Dawntrail Story Review & First Impressions (Spoilers)
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- Опубликовано: 26 июл 2024
- In this video, I want to discuss my experience with the story of FFXIV's Expansion Dawntrail. Overall my experience has been positive, but during some parts I felt like it needed some tidying up and more extensive exploration or gameplay elements. Let me know your own thoughts about the story down below!
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00:00 Introduction
00:46 Zones
01:39 Duties
01:53 Soundtrack
02:42 Focus on Wuk Lamat
05:12 Filler Cutscenes
06:12 Pacing Problems
08:40 Gameplay Elements
09:52 Predictable Characters
11:34 Unbelievable Plot Developments
12:55 Unbelievable Characters
14:24 Scions as Mascots
14:50 Retreading Old Plots
16:08 Outro 
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I feel like they did Bakool Ja Ja dirty. The dungeon would have been a prime opportunity to face the horrors of his countless sacreficed siblings, and maybe lift his torment there. Instead we get another seemingly random temple with a fancy exit. Didn't they explicitly mention sealing those away for fear of danger?
I think a positive, interpretation for the Otis death, is that he was able die protecting the Queen, the one thing he was unable to do in life, and his biggest regret.
If you overlook the thoughtless cruelty in letting him believe that, when all he was really doing was protecting one of the cold-blooded queen’s disposable holographic phones that she’ll no more miss than poor old Namikaa.
THANK YOU - I had the exact same reaction to Otis' death. Sphene's most defining quality is that she wants to protect her people at all costs, so allowing him to sacrifice himself for her when she's not in any real danger was so stupid.
Maybe we should ask three locals? ._.
Don’t even get me started… 😑
Yeah, after asking three of them, then aid three of them, then persuade three more of them…
and the speak with wuk lamat
When they drop a 2 or a 4 on me I pee myself a little bit.
Carry items for Wuk Lamat
Lol
So basically, the story goes downhill once Ishikawa stops writing it.
Looks like I haven't missed much from not preordering Dawntrail for early access. I'll still be getting it at some point, but the reviews have me feeling like we should apologize to Stormblood for treating it too harshly at the time.
Ishikawa bring 14 to the status that it has with ShB and EW, the game status also die with her with her lead writer role departure
Wait, she's not a writer anymore?
So who wrote Dawntrail then?
@@MegaAndyGG rumors said it was the ARR Bard write...say no more
@@MegaAndyGG the person in charge of Dawntrail's MSQ wrote the 4 lords (SB) and sorrows of werlyt (ShB) questline.
@@MegaAndyGG Hiroi is his name.
The problem with having a bad story in FFXIV is that the game is built around the story. You literally can't progress unless you go through it so if it's slog to get through, you really feel it. Even if you skip cutscenes, doing the fetch quests and "go here" quests still feel really bad and I feel like thats why some people dislike this expansion so far.
People who never played FF will dislike this games no matter what. I don’t see DT is any different than all other FF or FFXIV series. ARR has even more slog stories and cutscenes. FF is always always about slowburn story, but you gotta read it, watch it, experience it, otherwise you lose the meaning of this game.
@@k.vn.k As someone that has played and beaten damn near every FF mainline game and some of the spin-offs, I disagree with that statement. I've also been playing since 3.0.
The different between a single player FF and FFXIV (an MMO) is that the game is literally gated by the story. Yes, ARR is a slog which is why a lot of new players either skip the scenes and don't become invested in the story or just stop playing all together. The same applies for DT. It was about 3-4 hours before I got to my first dungeon in DT. Full of uninteresting fetch quests, characters and a boring ass story. I've heard some people say it was even longer for them and that is a problem. It's an RPG, I get it. But it's also a game, not a visual novel.
Literally all, I'm saying is if story is going to have such a heavy emphasis, it needs to be good. DT's pacing is soooooooo bad. Even worse than EW.
@@k.vn.k Yeah, Remember the slow burn of FF7 where you are on a bombing mission and the entire blows up a portion of a city? Or the slow burn of FFX where where Tidus city is under attack, then dropped into another mysterious world with monsters and al bhed chasing you? Or the slow burn FF8 where you literally go to war as a child soldier?
@@k.vn.k Stop with the copium, I thoroughly enjoyed all the expansion even a realm reborn since I started playing Jan last year. But Dawntrail is absolute shaite
@@semafreak it’s not a copium since it is true. Copium only if you ignored reality. People skip the story in game is reality, then they ask why it is so boring?
The story in DT is no different than any other expansion: it has moments of sad and happy. However surprisingly it changed my opinion many times towards certain individuals from dislike to like, and vice versa. I have played for a week and I am only level 97, because I took my time to read every single lines and watch every single cutscenes. I will put DT behind ShB and slightly ahead of EW.
I thought the same thing with the last zone, it’s completely the same as Amaurot. Walking around a “phantom” city and arguing with Sphene about ideals. The last fight where Wuk Lamat saves the day is also ridiculous. How does she go from barely being able to phase Bakool Ja Ja with her strongest attack to being stronger than the WoL and SAVING us??
she wasnt stronger than the wol... plenty of characters have saved the wol before and lets not forget that the wol isnt a god, shit happens
Story was frustrating, lots of smart people in our team, none voices what we all think - why Graha only says at last second that the big enemy plan is just simply not sustainable... but not just this, lot of the times there were frustratingly obvious arguments to be had but instead we just either said "friendship wooo" or "fight bad booo"... come on. Gameplay is muuuch better than before, credit where credit is due. Tho the first extreme trial is not so much difficult but more like a dance dance revolution reaction game. Visual update causes a lot of lags to a lot of people. I put most stuff to low setting and i have i9 core cpu with 3080rtx gpu and i still have lag with extreme high resulted benchmark. I cant imagine what its like for other people with lower performing hardware.
Music: Big Dinsey Copy pasta... I did not like majority of the voiced musics and im sad that some ambient music can only be heard for few minutes. Like dungeon 2 battle music.
I am unhappy with Wuk Lamat's voice for 1 reason only, I think the direction was not well given to the voice actress because there are scenes where the voice is very underwhelming even though the body language would deem much more animated voice paired to the character. Like the last fight, she comes in, she speaks with very casual voice... compare it to how Thancred entered the Hades fight? And you will get what i mean. But I really liked how passionate Bakool Ja's voice actor was. I really believed at the start they are a bully and at the end the emotions come through, (look, his turning to good suddenly made no sense, but credit where credits due, the voice actor did best with what they had)
I haven't personally experienced any prefomance issues so far and I have just a couple years old pre built that I was worried if it could handle a big update
Performance issues were largely solved when you turn down LOD. It makes far objects render a little janky but FPS is obviously more important.
But you are so correct on Wuk Lamats and Bakoll Ja Ja VA. I genuinely think they did the best they could do with the material they were given. It was more of an issue of BOTH the story writing and the animation. The game is largely a mature story with believable, more natural emotion. This expansion, it seemed like they tried turning it literally into a Shounen (a cartoony anime genre for young boys). The weak sense of humor, mixed with the immaturity and out of place animations dropped in the more mature, natural world... well of course we'd get some close to an awkward mess. That's the issue as I see it.
@@ProlificPianist What specific settings would you suggest turning down? FPS is very important to me and I feel the difference since the update.
Idk why you are having issues, im on an i5 13600k and a 4070 super and running 1440p DLDSR (technically DLAA, because the DLSS is set to below 60 fps and I am never below 60 fps), everything set to maximum. Lowest fps I have seen is in the high 80's, in most places 90, and I get 144 fps in instanced content like dungeons or extremes. Even doing hunt bullet trains with insane amounts of ppl on screen, pc is not even sweating. 3080 is pretty much around same performance as my card if I remember correctly, and i9 depending on the gen likely better than my cpu. Sounds like it may be an underlying issue with your system. Maybe lacking ram capacity which is causing micro stutters which you are perceiving as the lag, or an old gen cpu not being able to keep up with your card.
