So obviously this expansion is very divisive and the conversation surrounding it can get pretty heated. Like Mike mentioned in the video even in our own office we don't agree on it - I cannot tell you how long me and Mike have spent debating aspects of this MSQ 😂 As ever though even when we are critical, we are trying to do so through well reasoned discussion and to offer balanced takes on the subject. I hope y'all in the comments can do the same.
The only defense I have of the sudden power creep of Wuk-Lamat.... Akasha is probably involved. I bet she had some sprinkled on the tacos. I really hope that they find more data on that USB Earring.
My WoL just staring at Erenville who said could quietly checkout if we didn't enjoy aiding Wuk Lamat as a companion, "You. Lied. To. Me. Wuk Lamat would never allow me to leave, she's asked me already in 3 different instances to stay! What about my demeanor around her makes her think I want to be around her anymore!? She even called me family! Why!?" Erenville: "If I must suffer this, then I would wish for company that I can enjoy suffering alongside."
I love how NO ONE in 'New World' so much as mentioned anything like recent hardships. As if the whole 'End of Days' didn't JUST HAPPEN. Completely disconnected. It felt so weird.
The best lore reason I’ve heard people conjecture is that since there was no primals draining the land of aether after so many summonings that the final days didn’t visit Tural. It’s not a super good reason but it’s decent enough that it makes some sense
Yeah, that's odd, but I'm going to assume that Tural is simply thicker with aether, so dynamis couldn't affect it before we solved the problem. Or they're so generally happy that they didn't really have any fears to manifest.
@@Yesnaught Not sure about that. The despair of the Mamool Ja and their whole, well, eugenics stuff would absolutely have seen some happen. Just seems like they tried too hard to separate this expansion from previous, when the whole foundation for why we love FF14 is because of the previous. Having come in with Wuk Lamat to essentially put back together a people who were scared from the End of Days events would have been so much more impactful. Her reminding the peoples of who they are, giving them that fighting spirit, etc, instead of 'leaning' about them would have been such a good story to tell. Honestly they just botched it.
The lines of stagnant aether you can see when zofiark first dies... At least two of them criss crossed tural both north and south. For sure they had some final days action. Otherwise they fucked up with their own planet projection.
Problem is Krile is already pretty complete as a person, she is already pretty mature and the only thing she was missing was combat ability, and she already got that off-screen.
It hurts even more when you realize she’s been done dirty since the start. Her introduction was probably the first and last time she was an interesting character.
Reminder that we straight up walk away from a terminally ill child with a condition very similar to tempering/sin eater infection and make absolutely no mention to Sphene or anyone else that we could probably cure him.
@@TheChunkeyNinja and that’s absolutely a problem, because it’s lazy and insults my intelligence as a player. They’re just milking obvious low-hanging fruit for post-game content.
@@TheChunkeyNinjaWhy would it ever be brought up again? Not a single character showed any interest in remembering it for later. It's like the people who think Gulool Ja's mother will come up later. If that was really going to happen, Alphinaud or Alisae or G'raha or anyone_ would have brought it up to foreshadow it.
@@Dharengo Why not? There are still plenty of things for stories to explore for 7.1-7.3. The sickness, the kid and his military authority, dealing with the soul system, how the two civilizations interacts with each other... Just cuz they don't mention them in 7.0 means it will be not dealt with in patch updates. EW is a special case where 6.0 resolves all problems, leaving 6.1-6.5 for the 13th and 6.55 to bridge with 7.0. DT should return to the same old format of other expansions, with 7.1-7.3 dealing with immediate threat, then resolve consequences and wrap up the expansion, and 7.4-7.55 bridging to new expansion.
The fact Zoraal Ja isn't mentioned a single time in this video (outside of Gulool Ja Ja's death scene, in which he wasn't talked about at all) tells you enough about his impact.
The thing about Wuk being around all the time is that this is the first expac where they focused so heavily on one character at the expense of others. Every other expac had an ensemble cast that all had equal paths, equal goals, equal time. This was fully the Wuk Lamat show and sometimes her friends. It was like Stormblood dealing with Lyse without the Doma cast to shore things up and shift the focus.
The fact they had us literally wait around doing nothing while she got kidnapped was just fucking insulting. Not only was it so entirely predictable that it felt like watching Blue's Clues, but we're standing there with our dicks in our hands and clicking a spot on the ground to wait for her, repeatedly. It genuinely feels like parts of this expansion were actually included out of spite. I hope this is the last time these writers are trusted with the msq.
@@FoxHoundUnit89I would still give them a chance. I think their entire team is still trying to get used to their new structure and expanded responsibilities within Square Enix as a whole. New blood needs to learn from mistakes and DT is certainly filled with them. I’m sure they’re looking at all the public feedback atm.
Nah. Lyse is judged harshly cuz how little she shined in her own expansion. Wuk Lamat is judged harshly cuz she appears everywhere in her own expansion. Both deserves being judged harshly cuz under-representation and over-representation are both bad.
Sadly, the conclusion I‘ve arrived at is that the writing was just bad. They wanted to force her onto the throne for whatever reason, giving her no time for true failure or flaws even though that would have made the story much more interesting. The two halves of the story could have been much more interconnected and by doing so, they could have given the plot more room to breathe. They should have let Wuk Lamat fail and learn from her failures. They should have given us more of this rivalry they promised. Maybe they could have had the race to the throne end early because of unforeseen circumstances with the interdimensional fusion. There were so many ways to make the story more exciting, but for some reason they went for the most stale option they could think of.
I feel had been a quiet test audiance, like how would you feel if we did this and made wuka a perm scion for it to be angry backlash for them to just push her to side.
I'm not convinced it's a matter of "throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks". The problem with Dawntrail is not the plot, nor new ideas...it is that the writing is just BAD. I physically cringed through half of the MSQ. If ARR was a 5/10, this is a 2/10. - Wuk Lamat should have remained a scaredy cat and also a bad fighter for the entire story. This is why she NEEDED the WoL on her team. The one thing she IS good at should be that she already understands her people. So instead of each feat having a local help her, she earns her tablets by knowing what the other Promises don't know (such as the alpaca saddle, harvest flotilla, and banana leaf) and uses that to her advantage. - As for the scions, each Promise should have 2 scions on their team. They simply had to write each Promise to not be cartoonishly evil to begin with so that the scions would be willing to join their team. Imagine how fun it would have been if we actually fought Thancred and Urianger, with them knowing they cant beat us, so they try deterring the WoL with tricks and traps. - My opinion on Gulool Ja Ja (father lizard) and the invasion, is that it should have never happened. Ketenram should have been the one who died. It doesn't make any sense that Zoraal Ja would leave him alive. When the attack happened my immersion dropped to a 0%. It's not that I don't like sci-fi in FFXIV, but the whole thing was just not good, especially since that entire sequence of people dying the WoL did absolutely nothing. We just watched citizens get massacred. - They 100% did Krile dirty. She had the earrings, but it didn't even open the gate without the proper "authority", which completely ruins the scene of her parents telling her they gave that to her in hopes to see her again. The baby lizard should have never existed, it doesn't even make sense since Zoraal Ja is the ONLY lizard in Solution 9? So unless he can lay eggs himself Im not convinced he woulda had a child. Another missed opportunity was Erenville entirely not knowing that Krile had to just turn off her parents before he had to let his own mother go. Anyways, if we had to keep the general plot of 6 feats followed by Alexandria (and all the dungeons and trials) the same. I would rewrite everything else. Absolute terrible MSQ writing.
The new writing team are just not ready to take on a full expansion MSQ if this story had been sidecontent like the Hildebrand plotline it would have been a fun romp, as it is it kinda falls short in far too many ways
Gulool Ja Ja’s death could have been fixed so easy. Just have WOL team up with Bakool Ja Ja in a solo duty to fight someone augmented with a beast soul like in the savage raids. We defeat the enemy, see the cutscene with Zarool Ja and cut it with WOL and Bakool Ja Ja sprinting to the throne room. By the time we make it there the king is dead and everyone else is broken, beaten and Zarool Ja is already gone.
Or better yet, a solo instance fighting up to the throne room, only to arrive afterward and have an echo flashback of the Zoraal/Gulool fight, which would make more sense instead of having everyone around watching it happen and not intervening.
In retrospect, I don't think I cared much for it at the time, but it's the only zone that felt like a pre-Dawntrail zone. After the MSQ was over, I would have liked more of that.
2:00 It's really not, tho. YoshiP is extremely vocal about playing coy not giving out any spoilers while actively putting out massive spoilers in the Fanfests and Live Letters... It just happened before you started playing the game. Just take a look back at what they gave away for free in the Fanfests for Heavensward, Strormblood, and Shadowbringers. They have *never* been afraid to give away spoilers if they think it will build hype and sell the expansion. That said: It felt like was written by somebody who understood what has worked in prior expansions but has no understanding of why it worked. Just throwing a bunch of random pieces in the bucket: We need a new character here, but why do all the work to build her up over time (maybe a patch cycle ahead of time) and craft a character which connects with the player when you can just introduce her at the absolute last possible moment and then shove her down the audience's throat? We need a sad part here, but why make all the effort to build a moment that feels earned when we can just poke the player's emotional scars with a sharp pointy stick? They used to be so good at this sort of thing that it is absolutely astonishing how quickly they became so bad at it.
I dont understand why this was hard tbh. In heavensward we literally cutback all the scions minus 1 to focus on new characters for 80% of the game. It was great and it felt like when they came back they were used properly and more interesting and we got a great story with new characters that got the focus in the meantime. Why ignore a template like that.
I think having Wuk lose the rite to Koana would be better. This will put Wuk in her place for getting carried too much by the WoL. Then Koana being a smartass that he is would ask Wuk to lead beside him cuz he's bad with people, mirroring the two heads of Gulool in the end. Then, when the dome part started, Koana shouldve just prevent Wuk from going like, "no sis, u staying with me dealing with the invasion, that thing is Scion stuff" and actually do the talk with Azdaja for the cooperation or smth. The dome shouldve been scion only. Shouldve had the WoL linkpearl all the scions and be like, "xcuse me I wanna summon all of u using my crystal, just making sure ur not in the toilet rn or smth" and they be like "yea no prob Azem away" and have the WoL Azem them into the dome.
I feel those that feel lied to from the trailer and marketing campaign are justified in feeling so. When you look at the Dawntrail trailer and it's promotional material what do you see? The scions being prominently featured, giant monster hunting, old architecture hinting to a link between the Ronkan empire and the first, the hunt for the mysterious city of gold and the vibrant colours and environments inspired by south America. I went into Dawntrail expecting a lower stake adventure that was a mix of Monster Hunter and Indiana Jones with some political stakes. Instead what do we get? The scions are barely featured, we get a diet version of what the marketing promised us for the first couple of levels before we once again go into a drab environment and with the fate of the entire world at stake once again. Sphene and her motivations are pretty much just the diet version of the Ascians once again and it feels like reheated leftovers from Shb. The trailers for the other expansion also don't tell you what the plot of the expansions are but the sell you on the exact tone, theme and encapsulation of what the expansion is about.
At the end of the day, I find that there's just no direction the story is going. At the end of ARR, we still had Lahabrea to deal with. We still had the Garlean Empire on our doorstep. We still had Ala Mhigo to liberate. We still has Ishgard to visit. We still had stuff to do that was teased to us throughout the ARR story. There's nothing at the end of Dawntrail. We have a key that somehow is connected to Azem and that's it. There's nothing else. Tural is a happy joyous place with sunshine and rainbows and no strife whatsoever. The Power of Friendship ^TM made sure that even the conflict we encountered was resolved with a few words of kindness and a promise to be the bestest leader ever. Solution 9 is shown integrating into Tural society. Every direction they could have pointed the game in was resolved by the end. Dawntrail fails to setup the future of the game. It felt like a patch MSQ that outstayed its welcome. And the very fact that we have to rely on the patch MSQ to save this is just disastrous. Sidenote: I ran the Great Gubal Library the other day. You know, that dungeon aaaaaaaall the way back in Heavensward? There's a book there. It teases the City of Gold. A myth that no one has seen, that no one knows where it is. We've been teased about the City of Gold for FOUR expansions. And when we finally get to go hunt for it, we're told within the first half hour of the expansion that it had already been found and the leader of the nation knew exactly where it was this whole time. What the ever loving hell.
The new writers just seem to lack the ability to tease things. They have to say and reveal everything explicitly. They can't even do subtext, they have to literally tell you "I am showing the importance of friendship now" lol.
I didn't hate Dawntrail, but the overall arc of the story felt like a throwback to FFXI for me. Both in terms of the quality of the story, and the structure itself. In every expansion in FFXI, you were introduced to a new girlfriend, I mean, main protagonist character, and that character became your companion for the duration of the expansion. We had Lion from RotZ (hot pirate's daughter girlfriend), Prishe and Ulmia from CoP (a two for one choose your own girlfriend adventure, in the flavors of "looks like a loli" or "sweet elf with a good singing voice"), Aphmau from ToAU (now girlfriends in princess flavor!) , Lilsette from WotG (now girlfriends in halfling dancer flavor!), Arciela from SoA (but what about second princess?), and finally Iroha from RoV (new exciting flavor for your expansion girlfriend: shrine maiden!) Thinking back on it, I like some of the expansion girlfriends more than others. Lion was okay, but we barely got any time with her because RotZ was so short. I liked Ulmia, but I though Prishe was seriously annoying. I was a big fan of Aphmau. Lilsette was fun and spunky. By the time they got to Arciela, it felt like such a retread of the same characters She was just another bland princess who needed help because her continent was getting taken over by darkness yadda yadda. Wuk Lamat is the same vein as the FFXI expansion girlfriends. The writer loved the character, but couldn't force us to love her as much as they did.
What annoyed me throughout the MSQ is that nobody ever seems to say the things you'd want them to say, or ask the questions you'd want them to ask. Bakool Ja Ja kidnaps a contest judge and releases a monster that threatens half the continent, but nobody ever mentions that maybe he should get disqualified. The WoL sees Sphene during the attack on Tuliyollal. Never mentions it. Krile sees the robots sucking glowing orbs out of dead bodies. Never mentions it. We come to a place where everybody has a weird thing on their heads, a thing we saw Zoral Ja use to revive himself and power himself up. This is clearly something very important. Do we ask what those are? Eventually, yes, but first we spent an hour on learning about farming techniques. We learn that Krile's earring is a storage device, with data on it from people from another world. Do we ask what's on this? Nope, because we have to get not-Grenolt an energy drink.
I'll be honest, I stopped attempting to take the story seriously when the group let Wuk Lamat wander off on her own because some random elezen said there was a message for her early in the MSQ. I was just staring at my own character going "you idiot." When Koana started yelling at the player about "how could you let this happen?" I was like "yeah good question." It's one of those plots that requires everyone involved to make the dumbest choices they can to keep it moving, which can be pretty frustrating to sit through.
After it looked like Bakool Ja Ja was going to kill someone for not give him what he wanted and released that monster from the prison, I kept wondering why my WoL wouldn't just kill him already. How much more damage was he allowed to do before he was stopped. When they pointed out the earing was a data storage device, I was slowly getting angrier and angrier as they kept talking about everything else. I was about to lose it when it looked like you were about to leave without anyone at least starting to look at the data. Just before I popped, thankfully one of the NPCs asked to look at the data.
Y'shtola apparently recorded from a home studio owing to having recently had a child. And even if the quality isn't the best, the performance is still fine, so it's really not an issue. By contrast, the entire US voice acting studio has serious audio issues the entire time through. The amount of compression on their lines compared to the UK cast is absolutely ridiculous, and pretty much all of the performances beyond GJJ are laughably amateur. Plenty of people praise Koana, and yet his VA voices about 7 side-characters with the exact same voice and intonations, suggesting he's less of a "voice actor" and more of "voice haver." And I mean Wuk Lamat dropping the world's fakest Hispanic accent every third line just goes without saying.
There's this insane belief within circles of the XIV Defense Squad that everyone who disliked DawnTrail had already made their mind up before the expansion launched. I am not someone who hated Endwalker patch content, and I was trying (desperately) to enjoy this expansion. I actually did nothing but look for the positives until the credits rolled, but even despite all of this willingness to engage with a new story, found myself really disappointed in the end.
I loathe Wuk Lamat. A horribly written character, the VA couldn't do anything to salvage that train wreck. The MSQ was so bad...I quit playing. I just can't. It was that bad. We, as you said, are basically an atomic bomb in an environment where they're using clubs, and we're regulated to watching someone's fetish learn the power of friendship...and sitting idly by while horrendous things happen, because Wuk Lamat. Just. No. I was PISSED when that furball took the glory at killing Sphene. Really? What are we even doing here. The WoL could conquer the whole continent alone, yet...we're the glorified escort/fetch servant of Wuk Lamat. A childish, uninspired character. Straight up 0/10 on the MSQ. The environments and stuff, that is great. The music is terrible in this xpac too, it just does not fit. They screwed up bad on this xpac...very bad.
The character writing was very poor in this expac, the Scions could have been replaced by cardboard cutouts and nothing would have changed, even when they did have something to say it was very homogenous to the point where if you gave me the dialogue with no name attached I probably couldn't tell you who said it. If they're going to be used this badly I'd prefer them to either stay out of the story or just focus on a few of them (ala HW and SB). I think your point that how badly everyone else is handled builds resentment for Wuk Lamat (because for some reason the writers decided to super glue you to her ) is a fair assessment but I think she's not a fantastic character to begin with. I was not impressed with her in 6.55 but I was hopeful because it was quite obvious that her boisterous and optimistic personality was somewhat of a front but I don't think that was adequately explored here and in the end she learns nothing because she can talk no jutsu and love and peace her way out of every situation. She also never felt fit to be a leader, if you put her in a room with the alliance leaders it'd look like take your kid to work day. Even Nanamo, who has shown naivety in the past (but unlike Wuk was punished for it) and is probably a similar age to Wuk Lamat, shows much more maturity and feels like someone responsible enough to be a leader.
You know, Wuk's dad never needed to tell this random adventurer he doesn't even know everything about her past so that the henchmen could just hear it.
I remember we had a "You don't know about my past" moment with Fordola then she had an Echo flashback with our past. She was like "How the fuck did you deal with all of that"? To be honest, I was like giiirl your's was way worse. P.S. Haven't played Dawntrail yet or watched the video to avoid spoilers, was just curious about the comments
I really tried to give this expansion a fair shot, knowing that it's the start of a new story arc led by a new writing team, who should be given a chance before everyone goes full doomer. However after playing it and thinking on it for some time it's clear that there are just SO many problems when you dig even slightly deeper. I don't want to write an essay so I'll summarise it as follows: - Omnipresence of Wuk Lamat at the expense of every other character - Neglecting important characters (Krile, Erenville) and rushing their conclusion - Characterisation overall being poor, with the scions basically being cardboard cutouts, and the villains underwhelming - The childish nature of the story telling, genuinely felt like I was watching a kids cartoon at times during the 1st half - Heavy emphasis on telling rather than showing - Plot contrivance in multiple cases, often caused by our character and others acting stupid and passive - Shallow world building, few societal problems and those that do exist are solved immediately - Retreading previous themes in a less interesting way I think when people say 'It's a new arc, don't expect Shadowbringers/Endwalker levels of hype' what they fail to understand is that it's not about the stakes, its about the writing *quality* which has fallen off a cliff since 6.1. I'm still going to remain hopeful that they can rescue things in the patches like they did in Stormblood, but my confidence in the writers has been severely dented.
The old head writer, Ishikawa has said that she stopped writing for FFXIV after 6.0 (she contributed to 6.1 sidequests featuring Omega). This is because she got promoted into senior scenario writer which highly implies she is working on another project, perhaps FFXVII. We are under two new head writers who have been around since ARR.
@@coolyeh1017 Right now they need to hit the emergency Isihikawa button, grab her by the shoulders and put her back in the driver seat. There's no saving this MSQ otherwise.
