The Negative Impact of Poor Character Writing on the Quality of Dawntrail's MSQ

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

I tend towards localisation myself because:
A
He was shooting at the weapon anyway so rubber bullets didn't make sense and I'm pretty sure the other guy did not have rubber bullets.

B
We saw bandits being killed by dinosaurs right beforehand and a massacre right aftr this scene.

It's a really strange mood swing tbh. I get it that they wanted to go for a lighter tone for the most part but this scene imo is one of the few things not the fault of the writing but of the localisation.

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Even then, it looked like the bullet hit Vulture in the shoulder. So it's not like it was going to be a fatal shot in a setting where magic is commonplace. It was such a swing in the mood that it took me out of what was otherwise as fun zone to run through.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

One of the criticism I've had with this game for a while is the gradual PG-13:fication of the story.

It feels like before the writers really got their hands dirty in showing the horrors of oppression, pulling zero punches with moments like Arenvald's, Fordola's and Yotsuyu's backstories. So why is it suddenly too much to match the, still much lighter, western tone? The sudden family friendliness was really jarring and took me out of the zone's mood immediately. It feels like another writer took over, who had not been properly briefed on the target audience of the game. Like people use real weapons in the rest of the story - Is it because they didn't want "a good guy" to be the one using lethal force that wasn't strictly in self defense? Or Tural having harsh frontier laws in part of its regions would have made their nation have just tiny bit of shade of grey, which we can't have anymore for some reason? Help me out here.

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I was just thinking about this, how we've gone from Merlwyb explaining to Alphinaud that her people come first, then the alliance and then if there is anything left over, everyone else and if he didn't understand that then he didn't belong in that room to Conan the Barbarian with scales conquering two continents of warring tribes with the power of friendship. The man's primary trait is his ability to fight and he seemingly didn't take control over a single people by force, he just talked them all into making him their ruler. What kind of kindergarten crap is this? That's not how countries are formed. When they first tell us in the beginning I thought it was a fiction they tell the new generation, but then we go on the trip only to discover that no, his kingdom is built on the power of friendship... Dude, you were genetically engineered for combat. How did you build a kingdom with love and kisses?!

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

I was just thinking about this, how we've gone from Merlwyb explaining to Alphinaud that her people come first, then the alliance and then if there is anything left over, everyone else and if he didn't understand that then he didn't belong in that room to Conan the Barbarian with scales conquering two continents of warring tribes with the power of friendship. The man's primary trait is his ability to fight and he seemingly didn't take control over a single people by force, he just talked them all into making him their ruler. What kind of kindergarten crap is this? That's not how countries are formed. When they first tell us in the beginning I thought it was a fiction they tell the new generation, but then we go on the trip only to discover that no, his kingdom is built on the power of friendship... Dude, you were genetically engineered for combat. How did you build a kingdom with love and kisses?!

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I get that they wanted us to have a very good opinion of Gulool Ja. And just quickly thinking on it, one way would have been to have the Tural still be only tenuously unified, because he didn't want to iron fist all the various people into a single nation. Which realistically would probably be the only way to do it as fast as he did.

You know.... The other big problem being that the whole "peace and love" theme doesn't really have stakes when Tural is already almost perfectly peaceful. Having it still be far more volatile and interesting politically would have given Wuk Lamat's motivation a lot more gravitas.

So, I want to echo what everyone else has been saying first. You have beautifully portrayed the thoughts and feelings of the community so elegantly and I'm very grateful for your thoughtful reaction to the story.

Hearing people talk about Erenville and the death of his mother, and how poorly that entire arc happened reminded me of a particularly personal complaint I have about the story. At the end of the first half of Yak T'el's story, after Wuk Lamat defeats Bakool Ja Ja and frees her birth father. She ask him if it was true that he was her birthfather, but she has no reaction to this revelation, no thoughts or feelings about being face to face with her own flesh and blood. Instead she loudly yells in his face 'I AM GALOOL JA JA'S DAUGHTER".

I was adopted, a closed adoption. I do not know who my birth parents are, and while I don't often feel a need or desire to know who they are, it is something I will never know because that information is locked away. The fact that she couldn't even acknowledge this man as her birth father all while shouting in his face how she was someone else's daughter felt so cold to me. It felt so inhumane. If I was ever given the opportunity to meet my birth parents I would savor every second of it. I would never not acknowledge them as my parents, even if I might not feel the same way about them as I do the people who raised me. In that moment I felt so uncomfortable and disgusted with Wuk Lamat.

Wuk's father reveal made me laugh out loud. It was so random and unnecessary. Then her rude reaction occurs and they had the audacity to still show him hanging around in the ending. I felt secondhand embarrassment for him because literally no one cares about his truth.

I used machine translation for the text I posted.

I found it very interesting to read.
I agree with most of what you said.

As a token of my appreciation, I would like to share the topic of rubber bullets that some have been talking about.
We use rubber bullets in the Japanese version as well.

Perhaps the reason for this is that producer Yoshida previously said,
"If we want to conform to the ratings of each country, we cannot directly depict scenes where people are cut or bleeding."
Until now, scenes like an arrow piercing the body or a neck being cut were hidden in the shadows of a movie,
and were skillfully depicted so that the player could sense them.

In this Western duel, it would have been strange to hide the moment you are shot,
so perhaps they used rubber bullets to express that.
Or perhaps the development of laws in the wilderness has led to an awareness of valuing life...

The content of this forum post gave me an answer to one of my questions.
Thank you.

