MSQ COMPLETE! - Dawntrail MSQ - Day 9 (Finale)
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- Опубликовано: 21 окт 2024
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Mike. We have had final dungeon into final trial for 5 xpacs now XD
fake news, been playing since heavensward idk what you're talking about
@@MagiaErebea028
50 was a special case, two 8 players dungeons.
60 dungeon into thordan
70 dungeon into shynriu
80 dungeon into Hades
90 dungeon into Meteion
He was also dumbfounded that there wasn't a dungeon right away in DT. Like there hasnt been x.1, x3, x5, x7, x9 and one at max for every damn expansion we've had 🤣
We've also gotten teases of the raid series in the cutscenes following the x.0 MSQ conclusion, so seeing the Arcadion fire up should have been fully expected.
@@MrKanooe Hell, even then, 50 has been reworked into... a 50 dungeon into Ultima Weapon lol (though I guess it's 2 dungeons because of castrum so it's a little bit different still)
Our girl Krile got robbed 😢
Baby boi stole her thunder quite literally in the gate opening scene when she had to give her earring to him for literally no reason.
Feels like whenever she had a chance to develop as a character or to explore her story, somebody else just talked over her.
I also really wanted more Krile, she should've been the main character in the second half of the story.
I honestly wanted more Wuk, by that I mean I wanted more development with her, not more scenes. Wuk was /almost/ a good character. Almost.
As far as the scions go, I wish they weren't even here. (not including Krile) They had 0 development or reason to be here, and because they've been development as characters in the past, having them tag along just makes Wuk's minimal development all the more obvious. If they weren't around, you wouldn't have been constantly reminded of better characters lol
@@JenovaGirzzI think people are missing the scions because not enough fun new characters we’re introduced. The dev team doesn’t realize that hiring VA would be more fun, diverse and cheaper if they used more throw away characters for plot development. We really didnt need the scions but they had to sell the expansion which is kind of disingenuous.
and the first half
@@JenovaGirzz Wuk can't develop. She's already perfect. The only way they could have salvaged this is if she became the villain.
@@JenovaGirzzI liked Wuk for a long time, but after the final trial i just couldn't handle it any longer. I went from "she can maybe be fixed in post msq similar to how Lyse was in some way" but I honestly just don't want to see her ever again. She can show up and say hi but immediately leave. I'm exhausted of her and she's already now suddenly as strong if not stronger than us for no reason whatsoever.
"I cannot miss you if you never go away"
that makes no sense, wuk lamat is the mc, she is not going away, you just want to miss her because you dont like her, everyone would love to have the scions 24/7 with the warrior of light, guess why?
@@aeoyndjuric1679 "guess why?" because they went away so we can miss them? How about you stop putting words into other peoples mouths to get annoyed about?
@rickmel09 minfilia stopped a wave of light!
Wuk Lamat is terrible just a wannabe Naruto and somehow worse.
@@aeoyndjuric1679twilight sparkle was also the mc but she was only in half the episodes each season
Things is I would be happy if the scions never really showed up at all. If Erenville, Krile and other new characters took up 60% of Wuk's scenes I would be perfectly happy. They absolutely set her up to fail but not because she replaces the scions, it's because she replaced *everyone* including new characters/Krile/Erenville. We barely meet the scions in ARR and I would be happy knowing they're busy doing their own thing somewhere else instead of standing around doing nothing. In Heavensward we got to quest with the Fortemp boys, Ysayle, Estinien, Alphie, Aymeric, etc. Other scions were no where to be found and nobody missed them because we were immersed in the new story. This is what I expected from DT.
tbh I think the succession contest should have divided our attention a little more evenly to the other 3 contestants, particularly Koana.
Wuk Lamat's character arc pretty much ended halfway as well, we really should have branched out at that point
@@antarath517 honestly i think we should have been hired by the king directly, a strong impartial person much like himself in the past who can judge his potential heir, with us getting that conversation we get later straight away, laying out none of them are ready and not forcing us to specifically back a certain person, just naturally pushing us towards the good people who do the right thing over the course of the first half. it could have even potentially given us a few scenes with Zaarol ja earlier on
@@kpxtreame 100% agree with the idea, we could have gotten some more Zoraal Ja background from it. Also, we would have been able to see the full consequences of Koana's ideals.
To be fair though, no one missed the scions back in HW because they were barely characters
Overall I liked Dawntrail, but you hit the nail on the head. I went into it expecting a much different pace to the bombastic expansiona that were Shadowbringers and Endwalker. However, I really think we should have recruited an entirely new party of characters (keeping Krile and Erenville though) during our travels with Wuk Lamat during the Rite of Succession. It would have given her and us a chance to get to know her people as we traveled the lands with them and given us a much needed break from Wuk Lamat from time to time as you could have subbed in some Hanu Hanu or Mamool Ja characters in from time to time. Our WoL and Krile could gave played the role of the seasoned adventuerer and wise Sharlayan scholar much the way Ketenramm and Galuf did for Galool Ja Ja. This would have been better than shuffling the Scions offscreen and would have given more screen time to finally flesh out Krile to boot.
As an adopted child, Krile’s storyline made me ugly cry. I understood the whole awkward situation because I could see that exactly happening. I have no desire to find my bio parents because I don’t want to spoil my headcannon of who they are/were. I was given the most amazing gift-parents who loved me and could take care of me when my bio mom couldn’t.
Thank you for your comment. I was literally coming to say something very similar. As an adopted child, this storyline hits differently I think. And I personally had to take a day break before and after that section because of the emotional damage.
@@katherinejanke7837 i wish the people who say krile did nothing all expansion would engage with this comment in the way they engage with all the negative ones. krile’s storyline this expansion was beautiful and a nice nod to FF5 as well (when they first mentioned meteors and cenotes i was convinced the story was going a different direction). krile really shined this expansion in a lot of story moments and it feels like she got a lot of closure that was kinda left lingering after eureka.
@@LittleListy21 what is there to say? Both are true. She did nothing all expansion and then got a nice moment at the end. We don’t hate what she got we just wish it was more
@@LittleListy21 Nice moment at the end or not, Krile was a bystander for most of the story and took little initiative on her own. She did little more than Alphinaud and Alisaie.
@rickmel09 present YES, and do nothing also YES. Why people did not understand that we did not hate her, we love her and want dev to put more effort into her role
Bruh, that thumbnail is incredible.
You very much echoed my own feelings. I don't _hate_ Wuk Lamat, I actually grew to like her by the end of the Feats arc, but i did also let out an audible "oh fuck off" during the last trial because I was just so fed up with the way she's forced to the front and centre of everything.
I also agree on the pre vanguard, post vanguard split. People keep telling me that I hate world building if i hate the first half of of the MSQ but I loved all the world building they did around Alexandria. Post vanguard was so much better because it was actually _interesting_ . That's all there is to it.
I do think they did Krile really dirty though. They constantly push her story back with "I'll let you later" and then give her 5mins at level 99 and that's basically it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one in regards to the final boss. When the cutscene started and she came out, I said in chat "couldn't she just stay out of this one?"
@Snakester789 it's interesting to see different perspectives. I mostly enjoyed the first half's world building and absolutely despise everything to do with Alexandria. The game's insistence that I should be happy palling around with a bunch of soul cannibals is completely bonkers to me. It's like being in Elmore, only everyone knows exactly what meol is, and they're still happily consuming it to this day. And I'm supposed to just ignore that and enjoy the new hoverbike I bought from them? What?
I think one of the biggest issues with the pacing can be traced back the EW patch schedule.
EW used all five patches on the Zero/Void story, so unlike every other expansion to date, DT didn't have the EW x.4/5 patches to do all the preliminary setup. The writers had to waste a lot of the leveling MSQ on super basic things like character and concept introductions, that in any other expansion would have already been done beforehand. That lead to an overly drawn out and simplified first arc, and a hurried final one. I feel like if they had had those two patches at the end of EW, the succession arc could have been finished with the level 93 dungeon and trial, leaving more time to focus on everything else.
Alternatively they could have gone full into the idea that the expansion was just going to be about Tural. With it and giving us more complex conflict and slowly building stakes in the beginning.
Most expansions have very little combat in the first two quest lines before the first dungeon and focus instead on world building. We knew a little about two people from Ishgard and the culture before HW, we knew nothing about Alamigo proper or Yangxia except by a few characters from there, 0 about Garlemald or the Source. But in each of these situations were dropped into high stakes conflict from the get go.
So the issue isn’t really combat lack but that the stakes are so low. That Zoraal Ja is a warmonger that is probably bad and Bakuul JaJa is an dick are the only real stakes in the first half and they are weak because you don’t know the former well and the latter obviously can’t win such a trial against even Koana who is pretty OK.
I don’t think we need world ending stakes in the first half but we needed more tension and conflict earlier. I liked the world building but lot of the more engaging things are shoved into quest lines that start with the blue Aether current quests.
It is a shame because most people like Preach will skip them as optional content. The story of how the landsgaurd deal with failing recruits was a lot of fun and culturally interesting.
I think he would have really enjoyed the payoff to the farm lady’s issue as it deals with the loss of parents you can’t remember, how legacies can be left behind in such a society, and how people remember the parts of their life where a the memory of a loved one has been surgically removed.
A better writing and pacing could have brought these blue quests as part of the area MSQ to give it more depth than “learn one thing about the culture then move on.” Make it seem more like a world than a series of check boxes.
Maybe require you resolve some problems or participate in some things before the elector would consider you worthy to even undertake the feat. Throw in some actual tension with Koana and Wuk Lamat. Have the divisions between supporters of different claimants be more important and prominent. Take the time to develop the harvest festival as one people had let decline over the years. Throw in the threat of actual war with Mamook. Have the X’brall have to face up to the fact that they have been letting their neighbors languish below the forest. Have Galool Ja Ja acknowledge his neglect. Deal more thoroughly with the Chriwurgur faction. Actually have Xak Tural be part of the contest despite being a walled off zone. Explore the conflict between old and new ways there. Let the world building breathe.
Krile could see some development in her confidence as a battle mage. Alisae could start to temper and find her feet as an older sister or mentor same as WOL. Alphy can be excused from the story and travel Trual on his own.