"think when people say 'It's a new arc, don't expect Shadowbringers/Endwalker levels of hype' what they fail to understand is that it's not about the stakes, its about the writing quality which has fallen off a cliff since 6.1. " THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU I've LITERALLY been saying this since 6.1 and people act like im crazy or try to give me the "oh it's a new story" line. Yes, it's a bad story, it's a hap hazzard rushed poorly written immature mess. Think about it, since 6.1 we have uncovered and ended 2 calamitous world ending threats...where is the low stakes new slow burn setup exactly??? Not to mention they do things like assasinating Vritra, who is an ancient dragon but somehow...SOMEHOW..doesn't understand what a trade agreement is and has to be told be a literal fucking child. Vrtra just gets massacered in EW post patch, and so do the scions in 7.0, they're behaving in this MSQ like they would in some off brand crossover quest, stripped down to their most bare characteristics. They don't contribute much to the story imo, even Krile is just...there.
@@coolyeh1017 Those "new writters" onlyhad roles as a quest designers and one have a visual novel as a project with questionable tags including canibalism but i expected a bit more from the people who did sorrows of werly and the 4 lords and one who worked along in heavensward
@@coolyeh1017l believe Ishikawa is still reviewing at least parts of the story atm. The way I see it, they’ve just had a massive restructuring of their team and are getting used to the new work dynamics, so things are going to fall through the cracks. It doesn’t excuse the writing quality, of course, but it may bring a bit of understanding to the situation. I enjoyed a lot of the little threads that they left and the overall potential of where the story could go, but reflecting on how we got here and all the little moments that could’ve been done better just frustrates me.
If they made the entirety of patch content dedicated to tying Dawntrail up that would have helped with the pacing. An example would be that we don't actually take down Zoraal'ja right away and instead he is a boss for one of the patches as we start storming his kingdom. The entire MSQ should have ended with Wuk becoming the dawnservant and us not knowing where Zoraal'ja is and what's going to happen with him, saving it for patch content and Sphene not even being introduced until probably the same patch where we find out what Zoraal'ja was getting up to.
I agree! I've been wracking my brain and I think this really is the best way to fix the story even though some things would be different (solution nine zone, the raids, etc). There were things in tural that I genuinely wanted to see while the stakes weren't super high: the people that were against Wuk and supported zoraal ja coming back into play, Koana's past with the nomadic miqote and having to confront it as the dawnservant... and the mamook conflict taking longer than a few minutes. It could've been cool
Agreed! The whole story should have been Tural. Xak Tural should have been part of the trial. There should have been more drama and conflict in the member states you visit. Krile should have gotten focus on confidence building and recollections of Galuf. Erinville could have gotten work on coming out of his shell and spoken more about his relationship or lack there of with his mom. We could have dealt with conflict with the two factions of giants, conflict between Koana and Wuk Lamat, between the Hettsarro and the train builders. We could have seen Shaoloni before the merging and met the waluquee. The Mamook and X’braal relations is rife with potential juicy drama and even the culpability for the man who brought the “peace”. Why weren’t they given lands above the canopy? Why is trade not mandated or an economic solution devised for the ones who stayed? Did he ever try to put a stop to the practice? The resilient son could have been fleshed out as a more rounded character. The zones could be more fleshed out with the wonderful blue quest chains being incorporated more into the main story instead of being optional. We could spend some time separated from Wuk Lamat which each fear requiring she do a task on her own and we get given time to do some vacation or just fun stuff without her. Like instead of sitting by a camp fire while she Lama hunts we could have been running down some leads on the city of gold. Erinville and Krile could take the lead. Heck we could have gotten a near civil war as the climax. Solution 9 could have waited until the patches to start being introduced. With the last patch being the invasion and death of Galuul JA JA. It would have been a very post ARR ending and I think that would be great! That would have also given us a whole expansion to develop and explore Alexandria. I wanted something lower stakes than EW or SB and instead they ended with a multidimensional catastrophe aversion story.
Around 96 I was already reaching the point of wanting Wuk Lamat to go away, and give the player character some space (it was overbearing and feeling like flat-out babysitting). When the Scions were taken away from us at the very last second when we enter a Reflection (you know, the thing they are EXPERTS in), I was completely done with the story, since everyone felt kind of out-of-character and dumbed down for the (obvious) purpose of making Wuk Lamat be the center stage no matter what. Krile (who I might add, was heavily promoted for this expansion) getting shafted to a 10-minute story was the final nail in the coffin.
Please explain why Wuk, the one person that's not experienced with dimensional travel or other scientific area, was the one that managed to break into the fight but not G'raha or Krile. I was ready to shoot her myself at that point. FFS this is what the WoL does. This is our day job. We didn't need her help. At all.
@@CixiaKyrrah But we were iNsPiReD by her according to the buff that we get in the final stage of the trial kekw. Sometimes it feels like Wuk is the writer's self insert, but idk.
@@zhenoob Don't forget she has 18 million HP and deals 3 times as much damage as anyone else while she's there. I know it's inconsequential, but I don't understand why they hell they banked EVERYTHING on Wuk; unearned screentime, writer/story focus, power levels - all because she's a nice little ditzy cutie who says she understands. I could even have dealt with that, if it wasn't for the fact that it was obviously at the cost of intimate and growth moments for all other characters we know and hold dear, especially Krile (absolutely shafted) and Erenville (Lost 30 years with his mom due to chasing Wuk's bracelet for too long in the desert) and written as a contemplative mute in the final zone, which would be some of the most fucking traumatic shit ever. I just don't get these choices. And it worries me for their future direction.
Honestly the part that almost made me quit playing was when you're forced to play as Wuk Lamat WHILE STANDING RIGHT BESIDE HER. We have only ever taken over characters when WE ARE ABSENT from those scenes. It pissed me off so much that we were forced to play that character in such a horrendously executed fashion. Not to mention the bullshit of her doing *multiple Limit Breaks for no reason other than she borrowed our plot armor*. Like the implication was Dynamis, but that's all it was - an implication that is never explored or addressed ever again. She's basically the Rey of FFXIV. Nothing is earned, and it felt so insulting that they forced us to play her while our character literally stood right there.
@@Ellemtee749 i lowkey thought they wrote the story this bad on purpose for clouts. Free marketing. Because if Ishikawa was the supervisor, no way she looked at this and said "oh ok this is good".
After going through the MSQ Twice now, the best way I can describe it is as a YA novel. Whereas SHB and Base EW were far more adult in their concept and execution, DT reads like a self-published Young Audience story. The heavier issues were passed over too quickly with "The power of Friendship" as the explanation.
My biggest issue with Dawntrail was how everyone consistently and constantly tells you to not be you. They don't want conflict and blood baths to resolve problems like you are Zenos. Only to turn to you when things go sideways but then still throttle your response. You play as a character who is at this point for lack of a better term a demigod in power and ability they need to acknowledge it. The only time you get to bring it up is when you can tell Sphene that you are going to destroy her army and nobody has a response. Solving problems our way has literally saved the universe and being told that our methods are wrong by everyone, even the Scions. It's an insult to the player.
Yeah, I want some real "villain" options. Let us identify with Zenos' philosophy and choose chaos solutions instead of sticking to strait-laced proper solutions. I kind of wish we had the option of putting our hand up for the title of Dawnservant when he asked us what we thought of Wuk Lmao. "None of them are suitable. You might as well give it to me." Even if we can't actually hold it because we'd get tied down.
My main issue isn't with the MSQ as a concept, because I truly did have a good time with Wuk Lamat and parts of the tale. My problem is with the MSQ as a package. This absolutely felt like 2 different stories that each needed time to breathe. Like you brought up early on, the main MSQ should have been strictly the Dawnservant trials so that way we could actually get to know some of these characters a bit more. Give them more screentime and not have it *just* be the Wuk Lamat show. Then we could have ended on a cliffhanger with the dome being generated and not having an immediate way in, leaving a great hook for post-MSQ. It's like a soup was made, but a few steps were skipped. Sure, it's probably still edible by the end, but it's not gonna taste anywhere near as good as if the proper time was taken.
hoping SE learns they cant just expect people to gobble up the story without having anything else to fall back on, the overwhelming lack of gameplay sections made the story even more of a slog to get through
@@hypersleep9336 I was running an alt through skipping scenes, and in the time it took me to complete my first visit to Urqopacha alone, my alt skipping scenes had cleared the first trial in roughly that time. Maybe half an hour longer. So roughly in the time half of one zone took, skipping scenes finished 2 zones, 2 dungeons, and a trial, give or take a little flex time. I was surprised at how many opportunities we could have had for solo story duties we just didn't get.
This is spot on. The number of times my quest bar said nothing but "talk to x" for hours at a time is insane. If I wanted a visual novel that's what I would have bought, not a fucking mmo.
This was my biggest issue. Give us more voiced battle missions. Let us play the game while you tell the story and possibly make cutscenes more impactful in the process.
Thanks Mike for pointing out the way we take their lumber and walk away. 14 has had a history of dealing with tough realities in the past and I was disappointed we handwaved so many of them here. For me however the biggest problem was not Wuk Lamat or her character but the sidelining of the WoL and of the legacy of what that character used to mean. While we are not always the MC - though never has any MC sucked the oxygen out of the room like Wuk does - BUT we were always the protagonist. We saw other peoples' stories through the eyes of the WoL and as part of our own journey. Here the WoL might as well have been furniture in the room. This reduces the illusion of character ageny to nothing. While it is often noted the WoL has no real agency, the story in the past has created the illusion of agency by having our WoL make "choices" that reflect what we know of their character. Not here. From standing around watching the murder of a head of state and father of an ally to pressing the big button in Living Memory because "they aren't truly alive" . In Living Memory the player is clearly going to remember Emet Selch's words to us - "you are not truly alive ergo I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you". Without getting into any kind of debate about what being alive in 14 consists of, the glaring problem here is that the past lines of the MSQ itself will be ringing in the players ears at this point, not to mention the questlines in Ultima Thule, where we help dead people who only exist as memories rebuild a future. DT's MSQ simply handwaves all this as if our WoL has amnesia. My WoL is literally wearing the title "Barrista at the end of the Universe" over his head while all this is going on. This led to a problem for some of ius in which we began to feel a real disconnect between themselves and their character. It's not just that Wuk Lamat or any other MC was too omnipresent - it was that the WoL and the MSQ seems to have forgotten their own legacy. For a game so concerned with the past, with memory, and with honoring legacies this was very hard to take.
I genuinely thought Wuk Lamat's happy-go-lucky mindset was going to be challenged by some terrible truth the Dawnservant role holds. Like she becomes DS and then her father says "ye btw if you don't sacrifice a baby a year the golden gate opens and the bad guys come through and kill us all. Have fun!" And she'd have to struggle to make a terrible choice (probably negated by something the Warrior does, but still). But no. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. She bungles her way through the expac and learns absolutely nothing
Another problem with the Hanuhanu not knowing that the float was an arcane focal point, even with the additional "we just thought it was theatrics" line, is that Wuk Evu, a complete outsider who had been there for 3 years, so had attended at least 2 others festivals, knew what the float was for. Why did he know but the actual Hanuhanu did not? Where did he get this information from? Why didn't he tell anyone?
Especially you would think people that are so close to their culture would have beliefs...They wouldn't call it 'theatrics". That's stuff you see in modern society that are starting to put their cultures on the back burner. It just doesn't make any sense. If they wanted to have them forget about their culture they should've tackled a form of colonization, for example, from the Yok Huy who could have enforced their culture on them while they were in power for a couple of generations.
True, it felt like a stand in for wuk lamat wanting the festival. Kona sees the actual issue and goes to deal with it, bakool has no idea but plans to steal Kona’s work at least, no idea what zooral ja does and wuk is sad there’s no festival
@@Salt_Mage Actually...Does it? You could assume that the Hanu Hanu doesn't have a writing tradition just like the Autochtones people of America which could explain a loss of knowledge over time if elders don't share it perfectly. But then HOW did Wuk Evu learn about it? If there are writings then how did the Hanu Hanu forget? Are they all too dumb to read? However you want to twist it, it's not great. Having an outsider explain a people's culture while every one in that culture is oblivious is just a bad look. You won't see me go to an Autochtone community with my history book telling them about their culture. I would like to attribute this to bad writing, perhaps a course correction like Preach mentioned rather than what you are implying.
Right? Like have the tribal significance, but then have the twins notice the arcane nature of it. And then find out they weren't the smartest because this guy was thinking the same. Only now old guy has a fresh presepective from the new comers and they work together for a solution. Instead we get the typical Hollywood "everyone before me is dumb and stuck in the old ways, and I can solve all this because I am just that smart and modern."
I joke with my friends about Wuk lamat being alive on a diet of Peace, happiness, love, and tacos because thats LITERALLY all she talked about. Seriously, almost every sentence that came out of her mouth had one of those 3 words in there j;ogfdsgfsd;gfd
@fredy2041 Well, heavensward says otherwise. That expansion fcused on alphinaud, Ysaylenand Estinien. WoL barely did much but we were far more connected to that group than Wuk
Dawntrail, to me, story screams “newly-promoted intern handling a story for the first time.” Disappointing stuff when it comes from such a massive game and makes me worried for the future direction of the game that I’ve literally grown up with.
Lets us make a narrative comparison to another girl we met just recently, which is Zero. The narrative related to Zero was perfectly done, the introduction, the pace, the development of her character and the culmination at the end of her story line was perfect. She completed the Hero's Journey, learned not only from we player but from everyone else, not only the scions. She grew and become something much more than what she was, and at the end, she saw us, the player, as an equal. I absolutely loved her for everything she was, I myself, the real person could relate to her. Now let us take Wuk Lamat. Her character never develops much more than what was presented to us at the beginning. She don't follow the hero's journey, she is already a hero and leads everything, the very typical Mary Sue in all aspects. The narrative took away the agency from us, the player, and gave it to her. We just happen to be there to watch her. At the end of her journey I did not want to relate to her; I felt so unimportant and absent from almost all aspects of the MSQ. I was just there, nothing else. Not only her character development is messed, almost all characters are. Try to compare this expansion to all others and you will notice how bizarre the narrative is, how untypical of Square Enix FF14 development team it is. I just wonder what game consultant company they have hired to ''fix'' the story for the ''modern audiences''. We see the same very thing, the same very contamination in many other games out there that were good. Just see how divisive this MSQ was in the community. People knows there is something really wrong with it, no matter how much cope the others have.
My biggest problems were the pacing of the first half, all of the filler in the second half, the WoL and Scions becoming side characters and the numerous times we were involved in things that we shouldn't have been.
They should've done with Wuk Lamat like they've done with Yugiri: mask her or otherwise hide what race she is while introducing her in the prior expacs/updates. Yugiri was introduced in 2.X, 1 and a half expansions before she had her limelight!
There's a thing i learned recently that really grinds me. Which is how on the last trial, Wuk Finds her way to the fight against Sphene, and from that point onwards she deals double the damage of the WoL. She's a literal nobody, with little to no combat training. She didn't go through any real trials to test her might. On the other hand we have the WoL, the only soul that's 8 times rejoined, with the echo, blessing of light, traveler's charm. Who canonically fought all of the primals alone, who went to the 13th, the first, to the edge of the universe, to save humanity, and every single time did fought the greatest threats all ALONE. And here comes sweet lil kitty princess and obfuscates the strongest warrior that's ever lived. Amazing writing right here.
@pinkchckn agreed, though a couple points of contention. 1- G'raha is also technically 8 times rejoined since he came from a future after the 8th umbral calamity. And 2. It seems to be heavily implied for a lot of the primal fights that we recruited adventurer friends with the echo to fight with us. But yeah, almost everything she did felt unearned.
I don't think the damage number you're never even supposed to see holds any meaning for the narrative. My interpretation of her role is that she's a rookie placed under our care who needs to learn and grow, and we're so far above the threats this expansion that we're basically using them as teaching opportunities. We never actually have to get serious, which is reflected in us fighting with whoever's around instead of calling on Azem's crystal. For Sphene, it was over the moment we did. One notable thing about the ending is since Shadowbringers, we've always had the trope of a character "breaking through reality" to come to our aid with the final boss: Thancred and the Scions to deliver us white auracite, Zenos "I take it this is your prey" Galvus, and this time around Wuk Lamat. Zenos/Shinryu flying his entire ass to the end of the universe is in a class of its own, but I think it's fair to draw a comparison betweeen the Scions breaking through Hades' defenses and Wuk Lamat breaking through Sphene's. In that comparison, I don't believe for a second Wuk Lamat could have done anything about Hades. The Scions rescued us then, but in Dawntrail we would have had the situation well in hand by ourselves. Wuk Lamat coming in isn't about saving us. We don't need it. It's about proving that she's learned from her experiences and our guidance, found her confidence, and she will not stand on the sidelines while we fight her battles.
@@Poldovico lil man you're trying so hard to defend the indefensible. Wuk Lamat had zero reason to show up at all. They spent the entire second half reinforcing her "dumbass main protagonist" trope with her constantly inserting herself in the discussions that she "doesn't understand that stuff" when we talked about shards and dimensional travel every single time we talked about it. THEN, when we went into the portal Y'shtola flat out said that having the person alive who knows the absolute most about dimensional travel should something go wrong in Raha should be present on the other side. And lo and behold the two people who know about the things we are dealing with ,and Raha especially, get yeeted and are passed out in front of the meso terminal while for literally no other reason than to complete the trope of the shitty OC self insert saving the day is not excusable with whatever backstory you're trying to reason into existence. She didn't need to save anything and she MOST CERTAINLY didn't even need to be present for anything. She was way out of her depth even with the bullshit powerups she got for no reason and she 100% should have never been soloing Sphene's huge attacks as if she was on par with the WoL in any capacity. Its ok for her to not be perfect and the answer to everything but the self inserter couldn't have that. It was another mistake to even have G'raha present if they were going to yeet everyone and then the biggest dumbass of our group, that knows nothing about ANY dimensional shenanigans, be the one that somehow breaks through. The extent of our 'guidance' is a huge matter of subjectivity so i'm not even gonna try and approach that one but that character was forced into every aspect, and glaringly where it SHOULDN'T have even crossed their minds to force her. For some reason requiring that the WoL be stunned to transition the MSQ trial is a strange decision they keep going with, it made sense in ShB and EW. Here it had no place at all except just to shoe horn that terrible character in for no reason. She got yeeted, by something she herself stated over and over to not understand, and we didn't need her to prove anything. In fact her admitting that that was a battle that was out of her league would have done wonders but instead she had to be the main character AGAIN with terrible timing and, as stated multiple times already, absolutely ass reasoning. I would have loved it then if the "king of resolve" died fighting Sphene and we let the only character worth the development they were given rule with an understanding of loss and that his views weren't all that great in Koana. That was the only good character for a majority of the expac except Galool Ja Ja who was hardly present.
@@MetalMaidenDeth you can go call your friends "lil man", not me. Considering you're talking about something as inconsequential as a videogame, the least you can do is be respectful.
@@Poldovico My main problem with that is that it's just headcannon, none of the scions served as mentors for wuk lamat, she did everything herself, with the scions acting more like cheerleaders. Wuk didn't learn anything through the whole expansion, her sole growth was in her confidence, but she was stupidly naive from start to end. Her ideals were challenged 0 times, and her victory as dawnservant was never in question since it was designed for her to win. Hell, she tried to talk to Sphene like "leave the legacy of your people to us" after literally assassinating who Sphene wanted to protect. The characters coming to save us in the end works better in other expansions because they're not the main characters, it's becomes kind of a plot twist to see them up there, and none of them are stealing the spotlight. We talk to Emet after defeating him, we talk to Meteion after defeating her, and we are being a third wheel for wuk's expansion. I don't mind that she's the main character of the expansion, most people don't care about being the main character, just look at how the Hildibrand storyline is universally loved. But we as players need to feel useful at some points in the game. At the end of the trial my thoughts were something like "Hell, I guess I don't need to play this game anymore, since the writers found a better WoL than mine, all issues of the world will effortlessly solve themselves as long as she's around."