Keep in mind that if your card is not at high usage, the cpu will work harder to try and push more fps as well. Maybe you just need to set an fps limit?
tbh i dont care about the big bad plan being unsustainable or if it doesnt make much sense, because it fits to its narrative, she wasnt the real sphene, she only cared about keeping her people alive for as long as possible, so it actually fits, there is no debate or trying to change hermind, she isnt gonna change her mind... because she cant, she is just a ghost of herself
regarding the lag. i didnt have any of that why leveling 4 jobs to 100, so it might be on your end
Watch cutscene introducing new area -> talk to Wuk -> talk to three NPCs -> report to Wuk -> watch cutscene of Wuk talking to NPCs about understanding them and their struggles and wanting to save them all no matter what -> console Wuk and repeat.
Snoozetrail. Insane that as the WOL we’re taking a backseat to babysit a new character that just isn’t fleshed out at all with her entire personality being “I will save everyone even if they’re evil!!” and “together we’re stronger!” as if we haven’t seen that a hundred times before.
Story-wise, Erenville’s section was honestly the only saving grace. Still with insane cutscene lengths and tedious quests, but it was heartfelt.
Thankfully, we got fantastic dungeons and incredible places such as Solution Nine and the wild west town.
Yeah, Erenville felt more real than Wuk Lamat. He had me more invested in his story than in the entirety of the expansion.
Hard agree.
Personally I feel it was an interesting direction. We took on more of a mentoring position which after we had literally saved the universe, that would be the next step. Teaching those with potential which Wuk Lamat does have.
I stopped before endwalker tbh. Will I have to play through everything to get to this? It sounds like the story wrapped up with endwalker. Should have let it end and make a new mmo? idk It's always awkward moving to a new arc in a storyline, lowering the stakes and powerlevel.
@@tyg-zw7nn I'd advise you to finish Endwalker then stop until the patches arrive. They have salvaged the game before and they can do it again, but we need confirmation that they actually understood that there was something that needed fixing. Japanese response is mixed at best, with many of the complaints overlapping with ours so I'd guess there's a good chance the FF XIV team will be forced to reevaluate what people liked from the story.
They kept billing dawntrail as the "vacation" expansion, and to me personally, our time in Shaaloani (or however you spell it) was the only time where it felt like we were just kinda vibing. Just going somewhere and helping/interacting with folks along the way. In that sense it's actually my favorite zone in the expansion (or maybe also because it's based on Texas, where I live?). Honestly my thoughts on DT are basically the same as what you've said here other than that. Kinda disappointed about the MSQ, but I've been really enjoying the launch from an mmo-standpoint
Estinien had the vacation we were promised!
I thought uld da was Texas lol
It was a nice break, but still a shit zone and story.
@@SuperRamos619 can ypu please link me a video where they tell us this was going to be a vacation, because from what I remember, they told us this was a "vacation", but not really since its a mmo and shit was going to happen
Estinien got the vacation we were promised. While we were stuck babysitting discount Naruto.
I had thought that in EW, the scions should've stayed gone. Let the WOL deal with hope and doubt in their own way in the new expac. But it seems they brought them all back for.. someone else to kinda take over anyways? Perhaps the patch content will correct, but I'd say narratively this is my least favorite since ARR. Disappointing.
The utter failure of making the entire thing about Wuk Lamat is unforgiveable. We ALREADY had a main story. . . Krile and the mystery of her grandfather's connection to the City of Gold. We travel across the ocean to a new land where no one knows you are the WoL and you can just adventure like a normal person (a normal person that CRUSHES DUNGEONS!).
Imagine a scene where you get accosted by bandits and your team laughs at them threatening you. So many opportunities for this to have been a fun adventure. Instead. . . Help Wuk Lamat. . . Accompany Wuk Lamat . . . Join Wuk Lamat . . . Help Wuk Lamat. . . Listen to Wuk Lamat . . . Play as Wuk Lamat. . . . Help Wuk Lamat. . . BARF.
I really hope SE's reaction to the Wuk Lamat criticism is not to double down and give her even more screentime to try and redeem her.
They just need to let her fade into the background and bring the focus back to the WoL. Or at least create a new second protagonist more like Ryne who actually works with the WoL instead of stealing the spotlight from them in every single cutscene.
Yes. The worst thing would be if they try to give her an Alphinaud-like redemption arc where she has to pay the price for her well-intentioned but naive, childish and self-centered behavior - just let her fade away please! I'll go have tea with her once in awhile.
But I want more Wuk :(
The WoL does NOT always need to be the center and focus of the story…
@@crawlingeagle1364Which is why they said "or at least create a new second protagonist"
wuk lamat is legit the only character in the entire game i hope completely vanishes
The Mary Sue problem aside, one of the less irritating and more disappointing thing for me is the fact that the world now seems to operate on children's TV show logic. How did Tural get its peace? Just talk to people and feed them tacos. It kinda cheapens the previously serious world building. Imagine if Aymeric had fed Nidhogg some tacos, we would never have lost Haurchefant. If we had only made some tacos for Zenos, he would've been a chill guy to hang with. Emet-Selch's tacos could have prevented Hydaelyn from splitting the star. Or if the Ancients had invented tacos, Meteion would never have gone insane in the first place.
The power of tacos.
I actually laughed out loud at this comment
I think you nailed it on why wuk lamat is such a badly written character at 4:48. She has all the qualities and personality opposite of a nation's leader. Throughout the ordeal of the rites, not one of the challenges teaches sacrifice or choosing the lesser evil.
Isn’t that the point tho? Like she is a sheltered ditzy princess on a journey to learn to be stronger and learn the cultures and needs of the tribes while assisting em and gaining there support.
@@crazymage5316
First, we're forced to support her emphatically despite Koana being right there, and the better choice by almost all rites.
Second, we're forced to support her immediately, despite these traits being prominent all throughout.
Third, she takes way too much screentime to actually grow, and her flaws are pushed to the forefront of nearly every scene for the first three levels or so. Which took me about eight hours to get through.
It isn't even obvious that she will grow, or even wants to grow since she's so confident in herself right from the start, except when she has bouts of panic where she'll wallow in her own self pity.
It felt more like she was fishing for compliments than actually having a breakdown, and I just wanted to threaten to leave and help Koana, or Bakool Ja just to really encourage her to get over herself and act like a leader. We're supposed to look to her for strength, not the other way around.
@@redgeoblaze3752 If you think Koana is "the better choice" you clearly missed the whole point of the rite and why NONE of the claimants were fit. It is even outright spelled out by the Dawnservant that no matter who wins the rite of succession, if he deems them unworthy, he will not yield the throne. He doesn't care who wins, only if the winner is worthy, with the rite being merely a means to an end to test the claimants.
Neither Koana NOR Wuk Lamat on their own are good or capable leaders. Lamatyi is too dreamy-eyed and fails to see the bigger picture of things in terms of the needs of her people as the sheltered princess she was raised as, while Koana is ignorant to their wants due to being away from home for too long. One wants to help their people simply because it's the right thing to do (and because that's what her father would want), without understanding what is best for them, while the other is hell-bent on progress for the sake of progress, because "that's how they do it over there".
By the end of the story, both of them realize they are lacking and TOGETHER they make for a good foundation for leadership, similar to their father, where one focuses on the people and their personal needs/wants on a more grounded level, while the other looks to lift everyone's lives through technological advancement without trampling all over their customs and traditions.
@@vtxshiva tl;dr
They're both bad choices, but Koana would be easier to fix.
@@redgeoblaze3752 tl'dr, you're stating opinions not facts. By all means, if you think so, go right ahead, but at least let's not BS each other pretending like you actually know better just because you personally resonated with one character more than another. Both characters are only as easy to fix as the story writer wants them to be. Bakool Ja Ja and Soraal Ja are both good examples for this as well. (same with other characters in the past like Emet Selch, Zenos, etc.)
