Dawntrail’s Narrative Missteps: Why Natsuko Ishikawa’s Touch Is Sorely Missed

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Originally Posted by ScartPearl

YES, exactly! I wanted to scream too! The WoL has been through so much, fought gods, and saved entire worlds—there’s just no way they’d stand there and let that happen. That line about "honor" was such a weak excuse, it made my blood boil. It completely goes against everything the WoL stands for! That scene was so out of character, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

I mean, it's obvious they wanted to kill that character, but they could have written it in a much smarter way! That scene felt just plain stupid. I think even those who liked the expansion have to admit that it makes absolutely no sense.

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They could easily have had an extensive time with the WoL and the others pushing through the opposition toward Sunperch. Even get some good solo instances out of it. We might send Wuk ahead while we handle business in the city. And then we arrive at the throne room just in time to see it happen. Wuk's disabled somehow. We get an Echo headache that shows us what happened.

Still manages to do exactly what they wanted but doesn't have the WoL act completely out of character.

What Dawntrail needed (from Ishikawa-san) was the personal touch of NPC interactions.
What Dawntrail did NOT need was another (heavy) hitting emotional sledgehammer. I ran through Endwalker a second time on my alt, and it was ROUGH. It's not an easy expansion to get through, no matter how great the story otherwise is. Following that, Dawntrial's story needed something light. Uplifting. EPIC.
It needed something like the Praetorium and the Ultima Weapon, but done with the storytelling prowess that the team should have accumulated over the years. Over the top action is fine. Some stakes are fine, but it should've been an EPIC conclusion following a LIGHT and world-building journey.


Dawntrail ended up giving me emotional fatigue, and I play story games to FEEL. Zepla really made a lot of great points in her video and I can only agree with all of them.

Also hasn't been mentioned a lot, but where was the whole Blue Mage Tribe, Whalaqee ceruleum incident at?
Why was it a bunch of cowboys and native miqo'te instead of the Whalaqee in Shalooani, I feel like they got sidelined and robbed of that too?
Only whalaqee I saw was in a crafter sidequest.

Also the rolequest tribes seemed far more interesting than the tribes we actually got in the MSQ, hilariously.

(Honestly, I can forgive the whole "oh we were just pretending to be idiots" write in from the Mamool Ja, because it wouldve been hella awkward to speak like a simpleton for the VA's probably. Though we could've had a whole different language that the WoL translated in their heads with the echo.)

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

Also hasn't been mentioned a lot, but where was the whole Blue Mage Tribe, Whalaqee ceruleum incident at?
Why was it a bunch of cowboys and native miqo'te instead of the Whalaqee in Shalooani, I feel like they got sidelined and robbed of that too?
Only whalaqee I saw was in a crafter sidequest.

Also the rolequest tribes seemed far more interesting than the tribes we actually got in the MSQ, hilariously.

(Honestly, I can forgive the whole "oh we were just pretending to be idiots" write in from the Mamool Ja, because it wouldve been hella awkward to speak like a simpleton for the VA's probably. Though we could've had a whole different language that the WoL translated in their heads with the echo.)

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I assume that they(either the writers or the people above them) got squeamish at the idea of having a zone with more blatant Native American standins getting effectively enslaved by Ul'dahn oil barons, so they got mentioned very briefly in crafter content and that's it. A lot of the Native American cultural stuff that we'd gotten in things like cosmetics(the New World set and the like) and the BLU quests are just missing.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

Also hasn't been mentioned a lot, but where was the whole Blue Mage Tribe, Whalaqee ceruleum incident at?

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To be honest, I wasn't expecting we would access the area where it was. It's a bit like the Azim Steppe. There are tribes we don't get to interact with or where the extent of our interaction is via a river. It was a welcome enough surprise that the cereleum issue made its way into the MSQ at all.

Maybe they will answer it with the release of the blue mage quests in 8.0.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

To be honest, I wasn't expecting we would access the area where it was. It's a bit like the Azim Steppe. There are tribes we don't get to interact with or where the extent of our interaction is via a river. It was a welcome enough surprise that the cereleum issue made its way into the MSQ at all.

Maybe they will answer it with the release of the blue mage quests in 8.0.

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My hope is that they are saving it for some other place, because I feel like Shaloaani shouldn't have had Ceruleum without the Whalaqee there. One can hope, because that was the biggest thing we knew about the New World before we even stepped into it.

And answering to the comment above yours.
Them getting "Squeamish" about handling issues within a fantasy world hasn't stopped them before, what changed? Its not REAL. The people in movies, games and books aren't REAL. You can't limit art and storytelling unless it's a direct rallying cry towards hurting other people in the modern era. And even history you need to observe and not hide, or else we will not learn not to repeat it.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

Also hasn't been mentioned a lot, but where was the whole Blue Mage Tribe, Whalaqee ceruleum incident at?
Why was it a bunch of cowboys and native miqo'te instead of the Whalaqee in Shalooani, I feel like they got sidelined and robbed of that too?
Only whalaqee I saw was in a crafter sidequest.

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God this. So much this. As a huge nerd for the magic in this universe, this yet another thing I was excited to see in Dawntrail, yet we got fuck all for. Something around them would have been far better for the Caster role quest than...what we got >.>

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

Also the rolequest tribes seemed far more interesting than the tribes we actually got in the MSQ, hilariously.

(Honestly, I can forgive the whole "oh we were just pretending to be idiots" write in from the Mamool Ja, because it wouldve been hella awkward to speak like a simpleton for the VA's probably. Though we could've had a whole different language that the WoL translated in their heads with the echo.)

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I don't hate the Mamool Ja putting up an act. I think it was kind of necessary, not just for the VAs, but they were trying to build up Gulool Ja Ja to be this incredible hero, allegedly they wanted Zoraal Ja to be threatening and that wouldn't work if he was a moron, and even the Mamool Ja accompanying the Great Azuro didn't strike me as complete simpletons (notably when they weren't acting for the guy's blue magic sales), so I think there's precedent for it.