Tbh my issues with the discourse isn’t even that ppl have mixed feelings, but that the extremes insist on having the most unproductive conversation as possible about it. While I disagree with Mike on a lot of his points here I appreciate that he clearly has thought a lot about this and understands that there are many different ways to absorb the events of the MSQ. Would love a non-MSQ breakdown of Mike’s thoughts on the more mechanical aspects (encounter design, QoL releases, etc) though that might be more beneficial after the Bozja-esque content is out.
Wuk Lamat - Black Hole Sue with 95% screentime and how she warps reality to fit her Scions and other chars turned to husks with no personality Horrid story quest and pacing and the sudden jarring shift in tone in second half Don't get me started on people arguing WoL is a 'mentor' lol, more like a walking camera + cheerleader for Wuk 2/10 MSQ expansion
The loss of 'grit' in the world was a feeling that crept up early. And with Wuk Evu's somewhat automated behaviour, I was actually hoping for a Westworld twist. That the Golden City was a device used by the Dawnservant to create this artificially happy world for one generation. Leaving the creation of the next to his successor. It just seemed too far from how Etheris was presented to us so far. Alas...
Preach, you’ve managed to somehow help me sort through the complicated feelings I have with this expansion. I don’t hate it, but every point you’ve made in this video hits the nails on the head. I’m hoping they can somehow turn it around in the patch content and future expansions, and hoping it touches on the aftermath of our actions during the rite of succession. There’s so much potential sitting and waiting, and they just need to actually use it.
When I was reflecting I think they absolutely Messed up not having graha be accompany us in the first half but randomly in the final third. An xpac focused on exploring a new world and adventure is exactly the dream of graha and to experience it with the warrior of light. We have already done this exact event with the twins times and I don't think they added anything to the story in the first half, they were just there to do menial tasks or bounce off of. Graha was also a leader for many years, especially during trying times and could of invoked his older side especially with plot points like adopted daughter, sacrifice, Alexandria on the brink of destruction, etc. These are all points where graha could invoke his experience and learnings and teacher characters like sphene and wuk lamat. Regardless what they ended up telling was a story that didn't use any of the strengths of the characters, even wuk lamat. If this was a normal jrpg, vast majority of players would of dropped it in the first half.
For me the writers simply forgot who the Scions were characterwise. All the other expansions the Scions were clearly distinctive from each other but this time they reacted all the same. Alphinaud is the one whos most interested in diplomatic relations but he never ask anything. Alisaie is misstrusting in nature and a hothead but this time she was fine with everything. In every other expansion she would instantly misstrust Sphene from the get go but in DT? no reaction at all. the only time i got the feeling to meet an actual Scion i remember from past expansion was G'raha during the gondola ride.
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head as far as a lack of Scions in this expansion is concerned. Though I noticed it from a different perspective: pretty much every quest objective, accompaniment quest and cutscene was about Wuk Lamat, to the point that I was already tired of seeing her quite early on. Also consider this: our "inn room" was introduced very early on, but we never got to use it; more infuriating was how we were told that we and the other Scions could use it to rest a bit, and then it was immediately yanked away from us by more Wuk Lamat story points. And then, to add insult to injury, when we finally do get to use it, Wuk Lamat comes and bothers us within about five seconds and then proceeds to drag us around town for the next thirty minutes. To say that she was an utterly exhausting character would be putting it mildly. We never got any alone time by ourselves, nor any with the Scions either. In short, it felt like Wuk Lamat was being shoved in our faces 200% of the time. That was honestly the reason why Shaaloani unexpectedly became my favorite map, because we finally got a break from her. As for the MSQ itself, the pacing felt incredibly off throughout every single part. The Feats felt like they took forever, the Heritage Found portion felt oddly accelerated, and then we waste so much time on nonsensical "visits" in Solution Nine. And call me crazy, but I simply couldn't bring myself to feel any sympathy for these death-evading invaders because everything about their society just felt wrong. Sphene herself felt like a fake right from her introduction. More than that, she was rather childish and naive for a supposed "queen", and apparently lacked an understanding of how the Lifestream works. For all that other people claim that Sphene was a "tragic" character, I feel no sympathy for the out of control robot who knew exactly what she was doing and could have course corrected at any time but chose not to. Erenville was much more interesting to me in Endwalker than in Dawntrail. It felt like they took a good, intelligent character and dumbed him down and turned him into someone he wasn't for this expansion. I don't really agree with the general feeling that Krile didn't get a proper character arc though. The major outstanding questions about her were all answered, and she (and we) got to meet her parents. I mean, yes, Wuk Lamat had far too much screen time, and I would have loved to see more of Krile, but as far her character arc went, I didn't feel that it was incomplete in any way. I wouldn't compare Wuk Lamat to Lyse if I were you though. Stormblood had pacing issues but overall was a very good, and very human, story. Also, people who truly understood Lyse's character arc know that her growth happened organically and in a way that did not overwhelm every other character's presence. Lyse was also generally far more knowledgeable about her people and a great deal more mature as well. The story also did not devolve into the utter nonsense that was Dawntrail's second half. As for why they missed the mark in several areas, it's because they handed the story over to new writers with an apparent lack of proper supervision. What I can tell you for certain is that this expansion's base MSQ has left me feeling utterly disappointed and exhausted, and I never hang out in the new areas as a result because they remind me far too much of the terrible MSQ I experienced in them. I haven't even yet touched the role quests because they seem so boring, nor the crafter and gatherer quests which, while they do seem interesting, still occur in these new areas that I just don't care for. I also have had no enthusiasm for trying out the new extremes and I find the normal raids to be just plain uninteresting. At this point, I can't imagine the patches redeeming the base, but I hope I'm wrong. On the subject of expectations: going into Endwalker after Shadowbringers, I felt excitement. Not only because we were going to be seeing more of the ancients and Hydaelyn but because the story generally seemed like it was going to have a lot of great arcs. Going into Dawntrail from Endwalker though, I didn't feel any enthusiasm from the first time I saw the trailer. I kept waiting for the Live Letters to show something that would truly grab my interest, but it just wasn't there. Even the new maps, beautiful as they were, felt more like barely modified rehashes of older and prettier maps. A contest for a throne also hardly seemed like a fascinating story. Even so, I gave Dawntrail a chance to impress me, and it disappointed me every step of the way. In Endwalker, I did miss Shadowbringers a bit, but 6.0 itself was so good that it didn't make me long for it. In Dawntrail however, the nostalgia for both Endwalker and Shadowbringers hit me hard because of how much better their stories were. And that, to me, is what makes Dawntrail bad.
Krile's story didn't feel _incomplete,_ it just felt perfunctory and half-assed. She was with us basically every step of the way, the only character other than Wuk that was present for every single one of the MSQ dungeons, and yet she had barely more than a _third_ of the spoken lines as a character that didn't even enter the narrative until level 97. The entire Golden City plotline was inextricably tied to Krile and her parents, and yet Krile and her gifted earring weren't even allowed to open the freakin' gate without having to hand the moment off to another character. Krile was effectively a mobile set piece for all but like 3 or 4 sequences in the entire MSQ. We got ~30m to meet and get to know her parents, or their memories at least, before we yeeted them out of existence and they shoved Krile back into the wallpaper.
@@KaedysKor I don't agree with the half-assed part, but I agree that we should have seen more of her. However, the premise of her backstory, I think, is itself to blame. Since where she was from and who she was related to were the only real questions about her and one of them was answered in a much more general way by the second half of the MSQ, it gave us less reason to focus on her. So the writers should have given her something else, another arc that would allow her to be more closely tied to the MSQ. I fully agree with you that the entire second half should have been hers.
I think another thing to mention are that the villains of the expansion are very bland. They either have very similar motivations to other characters from previous expansions, or they just are completely uncompelling. I remember when Gra'ha asked Sphene "What will you do when you drain the source of all their aether? It'll be a neverending cycle" and she just had no response and completely ignored the question.
Literally ZERO battle content in the first 3-5 hours was already worrying. The MSQ structure at this points needs to be shaken up, there are way too few battle content and way too much "talk to this NPC at 5 locations" quests. Also I think a massive flaw with the new MSQ writer, Hiroi, is that he just...cannot make a story up by himself? EW patches was LITERALLY FF4, the second half of DT was basically FF9, and where it wasn't it was just a mashup of previous expansion stories. 'MEMBER ENDSINGER? 'MEMBER ULTIMA THULE? 'MEMBER AMAUROT? Also just to add: Wuk's ENG VA absolutely did NOT do a great job, and I legit feel like people are starting to be afraid to criticize them out of fear of being cancelled. This was the first time since ARR that a VA was NOTICABLY and CLEARLY off.
@@fredy2041 my guy if you like the xpac then keep liking it. But there are also valid criticisms when it comes to msq. Not every msq is gonna be hit for everyone and that's okay. But SE needs criticisms if they want to learn from their mistakes and what hits with the players and what doesn't. Let alone when their sole focus is their stories, then they should definitely have these criticisms. I thought the xpac was okay, but it still had its issues that could have been handled way better. I'm not saying the game is trash, I have hope that they take these criticisms and are able to make their next stories better. Your arguments just sound like a 10 year old kid who likes something and hates when someone goes against it. You don't know the development process either, the EW patches isn't about you so idk why you are asking if it has anything to do with you. It doesn't matter what the lead writer designed and wanted to add, it doesn't mean it's gonna be automatically good. Stop watching these videos and do you if you like the xpac, simple.
idk if i buy into the idea that Dawntrail wasn't misleading, like 85% of the content in the trailer happens post-MSQ and the fight with Gulool ja ja is a sparring match instead of a serious conflict.
Honestly for myself, I have to agree with a lot of this video. The general gist I felt about Dawntrails story, mirrors a lot of Mike's points. The scions are just accessories, Wuk Lumat is a rushed story with no real substance that made me appreciate Lyse during Stormblood. The pokebadge tour for Wuk Lumat was painfully slow at times and her constant ignorance with basic principles of the people she's supposed to become ruler over is just not believable. Then we finally get to the pay off, the thing I care about, the actual Golden City. Nope, hard stop, we gotta go do a disney song moment because we have to crown the new dawnservant(s) (lets be honest here, it was so poorly written everyone could see how this was going to end, the whole Yuk Hoy tablet conversation was just missing Dora the Explorer to 4th wall break the audience.) Then after that? City of Gold? Nope, go to 14's equivalent of Texas. This was the biggest disappointment for me. Honestly, you could remove the entire zone story and absolutely nothing is lost storyline wise. I mean for the love of god, they don't even use real bullets for the duels. Where the hell is the actual stakes? Oh no, I lost, I guess you win the argument. I absolutely hated Shaaloani. If it wasn't for the plot hook of the invasion, I don't know if I would have stayed hooked. Plus seriously, a music montage? When did 14 become a children's movie? Heritage Found and Living Memory, kept me interested because it was finally a story for us, the Warrior of Light, ya know the ACTUAL main protagonist. There were still issues but at least now I could speculate and I wanted to find out. Absolutely enjoyed my time from this point on, up till the final end trial and the Devs go and pull another insult to the player. Its our moment to shine, to be the hero to save the day, and who comes and steals the spotlight. Yep, Wuk Lumat, with her power of friendship bullshit. You had over half the game, can you piss off and let me be the Warrior of Light and feel like I'm saving the world like we always do every expansion? Nope, Devs got to pull a World of Warcraft moment and we don't' save the day, its the NPCs who are the heroes and we're their accessory. We like the scions, they've been with us through thick and thin, don't turn them into set dressing and cameo bits. Use them or don't. Hell, even in Endwalker they did a better job of having them involved with us saving the world. The Warrior of Light still saved the day, but the Scions were there to help us. Notice the key word there, HELP, not steal the show. I understand Yoshi P wanted to step away from dark story lines after FF16, but if you're going to include them don't underplay it. Conflict between Colonization/Modernization and Indigenous peoples/ways of life, resolved with one sentence and never brought up again. Revelation of a culture basing everything in Eugenics, fixed with one town hall meeting. The genocide of the Endless because their way of life conflicts with others, no discussion with everyone else just turn off the computers because we were told to. I would have loved to seen these fleshed out more but sadly I think this is all we're going to get because we have to have more disney music moments instead And most importantly, if you're gong to say that the story will reveal the real story for a character, especially if they've been stated to be a key part of the story, actually do that. Krile's story was so stop and go, it felt butchered. Oh right, forgot, this isn't about the Warrior of Light or the Scions, its the Wuk Lumat show. Dawntrail wasn't a story, it was the Wuk Lamut show, with the whole first season cramped into a jumbled mess to get it out on time. If the devs want to know what works for the playerbase and they were just throwing things out to see what we resonate with please take this to heart. We want to be the hero. We want to save the day. Not some random NPC whom when we met they were asking for our help because they needed our strength and then suddenly they become on par with us with no real good reason or sign of growth. That said, my issues entirely stem with the story and how it was done. Mechanically, I enjoyed the expansion. The dungeons and trials are great. A lot of the classes with their new additions feel great to play. Even the raid serious while quirky is a lot of fun. This the Devs nailed perfectly I feel. So at least my fear of the game not being fun to play is alleviated. TLDR: My complaints are with the story. Gameplaywise I enjoy it a lot.
I do agree that Wuk Lamat was a rushed character and i quickly grew to dislike her. I don't take the hiding new character thing as easy though they did it in post heavensward masterfully with Yugiri.
As i went through the DT msq (like through the first half), i had jokingly told my friends that we can tell that it wasn't written by ishikawa with how shallow the story is so far. It stopped being said in a joking manner by the time the second half was under way.
I think one of the biggest mistakes they've made recently is tying mmo gameplay mechanics and story together and trying to make sense out of it. It was touched on in the video, but not quite from this angle. Story moments kinda lost their impact by just having characters show up out of nowhere just because we need 8 people. Not only is it a slight spoiler as to what's coming up, it also brings out questions like "why are they here?". This is true for both 4-man dungeons and 8-man trials.
They should've just added random NPCs from the local tribes of wherever the dungeon is, and just have the quest giver introduce them as "oh here's some local dudes to help us out". Just like how they did Duty Support for dungeons before we are integrated into the Scions. I wouldn't mind a mix either, for example Krile and two other random NPCs. This would've allowed much more breathing room for characters to develop in the story.
Very true. I would go farther and say that they shouldn't even be doing that in the first place. That was never a problem in the early expansions, but now they need to bend over backwards to justify there being enough people for the activity? Aren't we justifiably powerful enough to solo the dungeon/trial? Kinda unrelated, but It bothered me since Endwalker, how trigger happy the writers were to use Azem's crystal for everything. Like, do we really need 7 other WoLs to beat Rubicante? I have no reason to believe he's that big of a threat. Really undermined the cool moments with the crystal back in Shadowbringers.
I would like to add that not having voiced scenes very early on when a new zone or character is introduced that have a difficult name to pronounce is a huge oversight. Spanish is my native tongue so some of the fantasy names are actually a play on some mesoamerican names but anyone else? Good luck trying to pronounce half of the names before someone speaks it. Like Erenvilles mom actually has an F sound in the middle but I never read it that way until it was spoken to me.
just in general, VA really was scarce in DT. it was more a visual novel than what we had gotten used to. so many times I though "alright, sure this is voiced right? fairly big event!" ... and it's just text. but hey, atleast they finally added the option to only auto advance the voice cutscenes now, only took them 10 years, but insanely convenient that they do that in an expansion where it's more a visual novel than a modern RPG story.
On top of what has already been said, there's so many elements of the DT MSQ that are either extremely jarring compared to the other MSQ, incoherent, schizophrenic or straight out dangerous from a story standpoint going forward, all that because they seem like they didn't take a step back to think about the implications of what they were writing. Jarring, because the whole south of Tural feels like it's populated by cultures with the political depth of Carebears that have next to no frictions or have some that can be fixed in a single exchange or lucky event, I mean, the war between the Mamool and Hrothgars lasted for at least multiple decades for them to ravage a fifth of the map, discover and grow multiple two-head military leaders which completely warped one of the belligerents' society... and all that stops thanks to a damn barbecue and no resolution to the problems that caused that war? Are you kidding? After the things we saw with the Dragonsong, Garlemald or even the Ala Mhigan refugees? Same with the Moblins, a whole decade-spanning society changed overnight by a single sentence. This makes them all feel like the cultural equivalent of Potemkin villages, fakes with next to no depth, basically Disney villages, the Smile song not helping with that. You see more problems inside the Hingan society with only Kugane than you do with multiple cultures in multiple maps in DT. Incoherent. Basically anything related to Zoraal Ja, like really, anything, we're talking about someone who spent 30 years preparing an attack against an unprepared force, while leading a faction that dominated its own shard... and came up with a kitchen sink army made up of maid robots badly repurposed for war, civilian motorcycles with just a gun strapped on it, forbid the use of feral souls outside of the military to see only one guy use them (while he could've recruited the Arcadion contestants in his army) and his only seemingly real military ship got stared down to explosion by the weakest of the first brood who is on top of that, missing an eye, while Garlemald with massively lower tech put Midgardsomr down. We're talking about someone who randomly, yet specifically attacked (somehow sliced his back open without killing him) Ketenramm (he's another can of worms, guy is supposedly past his race's life expectancy yet fights and looks better than when he was young, I was expecting some Fountain of Youth given that) to discover after the attack that he had a set of extra keystones which he was about to need, how convenient. We're talking about a guy who somehow made a kid appear out of nowhere (try to find a mamool in Solution 9) to suddenly be ok with giving him absolute power. We're talking about a guy those motivations are never really explained or shown outside of the trial where we kill him and never showing his childhood which supposedly was terrible enough to fuel him for more than 50 years. Schizophrenic, the whole Living Memory zone is a constant back and forth between "They are real livin' beans!" and "It's ok, they are just puppets, shut them down lol!" it feels like it was written by two different persons with the completely opposite view on it, especially after the whole Omicron beast tribe quests, it felt extremely weird on how it handled it. I had an extra backlash at the end of the Alexandria dungeon with Wuk saying "Why would you delete those memories?" while she spent the last two hours erasing everyone else's in Living Memory. Dangerous, because they introduced multiple very horrible elements for all future discourses of "Why didn't they just use x?" because they seem to have no idea about the implications of what they are writing, the Regulators being the most shining example of that. For the resurrection part to work, you need it to have at least some time-related magic and/or massive healing going on, why? Because NPCs directly said that it can save you from being crushed to death by accident by a massive stone for example... which would just kill you again after being resurrected since you're still being crushed by it, same with blood loss from missing limbs, does it regrow the limb for you not to die again of blood loss? If you get decapitated, will a whole new body sprout from your neck? Same when dying from an enemy, it takes so much time to resurrect you in a very obvious way that there's almost no military application for an army that mostly deals with melee combat. It's a feature that literally only works if your world is turn-based. And that's without even talking about the other logistical aspects of it like: "Wouldn't a Turali require 7 times the amount of souls to get resurrected compared to an Alexandrian since the former are from the source and latter from a shard?" among other things. But the most dangerous element is the fact that those things allow you to remotely rewrite someone's memory just by putting them on their head, imagine if we had that during Endwalker, Meteon alone would've been dealt with just by slapping it on her head, every genocidal villain going forward will have to have a counter mesure to justify not using it on them unless they pull out a moronic "No! I'd rather see the villain wipe out multiple cities rather than do as low as rewriting someone's memories" like they did with the moronic justification as to why they didn't intervene during Gulool Jaja vs Zoraal Ja. I honestly dread what's coming up. I feel like every time I start thinking a little deeper into an element of DT, I keep finding problems, it didn't happen that regularly with the previous expansions or even ARR.
