Wow, Wuk Lamat is really single-handedly ruining the DT story...

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Originally Posted by Coratanni

Zenos never bothered me like that. He made for an interesting reflection on the Warrior of Light. I was sad when he died to be honest. Would have been a nice redemption arc for him had he lived after our duel.

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I was happy then because it meant the writers couldn't butcher his character. Now I am extra happy.

Between Wuk Lamat I see some parallels with Ysayle. Both were idealists who believed strongly in fighting for their own people.
What HW did very well is how Hreasvelgr totally shredded Ysayle's imagined utopian vision of how Dragons and People can live together.
That scene where he told her how stupid she was... it was shiver-inducing; it was both terrible and wonderful to watch.

Wuk Lamat should have had some similar type of awakening where her "childish idealism" is crushed / pulverized into smithereens... and then through some incredibly arduous transformation she can be redeemed or something (like, going off screen for a while)
The way how her untested idealism goes unchallenged really weakened her impact as a character -- also leading to very little character development.

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Originally Posted by Ghost_of_Ebina

Between Wuk Lamat I see some parallels with Ysayle. Both were idealists who believed strongly in fighting for their own people.
What HW did very well is how Hreasvelgr totally shredded Ysayle's imagined utopian vision of how Dragons and People can live together.
That scene where he told her how stupid she was... it was shiver-inducing; it was both terrible and wonderful to watch.

Wuk Lamat should have had some similar type of awakening where her "childish idealism" is crushed / pulverized into smithereens... and then through some incredibly arduous transformation she can be redeemed or something (like, going off screen for a while)
The way how her untested idealism goes unchallenged really weakened her impact as a character -- also leading to very little character development.

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Wuk Lamat's probably the only idealist main character that didn't get her teeth kicked in by reality, which makes that aspect of the story stand out that much more.

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Originally Posted by Ghost_of_Ebina

Between Wuk Lamat I see some parallels with Ysayle. Both were idealists who believed strongly in fighting for their own people.
What HW did very well is how Hreasvelgr totally shredded Ysayle's imagined utopian vision of how Dragons and People can live together.
That scene where he told her how stupid she was... it was shiver-inducing; it was both terrible and wonderful to watch.

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The interesting thing about HW though is that Dragons and People CAN live together, but just not without fundamental changes to society to enable that; certainly the Ishgard of the past with their dark secrets and corruption couldn't accomplish it, but we're actually on that path now, post-dragonsong war. I think the important difference though is that an idealist is not a bad thing so long as they are realistic about what needs to be done to bring about that change. Aymeric is possibly my favorite idealist in the game. He had some pretty lofty ideals about radically altering Ishgardian society, but through some tumultuous ups and downs and his own experiences, he knew that in order to achieve that some pretty substantial work had to be done to get that goal started, and the effort needed to maintain that goal (hence why he's still practically chained to his desk to this day :( ). He was willing to roll up his sleeves and get to work with actual plans, not just simply hugging it out and eating tacos.

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Originally Posted by Rueby

I mean he did say it right in EW, he's our mirror. I liked him for his simplicity.

Because sadly from my personal experience in-game, I met alot of people who hate Zenos. My first 'friend circle' was so allergic to him they felt entitled to attack me as a person for my morality for being excited to see a "objectively badly written character" and to spoil the ending of SB for me when I was still in HW. I know he's a divisive character, I find that interesting about him, but from my experience I feel like loving him is an unpopular opinion and he constantly gets compared to Emet-Selch.

I kinda felt that maybe the story means alot to people that they feel strongly about such characters to be quite interesting but I'll forever be salty that people attacked me for looking forward to him and stripped me from the one thing I looked forward to....I just thought everyone hated him because that's what I personally experienced and saw, that people just want him to stay dead because it's a relief, he's that character you hate on I guess.