I think one of the worst parts about the whole story was the way zoraal ja killed gulool ja ja, how we were just standing there and watching the duel while outside the civilians were still being murdered by zoraal jas puppet soldiers. Wuk lamat later says that she didnt want to tarnish gulools honor by stepping in but i still think it was absolutely terrible we didnt confront him then. That is because i do not consider gulool ja ja putting his „honor“ over the fact that his people are being slaughtered right outside his palace by his own son. Not to mention that he won the duel and kiled zoraal ja, then he just comes back to life, kills him and walks away, while we, the savior of the world watch that mass murdering psycho go. Yeah, sure he stopped his attack but we should have killed him right then and there, permanently. This fact pisses me off because you could argue that him killing all those people in solution 9 later on is just because of us not stopping him at the first opportunity. So yeah, not tarnishing gulool ja jas honor in a bullshit cheated duel killed a bunch of civilians and endangered all of tural and even the world.
the scions and WoL could easily just not be present there.
yeah i had the same issue. the same exact thing happened when wuk lamat dueled with zoraal ja and the player just stands there and does nothing.
We didn't interrupt Gulool Ja Ja's duel with Zoraal ja out of respect for his wishes. However, the attack on Tuliyollal itself could've easily been an instance where we actually get to fight our way to the palace.
It's just bad writing. If Gulool Jaja was such a good king like Wuk kept on saying, why would he create a contest pitting his children against each other for the throne? On top of that, did he seriously not consider how his natural born son would react if his adopted, non-blood children won instead? A lot of stupid writing all around.
@zaryalace7475 the contest was a pretense for rounding out the flaws in his children. I get that. Zoraal's attack was handled terribly
I share your sentiment about the story, Wuk Lamat and the concept of rule and happyness. What left a sour taste more than the story itself though was the way it was told. This doesn't feel like our story anymore, or that of our companions. But someone else's. Which would be fine if people would act in a believable way. Something they did very well before, and in FF16 as well. Less Disney please. And more Final Fantasy.
Wow, we get 1 expansion after SEVERAL where we aren't the main focus and it's "this story doesn't feel like our syory" get real
@@relaxedclawI actually enjoyed not being constantly dickrode as the WoL/WoD for once, it felt cool to be in more of a mentor role for this one. Some just wanna be the main character forever.
People who unironically enjoy sitting in cutscenes 90% of the time while the game effectively ignores our presence and pretends the walking godkiller that is the WoL isn't standing right off the the left of the screen should go watch television instead of playing video games.
Everyone says that Wuk Lamat is the biggest problem and that we are not the main character. But in my opinion, the bigger problem is the weak dialogue, which feels like it was written by a 15-year-old at times. I'm still enjoying the game tho. I just started doing lvl 94 quests and the first trial was good too. But the story has been pretty average so far. Still not as bad as many haters have said. At this point, I would give an overall 7/10.
I like not being the main focus only because we're just a self insert. I thought it was refreshing.
A cutscene should be a reward to watch, not being used to pad the story and tell us literally nothing. Wuk was very obnoxious and I could not stand her at all. There are a lot of writing inconsistencies and Wol while being presented as a mentor yet doesn't act as a mentor at all. A ton of answers we give all involve praising Wuk to heaven. It was nauseating.
Another issue is that they rehashed a ton of writing plots, the whole train part was just a copy of working with everyone on Talos in ShB. Zoraal Ja killing his father like Zenos killed Varis. Some scenes were straight copies. Sphene reminded me immediately of Myste and his excessive use of aether to keep memories alive. I can keep going on how unoriginal the story was.
I can't stomach even replaying this story on my alts.
Exactly! I agree so so much with all your points. Imagine if we got so many cutscenes and moments with actual characters that deserve it and we love. I would give my kidney for one more scene with Emet selch and hythlodaeus….
It's crazy how people have differing opinions and I mean that genuinely. Because I enjoyed this story and expansion immensely. But I guess it has to do with what people want out of it.
I've always played xiv for the spectacle of exploring and just having a good time experiencing what the story throws at me, and to an extent the moral lessons the game presents. I thought dawntrail was one of if not the best expansion alongside Stormblood. And I know I'm a massive minority thinking that. Wild.
@@tony8076 I think you are my friend… I’m a huge HUGE Stb fan and still have a divided opinions about Dt even when I actually LOVE Wuk Lamat! Imagine that!
@@HikariVictor stormblood was my favorite, i really liked the first half of DT. Should have made the whole thing the lighthearted beach episode, I didn't need the stuff with sphene. Living memory was probably my least favorite hours ever playing this game. "oh shit the world is about to end? Let me talk to these memories about their last 300 years real quick"
@@quantumm313 exactly... We loved that first last part so much... But still, was the last favorite in general, XIV's community prefer a lot of drama sadly... Like IRL
yes i agree so much with u about the filler cutscenes. a lot of cutscenes even in general were too long and didn’t need to exist because the information was either repetitive or not important
THANK YOU. Why is Wuk lamat the forefront in so so many incredibly important decisions and discussions. On what authority? She never bothers to learn anything or try meaningfully. Just smiles and family.
I agree so so so much on all your points. So many contrived decisions, exactly like a poorly written anime.
They need to hear our feedback cause the writing of dawntrail was inexcusably bad for a big part.
The train ride could also be an instant to kind of save shalooani which had 0 substance as well mostly.
Also ZoraalJa was so interesting at the start. Silent, powerful, mysterious. And he ended up being a cliche…
Tough i was the only one who notice Yshtola voice recording, it felt like it was recorded with a cheap mic compared to other characters
At default volume settings it was legitimately hard to hear Y’shtola during cutscenes, but then other characters would chime in loud and clear
I think you're spot on with a lot of this and I thought the same, I did think however that Zoraal Ja would end up being a good guy and it was that lizard following him about that was making him think all the war and that was good so I'm a bit dissapointed that it didn't end up with the 3 siblings working together for a bigger threat
overall It was a decent story, just a lot of filler and pissing about
I d enjoy it more, if Sphene became a big baddie, or had someone controlling her, some "hidden leadership"... Her people talk with Wuk Lamat made me often cringe inside. I badly wanted to get new permanent baddies, these Alexandrians were made for it, but we dealt with it in 7.0 and whats next? Plus they really invaded just cuz Zoraal was butthurt x)
Tbh, in the moment the dome appeared and invasion started, Wuk shud have took backseat, scions shud have do a little "takeover" and tell her "this is existential threat for entire planet so u are no longer capable of dealing with it, leave it to us" and WoL shud have taken front seat
Imagine a scene where we fight armies of those sentries in some solo instance and u see all those ships from around tuliyolal leaving and heading for us...
In the end, proudest I felt was when Queen Eternal removed Krile, Wuk and Graha and kept us as the sole biggest danger to eliminate, that was first time we got proper recognition since end of 6.0 x) from an antagonist
I feel this all was to set up the dimensional travel, in the end we visited 2 new reflections both of which are basically screwed and ended up with an alien technology key to open gatewayes into them. I believe the story moving forward will focus on that.
SE made the same mistake with DT as they ultimately did with EW and that's introducing your supreme, world ending villain only a few hours before you kill them. Sphene could have been a cool villain had she actually been a part of the story from the beginning, but instead she's an asspull character that gets introduced and killed all within a few hours of each other just like Meteion.
Only for wuk to take all the spotlight once again during the second part of the fight and after the fight 😂
@@isix6833this, I don't even wanna run that trial again because of that cutscene. We saved the fucking cosmos and we have to be saved by a fucking cat because of a data code enemy.
@@darkendbeing please it was like OUR only moment of aaaall the msq and even there she get to take all the credits ?