My opinion is pretty simple...Wukie shouldn't have been in the second half. She should've stayed to defend the city that she goes on and on about loving for the first half of the game. The Scions should've led the second half with Krile at the helm... she was perfectly positioned as an ACTUAL Alexandrian by birth to reach Sphene... she could've said "Hey, I'm Alexandrian and I've gotten along just fine without a Regulator...we don't need this to be happy." I also wish they hadn't resolved the Alexandrian threat. DT didn't really leave anything to wonder or worry about. In ARR we got the beast tribes/ primals/ tempering... we got the Garleans darkening the horizon... we got the Ascians for goodness sake. Threats... threads to build upon. If the Alexandrians had remained a threat, or if Zoraal Ja had actually won the throne in the first place... there would be a lingering threat... something to worry about. As it stands, we got a mcguffin (that is likely to completely undo all the work Shtola has already put into figuring out cross-shard travel) that reacted to the soul of Azem. That was a cool touch, but is it enough to justify the whole expansion? At this point you could skip DT MSQ completely if someone just said "Hey, you get a dimensional key with Azem's symbol from the South Sea Isles." One more thing, when you brought up Gulool Ja Ja's death, I agreed, and it echoed a point I'd come to regarding the exit from the Moblin village... the choice to just have the Scions and WoL stand around like morons while Wukie was getting abducted suffered the same issue. There were so many other ways they could've separated her from the party that didn't involve the player yelling at their screen for Sixty seconds about how they're all total idiots while having one choice to push a button to "keep waiting... hurr durr durr." Honestly the DT MSQ reads like a teenage Shonen-lover writing their first fanfic...I only hope you're right and they listen to the rumbles. It's pretty bad when you have to resort to compliments on battle content and graphics to find anything nice to say about an expac in "The Story MMO."
Dawntrail is filled to the brim with great ideas that are just glossed over. There's no way this wasn't two expansions worth of story crammed into one because they weren't confident in what they had for the first half of the game.
I can forgive pretty much every underwhelming thing in the MSQ, except for how dirty they've done Krile yet again. They said Krile was getting more attention this time, basically a flatout lie from the devs, jamming her into a third of the final zone as an afterthought. It's actually fucking stupid and a bit insulting.
@@Tezasaurus A more compelling argument, then - she's present for most of the Rite, and it's her searching for answers about her earring, the Golden City, and her grandfather that end up providing crucial information that helps us actually find the place. She's even the one that actually puts all the pieces together after the final trial. That, along with her being able to come along for combat stuff, and the stuff in the final zone, all combine to her getting more attention... Also, I don't think we're done with her story. I wouldn't be surprised if elements of Preservation are still a factor somewhere within Solution 9, and who better to play an important role in dealing with that than the daughter of the founders?
I don't know if complete removal of the Scions is the answer but they have to be either gone or actively participating, not this half-done fan-service thing they did in DT. It would make sense to me that Y'shtola hangs back and works on her 'History of Etheirys' books she's mentioned before, or for Alphinaud & Alisaie to become fully fledged diplomats for Sharlayan and can't adventure with us anymore. This offers opportunities for us to fill the roster with newer characters and have new story arcs instead of Estinien running up to us when a trial is about to start, then fly away when it's over. I think a rotating cast of Scions going forward would be far more interesting.
"but they have to be either gone or actively participating, not this half-done fan-service thing they did in DT" my thoughts exactly. They have to pick a lane and stick to it. Either let the scions become full background npcs or actually write them doing things. This half-ass thing they did in DT is just not pleasing anyone.
Goddamn, you fuckin nailed it. Shoving all the characters we cared about to the side while gluing a shonen protagonist to our hip made this expansion rank below Realm Reborn.
Every time they talked about how we can all be friends, I thought of the many characters we met who had been traumatized by war and oppression. This game has established that in its world there are conflicts and wounds that will not heal. When I played Dawntrail, I wondered where the writing for those characters and those conflicts went. In Mor Dhona, there is a man we briefly got to know during the ARR story. He was a young man when he was forced to serve the Garlean Empire, and during that time his mother and sister had been taken. They knew exactly what the Garleans would do to them, and they decided they would rather jump. Having suffered so much because of the Garleans, I would love to see Wuk Lamat try to tell this poor man that he can be "friends" with the Garleans. Same time, I wouldn't let her...for his own sake. I had already posted this elsewhere, but you mentioning nuance and using Garlemald as an example, made me feel a bit compelled to share my thoughts here as well mostly because of that man. I feel like characters like him show we had good writing all along, or at least writers who knew how to handle such topics. Dawntrail really made FFXIV feel unrecognizable to me. It's a real shame, because I was pulled in by the story.
"Familiarity breeds contempt" rings true to me as it relates to Wuk. When I went across the bridge, I finally felt relief, but it was too short lived. MSQ left a lot to be desired. It was the most "meh" story to date for me. Hopefully Wuk isn't a big feature in the 7.xx post MSQ, I have spent way too much time with that character for my liking. I wouldn't appreciate Aymeric either if he was around as much as her.
it felt like most everyone was almost out of character throughout the MSQ, btu then I realized, it's simply because Wuk Lamat takes up so much room, feels like they give no space for other characters, even the Warrior of Light 💀 there were times we could have intervened, but simply stood by and did nothing, heck we traveled to the unverse's end and back, to see the WoL forced to take a back seat in situation we NEEDED to step up, infuriated me xD
The story was there but the way it was told just didn't feel great, we were hardly there. We get dropped into helping this random person without qualifications or serious knowledge about her country and people as a bodyguard and advisor but we spend the whole time not really protecting her from herself or being asked many questions. We're always over their shoulder just watching whats going on. Part of it is just how Wuk Lamat operates as sunshine and rainbows but doesn't go into many things with a plan. Even at the end of the game, no plan. Wants to meet with the big bad enemy that threatens untold amount of people, no plan, just wants to talk them down without anything to offer. Its frustrating for me to watch. Its saddens me because with the start of a new arc, the graphics update, and the actual plot there was a lot of potential but the character that was foisted on us and how it was told diminished its potential.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned how Wuk needed more direct opposition. I feel a big part of why she isn't liked as much is because the flaws in her character never come back to bite her in a "two steps forward, one step back" way where she has to reflect and learn in a more natural way, it's all "we just keep doing the same thing until it works"
I think they need to add some more combat back into the MSQ. The extreme rarity of ever actually fighting something during the hours of questing felt a lot worse this time around with the less suspenseful story compared to Shadowbringers and Endwalker.
it's like the opposite problem of WoW. Sometimes I'd rather kill 3 mobs or collect 3 whatsits than talk to another set of 3 villagers. You can't just have one type of quest for 30 hours and expect it to not get boring.
It sucks that people are afraid to call out the English VA of Wuk Lamat. There's so little range and is definitely worthy of being called out, it was bad.
@@fredy2041 And that's exactly it. People are too afraid of bringing constructive criticisms for fear of being labeled the other. The very last trial when Wuk breaks out to join the party, that 'Spheeene' is so weak and has zero energy behind it.
You know exactly why we can't call out the poor voice acting. And it's not just Wuk Lamat, the vocal direction was shit for every character this expansion.
being honest I'm not afraid I tell the truth wuk lamat a mary sue who should have died in this expansion and never appeared again, sphene a garbage AI who deserved to die along with that stupidity of living memory copy ass of amaurot and emet selch, even in msq they weren't original, how pathetic,
I felt like our character was sidelined for wuk lamat a lot. There are so many fights where we’re just standing there with angry face while wuk lamat gets her ass handed to her, I didn’t like wuk lamat for the majority of the story but I hate her after the final zone. We’re clearly on a very strict timetable while spheen upgrades herself and wuk lamat is like "hey let’s go walk around and talk to these random people instead of stopping the literal end off all the reflections”. Granted there are a few people to chat with like erenville’s mom and krill’s parents but those could have been handled better. And then getting "saved" by wuk lamat during the fight with spheen, she couldn’t beat bakool ja ja 3 weeks ago and now she can break thru a rift in space and go toe to toe with essentially a god?
My biggest gripe with Wuk didn't fully solidify to me till post trolley with a particular scene with a plot point child. Her reaction to being given a chance to talk to them was so childish, so eager, like she's actually the child. She's so aloof in not a good way. I had similar issues with Stormblood with Lyse, the character development opportunity is all around them, and it's not seized, shown or used in way that would make their characters much better. Wuk has moments of being mature, but it's so sparse and rare it's insulting. I dislike character archetypes like this to begin with, but my mentioned scene felt so incredibly off, it finally clicked to me. What kind of leader would react to a child like that?
I think its understated but they say enough in the msq to suggest that Wuk is, in fact, a very large teenager rather than being an actual adult. Things like Koana being old enough to work in a market stall before being adopted, and him remembering seeing Wuk as a really small child
@@oleub23 ages are vague but given other info we have, Wuk Lamat is anywhere between 19 and 23, so not only is she in the "fresh out of highschool" phase, she also stated to have had a rather isolated upbringing - she's like a kid who finally gets to go to the park without adult supervision, so to speak.
Wuk Lamat is a sheltered kid. She grew up in the city with a silver spoon. She’s about 17-18 years old (called about the twins’ age). She’s also idealistic to a fault. Huh, that sounds familiar doesn’t it?
I know you mean the instanced content when you say gameplay is great, but I think it's worth being specific. All gameplay related to the msq was horrific. It was so passive an unmemorable compared to much of the previous expansions.
Fire the writers. They clearly dont have any idea what they are doing. In fact I think they havent even played/read the past story and just got cliffnotes on a whiteboard.
Wuk Lamat had to have her Realm Reborn to Shadowbringers journey over the course of a single patch. Also, I think "Smile" is a great song...just utilized very poorly.
Its pretty obvious ishikawa didnt write this expansion, the tone shift was huge. Im not even talking about a exp with less stakes, just character motivations, fleshing story out, compelling villians, there was so much less of that. I never expected dt to be half as good as ew, it was a 10 year pay off, but it couldve been much more then what it was.
Wait, I thought the Scions got disbanded in EW because they thought their order would be seen as a potential danger/disruption to the nations' rule/sovereignty post-conflict, since there were no bigger threats to fight off. It had nothing to do with people being scared about the world ending if they saw them together again, am I misremembering this?
No, you are correct. They were founded as a secret society to deal with subtle threats that Eorzea's divided city states could not face, and with the events of post-ARR, Heavensward, Stormblood and Endwalker ended up accidentally becoming The Unaccountable Avengers. They made a show of "disbanding" because without a big threat to repel, people would likely catch onto and take issue with that.
@@haleynaga5671 That's probably it. Someone in marketing surely said: "Implement these characters at all costs. We need to push for higher plushy sales so the suits don't come for us!"
I agree with many of the points made here and in the comments but I feel like one piece that bugged me the most wasnt touched on. Someone had a good time but it wasnt the Warrior of Light. They were too stuck having to be the silent mentor character, while the twins and Erenville kept having little side adventures and character moments off screen. The 'optional' dialogue you can get by speaking to them before selecting the main quest giver tells stories about them going all over the place exploring the markets, nearly falling into cenotes, getting told funny anticdotes, getting made to prep rally potsworn and so on. I felt so excited to get going to Xak Tural because it felt like maybe a second cast off would get the adventure properly started and. . . It does prove to be a kick off of sorts. So that worked. The ingredients were there. Its actually all there, but somehow the cake deflated
It was just too childish for me. It genuinely felt like they hired writers from Dora the Explorer. Wuk and her power of friendship can just walk up and end racism, decades long blood feuds, reform literal terrorists, cure blight from the land because she wants to be friends and really likes smiles. There's no realism, or push back. It felt like the writers did not understand that a story can have a cheerful tone and still be mature. It's so jarring compared to all the other expansions. And the English voice acting, not just Wuk Lamat either, a lot of the characters, was horrible. And do not get me started on that hatefully pitchy gospel song, I still cannot believe that song was greenlit with the vocals like that and just coming out of nowhere multiple times.
The entire time I felt like a child watching Dora the Explorer going "There, it's right behind you!". I'm pretty sure they were even taking pauses in dialog for me to yell at the TV screen like a toddler 🤣
@@dash_o_pepper The way it fully felt like an episode of Blues Clues or something in that scene where the Mamool stops her and straight up tells her "From now on we will treat the other races with respect as equals", I actually had to take break, I needed rest. They literally had them tell her she cured racism, starvation and a decades long blood feud so deep that they sacrificed all those babies because she said she wanted to be friends and she would ask people in Sharlayan for some seeds they might give them later if she wins lol. WTF were the writers smoking?
@@alaskanparadise I would sign that petition, just erase DT, have Krile find a different trinket in the envelope and have the post MSQ lead to something totally different with no cat girls in sight.
@@alaskanparadise The good news is they resolved EVERYTHING in the expansion with the sole exception of Azem's key so we have no reason to be concerned about ANYTHING that happened anymore.
I need a vacation from Wuk Lamat, preferably with Krile as the main focus going forward. Erenville is deadset on going on his own adventure, let him do that. Koana & Wuk have two nations to run, let them do that. Let us have our own adventure already, not Wuks.
The unfortunate thing is that because they did Krile's backstory here, we're probably not getting another attempt at her story arc. They COULD, but I don't think they will.
@@fredy2041 Can you please not? You're borderline harassing people at this point in the comment section and I'm to the point of inviting the idea of people to report you. We get it, you unconditionally love DT, congrats you're in the minority of people who think this. Doesn't give you the right to straight up harass others for disagreeing with you.
@@dash_o_pepper Poorly done at that, but it is out there now. If anything, we can just go on more adventures with her to help bandaid the harm that was done. Krile deserves better than all of the MSQ has done toward her, from her introduction in HW, the "voice of Venat" in EW, and now the 15mins of fame she got in DT. Sure, she may have played a major role in Eureka but that is side content that a lot of people will pass up unknowingly unfortunately.
@@fredy2041 weak b8 m8. also, calling other people trolls to deflect from your obvious trolling is a decent strat but it doesn't work when you do it 50 times in one comment section. rookie moves
There is one issue I still want Wuk to face. I want some actual backlash in Alexandria! I can't accept that the entire nation will just be ok with her to rule in her Nephew's name after she murdered their beloved Queen. The fact that they handwaved this issue so far is the worst example of Wuk not having to face any consequences for her actions. There simply can't be a peaceful and downright uneventful transition of power if this game still wants its story to be taken seriously.
My opinion of Dawntrail (at least the first half) is that it is an optional blue quest. That’s how I explained how I didn’t like it to my friends that liked it. I skip most blue quests now after catching up, I’m not sure what changed me but I used to read everything (at least skim things I found boring) on the journey to the end of Shadowbringers. I unlocked every blue quest in order with the MSQ. I even put off Hildibrand for years because I wanted to pay attention but I was never feeling like starting it, the weapons ended up convincing me to skip it with the mindset that I’ll watch someone play it (I haven’t yet). Anyway - my exception is always tribal quests. And yknow what Dawntrail felt like? A tribal quest. Some people like them, and that’s fine, but they are definitely not for me.
I don't think I've seen anyone mention this, but in the post credits scene when Erenville talks about how he wants to keep exploring the world so that he can share those new memories with his mom when he meets up with her again in the Aethereal Sea... Sorry, my man. You mom doesn't exist anymore. Her memories got ripped out of her soul, and the essence of her soul itself got fed to someone else. And with the memory cores in Living Memory shut down, Cahciua is gone. Utterly gone.
@Maria_Erias that was certainly my thought when he said that as well. It made me wonder if they'd paid any attention at all to the ramifications of how horrifying the soul extraction thing is.
@@user-ox7ip6kw8c At the end of an hours long story about memories being stripped from souls and those souls being consumed as a resource, a character who saw the whole thing go down then claims he's going to see and talk to his dead mother in the afterlife, even though he deleted her memories himself. That's not a nitpick. It's a glaring plot hole.
@@user-ox7ip6kw8c The truth isn't cynicism, there's no hyperbole in what I said, and I'm not picking nits because every part of that was laid out blatantly in the story and the beats driven home again and again.
@@Keira_Blackstone Yeah, that whole process made the entire latter part of this expansion one of the most disturbing things in FFXIV to me up to this point. They are basically taking someone's eternal soul, ripping the part of it that's actual person out of the soul, then feeding both parts into a machine - one to turn that person into an NPC in the real-life MMO that is Living Memory, and one to feed the living with the "sanitized" soul stuff. It's utterly horrifying. And that horror is sort of hinted at, but never actually fully addressed. Kind of like a lot of things in DT, actually...
@@Maria_Erias Seeing how fucked up this whole situation truly is as sentient beings/potential lives are being held hostage and recycled forever against their will I cant help but think that our true villains have not revealed themselves yet. The implications of this whole soul extraction process and Everkeep are so beyond disturbing, I cant help but think they hold back on the actual threat still, or they dropped the ball. It's very bizzare to say the least how open ended this whole mess is. Preservation might still exist in some shape or form. Shinra Company but ffxiv.
I think they felt like they had to keep the scions around so that they could use them for Trusts. It would have been much better to take a break from them, make Erenville a combatant, and use him, Wuk Lamat, and Krile for Trusts, maybe adding Estinien or Thancred or Urianger if necessary, since they were already hanging around anyway. The other adds felt artificial -- they had no real part int he story, they were there just there to meet a quota.
So obviously this expansion is very divisive and the conversation surrounding it can get pretty heated. Like Mike mentioned in the video even in our own office we don't agree on it - I cannot tell you how long me and Mike have spent debating aspects of this MSQ 😂
As ever though even when we are critical, we are trying to do so through well reasoned discussion and to offer balanced takes on the subject. I hope y'all in the comments can do the same.
You've just made an enemy for life...
The only defense I have of the sudden power creep of Wuk-Lamat.... Akasha is probably involved. I bet she had some sprinkled on the tacos. I really hope that they find more data on that USB Earring.
By far, the worst expansion. YoshiP failed hard.
@tinyblackmage i think expansion was just fine 🤷♂️ i still think way better then the Ala Migo portion of stormblood
@@fredy2041 Gosetsu is BAE
My WoL watching the Scions start walking away: "No wait please don't leave me alone with he.......Heyyyyyy Wuk Lamat"
Same exact feeling, every single time. My WoL, "Come baaaaaaaaack..... 😭"
My WoL just staring at Erenville who said could quietly checkout if we didn't enjoy aiding Wuk Lamat as a companion, "You. Lied. To. Me. Wuk Lamat would never allow me to leave, she's asked me already in 3 different instances to stay! What about my demeanor around her makes her think I want to be around her anymore!? She even called me family! Why!?"
Erenville: "If I must suffer this, then I would wish for company that I can enjoy suffering alongside."
I love how NO ONE in 'New World' so much as mentioned anything like recent hardships. As if the whole 'End of Days' didn't JUST HAPPEN. Completely disconnected. It felt so weird.
It odd innit?
The best lore reason I’ve heard people conjecture is that since there was no primals draining the land of aether after so many summonings that the final days didn’t visit Tural. It’s not a super good reason but it’s decent enough that it makes some sense
Yeah, that's odd, but I'm going to assume that Tural is simply thicker with aether, so dynamis couldn't affect it before we solved the problem. Or they're so generally happy that they didn't really have any fears to manifest.
@@Yesnaught Not sure about that. The despair of the Mamool Ja and their whole, well, eugenics stuff would absolutely have seen some happen. Just seems like they tried too hard to separate this expansion from previous, when the whole foundation for why we love FF14 is because of the previous.
Having come in with Wuk Lamat to essentially put back together a people who were scared from the End of Days events would have been so much more impactful. Her reminding the peoples of who they are, giving them that fighting spirit, etc, instead of 'leaning' about them would have been such a good story to tell.
Honestly they just botched it.
The lines of stagnant aether you can see when zofiark first dies...
At least two of them criss crossed tural both north and south.
For sure they had some final days action.
Otherwise they fucked up with their own planet projection.
I really think they did Krile dirty on this one
We better get a whole patch for her and her alone.
Problem is Krile is already pretty complete as a person, she is already pretty mature and the only thing she was missing was combat ability, and she already got that off-screen.
Yoshi-P better apologize to Krile yet again. Girl didn't single handedly keep the Scions alive in Shb to get treated like this over and over again.
@@FF-tp7qs That's the problem. She got it...off screen.
It hurts even more when you realize she’s been done dirty since the start.
Her introduction was probably the first and last time she was an interesting character.
Reminder that we straight up walk away from a terminally ill child with a condition very similar to tempering/sin eater infection and make absolutely no mention to Sphene or anyone else that we could probably cure him.
Hundo percent that's a post msq thing
@@TheChunkeyNinjaI'm doubtful of that, but even if it is that doesn't excuse the fact that not a single one of us ever thought to speak up about it.