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Seconding all this! Zenos is my fav character after Ardbert, I think he's incredibly well-written and an excellent foil for the WOL but he gets shafted so often by fans (and sometimes the writers tbh, I was frustrated in the Endwalker patches partially because of this). He has so much more complexity than people give him credit for, and I hate seeing him get misrepresented as someone who "loves killing" when we have actual in-game dialogue proving that's not even his primary motive. Going from a character as interesting as him to the two-bit zero-dimension characters in Dawntrail was one of my biggest disappointments and it only made me miss him more, among many other great characters that were killed off.

There would've been more meat to Zenos if there would've been a... I don't know, GARLEMALD expansion where we'd get to look at the royal family, the nobles, the political turmoil, instead of ALL OF IT being done in the backround and them using ZEnos as a convenient "Oh ooops he destroyed Garlemald offscreen" button because they wanted to rush two expansions into one in Endwalker to rush for.... Dawntrail? (That didn't end up too well, though we got patches still coming.)

I didn't like Zenos, but I respected him after our first "final duel". He was an honest animal. But when they resurrected him, and worse yet, DIDNT DO ANYTHING with him for the longest time I really started hating him. He was eating screentime, doing nothing. He lingered around for far too long like a wet blanket, because I'm a 100% sure the writers had no idea what to do with him. THeeeen he barged into the last duel, and gave us a "devs talk to you" speech breaking the 4th wall. That wasn't ZEnos talking, that was the devs.

Don't get me wrong, he's cool, his english VA is amazing, but damn oh damn does he suck as a part of the story after Stormblood aside from anything than bringing the "cool".

Even the devs give you options to answer 10 different colours of "Go away" "I've had enough" in the speech options. That should be hint enough.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

What we saw was that Zenos had learned, in his own unique way, what it means to care for someone. His former demands of “I WILL have my contest!") changed to sincerely offering the WoL to share in the only form of happiness he understood. And he was finally able to see WoL as their own person. The way he referred to the WoL as “Adventurer” demonstrated that he understood there is a part of WoL that's difficult for them to express in the midst of all the heroics that were, more often than not, forced upon them. And we directly, and indirectly, gave him a purpose to live. It's what makes him an intriguing character.

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That's kinda what gripes me the most of the entirety of Dawntrail. Everything we learned was that we were going to be going back to our roots and be adventurers. Yet from 90 to 95 we're babysitting, at 95 in Shaaolani we get to adventure with Erenville (and handle feces. That bit was fantastic), and immediately go back to world-ending-problem and babysitting again.

Where is my actual Adventure, Dawntrail at best is the Wuk Lamat Adventure, not the Warrior of Light's adventure.
I wish we were with anyone but Wuk Lamat just to get her to realise she needed to grow, her 'entourage' was so god damn strong (even when butchered) there was no way she would've lost. She should've lost.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

There would've been more meat to Zenos if there would've been a... I don't know, GARLEMALD expansion where we'd get to look at the royal family, the nobles, the political turmoil, instead of ALL OF IT being done in the backround and them using ZEnos as a convenient "Oh ooops he destroyed Garlemald offscreen" button because they wanted to rush two expansions into one in Endwalker to rush for.... Dawntrail? (That didn't end up too well, though we got patches still coming.)

I didn't like Zenos, but I respected him after our first "final duel". He was an honest animal. But when they resurrected him, and worse yet, DIDNT DO ANYTHING with him for the longest time I really started hating him. He was eating screentime, doing nothing. He lingered around for far too long like a wet blanket, because I'm a 100% sure the writers had no idea what to do with him. THeeeen he barged into the last duel, and gave us a "devs talk to you" speech breaking the 4th wall. That wasn't ZEnos talking, that was the devs.

Don't get me wrong, he's cool, his english VA is amazing, but damn oh damn does he suck as a part of the story after Stormblood aside from anything than bringing the "cool".

Even the devs give you options to answer 10 different colours of "Go away" "I've had enough" in the speech options. That should be hint enough.

