There's multiple search returns with the common theme being: During FanFest, Naoki Yoshida described Dawntrail as a “summer vacation” for players during the FanFest keynote.
Oh I agree, but that is the pitch we seem to be getting (so far).
To me, this whole post-patch EW story has just been very much a who cares? Non of it feels like it matters. We just saved the whole universe, to then go: oh, by the way, some dude in the void wants to destroy the world or whatever. It just feels very much like they were stuck with an idea of what to do and decided, hey lets go with a world ending threat.... again!
Scatterbrained thoughts are I feel like we should have been dealing more with the ramifications and loss and fear and rebuilding. There should have been lingering effects, from the stopping the Final Day, with the underlying idea of what was said, about how little we knew about and had explored of the world. That would be the set up to go visit the other places.
This whole Golbez thing could have been made into an expansion, later, to explore and recover the Thirteenth shard, somehow, instead of being shoehorned into post-patch and treated like oh no! the lady of wind! oh, she dead... whose next?
This. One joke about it being a summer beach holiday doesn't undo everything else we were shown in the trailer and keynote.
We're specifically there for an adventure that will be taking us to a lot of different places with inevitable danger and stuff. Of course we're going to take a moment to do touristy beach things upon arriving in a tropical coastal town, but that isn't going to be the entire plot and we've already been told as much, and seen it in the trailer.
It's not going to be a whole expansion of lazing on the beach and having really intense volleyball competitions or something.
To be fair though, that's not the fault of the people who think that. That's on Yoshida for putting that idea out there. He could have been like, hey this is going to be initially a low key thing, but what mysteries are hiding under the surface. It's him that started this whole vacation thing.
It was one probably light-hearted statement amid a whole presentation of what we would actually be doing and seeing there. People for some reason have seized on it as if he walked on stage, said "we're off to the beach!" and showed nothing but shots of the Scions doing tourist stuff.
Because:
https://www.polygon.com/23811679/fin...ease-date-ff14 Quote attributed to Yoshida: Yoshida said, “you did just save not only all of Hydaelyn, but kind of the whole universe, so we thought we’d give you a little break”
https://www.eurogamer.net/final-fant...ummer-vacation Quote attributed to Yoshida: Indeed, Yoshida described it as "the very best summer vacation" for Warriors of Light and quite the change from Endwalker.
And that's just two links.
I get it, I agree. But Yoshida himself is out there talking about vacations and breaks. This isn't stuff that people just made up, based on a single throwaway comment. I don't think it's fair to be going: why is everyone reacting like this or making this up? It's not like Yoshida is some kind of novice developer. He knows what message he is putting out there.
I'm fairly sure there was mention of political intrigue over a rite of succession in the slides as well. Make what you will of that.