@@TheChunkeyNinja and that’s absolutely a problem, because it’s lazy and insults my intelligence as a player. They’re just milking obvious low-hanging fruit for post-game content.
@@TheChunkeyNinjaWhy would it ever be brought up again? Not a single character showed any interest in remembering it for later.
It's like the people who think Gulool Ja's mother will come up later. If that was really going to happen, Alphinaud or Alisae or G'raha or anyone_ would have brought it up to foreshadow it.
@@Dharengo Why not? There are still plenty of things for stories to explore for 7.1-7.3. The sickness, the kid and his military authority, dealing with the soul system, how the two civilizations interacts with each other... Just cuz they don't mention them in 7.0 means it will be not dealt with in patch updates.
EW is a special case where 6.0 resolves all problems, leaving 6.1-6.5 for the 13th and 6.55 to bridge with 7.0. DT should return to the same old format of other expansions, with 7.1-7.3 dealing with immediate threat, then resolve consequences and wrap up the expansion, and 7.4-7.55 bridging to new expansion.
The fact Zoraal Ja isn't mentioned a single time in this video (outside of Gulool Ja Ja's death scene, in which he wasn't talked about at all) tells you enough about his impact.
The thing about Wuk being around all the time is that this is the first expac where they focused so heavily on one character at the expense of others. Every other expac had an ensemble cast that all had equal paths, equal goals, equal time.
This was fully the Wuk Lamat show and sometimes her friends. It was like Stormblood dealing with Lyse without the Doma cast to shore things up and shift the focus.
The fact they had us literally wait around doing nothing while she got kidnapped was just fucking insulting. Not only was it so entirely predictable that it felt like watching Blue's Clues, but we're standing there with our dicks in our hands and clicking a spot on the ground to wait for her, repeatedly. It genuinely feels like parts of this expansion were actually included out of spite. I hope this is the last time these writers are trusted with the msq.
@@FoxHoundUnit89I would still give them a chance. I think their entire team is still trying to get used to their new structure and expanded responsibilities within Square Enix as a whole.
New blood needs to learn from mistakes and DT is certainly filled with them. I’m sure they’re looking at all the public feedback atm.
@@PanickedPixelexcuses excuses
Guess the fanbase treated lyse too harshly.
@@FoxHoundUnit89just like every other expansion where we stand there and do nothing while plot happens in front of us
The best thing about the expansion is that I realize I judged Lyse too harshly.
Nah. Lyse is judged harshly cuz how little she shined in her own expansion. Wuk Lamat is judged harshly cuz she appears everywhere in her own expansion. Both deserves being judged harshly cuz under-representation and over-representation are both bad.
@@ViewTube_Emperor_of_Mankind Lyse still sucked. A pile of dung doesnt make another pile of dung shine. Its still a pile of dung.
I will still always yearn for the journey with Raubahn I never got.
nah lyse still sucks. both dont need to correlate.
Sadly, the conclusion I‘ve arrived at is that the writing was just bad. They wanted to force her onto the throne for whatever reason, giving her no time for true failure or flaws even though that would have made the story much more interesting. The two halves of the story could have been much more interconnected and by doing so, they could have given the plot more room to breathe. They should have let Wuk Lamat fail and learn from her failures. They should have given us more of this rivalry they promised. Maybe they could have had the race to the throne end early because of unforeseen circumstances with the interdimensional fusion. There were so many ways to make the story more exciting, but for some reason they went for the most stale option they could think of.
I feel had been a quiet test audiance, like how would you feel if we did this and made wuka a perm scion for it to be angry backlash for them to just push her to side.
I'm not convinced it's a matter of "throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks". The problem with Dawntrail is not the plot, nor new ideas...it is that the writing is just BAD. I physically cringed through half of the MSQ. If ARR was a 5/10, this is a 2/10.
- Wuk Lamat should have remained a scaredy cat and also a bad fighter for the entire story. This is why she NEEDED the WoL on her team. The one thing she IS good at should be that she already understands her people. So instead of each feat having a local help her, she earns her tablets by knowing what the other Promises don't know (such as the alpaca saddle, harvest flotilla, and banana leaf) and uses that to her advantage.
- As for the scions, each Promise should have 2 scions on their team. They simply had to write each Promise to not be cartoonishly evil to begin with so that the scions would be willing to join their team. Imagine how fun it would have been if we actually fought Thancred and Urianger, with them knowing they cant beat us, so they try deterring the WoL with tricks and traps.
- My opinion on Gulool Ja Ja (father lizard) and the invasion, is that it should have never happened. Ketenram should have been the one who died. It doesn't make any sense that Zoraal Ja would leave him alive. When the attack happened my immersion dropped to a 0%. It's not that I don't like sci-fi in FFXIV, but the whole thing was just not good, especially since that entire sequence of people dying the WoL did absolutely nothing. We just watched citizens get massacred.
- They 100% did Krile dirty. She had the earrings, but it didn't even open the gate without the proper "authority", which completely ruins the scene of her parents telling her they gave that to her in hopes to see her again. The baby lizard should have never existed, it doesn't even make sense since Zoraal Ja is the ONLY lizard in Solution 9? So unless he can lay eggs himself Im not convinced he woulda had a child. Another missed opportunity was Erenville entirely not knowing that Krile had to just turn off her parents before he had to let his own mother go.
Anyways, if we had to keep the general plot of 6 feats followed by Alexandria (and all the dungeons and trials) the same. I would rewrite everything else. Absolute terrible MSQ writing.
The new writing team are just not ready to take on a full expansion MSQ if this story had been sidecontent like the Hildebrand plotline it would have been a fun romp, as it is it kinda falls short in far too many ways
Gulool Ja Ja’s death could have been fixed so easy. Just have WOL team up with Bakool Ja Ja in a solo duty to fight someone augmented with a beast soul like in the savage raids.
We defeat the enemy, see the cutscene with Zarool Ja and cut it with WOL and Bakool Ja Ja sprinting to the throne room. By the time we make it there the king is dead and everyone else is broken, beaten and Zarool Ja is already gone.
Or better yet, a solo instance fighting up to the throne room, only to arrive afterward and have an echo flashback of the Zoraal/Gulool fight, which would make more sense instead of having everyone around watching it happen and not intervening.
Best part of the expansion was the actual vacation where I got to hang out with my Homeboy Erenville in Arizona.
In retrospect, I don't think I cared much for it at the time, but it's the only zone that felt like a pre-Dawntrail zone. After the MSQ was over, I would have liked more of that.
Quite a few people hated that part, I enjoyed it.
Sadly, even that became about Wuk with the bracelet quest. :/
Hell yeah dude. When that tumbleweed rolled by during the duel I lost my mind laughing.
I even dressed up for it but then the game made me look stupid for it as we pretty much instantly went back lol
2:00 It's really not, tho. YoshiP is extremely vocal about playing coy not giving out any spoilers while actively putting out massive spoilers in the Fanfests and Live Letters... It just happened before you started playing the game. Just take a look back at what they gave away for free in the Fanfests for Heavensward, Strormblood, and Shadowbringers. They have *never* been afraid to give away spoilers if they think it will build hype and sell the expansion.
That said: It felt like was written by somebody who understood what has worked in prior expansions but has no understanding of why it worked. Just throwing a bunch of random pieces in the bucket:
We need a new character here, but why do all the work to build her up over time (maybe a patch cycle ahead of time) and craft a character which connects with the player when you can just introduce her at the absolute last possible moment and then shove her down the audience's throat?
We need a sad part here, but why make all the effort to build a moment that feels earned when we can just poke the player's emotional scars with a sharp pointy stick?
They used to be so good at this sort of thing that it is absolutely astonishing how quickly they became so bad at it.
I dont understand why this was hard tbh. In heavensward we literally cutback all the scions minus 1 to focus on new characters for 80% of the game. It was great and it felt like when they came back they were used properly and more interesting and we got a great story with new characters that got the focus in the meantime. Why ignore a template like that.
I think having Wuk lose the rite to Koana would be better. This will put Wuk in her place for getting carried too much by the WoL. Then Koana being a smartass that he is would ask Wuk to lead beside him cuz he's bad with people, mirroring the two heads of Gulool in the end. Then, when the dome part started, Koana shouldve just prevent Wuk from going like, "no sis, u staying with me dealing with the invasion, that thing is Scion stuff" and actually do the talk with Azdaja for the cooperation or smth. The dome shouldve been scion only. Shouldve had the WoL linkpearl all the scions and be like, "xcuse me I wanna summon all of u using my crystal, just making sure ur not in the toilet rn or smth" and they be like "yea no prob Azem away" and have the WoL Azem them into the dome.
this is good.
I feel those that feel lied to from the trailer and marketing campaign are justified in feeling so.
When you look at the Dawntrail trailer and it's promotional material what do you see?
The scions being prominently featured, giant monster hunting, old architecture hinting to a link between the Ronkan empire and the first, the hunt for the mysterious city of gold and the vibrant colours and environments inspired by south America.
I went into Dawntrail expecting a lower stake adventure that was a mix of Monster Hunter and Indiana Jones with some political stakes.
Instead what do we get? The scions are barely featured, we get a diet version of what the marketing promised us for the first couple of levels before we once again go into a drab environment and with the fate of the entire world at stake once again.
Sphene and her motivations are pretty much just the diet version of the Ascians once again and it feels like reheated leftovers from Shb.
The trailers for the other expansion also don't tell you what the plot of the expansions are but the sell you on the exact tone, theme and encapsulation of what the expansion is about.
At the end of the day, I find that there's just no direction the story is going. At the end of ARR, we still had Lahabrea to deal with. We still had the Garlean Empire on our doorstep. We still had Ala Mhigo to liberate. We still has Ishgard to visit. We still had stuff to do that was teased to us throughout the ARR story.
There's nothing at the end of Dawntrail. We have a key that somehow is connected to Azem and that's it. There's nothing else. Tural is a happy joyous place with sunshine and rainbows and no strife whatsoever. The Power of Friendship ^TM made sure that even the conflict we encountered was resolved with a few words of kindness and a promise to be the bestest leader ever. Solution 9 is shown integrating into Tural society. Every direction they could have pointed the game in was resolved by the end.
Dawntrail fails to setup the future of the game. It felt like a patch MSQ that outstayed its welcome. And the very fact that we have to rely on the patch MSQ to save this is just disastrous.
Sidenote: I ran the Great Gubal Library the other day. You know, that dungeon aaaaaaaall the way back in Heavensward? There's a book there. It teases the City of Gold. A myth that no one has seen, that no one knows where it is. We've been teased about the City of Gold for FOUR expansions. And when we finally get to go hunt for it, we're told within the first half hour of the expansion that it had already been found and the leader of the nation knew exactly where it was this whole time. What the ever loving hell.
The new writers just seem to lack the ability to tease things. They have to say and reveal everything explicitly. They can't even do subtext, they have to literally tell you "I am showing the importance of friendship now" lol.
I didn't hate Dawntrail, but the overall arc of the story felt like a throwback to FFXI for me. Both in terms of the quality of the story, and the structure itself. In every expansion in FFXI, you were introduced to a new girlfriend, I mean, main protagonist character, and that character became your companion for the duration of the expansion. We had Lion from RotZ (hot pirate's daughter girlfriend), Prishe and Ulmia from CoP (a two for one choose your own girlfriend adventure, in the flavors of "looks like a loli" or "sweet elf with a good singing voice"), Aphmau from ToAU (now girlfriends in princess flavor!) , Lilsette from WotG (now girlfriends in halfling dancer flavor!), Arciela from SoA (but what about second princess?), and finally Iroha from RoV (new exciting flavor for your expansion girlfriend: shrine maiden!)
Thinking back on it, I like some of the expansion girlfriends more than others. Lion was okay, but we barely got any time with her because RotZ was so short. I liked Ulmia, but I though Prishe was seriously annoying. I was a big fan of Aphmau. Lilsette was fun and spunky. By the time they got to Arciela, it felt like such a retread of the same characters She was just another bland princess who needed help because her continent was getting taken over by darkness yadda yadda.
Wuk Lamat is the same vein as the FFXI expansion girlfriends. The writer loved the character, but couldn't force us to love her as much as they did.
What annoyed me throughout the MSQ is that nobody ever seems to say the things you'd want them to say, or ask the questions you'd want them to ask. Bakool Ja Ja kidnaps a contest judge and releases a monster that threatens half the continent, but nobody ever mentions that maybe he should get disqualified.
The WoL sees Sphene during the attack on Tuliyollal. Never mentions it. Krile sees the robots sucking glowing orbs out of dead bodies. Never mentions it.
We come to a place where everybody has a weird thing on their heads, a thing we saw Zoral Ja use to revive himself and power himself up. This is clearly something very important. Do we ask what those are? Eventually, yes, but first we spent an hour on learning about farming techniques.
We learn that Krile's earring is a storage device, with data on it from people from another world. Do we ask what's on this? Nope, because we have to get not-Grenolt an energy drink.
Hey, to be fair, it was a really really awesome energy drink.
Erenville never asks his mother how she died.
@@ChainedFei They _need_ to make it either an emote or a purchasable consumable. Absolutely criminal that it's a 1-and-done thing.
I'll be honest, I stopped attempting to take the story seriously when the group let Wuk Lamat wander off on her own because some random elezen said there was a message for her early in the MSQ. I was just staring at my own character going "you idiot." When Koana started yelling at the player about "how could you let this happen?" I was like "yeah good question."
It's one of those plots that requires everyone involved to make the dumbest choices they can to keep it moving, which can be pretty frustrating to sit through.
After it looked like Bakool Ja Ja was going to kill someone for not give him what he wanted and released that monster from the prison, I kept wondering why my WoL wouldn't just kill him already. How much more damage was he allowed to do before he was stopped.
When they pointed out the earing was a data storage device, I was slowly getting angrier and angrier as they kept talking about everything else. I was about to lose it when it looked like you were about to leave without anyone at least starting to look at the data. Just before I popped, thankfully one of the NPCs asked to look at the data.
Y'shtola apparently recorded from a home studio owing to having recently had a child. And even if the quality isn't the best, the performance is still fine, so it's really not an issue.
By contrast, the entire US voice acting studio has serious audio issues the entire time through. The amount of compression on their lines compared to the UK cast is absolutely ridiculous, and pretty much all of the performances beyond GJJ are laughably amateur. Plenty of people praise Koana, and yet his VA voices about 7 side-characters with the exact same voice and intonations, suggesting he's less of a "voice actor" and more of "voice haver." And I mean Wuk Lamat dropping the world's fakest Hispanic accent every third line just goes without saying.
There's this insane belief within circles of the XIV Defense Squad that everyone who disliked DawnTrail had already made their mind up before the expansion launched. I am not someone who hated Endwalker patch content, and I was trying (desperately) to enjoy this expansion. I actually did nothing but look for the positives until the credits rolled, but even despite all of this willingness to engage with a new story, found myself really disappointed in the end.
I was chewing on the walls to get in and the story was so awful it took me three weeks to finish. I finished Endwalker in 3-4 days when it came out.
I loathe Wuk Lamat. A horribly written character, the VA couldn't do anything to salvage that train wreck. The MSQ was so bad...I quit playing. I just can't. It was that bad. We, as you said, are basically an atomic bomb in an environment where they're using clubs, and we're regulated to watching someone's fetish learn the power of friendship...and sitting idly by while horrendous things happen, because Wuk Lamat. Just. No. I was PISSED when that furball took the glory at killing Sphene. Really? What are we even doing here. The WoL could conquer the whole continent alone, yet...we're the glorified escort/fetch servant of Wuk Lamat. A childish, uninspired character. Straight up 0/10 on the MSQ. The environments and stuff, that is great. The music is terrible in this xpac too, it just does not fit. They screwed up bad on this xpac...very bad.
The character writing was very poor in this expac, the Scions could have been replaced by cardboard cutouts and nothing would have changed, even when they did have something to say it was very homogenous to the point where if you gave me the dialogue with no name attached I probably couldn't tell you who said it. If they're going to be used this badly I'd prefer them to either stay out of the story or just focus on a few of them (ala HW and SB).
I think your point that how badly everyone else is handled builds resentment for Wuk Lamat (because for some reason the writers decided to super glue you to her ) is a fair assessment but I think she's not a fantastic character to begin with. I was not impressed with her in 6.55 but I was hopeful because it was quite obvious that her boisterous and optimistic personality was somewhat of a front but I don't think that was adequately explored here and in the end she learns nothing because she can talk no jutsu and love and peace her way out of every situation. She also never felt fit to be a leader, if you put her in a room with the alliance leaders it'd look like take your kid to work day. Even Nanamo, who has shown naivety in the past (but unlike Wuk was punished for it) and is probably a similar age to Wuk Lamat, shows much more maturity and feels like someone responsible enough to be a leader.
You know, Wuk's dad never needed to tell this random adventurer he doesn't even know everything about her past so that the henchmen could just hear it.
I remember we had a "You don't know about my past" moment with Fordola then she had an Echo flashback with our past. She was like "How the fuck did you deal with all of that"?
To be honest, I was like giiirl your's was way worse.
P.S. Haven't played Dawntrail yet or watched the video to avoid spoilers, was just curious about the comments
Yeah, that part executed so badly that at that moment I was convinced the story is screwed up this time.
I really tried to give this expansion a fair shot, knowing that it's the start of a new story arc led by a new writing team, who should be given a chance before everyone goes full doomer.
However after playing it and thinking on it for some time it's clear that there are just SO many problems when you dig even slightly deeper. I don't want to write an essay so I'll summarise it as follows:
- Omnipresence of Wuk Lamat at the expense of every other character
- Neglecting important characters (Krile, Erenville) and rushing their conclusion
- Characterisation overall being poor, with the scions basically being cardboard cutouts, and the villains underwhelming
- The childish nature of the story telling, genuinely felt like I was watching a kids cartoon at times during the 1st half
- Heavy emphasis on telling rather than showing
- Plot contrivance in multiple cases, often caused by our character and others acting stupid and passive
- Shallow world building, few societal problems and those that do exist are solved immediately
- Retreading previous themes in a less interesting way
I think when people say 'It's a new arc, don't expect Shadowbringers/Endwalker levels of hype' what they fail to understand is that it's not about the stakes, its about the writing *quality* which has fallen off a cliff since 6.1.
I'm still going to remain hopeful that they can rescue things in the patches like they did in Stormblood, but my confidence in the writers has been severely dented.
The old head writer, Ishikawa has said that she stopped writing for FFXIV after 6.0 (she contributed to 6.1 sidequests featuring Omega). This is because she got promoted into senior scenario writer which highly implies she is working on another project, perhaps FFXVII. We are under two new head writers who have been around since ARR.
@@coolyeh1017 Right now they need to hit the emergency Isihikawa button, grab her by the shoulders and put her back in the driver seat. There's no saving this MSQ otherwise.
"think when people say 'It's a new arc, don't expect Shadowbringers/Endwalker levels of hype' what they fail to understand is that it's not about the stakes, its about the writing quality which has fallen off a cliff since 6.1. "
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
I've LITERALLY been saying this since 6.1 and people act like im crazy or try to give me the "oh it's a new story" line. Yes, it's a bad story, it's a hap hazzard rushed poorly written immature mess.
Think about it, since 6.1 we have uncovered and ended 2 calamitous world ending threats...where is the low stakes new slow burn setup exactly??? Not to mention they do things like assasinating Vritra, who is an ancient dragon but somehow...SOMEHOW..doesn't understand what a trade agreement is and has to be told be a literal fucking child. Vrtra just gets massacered in EW post patch, and so do the scions in 7.0, they're behaving in this MSQ like they would in some off brand crossover quest, stripped down to their most bare characteristics. They don't contribute much to the story imo, even Krile is just...there.
@@coolyeh1017 Those "new writters" onlyhad roles as a quest designers and one have a visual novel as a project with questionable tags including canibalism but i expected a bit more from the people who did sorrows of werly and the 4 lords and one who worked along in heavensward
@@coolyeh1017l believe Ishikawa is still reviewing at least parts of the story atm. The way I see it, they’ve just had a massive restructuring of their team and are getting used to the new work dynamics, so things are going to fall through the cracks.