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My theory is that they rushed to end the current arc to free up all the talents that made FF14 great. Either because they themselves wanted to move on from FF14 (YoshiP, Koji, Ishikawa, ...) ,the company decided to move them to other projects, or they wanted to leave because they did not want to deal with outside influence (consulting companies) interfering with their work.
So they "solved" every mystery/threat that was left in this arc:
-Garmelmald killed off screen
-Omicron threat killed off screen
- Hydaelyn and Zodiark
- Zenos
- Ascians
- What happened to the dragon star
- the twelve just being ancients that we help committing suicide ... (i really hated that story)

At first i thought they did that because they had this great new arc ready to go but after playing DT it is obvious that they have nothing.

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Originally Posted by MoiraTerrwell

That's kinda what gripes me the most of the entirety of Dawntrail. Everything we learned was that we were going to be going back to our roots and be adventurers. Yet from 90 to 95 we're babysitting, at 95 in Shaaolani we get to adventure with Erenville (and handle feces. That bit was fantastic), and immediately go back to world-ending-problem and babysitting again.

Where is my actual Adventure, Dawntrail at best is the Wuk Lamat Adventure, not the Warrior of Light's adventure.
I wish we were with anyone but Wuk Lamat just to get her to realise she needed to grow, her 'entourage' was so god damn strong (even when butchered) there was no way she would've lost. She should've lost.

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Personally, the MSQ should've ended around the time we even got to S9 and defeat Zoraal Ja. All that about Sphene being a Disney plot twist villain and save the Source/the remaining shards with Azem's mcguffin key should've been left for 7.1 and onwards. Dawntrail was expected to be a lower stakes/vacations/new beginnings expansion yet we nosedived back into "we have EW at home"

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Originally Posted by dies_irae

the twelve just being ancients that we help committing suicide ... (i really hated that story)

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I don't think I've had a bigger 360 on a story than the twelve questline.

I was annoyed at first because it was going to be one god trope I dislike for being overdone (The gods are evil and we have to kill them because we're ahh-sum), then it turned out they were just testing us which I was fine with, then it turned out to be the other trope I dislike (the gods are nice but they die shortly after meeting them).

Made worse by the fact that most of the twelve were "just there" at best, to almost maliciously negligent at worst (Nophica and Menphina being the biggest offenders).

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Originally Posted by DonutSteel

I don't think I've had a bigger 360 on a story than the twelve questline.

I was annoyed at first because it was going to be one god trope I dislike for being overdone (The gods are evil and we have to kill them because we're ahh-sum), then it turned out they were just testing us which I was fine with, then it turned out to be the other trope I dislike (the gods are nice but they die shortly after meeting them).

Made worse by the fact that most of the twelve were "just there" at best, to almost maliciously negligent at worst (Nophica and Menphina being the biggest offenders).

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I was suspecting something like that from the beginning, it was just so predictable but i was hoping to be proven wrong until the end.

I wanted them all to just become adventurers like Deryk and spread all over the planet so we could meet them in future expansions. Or they could have just used them as future trust characters so they dont have to lobotomize the scions into generic trust npcs all the time.

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Originally Posted by dies_irae

I was suspecting something like that from the beginning, it was just so predictable but i was hoping to be proven wrong until the end.

I wanted them all to just become adventurers like Deryk and spread all over the planet so we could meet them in future expansions. Or they could have just used them as future trust characters so they dont have to lobotomize the scions into generic trust npcs all the time.

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Admitted I was initially worried, but was so relieved at them avoiding the "evil gods" twist that I was gaslighting myself into thinking "surely they won't just kill them all off at the end either, right?"

But then I finished Euphrosyne and got that "We're gonna accomplish our dream!" line from Menphina and I was just "Oh no. Surely not..." Then they did.

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Originally Posted by dies_irae

My theory is that they rushed to end the current arc to free up all the talents that made FF14 great. Either because they themselves wanted to move on from FF14 (YoshiP, Koji, Ishikawa, ...) ,the company decided to move them to other projects, or they wanted to leave because they did not want to deal with outside influence (consulting companies) interfering with their work.
So they "solved" every mystery/threat that was left in this arc:
-Garmelmald killed off screen
-Omicron threat killed off screen
- Hydaelyn and Zodiark
- Zenos
- Ascians
- What happened to the dragon star
- the twelve just being ancients that we help committing suicide ... (i really hated that story)

At first i thought they did that because they had this great new arc ready to go but after playing DT it is obvious that they have nothing.