For extra combat drama they could have you fighting as Galool JAJA or his associates in the past battles you learn about. One as Galool JaJa himself after returning from your victory against Vall Girl. Have the first confrontation with Bakool Ja Ja after the Kidnapping be an actual duty/dungeon. There are only 3 dungeons that need to shoved in if you cut off the Alexandria stuff. The 2 other trials would be harder to place. Though I would say one could definitely be fighting the Shade of Galool Ja Ja. You could even theoretically leave the unleashing of Vall girl to be the end trial. The 3rd one would be the hardest because without power scaling shinannegans it doesn’t make sense that it would be the Zoraal or Bakuul.
Zoraal Ja would be the post coronation threat in that he causes division after loosing and gathers his own forces to coup his siblings. This could be a plan long in the making as a contingency. Maybe evendrawing upon much of Mamook and the imperialistic Giants to do so since not all of them believe in the promise of seeds. Bakuul Ja Ja could join in. The golden city could be expressly off limits to the main character by decree of Galool JaJa but also no time because you have to deal with the civil war.
After the big end battle, Zoraal Ja fs off and the post patch could get into him getting the key to the golden city and disappearing. You could even include the death of the former Dawn Servant in the last patch. While the patches leading up to that are about healing the country. And maybe it is just Zoraal Ja coming to challenge his father alone and we show up at the end right as he uses his feral soul to cut him down. He could then issue his challenge to Wuk and Koana to come see his kingdom and offer a chance to pledge fealty to him as the superior ruler.
Then we could have a whole expansion that was Alexandria the juicy content and commentary on Wuk Lamar’s relentless optimism as well as Koana’s technological obsession. And how that Alexandria is a reflection of the worst unrestrained version of both of them. Maybe you go to the bubble but the forces for war aren’t quite ready to invade Tural which allows Koana and Wuk Lamat to take turns learning about the issues there before the invasion kicks off. Maybe it happens while Wuk and Koana are back home discussing and you and Erinville are off searching for his mother. Since you are only allowed a very limited highly supervised visit to Solution 9. He would not have met a person he knew by then.
Ultimately I think they had too much for one expansion and instead of just committing to making Tural be enough and then Alexandria having its own expansion later. They wanted to get their inter dimensional travel muffin setup so squeezed it all into one.
The "we have to aim at a younger audience" excuse fall flat IMO. 25-35 and single are the best cash cow for games companies cause they have expendable income. In addition the MMO has not been a young mans game for 15 years. I think I have meet like 2 ppl under 18 in farm groups and the like in the last 3 years. Trying to aim the story more towards 14 year old's will alienate a portion of the older crowd for sure. FFXIV is a shonen anime enough at times with it's "power of friendship". It does not need more.
It’s aimed at young women. And it always has been.
My biggest issue with this expansion is that it relies too much on you liking Wuk Lamat. If you do like her, the story is just okay... basic, juvenile, but OK. If you don't, it feels like following around Naruto or Ash Ketchum as they fumble around in filler episodes. Mike you put it wonderfully... she doesn't go away... she doesn't let others have opinions... everything revolves around her. I wish they had developed other characters more, let other character use their expansive knowledge to help teach, learn, not macguffin problem solve, so the audience's whole reaction to the the story isn't based on just one pillar. Ive never had such a visceral reaction to someone than when i did when she shows up at your hotel room, i recall screaming out "please go the F*** away." I can't understand why they wrote themselves into a corner like this. Forcing me to like one character while sidelining the ones I do like, and most importantly TRUST feels distasteful. And honestly for much of this expansion my only thought was "why am I here? Why are any of us here?" I didn't feel like my character had purpose... and the scions were just there to pad the duty roles for dungeons, or fix writing mistakes... "oh no... we found a problem! . Ontop of that... all that fatigue... and all the time it took to get to the interesting 2nd half (more like third)... just made me unable to appreciate the 2nd bit as much as I would of liked. I was checked out cause of how disconnected I felt from said story.
I will forever stand by my stance that Krile got robbed. Cool lore and all for her here, but let my girl shine, shes been around since Heavensward. A single section in the final zone Square, that's all you could give us!?
Yeah, it's sucks the game is over and will never get another patch for her to shine.
Until Dawntrail, I always considered Krile to be a slightly more useful Minfilia because she could occasionally heal NPCs.
@@DoctorPlato Oh sorry, let me not express what I perceive as a failing of the current scenario based on hypothetical futures. Of course they could give her more in the future, but looking back at the billing she was given in the marketing for this expansion, she is very underutilized. They gave her this wonderful, bombastic spot in the main trailer, gave her the cover on Famitsu, Yoshi-p made many comments about how he owed Krile her due before hand. I had expectations set and not delivered, sorry I guess?
I very much have left feedback via the ingame feedback section encouraging MORE Krile and Erenville, as I have seen others do as well, and will keep an eye on potential future patch and expansion content to see if they include them more, but I am disappointed with the present.
i’m a little confused how you can go thru the entire msq and say that krile only got “a single section in the final zone” krile has plenty of moments of development in the msq and her learning and coming to terms with her family hits kinda hard after doing all of eureka with her and knowing her relationship with galuf, idk, just curious how much more involved you wanted her?
I always liked Krile, so I got hype about the idea of a new world focusing on the mysteries of this character thats always been the caretaker of the Scions. She's never had a chance to shine, and she's been helping this entire time. And... This expansion made me angry about how they handled Krile. I think in total Krile has maybe 10 minutes of screen time and most of it is her getting a line or 2 and then other people talking over her. She wasn't even allowed to open the gate! Then her meeting her parents had the super awkward padding to get them icecream. Gah!
I think Sphene's plan was supposed to obviously not make sense. I thought of it as a commentary on AI and an AI leader of a society, that is compelled to do something that has a noble goal, but the execution of which is terrible.
The thought experiment with the "Paperclip imperative" - i think it's called - is what it reminded me of: if you give an AI the goal of producing paperclips, it will destroy the entire planet, along with people and just reduce them down to prime materials for paperclips, eventually doing the same with the entire universe, because it just has the goal of producing paperclips. So to me, AI Sphene has the goal of protecting her citizens, with no other caveats or failsafes to the plan, which is ultimately what compells her to kill all of existence in pursuit of that goal.
I also find it a bit tragic. Imbued with the original Sphene's memories, who I believe would have been against the invasion, but unable to fight against her programming, eventually losing to it completely and being erased.
It's not even a commentary on AI. but on the fact that you will continue to do something wrong just because you want to preserve the current situation as long as you can.
Which is literally what we do in the real world in politics and economy. You don't have enough resources ? take it forcefully from somewhere else .
@rickmel09 It's not a metaphor though. They are literally invading to take resources.
That could make sense, but everyone is treating Sphene like she's a real person an not an AI.
You could also see it as the flaw of AI is the programmer's bias
the amount of "tours" i have had to go on this expansion is egregious. I am starting to wonder if they have forgottten how to introduce a new location without a tour. every single place you go to, tour. the first three zones were one big tour. i'm sick of tours. I don't even go on them when i'm a tourist, i just want to get stuck in, wander around, figure things out.
this Xpac certainly has elements that feel like they belong in a flowchart. it's paint by numbers in some cases and it really shows. it's a shame because places like alexandria, solution 9, etc i would really love to have cared more about but not when i'm being led around on a leash because they don't have a clever way to introduce these locations that also drives the plot.
The tours feel like how Japanese tours are done for Japanese tourists (the vast majority of Japanese travel to other parts of Japan and not frequently outside of Japan though some do). The trials are essentially like Japanese stamp tours, the retelling of culture, history, food, etc are very similar to how many tours are conducted in Japan, etc.
I mean, they did say this is the summer vacation chapter...
I think they should have committed to either getting rid of the Scions or keeping them. If they kept them, then they need to keep them in the focus at least somewhat. If they really wanted to get rid of them and start a brand new chapter, they should have had them stay dead in Ultima Thule. Let each of them have their badass heroic moment that ends with them nobly sacrificing their lives. I don't _want_ them to be gone, but at least that way there would be a sense of closure and dramatic weight to their absence. Instead they brought them back just so we could lose them in a much more senseless way as they just fade slowly into the background.
Wuk Lamat's biggest problem was that they put her in the role of the protagonist but wrote her like a foil. She spends the whole expansion not chasing her own dreams, but just trying to thwart others. Why does she need to win the competition to become Dawnservant? Because it _must not_ be Zoruul Ja. Why does she go to the Golden City? Because Sphene _must not_ be allowed to succeed in her plan. But she has no real vision of her own for the future, just a vague notion of maintaining the peaceful status quo of her people. Just opposing the bad things might be enough for a side character, but Wuk Lamat is supposed to be the main character driving the whole story forward, yet she lacks a destination to drive it towards.
I disagree with Preach that she was doomed from the start, I think there was a way to write this story in a way that would work better and make her a better character, but they most definitely didn't write the story that way.
I think the MSQ splits in two this way.
First part: you want a queen that would do anything for her people, and no matter what.
Second part: you really do not want a queen that would do ANYTHING for her people, no matter WHAT.
Yeah, that makes sense to me, and may be why they pushed Wuk Lamat forward so much even in the back half. But it was overdone - she still could have been around but we could do some quests with Krile or Erenville instead of her all the time.
@@lijakaca I understand, but I thought that the point was to get away from the Scions for a while. I was disappointed that they were all there, especially since there seemed to be no reason for it most of them time, and it made some of the storytelling less plausible.
The side quests I've done so far are doing a good job of world-building, so it does feel like a new start, as it was intended. I think the presence of all the scions indicates that they were not confident enough to let them go yet.
We have about a third (?) of the story still to go in the patches. I hope we will not see the scions so much in them.
I don't dislike Wuk Lamat, but I think back to FFX which had a somewhat similar premise of accompanying someone else on their big journey, and that did it without being "The Yuna Show". There managed to be good group of characters in that game (and Wakka) without Yuna being front and centre every scene.
Also agree that the scions should either have had main roles, or been kept completely out (except Krile).
"(and Wakka)" XDD
To be fair, people had similar criticisms of Tidus back in the day. He fit the bill for a fish out of water protagonist and his more cheery disposition was needed to highlight how depressing the modern world of Spira had become. But people found him grating and whiney (before we even get into VA issues).
Now I can't say if Wuk will be looked back on as fondly as Tidus is these days, but the longer FFXIV goes on for the smaller this focus on Wuk will become compared to all the other MSQ's people will have gone through. Time will tell.