Hmm I find Yoshi-P response for the whole can't show blood to be kinda bull. The Pegi for it is 16. ESRB IS Teen and all of those points to violence and or including blood... soo yeah no . I wouldn't be surprised if the CERO was a teen type rating as well.

Which for the T for teen rating on the site itself states blood

Edit: if it were really the case then they need to drop the rating and mark it PG or G and it's equivalents or Other countries...

And at that point if this keeps up I'm probably gone... I didn't ask to play TULIYOLLAL Street staring a character better fit for a trash can than oscar the grouch

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

Wuk's father reveal made me laugh out loud. It was so random and unnecessary. Then her rude reaction occurs and they had the audacity to still show him hanging around in the ending. I felt secondhand embarrassment for him because literally no one cares about his truth.

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To be fair, Wuk Lamat didn’t just rudely yell “yup I’m Galool’s daughter!” at her birth father. She said it in reaction to his obviously intentional ignoring of her question about whether he was really her dad. When she asked, he basically cut her off and very intentionally emphasized how her actions showed she was galool’s kid (or reminded him of galool? I forget the exact words.)

It was then that Wuk Lamat paused a second to process that as his hint that he didn’t want to openly acknowledge he was her father, and that she should just consider herself as daughter of the dawnservent; and she then responded by emphatically going along with what he’d said. She accepted his wishes. It wasn’t rude at all.

I hated that revelation for how the WoL was railroaded into agreeing with his silence on the matter, but Wuk Lamat wasn’t a problem there, to me.

More than the rubber bullet crap that zone made me question the logic in making those areas look the way they do.
While every region in XIV is based on architecture and cultures of different countries, I just feel like the way they inserted Thavnair and Yak'Ajsgkadasgj as literally Fantasy-India and Fantasy-USA don't really have any good lore explanation. The origin of Thavnair has almost nothing in common with the origin of classic Hindu yet the architecture, fashion, cuisine, etc, just happens to be similar. What reason is given for Yak'Asfgaskf to be so similar to the wild west? Did they actually research why the wild west was the way it was? Did they have literally the same colonization history as the USA?
For the rest of Tulyal the backstories make sense. For all the other nations, Thanalan, La Noscea, Black Shroud, Ishgard, Ala Mhigo, Sharlayan... they take inspirations from real cultures and locations but they feel and look very much like places that could only exist in Final Fantasy XIV. The same really can't be said for Thavnair, YakYakYakYak or even Doma. Aside from the giant dragon leader, those just seem to copy the homework and do very little that's original.

Just posting here to keep this thread on top and going because it nailed it. Thank you so much for putting it so well and posting it here.
And I also agree with many of the comments as I have been reading every single page. My one hope to this game's future is to have someone in Square Enix read this feedback and attempt to fix things. Maybe bring Ishikawa back as the main writer, or have her teach them how to treat our precious characters. Or even, I don't know, pay the team a BASIC STORYTELLING ONLINE CLASS.

The characters were so bad, and my favorites felt so out of character, it was actually heartbreaking to speak to them and see nothing. It felt disrespectful to them, and a gross misunderstanding of what people like about them. The story also very much underestimates the intelligence of the player, like we are not supposed to think about it for more than 3 seconds or it just doesn't make any sense. So the characters don't think about it either.
I lost all motivation to log in after finishing the MSQ, even though there's still so much content to play. I don't have any complaints about the gameplay and graphical aspect, and I do enjoy it, but I'm so attached to the story and the characters, that it took every motivation away.

You hit the nail on the head. Well said!

I'd have to agree with mostly everything already posted in this thread, and I'd like to add an additional thought that has been bothering me during the 2nd half of the story (just reached Solution 9).

I feel as if Koana would've been the better choice for the 2nd half of the story heading into Heritage Found.
For one, for what little characterization he got during the rite of succession, he's been shown to care a great deal for Wuk his adoptive family since being abandoned by his biological family and is also shown to be unusually emotional whenever Wuk his family is in danger to the surprise of others, and rather than have this be one of many throwaway elements, they could've played into it more seriously when Zoraal Ja kills Gulool. This is the only father he's known his whole life! Who says only Wuk gets to be angry and wants to kill Zoraal for patricide? Koana has every right to feel the same as well, and it would push his emotional outburst from an ooc mini joke to an actual character trait!

Secondly, the setting appeals much more to Koana and his ambition for technological advancement for Tural in a way that can potentially challenge him on his worldview. The only time the story suggests that his perspective on technology may be wrong is when he develops an alchemical solution during the 1st feat, while ignoring the cultural heritage of the festival, even though the elector believes his solution to be acceptable and grants him his keystone anyways. Meanwhile, a Reflection that showcases an incredibly advanced technological society would be something that I feel he should be written to have a lot to say about, and could finally present an obstacle for him to tackle, when the story presents the science behind the regulators, and the questionable morality behind such a useful device.

Lastly, seeing as how the entirety of the story revolves around Wuk to the detriment of every other character's growth, this is the perfect scenario to take a break from her overbearing presence. Wuk would have been a great choice to leave behind to defend her city and her people being as she is shown to be charismatic and with alot of appeal towards the populace, and she should be able to reassure them and raise their morale before the impending siege on the city, as well as provide her fighting skills towards repelling the attack. Meanwhile Koana would have been a perfect addition to our infiltration of the dome, being as he has a strategic mind and the technological knowledge to help with the construction of the bomb train.