It doesn’t excuse the writing quality, of course, but it may bring a bit of understanding to the situation. I enjoyed a lot of the little threads that they left and the overall potential of where the story could go, but reflecting on how we got here and all the little moments that could’ve been done better just frustrates me.
If they made the entirety of patch content dedicated to tying Dawntrail up that would have helped with the pacing.
An example would be that we don't actually take down Zoraal'ja right away and instead he is a boss for one of the patches as we start storming his kingdom.
The entire MSQ should have ended with Wuk becoming the dawnservant and us not knowing where Zoraal'ja is and what's going to happen with him, saving it for patch content and Sphene not even being introduced until probably the same patch where we find out what Zoraal'ja was getting up to.
I agree! I've been wracking my brain and I think this really is the best way to fix the story even though some things would be different (solution nine zone, the raids, etc). There were things in tural that I genuinely wanted to see while the stakes weren't super high: the people that were against Wuk and supported zoraal ja coming back into play, Koana's past with the nomadic miqote and having to confront it as the dawnservant... and the mamook conflict taking longer than a few minutes. It could've been cool
Agreed! The whole story should have been Tural. Xak Tural should have been part of the trial. There should have been more drama and conflict in the member states you visit. Krile should have gotten focus on confidence building and recollections of Galuf. Erinville could have gotten work on coming out of his shell and spoken more about his relationship or lack there of with his mom. We could have dealt with conflict with the two factions of giants, conflict between Koana and Wuk Lamat, between the Hettsarro and the train builders. We could have seen Shaoloni before the merging and met the waluquee. The Mamook and X’braal relations is rife with potential juicy drama and even the culpability for the man who brought the “peace”. Why weren’t they given lands above the canopy? Why is trade not mandated or an economic solution devised for the ones who stayed? Did he ever try to put a stop to the practice?
The resilient son could have been fleshed out as a more rounded character. The zones could be more fleshed out with the wonderful blue quest chains being incorporated more into the main story instead of being optional.
We could spend some time separated from Wuk Lamat which each fear requiring she do a task on her own and we get given time to do some vacation or just fun stuff without her. Like instead of sitting by a camp fire while she Lama hunts we could have been running down some leads on the city of gold. Erinville and Krile could take the lead.
Heck we could have gotten a near civil war as the climax. Solution 9 could have waited until the patches to start being introduced. With the last patch being the invasion and death of Galuul JA JA. It would have been a very post ARR ending and I think that would be great!
That would have also given us a whole expansion to develop and explore Alexandria.
I wanted something lower stakes than EW or SB and instead they ended with a multidimensional catastrophe aversion story.
Around 96 I was already reaching the point of wanting Wuk Lamat to go away, and give the player character some space (it was overbearing and feeling like flat-out babysitting).
When the Scions were taken away from us at the very last second when we enter a Reflection (you know, the thing they are EXPERTS in), I was completely done with the story, since everyone felt kind of out-of-character and dumbed down for the (obvious) purpose of making Wuk Lamat be the center stage no matter what. Krile (who I might add, was heavily promoted for this expansion) getting shafted to a 10-minute story was the final nail in the coffin.
Please explain why Wuk, the one person that's not experienced with dimensional travel or other scientific area, was the one that managed to break into the fight but not G'raha or Krile. I was ready to shoot her myself at that point. FFS this is what the WoL does. This is our day job. We didn't need her help. At all.
@@CixiaKyrrah But we were iNsPiReD by her according to the buff that we get in the final stage of the trial kekw. Sometimes it feels like Wuk is the writer's self insert, but idk.
@@zhenoob Don't forget she has 18 million HP and deals 3 times as much damage as anyone else while she's there. I know it's inconsequential, but I don't understand why they hell they banked EVERYTHING on Wuk; unearned screentime, writer/story focus, power levels - all because she's a nice little ditzy cutie who says she understands.
I could even have dealt with that, if it wasn't for the fact that it was obviously at the cost of intimate and growth moments for all other characters we know and hold dear, especially Krile (absolutely shafted) and Erenville (Lost 30 years with his mom due to chasing Wuk's bracelet for too long in the desert) and written as a contemplative mute in the final zone, which would be some of the most fucking traumatic shit ever.
I just don't get these choices. And it worries me for their future direction.
Honestly the part that almost made me quit playing was when you're forced to play as Wuk Lamat WHILE STANDING RIGHT BESIDE HER. We have only ever taken over characters when WE ARE ABSENT from those scenes. It pissed me off so much that we were forced to play that character in such a horrendously executed fashion. Not to mention the bullshit of her doing *multiple Limit Breaks for no reason other than she borrowed our plot armor*. Like the implication was Dynamis, but that's all it was - an implication that is never explored or addressed ever again. She's basically the Rey of FFXIV. Nothing is earned, and it felt so insulting that they forced us to play her while our character literally stood right there.
@@Ellemtee749 i lowkey thought they wrote the story this bad on purpose for clouts. Free marketing. Because if Ishikawa was the supervisor, no way she looked at this and said "oh ok this is good".
After going through the MSQ Twice now, the best way I can describe it is as a YA novel. Whereas SHB and Base EW were far more adult in their concept and execution, DT reads like a self-published Young Audience story.
The heavier issues were passed over too quickly with "The power of Friendship" as the explanation.
My biggest issue with Dawntrail was how everyone consistently and constantly tells you to not be you. They don't want conflict and blood baths to resolve problems like you are Zenos. Only to turn to you when things go sideways but then still throttle your response. You play as a character who is at this point for lack of a better term a demigod in power and ability they need to acknowledge it. The only time you get to bring it up is when you can tell Sphene that you are going to destroy her army and nobody has a response.
Solving problems our way has literally saved the universe and being told that our methods are wrong by everyone, even the Scions. It's an insult to the player.
Yeah, I want some real "villain" options. Let us identify with Zenos' philosophy and choose chaos solutions instead of sticking to strait-laced proper solutions.
I kind of wish we had the option of putting our hand up for the title of Dawnservant when he asked us what we thought of Wuk Lmao. "None of them are suitable. You might as well give it to me." Even if we can't actually hold it because we'd get tied down.
My main issue isn't with the MSQ as a concept, because I truly did have a good time with Wuk Lamat and parts of the tale. My problem is with the MSQ as a package.
This absolutely felt like 2 different stories that each needed time to breathe.
Like you brought up early on, the main MSQ should have been strictly the Dawnservant trials so that way we could actually get to know some of these characters a bit more. Give them more screentime and not have it *just* be the Wuk Lamat show. Then we could have ended on a cliffhanger with the dome being generated and not having an immediate way in, leaving a great hook for post-MSQ.
It's like a soup was made, but a few steps were skipped. Sure, it's probably still edible by the end, but it's not gonna taste anywhere near as good as if the proper time was taken.
hoping SE learns they cant just expect people to gobble up the story without having anything else to fall back on, the overwhelming lack of gameplay sections made the story even more of a slog to get through
@@hypersleep9336 I was running an alt through skipping scenes, and in the time it took me to complete my first visit to Urqopacha alone, my alt skipping scenes had cleared the first trial in roughly that time. Maybe half an hour longer. So roughly in the time half of one zone took, skipping scenes finished 2 zones, 2 dungeons, and a trial, give or take a little flex time. I was surprised at how many opportunities we could have had for solo story duties we just didn't get.
This is spot on. The number of times my quest bar said nothing but "talk to x" for hours at a time is insane. If I wanted a visual novel that's what I would have bought, not a fucking mmo.
This was my biggest issue. Give us more voiced battle missions. Let us play the game while you tell the story and possibly make cutscenes more impactful in the process.
The part where you follow 2 different npcs back to back made me legit mad and go “wtf?”
Good thing I enjoyed the story, but I do hope they add more variety to the content.
Thanks Mike for pointing out the way we take their lumber and walk away. 14 has had a history of dealing with tough realities in the past and I was disappointed we handwaved so many of them here. For me however the biggest problem was not Wuk Lamat or her character but the sidelining of the WoL and of the legacy of what that character used to mean. While we are not always the MC - though never has any MC sucked the oxygen out of the room like Wuk does - BUT we were always the protagonist. We saw other peoples' stories through the eyes of the WoL and as part of our own journey. Here the WoL might as well have been furniture in the room. This reduces the illusion of character ageny to nothing. While it is often noted the WoL has no real agency, the story in the past has created the illusion of agency by having our WoL make "choices" that reflect what we know of their character. Not here. From standing around watching the murder of a head of state and father of an ally to pressing the big button in Living Memory because "they aren't truly alive" . In Living Memory the player is clearly going to remember Emet Selch's words to us - "you are not truly alive ergo I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you". Without getting into any kind of debate about what being alive in 14 consists of, the glaring problem here is that the past lines of the MSQ itself will be ringing in the players ears at this point, not to mention the questlines in Ultima Thule, where we help dead people who only exist as memories rebuild a future. DT's MSQ simply handwaves all this as if our WoL has amnesia. My WoL is literally wearing the title "Barrista at the end of the Universe" over his head while all this is going on. This led to a problem for some of ius in which we began to feel a real disconnect between themselves and their character.
It's not just that Wuk Lamat or any other MC was too omnipresent - it was that the WoL and the MSQ seems to have forgotten their own legacy. For a game so concerned with the past, with memory, and with honoring legacies this was very hard to take.
I genuinely thought Wuk Lamat's happy-go-lucky mindset was going to be challenged by some terrible truth the Dawnservant role holds. Like she becomes DS and then her father says "ye btw if you don't sacrifice a baby a year the golden gate opens and the bad guys come through and kill us all. Have fun!" And she'd have to struggle to make a terrible choice (probably negated by something the Warrior does, but still). But no. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. She bungles her way through the expac and learns absolutely nothing
I'm pretty sure Y'shtolas voice being off has something to do with the VA having a kid around that time
Wuk Lamat single-handedly ruined this expansions MSQ for me. Would be great if she could go away for like 10 minutes. So annoying.
Another problem with the Hanuhanu not knowing that the float was an arcane focal point, even with the additional "we just thought it was theatrics" line, is that Wuk Evu, a complete outsider who had been there for 3 years, so had attended at least 2 others festivals, knew what the float was for. Why did he know but the actual Hanuhanu did not? Where did he get this information from? Why didn't he tell anyone?
Especially you would think people that are so close to their culture would have beliefs...They wouldn't call it 'theatrics". That's stuff you see in modern society that are starting to put their cultures on the back burner. It just doesn't make any sense. If they wanted to have them forget about their culture they should've tackled a form of colonization, for example, from the Yok Huy who could have enforced their culture on them while they were in power for a couple of generations.
True, it felt like a stand in for wuk lamat wanting the festival. Kona sees the actual issue and goes to deal with it, bakool has no idea but plans to steal Kona’s work at least, no idea what zooral ja does and wuk is sad there’s no festival
Wuk Evu is explicitly there to study the Hanuhanu culture, him knowing isn’t that far fetched imo.
@@Salt_Mage Actually...Does it? You could assume that the Hanu Hanu doesn't have a writing tradition just like the Autochtones people of America which could explain a loss of knowledge over time if elders don't share it perfectly. But then HOW did Wuk Evu learn about it? If there are writings then how did the Hanu Hanu forget? Are they all too dumb to read? However you want to twist it, it's not great. Having an outsider explain a people's culture while every one in that culture is oblivious is just a bad look. You won't see me go to an Autochtone community with my history book telling them about their culture. I would like to attribute this to bad writing, perhaps a course correction like Preach mentioned rather than what you are implying.
Right? Like have the tribal significance, but then have the twins notice the arcane nature of it. And then find out they weren't the smartest because this guy was thinking the same. Only now old guy has a fresh presepective from the new comers and they work together for a solution.
Instead we get the typical Hollywood "everyone before me is dumb and stuck in the old ways, and I can solve all this because I am just that smart and modern."
I joke with my friends about Wuk lamat being alive on a diet of Peace, happiness, love, and tacos because thats LITERALLY all she talked about. Seriously, almost every sentence that came out of her mouth had one of those 3 words in there j;ogfdsgfsd;gfd
The raid story is better than the MSQ imo.
I'm more excited to fight for the Heavyweight belt than I am for literally anything else mentioned in the MSQ.
Facts af. The raid story feels like a breath of fresh air. Can't wait to be an MSQ skipper till they get rid of Wuk and get better writers
@@fredy2041 No, that's not why people hate the main story
@fredy2041 Well, heavensward says otherwise. That expansion fcused on alphinaud, Ysaylenand Estinien. WoL barely did much but we were far more connected to that group than Wuk
Which raid story
Dawntrail, to me, story screams “newly-promoted intern handling a story for the first time.” Disappointing stuff when it comes from such a massive game and makes me worried for the future direction of the game that I’ve literally grown up with.
Lets us make a narrative comparison to another girl we met just recently, which is Zero. The narrative related to Zero was perfectly done, the introduction, the pace, the development of her character and the culmination at the end of her story line was perfect. She completed the Hero's Journey, learned not only from we player but from everyone else, not only the scions. She grew and become something much more than what she was, and at the end, she saw us, the player, as an equal. I absolutely loved her for everything she was, I myself, the real person could relate to her.
Now let us take Wuk Lamat. Her character never develops much more than what was presented to us at the beginning. She don't follow the hero's journey, she is already a hero and leads everything, the very typical Mary Sue in all aspects. The narrative took away the agency from us, the player, and gave it to her. We just happen to be there to watch her. At the end of her journey I did not want to relate to her; I felt so unimportant and absent from almost all aspects of the MSQ. I was just there, nothing else.
Not only her character development is messed, almost all characters are. Try to compare this expansion to all others and you will notice how bizarre the narrative is, how untypical of Square Enix FF14 development team it is. I just wonder what game consultant company they have hired to ''fix'' the story for the ''modern audiences''. We see the same very thing, the same very contamination in many other games out there that were good. Just see how divisive this MSQ was in the community. People knows there is something really wrong with it, no matter how much cope the others have.
My biggest problems were the pacing of the first half, all of the filler in the second half, the WoL and Scions becoming side characters and the numerous times we were involved in things that we shouldn't have been.
They should've done with Wuk Lamat like they've done with Yugiri: mask her or otherwise hide what race she is while introducing her in the prior expacs/updates. Yugiri was introduced in 2.X, 1 and a half expansions before she had her limelight!
There's a thing i learned recently that really grinds me. Which is how on the last trial, Wuk Finds her way to the fight against Sphene, and from that point onwards she deals double the damage of the WoL.
She's a literal nobody, with little to no combat training. She didn't go through any real trials to test her might. On the other hand we have the WoL, the only soul that's 8 times rejoined, with the echo, blessing of light, traveler's charm. Who canonically fought all of the primals alone, who went to the 13th, the first, to the edge of the universe, to save humanity, and every single time did fought the greatest threats all ALONE. And here comes sweet lil kitty princess and obfuscates the strongest warrior that's ever lived.
Amazing writing right here.
@pinkchckn agreed, though a couple points of contention. 1- G'raha is also technically 8 times rejoined since he came from a future after the 8th umbral calamity. And 2. It seems to be heavily implied for a lot of the primal fights that we recruited adventurer friends with the echo to fight with us. But yeah, almost everything she did felt unearned.
I don't think the damage number you're never even supposed to see holds any meaning for the narrative.
My interpretation of her role is that she's a rookie placed under our care who needs to learn and grow, and we're so far above the threats this expansion that we're basically using them as teaching opportunities. We never actually have to get serious, which is reflected in us fighting with whoever's around instead of calling on Azem's crystal.
For Sphene, it was over the moment we did.
One notable thing about the ending is since Shadowbringers, we've always had the trope of a character "breaking through reality" to come to our aid with the final boss: Thancred and the Scions to deliver us white auracite, Zenos "I take it this is your prey" Galvus, and this time around Wuk Lamat.
Zenos/Shinryu flying his entire ass to the end of the universe is in a class of its own, but I think it's fair to draw a comparison betweeen the Scions breaking through Hades' defenses and Wuk Lamat breaking through Sphene's. In that comparison, I don't believe for a second Wuk Lamat could have done anything about Hades.
The Scions rescued us then, but in Dawntrail we would have had the situation well in hand by ourselves. Wuk Lamat coming in isn't about saving us. We don't need it. It's about proving that she's learned from her experiences and our guidance, found her confidence, and she will not stand on the sidelines while we fight her battles.
@@Poldovico lil man you're trying so hard to defend the indefensible. Wuk Lamat had zero reason to show up at all. They spent the entire second half reinforcing her "dumbass main protagonist" trope with her constantly inserting herself in the discussions that she "doesn't understand that stuff" when we talked about shards and dimensional travel every single time we talked about it. THEN, when we went into the portal Y'shtola flat out said that having the person alive who knows the absolute most about dimensional travel should something go wrong in Raha should be present on the other side. And lo and behold the two people who know about the things we are dealing with ,and Raha especially, get yeeted and are passed out in front of the meso terminal while for literally no other reason than to complete the trope of the shitty OC self insert saving the day is not excusable with whatever backstory you're trying to reason into existence. She didn't need to save anything and she MOST CERTAINLY didn't even need to be present for anything. She was way out of her depth even with the bullshit powerups she got for no reason and she 100% should have never been soloing Sphene's huge attacks as if she was on par with the WoL in any capacity. Its ok for her to not be perfect and the answer to everything but the self inserter couldn't have that. It was another mistake to even have G'raha present if they were going to yeet everyone and then the biggest dumbass of our group, that knows nothing about ANY dimensional shenanigans, be the one that somehow breaks through.
The extent of our 'guidance' is a huge matter of subjectivity so i'm not even gonna try and approach that one but that character was forced into every aspect, and glaringly where it SHOULDN'T have even crossed their minds to force her.
For some reason requiring that the WoL be stunned to transition the MSQ trial is a strange decision they keep going with, it made sense in ShB and EW. Here it had no place at all except just to shoe horn that terrible character in for no reason. She got yeeted, by something she herself stated over and over to not understand, and we didn't need her to prove anything. In fact her admitting that that was a battle that was out of her league would have done wonders but instead she had to be the main character AGAIN with terrible timing and, as stated multiple times already, absolutely ass reasoning. I would have loved it then if the "king of resolve" died fighting Sphene and we let the only character worth the development they were given rule with an understanding of loss and that his views weren't all that great in Koana. That was the only good character for a majority of the expac except Galool Ja Ja who was hardly present.
@@MetalMaidenDeth you can go call your friends "lil man", not me. Considering you're talking about something as inconsequential as a videogame, the least you can do is be respectful.
@@Poldovico My main problem with that is that it's just headcannon, none of the scions served as mentors for wuk lamat, she did everything herself, with the scions acting more like cheerleaders. Wuk didn't learn anything through the whole expansion, her sole growth was in her confidence, but she was stupidly naive from start to end. Her ideals were challenged 0 times, and her victory as dawnservant was never in question since it was designed for her to win.
Hell, she tried to talk to Sphene like "leave the legacy of your people to us" after literally assassinating who Sphene wanted to protect.
The characters coming to save us in the end works better in other expansions because they're not the main characters, it's becomes kind of a plot twist to see them up there, and none of them are stealing the spotlight. We talk to Emet after defeating him, we talk to Meteion after defeating her, and we are being a third wheel for wuk's expansion.
I don't mind that she's the main character of the expansion, most people don't care about being the main character, just look at how the Hildibrand storyline is universally loved. But we as players need to feel useful at some points in the game. At the end of the trial my thoughts were something like "Hell, I guess I don't need to play this game anymore, since the writers found a better WoL than mine, all issues of the world will effortlessly solve themselves as long as she's around."
Tbh my issues with the discourse isn’t even that ppl have mixed feelings, but that the extremes insist on having the most unproductive conversation as possible about it.
While I disagree with Mike on a lot of his points here I appreciate that he clearly has thought a lot about this and understands that there are many different ways to absorb the events of the MSQ.