I've seen people comparing our WoL to Tidus a lot. The thing with Tidus is that he's a brand new character from the beginning, he doesn't have any preconceived notion unlike our WoL. It's easier to write a "side"-main character story when it's a blank slate, he's not known to be a god-slaying adventurer before he starts his journey, merely a naive famous blitzball player.
I've also seen people comparing our character with Auron which is fair and also a more realistic comparison but imo that also falls off because Auron actually gives meaningful advice to Yuna and have knowledge of Spira to help guide her, he also doesn't just focus his time on Yuna but also connects with Tidus along the way, compared to our WoL who most of the time feels like we're just standing around and just giving Wuk Lamat the OK for her actions. It's funny when people say we're taking the mentor role this time but we barely see our character actually mentoring Wuk Lamat, at best we're just there for moral support. Her actual mentor is her papa that she talks about A LOT over and over again.
" good group of characters in that game (and Wakka)"
*[Filthy Fucking Al Behd Detected]*
Yuna is a good character though. Wuk Lamat is Zidane but done in the worst way possible “you don’t need a reason to help someone” but without the charm.
While I give them credit for trying something different with Wuk Lamat, FFXIVs strengths have always been on fleshing out it's ensemble cast. Even when supporting Lyse in SB, you had the Doman crew there as well taking uo a big part od the story. Not everything hinged on one character.
Even in shounen anime, the protagonist is usually surrounded by a cast of characters people tend to like a lot more than the MC, who many times have their own big arcs.
Wuk, unfortuantely, just wasn't strong enough of a character to carry the entire expac on her own and they didn't flesh out the other cast enough to balance that. Especially with how much other stuff they tried to cram in and rushed through.
The game kinda needed to be two expacs.
Alphi and Alisae join us to Tural to learn about how this different continent handles their political struggles.
Alphi: "Anyways let me collect some firewood"
Alisaie: "I'm not doing anything unless I get to fuck shit up!"
No, they wanted to go to help wuk lamat and afterwards do whatever else they felt like it, their main goal was wuk lamat, so gathering firewood at that moment was more important than running off somewhere and they were learning a lot at the same time that they were helping her out...
@@aeoyndjuric1679 yes, but that is a LOT of head canon that is not actually shown to be the case. It doesnt take much to show that. There should have been moments with Alphi and Alisae discussing the the things they've learned and how they might implement that to the Garlean society. That was their mission while helping Wuk. But whatever little they did say about the economics or political structures was left to a very surface level: "this might be cool thing to learn in our endeavours towards Garlemald".
You're not wrong ofcourse, but it's one aspect that shows the writing just not be on par with earlier expansions. Simple things were given a bit more, to not leave them hanging.
I can give you many examples, but this is just one of them.
peak mmo story
@@Revonlieke seriously the amount of people making shit up that WAS NOT STATED IN THE GAME to justify shitty writing is infuriating
I'm jealous of Estinien. He got the adventure we really wanted.
Also they dropped a pretty big hint of what is coming in the form of Sphene's Tiara being shown. Some NPCs already commented during the MSQ that it has very special powers.
I'll say it now and I'll say it again: We needed Koana to join us in Shaaloani and Solution 9 and onward. His entire character is that of an innovator trying to help his people towards a brighter future. Sphene is the best possible foil to that: willing to erase people's memories just to save them from sorrow, unwilling to ever let anyone die even if it means sacrificing others for it. And they should have benched all the other Scions except for Krile until the second trial, and just have us summon them with the crystal. They were literally just cameos. You put all the Scions together and Wuk Lamat had more lines than all of them combined still.
I fully agree with splitting the story when rating it, and I do the same for Stormblood. Ala Mhigo side: 6/10, Fordola being the main reason it's still a 6 and not lower, she saved that half from fairly weak writing (until Urianger literally shows up with a magic wand to make her go away because the writers had no clue how to resolve that storyline). Far East side: 9/10 for the base expac, 10/10 after 4.3. Every character is written logically and every character is a charming, eccentric character with proper flaws. Gosetsu bears more shame and regret than 99% of the cast of this game, yet he is one of the most enjoyable characters to be around, even if he is wrong sometimes. I'll never forget the introduction to the Dotharl, where initially he mocks the idea of reincarnation, only to be told off by Sadu. And then, realizing his offense, he reflects on it and realizes it's a comforting tradition, much like his duties as a samurai gave him comfort when he needed it most. It's clear there's several cooks in the kitchen again this expansion and I know that, at least the Steppe part of the MSQ was largely Ishikawa's work. Dawntrail has clear disparities in the writing again and yet again there's sides of the story that are simply written significantly better. Living Memory was all about processing your loss and mourning. It simply doesn't compare to "go get all the gym badges to become the new ruler!"
I really wanted more MSQ time with Koana as well, to balance out the Dawnservant concept that we spent so much time building to.
@@dianak6537 Right? Like everything was perfectly in place for that. But nah, you can't have your post-MSQ content until you've finished your Wuk Lamat
"The plan was doomed from Day 1"
Sums up the Dawntrail 1.0 MSQ
I agree, the MSQ has ups/downs. The saddest thing about it is the potential. The potential to give the 2nd half additional time to breathe for things like Krile's parents or exploring the people in the Living Memory who didn't want to be turned off, or were dealing with trauma as an adult who manifested as a kid. I hope they take the feedback seriously, especially your videos as they're so well structured to give constructive feedback.
90% meh 8% REFERENCES TO 9! 2% "That was fun"
I couldn't stand Wuk Lamat towards the end. "Oh cool I'm gonna do a play with Otis for the Endless children!" Then Wuk Lamat gets into the scene saying she wants to do the play too and I was like "NOOOOOOOOOO get lost leave me alone!"
The "I am killed" screenshot did make for some funny memes at least.
I like her and i'm glad she was there
I really wanted that to be a solo duty so I could beat the crap out of Wuk Lamat myself and show her why the WoL is the real protagonist of the story.
@@NekoBatyx Yep, and while being there we could've had the fake spells from FFIX in that show since that entire thing was a FFIX reference.
The extremely obvious path of what's next is the key used to merge the worlds. It has the Azem symbol on it and we get it at the end. The whole expasion even basically ends focused on it and we don't ever get an explanation for it.
You're the first person to mention Azem's symbol on the key in days' worth of comments I've seen. I noticed it immediately and started making a whole big deal over it, but the story never addresses it and is leaving it for future content it seems. I'm really surprised more people don't mention it though. It's such a big thing. Makes sense though. The key to travel between reflections bears the TRAVELER'S mark? Can't say that's too surprising. Will be interesting to see how that all plays out.
@@Gofr5 because most people probably weren't looking at it, 2 of the main times they showed it i had my face buried in my hands face palming, 1st time how the fk did he get it from the dawn servants vault, no everyone wasnt at the party get out of town, and 2nd when we let it sit on the damn ground for 87 years while sphene paced around and monologued and then picked it up and used it. it was disgusting
@@zeening LoL fair enough.
The song of the coronation and subtitles remember me to “Let the river run” from “Working Girl Movie”. It was absolutely out of context in FFXIV at least for me
In one of your former videos, you said: "If you want to get rid of the scions, get rid of them. But dont do it like in dawntrail so far."
I seriously hope that this is not their intent. Somehow i completely failed to build the same connection with Wuki like i did with the other scions. I just couldnt take her seriously. The level of naivety might be adorable for younger people, but when problems have to be resolved by happy little conveniences (yes, hanu hanu village i am looking at you) like going to party which accidentally fixes the problem...that is just bad. Also the constant running gar with the sea sickness....yes, it might give you a chuckle the first three times but then its really enough.
What really makes final fantasy special is the feeling that the WoL is part of a team. Part of a competent team of hightly intelligent and competent characters which have been formed by long, rich history. You CARE about them. Seeing them being pushed away by a character that i cant take seriously....*sigh*...it probably still wouldnt be a reason to quit because i really like raiding in ff14. But i can see the moment coming where i just start skipping cutscenes. I was really close to this moment shortly before the ceremony halfway through.
And i was mad beyond words when Wuki forced herself into the final moments of sphene. She couldnt even stay away there. She had to be in every. single. scene. When Zenos bashed into the meteon fight, i just thought fuck yes. You are right. You are my enemy, but you are also my friend. True words. I felt shivers so hard that moment.
After the Sphene trial? I just closed my eyes and thought oh god why. Just go away.
Also, on your point of "Does it make sense for Estinien to just chill here when he's done all this stuff..." yes, yes it does. It absolutely does.
Estinien has had his country riding on him since he was a young child, since he trained to become a dragoon, then was chosen to inherit Nidhogg's eye. He's been bearing that legacy, that hatred, that cross on him throughout Heavensward and even Stormblood, Shadowbringers AND Endwalker. There is a part of Nidhogg lodged in him forever, and his immense power and training has also rendered him very much inept in mundane matters. He is straight up a forever soldier that misses the war soon as he gets out of it. The whole point of Endwalker, and when Hydaelyn looks upon him and speaks of the love she feels radiating from him now - it's of a wounded man finally healing, accepting his lot and learning to be more than just the perfect soldier that he is.
That is why seeing him just wandering around Tural, having a good time, relaxing until he inevitably gets called back DOES make sense and is GREAT for the character. I want to see more of this Estinien, of the universe-saving veteran that bears Nidhogg's bones as his spear and Iceheart as his armor, I want him to just finally rest, to see him grow as a person beyond just being a walking WMD.
I think the point he was making was that estinien and the scions featuring so heavily in the cgi trailer felt very disingenuous. They hang around like set decoration and the story for the most part wouldn't be any different without them, which just makes their presence feel like crap. I'd rather that the scions weren't there at all, rather than standing in the background doing nothing.
It makes sense but at the same time, i wouldnt say he did anything of value. You could get the same effect if he came back in a couple years real time, having already visited Meracidia, drawn by his connection to dragons, with some new tricks up his sleeve and knowledge to impart, and then give him a leading part in a story that suits him instead of basically being a side dude whos around when we need a dps. Its the whole "abscence makes the heart grow fonder" thing
I dont believe that SHB and EW were too 'mature'. I mean its a Teen rated game and its okay to address some difficult narratives like death, suicide, nihilism and politics. I am hoping Yoshida sees the reception to 7.0 and course corrects in the post launch patches with a more serious narrative and less focus on Wuk entirely.
Agreed, also If Preach could get over his abhorrence of anime, I bet he will love Xenoblade Chronicles because of all the themes and the story but knowing him he would quit 2 on the spot lmao.
