How would you improve Dawntrail's writing?

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Originally Posted by MediocreIndigo

I have three questions that I'd like to see other players answer:

1. What would you have done differently with Dawntrail's writing and how would you have done it?

2. What are some suggestions you have for how the MSQ could go in the future?

3. What are some parts of the writing that you actually think are good and would like to see more of?

Please try to make suggestions that are actually feasible rather than things like "remove x character."

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So this is a fun challenge. For these suggestions I'm going to follow a few rules for myself: The overall plot beats need to be the same. Major characters cannot be removed. All major arcs need to happen. That said...

1a) INTRODUCE SPHENE EARLIER. This may be a weird thing to start with, but considering that she was meant to be a twist villain, and her bond with Wuk Lamat was meant to "pay off" in Queen Eternal (you know what scene I'm talking about), Sphene's relationships with us really needed to stew for a time. A lot of the elements that fall flat in the second half really suffer from not enough to from things to process and build up to an impactful moment. It's the less spoken issue with DT's pacing that's seriously damning. Sphene being present earlier could also help explore the same thing about Wuk Lamat's love of peace in a show not tell way, its virtues and its faults, rather than regurgitating the same plot point again.

1b) For God's sake, flesh out Zoraal Ja. The guy comes off as written by an edgy teenager with how much he shits on past foes and has cryptic, twisted views on peace, but it didn't need to be that way. All that really separates really bad writing here from actually interesting writing is some goddamn context. Why does he feel this way? What happened to lead him down this path? Real, satisfying answers, not just a half baked at the last minute identity crisis that doesn't answer half the questions, and none of them in a satisfying way. DT wrote him like the friggin' Jailer. Good writing could have stopped that.

Hell, pairing us with him instead of Koana for the taco making competition could have been a good way to do this, rather than having the black and white "good guy team, bad guy team".

1c) More emphasis on Krile's legacy. Similar to point A. Krile has a very impactful plot reveal for her character, but a large part of the impact is lost because there's so little setup or attention paid to Krile in favor of yet another revelation that Wuk Lamat likes peace.

Part 2 because eff character limits:

1d) The Trials of Succession end earlier. Way earlier. You can honestly cut the first two zones in the story without much of a care--all the important stuff happens with the Yok Hoy, the not-Hrothgar, and the Mamool Ja. The final fight with Bakool Ja Ja should be the culmination of the rite of succession (probably him trying to steal the stones after Wuk Lamat is about to open the City of Gold or somesuch). This leads to a few changes. One--we see Bakool's parentage earlier. That's given time to stew. Then we have the defeat, and possibly even the trauma. But he doesn't really help until Alexandria's army attacks. And Bakool Ja Ja is motivated by a want to stop more senseless death. You'd need to do a little more with it, but having the massacre at Tulliolol (sp) compounding his guilt I think puts a little more oomph into his redemption as a concept.


1e) Wuk Lamat needs to grow into the story, not have the story grow around her. Her repeating herself over and over again is exhausting.

1f) The defense against Alexandria should have been a duty. Yes this is a story choice. Having the entire invasion force be handwaved off by a cutscene weakens the emotional impact, and makes the Alexandrians look like chumps. You don't want your villains coming off as non-threatening.

2) A lot of the damage is done regarding Krile's story. Bakool Ja JA is regulated largely to the Alliance raid. What the devs really need to do is stop trying the same thing over and over again with Wuk Lamat. If they want to sell her as a good character, they need her to have a compelling conflict. She needs to actually mature as a character. This isn't rocket science. Also for god's sake, the characters need more nuance. You know, like people.

3. The worldbuilding is actually really solid. Whether it's the expansive land and lore of Tural, or the meta lore we get about souls, the regulators, and the implications of them, reincarnation, memories, and all that. The writers had a lot of snafus in the MSQ, but when it came to actual lore they cooked.