Really feels like missed potential. Or maybe the writers thought that people would call this "Stormblood 2.0" if they let Koana have as much presence as Hien did during the Doma arc. But in my opinion it would have really made this 2nd half of DT much more enjoyable, instead of dragging along the same tired character who has at this point overstayed her welcome.

Just wanted to agree that you really hit the nail on the head with so many of the issues in the writing! I've been really struggling with how "off" it felt this time around (especially as someone who played all the previous expacs within the past 2 years) and it makes me feel a bit less crazy to see other folks who are able to point out clear, objectively detrimental changes in the writing. These are criticisms that me and a lot of friends have all arrived at separately and organically too, so I know it's not just my subjective taste making me feel so :/ about it.

I'm someone who only started playing because I loved the story when I watched my partner play thru msq, and I feel a little cheated that my first on content expac ended up feeling subpar as far as the writing went. I'm still trying to be hopeful that they can turn this ship around and get back on track for patches and 8.0, but it feels good to be able to name exactly what went wrong / made it so this one didn't click.

The OP was excellent. I’m really, really shocked at how many basic errors of creative writing there are in the Dawntrail story. While I hope it isn’t a sign of things to come, the main writer’s previous writing for quest does fill me with dread.

I don't know if anyone has brought this up, but why does baby Zoraal Ja exist? It's never explained how or why Zoraal Ja had a kid. He just pops up, with the same exact rare trait his father had. Where is the mother? Why did he even have a son if he clearly didn't want a son? Is he a clone or something?

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Originally Posted by Finalvalkyrie

I don't know if anyone has brought this up, but why does baby Zoraal Ja exist? It's never explained how or why Zoraal Ja had a kid. He just pops up, with the same exact rare trait his father had. Where is the mother? Why did he even have a son if he clearly didn't want a son? Is he a clone or something?

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don't you know all shows, books, movies and video games become better when you add an adorable cute kid in the mix! it's an instant success! who cares about the details! /s

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Originally Posted by Finalvalkyrie

I don't know if anyone has brought this up, but why does baby Zoraal Ja exist? It's never explained how or why Zoraal Ja had a kid. He just pops up, with the same exact rare trait his father had. Where is the mother? Why did he even have a son if he clearly didn't want a son? Is he a clone or something?

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I'm assuming we're gonna find out he was a clone and it'll be a Vivi parallel.

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Originally Posted by EshKarasu

I feel as if Koana would've been the better choice for the 2nd half of the story heading into Heritage Found.

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Now that you mention it, it would've been amazing. More character development. Giving Koana a taste of what too much technological advancement, too quickly, can do to a populace. Instead, he just gives up his entire world view despite all of the good he has done for Tural with the knowledge he's brought back from Sharlayan just because the overgrown cat woman "beats" him in the contest while being carried by literal Eorzean Jesus and his/her crew.

What a tremendously huge missed opportunity.

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Originally Posted by Icycrits

Now that you mention it, it would've been amazing. More character development. Giving Koana a taste of what too much technological advancement, too quickly, can do to a populace. Instead, he just gives up his entire world view despite all of the good he has done for Tural with the knowledge he's brought back from Sharlayan just because the overgrown cat woman "beats" him in the contest while being carried by literal Eorzean Jesus and his/her crew.

What a tremendously huge missed opportunity.

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I agree! Koana deserved more. The only thing we ever learn about his character is that he is smart and likes Sharlayan technology, then that he suddenly always cared about his sister. He stops talking as much about Sharlayan after telling us that, and that's it. I don't even know what Wuk Lamat thinks of him othen than "my smart brother".
But having him there would probably mean the writers would have to actually think more about the technology than Wuk Lamat did, and they certainly didn't give me the impression they're able to do that. They can SAY a character is smart, but showing it?! It would be expecting too much.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

It feels like another writer took over, who had not been properly briefed on the target audience of the game..

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Another writer did take over for Dawntrail, the one who penned Shadows of Werlyt, so its definitely not PG-13ification of the game as we KNOW what that questline dives into, and torturing kids and branding them with cattle rods and the complete dissolving of the self to be overwritten by the memories and personality of one of the elite of your country in a wannabe Evangelion story absolutely isn't "family friendly." They're simply not as skilled of a writer as Ishikawa is and likely wanted to play it safe for their first MSQ narrative. We were spoiled with her mastery of writing as an art-craft and have been given something written by someone who needs to learn the rules of creative writing.

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Originally Posted by Alleluia

I'm assuming we're gonna find out he was a clone and it'll be a Vivi parallel.

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Ugh I sincerely hope not. They butchered FF9 enough already.

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Originally Posted by localareanetwork

Hi, excellent write up to start, I was pointed to you by a mutual friend of ours. I wanted to share something that personally bugged me. It has nothing to do with Wuk Lamat.

Towards the latter half of the Solution 9 arc, Erenville begins to realize that his mom is dead, and you can very clearly notice his behavior changing from that point up until the very last part of the last bit of Living Memory. If you talk to him between quests, he literally just sits there pacing back and fourth, only saying "..." because he knows he's going to have to come to terms with it. And that's where my problem is. Why did no one comfort him? He got like one offhand comment thrown his way, but where's the actual consolation? I lost a parent recently, so this part probably personally bugs me more than it should, but I felt so bad that I took a gpose of my character hugging him in some strange attempt to convince myself the WOL actually notices that their friend is grieving about their dead parent and that they actually care about him. It just felt so wrong and bizarre at the same time, and was easily the most infuriating thing about the entire expansion to me that made me feel downright awful, not just "this is boring".