@@Plasmacat1I remember him trying some anime games and just not liking it
@@Plasmacat1 While XC2 is definitely an obstacle, I think XC1 should be a relatively safe recommendation. XC3 as well, but there is a consensus that it should be played last for a few reasons. I'd actually lean on FFXIV "borrowing" a lot of the voice-actors from XC1 as an incentive, especially with Tataru's VA showing up early in XC1.
And while not normally the case, I'd actually recommend playing through Torna before XC2 for him (taking advantage of the fact it's a prequel). The questions raised from that might be enough to make it through to the latter sections of XC2 where the tone turns darker.
And while it's probably tough from a logistical standpoint (no readily available modern ports), Xenogears and Xenosaga are other options as well. The anime influences are on their sleeve, but it's *classic* anime which is known for bit a fair bit darker in tone.
I don't really get how a story about the connections between people and how they go awry (as when expectations others place on you crush you, with Zoraal Ja, or when grief makes you feel like you can never move on, as with Living Memory) is immature.
Large portions of this narrative would be lost on basically anyone teenager or younger (hell, they are lost on most adults from what I can see), like how the connections between people can be turned into a power all their own (as with the first two zones...) or how Zoraal Ja doesn't appreciate the value of merely having a good father (or the legacy that father left, absent tangible things like a throne) in the same way that the residents of Alexandria don't appreciate the value of souls except as resources to be used. Zoraal Ja's attack on S9 was the logical extension of confusing the value of people with the value of the resources they provide.
I agree with a lot of Preach's takes in this series, even though I enjoyed the first part of the story a lot more than he did. But this one take about it being too "childlike" just seems very silly to me. It sounds like a take he had from ignoring subtle stuff early on, compounded with him just not liking a perfectly fine song (because of its genre...I guess? I dunno, I don't see how the screamo from last expansion is mature by comparison...but I got over my screamo phase when I was 12), and then just refusing to re-evaluate when he got to the more "mature" stuff later.
I just don't consider the death of your loved ones to be a lighter or "less mature" subject than despair writ large.
@@GoldenMan-Gamingit’s not the theme, it’s the way it’s delivered to the audience, it’s done in a very Sunday morning cartoon vibe as if it were a “lesson of the day” kind of thing. I think that’s his point and one that I agree with. You can talk about all these themes without crossing this point that Dawntrail did, the music with vocals didn’t helped either because it does have a very Disney vibe, that train scene and the coronation are prime examples of killing the vibes.
Before this expansion i had 100% confidence in SE's ability to write/produce a good quality expansion. Now im actually worried for what comes next. There are so many problems in DT and im not even talking about the tonedeaf MSQ writing. The audio quality for example. Alphi's VA said there were directing issues like they weren't given context to voice lines (this is what leads to awkward moments where characters sound flat or "yell in lowercase"). Some scions sounded like they phoned in their lines, and Thancred had a weird nose breathing thing going on in several scenes. Wuk's VA has an amazing reel where she does emotional and yelling scenes just fine and yet in several DT scenes she sounded flat or "off", so that's obviously a problem with directing and not the VA. I have no idea how this passed QA but whoever is in charge of running the English VA department needs to go before they do more harm. This is not the quality i have come to expect from this game, this is Blizzard levels of bad. I love this game but the fact that Yoshi has not even acknowledged or addressed any of the very obvious issues with DT does not fill me with hope for the future.
worst part was y'shtola sounding like shes under water, seriously amateur
Bro that reel is in male voice. Do you really believe that a male VA can voice a woman just because he's good at voicing men? I don't even care about the VA that much, because the character is trash anyway, but I really feel like I'm taking crazy pills here.
Yell in lowercase is because to yell you have to use your chest voice, and the VA obviously can't do that. Why did they hire a person who can't yell properly to voice a character who constantly yells or speaks loudly? Idk, whoever did the hiring is deaf apparently, which is rather concerning.
@@xviii5780 oh get off it Estenian has yelled in lower case since his VA’s introduction. And many scions do so throughout the game as well. Wuk Lamat has lines that are properly yelling in Dawn Trail. It’s entirely a direction and an equipment used for the take issue and nothing to do with the actress.
I fundamentally disagree with your reading of Estinien, because while his time in DT was sparse, it's still consistent with his character as he's been written in the past. Estinien has gotten involved when it matters, he stepped in in Stormblood to disable the Garlean's war machines, he partnered up with Gaius in Garlemald in Shadowbringers because the Empire was advancing in the WoL's absence, and he stepped up to defend Tuliyollal in DT.
But outside of that, he's a child soldier who has spent his entire life with one purpose: Kill every fucking Dragon I see, especially Nidhogg, and after Heavensward, he is directionless, he has no purpose, his entire life goal is done, and because he's been training as a dragoon since he was a child, he doesn't know anything else. He talks in side stories about enjoying different food, and so he travels to the far east to try their food, he mentions in Shaaloani that you should try the fried sabotender. He's a wanderer, he's a foodie, he's always there when you need him, but he travels his own path JUST LIKE THE WARRIOR OF LIGHT
Did I want more from him than Wild Westinien? Yes. Does his appearance in DT break from his already established character? Not in the slightest. Aside from the Warrior of Light, Estinien embodies what Venat and the seat of Azem stood for, he explores, he travels the world, he helps people where he's needed, not for the reward of doing so, but because he enjoys it, and he knows it's the right thing to do.
I ugly cried during the goodbye between Erenville and Cahcuia. I hit that point of the MSQ on July 4; the 15th anniversary of my mother's death was July 20.
I had no sympathy for Sphene or Zoraal Ja, either, but I did find them compelling as antagonists. An enemy doesn't have to be sympathetic, though.
Im not sure why Preach says that they got an extra dungeon for the msq. We got the same amount of dungeons we had in 6.0. Theres always a max level dungeon and trial for the msq and theres also a level x9 dungeon and trial.
Ye know, for being so technologically advanced, they did not think to program their Queen AI with the added objective to look for a more effective power source for the Endless. As it keeps getting pointed out, the plan was never gonna work out forever, so they should've at least tried to improve on it and you never hear about any attempts for that
Yeah. All Sphene really says is "I have tried" but there's no exploration of that
@@cheffdonty I mean it's not like Dawntrail is over, even in Stormblood someone like Yotsuyu was underused, and then they gave us the incredible stretch of story up to the trial against her. The crown hint at the end of the MSQ shows that it isn't over just yet with Sphene's story.
I wonder why they couldn't stop making new living Alexandrians. Obviously no system can grow forever, so it's only natural that at one point they would be forced to abandon their corporeal bodies altogether and live in the stasis for as long as the universe is turning. They could make short voyages to other shards, get some souls, then let the population regenerate before harvesting it once more. After all, Sphene was programmed to care about Alexandrians, not people in general.
It just occurred to me that Otis appearing was such a mindbreak for Sphene, because she knew that there were two Otises. Her programming would make her consider the one she saved real. But that means that the robo one is not real. But he definitely felt real, real enough to grieve for him not having a regulator. That logic bomb was probably what started the need to purge Sphene memories.
WELLLLLLL UNFORTUNATELY AT THE TIME THE AUTOMATON OTIS DIED WE WERE UNDER THE EXPLICIT IMPRESSION THAT HE WOULD NOT BE IN THE MEMORY BANKS OF THE ENDLESS SINCE HE DIED BEFORE THEY COMPLETED THE SYSTEM!!!!
Instead of a f'n stupid plot hole they could have made this an increased plot development. But that's what happens when you get a shitty writing team.
Those saying the Scions no longer exist must not have finished Endwalker or have forgot Alphinaud’s final letter.
“At least, that is what the story will be”.
"Sphene, listen to me," Wuk Lamat said, calmly.
The replies to this comment will be glorious.
The English VA in the final trial was extremely poor. Go check out the Japanese version, vastly superior.
That she did
She couldn't get the emotion at all, throughout the entire story. Very bland and empty. Her being angry was simply growls with "wuk lamat" voice overtop of it. Every time she said a name in anger that was the case. I don't know. I hope the team understands why she wasn't as big of a hit.
Her VA was as bad or worse than ARR Alphinaud.
That was the main reason why I changed to JP. Was weird, since I'm so used to the cast in English, but man Erenville in JP sounds soooo good, and nothing wrong with the English VA, but JP is just better.
A problem with the "There are no Scions anymore, they broke up!" Line of thinking people keep spouting is that even in the same cutscene they established them "Seperating", it was established it was only officially on paper. They're still very much a cohesive group, they're just all off working on different projects like they were doing in ARR before shit really hit the fan. The moment Eorzea has a problem that requires the Scions of the Seventh Dawn publically, a few linkpearl calls and they're all back in The Rising Stones ASAP.
There was a new lead writer for this expansion. He was in charge of writing the bard quest, which alot of people do not like. I have no proof but it feels like there was a massive rewrite halfway through the story and they were trying to re-piece together the plot points. another thing is the msq takes roughly 12 hours more to go through in autotext advance then most of the other expansions. it is like preach previously mentioned rushed yet slow. And rewrites are the only reason i can think of why that happened
Either this or lack of supervision by more talented or experienced writers.
@@wojnr IMO, they're trying to treat writers the same way they do developers, and writers are ABSOLUTELY NOT interchangeable.
I get that ishikawa can't be the writer for it all and she might have needed time off for life events etc..
But the drop in coherence is massive. Couldn't she just supervise this and say 'this is not working?
A complete and thorough failure of storytelling. You can see the story they were *trying* to go for, and all of its haunting themes and what would have been clever and poignant messages, but damn if they didn't absolutely fail to execute or deliver on any of it. A great story told in the worst possible way, to the point it takes something you could have loved and makes you hate it.
Left out a bit of detail about Krile. Her parents one, also left the artifact on the source, which would prevent Sphene/Preservation from using interdimensional fusion on the 9th/Alexandria. And two, most importantly, they left Krile b/c she was going to be experimented on for her Echo if she stayed and they couldn't protect her.
she got experimented on anyways lol
@@joeyfromanimalcrossing at least it delayed it a while?
Damn, I was about to say... she got experimented on anyway lol
It's strange seeing so many people have such a different experience with the last zone than I did. I found it boring. And not "oh, this is dull" boring, but "keep yawning and eyes won't stay open" boring. And that was after a good night's rest. I needed to take multiple breaks from playing this zone just so I literally wouldn't fall asleep and that's not an exaggeration.