For the throne competition I'd keep everything pretty much the same except. I'd put mission points that reveal that Gulool Ja Ja isn't as great as Wuk Lamat keeps saying and that the apple really didn't fall far from the tree in terms of his real child. Of course Wuk Lamat doesn't believe any of it so it's info that there for the scions. When the fight between the WoL and Gulool Ja Ja happens the player will know that title of 2nd and 3rd promise is just another name for political prisoner and will be given the option to say that we know and don't like it giving a whole different tone to the fight. Especially the shift when Wuk Lamat bursts in. She knows we have issue with Gulool Ja Ja taking her from her father and denying her tribe its rightful chief. Thus ends in a draw forever unresolved as you will be pulled aside by Thancred and told that no matter how much we hate it there's nothing we can do right now. After that deal with knowing about the whole eugenics thing with someone in your cabin. Next day crowning and after party then across the big bridge to more adventure. Zoraal Ja still makes the deal with Sphene. Our adventures on the otherside of bridge remain much the same except some of the role quest come into play at minimum if they are done for that area will allow you skip several fetch quests do to having someone speak for you.

The lightning dome appears and cannon occurs until Sphene "leave us on our own" after being told about some people that refused the head computer (will be calling it head comp from now on) to the point of destroying a POI that's causing all the malfunctioning bots that have been causing trouble all around the zone. We investigate to try and shut down the bots witch leads us into contact with the rebellion while separated from Wuk Lamat who tell us we can't Sphene that the head comps do more we think at witch point they flee at the sound of Wuk Lamat approach. Return to Alexandria get more Sphene time. Wonder Alexandria. Find out that Sphene is controlling everyone with a head comp and even using people to see and hear from everyone all time from a rebellion agent who gives you your next plot point. Since Wuk Lamat has Sphene's attention we are free to explore a facility pointed out by the rebellion agent inside are the files of Zoraal Ja that explain how over the years he'd come too regret his choice of opening the gate and selling his soul. That while he sold soul he took her power, her armies were his alone to command and inso doing keep her from slaughtering the source. You tell Wuk Lamat who doesn't believe you saying you are trying to spare cause he killed her father who we had a problem with. The rest of Wuk Lamats revenge plays out Sphene freaks out and decides reset her system admin rights giving her control of the military.

Living Memory much the same except a bit more getting to know these people you're being forced to genocide as part of Sphene's plan to weaken Wuk Lamat's will for doing what needed to be done. It gets done you fight Sphene Wuk Lamat busts into the fight and tries to use the talk no jutsu on Sphene who laughs at her revealing that she was never Queen Sphene as the real Queen Sphene died before the experiment was completed and that she is literally just the memory every Alexandrian had of Queen Sphene that was just trying to be nice about it because that's how people remember her. Wuk Lamat goes down to emotional damage and the fight restarts and you win and you do the genocide.

Then maybe Wuk Lamat goes oh crap I killed all those people gotta fix it. The only way I can think that would do that would be to fix the 9th by maybe restarting the Iifa tree. Had to two part was too long

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Originally Posted by MediocreIndigo

1. What would you have done differently with Dawntrail's writing and how would you have done it?

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My main issue is how the characters are written, and that's going to come down to the skillset of the writers. If I were Yoshi P I'd make them do more writing on the side so I could better evaluate who should be getting the big assignments.

But if you were thinking more along the lines of taking a red marker to the plot outline, I suppose I'd start by having everyone, including Wuk Lamat, back Koana in the first half. Let her be an unburdened, fun-loving side character in Koana's quest. Then have him die in Zoraal Ja's attack and ask Wuk Lamat to take over as Dawnservant. Make her grapple with things like the burden of leadership and having to fight her brother during the second half, and do it on-camera so the player can follow her journey.

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Originally Posted by MediocreIndigo

2. What are some suggestions you have for how the MSQ could go in the future?

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Let's take the Azem hourglass macguffin and Doctor Who it up. I want to go out into the greater universe to see a bunch of wild new places and encounter some new baddies. Etheirys just feels too small for the Warrior of Light now.

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Originally Posted by MediocreIndigo

3. What are some parts of the writing that you actually think are good and would like to see more of?

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I did enjoy Erenville in Dawntrail. Most of his dialogue is laden with his personality, that mild snark laced with genuine, if reluctant, helpfulness. If we're looking to replace the scions as regulars, even temporarily, I think he's won a spot.