I dont need the WoL to be the savior of everyone all the time but WoL and the scions being literal observes and mascots most of the time made playing through the story a drag
ShadowBringers 15.5hr cutscene. Endwalker: 22 hrs cutscenes. Dawntrail: 28hr cutscene. it was grueling i would say, and at least 40% of the first half of story was filler painful and useless cutscenes. it felt very much like Squeenix padded nearly 30hr of cutscenes just so they can claim XX hours of new content. it was ridiculously painful to get through the cutscenes
If that's true. That explains why I enjoyed Shadowbringers so much. Not just from a gameplay standpoint but story as well.
Worldbuilding is not filler
Is any of this was ‘world building’ I would want no further part in the world.
@@Velrikk maybe, but unless you're Tolkien, which the new writer, Hiroi, is clearly not, you have absolutely no business telling a story through world building.
@@Velrikk Except for every hour of world-building, we got 2 hours of Wuk Lamat building. Even worse is that they never actually build Wuk Lamat into anything. She's the exact same character she was at the beginning, except now she "knows her people better now" (She learnt that in the rite of succession you know!!!). It's frustrating to no end that she got so much screen time to make zero progress, especially when everything else around her seems so interesting. I really enjoyed the world-building, but every character was written poorly (Sphene, and Erenville excepted). This expansion would be so much better if it focused more on Sphene, Erenville, and Krile rather than Wuk.
Dawntrail= scoobie doo + dora the explorer visit Donkey Kong country.
With musical guest Zendaya
And it's glorious
Donkey Kong Country, and then Tron.
Well put good sir.
I've posted pretty much the same feedback on the forums. Hope we can reach SE with this feedback. I wonder how the japanese audience reacted to the MSQ.
I have seen a small Japanese RUclipsr write a review with these points exactly and has aeouns90 linked on twitter. Apart from that I saw some people being like “if you don’t like a scenario, write it yourself” which is the most braindead immature take but yeah. Need to check jp forums as well
Seems like Square is trying to silence any naysayers.
@@zaryalace7475are they really?
Spoilers: I would have liked to see Wuk Lamat go through more development, maybe touch up on that bubbly persona she gives off every time her dialogue pops up, and steer more towards a serious air about her. She seemed like she'd resolved and reverted to her original self in the span of two cutscenes when her father was killed, instead of working through those emotions. Some visual representation of her still battling that turmoil in the 5th zone would have added to the weight of talking about killing her brother and even coming to terms with her affection towards him at the end of the trial. I don't know, something felt off in the mid to later half of the story that didn't sit right with me, at least from my perspective.
I enjoyed the story and the characters, my one problem is how it felt like the Warrior of light took a backseat in pretty bad situations, I feel like OUR WoL would have interffered more, but we just stood there, nothing was restraining us from stepping in, we've went to the universes' end and back, I don't think they will sit back just to uphold someone's "honor".
ALSO want to say, it felt like we barely included our comrades IN the story, it was so focused on Wuk Lamat, I miss being witht he team, seeing Alphinaude and Alisae shine, I want to say though the best part about DT is Erenville, must protecc
The story simply had too much Wuk, her arc should have wrapped up after winning the contest. Second half of the expac should have been WoL, Krile, and Erenville focused.
I think you absolutely nailed it with this review. It mirrored a lot of my own complaints amd highlighted the ones I hadnt fully considered. Excellent review!
gotta love that at 4:10 hes just describing us elections
well the uniparty dgaf about the people that live there
We don’t even have wuk lamat
I feel like in living memory if you got there and found out about what it was then Sphene kind of does with Metion did in Endwalker and not actively engage the instant world death threat. Have you disable the terminals and have her show up threatening you with more and more desperation with each terminal disabled before enabling the big death machine after the final terminal.
Yes, that would at least produce a proper tension curve. Doesn't solve the issue that we spend 4 hours on yet more worldbuilding and lore and some minor emotional payoffs when we really should be getting on with it. But at least that way our turning off the terminals would count as deliberate provocations towards the big bad evil. The fact that evil AI Sphene keeps holding onto her objective of securing more aether when almost all the memory files (except those in the Mesa tower) of the people she could conceivably revive with that aether had just been deleted was quite illogical to me, in a utilitaristic sense. Especially since cold hard calculated logic was the one thing this rogue AI was supposed to be holding on to.
I agree with 99% of this video. Yet one thing I couldn’t help but notice whilst exploring Living Memory, is that we were sort of retracing Emet’s path in the life he had to live post The Final Days.
He sent us on this path and yet, we are in the same position he once was. Where he was surrounded with all these different people, he had to come to terms with the fact he will be the one to destroy them for the sake of his own people.
I’m not sure many noticed this parallel whilst exploring this area and I believe its partly because there is practically 0 mention of anything that took place in Endwalker which I feel really was a poor writing choice.
Not really. Emet-Selch was trying to revive his dead people by sacrificing the living. These people had already died, and would be sustained by sacrificing the living. Sphene was more Emet-Selch than we were.
my first thought after going into living memory was "this looks like amaurot" because they reuse the same high rise buildings in the background
sphene having a city full of people made from memories of the dead, planning to go around and kill others for the sake of her people also happens to allign with that
it felt like repeating something that was already done way better in the past tbh
@@4NSW3RM3 It's of course not going to be a 1:1 similarity on what happened. I don't disagree with your point about Sphene being a prominent figure among her people refusing to let go being a strong reflection of Emet. Yet there are undoubtedly similarities between what we did and what he did. This was a brand new existence of people to us and the people of Tural that put us at risk.
It was the same "Us or them" scenario we've faced many times before, yet this time enemy wasn't just a tyrannical mad-woman who decided what she wanted for her people. Did some of the Endless disagree with Sphene? Absolutely, but to deny that there weren't people who agreed with her methods and wanted to keep living is simply not true. This was how they lived and although it seemed extremely unorthodox to us the players and also the people of Ethyris, it was perfectly normal among the Alexandrians and Endless. The same way that us being "imperfect fragmented beings" was normal to us compared to Emet and the Ancients.
I fully expectedd Ystolla to mention we turned into Emet Selch. As she is usually the one that calls out hipocricy.
"I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you." -- Emet Selch
We did precisely that. The Eternal were like Moriarty in the Holodeck of Star Trek TNG. Sentient and thus alive. Or as Data.
I hated the final zone. All the momentum came to a screeching halt. I honestly started skipping cutscenes because the story totally lost my engagement. Like you said it’s incredibly asinine to have a multidimensional threat that is imminent and yet you’re trying popcorn for the first time
You missed out on the closure for each character that has an Endless loveone
@@straightjacket510
Cheap emotional points
The final zone is basically Heaven. But you find out Heaven is sustained by very questionable methods. Does the ends justify the means?
Honestly they should have done more here. Especially with Krile. They gave better story to Erenville when Krile earned it more.
Krile being reunited with her parents began with 6.6. And Krile is a long standing Scion.
Erenville is a nobody by comparison.
Turning off this zone is thematically a disappointment. But the skeleton is there to rebuild it. I hope they do.
@@mrwolfdigtrainer It's not even heaven. It's just a Google cloud for AI. They even tell you repeatedly in the story not to care about unplugging the servers because you're just wiping a hard drive of literal NPCs imitating dead people.
@iwannadie9031 just cuz they tell you not to care doesn't change anything.
It is equivalent to heaven.
A great way to bring the stakes back down would be to move the story entirely into a new shard, where everything is much stronger than what we've known so far
That's what ShB did already. Bad idea to do that so soon.
@@mobius4247 Then have them invade our shards haha
@@Lordoziom what do you think the 2nd half of this MSQ was about, friend?
That's what i think as well, throughout my journey with WK, she never felt like a leader, it feels like she's chosen from the start.
💯
Girl boss has got to girl boss /shrug.
@@karenpojar2514 yuck, could use way less of it
I agree with most of this EXCEPT for Shaaloani. That has my absolute favorite music of all the zones in Dawntrail. My biggest complaint if I had to make one is that the mount height in Shaaloani is barely higher than the ARR zones for some reason.