I've played for a decade and I've seen some highs and lows with this game, but this zone is the single worst experience I've ever had playing this game. The ideas were good, the execution was numbing. And the music probably had a lot to do with my drowsiness. Awful, awful ending to the MSQ.
26:16 I'm glad you showed this clip. I didn't notice it at first but a few seconds before this part, she made a mistake here when she mentions learning about the history of the Yok Huy in Kozama'uka instead of Urqopacha.
It's made even more egregious since this was a voiced cutscene. I wonder if they'll decide keep this error moving forward or just correct it later. This definitely needed more time to be rechecked either by the writers or the editors since there was no way the VA could've known about it.
If they're going to have to make people learn all of these new Turali terminologies the least they could do is to get them right the first time (granted this was in English, I'm not sure if the other languages share the same error in the script).
I disagree. You say "Dawntrail was trying to do too much, that is why it's divisive".
But we had Shadowbringers. Where in 40 hours of MSQ authors had time to setup a WHOLE NEW WORLD, dozen of characters (many of which still beloved to this day. And they did not need tens of hours to make you feel that), 4-5 story arcs (in almost every zone we had somewhat contained story) and a best villain this game ever had.
And here is Dawntrail, that in 40 hours can't even make Wuk Lamat likable and has 2 story arcs, both of which are rushed and poorly written (yes, even second half).
It is so bizzare for quality of MSQ to drop so much, and i say it as a constant player since Heavennsward.
I strongly disagree. Shadowbringers does not exist in a vacuum, and I am replaying through it on an alt right now. What makes the world of the First compelling is that it is unsettlingly familiar to Eorzea, a direct existing parallel that requires you already knowing the base game and being invested. You know these lands, but you don't in this version - and you're propelled through the story by the mystery of what is going on, who's the exarch, what are the Ascians really plotting, what's going on with the Scions and even flashes to Estinien and Gaius soloing the Empire on their way to Garlemald. All of this is completely divorced from the First.
On its own, Shadowbringers is no different than Dawntrail in terms of pacing. Same two intro zones, same expository introduction, same display of the local cultures that won't really make much appearance in the main story, but will feature in side content. Do we really need to eat the rotten kobold food or do chores for them? Do we really need to do silly chores to childish pixies that slow you down just because? Do we really need to BEG FEO UL IN TEXT MULTIPLE TIMES just to progress the story? Does all of this really need to happen in the way of the story you actually care about?
But since you've got a ton of investment riding in on Shadowbringers, first time through you don't mind any of this at all. Might not even notice it. But on repeat playthroughs, it is very noticeable, and especially with the criticism Dawntrail's first half is receiving. Shadowbringers story straight up STOPS for the majority of Il Mheg and is only saved by Urianger giving some lore updates and Ryne struggling with her role as Minfilia. Taken on its own, I don't think there's a zone or concept in the entire game that I dislike more than Il Mheg.
@@thesunthrone no it doesn't need that much context. They could've made like a 2h introduction to the world, just so you know wtf a primal is, and a new player would easily enjoy the story. I skipped the og cristal tower quests completely and like half of arr and haven't once felt like I miss something during shb.
You need to play StB patches, and it's always nice if you're already familiarised with the main cast, but it's not that crucial at all. Hell, they even teach you how to use aetherites at the start of ShB, because SE clearly expected a lot of players who bought a story skip. They never do that in other expansions.
DT is a snoozefest for like the first 96 levels. World building my ass, you can do that in a smart way (like ShB) instead of just dumping exposition (ARR and DT) that let's be real, either never pays off, or it does but it's just not worth the time spent and could be explained much more concisely. ShB had it's own issues (Raktika mostly and the trolley kinda), but it was nothing compared to DT in terms of filler. Still far from being as bad as ARR though xdd
I dunno. Both Stormblood and Endwalker were big dips in story. We weren’t allowed to say it a year ago because of all the hype but Endwalker was a huge comedown from Shadowbringers and the western part of Stormblood is brutal and still the worst part of the game. I agree this isn’t good but it’s not like it’s a perfect 10/10 story and this is a 6.
@@jaybee4288 Stormblood last part and post-patches were imo better than the 2 previous ones. Endwalker for me was a very good conclusion and from start to finish was interesting. Dawntrail Idk what the fuck it was, it was trying to be something, it had the potential to be something, but all we got was a big disappointing Wuk.
Krille and Erenville parts were such huge dissappoinments.
Krille should have played major part in the Dawntrail and we should have been presetn and be there for her for many more scenes. The scenes we got, mainly with her parents were a joke. There should have full on conversation, maybe even join us for a time and show us and Krille their world. Would care much more for those quests like restart a fountain or do a show, if it was for Krille to have a good final momemts with her partents. And then at the end, Krille should be crying entire time while trying to delete her parents and they should have been standing next to her durinh this giving her strenght, not in a basement of muzeum.
Erenville part was also dissappoinment but for different reason. Dude lost his mother and she lost 30 years of her life and chance to ever see him again, but her biggest regreats were what? Not being able to explore more?? What about not being able to see a person who Erenville will become, or seeing your grandchildren??! I hatet her as a mother, Erenville deserved more, not just here but in entire expension.
I don't think that Dawntrail was *intentionally* aimed at a younger audience, since what zoomer is going to sit through hundreds of hours of text and cutscenes?
I think it's more likely that 1) they tried to lighten the tone post Endwalker and completely misjudged it, or 2) the new writers are a lot more familiar with shounen anime than they are novels and cinema.
It is absolutely the latter and they should be shipped off to those studios never to touch this story again. Like holy fucking shit I can't believe Wuk didn't say "BELIEVE IT!" after every sentence out of her mouth. She was literally a self insert or some other cringe bullshit. The few good moments where she seemed to be developing and had decent moments were far overshadowed by being such an annoying waste of development. The fact that Raha, the person that knows the most about dimensional travel and worlds the most out of anyone alive got yeeted for the final trial and Dumbfuck Lamat breaks in for no reason is proof of that.
I enjoyed the expac overall but Yoshi desperately needs to fire these writers and give them a reference or good word to some shitty anime studio. The fact this got through the storyboard process is actually baffling to me, especially that character.
I also think the requirements and structure of the MSQ held them back too. In a condensed setting they can pump out pretty good storylines. They have written Sorrows of Werylt which is probably one of Preach's favorite side stories, Ivalice, various beast tribe quests (mostly comedic i.e. Namazu, Dwarves, Pixies), and Pandaemonium, though they aren't highly praised compared to Ishikawa when she was the lead writer but generally they were acceptable or people liked those storylines.
one of the writers (Tomohiro Kawasaki) is credited for a **nurse romance visual novel**
in fact it's their only other credit on IMDB besides ffxiv
Quick fix to the story: have Wuk Lamat get injured in fight with Zoraal Ja to protect either Gulol Ja, or us or whoever honestly, it would show growth into a leader ready to sacrifice themselves for their people. This would set the scene for Koana to accompany us to deal with Sphene, giving a nice paralel, Vow of Resolve vs King of Resolve, Vow of Reason vs Queen of Reason.
Also his tech background fits much better for the task.
If the new writers continue to press shounen anime angle it's going to get bad.
That shit is often juvenile junk food. No wonder Wuk and other characters spend so much time constantly blatantly yelling her goals and motivations. That's bad writing, it saves in production costs, but that is a horrible driving force behind a writing style.
I agree with Dawntrail being targeted more for the younger audience. The whole vibe of the first half of the expansion does feel a lot like the shounen mangas and animes whose main audiences are teens.
Except shonen manga does not shy away from heavier topics.
Even the anime/manga wuklamat is often compared to the protagonist of... Naruto the often considered bottom of the barrel of shonen has some heavy shit. In the iirc 3rd episode you're introduced to Sasuke, a genocide survivor driven by (as we learn later misguided) vengeance. The main character is hated by most of his town over circumstances beyond his control. First arc or naruto alone has deeper message dawntrail wishes it had. Pain arc with morality of big guns to keep peace. Kakashi's survivor guilt, Asuma's death and effectively setting up world to be a better place for those who come after.
Obito/Madara and forcibly putting people under illusion where they're happy (that one is kinda close to dawntrail last bit).
@@The_Yukki We did tackle heavier topics in dawntrail. We have Bakool Ja Ja's story and his tribe's practice of eugenics. I think Bakool Ja Ja's backstory of being one of the sole survivors of his tribes thousands to tens of thousands of infanticides is just as heavy of a topic as Sasuke's survival from his family's genocide.
I'm sorry but no one could see the philosophy in the 2nd half I think it's for a younger audience.
@@The_Yukki people compare her to Naruto but then forget that Haku was the like the first arc and shoved the truth of Naruto's immaturity in his face. Dawntrail felt like i was being talked down to.
even younger than shounen.
I wonder if the writers are totally aware that Wap Lamont🤨would be resented and played this angle on purpose. Much the way Dave Filoni told the voice actress of Ahsoka that she would be hated initially by fans for her role in The Clone Wars. For the most part, the writers have been on the ball in FFXIV. Alphi had to learn a hard lesson with the Crystal Braves, Thancred had his lesson. It seems they often raise characters up so that horrible shit can happen to them. Once brought low, they can go through the change necessary to a) give them a satisfying character arc b) make fans of the IP who are not necessarily fans of the character root for their rise.
One can only hope.
I believe the end shows screen Sphene's crown alerting preservation of her shuting down.
I will die on this hill. As soon as Sphene Bailed out - that should've been it.
We could still go into Living Memory - but there would be no way to shut it down during this expansion.
Sphene + Living memory + Krile's Parents + Eren MILF + Otis - should've been recurring during the next expansion, and at the end of that it's when we shut it down.
This would've allowed us to establish more connection to all of these characters that make up for the last zone.
- More answers and resolution for Krile's parents.
- Krile's decision to let go would've had more impact, since she would have interacted with them more.
- Otis seeing his "queen" descend down this path, would've made for a greater story arc, where he (instead of Wuk) has a more direct intervention in bringing her back from the brink.
- Erenville is the one that I suppose due to his nature, feels like there wasn't much to gain here. If anything, We could've shut down his mom first, and then get booted from living memory by Sphene/Security, giving it a lore reason why we didn't complete the shut down immediatelly.
