you can continue with your stupid behaviour and keep being a liar.
May be aimed at manchildren/disney adults considering Wuk Lamats fanbase
I have to admit, it felt like there was more dialogs than voice acting this expansion. And if I am right, i have no doubt that some people skipped or skimmed thru it. Not allowing the story truly sink in. In my personal opinion, Dawntrail is the most approachable expansion for newcomers ever. The character we all know took the wayside and allowed new one to develop but at the same time giving us enough clues on who WoL and the other established characters were.
Hm... no... I read every cutscene, every quest. I took my sweet time with MSQ, did every side quest as soon as they showed up and did some FATEs for faster mount speed... and... I'm sorry to say this but DT MSQ, overall a good story (!), but presented in a very infantile way. Also, and I admit this was the worst part for me: every reply option for my character was horrible. At points I wholeheartedly hated my own WoL. I like the new characters, and I agree that this expansion is a good foundation for later stories, but that doesnt take away that so many parts fell short, especially Zoraal Ja was disappointing given his prominent role in the story. Explaining everything he did with him having daddy issues is... insultingly bad :( Again, story on a whole is solid, but there were many parts that were severely undercooked.
"newcomers" lmao bro you have to play ARR plus 4 different expansions by the time you get to dawntrail.
Age has nothing to do with the story. It is maturity, have you not read social media? A 40 year old will act like a 5 year old all day. I believe the targeted people were the ones who judge things without putting an once of thought into their judgments and that can come at any age. They have to write for the lowest common denominator to maximize their profit and reach.
Maybe... but after HW and ShB, we can expect more from this team...
me, i love this story
why
FF14 is PEGI 16 so definitely the story is poorly written for its intended audience. It is childish and some dialogues are repeated as a mantra over and over again. The characters seem written just to be comedy interactions and not for an adventure dramatic title as it was.
It even seems that the writer does not even know anything of the past game story, the Dispair of Endwalker is not even mentioned even though is should have hit the entire planet as an example.
The is not intended and can never be for kids, not this title considering all that happens in the past stories the players would have access to and for all the interactions in game a child cound not be screened from.
They simply gave an approval to a script that gives no emotions and breaks the tension just where it should not.
Is this captivating story in the room with us now? There's a reason it has the reviews it does. it was a boring, force fed word vomit like every other MSQ, but less interesting and with more cringey lines, at least in the English version. "I feel for your people's pain" belongs in the 90's, forgotten. Instead of leaning into "be free, less rails, more exploring a new world built on mesoamerica" it was "here's some boring character you feel like a sidekick too, in a cutsey adventure where there isn't any real development mostly" like you get 2 hours of being told "midget race likes to trade" as if thats real in depth (only the gecko lizards got any kind of development). The only character that felt fleshed out and good was Zaruul, a surprsiingly well done villain that they didn't try to turn into a tragic, sympathetic antihero like they did with the overrated Emet Selch. While leveling I fought one (1) enemy in 2 levels. The rest is a tedious visual novel. I'm not sure Wuk Lamat evne held much appeal for 10 year olds because she was all over the place, and mostly yapped instead of did cool adventuring and action scenes that children love.
The story itself just isn't good, and that's why you're seeing this issues of who is this even for. It's all over the place. Endwalker was a disaster where they closed off all the real plotlines they'd built up, and now they're grasping at straws.