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This, this so much. As much as I think the complaints of good character writing being lacking in this expansion, Erenville was a specific exception for me, especially towards the end. There are times earlier in the expansion where he solves problems in line with his character and skillset, our watery-carriage lost its steed? Erenville knows what it eats, and how to behave around it, providing a solution that is as effective as it is humble in its execution. He reacts with cynicism quite often in the story, but never in a place where it felt like he was being written to be cynical simply because it was his trope to fill, normally his dour attitude would lift when everything was operating as intended, and fall back to a more pessimistic standpoint when he was pointing out accurate criticisms or problems.

In Living Memory, where he is simultaneously being wrenched back and forth between trying to grapple with the loss of his mother, while simultaneously being forced to interact with an AI ghost of his mom who looks and acts and talks like his mother, his reaction makes sense. Erenville wildly pivots between withdrawing emotionally and sometimes physically, before being pulled back into a familiar pattern of conversation with said AI ghost, while also getting sad, and angry, offended and insulted by how his trauma is being brushed aside. The whole time, right up until they speedran his acceptance of everything in the resolution, Erenville's felt very human and relatable to me. Which makes how the plot dismisses this all the more frustrating.

I think for me, my major complaint with the writing is that it felt likely to me that it was... designed by committee? The first half was very basic in its plot setup, which, honestly I was okay with. Wuk Lamat being weak to... every form of travel we encounter, I think? That got a bit tiring. Her Genki Shounen Anime Protag energy where everything is solved by the power of friendship and determination was a bit much. But frankly, I went into this thinking it'd be the new ARR, a fairly bland, but serviceable plot to give us something to do while they start getting their pieces on the board for a new plotline. So I was okay with us just tooling around with Wuk Lamat and letting her go on a simple, but straightforward plot about how working together is cool. It was safe, sanitary, and within my expectations enough that I was, perhaps not thrilled by it, but at least content.

But once we got to Heritage Found and the 2nd arc of the plot really started to kick off, it just felt like it didn't know what story it wanted to tell. For one moment, you're seeing everyone's memories getting stolen into "the cloud" and the horror of it. The next, you're eating snacks with Sphene and having a good time in her techno-utopia. The next, you're seeing people buy souls of once living people as a creature comfort in Sphene's techno-dystopia. Ultimately the collected Scions and Wuk Lamat largely just shrug and give a lukewarm take of "well we don't really like it that much." and proceed to neither give a clear message one way or the other. On one hand they want to tell us that Solution 9 is, whilst flawed, a relatively okay place. Like the Crystarium in Shadowbringers, the people in Solution 9 are doing their best to live out their lives in a world on the brink of total ruin. On the other hand, they try to tell us that Solution 9 is a place that's deeply, and troublingly wrong. But instead of picking one or the other, or at least letting the cast of characters walk away with distinctly different reactions, everyone mouths slightly different platitudes that all boil down to merely being half-hearted platitudes.

(1/2)

Then once you get to Living Memory, the same thing happens. On one hand they constantly use sad music, and imagery and scenarios to tell us over and over again how these are people living in a dying heaven. Similar to Solution 9, they have problems as the energy demands cannot keep up with the infinitely increasing number of the dead, but they are nevertheless happy, and the last remnants of an era gone, but worthy of preserving. And then on the other hand, they tell us they're not real people, a horrific facsimile of life that is slowly killing the rest of the real world, and we should just pull the plug on this world before it destroys all others before eventually dying itself anyways.

An exploration of what it means to be alive, or the difficulties of letting go of the past... these are already explored in the game, but are worthy narrative choices to have made. Simultaneously, treating this more as an analogy to the real world's energy consumption, the inherently self-destructive nature of unchecked, infinite growth, and AI or whatever, that could have been a very interesting story for them to tell. But instead they told both, and in doing so, told neither. The Endless could be painted as a tragic, fragile living memory of the past, worthy of preservation even if one would deny them full humanity, or as a parasitic conglomeration of unsustainable chatbots... ones that are remarkably well designed, mind you, but just glorified algorithms putting on a great show of being alive. But these both can't be true simultaneously, you can't both embrace the tragedy of their demise, and say there's no issue with bringing that demise.

It feels like both ideas were pitched in the writing room, and rather than have one be chosen as the preferred direction, they just tried to get all these conflicting narrative structures to exist in the same framework, leaving the entire story scoured clean of nuance. In an attempt to incorporate every view, they watered down every view until they could technically share the same space, as these sterile, surface level looks at everything, making the whole experience vapid.

(2/2)

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Originally Posted by Tethan

I found the final zone deeply insulting, as an exploration of grief it was nonsensical and wholly inadequate. Grief is such a powerful, scary and sometimes ugly thing. It's not something you can just handwave away. Everything in the final zone just said "yeah it's sad but it's natural so get over it". Erenville was the only one who reacted somewhat naturally to what was going on, but it felt like the game wanted to dismiss or chide his reaction, rather than actually explore it and as soon as it's done he is just fine again? That's not how it works.

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Snipped your post down a little bit but I couldn't agree more. I have also suffered major loss and grief in my life, and the "handwave" attitude as you call it was just insufferable during that final map watching Erenville feel tortured by his grief. As someone who had to deal with the loss of a sister, and both parents before 30 essentially on my own, I was desperate, ugh, half dying for the writers to have given us a chance to say something to him about it. Anything. Even if it was as simple as to tell him he's not alone in this.