- Sphere would've / Should've transitioned into a full villain, with the focus of the next expansion being us stopping her and pushing her back from other reflections ( hint : Giving us opportunity to have the First + 13 back, and finally use Interdimensional fusion to restore both )
They rushed way too much. I still liked the story, I have nothing against wuk lamat apart from what mike said ( too much screen time ). I am more "angry" at the "speak with 0/3 people" that was overused with a lack of solo duties or combat focused quests.
I would have split it into two expansions and Alexandria would have to wait until after dawn trail. An entire new continent and royal drama is more than enough for a single expansion.
Weird choice to have not one, not two, but three different segments on horticultural practices in the MSQ
12:24 omg frfr- Ok, I had an overall good time with dawntrail...but there are SOOOOOOO many sections "This is what we eat...these are our crops and how we tend them...flowers are nice"......meanwhile me in the corner..."I know you need something killed, please! anything! Let me fight....something!!"
The ice cream scene during Krile's part was the most awful, horrible scene and it's PAINFUL to watch. I hate it. It feels like they're on their way to flanderizing G'raha to a glutton joke, and it feels very out of character to him, instead of him helping her talk about her life, like the childhood friend he is supposed to be to her. Which brings me to my main reason to why I didn't like any of the MSQ at all: the character writing is all wrong. The scions a LOT of times don't act in character, and the new characters are not well developed, and it's hard to care about them without some mental gymnastics to justify their actions. Again, Krile is supposed to be very close friends to G'raha...and yet she only treats him as a work colleague. In fact, all of the Scions treat eachother that way. They all react the same and talk the same way about everything. If you don't read the name of who's talking, you most likely wouldn't guess who it is.
I don't believe we should get rid of the Scions like so many people say, and I still wish to see them more and spend time with them...but the writers need to be able to do that competently! Or at least, if they really want to focus on all the new characters, don't bring the Scions, but also give me a good reason why they can't be here, something that feels natural. The way they kept dangling them in front of us so they immediately ran away and split up was frustrating. The good ideas were there, and there were so many things mentioned and situations I could see one of them being part of it, having some nice experience to add to it, yet they were either not-reacting, saying something very generic, or asking about Wuk Lamat.
I also felt like the story was told to a younger audience: a lot of telling and not showing, over-explaining things, the writer constantly deciding how you should feel about everything, and the solutions to every problem are very simple, juvenile and shallow. It is SO weird to have that shift, especially because this is an MMO where not only the majority of the audience IS older, but the younger ones will have to go through older content to get this far anyway. And they're either not getting to Dawntrail if they didn't enjoy the past content enough...or they will enjoy it enough to notice the difference in Dawntrail and most likely be unhappy about it. YoshiP even decided to not add a fresh starting point straight to Dawntrail, so that doesn't even match the idea of trying to reach for a new audience.
Gra'ha lived 100 years, saw people be born, live and die, is treated as a grandfather by most of crystarium's inhabitants and is highly respected as a leader throughout norvrandt (with the exception of Eulmore's denizens)
Yet in all his experience and wisdom the best he could do is act like a clown to break the ice? You're right, they're totally flanderizing him. It feels like the gondola scene and the ice cream scene were written by different people.
My favorite part of the last zone had to be the Krile's parents. Just purely out of my love for Krile.
Side note: I don't know why Preach was surprised that there was a lv100 dungeon prior to the last trial.
She deserved more screen time and better, same with Erenville.
Cause Mike hasn't ever picked up on how MSQ/xpac content is structured
I agree wholeheartedly with you conclusions and feel the same way. One thing that personally also stuck out to me is the moment in the final fight where Wuk Lamat suddenly comes back and "steals the show".
It reminded me of the end of Cataclysm where after taking Deathwing down we see Thrall do it instead.
I think this felt similarly awful - we finally went serious and were in the spotlight and then it's taken away (the voice acting/direction in that moment is also pretty bad, and since this scene sticks out so much and is near the end it causes a lot of people to think the voice acting overall sucked when that was not the case)
Felt great actually
my problem with it was that the exact same happened at the end of endwalker, but in a totally unneccesary way
zenos crashes through the space-time continuum to save us at the final moment
wuk lamat crashes in when we are already fighting with no signs of needing help at all
The focus of the story is on her so it makes perfect sense for her to be involved. I'd say itd be bad story telling NOT to have her there in the final fight. We the WoL are not the main character of DT regardless how you feel about it
@@MidnightEkaki The issue is, that I'm not playing as Wuk Lamat, but the WoL. A character whose relevant participation in the story is being talked at and combat. This is the final fight of the expansion. Taking that moment away from the WoL is kind of taking it away from the player in favour of an NPC that is already in every cutsceen ever and now even steals your spotlight in the final trial.
In my opinion, there are very few bigger crimes in storytelling in games, than favoring the NPC over your player, no matter the importance. At the end of the day, they are not the ones you have to satisfy.
I think if Wuk Lamat stayed in Tuliyollal after her and Koana became Dawnservant, and either Koana came with us for the 2nd half, OR if they just focused on Krile and Erenville, it would have felt better. I didn't hate Wul Lamat, but I was already starting to feel exhaustion from her by the end of the first arc, and I would have really enjoyed if the story shifted back towards older characters again. Considering there was essentially no character development of Wuk Lamat in the later zones, it felt like there wasn't even a grand payoff. The only reason it ever felt important she was there at all was because of Gulool Ja. Also, it felt a bit cheap to have her attempt the Zenos style entrance in the last fight, especially considering I would have preferred almost anyone else break through that barrier by that point. Even if something is popular in an expansion, let it breathe for a bit before breaking it out again.
All in all, the story was fine. It's probably the least I've enjoyed the MSQ since the Ala Mhigo arc of Stormblood. While it wasn't bad enough to make me want to quit or anything, it did take me several days to actually get going in the story because I was pretty ambivalent to what was happening until around the 95 dungeon.
The thumbnail is as cursed as what happens in the ending sections of the story. I hope post patch makes its magic and they pull a Stormblood, which funny enough is having the same complaints and praises from the 4.0 back then.
Thank you for your journal style thoughts! I really enjoyed them and appreciate the discussion without falling into the extremes you usually find online.
4.2 is the single worst story patch this game has ever done, so I don't think you should wish that.
I'd say while ShB and endwalker do tackle existential topics that can be troubling for younger audiences, I still dont think they're particularly dark compared to what out there.
I'd even say similar topics are litterally littered all over Young Adult fiction. People read the giver and 1984 in like middle school I think they can handle a little bit of cosmic dread.
I hope SE never brings wuk Lamat back. I have had enough of her overtaking the story from every other character. WoL could have been written out of DT and the story wouldn't change.
Wuk Lamat should have been left behind when we hit Shaaloani. For God's sake, Shaaloani is Koana's homeland but the writers completely forgot that to make way for Wuk Lamat's BRACELET FETCH QUEST.
The Scions, Erenville, Estinien, and Koana all got done dirty so someone could insert their fursona OC!
FF14 current writing team:
OK, we've heard your feedback and we've been doing some thinking on how to improve the MSQ going forward:
1) Wuk Lamat needs to be louder, angrier and have access to a time machine
2) When Wuk Lamat is not on screen, all the other characters should be asking "Where's Wuk Lamat?
3) ....
everyone else:
great great, just leave your ideas on the floor on the way out.
Seriously though, she was the Poochie of FF14 and certainly hope this is the last we see of them, they really don't deserve any more screen time let alone another arc to development them more. The direction they chose with this character, the pacing and some of the writing decisions were baffling at the best of times and do agree that this was both rushed and dragged out. My major gripe about this expansions is if you continue to do your character tier list, I doubt many characters would have even moved.
I agree 100% with what you said at the end about trying to do too much, resulting in it feeling both too slow and too rushed. They needed to take more time with a lot of these characters and story arcs in order to make me actually care about them.
I had an entirely different reaction to Living Memory. I was super frustrated and impatient for most of it because they set up the "world ending soon" thing before your little tour 'round the zone. I was on my side of the screen the whole time going "wtf are we doing?! go get her!". If they had just had us mosey around the zone first and then set Sphene up to go boom, I think I would have felt quite differently.
I totally agree with your explanation of how Wuk was handled. I liked her for the first 50% and felt people who were whining about her were just... whining. She was a little too extraverted, naiive, and "outgoing anime protagonist" for me to love her, but it made sense for her and when she gets her prize, it feels like we can move on and it is wrapped up satisfyingly. We have another head-of-state friend, doomed to waste away behind closed doors but help out if something comes up in the city. Then she came back almost immediately, and I was like.... why is it her and not Koana or our fussy bun-bun or Krile starring next? Then the final trial happened, and it was like 🙃wow, she really does need to be in every important scene, and it left me with a bitter taste towards her overall. It is unfortunate for her character that her sheer heavy presence dooms her, since she could have been loved in smaller doses.
I mean, her appearance in the final scene was reminiscent of Gaia popping in at the end of E8 to save Ryne from herself. Definitely feel like Wuk Lamat in the second half was initially trying to hold Zoraal Ja accountable for killing their father, but somewhere along the way, the gay happened.
I have personal reasons for actively disliking the character, but aside from those, it is a serious problem in the writing that both the major villains of the expansion are specifically her villains. Both of them genuinely only see us as Wuk Lamat's hired muscle, all their focus is on her, and their narratives are specifically meant to contrast with hers. At least in Stormblood we had Zenos, who was very much our villain. Can you imagine what Stormblood would have been like if he was obsessed with Lyse instead?
@@Keira_Blackstone I mean, our story concluded with Endwalker for the most part, so...
@sovest555 yeah it was definitely an E8 moment but E8 felt more earned. Both the girls were oracles of their respective elements, essentially equivalent. One a sundered convocation member and one powered up to be a primal. It made sense that Gaia could jump in and have an advantage we didn't against light, bc she was representative of darkness.
Wuk... is good with an axe and got practice. But it was weird to me that she was able to bust out of the wall and jump into a fight against a giant superpowerful robot thing. Also, they already did it in Eden so it felt like it was reusing the same "surprise" less effectively.
For me she's probably the first time I actively didn't want a character to appear on screen in ffxiv. She's not even that fun to hate, she's just exhausting.