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Yoshida admitted they initially planned Endwalker to be two parts in one of the LLs. Ishikawa decided it would be better to condense the story into one as she didn't think there would be enough material. That was also a concern of Yoshida's, alongside whether people would like a potential cliffhanger that wouldn't really have a full resolution until two years later.

So assuming all that to be correct, they absolutely rushed to the conclusion. It hurt Endwalker in my opinion but also left them with next to nothing for Dawntrail. My own theory is they were wholly unprepared for a brand new story and vastly underestimated the position it put them in. Hence why Dawntrail feels like a big filler arc because, well, I suspect that's exactly what it will become. An expansion made to buy them another two years.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Yoshida admitted they initially planned Endwalker to be two parts in one of the LLs. Ishikawa decided it would be better to condense the story into one as she didn't think there would be enough material. That was also a concern of Yoshida's, alongside whether people would like a potential cliffhanger that wouldn't really have a full resolution until two years later.

So assuming all that to be correct, they absolutely rushed to the conclusion. It hurt Endwalker in my opinion but also left them with next to nothing for Dawntrail. My own theory is they were wholly unprepared for a brand new story and vastly underestimated the position it put them in. Hence why Dawntrail feels like a big filler arc because, well, I suspect that's exactly what it will become. An expansion made to buy them another two years.

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The first half definitely didn't have much material unless they massively expanded Garlemald(which I wouldn't have minded) and maybe Thavnair, but there needed to be a lot more after Zodiark's death to actually make things feel dire, as opposed to the Final Days fully manifesting in only 2 zones and then everything else happening in the past, underground, and in space, and Meteion needed to be introduced sooner. Hythlodaeus had some dialogue in either ShB or in Mare Lamentorum about them receiving reports of the Final Days gradually spreading across the planet before it finally reached Amaurot, and we needed to see that gradual spread as we tried and failed to find ways to get to Ultima Thule.

Pretty much since the expansion launched people in our Discord have jokingly summarizing the DT story as "Talk to Woke La Mutt." xD

I didn't really get the whole "woke" vibe from it, but I always thought the play on words was funny regardless.

What DT was to me was a total cringe-fest with forced immature cartoon humor and total cheese writing tropes that belonged more in a Care Bears reunion film than a Final Fantasy game. It picked up a little at the end but even the new central hero/villain they introduced later had a very "Disney" vibe and also came off pretty cringe. I did like some of the story concepts this last stretch touched on, but they just didn't weave them very well through the character interactions.

I get we are on vacation and everything. But there is no reason not to touch on some more serious points of the larger universe instead of leaning totally on "self esteem gives you magical powerz" Wuk Lamat riffs. I mean we are only on another continent, not another reflection. There is no reason for this place to be so completely cut off from the larger saga of the calamity, the ambitions of the Empire, the meddling of the ancients, or anything else.

I mean we have airships, ships that go to space, and non-attuned teleportation magic FFS. The idea that this continent on the same world is so isolated that the biggest cultural challenges for them is healthy reed crops and building a rep as a successful capitalist with no mention of Primals or other forces in this universe canon is more than a little silly.

So, while I feel Wuk Lamat was critically overplayed and underwritten, I think what really ruins the story is the overall lack of maturity and the writing in general not being up to FFXIV standards.

If this was an isolated game in an unknown franchise that would be one thing. Hello Kitty Island Adventure had its audience. But you can't take a book from a mature sci-fi fantasy genre and just randomly stick a Care Bear Friendship is Magic children's story time chapter in the middle of it and expect people not to do a double-take.

DT feels completely out of place in this universe, and the way it was woven in makes no sense.

