Character disconnect and disappointing Player Agency in Dawntrail's MSQ [Spoilers]

6.55 and Act 1 of Dawntrail actively made me dislike my own character. I haven't played since I finished Act 1.

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Originally Posted by mouse_marple

Think of having to see this cutscene every time this trial comes up in roulette. They really need to change it.

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When this went down, my brain went to "No trial roulette from now on from a certain level upwards", and I don't even care how petty that is; I don't want to sit through that more than the one mandatory time. The whole thing was truly awful.

Also, agreed with everything on how railroaded this was. I basically checked out during the MSQ deciding that none of this happens, this is only gameplay/someone's weird dream, and my WOL would never go along with all this.

Having finished the MSQ the other day and taken some time to reflect on it I wholeheartedly agree.
How disastrous our involuntary involvement in the whole thing turned out to be for a lot of parties aside this time they really dropped the ball on giving us even the illusion of choice.

The MSQ used to be the highlight of an expansion/major patch for me, this time it actively pushed me to skip through MSQ dialogue in the final zone. I certainly hope Wuk Lamat falls into the same narrative black hole Lyse disappeared into after ascending to a leadership position and isn't gong to be around for much of the future story.
How railroaded this whole expansion felt really started to grate at some point, especially during the final stretches. In one of the old dialogues there's a tongue-in-cheek answer we can pick that essentially says "It's not going to matter what I say anyway, right?" parts of the dialogue "choices" really brought that memory back and essentially caused me to check out of the narrative, just pushing through the nonsense to unlock game systems that hopefully are still going to be worth it.
The final dialogue with Cahciua comes to mind
"Shut the thing down"
1. Yes.
2. I don't want to do this.
3. There has to be another way.
"There has to be another way (and I can name at least 4 angles to look at)."
"No. I don't want to hear it, plot dictates there's no other way."
1. Yes.
2. I don't want to do this.
"I don't want to do this."
"I don't care, I want you to do it."
1. Yes.
"Yes. (Because I'm out of options to click)"
"I'm glad you agree"
(I don't, the game just leaves me no choice)

That and the whole Wuk Lamat power of friendship thing really soured me on the expansion.
Look hairball, you're a client at best and a burden at worst. We most definitely are not friends. You've done nothing to earn my friendship. In fact you've earned my contempt, the only character in this game I despise more is Zenos who overstayed his welcome for at least one full expansion.

My headcanon now is that none of this MSQ happened this way, after crafting all those Manderville weapons last expansion my WOL went clubbing with Gerolt and this whole MSQ experience has been one long, alcohol-fueled delirium.

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Originally Posted by Astrus

My headcanon now is that none of this MSQ happened this way, after crafting all those Manderville weapons last expansion my WOL went clubbing with Gerolt and this whole MSQ experience has been one long, alcohol-fueled delirium.

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Gerolt: "Hey WoL, you really got to try this new world spirits, its made with cactus juice."
WoL drinks it down, gets drunk, goes on a hallucinogenic drug trip that is just Dawntrail.

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Originally Posted by Astrus

The final dialogue with Cahciua comes to mind
"Shut the thing down"
1. Yes.
2. I don't want to do this.
3. There has to be another way.
"There has to be another way (and I can name at least 4 angles to look at)."
"No. I don't want to hear it, plot dictates there's no other way."
1. Yes.
2. I don't want to do this.
"I don't want to do this."
"I don't care, I want you to do it."
1. Yes.
"Yes. (Because I'm out of options to click)"
"I'm glad you agree"
(I don't, the game just leaves me no choice)

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It feels very hamfisted. On one hand I can understand they put it like this... but we've had better options before, and I do feel the Disney-like pruned localisation is also messing with how the message is conveyed.

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Originally Posted by Astrus

Look hairball, you're a client at best and a burden at worst. We most definitely are not friends. You've done nothing to earn my friendship.