Krile got robbed. The writers did Wuk Lamat dirty. And, they should have done more with Erenville’s story with his mother.
i felt like erenvilles emotional resolution was kinda rough, like i think its lazy to be like hey guys project your emotions onto this scene cuz death sucks and we dont have the skills to write it realistically. Also when erenville says that he is frustrated with the way his mother is treating him she basically hardcore shuts down any of his grieving immediately and is like stfu im gunna talk about myself for a while and then after that none of the scions or wuk lamat who are supposed to be the most caring and compassionate people in the universe even check on him they literally turn their back on him slap their hands together and go OK THATS THE LAST OF THOSE PESKY GHOSTS NOW WE GET TO FIGHT THE BOSS WEEEEHOOOO. i wrote a long ass post about how i thought the whole sequence was problematic and rushed on reddit and i got downvoted to hell so i guess im wrong but i think when people look back at this after some time has passed it wont be remembered very strongly.
I'm gonna quote the post that is directly below yours, from one "jhlundy."
"Erenville got done dirty... but, they absolutely nailed the interactions of a self-absorbed parent knowing they're dying. It was rough and unsatisfying because the writers knew exactly how a parent like her behaves in this scenario."
I liked the final zone (after despising everything that came before), but in retrospect that may be just because it was finally something that approached mediocrity, instead of downright dog crap. I think that Lundy is in the right here - this absolutely comes off as Cahciua being a self-absorbed narcissist - and if the game had leaned into that, his story could have been great. But because Erenville and Krile both got shafted on screen time and because the writers likely didn't *know* that Cahciua is a bad person, it comes off as unfulfilling.
@@TheWickedWizardOfOz1 my problem is that I really don't think they intentionally made her narcissistic as shit cuz the music and framing of the whole scene is really trying for this triumphant touching moment. The writing in the final zone is just as ass and rushed as the rest of the expansion it just has wow factor to cover the shortcomings
Krille should have had the "Alfino" treatment from HW and backed up by Sphene's arc. The would have been amazing.
The notion of starting to appeal to a younger audience in your fifth(!) chronological expansion is just insane. Even if your player base hasn't physically aged 10 years by Dawntrail, it has definitely been conditioned to enjoy your existing tone of voice.
Yeah that was the final nail in the coffin on DT
'speen lissun to me'
I didn't think I'd live to see the day that Preach praised a particular section of the MSQ as his favorite because it was nothing but memberberries for an entirely different game.
Isn't it amazing writing how the rite of succession contestants know nothing about their own people are gonna be nation leaders next week from the story's start?
Sounds like irl tbh, I feel there’s better threads to pull from for critique. I seen a lot of people trying to apply logic that can also destroy any of the previous stories and expansions. Dawntrail’s story is an undercooked meal that didn’t knew what it wanted to be and lacks “the sauce” of previous ones.
The expansion story as always uses cinematic time. This story takes place over the course of like several months. Shb lasted years in universe. Endwalker is really the only one that was meant to be a few weeks or so given the urgency of the situation. But in general the time it takes for you to beat the story is not how long the story actually took in universe.
I think my issue is that the bad bits (Wuk Lamar’s constant presence) was enough to sour my enjoyment of the good bits. And much like how a particular song can forever be tied to an experience like a first kiss, Wuk Lamat is probably forever tied to a feeling of disappointment for me
I loved the entirety of Living Memory and I have to say the Krile part hit me way harder than I was expecting. I didn't feel particularly rushed by it since the story itself was asking us to move quickly (and her parents themselves wanted to be released as soon as they could). Cahciua was the one that came for me the hardest.
Overall, I stand by my verdict: the torch has been passed to a new group of writers and they show a lot of promise. It wasn't perfect, but I didn't expect perfect. What I wanted was to feel like the new writers had the ability to connect with me in a way that addressed complex and nuanced emotion. They did that several times, most especially in Living Memory, and I've got a great deal of optimism about the future.
edit: also I bet we've got a *ton* of Krile story upcoming. She's going to be vital to our journeys for a good while.
edit 2: I've come to the conclusion over the years that it's impossible to properly rate a FFXIV expansion at least until the raid is out because we've learned very well that the raid story can sometimes be a huge component to the experience. RPGSite tends to wait until after all the content is out, and I think that's wise.
edit 3: too many additions but I completely agree that Smile is a musical theater finale song. And that can be great! It just wasn't one I want to hear again.
Erenville got done dirty... but, they absolutely nailed the interactions of a self-absorbed parent knowing they're dying. It was rough and unsatisfying because the writers knew exactly how a parent like her behaves in this scenario.
If I am honest I do not think that the argument of needing to develop too many characters too quickly holds all that much water. They did similar things in shadowbringers with the chais, the people of the crystarium, the dwarfs, the people of slitherborough and so on and so forth. And they pulled it off. I really think that the undivided focus on wuk lamat as a protagonist with next to no breaks was what put people off, it is especially offputting for people that did not resonate with her at all. I personally thought she was an ok character but by the end I started skipping her monologue cutscenes because they became so predictable that it was no fun anymore.
Hard-Agree with most of your points. I love Wuk Lamat and the focus on her never bothered me - but on a second watch, my mind was blown how many times they send away the scions at every given moment 😂
You actually missed Sphene's tiara foreshadowing after the credits D:
IMO there's a reason why her tiara (where her memory reside) looks like an ascian mask.
Here's my theory:
My guess is that Sphene is an ascian that died in Alexandria while she was on her ascian mission (i.e like Emet was doing in Garlemald) and before she had time to reincarnate thanks to the Echo, her memories were picked and saved by her people who didn't know she was an ascian, this way only the "queen who wants to save her people" was stored in her regulator.
Now that she is dead she will reincarnate but there are multiple scenarios:
- She reincarnates as Sphene the queen, doesn't understand why and we shall investigate and discover that she is an ascian
- She reincarnates as an ascian (probably Pashtarot) and she either still wants to preserve her people, making her an even powerful enemy, or we befriend her like we did with some ascians in Elpis, this way we can understand what ascians really are, how the reflects and the aetherial sea work, because from what we know, the aetherial sea only exists on the source.
The story can go everywhere from here, which is pretty cool tbh
Dunno about the dungeon but in the Ottis region there were 3 children jumping rope and one of them challenges the other to do 1000
I was looking all over for something like that and didn't see it! Are they in some out of the way corner or something or am I just blind?
They are somewhere around the 4 lamps you have to light up, but they vanish after the quest along with everything else
@@LarkyLuna one of the ether current quests also made a direct reference to I Want to be Your Cannery
They did give us a literal key to future expansions, we have the key they used the cross into the reflection in our hands, so we can now have a world hopping story arc.
It is baffling to me that anyone is attempting salvage something positive from this train wreck after having experienced the entire thing. As I've said on other videos, it isn't the concepts behind Dawntrail that are the problem, it is the embarrassingly amateur execution. There are decent ideas to be found among the wreckage of this dumpster fire, this is true. The problem is not a single one of their attempted stories managed to stick the landing; or make it halfway down the track without tripping and smashing the lackluster contents of their skulls all over the floor. Everything is rushed, everything is crammed together like a hastily written recap episode with none of the years and years of world building and cooking that all the various plot threads in previous expansions created so that when they finally wrapped up in Endwalker it made sense and was satisfying. And any writer worth their salt would have seen this problem long before this script was finalized. This was not them accidentally tripping over a landmine that they couldn't see coming. This is gross incompetence, plain and simple.
Alexandria, while certainly more interesting than the contest with more salvageable tidbits to find, was not a good addition to the plot. The very existence of a hyper advanced civilization that could travel between shards that existed for hundreds of years retroactively makes the Ascians look like complete idiots. They had no idea this civilization existed? Really? And it wouldn't have massively benefited their efforts to screw with the various shards if they could just open up a doorway and send entire armies through the portal instead of having to play long cons to try and trick people into Machiavellian shenanigans? Solution 9 is a plot hole and a gaping one at that.
As for all the heart felt moments that people keep bringing up as shining rays of sunshine. These are unimpressive too because, like everything else in this MSQ, these are just rehashes of things we already got much better versions of. Krile and Ereville's plot is just another Urianger reuniting with Moenbryda's parents moment. The final dungeon is just the Dead Ends again. Sphene is a less competently written Meteion. Every single thread this plot tries to weave is taken, sometimes whole cloth, from the previous work of far more talented writers.
As for the Scions - I'm probably in the massive minority here but I'm of the opinion that most if not all of them should have been dead by the end of Endwalker. Several of them should have died half a dozen times over by this point - Yshtola being the worst offender - and there are multiple instances where their deaths would have made far more compelling stories. Unfortunately, since the gotcha at the end of ARR that tricked us into thinking there were actually stakes in this story, not a single main character that had any real screen time has suffered the consequences of their actions. How much more compelling of a villain would Zenos have been if he'd killed one of the Scions in your body? That speech he gives about hounding you to the end of the earth as he takes apart everything you love piece by piece would have hit so much harder with Graha or Allisae lying Teledji'd on the snow beside you. Unfortunately, the writers have made it clear that there will never be meaningful stakes to anyone important. FF14 has gone the way of Marvel comics and effectively immortalized the main cast via popularity. Endwalker was the chance to wipe the slate clean, have the entire squad sacrifice themselves heroically so you could save the universe, and STAY DEAD so it actually had some sort of meaning. This would have been the perfect peiod on the end of a long journey and paved the way for a new set of traveling companions to take up the torch.
Preach might not like giving things fixed ratings but I have no issues with that. There is nothing in Dawntrail that grabbed my attention, at all. I've been playing this game since the beta of 1.0. I've been here through the worst and the best of what this game has had to offer. I loved ARR, again being in the minority, because I could tell that the world building vegetables it was forcing us to eat might not have been a tasty high-octane adventure at the time but it was laying a good foundation for the banquets that could potentially come in the future. Dawntrail is a shit sandwich that promises nothing but a foul after taste and a fuck load of dishes that need to be scoured with holy fire to even potentially make what comes next palatable.
FF tries to do sympathy as much as WoW tries to do redemption. Sometimes you need a bad guy to just be a bad guy.
Starting a new story arc focusing on a new character I can agree is a mistake. They kept Krile, left all other scions out and started to build a new cast of characters. It would give them a larger option of characters to keep or get rid of based on what sticks with the players. Introducing 1 character that is there the whole time, it is always going to be divisive because people are going to like the 1 character or dislike the 1 character.
This expansion has similar issues with EW which tries to do to much in a single expansion and things feel rushed, left out, or happen off screen. They need to chill with trying push so much plot into one expansion.