If, as it seems to me, SE has decided that gamers are all having babies and it is time to target a younger more immature generation of up-and-coming gamers, my advice would be to do it with a new game and IP.

Don't totally shift gears in a beloved decade+ established franchise and expect everything will turn out for the best.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

The first half definitely didn't have much material unless they massively expanded Garlemald(which I wouldn't have minded) and maybe Thavnair, but there needed to be a lot more after Zodiark's death to actually make things feel dire, as opposed to the Final Days fully manifesting in only 2 zones and then everything else happening in the past, underground, and in space, and Meteion needed to be introduced sooner. Hythlodaeus had some dialogue in either ShB or in Mare Lamentorum about them receiving reports of the Final Days gradually spreading across the planet before it finally reached Amaurot, and we needed to see that gradual spread as we tried and failed to find ways to get to Ultima Thule.

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That was seemingly the idea: an extended Garlemald and I'm assuming other areas that were in the first half. Anima would have been our final trial. So I suspect the whole Varis becoming a Primal would have actually had some substance instead of being kind of tossed in without much fanfare. Sadly, none of this left the concept phase.

I do agree though, and have frequently criticised how lackluster the whole Final Days aspect felt. It essentially boiled down to the Final Days: Screw Thavnair. It literally followed the Thavnair refugees and impacted nothing else to the point of feeling completely irrelevant. Which kind of undercut the whole back half of the story. I get they were likely afraid of repeating Shadowbringers with another "flood of light" equivalent but there were ways around that.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Yoshida admitted they initially planned Endwalker to be two parts in one of the LLs. Ishikawa decided it would be better to condense the story into one as she didn't think there would be enough material. That was also a concern of Yoshida's, alongside whether people would like a potential cliffhanger that wouldn't really have a full resolution until two years later.

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I can kind of see their point there, though. Everything seems to be getting split into two. That new Wicked musical movie is apparently going to be 2 parts. Can you imagine the hate if they had explicitly made Endwalker a part 1 and part 2? They leave little breadcrumbs now for future expansions but they've never segmented an expansion's story arc like that.

Endwalker should have been two expansions. I will die on this hill.

The Ilsabard expansion: Cities: Corvos capital, Radz-at-Han.
Zones: Corvos, Thavnair, two other unknown/hidden by clouds currently Ilsabard regions heading north from Corvos, Garlemald, The Moon.

This expansion would focus exclusively on the fall of the Garlean Empire and the sociopolitical repercussions of it. We get to meet the people of Ilsabard and see how differently their occupation looks like from Ala Mhigo and Doma, as many of them have been under imperial rule for much longer, like 40+ years. It's not easy to convince them to defy the Empire, as many don't remember a time before Imperial rule and have much more to lose, and it may come to blows. We spend more time on the Towers that Fandanial put up and the horror of what they really are and what happened to Varis as opposed to the whole thing being a footnote. We get some hints about Fandaniel's plan and Zodiark near the very end, but we dont' fight him until the X.3 patch. We know that something is very wrong, but we don't know what. All of the Scions are desperately trying to find any sort of hint as to what will happen to the planet without Zodiark there now, and we start to get small hints about Dynamis and Meteion.

The Final Days expansion: City zones: Sharlayan, ??? (new unknown city we've never seen yet in Othard)
Zones: Labrynthos, New Eorzea zone (northern Eorzea in Ixal territory? Paglthan proper? Yafaemi? Corthas Eastern Highlands? We still haven't seen all of Eorzea), Nanxia (+ taking more time exploring places hit all around the world by the Final Days and making it really catastrophic + revisiting old zones and companions), New Unsundered World zone (could be part of Amaurot, could be another part of the Ancient world we haven't seen yet like one of the many other cities that we know once existed), Elpis, Ulitima Thule.

