Wow, Dawntrail was bad

Guess you missed that it was intended to be a vacation, or interlude, after Endwalker. It's supposed to be be light (even though we end up saving the universe again but whatevs). You missed the point.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's pretty obvious why. We had just entered the area. They want us to explore said area. It is explained in the story how we are able to do it. The process of what she is doing to reprogram herself takes a lot of time and doesn't just happen at the press of a button….

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Respectfully Jeeq, them pulling an explanation out of their magic hat doesn‘t make the pacing any less odd. It‘s just another example of the writers forcing the plot into a certain direction while simultaneously ignoring the natural flow of the story to the detriment of the player experience. There‘s a reason many people have an issue with this and many other zones, and you are not helping by blindly defending it.
Nobody cares about the explanation if it isn‘t convincing or the result isn‘t satisfying.

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Originally Posted by Xapapetsu

Please make donations in the form of mogstation mounts, outfits, and emotes. Word of mouth is nice but money is better.

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Exactly, money is love and gives SE and Yoshi P happiness. I think we need to support them, so they understand how perfect their choices are and how much we love the formula.

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

I love how Dawntrail really doubled down on the flashbacks to events that legit had happened five minutes prior, like the player suffers from short-term memory loss and needs a nudge for even the smallest of things. I was like - seriously, that JUST HAPPENED.

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Even the guy from Memento had a better memory! And he had to leave sticky notes everywhere!

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Originally Posted by Barwara

I mean… the fact that there’s a reason why things happened the way they did doesn’t excuse the poor writing. Doesn’t make the gameplay fun. The devs could have written the same story differently but made it so the player feels more engaged with what they are doing.

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I agree they could have added more gameplay. The ones that stick out most to people are the train scene and the cooking where you have no control over the situation. They have demonstrated the technology to do it though because we actually enter an aim mode during other expansions where we fire at NPCs that play hide and seek, and there is a cutscene where we select and choose food in Shadowbringers at Mord Souq. Didn't they even do just that in Urqopacha for the pelupelu merchant?

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That’s just a writing issue.

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I'd argue the gameplay issues aren't to do with writing but the decision of what technology to use to portray the story (cutscenes instead of gameplay). Some of the bloat was also not particularly story related but just that they wanted to over-explain everything in case people skipped or forgot the previous MSQ.

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Originally Posted by Mondschnee

Respectfully Jeeq, them pulling an explanation out of their magic hat doesn‘t make the pacing any less odd.

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I agree that it's odd, I was just making the point that it was technically explained because I've seen many people talk as if it wasn't explained.

I thought Dawntrail was pretty good. The arguments against it here pretty much fall flat for me. I found no problem with the pacing in the final zone because the game never actually signaled it as a race against time, the momentum going into the zone was compatible with the momentum held throughout it. Expecting the story to suddenly change tact at the eleventh hour and no longer care about the peoples and cultures of the places we visit... it requires either a fundamental misunderstanding of the narrative or an expectation of moral absolutism that would have been unprecedented in the expansion.

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Originally Posted by Bad_Luck

Guess you missed that it was intended to be a vacation, or interlude, after Endwalker. It's supposed to be be light (even though we end up saving the universe again but whatevs). You missed the point.

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You can make a vacation or light-hearted story that is still well-written and actually fun to experience.

This "vacation" felt like a chore.

The whole concept behind the story was bizarre. I am still at a loss why I as the WoL/player had this role in the story. Especially given I have no relationship with the nation's history or people and have no faith in Wuk Lamat as a leader whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's pretty obvious why. We had just entered the area. They want us to explore said area. It is explained in the story how we are able to do it. The process of what she is doing to reprogram herself takes a lot of time and doesn't just happen at the press of a button.

Depends on if it was actually a computer program, but in the kind of programs we have it does take more than a few minutes to code something complex without AI (and even sometimes with it when it's not doing what you want).

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I think that bit probably would have gone over a bit better if they made it less than we were choosing to do the actions in going and meeting the Endless and more something that was essential to do in the process. I suggested in another thread it could be something like having to handle glitches in the system before being able to access the terminal. Or they could have been the gatekeepers of lesser terminals and we had to solve their issue before we could shut the sub-terminals down. Then it's not us choosing to essentially waste time but performing necessary steps integrated into the storyline.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

I thought Dawntrail was pretty good. The arguments against it here pretty much fall flat for me. I found no problem with the pacing in the final zone because the game never actually signaled it as a race against time, the momentum going into the zone was compatible with the momentum held throughout it. Expecting the story to suddenly change tact at the eleventh hour and no longer care about the peoples and cultures of the places we visit... it requires either a fundamental misunderstanding of the narrative or an expectation of moral absolutism that would have been unprecedented in the expansion.

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You don’t see a pacing problem with Sphene taking the key and going “now it’s time to kill you all” suddenly becoming “let’s eat ice cream and go on a gondola ride because old Spheney is bad at maths”?

Just because the writers “explain” a pacing change doesn’t mean it actually makes any sense

I learned from dawntrail ice cream and parental death go together.