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Well put, this is how I felt any time she mentioned our supposed 'friendship'.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Astrus

My headcanon now is that none of this MSQ happened this way, after crafting all those Manderville weapons last expansion my WOL went clubbing with Gerolt and this whole MSQ experience has been one long, alcohol-fueled delirium.

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If only... the fun we could have had.

My headcanon is that the storm happened, Wuk went overboard, and next patch we'll wake up in a cart like in Skyrim, to get our promised adventure in the wilds of Tural.

I cannot overstate how much feeling disconnected from my character affected my enjoyment of the story. It wasn't just the lack of agency; it was the general lack of presence our character had compared to the game's writing up until now.

I have other complaints with the narrative but I felt like maybe I could hang on if there was anything personal to the warrior of light. There was certainly room for a plot thread tying the player's character to the expansion's theme of legacy with how much of the storytelling felt like repeat dialogue. Maybe a small adventure in each zone where the crew lets you loose to explore and you make a small connection to the locals. I think it could have been fun for us to help establish an adventurer's guild in Tural, for example.

Instead, my character felt invisible. In cutscenes it felt like there was just a token line or two to acknowledge I, the player, had initiated dialogue before the characters seemed to forget the WoL completely. It felt horrible and was especially jarring coming from the writing in Endwalker in Shadowbringers.

Looking back, I feel these narrative patterns started in the 6.x patch quests. I didn't particularly care for the void storyline, but Dawntrail's MSQ has recontextualized and degraded it. At the time it was more difficult to see the changes in storytelling given that the patch stories were much shorter and Endwalker's base story had just concluded.

The fact that the player character matters and is an active participant in the story was always a signature for FFXIV and part of what made the emotional story beats so effective. Even in ARR the player character felt more seen than in Dawntrail. What on earth happened?

There's also a super weird disconnect of show-and-tell when it comes to WoL's capability. It's like the worse version of it - Where you constantly show the opposite what you tell and vice versa.

"Hey boss, you really need to watch out for that one, he/she is a huge badass" says the henchman, and WoL proceeds to do absolutely nothing when they enact their plans.

WoL, the foremost specialist in defeating god-like monsters pitches in to defeat a creature that had been previously an unbeatable catastrophe - "We did nothing here, the thing was practically already half dead when we got here. I mean if our dad couldn't do it then me and Wuk Lamat couldn't possibly have done it, there's none one else here who might be a factor."

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Originally Posted by Aurumis

Agree 100%. I was so angry when Koana told me that Wuk Lamat wanted my character as her consultant and to be by her side like WTF let me tell them NO, something!! Koana leaves and that's it, I can't even say I don't want to.

There's been some answers that you can make to her in disagreement, but they always push your answer to something you didn't selected or want to.

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Yes, this bring up a point that bothered me too. In previous expansions, whenever you had a choice of different dialogue lines for our WoL, there was never an 'intended' answer, they all just created a sense of personality in how the scene proceeded. In Dawntrail however, it feels more like a quiz, and you will be told and corrected when you didn't pick the right answer according to the writers. DT gives me a feeling I am being punished for picking something that isn't the writer's preferred pick -- my character will get berated, or treated as mistaken and overruled.

Random thing to bring up but speaking of trials with unskippable cutscenes, the Endsinger moment where it's all dark and then everyone shouts "LIGHT THE WAY!" was pretty bad. The rest of the fight is fine it's just that one moment that really sticks out as excessively campy.

I will only say you are very optimistic that Gulool Ja Ja wouldn't have picked one of them at the end regardless. Wuk Lamat didn't need us for anything really other than MAYBE the fight against fake Gulool. The writers easily could have just written she and koana win without us though. I will say the worst part from me is when Wuk Lamat pulled her whole "join my government" thing and my character never got a chance to say "hell no". She eventually just had 1 iota of a thought and realized "this is an adventurer, they are never settling down certainly not to work for me". I would have liked the option to say it myself though, but even that agency had to get leeched away.