This is unpopular and I know it, but I actually really enjoyed the Erenville + WoL side adventure into Xak Tural after the ceremony. The moment that explosion/tremor happened, and the dome appeared, I immediately thought of Erenville's mom and his home that we'd steadily been making our way toward. I wanted to just run with him that way, to see the dome at least, but what did the game offer me? (paraphrased) "What will you say?" (1) "We have to follow that ship!" (2) "We have to get back!" (...) basically, the same answer twice, and not what I wanted to do for my friend in that moment. Ugh, so frustrating.

Anyway, unrelated, but just because I haven't commented in this thread yet, this OP has done the best job of summarizing my opinions on the failings of this expansion from a narrative point of view. Thank you, and everyone else who has added to it in the subsequent replies, for your insights. Always nice to know when you're not the only one wondering what in the seven hells happened in the writing room this go around.

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Originally Posted by AureliaF

Snipped your post down a little bit but I couldn't agree more. I have also suffered major loss and grief in my life, and the "handwave" attitude as you call it was just insufferable during that final map watching Erenville feel tortured by his grief. As someone who had to deal with the loss of a sister, and both parents before 30 essentially on my own, I was desperate, ugh, half dying for the writers to have given us a chance to say something to him about it. Anything. Even if it was as simple as to tell him he's not alone in this.

This is unpopular and I know it, but I actually really enjoyed the Erenville + WoL side adventure into Xak Tural after the ceremony. The moment that explosion/tremor happened, and the dome appeared, I immediately thought of Erenville's mom and his home that we'd steadily been making our way toward. I wanted to just run with him that way, to see the dome at least, but what did the game offer me? (paraphrased) "What will you say?" (1) "We have to follow that ship!" (2) "We have to get back!" (...) basically, the same answer twice, and not what I wanted to do for my friend in that moment. Ugh, so frustrating.

Anyway, unrelated, but just because I haven't commented in this thread yet, this OP has done the best job of summarizing my opinions on the failings of this expansion from a narrative point of view. Thank you, and everyone else who has added to it in the subsequent replies, for your insights. Always nice to know when you're not the only one wondering what in the seven hells happened in the writing room this go around.

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Especially awful when your character is clearly looking at people looking sad and no one else is noticing and then you just don't acknowledge it again. I laughed at us getting the leather daddy gear right before a sad character moment so I'm just in the background looking like I'm about to go to a fetish club while people are openly weeping.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

I actually hadn't heard of this variation but boy does it fit her to an absolute tee



That scene really irked me for not only how contrived the whole damn setup is with her father but how our character just awkwardly hangs in the background. They're very clearly attempting to portray us as the mentor allowing their pupil to prove themselves except... we don't actually do any mentoring. Which still baffles me why they didn't include even some throwaway scenes of precisely that. It genuinely feels like the writer was so in love with Wuk Lamat they didn't dare want to take the limelight away from her.

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I've honestly wondered if she is either a higher up's favorite, something decided upon by committee, or a writer self-insert.

I actually liked her in the first half. I liked being the mentor (for all the flaws that had) in the first half. I did not like her overshadowing Scions and others like Erenville in the second half when that should have been our time with them so their stories could be told properly. So they shoved her into things so much that I don't ever want to even hear her name again in the story.

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Originally Posted by AureliaF

Snipped for character limit

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I wanted to add on to this myself as someone who has also experienced loss and how insultingly poorly it was handled in the final zone. Erenville is going through HELL and no one around him, including his abomination AI mother, seem to notice or care. I wrote something similar to some friends on discord that I'm going to rephrase here:

Personal pet peeve about theming and something that came up repeatedly in Dawntrail that irked me due to very personal reasons--the whole "the dead live on in our memories, so don't be sad, they live on with you now!" thing. Because as someone who has experienced a traumatic loss and had people repeatedly telling me things like in the wake of it, it's a fucking lie. No, they don't. They're dead and gone, and what memories you have feel like like wisps of smoke. They are nothing. It's one of many similar empty platitudes given more to assuage the feelings of discomfort of the person saying it rather than the person mourning. I got told a lot of shitty "comforting" things in the wake of my father's sudden and tragic death, and that was one of them. Hell, I was once told that my sobbing in the morgue was making other people in the area uncomfortable. It was one of the most hurtful and insulting things to have been told in my life. And it felt like that was how Erenville was being treated by the writers and the other characters. "Well, see, you being upset about your dead mom is kind of a bummer and we don't have the time or artistic knowledge or talent to grapple with that topic, so cheer up buddy! Get on the capybara with your ghost mom!"

I thought this theme was handled okay in the giant's society in Uroqopacha, because there it still seemed like more of a "respect for the dead, respect and reverence for those who came before us" thing, which I can vibe with. I understand from a storytelling standpoint how that is meant then to clash with the people of Solution 9 forgetting the dead, thus making them metaphorically even more dead in the eyes of many. Sure they get to "live" (not really, they're just reconstructed memories given aether) in the data cloud, but they are forgotten by the living! They never dug into that at all, ugh!! Anyway, they bring back the whole "they live on in our memories!" thing a bunch at the end zone and it made me so angry. It feels like whoever wrote that part has never experienced the loss of a loved one in that way, whereas the writing of ShB and EW definitely felt far more real and relatable when it touched on the themes of grief and loss.

I began to like wuk lamat by the end of the third zone, when she became leader of tuliyolal alongside her brother, but mostly because I thought "yes, finally, you're done, now goodbye and enjoy your city while I venture forth with Erenville"

If things weren't very good before, it all went even further downhill. Shaaloani is shit - it is what Thanalan could've been if they had today's technology/experience back then, nothing new whatsoever just a whole map of nothingness, on top of that godawful wild west aesthethic. The first part of the main story quest, the bracelet, felt 100% filler with no sustenance. It only gets slightly interesting when we try to fix the cerulean train, mostly because we are remembered of the trolley in shadowbringers - this was a nice touch to add.