I would have loved to actually fight thancred and Uriange in one of the dungeons. Just a fun spar between friends.
I dont know why something like that never happend before
There was a lot of missed opportunities. Making the rite actually feel like a competition instead of the Wuk Lamat show. Having the other scions fight us or do stuff to sabotage us. Having a metal gear Thancred section to help find Wuk Lamar. Hell maybe make that whole section into a dungeon instead of the first one. We go out with Thancred, Uriange, the twins, Krile and Koana to find Wuk Lamat and have Bakool Ja Ja be the final boss of it.
This expansion had a huge problem with dungeon pacing and dungeons and trials that made sense with the story simply putting them places because the story needed to happen.
Like the second trial the rest of the scions just appearing out of thin air in a giant ass tower just because a trial was going to happen. Couldn’t even say like the rest of the scions were there after the Alexandrian raid to help with infiltration by going another route through the tower to help. Just “Hey we finished the war and just stopped by, you need help with this trial coming up right?”
I found the zones, dungeons and trials very fun but man the story's pacing was glacial. Without having hard stats, I got a gut feeling that you could at least 1/3 of the cutscenes and still not miss much. In the end they managed to only make me care about Otis and Eren's mom, I could not care about anyone else. Very disappointed Wuk Lamat never really evolved from her initial "I'm going to be the Hokage and protect my village!" attitude. I'm 99% the line about protecting her people's happiness is dropped at least 3 times in less than one hour when the dawnservant trials are finishing. Fight wise I'm excited to see what the team will cook but right now I'm not looking forward to any potential plot points that would follow on the expansion.
I skipped a ton of cutscenes because of wuk lamat and I really don't think I missed any story.
14:06 speaking of Y’shtola - why was she even there? I’m so tired of her at this point. She’s just conveniently there to figure out all the mysteries that the rest of us are too stupid to figure out apparently.
What makes her appearance even worse is that she fucks off for a lot of it while she’s with us to “investigate” something. So it just feels like she’s shoehorned in without any real thought of what she should actually be doing other than being fanservice.
I really wanted her to leave us alone for JUST ONE expansion.
That's a pretty hot take there, brother.
She was a drop of fresh water in a desert of boring shitty writing when she showed up.
@@mobius4247 is it though? Take her out of the story and nothing changes. She provided nothing.
@@iwannadie9031 she provided me with Yshtola vibes and is presumably there as a setup to post patch MSQ since she's the most knowledgeable about the interesting bits of the story.
Never liked her, she is boring and always goes away for a while like she doesn't care then appears to explain stuff before vanishing after a battle. Worst character in the scions. Should've died instead of Papalymo (rip goat)
She was there so we could have characters for Trusts
Ottis's sacrifice makes sense only once the story is complete (a tragedy of their condensed writing). The original queen is a first generation endless like he is with a soul and memories stored in a vessel. Ottis has been hiding from the queen as he "doesn't want to scare her" with his robot body, but his actual reason is that he feels he failed to protect his queen. In any case, he has no idea that the queen he is seeing is different from himself. The queen we are dealing with is a copy of her memories animated by the conservators much later. Ottis assumes the queen is like himself and rushes to save her. This also means post credits that there is a first generation Sphene out there or at least existed. This is because they did not have the technology to animate the memories of others without a soul until much later.
Glad someone else picked up on this. Sphene is duplicitous (on purpose or by nature of the copy), so there’s a few possible why’s. And narrative wise, Otis gets his moment.
It's not the case that Bakool Ja Ja changed his personality in a vacuum, it's that the context for his immoral behavior were not revealed until the third zone in which we saw his actions were being negatively reinforced by his conservative father/culture. Some players were making the same assuations to Hydaelyn being evil in Shadowbringers.
She sure is good , she is pretty gray
And then the father suddenly changed 180. Makes zero sense and highly unrealistic.
Excellent, honest review. Many thanks.
this was the worst expansion ever, the story is utter cringe trash and makes no sense whatsoever, i'm literally going to uninstall and delete my account if this shit gets any worse in the future ...
Emblematic of the problem of the first half of the MSQ where you're just constantly dumped on with worldbuilding exposition with very little opportunity to 'play' the game is the big set piece between the 4th and 5th zones.
A huge moving action piece scene, lots of characters including the WoL fighting - high stakes, explosions, daring rescues and near death escapes... and it all plays out in a cutscene. Would have made a great duty, but you just sit there watching thinking "man, sure would be nice to be playing this".
That's interesting, because I remember at the time thinking "oh God, please don't make me play this out, and if you do, don't make me do it with a different character than WOL using a silly 4 or 5 button hot bar!"
I agree with you that it would be more interesting to play it out (in theory) but I don't trust them to execute it in a satisfying way. I'd rather have the cut scene than a very long and unskippable interlude with very watered-down combat and generic dialog.
I like an impactful cut scene. It allows me to observe and react. I just don't want cut scenes for stuff that doesn't matter that much.
Hey guys i wanna get into this game, but i have a question, if i buy dawntrail, do i get all the other content or do i have to buy every other dlc there was
U need to buy only base game + dawntrail. Every other expansion u will get for free, included with DT.
@@luretta6704 if i buy dawntrail, will i get the other future expansions/ dlc for free or am i gonna have to buy it?
@@ihaveanxiety8093new expansions need to be bought
The free trial gets you the base game and the first two expansions for free.
Buying dawntrail gets you the rest.
If you play through Steam, then buy through Steam.
If you play through SE's site, buy through SE.
You CANNOT mix the two versions. The keys will refuse to work.
@@karenpojar2514 zamn you saved me some bucks there
i agree with your take, going to be hard pressed to make such an emotional story as what we had on the last one. i was wanting some more teasing on whats to come and i feel we missed that here. hopefully we will get some in the comming months to keep me intersted.
If you don't like voice acting in English changing the speech language to Japanese usually helps a lot in my experience
It's been a few expansions since I've played. Are we getting to the point where you think we need a full reset? A new game? Sounds like the main story already finished.
Is there a way to mod wuk lamat into someone else? If I just could just mod her into someone else and change the voice acting to Japanese, it might even be possible to enjoy the story
i agree completely. my biggest complaint is what you said at the end about the scions just feeling like mascots. i love those characters so i wanted more interaction with them, but it felt like none of them had any really memorable moments or any personal stake in what was happening at all, and most of them were absent for the entire first half of the story. it also felt like wuk-lamat had no real character growth other than becoming slightly more mature and learning to admit when she needs help. which are maybe fine for a disney movie but kind of pale in comparison to the struggles some of the other characters have gone through. it never felt like she really struggled with the trial because it was built by her daddy to cater to all her strengths anyway. she almost immediately caught onto what he was trying to teach her because it already came naturally to her. koana had much more growth as a character, and he was also frustratingly flat. as soon as i appeared i knew the "twist" that they would be working together. her biggest struggle is admitting she has a tummy ache to her cool new friends because she's embarrassed.
also thought krile was very disappointing. i was looking forward to getting to know her more (tho kind of upset we had to trade g'raha for her for some reason), but i forgot she was there most of the time until someone decided to say something cryptic about her earring, to which she was always just like "i guess i can wait : )"
i also thought that her voice actor was kind of weird. her accent didn't bother me, but i don't think she was directed very well because her voice often didn't match up with the tone of the scene. she also doesn't sound convincingly tough or authoritative. i thought galool ja-ja's voice actor was downright awful. he sounded so goofy i'm amazed anyone thought that was a good idea.
mostly this just felt like a "break" between endwalker and whatever they're setting up next. i predict we'll go to the southern isles to find out how the lalafell traveled to sphene's world. that's the only thing i can think of tbh.