This expansion would spend the first half focused on the Final Days returning to the star, and it is NOT isolated to just Thavnair and Garlemald (though it may still start there first). As this is the wrap up of the story arc, we spend some time both in the new zones before everything goes to shit trying to reach out to the nation's leaders as a diplomat to let them know of the coming danger and what to do (which may not go so smoothly). As fire and monsters begin to rain down, we retrace our steps in our journey as the Warrior of Light, doing everything we can to help all the people we've come to know over the past decade of the game get to Sharlayan or Garlemald to evacuate to the moon and grapple with having to say goodbye to the world we've come to love. But then we follow the hints about Dynamis, Meteion, and Elpis to go to the First and seek what remains of Elidibus out to send us back in time. (I know some people hated the time travel, but I'm trying to keep things as canon friendly as I can in my spitballing two game theory here). It takes us longer to find Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus, as we don't get brought straight to Elpis and have to puzzle our way there by learning more about the Ancients and what the place is and how to get there, but we eventually get spotted by the two as we stumble around and things play out more or less the same, but with more time to tell the story of Venat and Hermes and the rest, as opposed to a very confusing "artistic license" not literal cutscene about the Sundering at the very end of the zone. We return to the present with the key to defeating Meteion and go to Ultima Thule to save the universe.

Rushing Garlemald is one of the biggest tragedies in FFXIV's storytelling pre-DT. Spending 8 years hating Garleans and working towards finally wiping them out only for them to rush the story beat of us being a part of a contingent that goes over there for humanitarian aid. I couldn't, and still can't, swallow that. It basically expects you to 180 your opinion on Garleans immediately while still beating you over the head with how much they despise you and see you as less than human. I often have people go "omg you have no empathy, they're all brainwashed by propaganda." and it's like, no duh. Anyone that's done Highschool reading has seen this theme done to death. Not to mention that they are still actively attacking us in some zones, like the Weapons storyline. Issue is that the change from wanting to kill them all for invading my home and killing my friends & family to "we need to help them" was handled horrendously. All the interesting Garlean stuff happened offscreen where we couldn't see it. Now it's a singular zone and all the true parts of Garlemald are 'destroyed' and inaccessible.

What a waste. I wanted to be the one to lay waste to Garlemald. lol So many years of hating their faction and nada to show for it in the end.

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Originally Posted by SeriousPan

Rushing Garlemald is one of the biggest tragedies in FFXIV's storytelling pre-DT. Spending 8 years hating Garleans and working towards finally wiping them out only for them to rush the story beat of us being a part of a contingent that goes over there for humanitarian aid. I couldn't, and still can't, swallow that. It basically expects you to 180 your opinion on Garleans immediately while still beating you over the head with how much they despise you and see you as less than human. I often have people go "omg you have no empathy, they're all brainwashed by propaganda." and it's like, no duh. Anyone that's done Highschool reading has seen this theme done to death. Not to mention that they are still actively attacking us in some zones, like the Weapons storyline. Issue is that the change from wanting to kill them all for invading my home and killing my friends & family to "we need to help them" was handled horrendously. All the interesting Garlean stuff happened offscreen where we couldn't see it. Now it's a singular zone and all the true parts of Garlemald are 'destroyed' and inaccessible.

What a waste. I wanted to be the one to lay waste to Garlemald. lol So many years of hating their faction and nada to show for it in the end.

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MAssive wasted opportunity, much like Dawntrail with its characters. Its rushed and badly paced.
GArlemald should've been a huge part, we could've had political intrigue, infiltrated into their society. Worked together with the "Populares" to make Garlemald into a more reformed society or joined some Legions temporarily that wanted inner change in Garlemald. Seen how the inner workings functioned, how the royalty there functioned. Hell even Zenos who I hated couldve had more character development and he could've actually blossomed into something else than a murder hobo with no relevance in the plot.

But nooooooo.... Offscreen explosion, Garlemald gone. Woooooo.. So we could get what? Labyrinthos? Give me a break

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Originally Posted by CuteBucket

snip

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you think you want another stormblood, but you dont.

I am convinced dawntrail was written by AI and the devs were told to just make it work.