Also, while I have some issues with Shaaloani overall, I ultimately found the low-stakes bottle episode enjoyable and the juxtaposition of it against the foreshadowing of Zoraal Ja messing with the portal to Living Memory got me hyped up to see what was coming.

There was a reddit thread a while back that basically asked this same question, where my answer was essentially that I think the main issues with DT's writing are pacing + cohesion between the two halves. To just copy-paste it:

Wuk's ascension to the throne would be finished a bit after 93. Make Valigarmanda's escape into a much bigger deal, which rather than just being like "oh boy! You defeated the embodiment of wild disaster that even your father couldn't beat that's tormented us for centuries! You get a stamp for your card!" serves as her feat that marks her as a worthy ruler. Wuk becoming Dawnservant isn't a bad story in concept, but it was dragged out way too much, with a lot of boring fluff. Remove some of the time of her getting to know the locals to remove excess padding, she should be familiar with them already and this should really just be a short intro to them for the player, for them showing up later. Reduce the number of contests and make them feel more ruler-y, rather than just lessons about people she should've already known to some extent.

The 97+ stuff after Vanguard is largely fine and doesn't need to be touched.

The question then is what to do with everything between Valigarmanda+her ascension, up to Vanguard (so, 93-97). For this, I would say rework the part that just goes "dome shows up, robots pop out, blow up Tuliyollal, leave" to make it longer. Have the dome itself show up early on, but have the connection not be complete yet. Instead, we have to go around investigating weird occurrences, like surges of lightning aether or something messing with the ecosystem, or something. For example, the Hanu Hanu plot of plants withering due to lack of aether + their festival could be reworked, from instead of being something done during Wuk's contest, to instead be something that we learn about during this portion, and instead of "the plants don't have enough aether", it's "this weird lightning is coming from somewhere, we have to do the festival to restore balance". We could also have incidents with minor amounts of robot scouts coming through/etc, with breadcrumbs teasing more and more weird sci fi stuff until Vanguard gets completed and they burst out of the bubble + the attack on Tuliyollal at the finale of the section, which leads to us going into the train bomb section.

The biggest thing is the whole Rite of Succession.

There is really no real justification on why the WoL goes along with it. The most justification we're given is that Zoraal wants to start a losing war with Eorzea if he wins it.

Without the whole rite, wuk also loses her point in the story, which not the main intention but definitely not a negative.


But generally, it should be more of the WoL and friends going through the lands to find information on the Golden City they're there to find and explore, and helping people along the way with whatever troubles they have and could work in the game's past story into it as Tural seemed to completely avoid the Final Days... Probably by the power of tacos... But alongside with the other troubles they have, could somewhat have helped with recovering and rebuilding.

Overall, just going around the place and helping people, which in typical RPG story form somehow leads to hints about the Golden City until you eventually actually reach it.

Reverse the thinking, trick us into thinking we were going to have a vacation then from the boat crash the ship then have the character teleport into Alexandria somehow and have the plot go mostly to Alexandria's blight where the character is solo without the Scions and the expansion basically figuring out where we ended and how to get back. Then we find Krile somewhere and focus with her on where we are and how the place we are on revolves around her.

Wuk I feel could have become an instigator, a character made to be a plot device maybe a resident of Alexandria or a source of power brought about Alexandria in the wish to be free. Tural still existing, but she herself a plot twist having nothing to do with Tural. The Scions could have ended in Tural washed up along its shore where...more dark elements could have been introduced maybe the people there have regressed into how they think, idk.

The Alexandrians don't seem lile functioning people in general. Much like the writing, the citizens seem like juveniles who are swayed by the theme/plot instead of being functioning characters.