Would love a non-MSQ breakdown of Mike’s thoughts on the more mechanical aspects (encounter design, QoL releases, etc) though that might be more beneficial after the Bozja-esque content is out.
Wuk Lamat - Black Hole Sue with 95% screentime and how she warps reality to fit her
Scions and other chars turned to husks with no personality
Horrid story quest and pacing and the sudden jarring shift in tone in second half
Don't get me started on people arguing WoL is a 'mentor' lol, more like a walking camera + cheerleader for Wuk
2/10 MSQ expansion
The loss of 'grit' in the world was a feeling that crept up early. And with Wuk Evu's somewhat automated behaviour, I was actually hoping for a Westworld twist. That the Golden City was a device used by the Dawnservant to create this artificially happy world for one generation. Leaving the creation of the next to his successor. It just seemed too far from how Etheris was presented to us so far. Alas...
Preach, you’ve managed to somehow help me sort through the complicated feelings I have with this expansion. I don’t hate it, but every point you’ve made in this video hits the nails on the head. I’m hoping they can somehow turn it around in the patch content and future expansions, and hoping it touches on the aftermath of our actions during the rite of succession.
There’s so much potential sitting and waiting, and they just need to actually use it.
When I was reflecting I think they absolutely Messed up not having graha be accompany us in the first half but randomly in the final third.
An xpac focused on exploring a new world and adventure is exactly the dream of graha and to experience it with the warrior of light. We have already done this exact event with the twins times and I don't think they added anything to the story in the first half, they were just there to do menial tasks or bounce off of. Graha was also a leader for many years, especially during trying times and could of invoked his older side especially with plot points like adopted daughter, sacrifice, Alexandria on the brink of destruction, etc. These are all points where graha could invoke his experience and learnings and teacher characters like sphene and wuk lamat.
Regardless what they ended up telling was a story that didn't use any of the strengths of the characters, even wuk lamat. If this was a normal jrpg, vast majority of players would of dropped it in the first half.
For me the writers simply forgot who the Scions were characterwise. All the other expansions the Scions were clearly distinctive from each other but this time they reacted all the same. Alphinaud is the one whos most interested in diplomatic relations but he never ask anything. Alisaie is misstrusting in nature and a hothead but this time she was fine with everything. In every other expansion she would instantly misstrust Sphene from the get go but in DT? no reaction at all. the only time i got the feeling to meet an actual Scion i remember from past expansion was G'raha during the gondola ride.
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head as far as a lack of Scions in this expansion is concerned. Though I noticed it from a different perspective: pretty much every quest objective, accompaniment quest and cutscene was about Wuk Lamat, to the point that I was already tired of seeing her quite early on. Also consider this: our "inn room" was introduced very early on, but we never got to use it; more infuriating was how we were told that we and the other Scions could use it to rest a bit, and then it was immediately yanked away from us by more Wuk Lamat story points. And then, to add insult to injury, when we finally do get to use it, Wuk Lamat comes and bothers us within about five seconds and then proceeds to drag us around town for the next thirty minutes. To say that she was an utterly exhausting character would be putting it mildly. We never got any alone time by ourselves, nor any with the Scions either. In short, it felt like Wuk Lamat was being shoved in our faces 200% of the time. That was honestly the reason why Shaaloani unexpectedly became my favorite map, because we finally got a break from her.
As for the MSQ itself, the pacing felt incredibly off throughout every single part. The Feats felt like they took forever, the Heritage Found portion felt oddly accelerated, and then we waste so much time on nonsensical "visits" in Solution Nine. And call me crazy, but I simply couldn't bring myself to feel any sympathy for these death-evading invaders because everything about their society just felt wrong. Sphene herself felt like a fake right from her introduction. More than that, she was rather childish and naive for a supposed "queen", and apparently lacked an understanding of how the Lifestream works. For all that other people claim that Sphene was a "tragic" character, I feel no sympathy for the out of control robot who knew exactly what she was doing and could have course corrected at any time but chose not to.
Erenville was much more interesting to me in Endwalker than in Dawntrail. It felt like they took a good, intelligent character and dumbed him down and turned him into someone he wasn't for this expansion. I don't really agree with the general feeling that Krile didn't get a proper character arc though. The major outstanding questions about her were all answered, and she (and we) got to meet her parents. I mean, yes, Wuk Lamat had far too much screen time, and I would have loved to see more of Krile, but as far her character arc went, I didn't feel that it was incomplete in any way.
I wouldn't compare Wuk Lamat to Lyse if I were you though. Stormblood had pacing issues but overall was a very good, and very human, story. Also, people who truly understood Lyse's character arc know that her growth happened organically and in a way that did not overwhelm every other character's presence. Lyse was also generally far more knowledgeable about her people and a great deal more mature as well. The story also did not devolve into the utter nonsense that was Dawntrail's second half. As for why they missed the mark in several areas, it's because they handed the story over to new writers with an apparent lack of proper supervision. What I can tell you for certain is that this expansion's base MSQ has left me feeling utterly disappointed and exhausted, and I never hang out in the new areas as a result because they remind me far too much of the terrible MSQ I experienced in them. I haven't even yet touched the role quests because they seem so boring, nor the crafter and gatherer quests which, while they do seem interesting, still occur in these new areas that I just don't care for. I also have had no enthusiasm for trying out the new extremes and I find the normal raids to be just plain uninteresting. At this point, I can't imagine the patches redeeming the base, but I hope I'm wrong.
On the subject of expectations: going into Endwalker after Shadowbringers, I felt excitement. Not only because we were going to be seeing more of the ancients and Hydaelyn but because the story generally seemed like it was going to have a lot of great arcs. Going into Dawntrail from Endwalker though, I didn't feel any enthusiasm from the first time I saw the trailer. I kept waiting for the Live Letters to show something that would truly grab my interest, but it just wasn't there. Even the new maps, beautiful as they were, felt more like barely modified rehashes of older and prettier maps. A contest for a throne also hardly seemed like a fascinating story. Even so, I gave Dawntrail a chance to impress me, and it disappointed me every step of the way. In Endwalker, I did miss Shadowbringers a bit, but 6.0 itself was so good that it didn't make me long for it. In Dawntrail however, the nostalgia for both Endwalker and Shadowbringers hit me hard because of how much better their stories were. And that, to me, is what makes Dawntrail bad.
Krile's story didn't feel _incomplete,_ it just felt perfunctory and half-assed. She was with us basically every step of the way, the only character other than Wuk that was present for every single one of the MSQ dungeons, and yet she had barely more than a _third_ of the spoken lines as a character that didn't even enter the narrative until level 97. The entire Golden City plotline was inextricably tied to Krile and her parents, and yet Krile and her gifted earring weren't even allowed to open the freakin' gate without having to hand the moment off to another character. Krile was effectively a mobile set piece for all but like 3 or 4 sequences in the entire MSQ. We got ~30m to meet and get to know her parents, or their memories at least, before we yeeted them out of existence and they shoved Krile back into the wallpaper.
@@KaedysKor I don't agree with the half-assed part, but I agree that we should have seen more of her. However, the premise of her backstory, I think, is itself to blame. Since where she was from and who she was related to were the only real questions about her and one of them was answered in a much more general way by the second half of the MSQ, it gave us less reason to focus on her. So the writers should have given her something else, another arc that would allow her to be more closely tied to the MSQ. I fully agree with you that the entire second half should have been hers.
I think another thing to mention are that the villains of the expansion are very bland. They either have very similar motivations to other characters from previous expansions, or they just are completely uncompelling. I remember when Gra'ha asked Sphene "What will you do when you drain the source of all their aether? It'll be a neverending cycle" and she just had no response and completely ignored the question.
I think they are setting her up to be the end boss of this storyline but as I am already an old fart with health problems I probably won't see it
Literally ZERO battle content in the first 3-5 hours was already worrying. The MSQ structure at this points needs to be shaken up, there are way too few battle content and way too much "talk to this NPC at 5 locations" quests.
Also I think a massive flaw with the new MSQ writer, Hiroi, is that he just...cannot make a story up by himself? EW patches was LITERALLY FF4, the second half of DT was basically FF9, and where it wasn't it was just a mashup of previous expansion stories. 'MEMBER ENDSINGER? 'MEMBER ULTIMA THULE? 'MEMBER AMAUROT?
Also just to add: Wuk's ENG VA absolutely did NOT do a great job, and I legit feel like people are starting to be afraid to criticize them out of fear of being cancelled. This was the first time since ARR that a VA was NOTICABLY and CLEARLY off.
@@fredy2041 my guy if you like the xpac then keep liking it. But there are also valid criticisms when it comes to msq. Not every msq is gonna be hit for everyone and that's okay. But SE needs criticisms if they want to learn from their mistakes and what hits with the players and what doesn't. Let alone when their sole focus is their stories, then they should definitely have these criticisms. I thought the xpac was okay, but it still had its issues that could have been handled way better. I'm not saying the game is trash, I have hope that they take these criticisms and are able to make their next stories better. Your arguments just sound like a 10 year old kid who likes something and hates when someone goes against it. You don't know the development process either, the EW patches isn't about you so idk why you are asking if it has anything to do with you. It doesn't matter what the lead writer designed and wanted to add, it doesn't mean it's gonna be automatically good. Stop watching these videos and do you if you like the xpac, simple.
@@fredy2041 Why are you this invested in defending DT that you leave hundreds of comments just flat-out insulting people who criticize it?
@Rakka5 you know exactly why a member of the most coddled and catored to group in history would be like this.
@@fredy2041ah yes. How dare we want an mmo to play like an mmo and not a fanfic level visual novel.
The thing is, it doesn't even have to be so much battle content. But just anything besides "go here, click this, read that" would be nice
idk if i buy into the idea that Dawntrail wasn't misleading, like 85% of the content in the trailer happens post-MSQ and the fight with Gulool ja ja is a sparring match instead of a serious conflict.
I hope Yoshida gets to watch this in its entirety.
I was promised a Vacation, all i got was a Job in a Furry Daycare. Krile and Erenville were Robbed of their Story and Spotlight.
Honestly for myself, I have to agree with a lot of this video. The general gist I felt about Dawntrails story, mirrors a lot of Mike's points. The scions are just accessories, Wuk Lumat is a rushed story with no real substance that made me appreciate Lyse during Stormblood. The pokebadge tour for Wuk Lumat was painfully slow at times and her constant ignorance with basic principles of the people she's supposed to become ruler over is just not believable. Then we finally get to the pay off, the thing I care about, the actual Golden City. Nope, hard stop, we gotta go do a disney song moment because we have to crown the new dawnservant(s) (lets be honest here, it was so poorly written everyone could see how this was going to end, the whole Yuk Hoy tablet conversation was just missing Dora the Explorer to 4th wall break the audience.)
Then after that? City of Gold? Nope, go to 14's equivalent of Texas. This was the biggest disappointment for me. Honestly, you could remove the entire zone story and absolutely nothing is lost storyline wise. I mean for the love of god, they don't even use real bullets for the duels. Where the hell is the actual stakes? Oh no, I lost, I guess you win the argument. I absolutely hated Shaaloani. If it wasn't for the plot hook of the invasion, I don't know if I would have stayed hooked. Plus seriously, a music montage? When did 14 become a children's movie?
Heritage Found and Living Memory, kept me interested because it was finally a story for us, the Warrior of Light, ya know the ACTUAL main protagonist. There were still issues but at least now I could speculate and I wanted to find out. Absolutely enjoyed my time from this point on, up till the final end trial and the Devs go and pull another insult to the player. Its our moment to shine, to be the hero to save the day, and who comes and steals the spotlight. Yep, Wuk Lumat, with her power of friendship bullshit. You had over half the game, can you piss off and let me be the Warrior of Light and feel like I'm saving the world like we always do every expansion? Nope, Devs got to pull a World of Warcraft moment and we don't' save the day, its the NPCs who are the heroes and we're their accessory.
We like the scions, they've been with us through thick and thin, don't turn them into set dressing and cameo bits. Use them or don't. Hell, even in Endwalker they did a better job of having them involved with us saving the world. The Warrior of Light still saved the day, but the Scions were there to help us. Notice the key word there, HELP, not steal the show.
I understand Yoshi P wanted to step away from dark story lines after FF16, but if you're going to include them don't underplay it. Conflict between Colonization/Modernization and Indigenous peoples/ways of life, resolved with one sentence and never brought up again. Revelation of a culture basing everything in Eugenics, fixed with one town hall meeting. The genocide of the Endless because their way of life conflicts with others, no discussion with everyone else just turn off the computers because we were told to. I would have loved to seen these fleshed out more but sadly I think this is all we're going to get because we have to have more disney music moments instead
And most importantly, if you're gong to say that the story will reveal the real story for a character, especially if they've been stated to be a key part of the story, actually do that. Krile's story was so stop and go, it felt butchered. Oh right, forgot, this isn't about the Warrior of Light or the Scions, its the Wuk Lumat show.
Dawntrail wasn't a story, it was the Wuk Lamut show, with the whole first season cramped into a jumbled mess to get it out on time. If the devs want to know what works for the playerbase and they were just throwing things out to see what we resonate with please take this to heart. We want to be the hero. We want to save the day. Not some random NPC whom when we met they were asking for our help because they needed our strength and then suddenly they become on par with us with no real good reason or sign of growth.
That said, my issues entirely stem with the story and how it was done. Mechanically, I enjoyed the expansion. The dungeons and trials are great. A lot of the classes with their new additions feel great to play. Even the raid serious while quirky is a lot of fun. This the Devs nailed perfectly I feel. So at least my fear of the game not being fun to play is alleviated.
TLDR: My complaints are with the story. Gameplaywise I enjoy it a lot.
I do agree that Wuk Lamat was a rushed character and i quickly grew to dislike her. I don't take the hiding new character thing as easy though they did it in post heavensward masterfully with Yugiri.
As i went through the DT msq (like through the first half), i had jokingly told my friends that we can tell that it wasn't written by ishikawa with how shallow the story is so far. It stopped being said in a joking manner by the time the second half was under way.
I think one of the biggest mistakes they've made recently is tying mmo gameplay mechanics and story together and trying to make sense out of it. It was touched on in the video, but not quite from this angle. Story moments kinda lost their impact by just having characters show up out of nowhere just because we need 8 people. Not only is it a slight spoiler as to what's coming up, it also brings out questions like "why are they here?". This is true for both 4-man dungeons and 8-man trials.
They should've just added random NPCs from the local tribes of wherever the dungeon is, and just have the quest giver introduce them as "oh here's some local dudes to help us out". Just like how they did Duty Support for dungeons before we are integrated into the Scions. I wouldn't mind a mix either, for example Krile and two other random NPCs. This would've allowed much more breathing room for characters to develop in the story.
Very true. I would go farther and say that they shouldn't even be doing that in the first place. That was never a problem in the early expansions, but now they need to bend over backwards to justify there being enough people for the activity? Aren't we justifiably powerful enough to solo the dungeon/trial?
Kinda unrelated, but It bothered me since Endwalker, how trigger happy the writers were to use Azem's crystal for everything. Like, do we really need 7 other WoLs to beat Rubicante? I have no reason to believe he's that big of a threat. Really undermined the cool moments with the crystal back in Shadowbringers.
I would like to add that not having voiced scenes very early on when a new zone or character is introduced that have a difficult name to pronounce is a huge oversight. Spanish is my native tongue so some of the fantasy names are actually a play on some mesoamerican names but anyone else? Good luck trying to pronounce half of the names before someone speaks it. Like Erenvilles mom actually has an F sound in the middle but I never read it that way until it was spoken to me.
just in general, VA really was scarce in DT.
it was more a visual novel than what we had gotten used to.
so many times I though "alright, sure this is voiced right? fairly big event!" ... and it's just text.
but hey, atleast they finally added the option to only auto advance the voice cutscenes now, only took them 10 years, but insanely convenient that they do that in an expansion where it's more a visual novel than a modern RPG story.
@@DarkDyllon It was also weirdly placed. "Why is this scene VA' d but this other more important one wasn't?
On top of what has already been said, there's so many elements of the DT MSQ that are either extremely jarring compared to the other MSQ, incoherent, schizophrenic or straight out dangerous from a story standpoint going forward, all that because they seem like they didn't take a step back to think about the implications of what they were writing.
Jarring, because the whole south of Tural feels like it's populated by cultures with the political depth of Carebears that have next to no frictions or have some that can be fixed in a single exchange or lucky event, I mean, the war between the Mamool and Hrothgars lasted for at least multiple decades for them to ravage a fifth of the map, discover and grow multiple two-head military leaders which completely warped one of the belligerents' society... and all that stops thanks to a damn barbecue and no resolution to the problems that caused that war? Are you kidding? After the things we saw with the Dragonsong, Garlemald or even the Ala Mhigan refugees?
Same with the Moblins, a whole decade-spanning society changed overnight by a single sentence. This makes them all feel like the cultural equivalent of Potemkin villages, fakes with next to no depth, basically Disney villages, the Smile song not helping with that.
You see more problems inside the Hingan society with only Kugane than you do with multiple cultures in multiple maps in DT.
Incoherent. Basically anything related to Zoraal Ja, like really, anything, we're talking about someone who spent 30 years preparing an attack against an unprepared force, while leading a faction that dominated its own shard... and came up with a kitchen sink army made up of maid robots badly repurposed for war, civilian motorcycles with just a gun strapped on it, forbid the use of feral souls outside of the military to see only one guy use them (while he could've recruited the Arcadion contestants in his army) and his only seemingly real military ship got stared down to explosion by the weakest of the first brood who is on top of that, missing an eye, while Garlemald with massively lower tech put Midgardsomr down.
We're talking about someone who randomly, yet specifically attacked (somehow sliced his back open without killing him) Ketenramm (he's another can of worms, guy is supposedly past his race's life expectancy yet fights and looks better than when he was young, I was expecting some Fountain of Youth given that) to discover after the attack that he had a set of extra keystones which he was about to need, how convenient.
We're talking about a guy who somehow made a kid appear out of nowhere (try to find a mamool in Solution 9) to suddenly be ok with giving him absolute power.
We're talking about a guy those motivations are never really explained or shown outside of the trial where we kill him and never showing his childhood which supposedly was terrible enough to fuel him for more than 50 years.
Schizophrenic, the whole Living Memory zone is a constant back and forth between "They are real livin' beans!" and "It's ok, they are just puppets, shut them down lol!" it feels like it was written by two different persons with the completely opposite view on it, especially after the whole Omicron beast tribe quests, it felt extremely weird on how it handled it. I had an extra backlash at the end of the Alexandria dungeon with Wuk saying "Why would you delete those memories?" while she spent the last two hours erasing everyone else's in Living Memory.
Dangerous, because they introduced multiple very horrible elements for all future discourses of "Why didn't they just use x?" because they seem to have no idea about the implications of what they are writing, the Regulators being the most shining example of that. For the resurrection part to work, you need it to have at least some time-related magic and/or massive healing going on, why?
Because NPCs directly said that it can save you from being crushed to death by accident by a massive stone for example... which would just kill you again after being resurrected since you're still being crushed by it, same with blood loss from missing limbs, does it regrow the limb for you not to die again of blood loss? If you get decapitated, will a whole new body sprout from your neck? Same when dying from an enemy, it takes so much time to resurrect you in a very obvious way that there's almost no military application for an army that mostly deals with melee combat. It's a feature that literally only works if your world is turn-based.
And that's without even talking about the other logistical aspects of it like: "Wouldn't a Turali require 7 times the amount of souls to get resurrected compared to an Alexandrian since the former are from the source and latter from a shard?" among other things.
But the most dangerous element is the fact that those things allow you to remotely rewrite someone's memory just by putting them on their head, imagine if we had that during Endwalker, Meteon alone would've been dealt with just by slapping it on her head, every genocidal villain going forward will have to have a counter mesure to justify not using it on them unless they pull out a moronic "No! I'd rather see the villain wipe out multiple cities rather than do as low as rewriting someone's memories" like they did with the moronic justification as to why they didn't intervene during Gulool Jaja vs Zoraal Ja.