I really dislike the decision to leave living memory dead and all black/hollow. I loved the zone and music at the start and it felt like we just killed a crazy beautiful zone for a plot that didn't even do anything for me. It was like the inverse of building Elysion during the omicron tribe quests. Instead of being like "I can't wait to progress to see what new thing is created!" during Elysion, the whole time in living memory I was thinking "Man please don't make me ruin this pretty location that I have to interact with over the next 2 years".
Right? It’s legitimately my favorite zone in a very long time, and it’s gone.. Hopefully there’s a way to restore it at some point..
@@amanomurakumo6863 New Game + probably
Guaranteed they are going to bring it back in a later patch, likely as a beast tribe function. I'd be extremely surprised that they would make all those assets and then throw them away.
You are missing the point of the last part of the story, its about letting go, we have to shut down the city, even if for us the players, means we wont see the pretty version of the map anymore. It's a little like Nier when u delete ur file to help others.
@@sharizart Story or not we have to interact with the zone for 2 more years (technically forever) and it kinda sucks to see it be in a worse state
I think one missed mentality. Is that maybe one of the reasons the queen didn't just jump into another body or didn't? Just not worry about her safety is because most of the robots are not in her control.
Temporarily speaking, I think it's heavily implied or at least it shows that when Lamatis brother aserts direct mikitary control, she is heavily limited by the bosies she can use. Sure, you can still argue that if she "dies" It doesn't matter but it does disable her and keep her out of the events where she's being shown. She is very helpful and useful with rearranging the area and helping keep people safe, even if she can't directly combat any of her robotic forces
I couldn’t agree more with basically every point you made. I’m particularly upset with the pacing once we get to Living Memory. Here are these heart-wrenching moments and the sense of finality as you shut down each terminal and see the world/characters change permanently, and yet I was anxious to get it over with to face Sphene. It really robbed what could have been very impactful had the story been paced better.
The point in Living Memory was to shut down the devices to erase the Endless thus the Queen having no reason to fight. Just pointing that out.
Worked out perfectly
The point was to "burn the Library of Alexandria", with a side of "deconstruct Christian heaven."
The subtext of "screw the West" was driving the main plot. Just like everything else out of Hollywood for the last decade. Freaking Post Modern writers, they are more one-note than Anne Rand.
@@karenpojar2514 nice one, now tell me more. Do Heavensward plot. I think you're onto something.
Never in my 2000+ hrs of playing have I had my finger hovering over the skip button the majority of my time with Dawntrail
There were some good points that i got a little excited over, but overall, I was more annoyed with it than enjoying it.
Bakool Ja Ja was by far the smartest, most heroic character in DT. He knew that the ice holding the DeathDragon was melting, and that the result would be millions of needless deaths. So, he rigged things so that his halfwit sister and her killer-for-hire WoL sidekick would defeat the dragon for good.
I had pretty much the same experience as you playing the expansion. I feel like you actually put a more positive spin on it, which i really appreciate because I was pretty sad and disappointed afterwards. Thanks so much for your thoughts!
I thought the Otis thing made sense?
He completely lost his personality and free will after Zoraal Ja’s order. it seemed that he was acting on programmed protocol to defend the queen at all cost as if it was the actual queen. I remember she said she couldn’t stop the robots by overriding their commands herself upon entering solution 9, so i assumed it also meant she couldn’t freely transfer her consciousness to a new body at the time and if her body would have died at that time she’d have been stuck in a limbo until the order to execute all citizens was over.
That’s my interpretation of it and why i thought it made sense
Wuk Lamat, to me, is all of Narutos most annoying traits dialled up to 11. I could not stand her. Plus, the story was filled to the brim with filler that it killed any of the good moments it had. They dropped the ball so many times for the sake of extending the story time.
I don't know if anyone else felt the same but the fact that the last zone was so beautifully done,only for you to go and essentially delete it and turn into a grey desolate zone was pretty disaapointing for me.
One big question I’ve had since I’ve started, is not one mention of how the final days affected the people of Tural. It’s like we forgot about that world ending event?
Tural has its own system of hunters, IE: Vipers, that hunt down oddities. It's likely that the Final Days wasn't much different than their normal lives, even in the Job Quests there was only a handful of Blasphemies around, and Tural is equipped to deal with the threat that the Final Days imposed. They'd have no concept of what Blasphemies are, so they'd likely just label them as Vidraal and have them hunted down like business as usual.
@@azurebreeze. I refuse to buy into that the final days was just no big deal to Tural meanwhile the rest of the planet were panicking and running from their lives and fire raining from the sky.
Nope. Not buying it.
It’s clearly a misstep by the writing team to not even mention a cataclysmic event from the previous expansion
@Omygames In the tank job quest for Endwalker there's a singular Blasphem in the Black Shroud, and there were scant few in other regional quests as well. The Final Days didn't hit everywhere the same and it's why Sharlayan focused on evacuating the areas hit the hardest first. We stopped it from becoming a bigger threat, and Tural is equipped to handle something like a rogue Blasphemy with no problems because of how they treat the hunt and Turali Vidraal.
Great video man, I agree with your review for the most part of course I have my own opinions.
I was fine with the WoL and the scions taking a back seat so that we had someone else leading the charge, and I love Wuk Lamat but I wish we got to spend more time with Koana and Zoraal Ja to really learn their characters and motivations. Zoraal Ja in particular was really disappointing out of the 3 siblings because they could have set up a much better character. It's shown towards the end that he seems to resent his father but at no point is this ever explored other than hinted at with kriles echo. It would have been so much cooler to see why it is he resents his father but no we just got him go evil sicko mode and die with no real resolution to his story.
And speaking of poor storylines. Some might disagree but I was extremely dissapointed with Kriles and Erenvilles story lines. I expected them to play much bigger parts and them finding their whole reason for coming along with us would be more impactful, but no. Everything is pretty much resolved in an hour between the two of them and it just felt completely pointless and empty.
And finally Sphene...I liked Sphenes motivation for the most part. Much like Emet she thinks that her people are what important and the end justifies the means. However we've ALREADY had this storyline and it was so much better the first time around. Which makes Sphene just come across as a bit of a joke overall. Travelling between reflections is a neat idea and certainly opens up future possibilities for content, but it just falls flat in this case. Nothing about it is explained at all they could just said oh yeah it was Ascian voodoo or something since the chalice thingie originally came from the 6th or something but nah just smart potatoes? I like the edition of Sphene and Alexandria but it just could have been executed in a much better way that wasnt something we've already done.
Overall though I did enjoy Dawntrail for all its shortcomings. I do rank it below Shadowbringers and Endwalker but right now just based on pre-patch expansions I do rank it above stormblood and probably equal to heavensward. It's probably around an 8/10 for me and I am really looking forward to what the future holds for my beloved FFXIV.
An utterly frustrating and disappointing experience.
All the things you say in this vid are spot on how I felt.
It also felt like the writers just kept referencing key moments from previous expansions, and trying to recreate them in DT; like a bunch of call-backs. And it just felt shallow and lame, because those moments mattered in the previous expansions because they were *earned*. They aren't at all here.
"Hey.... people really resonated with Emet doing all he did because of the pain he carried... Let's do that with Bakool!"
"People resonated with Amaurot existing from Emet's memory of the city and home he loved... Let's do something similar with this!"
Bakool's all "I WILL WIN THIS EVEN IT MEANS CHEATING AND PUTTING COUNTLESS LIVES IN DANGER!!"
Then in a single cutscene...
"OH.. I SOWWY. I BAD. I DID VEWY TEWWIBLE THINGS"... and we just accept that.
Felt like every other quest was just a long cutscene. Sometimes several back-to-back.
And on and on. Just lame and disappointing.
I don't think it's a huge deal that we're not the protagonist but rather that there is only one protagonist. I don't mind Wuk Lamat but I feel like the writers putting all their chips into one character is bad for the health of a game where the barrier to entry rises by dozens of hours every expansion. ShB's focused on 3 new fan favorites that created intrigue throughout their stories rather than overstaying their welcome and it's disappointing that CBU3 is potentially alienating more newcomers with another expansion that focuses so much on a character that can't handle the weight of that attention.