Why did we have to waste half of Shaaloani's story chasing around a bracelet? Why bring Wuk Lamat again? This was the perfect opportunity to bring Koana with us so that he could prove to everyone else that he's not a bore without feelings, he'd go there and venture forth with us. There's even a Miqote tribe in Shaaloani, we could've had a small side story with them and Koana, since he confesses more than once during the first party of MSQ that he resents being born into a nomadic tribe and abandoned along the way. We could have had character growth, with him working with other nomadic Miqote in order to overcome his resentment of his birthparents. But not, we waste time planting dung bombs on people, waste our time running around after a bracelet and solving a stupid detective "mistery". Shaaloani is by far the lowest I've experienced in FFXIV, and I've been around since we were guiding Yugiri to Mor Dhona in 2.1.

Then we reach Heritage Found. If Shaaloani is Thanalan could have been, this map is a 100% revamp of Northern Thanalan, same aesthethics and the whole blue/purple vibe, only now we are friends with the Garleans (Alexandrians). It's beyond disappointing. The only positive so far has been Solution Nine, which is a really nice map, it has a vibe that reminds me of the main hub area of phantasy star online 2

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Originally Posted by CuteBucket

*snip*

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I agree. The decision to couple the erasure of everyone's parents with a trip to the themepark was tonal whiplash. For five minutes you were supposed to be super sad cause everyone's mom is being deleted, and then it was okay, everyone off to the next ride! I couldn't believe what I was experiencing. I had to wonder if a feeling, thinking person wrote this or was it written by AI. Because no, that's now how humans work. I'd be working on a way to save my mom's memories, not eating ice cream and visiting the waterpark. Even if they are just being released back into the aetherial sea, they are on another shard, his mom isn't even in the aetherial sea he'll end up in. They should have at least been looking for a way to take their families home with them. This insistence that we shouldn't be bothered by death for more than six seconds is just weird and I wish they'd stop insisting it.

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Originally Posted by AureliaF

This is unpopular and I know it, but I actually really enjoyed the Erenville + WoL side adventure into Xak Tural after the ceremony. The moment that explosion/tremor happened, and the dome appeared, I immediately thought of Erenville's mom and his home that we'd steadily been making our way toward. I wanted to just run with him that way, to see the dome at least, but what did the game offer me? (paraphrased) "What will you say?" (1) "We have to follow that ship!" (2) "We have to get back!" (...) basically, the same answer twice, and not what I wanted to do for my friend in that moment. Ugh, so frustrating.

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I loved the Erenville field trip, too. I can understand the reaction being "we need to get back", though. The city was clearly about to become a battle zone and, if nothing else, the twins were there.

What I want to know is, why wasn't sticking our finger to our ear to use our linkpearl to warn them the first thing we did? The writers seemingly just forgot the linkpearls were a thing, even though we made sure the whole group had them back at level 90.And we know we didn't use it of screen cus a character (I think Alphinaud?) says that the ships struck without warning. I'm not saying us sending off a warning would have done much. It would have likely only given our friends a minute or two advantage. But it's a little detail whose omission speaks to the unpolished nature of some of this writing.

Hi, haven't read all of this yet because I'm an adhd addled goblin- but I very much agree with everything I've read so far. Because I haven't read it yet completely, I'm sorry If I repeat any points.

One of my biggest problems with the plot is how is feels like it utilizes the characters as tools for the narrative, instead of making the characters PART of the narrative. Things happen in the plot because they need to happen, screw if the characters should know better.

Honestly, I RP a lot- not within FFXIV's world, but in a personally crafted world. I see pitfalls in the writing for my RPs that I see in this expansion. I see a narrative that's been crafted after the world building, letting the world building fill in the gaps for side characters rather than giving the side characters true personalities. It's very much easy to write a character with the illusion of a personality, but they're just a cliche wrapped around world building. (Example: Golbez)

Another thing I see is rushing for plot beats, and therefore making shallow work of the character's revelations and growth. They want these characters to have a huge journey, but are impatient for that character's journey- and therefore, they rush things where they shouldn't rush, and lull in the story where they shouldn't lull.

These things should not be problems for a professional writing TEAM. A team with multiple people. These are the problems of an amateur with no oversight or talk from teammates.

The things I did like were the last zone. I liked Erenville. I didn't like how we, the character, treated Erenville despite knowing he was suffering. I liked what the narrative was presenting.

But it was spoonfed. We weren't given time to dwell on the mysteries. We didn't get time to theory build. It was a gallop through the plot.

We didn't get a character with meaningful trials for their growth. They had things given to them step by step, and even though I love her- wuk lamat should have faced more trials. She should have had... a lot more growth as a person. Should have had more faults in her character. Should have had just... more.

I enjoyed the expansion, but it could have been better. A lot better. The horror of solution 9 should have lasted longer. The scions shouldn't have been accessories they should have been fun.

The actors for the characters played their hearts out though, and I feel like they did stellar. It's the writing that lacked.

And now to never post again. Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in agreement with a lot of what you said.

P.S.: The WOL was written more like a WoW Player character in this expansion than ever before. This is not a good thing.