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Originally Posted by SeriousPan

Rushing Garlemald is one of the biggest tragedies in FFXIV's storytelling pre-DT. Spending 8 years hating Garleans and working towards finally wiping them out only for them to rush the story beat of us being a part of a contingent that goes over there for humanitarian aid. I couldn't, and still can't, swallow that. It basically expects you to 180 your opinion on Garleans immediately while still beating you over the head with how much they despise you and see you as less than human. I often have people go "omg you have no empathy, they're all brainwashed by propaganda." and it's like, no duh. Anyone that's done Highschool reading has seen this theme done to death. Not to mention that they are still actively attacking us in some zones, like the Weapons storyline. Issue is that the change from wanting to kill them all for invading my home and killing my friends & family to "we need to help them" was handled horrendously. All the interesting Garlean stuff happened offscreen where we couldn't see it. Now it's a singular zone and all the true parts of Garlemald are 'destroyed' and inaccessible.

What a waste. I wanted to be the one to lay waste to Garlemald. lol So many years of hating their faction and nada to show for it in the end.

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I do hope that in the future we get to go back to Garlemald, and properly see it. Multiple zones surrounding an actual city. Not what was essentially a small town that's in ruins that we got.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

you think you want another stormblood, but you dont.

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I don't know - I still look back very fondly on 'A Requiem for Heroes'. I really enjoyed that part of it.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

you think you want another stormblood, but you dont.

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Still better than DT.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

you think you want another stormblood, but you dont.

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OK J. Allen Brack.

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Originally Posted by Alchemii

Still better than DT.

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SB at least had Doma.

The more I think about DT, the worse it gets.

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Originally Posted by RingoNoyamano

I am convinced dawntrail was written by AI and the devs were told to just make it work.

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That was literally my first take I posted on Reddit about a week after it released. The story complexity and depth is SO far beneath all previous chapters and just lacks basic human feeling. I literally imagined it was an attempt at setting up MMO Generator GPT 9000.

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Originally Posted by RingoNoyamano

I am convinced dawntrail was written by AI and the devs were told to just make it work.

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I had this same thought at numerous points in the story. The scene where Wuk comes to your room all flustered and takes you to the balcony to tell you that she's decided to fight for peace, after umpteen other scenes where she told us the exact same thing, really had me scratching my head re: DT possibly being AI-written.

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Originally Posted by CuteBucket

Endwalker should have been two expansions. I will die on this hill.

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Absolutely, the very VERY least whould have been using 6.0 for one part and the patches for the rest...

And a real trial for Varis... anything more, having a proper city, outskirts and then the ruins with the tower. Rebels that side with us and help us... filling all those gabs below the clouds....

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Originally Posted by CuteBucket

Endwalker should have been two expansions. I will die on this hill.

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And on that note Anima should have been the expac big boss like Yoshida said was planned when they were in the planning stages before it was split into two. Anima of all bosses, being wasted as a leveling dungeon boss is just criminal. Magus sisters too, but Anima to a much higher degree. I literally took off my headset, dropped it down on my desk and uttered quite a few obscenities over that. Esp since they took to the time actually reveal the fact she was added during the EW promotion like she was going to be a bigger deal. Hell, Anima would have made more sense than sad bird girl and likely better recieved as the big bad.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

you think you want another stormblood, but you dont.

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I like Kugane
I like Gosetsu
I like Yugiri
I like Yotsuyu
I like the Azim Steppe
I̶ l̶i̶k̶e̶ t̶h̶e̶ f̶a̶c̶t̶ t̶h̶a̶t̶ Y̶s̶h̶t̶o̶l̶a̶ i̶s̶ i̶n̶ a̶ c̶o̶m̶a̶ t̶h̶e̶ e̶n̶t̶i̶r̶e̶ e̶x̶p̶a̶n̶s̶i̶o̶n̶
I even like the ending

I cant list that many things I like about Dawntrail

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

you think you want another stormblood, but you dont.