I think it's gonna be like storm blood 2.0, the writing in msq may not have been the best but in all other aspects the game is gonna be dope af. 👌
Baku jaja changed his mind cause he was a victim of talk no jutsu.
Strongly agree with everything you said, especially about certain cutscenes not being necessary or information being rehashed, and everything you’ve said about the characters. I was also displeased with Zoraal Ja’s character starting out with, “I’ll show everyone how terrible war is firsthand so that they crave peace” but having that dropped and changed out of nowhere to “I want to raze the world to the ground.” The shift was completely unbelievable. I also found myself wishing that some of the cutscenes turned into instances instead, even though I don’t love them either, just so I can play the game instead of reading cutscenes. For example, the train breaking in to vanguard could have been a shooter instance since we were manning the cannons. How neat would that have been? The amount of voice acting was so inconsistent too, and at multiple points I was getting really tired of reading the text and wished the characters were speaking instead.
Oh god your point about Otis was great and I hate you for pointing it out, because I kinda liked the moment, but it really was a waste of a good life.
The thing that irks me the most is that Wuk lamat is being the heel for the expansion for most of the community when the story itself had around as many plot holes as it did plot points. The Wuk lamat voice acting being sub par is being blamed on her being a trans VA'ed character and distracting from the fact that ALL of the new voice acted characters in the expansion were sub par compared to the prior 2 expansions. The first thing that threw me off was the voice of the sailor while we were on the ship for example. There were also inconsistencies with how certain events were handled that were clearly allowed for nothing other than plot progression. A pair of examples that i found really note worthy was the last 2 tests. The 6th proctor is kidnapped and ordered to be killed should Wuk lamat lose a duel against bakool ja ja... Despite this occuring, bakool is not disqualified. Zoraal ja was DQed by the 7th proctor for either calling on help during a duel or the help he called on attacking the proctor to try to disrupt the summoning of the shade ( a move that i dont even understand anyway since the trial was to defeat the shade and i assume the proctor would not have allowed zoraal ja to be killed in the trial). regardless of which is true, both are plot holes. Should the first be true, Wuk should have been DQed for 8v1ing her trial and winning and, to reiterate the previous thing i mentioned, its just further evidence that bakool should have been dqed for his dealings with the 6th proctor. Furthermore... the boss of the first trial was a being so powerful and destructive that Gulool jaja had to seal it away in its own ice because he could not kill it... Despite that, he had not a word to say after bakool freed it, endangering his entire kingdom for the sake of attempting to slow the other claimants? Additionally, as you mentioned, Gulool jaja was killed in front of everyone with no one so much as doing anything but surprized pikachu face. Wuk says that it would have dishonored him to interfere in his duel to the death... but when she had to duel his shade, it was not dishonorable for her to fight it with 7 other people?
Fact is that everything about Dawntrail that isnt the writing/ english voice acting has been phenomenal but both of those just felt terrible to me. Im sure the rest of the expansion is going to be amazing but the writing outright felt worse than ARR's and leagues behind any other expansion's so far to me. I understand the comparisons to SB but at least SB told a relatively coherent story while DT simply did not. This was supposed to be a vacation arc so why does it have the 3rd highest stakes of all of expansions out so far? I understand why people say that the story gets better in the later levels even if i don't agree. The themes tackled were heavy and hit hard... that much is true. My biggest issue with it is the same as it was throughout the expansion. Our Warrior of light... The hero who fought across stars to save them from the brink of destruction, who found solutions to issues that were thought inevitable. Identified the problems that wiped out the Ancients before traversing to the edge of space to stop the Endsinger... Simply allowed the events to unfold the way that they did? Allowed all of those souls to be effectively deleted? No thought to another solution... no trying to find a way to save everyone like we did in shadowbringers...but just delete them all? Without so much as a second thought for no reason other than to have something in the expansion to get some emotion out of the players just delete the parents of 2 characters that were actually quite likeable one of whom had been searching for them for over a decade only to get to have a few minutes with them? WE SUGGEST NOTHING?!?!
The events of dawntrail thus far were not just a plot hole ridden mess, they actively spat in the faces of the characters that were written before and beloved. That is my actual issue with the expansion's writing and I genuinely hope that something is done to improve it in the future before this game's msq becomes auto skipped like most other mmos.
Oh, gosh, I really dislike the story in this expansion. I agree with everything you mentioned, and you even brought up some valid observations that I hadn't noticed before. Now I have more reasons to be upset about this writing. Let's hope for better future.😢
yep, they should have added more action.., just send / force us to do big fates occasionally..
I really wanted to be done with the whole Ascian storyline because, as interesting as it was back in shadowbringers, endwalker just kinda hit us over the head with certain themes. Guess I should have been careful what I wished for 😒
I agree with basically all of your points, Jolsn. About Otis, though - I think he was defending *all* of us. His passionate defense was for the Queen, sure, but we all benefited. Even if she discarded her drone, I feel like he'd still have defended us to the point of death.
Well, funny thing for me was, since I use the Japanese vc, it all felt like an anime episode, it went 10/10 for me till the moment we reached the golden city ... and we just forgot about it (??!) 😅
I took me Soo long to forget about this issue, so I didn't enjoy the next map that much due to this issue, when we reached the following map, it looked like we have a pretty solid trail of interest they can pull into, and they still hit and miss a lot there..
Living memory looks amazing and tbh I didn't mind the pause, what did bother me was how the last boss felt, we just wiped out her "people" that she kept doing what she was doing for how many years, and she didn't mention anything about it (?!!) I hope I'm not missing anything, but I was a little disappointed.. there are many great small stories along the way, even the side quests are pretty good! But the main narrative was a bit... poorly weaved I would say.
Solution Nine reminded me of Cocoon from FFXIII and memory wiping was reminiscent of FF Type 0
Harsh but mostly fair.
I like Shaaloani quite a bit, contrary to popular belief I felt it was pretty fresh setting for the game.
I love the music in it, and I think it's placement, while understandably frustrating, was necessary to contrast it's inhabitants with the unlucky victims of Alexandria's dimensional fusion. It makes that zone mean a lot more than erenville simply telling you what Yyasulani would be like.
And if they made you go through the zone only when the dome appeared, it would have felt even worse to have to speedrun it to get to vanguard & heritage found imo
I also think that while yes, the writing is worse, they've come out and said they are trying things here. After the Zodiark/Hyda saga, they see an opportunity to take risks: let different staff members try things (exactly what is happening here), try another dual protagonist, try a lighter story etc. I can understand it being frustrating because the MSQ is a large part of the expansion offering, so having one that doesn't meet the usual bar is a little unsatisfying. But I don't think there's a crisis in confidence in their writing; I think they want to pass the torch and that is going to be shaky.
I've also been having so much fun with the much improved battle content and zones that it's been hard to genuinely be upset with one of the most risk-averse dev teams in gaming trying new things.
I totally agreed with your comment on how Dawntrail's story goes. I think is near to no wow effect and a lot of draggy cut scenes. I wonder the post dawntrail patch what they would release. I read some blog suggested either the writer or producer has changed hence the story is not longer the same.
The overall consensus is that the story is pretty fcking boring. It's not even "chill beach experience", it's the horrible VA (Japanese is 1000% better), the fetch quests, the lack of engaging content, becoming a glorified retainer of Wuk Lamat. So many tedious quests and dialogue and un-voiced/unskippable cutscenes. We're just on a long ass beast tribe quest. I will be totally honest, when we first met Wuk and we were chasing down that huge Colibri, she DESTROYED that pack of mobs as a warrior, I was like FUCK yeah that our teammate?!...but nope...wtf happened.