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Originally Posted by Bunyon

That gondola ride was the first time I felt like we were about to start exploring some interesting concepts of what exactly is life for the Endless, whether they are alive and if they should continue to live, and address the weight of shutting them down. But I feel like we just hand waved all of that away with a "Well, we're on a time limit and also nobody really seems bothered to be erased?"

The only thing that made me feel actually bad was how Erenville was treated. He saw his whole past life get obliterated in seconds without knowing exactly what happened, and then was fooled into thinking his mom was okay, only to then being told she only exists in this weird memory state and he gets dragged around the last zone knowing they have to pull the plug, and it's just... handled so weird and rushed.

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Gods, This is my problem too. Erenville was done so dirty in this expac. Look I know the way they wrote the guy in this expac is that he is grumpy and standoffish but, with the way he talks about his mom whenever shes brought up, it might be reserved but there fondness respect and unending love there. It's obvious he has gripes with her style of parenting ofcourse but there is love there.

When we were going through his part in the story and he was going through his grief of letting his mom go, I was expecting a Magnus from ShB levels of nuanced take on grief for him but we didnt get that here. Yes he was sad but it doesn't fit with how a grief this large and all encompassing should be handled. Imagine one moment your mom is fine, you can finally see her after years of being gone. You know she's hale and whole and then the next you are told she only has 3 hours left to live. That kind of grief is like a sucker punch to the gut, It's ugly, it consumes you, it can put a man on their knees, it can cause friction or a dilemma with your companions because you are GRIEVING and in DENIAL. We didnt get that here. We didnt get friction, we didnt get ANYTHING substantial.

I feel like they stole something from Erenville in this expansion bros...

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Originally Posted by Mnemy

I feel like they stole something from Erenville in this expansion bros...

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Honestly, I feel like they kinda stole it from Krile too. She learns she's from another shard halfway through the expansion (and she's excited about it) and absolutely nothing significant involving her happens until the very end, where we meet and resolve her parents in MAYBE one hour. They really should have introduced them earlier in some regard, or at least some information on them or anything, like when they analyze the earring. It just didn't work for me at all.

I understand that the first half of the expansion was world building but they wasted way too much time that would have been better served in character development in the second half.

Thank you for posting this. I feel like in-depth criticism was always needed ever since finishing this MSQ, which only left a lingering negative aftertaste for the most part due to how poorly it was executed regardless of the plot it was given, and I'm glad people are contributing to the discussion in a level-headed manner.

It feels particularly frustrating when voicing complaints or criticism regarding this expansion as every single response to it has only been met with..."toxic positivity"?, from the people who blindly defends it ignoring all the flaws it had that was particularly frustrating for the people who cares about it.

Seems like everything is just met with "you just skipped the cutscenes didn't you?", "you just hate Wuk Lamat.", "you just don't care at all about Tural.", "not everything has to be about you." And it's just tiring and shouldn't be the way to go.

I think the part that jumps out to me the most in Dawntrail as emblematic of where its writing falls short is in the Vrtra cutscene.

We leave Koana behind to deal with the spaceship threat, with the implication that his technological expertise will see him devise some sort of defense for the city. Instead, we get a literal draco ex machina with no prior buildup—only an aside after the fact that Alphinaud and Estinien took care of negotiations.

There are a couple of ways this could be fixed if the writers were set on the Vrtra route. Show us Koana using his newfound people skills to negotiate an alliance. Have Alphinaud mention in a cutscene he'll take Estinien and go appeal to Vrtra for aid. Give us a "Meanwhile, in Thavnair..." Or have Wuk Lamat use her people skills while Koana comes with us to Solution 9.

The way that it stands now, it feels like there was no sufficient buildup for what is meant to be a cool payoff. The writers instead dangle the nostalgia keys of "You liked Endwalker, right?" in the player's face to make up for the narrative shortcoming. A lot of the plot is the same—not enough buildup for a resolution that feels unsatisfying and unearned.

I also despise how poorly Krile was handled in what was meant to be an expansion for her. She begins and ends Dawntrail exactly the same—she experiences no growth over the course of the story, and the writers drop shiny backstory on her in place of actual development. She has no emotional reaction to the revelation that she's from another shard, at least not one we get to see, because by the time the player learns about this, she was told all of this offscreen. (Again, the writers telling and not showing.) She's unnaturally cheerful after meeting the AI facsimiles of her parents. And, in a story that really loved to emphasise the importance of found family, not once is any mention made of how she and G'raha were raised together. Hell, she introduces him to her parents as a colleague before turning around and addressing him as Raha. It's like the writers forgot why she's allowed to drop the prefix with him and it feels bizarre.

The Scions were paid so little attention to by the narrative in the moments when it really would have been warranted. It was nice to see them take a backseat for a while, but the moment a starwide threat showed up, we should have been calling in all hands on deck. Instead, we got an aside from talking to G'raha between quest objectives: "I have a mind to inform Thancred and Urianger as well, but they may have already left Tural."

[deep inhale]

There is so little sense of urgency in spite of the looming threat. Why weren't we at least attempting to call Thancred and Urianger? Why didn't we mention Estinien was in the area? Instead, the Scions just wander in, stage left.

There was just so little care for the story that came before while using it as a crutch to tell the story that's coming now.

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Originally Posted by Poiyomin

It feels particularly frustrating when voicing complaints or criticism regarding this expansion as every single response to it has only been met with..."toxic positivity"?, from the people who blindly defends it ignoring all the flaws it had that was particularly frustrating for the people who cares about it.

Seems like everything is just met with "you just skipped the cutscenes didn't you?", "you just hate Wuk Lamat.", "you just don't care at all about Tural.", "not everything has to be about you." And it's just tiring and shouldn't be the way to go.