Honestly, Dawntrail just made me sad. I was really excited for the expansion, took time off to play, and was very interested in what it would set up. But I walked away feeling disappointed and let down. My favorite characters, the Scions, felt like cardboard cut-outs and entirely pointless to the story (what was with the misleading marketing? Why bring them at all if you're going to do nothing with them?) The character balance was way off, with some characters getting far too much screentime at the expense of others (looking at you, poor Krile and Erenville). And the writing was all over the place, with pacing issues and a meandering plot that just didn't work for me.
For the first time ever during my playthrough of a major MSQ, I started watching videos and walking off to do other things because I got so bored.
I had a think and while I can come up with several points in both Shadowbringers and Endwalker that I'd be interested in watching a streamer react to, for example, I couldn't think of a single one in Dawntrail. I really hope they can course correct in the patches and bring this MSQ up to snuff, because as it is, it felt like I was playing a different game, and it was honestly depressing.
Well put! You put to word a lot of what I was feeling. Personally I enjoyed the expac story and was able to suspend my disbelief enough to not have too many issues with the story but your point on them trying to do too much with too little time hits the nail on the head imo. Regardless, the Story is only the setup for the entirety of the expac and it should be quite the enjoyable and content laden expac for the next 2 years. Everything I've seen so far has been enjoyable content-wise and I'm super excited to jump into this Savage tier. It'll be my first time progging savage even though I've been playing since 2021 and I can't wait. Despite the initial stumble I can't help but have an overwhelming sense of optimism for the game going forward.
The part with Erenvelle's mom absolutely destroyed me. I had to pull the plug on my mom and when Erenvelle said "absolutely not" a decade worth of repressed emotions came gushing to the surface and I just stared at the screen for 2 hours. Amaurot and Ultima Thule didn't phase me but this destroyed me.
Yeah... I watched both my father and grandmother wither away to illness. I remember the deep hesitancy to even see them how they were in the last days, despite clearly wanting to, because what they looked like in their last days was completely counter to the people I knew and remembered them to be. I remember praying for them to pass so that their suffering would end. I remember being so distraught by this very thought, grappling with it - because what does that make me, to want my own parent/grandparent to pass? Am I even justified in such emotion?
This zone brought it all back for me and I empathized with Erenville very deeply here, to the point he's probably my favorite character in the expansion.
I struggled so much to even try and get through this story, and really just... can't bring myself to care, I have not finished the MSQ and I struggle to even get through the story in a couple hour sessions and then have to stop for days. I no longer care about the story I just skip the cutscenes to be done with it and not hear them blather.
Krile's story was the only thing I gave a rats ass about this entire expansion.
I despise Wuk Lamat as a character, she is an idiot who is like ARR Ysa without Papalimo to reign in her stupidity.
Damn Mike lookin' FIT
I don't mind that a new character takes 95%+ of the screentime. The problem is Wuk Lamat was not interesting, she wasn't written well, and she spends a lot of her time repeating herself and goes on about Papa's Piss and Happiness. Not only was she set up to fail as you put it, but she fails herself in every single one of her appearances by resolving every situation she's in by repeating herself.
Otis seems like he's less Steiner and instead inspired by him but also a shard of Hildibrand if he was a Knight instead of Detective.
That trial was a copy paste of endwalker. The one time we were recognized as a threat and WUk Lamat once again ruins a cutscene by breaking through time and space to hero all over us. I verbally said "oh Fu$% off!" when she showed up. It was forced and pointless.
oh yeah, I had the exact same reaction!
I wish I had a conjoined twin so that there would be more room in my body for hatred toward Wuk Lamat. You can reduce her screentime by 90% and the remaining 10% will still be low quality, middling voice-acting, or bad tropes. There were a dozen better characters that deserved more exploration.
Mike, I think most would have point out, the lala have no idea how it work from the begining, its heavily hinted they(Lala) were from Aloalo island and the Speaker(the secret boss) made it happen. That's why although they had the relic for centuries, and have tried multiple attempts, they could not recreate a path home.
To be honest I don’t have a problem with the scions coming together when we need help with important stuff. The way I see it is that we are no longer an organization pushing toward a unified goal, but that doesn’t mean we stop knowing each other. If one of us needs help with something and there are people we know from our scion days who have the skills we need it makes perfect sense to ask them for help.
I would have liked to have a chance to fight some of the other scions during the right of succession though.
Why were you surprised by the last dungeon? Attacking Ala Mhigo, Amaurot, The Dead Ends, the structure in these expansions is always the exact same, down to the level at which they happen.
A big theme of this expansion for me was crushing expectations. As in expectations that are crushing people. All four candidates for Dawnservant were there with large expectations placed upon them. And as someone who was called a genius as a child it can be a heavy burden, what's good enough for others isn't good enough when you do it. I actually had a break down in high school because of expectations that I wasn't living up to. So while I can never agree with miracle lizard and two headed lizard did, I can at least understand their situation.
But I largely agree with your takes. I still think this was an alright story but from the get go head some things I wasn't a fan of but other things I think they did well. You see all the other claimants and then get told about them, just for you to learn about them again in the first two zones. I didn't mind Wuk Lamat's quirks, for example her hatred of Llamas didn't bother me because I know a grown adult who feels the same way about cats.
"I cannot miss you if you never go away" applies to the Scions as much as Wuk Lamat. As cool as they are, perhaps the Scions should be busy dealing with other things for awhile.
I think the closest comparison for Wuk Lamat, for better or worse, is Lyse. We do spend all of the stormblood MSQ with lyse, she is with us in every zone throughout the entire thing. I think one of the big differences though is later on in the story there are time when she takes a step back and we explore other characters story and instead there are moments when she reacts to that story and has her character grow from it. Wuk Lamat you can say kind of does that for parts of the later zone but she is still more front and center to that story then Lyse was in Doma
I'm glad you enjoyed it despite its flaws. Unfortunately, when the story turned for the better (Alexandria), I was so exhausted from being bored out of my mind and hating everyone to care anymore. Luckily the fight design has been solid so far, and I'm sure I will enjoy savage.
I was actually tired of the scions and I wanted them to actually commit to sending them away and not bringing them back together at every possible opportunity. I wanted to let them breath for a second at least
I think what kills wuk lamat is her voice direction
Wuk Lamat is heavily emoting and Sena Bryer is just calmly saying stuff with very little emotion behind it
I've seen her other work, she's much better than what she was given
This could be just me, but I played in JP. And yeah, then you don't have an issue with her voice, but def with the dialogues and screen time after some time, depending when you got tired of her
It's not just Wuk, I feel that lots of the English voice direction this expac have been fairly strange. Not putting enough punch behind certain words or statements. Hopefully it can be improved since the English cast can definitely do a great job when given the opportunity.
When Wuk comes in crashing our big moment with the final boss, she sounds so flat. She's crashing in!!! She should be YELLING! She has a big giant robot hand that she's pushing back against, yet she sounds like she's lounging back in her couch having a sip of tea. It's so bad the way they did that.
The thing with JP vs EN Wuk Lamat is that they... are two different characters by design. JP Wuk Lamat is a rough-around-edges teenager delinquent archetype, EN Wuk Lamat is a goofy, overly kind teenager archetype. Each localization is playing up different archetypes, and frankly many characters are like this across the board - Alisaie and Emet-Selch being VERY strong examples in how different they are in each version, because they take different approaches to the same material. JP Alisaie is a grumpy anime teenager and not at all the well-spoken, but still fiery EN Alisaie, and Emet-Selch in JP just lacks that poetic snark that Rene Zagger put to his lines, going for a more grounded and serious read. This could also be simply because I don't speak Japanese and so I am not familiar with dialects or their theater norms - but it is clear that each localization is made with their own specific tropes in mind.
When JP Wuk crashes in, she's yelling and screaming and trying to punch sense into Sphene. When EN Wuk crashes in, she is begging for Sphene to stand down and trying to de-escalate. They are two very different reads that are nonetheless consistent to each version of the character, but put side by side are very jarring, because we expect someone jumping into a fight to be yelling, not trying to convince someone to stop fighting in a softer voice. So it all comes down to voice direction - how were the actors instructed, what they were told they're seeing, what they were asked to portray.
I fully agree with your point about Scions, though. I -don't- want to call them in for everything all the time. I want to see how other characters handle such things. The whole deal of what I like about FFXIV is how they introduce characters I might not like, then make them truly shine down the road.
Yeah, my complaint was about voice direction, as I said
If they wanted characters that behave completely differently they needed two different scenes for that final trial. The english one doesn't really match what we're seeing
About the fact that we don't get imformation about what is to come after the Downtrail MSQ, it might be a stretch but we got a another hint about Azem. If you look at the cutscene before the Sphene boss fight, you can see her absorbing the key, on the bottom of the key is Azems symbol. Which means that either Azem created it or the symbol inherets Azems invocations or travel magic. The question is why should a artefact like that exist if it only makes sense when there was not one world but multiple reflections, if Azem created it. Since we don't know it's origins, it further gives the vibe that Azem layed the foundation for the MC and their allies to unite all worlds without the need to cause calamities in order to make them back to one world.
Pondering about Living Memory led me down paths I did not want to be on. I was somewhat surprised how smooth the entire process of shutting down the place went. Imagine one of the endless children comes up to you and begs you not to kill her, what would you say to her? Saw a comment on an earlier video about how we look at these memories are very akin to what the Ascians look at the sundered people, referring them as mere fragments of once complete beings. That definitely put my actions into a different perspective.
The second half of this expansion is a proper cyberpunk story. Stories in the cyberpunk genre usually ask the question, “what are you”. Living memory is pretty much a representation of heaven if you think about it. They went out of their way at the beginning to show you that everyone there was generally happy. I remember losing my shit when one of the NPCs asked if I had tried the popcorn. I then realized what was going on.
Where the parallel falls apart for me is the sacrifice. For these people to live, other people have to continually die, whereas the sundered are only preventing whole ancients from being born again.
I seriously doubt that a younger audience would appreciate this little gameplay and the very slow paced first half of DT. I think they alienated more people with this approach than they will gain.
objectively the best, most rational take i've heard yet
i do think Dawntrail's shotgun blast approach to potential storylines will smooth over in time, it just feels uncomfortable for many in this moment because of the time it's going to take to get to that 'worth it'