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Originally Posted by MediocreIndigo

I think it's safe to say that a lot of people are disappointed with Dawntrail's writing, myself included. Something I've noticed about how people tend to criticize the expansion on here is that a lot of it seems focused on stating what went wrong. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, as identifying the problem is an important step in criticism, but something that I think would benefit discussion is if we talked more about how the writing could be improved. To try to generate this, I have three questions that I'd like to see other players answer:

1. What would you have done differently with Dawntrail's writing and how would you have done it?

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Miyazaki said that a problem with the Japanese animation industry is that a lot of anime is written about people, by people that don't like people, for people that don't like people, so the characters are off-putting to your average person rather than otaku seeking an ideal. Dawntrail seems like it suffers from this. The characters just aren't believable at all. The bones are there for interesting characters, but what's built around it is so twisted that you just can't believe that it's real. There's nothing wrong with Wuk Lamat's concept as a character, but the way everyone fawns over her while she comes off as an ignorant, incompetent shut-in that did nothing but run laps around the palace for 19 years and never developed a sense of true empathy as a result is just too shocking to overcome. Bakool Ja Ja's ballerina twirl of a heel-face turn really distracts from what could be an interesting anti-hero or villain. Making him a good guy and having someone as hot-blooded as Alisaie look the other way after looking at a few urns is so unbelievable after the stunt he pulled with Valigarmanda. I frankly don't think the current writer is well-versed enough in interpersonal interaction to write anything more than side quests and should probably have stayed in his lane.

As for what I would have done differently, I would have made Wuk Lamat seem more like a woman of the people, have existing interpersonal connections with people she met in other provinces. She would have stayed genki and naive, since it is possible to work with that, but charging headfirst into problems ignorantly should provide setbacks with a negative payoff. Alphinaud's dumb move with forming the Crystal Braves and how his mistake had an impact for two entire expansions and got a Scion killed is a good example, though I wouldn't be so harsh as to let that happen. I would have put more learning experiences for her in place, and made it so the Scions around her and the WoL would have played more of a mentor role rather than acting like muscle.

Wad up dynamis and throw it away. If they keep using dynamis as it was in DT, it's going to become FFXIV's midichlorians. If Wuk can't solo Bakool Ja Ja, she just can't, or at least work with the berserker aspects of WAR so her getting stomped at the Hanuhanu town was because she just wasn't mad enough to stop feeling any self-doubt. Proofread interactions better, maybe have whatever employees have some sort of theater training actually play out the scenes to see if they seem stilted or out of character. If Wuk Lamat is going to be empathetic, it should be about her legitimately hurting for other people, sharing their joy, sharing their pain, not just saying the right thing and going "everyone's special" like Barney and skipping along her way while everyone applauds the strong and brave wunderkind.

Solution Nine is a cool zone but its presence really detracts from the rest of the continent. It works in that it really did smash into the storyline and irreparably change it. I would have tried to do what I could to bump it for 7.1 and make fighting Zoraal Ja after he usurps the throne while you're occupied in the City of Gold the end boss. Also change the City of Gold so it's not an extension of Solution Nine (which makes absolutely no sense from a narrative standpoint).

Also, arcs for Krile and Erenville would be added in rather than just being afterthoughts. They'd get closure that wasn't so heavy-handed.

I could go on. The writing is that odd and juvenile. The entire expac seems like it was lifted from Fanfiction.net.

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2. What are some suggestions you have for how the MSQ could go in the future?

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Substance over style and quality over quantity. I feel like they bit off more than they could chew with DT and a lot of the talent getting promoted really didn't help matters much, either. Develop the lore more and understand that low-stakes doesn't mean playing scavenger hunt in a utopia. Utopias are boring if you're an adventurer, after all. Make it so places have more than superficial problems. Show their impacts, give your new main character a chance to actually exercise that empathy you're trying to build up (but the writers failed to do so since they apparently don't know how truly empathetic people behave).

And if you're going to do a zone based on the American West, could you at least pretend you've done more than watched a couple John Wayne movies? Shaaolani was so half-baked it's unbelievable.

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3. What are some parts of the writing that you actually think are good and would like to see more of?

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How Solution Nine explored the drawbacks of utopian thinking and how the avoidance of pain taken to its extremes would lead to cruelties in its own right, and making the augmented seem so divorced from a very human experience that others couldn't relate to them was actually really well-done. It made what you were doing in Living Memory feel like you were filling in an uncanny valley that shouldn't exist. I still don't like how disjointed its presence makes the expac feel, though.

Also, I know he's robo-Steiner, but Otis was cool. More Otis, please, or at least let us find his brother powered down somewhere, or have Cid get a hold of his disabled frame and fix him into a new Scion.