It felt like two separate stories to me. The succession story and then the “golden city” story no agree that the characters seemed more one dimensional than I usually expect from squeenix. The dungeons and trial were great but I was expecting more duties and such. Turn the whole expac into the succession and have us do duties with the other characters like they did in shadowbringers/endwalker. Have us play as Thancred with Koana and viper as zoraal ja in some duty. I liked it but I want to see where they go with it. Lots of breadcrumbs dropped so we will see
the scions shouldn't be here except for Krile and Erenville only problem is even this 2 was like doing nothing, hell you can even remove WoL and it will be same too.
I honestly really liked the first half. Sure, the characters are a bit flat and its heavy handed with the peace and love and culture stuff, but its like you said - it was a beach episode. Having such an abrupt switch after the succession felt like they got to the end and were like "wait, we need 15 more hours and three more zones worth of content" and tacked it on. Or even that two separate teams did each half and then they just stitched it together after. I'd have rathered we just went off to explore more of the region and got into some crazy foreign primal fights or something. Commit to the beach episode instead of feeling like every expansion needs us to avert some kind of umbral calamity. The lightheartedness and joke bits from most of the NPCs in the first half was kind of a nice break, and it seemed forced to make everything so serious on the back end.
I did enjoy the first half up to, say, level 83-84? Then it started to drag for a few hours. I think after the whole cooking show arc, I was kind of over it. Then some exciting stuff happened, went straight back to a dragging again and by then I was mentally checked ouf of the story. I don't know why I hated Shaaloani so much, but it ruined the rest of the experience for me to a degree. I think it was just too much filler for the story they wanted to tell.
So surreal seeing someone I know in your party, hope Niinii is doing well.
The story is really bad. It's not even our story, it's Wuk's. Legit, there was a section where Y'Shtola who never talked with Wuk before called Wuk on her linkshell to ask her about us, like Y'Shtola couldn't call us directly or something. Wuk is literally poochie from simpsons. Even at the very end, when finally it appears that our warrior of light made up his mind about what to do, Wuk shows up and steals the spotlight. We literally could not even have one(1) good moment just for us. It has to be all Wuk. I'm disappointed in Square and have unsubscribed. Unless they make rapid changes and fast I'm never coming back.
You're unsubscribing just cuz you didn't like the story? Personally, the content takes priority and I'm really looking forward to what they're going to put into the patches. The dungeons alone this expansion were stellar.
@@MrProg-ey3tl I'm just voting with my wallet, I don't want square to get the idea that I like what they do. Speaking about the combat content, I do agree with you that it's more engaging that before due to the way they time the mechanics but even the dungeons feel lazy, they're still the same as they've always been for 2 expansions now and every boss is a reskin. I've counted Cuchulain twice, Titan twice, I've seen Scatnach there's eden prime and the snake thing from singularity reactor which I actually think is from coils and others that I didn't keep track of. Even on that end it feels like a budget expansion and square didn't change it's formula, bozja2 is coming maybe after 1 year so I guess I'll be back then and I hope they actually make some changes.
@@forte8227 you clearly just don't like the game might as well just perma quit.
@@MrProg-ey3tlthe story Is 99% of ff14. I don’t care about raiding or grinding power lvls at all. So if the story is bad the game is bad
Sphene really prankked Otes by staying as a hologram in that body and not moving.
I didn't like Lyse, but I love SB. I didn't mind Lyse getting some focus because the lead up to SB was YEARS of time with her character from Yda -> Lyse. Wuk Lamat e-rapes us with her screentime. We have no relationship with her or her situation, we basically just paid SQEX $40 to be forced into diversity training in her cutscenes. 4/10 expansion, fights, music are great. Fantastic actually. Writing 1/10.
to be honest, after Endwalker, the last thing i was expecting was an entire city of artificial people and dead memories and depressing background music,
and in the end, it still takes away the only good thing the zone had, its beauty, because by turning off the 4 zones, I would say that the player has no reason to go back there, except fates.
btw
Aren't we supposed to be on vacation? What I expected from the "Golden City" was some kind of lost city underground (like Orbonne Monastery on Ivalice Raids),
with treasures and goodies for the player to collect, cool world bosses and stuff, not that depressive living memory.
my main issue so far is pacing
i thought arr pacing was bad but arr is a f1 car in comparison too this
the first hours is nothing but go here to talk to this see cutscene go here talk to this other guy cutscene go here talk to this guy cutscene on and on and on
Hmm. That's how it is with every expansion tbh. Which is why I've been skipping cutscenes since Stormblood. XIV's story is an absolute snooze fest imo... 😅
I have now about 4-5 hours of playing and i'm so fucking bored. Does it get any better? No spoilers please, but i just wanna know. I feel like i am wasting my time.
@@MegaAndyGGit gets better with the duties and the other half of the story but that also has its problem (but the duties are even better)
Never been happier to be a story skipper. All the new dungeons and trials are amazing. The trials have some really fun new mechanics and the ex versions have been really fun so far too. All the new zones are amazing as well. Honestly have been enjoying this expac so far. Hoping this is a SB situation. Where the story is ass but the raid and combat content is amazing.
I've always thought FF14 story was ass so the fact that the story this time is MORE ass doesn't bother me!
i litreally cannot imagine people who play this game only for the story when you're missing out on so much other content - and what, you get patch story every few months? do you really do nothing but sit in limsa until then? DT bosses and trials have been great and i can't want for it's bozja and beastmaster class.
"I thought the voice acting for her was really well done" uhhhh...
Gotta keep the freaks from beating down his door.
@@geek593 haha, facts
i think also some of the voice acting was very well done. But... i am German, The German Voices this time were utterly awefull, soulless, emotionless... so i don't have much to compare it to.
This review was spot on. Felt the same about 99% of what you referenced.
I thought i didnt like Shaaloani but then i started shared fate grinding on MCH and it just hits diffy. Plus the music there is 10/10 (for the kind of zone that its in)
2:07 we couldnt disagree more, Texas zone has S tier mega vibe music, i often go to it just to afk with the music
The credits song is probably one of the first songs i really dislike in the entirety of 14, felt so out of place
Wuk Lamat just does the same shit over and over again, it's really grating.
The way I see it is they had pacing issues that affected what was delivered in the later half. They spent a lot of time on the succession ritual. The character of Sphene would have benefited from being introduced earlier in the story to give her more lines and a more personal relationship with the WoL. Figuring out the golden city should have been the next objective immediately after finding the entrance with Shaalaoni being part of that path. Some of the early story content could have been condensed a little to give room for the side cast to perform the feats they are capable of and for what should have been the second half rather than the last third of the story. Alisaie was underutilized in Solution 9 in a way that left out a very touching moment that would have changed the dialogue significantly.
Was it the moment when they discuss if the WoL has anyone they think of as family? I was disappointed that there wasn't a more direct answer available, like being able to say that they view Alphinaud and Alisaie as younger siblings
@@twilightgeneral777 Alisaie can summon a familiar named Angelo which can cure any form of aether imbalance. This harkens back to Shadowbringers as well as the MSQ of Endwalker where we mass produce porxies to cure the tempered. Sphene died of levin sickness and cannot do anything other than visit the children who are suffering from the same affliction. Sphene would have bore witness to a terminally ill child being cured of the same condition that killed her. Given the line of dialogue from the last dungeon involving why she smiles, this would affect Sphene emotionally and lead to different dialogue.
@@twilightgeneral777 Sorry for the numerous typos in my reply. They have been corrected :)
I had much the such feelings on the way the msq was written. I may be mistaken, but I recall something being said about the writing responsibility being handed off to two individuals who were not the primary writers in the past, and if so that may be the source of the problem. They may simply have no experience writing the kind of narrative 14's msq has been known for up to this point. I can see why they might want to pass the torch but the results were a disaster.
Yeah, same thought. Some aspect of the story is great, but some are extremely weird. Everything else is 10/10.
The story is on the same level as ARR if not worse but the fights are really fun tho. Haven't finished it yet.