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The toxic positivity has definitely been an issue for the past few years in this community. Some people seem to take any type of criticism against this game as a personal attack against themselves and will lash out to defend the game against any kind of valuable negative feedback (and negative feedback is very useful and needed for the development team in order to improve as long as it is constructive). I've been playing this game since ARR was released, and I've never felt this disappointed in the MSQ and journey until DT (even SB, despite its flaws, had me very satisfied by the end of the MSQ).

I have an educational background in a creative field that involved media analysis and screenplay writing, and even won first place in a short story competition for an original script I wrote -- I don't call myself an expert writer, but I think I can hold my own when it comes to analyzing storytelling and being able to understand the elements that make a story good from those that are bad. Being told that my criticism is only because I "skipped the cutscenes..didn't like Wuk Lamat...don't have media literacy skills" -- there are too many logical fallacies being thrown about as a deflection against any constructive criticism received, and this is extremely dangerous for this game's future if we are to have any hope that the upcoming narrative will improve in its execution to tell a compelling story at the caliber that was set in previous expacs.

I would love to be a fly on the wall of the development team's DT post-mortem.

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Originally Posted by Iximaz

character limit.

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Yeah. There was basically no reaction to Krile being from another shard just an “oh cool whatever”.
Even her musing about why Y’sthola didn’t recognize this while answered was just an offside mumbling of her with Y’sthola right next to her.

Thancred and Urianger were just there in the end because “hey look those guys are still here and fight but we don’t show that and also because of the second trial”.
Anyone remember ARR where Thancred was fighting while Y’sthola was casting flow? That was in ARR and DT has nothing in this regard.
No magic bubble, Scions just standing there.
Vitra was also stupid.
You tell me that big dragon and his brood traveled half the world in what, two days?
How convenient.

The most stupid thing though was the finale right before the final zone.
The scions almost all standing back and not coming with us. Sure you guys. You had to protect the gate that was utterly hidden with 4 mages and 2 close combat fighters. Hmhm sure.
There wasn‘t even a scene showing them fighting not anything even implying they had trouble. Guess they just sit back playing cards the entire time, at least Estenien and Thancred.

The more you look the more plot holes shine through.
For me it seems they really wrote themselfs into a trap with the trust system.
They have to include the scions even though they can‘t utilize them.
Why not give us other NPC’s as trust then?
Why not have Bagool JaJa come with us or Koana as well? Heck even introducing a captain of the Guard or something would have worked or even better, don’t kill off Robo-Otis and have him come with us as trust.
Would have also been an interesting meeting with him and his endless version.

The characters are there, the ideas basically write themself.

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Originally Posted by Iximaz

(...)in a story that really loved to emphasise the importance of found family, not once is any mention made of how she and G'raha were raised together. Hell, she introduces him to her parents as a colleague before turning around and addressing him as Raha.
(...)

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As a huge G'raha fan, I was heartbroken at how they handled him and his relationship with Krile - so much so that I couldn't even enjoy the one supposed-to-be-good gondola scene. I always felt like they should show more about their friendship and I was expecting this to be the opportunity for that...BUT NO.
Nevermind how G'raha just isn't acting in character at all, they treat eachother like strangers.
I have screenshots of every single line he said. They're either out of character comments about what is happening, just obvious repetitive factual comments about what they literally just talked about, or just a bunch of nothings like "Let's wait and see", "We will be here for Erenville" - NO ONE WAS THERE FOR ERENVILLE...

Krile's indifference already started when they get to Tural.
https://i.postimg.cc/fWBCpQTT/image.png
https://i.postimg.cc/k5qt7DTr/image.png
"Helpers", "comrades". But she is just introducing them, right? Then after the serious dialogue, we will get some friendly conversation between them, right? Right??? Maybe she will thank him for taking care of the Students for her sake (even though that was completely unnecessary!!!)...right?
Nope. They don't speak directly again for a long time. No one does, they're all just business. G'raha just wants to be useful...what, did we expect him to be excited to be going on a new adventure?!
https://i.postimg.cc/K8k519SP/image.png

And then in Living Memory...

https://i.postimg.cc/P5WccFLX/image.png
"My COLLEAGUE". I get introducing his full name, but couldn't you say also...FRIEND?

https://i.postimg.cc/SQHKdJF6/image.png
But HE said they're friends, so they're friends. We don't have to SEE IT...no need to show when you're telling.
This is when he offers to grab the tasteless icre cream...which...that ice cream scene. I hate it. It's PAINFUL to watch, incredibly out of character. It's like they were forcing a stupid situation to have him eat on screen, because they don't understand WHY people liked to see him eat happily - it's NOT 'haha catboy eat food', by the way. How come G'raha, the kind, close friend that just knows exactly what to say to comfort people, wouldn't SAY anything to get a conversation started? Maybe tell stories about them?
Huge missed opportunity to have a heartfelt dialogue that showed G'raha's empathy and care for his friend, hear some stories from Krile and have a nice bonding moments with her parents before we get sent to the lala lore museum that exists for some reason.

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Originally Posted by chizLemons

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Freaking THANK YOU. After he stayed behind to help with the Students of Baldesion (after we promised to take him on adventures!), I was really hoping we would get some payoff about how much it meant to Krile that he was willing to stay in order to give her the opportunity to learn more about her grandfather, and we would get to see more of their relationship fleshed out. Instead, it's so underutilised that they behave like mildly good acquaintances at best.