I honestly dread what's coming up. I feel like every time I start thinking a little deeper into an element of DT, I keep finding problems, it didn't happen that regularly with the previous expansions or even ARR.
THANK YOU. This was such a great video. Honestly voicing a lot of how I've been feeling with the story for so long.
My opinion is pretty simple...Wukie shouldn't have been in the second half. She should've stayed to defend the city that she goes on and on about loving for the first half of the game.
The Scions should've led the second half with Krile at the helm... she was perfectly positioned as an ACTUAL Alexandrian by birth to reach Sphene... she could've said "Hey, I'm Alexandrian and I've gotten along just fine without a Regulator...we don't need this to be happy."
I also wish they hadn't resolved the Alexandrian threat. DT didn't really leave anything to wonder or worry about. In ARR we got the beast tribes/ primals/ tempering... we got the Garleans darkening the horizon... we got the Ascians for goodness sake. Threats... threads to build upon. If the Alexandrians had remained a threat, or if Zoraal Ja had actually won the throne in the first place... there would be a lingering threat... something to worry about.
As it stands, we got a mcguffin (that is likely to completely undo all the work Shtola has already put into figuring out cross-shard travel) that reacted to the soul of Azem. That was a cool touch, but is it enough to justify the whole expansion? At this point you could skip DT MSQ completely if someone just said "Hey, you get a dimensional key with Azem's symbol from the South Sea Isles."
One more thing, when you brought up Gulool Ja Ja's death, I agreed, and it echoed a point I'd come to regarding the exit from the Moblin village... the choice to just have the Scions and WoL stand around like morons while Wukie was getting abducted suffered the same issue. There were so many other ways they could've separated her from the party that didn't involve the player yelling at their screen for Sixty seconds about how they're all total idiots while having one choice to push a button to "keep waiting... hurr durr durr."
Honestly the DT MSQ reads like a teenage Shonen-lover writing their first fanfic...I only hope you're right and they listen to the rumbles. It's pretty bad when you have to resort to compliments on battle content and graphics to find anything nice to say about an expac in "The Story MMO."
Dawntrail is filled to the brim with great ideas that are just glossed over. There's no way this wasn't two expansions worth of story crammed into one because they weren't confident in what they had for the first half of the game.
I can forgive pretty much every underwhelming thing in the MSQ, except for how dirty they've done Krile yet again. They said Krile was getting more attention this time, basically a flatout lie from the devs, jamming her into a third of the final zone as an afterthought. It's actually fucking stupid and a bit insulting.
@@fredy2041 "Nuh uh" A compelling argument, you've completely turned me around on this point; well done and thank you for commenting.
@@Tezasaurus A more compelling argument, then - she's present for most of the Rite, and it's her searching for answers about her earring, the Golden City, and her grandfather that end up providing crucial information that helps us actually find the place. She's even the one that actually puts all the pieces together after the final trial.
That, along with her being able to come along for combat stuff, and the stuff in the final zone, all combine to her getting more attention...
Also, I don't think we're done with her story. I wouldn't be surprised if elements of Preservation are still a factor somewhere within Solution 9, and who better to play an important role in dealing with that than the daughter of the founders?
After watching Jessie Cox complete the MSQ, I need to see a Preach and Cox conversation. Preferably a 2 hour video minimum!
Did Jesse like it?
I don't know if complete removal of the Scions is the answer but they have to be either gone or actively participating, not this half-done fan-service thing they did in DT. It would make sense to me that Y'shtola hangs back and works on her 'History of Etheirys' books she's mentioned before, or for Alphinaud & Alisaie to become fully fledged diplomats for Sharlayan and can't adventure with us anymore. This offers opportunities for us to fill the roster with newer characters and have new story arcs instead of Estinien running up to us when a trial is about to start, then fly away when it's over. I think a rotating cast of Scions going forward would be far more interesting.
@@dash_o_pepper Estinien imo is the only character that was done well because of who he is as a person.
"but they have to be either gone or actively participating, not this half-done fan-service thing they did in DT" my thoughts exactly. They have to pick a lane and stick to it. Either let the scions become full background npcs or actually write them doing things. This half-ass thing they did in DT is just not pleasing anyone.
@@Arcturus187 They should've just had the back bone to get rid of the scions at the end of endwalker.
Thank god. I'm so glad to see big creators not sugarcoat it.
Dawntrail was just a long and arduous journey to Wrestlemania
Goddamn, you fuckin nailed it. Shoving all the characters we cared about to the side while gluing a shonen protagonist to our hip made this expansion rank below Realm Reborn.
Wookie D. Luffe as i have heard someone call Wuk, very fitting
I hope to never see Wuk Lamat again. That's where I'm after this shitshow poor written story.
Every time they talked about how we can all be friends, I thought of the many characters we met who had been traumatized by war and oppression. This game has established that in its world there are conflicts and wounds that will not heal. When I played Dawntrail, I wondered where the writing for those characters and those conflicts went.
In Mor Dhona, there is a man we briefly got to know during the ARR story. He was a young man when he was forced to serve the Garlean Empire, and during that time his mother and sister had been taken. They knew exactly what the Garleans would do to them, and they decided they would rather jump. Having suffered so much because of the Garleans, I would love to see Wuk Lamat try to tell this poor man that he can be "friends" with the Garleans. Same time, I wouldn't let her...for his own sake.
I had already posted this elsewhere, but you mentioning nuance and using Garlemald as an example, made me feel a bit compelled to share my thoughts here as well mostly because of that man. I feel like characters like him show we had good writing all along, or at least writers who knew how to handle such topics.
Dawntrail really made FFXIV feel unrecognizable to me. It's a real shame, because I was pulled in by the story.
"Familiarity breeds contempt" rings true to me as it relates to Wuk. When I went across the bridge, I finally felt relief, but it was too short lived. MSQ left a lot to be desired. It was the most "meh" story to date for me. Hopefully Wuk isn't a big feature in the 7.xx post MSQ, I have spent way too much time with that character for my liking. I wouldn't appreciate Aymeric either if he was around as much as her.
Anyone else feel like the echo is strangely absent from this expac?
I was OK with Wuk Lamat unit she interrupted my fight in the Last Trial. After we honored her request not to interrupt her fight with Bakool Ja Ja.
it felt like most everyone was almost out of character throughout the MSQ, btu then I realized, it's simply because Wuk Lamat takes up so much room, feels like they give no space for other characters, even the Warrior of Light 💀 there were times we could have intervened, but simply stood by and did nothing, heck we traveled to the unverse's end and back, to see the WoL forced to take a back seat in situation we NEEDED to step up, infuriated me xD
The story was there but the way it was told just didn't feel great, we were hardly there. We get dropped into helping this random person without qualifications or serious knowledge about her country and people as a bodyguard and advisor but we spend the whole time not really protecting her from herself or being asked many questions. We're always over their shoulder just watching whats going on.
Part of it is just how Wuk Lamat operates as sunshine and rainbows but doesn't go into many things with a plan. Even at the end of the game, no plan. Wants to meet with the big bad enemy that threatens untold amount of people, no plan, just wants to talk them down without anything to offer. Its frustrating for me to watch.
Its saddens me because with the start of a new arc, the graphics update, and the actual plot there was a lot of potential but the character that was foisted on us and how it was told diminished its potential.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned how Wuk needed more direct opposition.
I feel a big part of why she isn't liked as much is because the flaws in her character never come back to bite her in a "two steps forward, one step back" way where she has to reflect and learn in a more natural way, it's all "we just keep doing the same thing until it works"
50 people died because she didn't bother to keep an eye on the losing candidate after she won.
I think they need to add some more combat back into the MSQ. The extreme rarity of ever actually fighting something during the hours of questing felt a lot worse this time around with the less suspenseful story compared to Shadowbringers and Endwalker.
it's like the opposite problem of WoW. Sometimes I'd rather kill 3 mobs or collect 3 whatsits than talk to another set of 3 villagers. You can't just have one type of quest for 30 hours and expect it to not get boring.
Speak with Wuk Lamat
Speak with Wuk Lamat again
Speak with Wuk Lamat yet again
It sucks that people are afraid to call out the English VA of Wuk Lamat. There's so little range and is definitely worthy of being called out, it was bad.
@@fredy2041 And that's exactly it. People are too afraid of bringing constructive criticisms for fear of being labeled the other. The very last trial when Wuk breaks out to join the party, that 'Spheeene' is so weak and has zero energy behind it.
You know exactly why we can't call out the poor voice acting. And it's not just Wuk Lamat, the vocal direction was shit for every character this expansion.
being honest I'm not afraid I tell the truth wuk lamat a mary sue who should have died in this expansion and never appeared again, sphene a garbage AI who deserved to die along with that stupidity of living memory copy ass of amaurot and emet selch, even in msq they weren't original, how pathetic,
@@fredy2041No. You’re not going to use that as a shield. It just makes you a bad person to try.
Rather calling out the VA, call out the voice direction, they would have directed her as to the way lines needed to be delivered.
I felt like our character was sidelined for wuk lamat a lot. There are so many fights where we’re just standing there with angry face while wuk lamat gets her ass handed to her, I didn’t like wuk lamat for the majority of the story but I hate her after the final zone. We’re clearly on a very strict timetable while spheen upgrades herself and wuk lamat is like "hey let’s go walk around and talk to these random people instead of stopping the literal end off all the reflections”. Granted there are a few people to chat with like erenville’s mom and krill’s parents but those could have been handled better. And then getting "saved" by wuk lamat during the fight with spheen, she couldn’t beat bakool ja ja 3 weeks ago and now she can break thru a rift in space and go toe to toe with essentially a god?
My biggest gripe with Wuk didn't fully solidify to me till post trolley with a particular scene with a plot point child. Her reaction to being given a chance to talk to them was so childish, so eager, like she's actually the child. She's so aloof in not a good way. I had similar issues with Stormblood with Lyse, the character development opportunity is all around them, and it's not seized, shown or used in way that would make their characters much better. Wuk has moments of being mature, but it's so sparse and rare it's insulting. I dislike character archetypes like this to begin with, but my mentioned scene felt so incredibly off, it finally clicked to me. What kind of leader would react to a child like that?
I think its understated but they say enough in the msq to suggest that Wuk is, in fact, a very large teenager rather than being an actual adult. Things like Koana being old enough to work in a market stall before being adopted, and him remembering seeing Wuk as a really small child
@@oleub23 ages are vague but given other info we have, Wuk Lamat is anywhere between 19 and 23, so not only is she in the "fresh out of highschool" phase, she also stated to have had a rather isolated upbringing - she's like a kid who finally gets to go to the park without adult supervision, so to speak.
Wuk Lamat is a sheltered kid. She grew up in the city with a silver spoon. She’s about 17-18 years old (called about the twins’ age). She’s also idealistic to a fault.
Huh, that sounds familiar doesn’t it?
Accept Lyse had real failures to overcome. Wuk just one shot everything infont of her... boring.
Lyse is a goddess compared to Wuk
Been playing XIV for years now, and this was a huge disappointment, very unfortunate
Of all the MSQs I've done, I don't think I'll be able to endure DT's again on a replay. The gameplay thought, it's top notch.
I know you mean the instanced content when you say gameplay is great, but I think it's worth being specific. All gameplay related to the msq was horrific. It was so passive an unmemorable compared to much of the previous expansions.
@@squash2544 Yes, correct. I meant instanced and endgame gameplay.
Fire the writers. They clearly dont have any idea what they are doing. In fact I think they havent even played/read the past story and just got cliffnotes on a whiteboard.
Wuk Lamat had to have her Realm Reborn to Shadowbringers journey over the course of a single patch.
Also, I think "Smile" is a great song...just utilized very poorly.
Its pretty obvious ishikawa didnt write this expansion, the tone shift was huge. Im not even talking about a exp with less stakes, just character motivations, fleshing story out, compelling villians, there was so much less of that. I never expected dt to be half as good as ew, it was a 10 year pay off, but it couldve been much more then what it was.
I got a feeling she's doing Meracydia or FF17 lol need her back!
Wait, I thought the Scions got disbanded in EW because they thought their order would be seen as a potential danger/disruption to the nations' rule/sovereignty post-conflict, since there were no bigger threats to fight off. It had nothing to do with people being scared about the world ending if they saw them together again, am I misremembering this?
No, you are correct. They were founded as a secret society to deal with subtle threats that Eorzea's divided city states could not face, and with the events of post-ARR, Heavensward, Stormblood and Endwalker ended up accidentally becoming The Unaccountable Avengers.
They made a show of "disbanding" because without a big threat to repel, people would likely catch onto and take issue with that.
They tried so hard but forgot they still need to sell merchs lol
@@haleynaga5671 That's probably it. Someone in marketing surely said: "Implement these characters at all costs. We need to push for higher plushy sales so the suits don't come for us!"
I agree with many of the points made here and in the comments but I feel like one piece that bugged me the most wasnt touched on.
Someone had a good time but it wasnt the Warrior of Light. They were too stuck having to be the silent mentor character, while the twins and Erenville kept having little side adventures and character moments off screen. The 'optional' dialogue you can get by speaking to them before selecting the main quest giver tells stories about them going all over the place exploring the markets, nearly falling into cenotes, getting told funny anticdotes, getting made to prep rally potsworn and so on. I felt so excited to get going to Xak Tural because it felt like maybe a second cast off would get the adventure properly started and. . . It does prove to be a kick off of sorts. So that worked.
The ingredients were there. Its actually all there, but somehow the cake deflated
Talk to Wuk Lamat. Talk to Wuk Lamat. Talk to Wuk Lamat. Talk to Wuk Lamat. Talk to Wuk Lamat. Talk to Wuk Lamat.
It was just too childish for me. It genuinely felt like they hired writers from Dora the Explorer. Wuk and her power of friendship can just walk up and end racism, decades long blood feuds, reform literal terrorists, cure blight from the land because she wants to be friends and really likes smiles. There's no realism, or push back. It felt like the writers did not understand that a story can have a cheerful tone and still be mature. It's so jarring compared to all the other expansions. And the English voice acting, not just Wuk Lamat either, a lot of the characters, was horrible. And do not get me started on that hatefully pitchy gospel song, I still cannot believe that song was greenlit with the vocals like that and just coming out of nowhere multiple times.
The entire time I felt like a child watching Dora the Explorer going "There, it's right behind you!". I'm pretty sure they were even taking pauses in dialog for me to yell at the TV screen like a toddler 🤣
Join me in excluding dawntrail entirely from my personal ffxiv headcannon
@@dash_o_pepper The way it fully felt like an episode of Blues Clues or something in that scene where the Mamool stops her and straight up tells her "From now on we will treat the other races with respect as equals", I actually had to take break, I needed rest. They literally had them tell her she cured racism, starvation and a decades long blood feud so deep that they sacrificed all those babies because she said she wanted to be friends and she would ask people in Sharlayan for some seeds they might give them later if she wins lol. WTF were the writers smoking?
@@alaskanparadise I would sign that petition, just erase DT, have Krile find a different trinket in the envelope and have the post MSQ lead to something totally different with no cat girls in sight.
@@alaskanparadise The good news is they resolved EVERYTHING in the expansion with the sole exception of Azem's key so we have no reason to be concerned about ANYTHING that happened anymore.
Gotta disagree on one thing, the English wuk lamat VA is what finally got me to switch over to JP voices
That video comparing Wuk EN and Wuk JP was so jarring.
FFXIV EN has done a good job so far, but damn Wuk Lamat, you could have done better.
I need a vacation from Wuk Lamat, preferably with Krile as the main focus going forward. Erenville is deadset on going on his own adventure, let him do that. Koana & Wuk have two nations to run, let them do that. Let us have our own adventure already, not Wuks.
The unfortunate thing is that because they did Krile's backstory here, we're probably not getting another attempt at her story arc. They COULD, but I don't think they will.
@@fredy2041 Can you please not? You're borderline harassing people at this point in the comment section and I'm to the point of inviting the idea of people to report you. We get it, you unconditionally love DT, congrats you're in the minority of people who think this. Doesn't give you the right to straight up harass others for disagreeing with you.
@@dash_o_pepper Poorly done at that, but it is out there now. If anything, we can just go on more adventures with her to help bandaid the harm that was done. Krile deserves better than all of the MSQ has done toward her, from her introduction in HW, the "voice of Venat" in EW, and now the 15mins of fame she got in DT. Sure, she may have played a major role in Eureka but that is side content that a lot of people will pass up unknowingly unfortunately.
@@fredy2041 weak b8 m8. also, calling other people trolls to deflect from your obvious trolling is a decent strat but it doesn't work when you do it 50 times in one comment section. rookie moves
There is one issue I still want Wuk to face. I want some actual backlash in Alexandria! I can't accept that the entire nation will just be ok with her to rule in her Nephew's name after she murdered their beloved Queen. The fact that they handwaved this issue so far is the worst example of Wuk not having to face any consequences for her actions. There simply can't be a peaceful and downright uneventful transition of power if this game still wants its story to be taken seriously.
My opinion of Dawntrail (at least the first half) is that it is an optional blue quest. That’s how I explained how I didn’t like it to my friends that liked it.
I skip most blue quests now after catching up, I’m not sure what changed me but I used to read everything (at least skim things I found boring) on the journey to the end of Shadowbringers. I unlocked every blue quest in order with the MSQ. I even put off Hildibrand for years because I wanted to pay attention but I was never feeling like starting it, the weapons ended up convincing me to skip it with the mindset that I’ll watch someone play it (I haven’t yet).
Anyway - my exception is always tribal quests. And yknow what Dawntrail felt like? A tribal quest. Some people like them, and that’s fine, but they are definitely not for me.
I'm convinced that the old writing team trained their replacements wrong as a joke.
I don't think I've seen anyone mention this, but in the post credits scene when Erenville talks about how he wants to keep exploring the world so that he can share those new memories with his mom when he meets up with her again in the Aethereal Sea... Sorry, my man. You mom doesn't exist anymore. Her memories got ripped out of her soul, and the essence of her soul itself got fed to someone else. And with the memory cores in Living Memory shut down, Cahciua is gone. Utterly gone.
@Maria_Erias that was certainly my thought when he said that as well. It made me wonder if they'd paid any attention at all to the ramifications of how horrifying the soul extraction thing is.
@@user-ox7ip6kw8c At the end of an hours long story about memories being stripped from souls and those souls being consumed as a resource, a character who saw the whole thing go down then claims he's going to see and talk to his dead mother in the afterlife, even though he deleted her memories himself. That's not a nitpick. It's a glaring plot hole.
@@user-ox7ip6kw8c The truth isn't cynicism, there's no hyperbole in what I said, and I'm not picking nits because every part of that was laid out blatantly in the story and the beats driven home again and again.
@@Keira_Blackstone Yeah, that whole process made the entire latter part of this expansion one of the most disturbing things in FFXIV to me up to this point. They are basically taking someone's eternal soul, ripping the part of it that's actual person out of the soul, then feeding both parts into a machine - one to turn that person into an NPC in the real-life MMO that is Living Memory, and one to feed the living with the "sanitized" soul stuff.
It's utterly horrifying. And that horror is sort of hinted at, but never actually fully addressed. Kind of like a lot of things in DT, actually...
@@Maria_Erias Seeing how fucked up this whole situation truly is as sentient beings/potential lives are being held hostage and recycled forever against their will I cant help but think that our true villains have not revealed themselves yet. The implications of this whole soul extraction process and Everkeep are so beyond disturbing, I cant help but think they hold back on the actual threat still, or they dropped the ball. It's very bizzare to say the least how open ended this whole mess is. Preservation might still exist in some shape or form. Shinra Company but ffxiv.
It's crazy how Bakool had the best character arc in DT.
Fire those junior writers, it feels like it was written by prescoolers......
A very fair and well articulated critique. Here's to better days and your continued coverage of FFXIV.
I think they felt like they had to keep the scions around so that they could use them for Trusts. It would have been much better to take a break from them, make Erenville a combatant, and use him, Wuk Lamat, and Krile for Trusts, maybe adding Estinien or Thancred or Urianger if necessary, since they were already hanging around anyway. The other adds felt artificial -- they had no real part int he story, they were there just there to meet a quota.