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I do, actually. I really liked Stormblood and don't know why people rag on it so much. I thought it did a good job maturely showing us the reality of living under an oppressive empire without it getting needlessly grimdark about it. It has it's issues (mostly some weird pacing in the Ala Mhigo portions), but it was still overall an enjoyable expansion for me and I liked most of the characters introduced.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

And on that note Anima should have been the expac big boss like Yoshida said was planned when they were in the planning stages before it was split into two. Anima of all bosses, being wasted as a leveling dungeon boss is just criminal. Magus sisters too, but Anima to a much higher degree. I literally took off my headset, dropped it down on my desk and uttered quite a few obscenities over that. Esp since they took to the time actually reveal the fact she was added during the EW promotion like she was going to be a bigger deal. Hell, Anima would have made more sense than sad bird girl and likely better recieved as the big bad.

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YES!! I was so excited as a FFX fan for Anima, and then they just wasted it as a dungeon boss?! UGH. Yeah, that made me mad. Should have been our big final trial of theoretical Ilsabard expansion. And while I quite like Meteion/Endsinger as a concept quite a lot, she definitely needed more time to cook.

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Originally Posted by sylphlands

I had this same thought at numerous points in the story. The scene where Wuk comes to your room all flustered and takes you to the balcony to tell you that she's decided to fight for peace, after umpteen other scenes where she told us the exact same thing, really had me scratching my head re: DT possibly being AI-written.

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If you plug in a few random shonen protags you can pretty much create Wuk Lamat in AI, most of them are incredibly similar, Wuk Lamat even has the large appetite too and the repetitive sloganeering(PEACE AND HAPPINESS). If it's not AI the writer is as bad as one and I don't know which is worse.

We got more cultural exposure in the Azim Steppe than all of Tural.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

you think you want another stormblood, but you dont.

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SB was the last time I truly enjoyed the game tbh.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

you think you want another stormblood, but you dont.

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Your point being?

If you tell me my choice is between SB and DT, I'll give you my answer even before you finish asking the question. And it won't be DT. I don't think trashing on SB helps DT's defense in any way. Because the lower you try to put down SB, it doesn't change the fact DT is a tier or two below that.

Even if the story is bad, SB at least has a cast that I found interesting while at the same time, I can't say I care for a single character in DT.

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

Your point being?

If you tell me my choice is between SB and DT, I'll give you my answer even before you finish asking the question. And it won't be DT. I don't think trashing on SB helps DT's defense in any way. Because the lower you try to put down SB, it doesn't change the fact DT is a tier or two below that.

Even if the story is bad, SB at least has a cast that I found interesting while at the same time, I can't say I care for a single character in DT.

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What, not even Erenville?
Or are you specifically talking of characters we got to meet in Dawntrail.
I wanna learn about Koana, who he is when he's not around Wuk Lamat. I think that about sums up who I'm interested in in Dawntrail specific new characters.

I really did not like the eastern section of stormblood msq, to me it felt like it was just padding and entirely in the way of the more interesting Gyr Abania section. Shinryu and Omega being very dangerous and at risk of falling into the hands of the empire should have been more than enough motive to stay nearby and resolve that. Instead we went halfway around the world just to encounter another beige zone, some impoverished pirates and a windblasted plain. The nadaam instance was pretty cool though and underwater zones are cool so the ruby sea wasn't all bad after diving was unlocked.

Despite disagreeing with which part of stormblood was cool, I still consider it a superior expansion to dawntrail in terms of story. Again I'm of the opinion that the gym badges/dawnservant stuff was an idea with potential that was fumbled and zak tural just a bit of a catastrophe.
Heritage found and living memory both felt like competing "final zones" - possibly a product of the formula™. I quite like how many of the zones can be accessed directly from the tuliyollal big aetheryte, but that also emphasises how HF and LM both feel wrong/alien/separate (maybe intentionally).

All of heritage found felt ...fillery? similar to orthard. A largely visually uninteresting zone with character that didn't particularly engage me all while the story had this conflicting sense of urgency and meandering pace. The ruins of old alexandria felt underutilised, although it could be 5 patches too early to make that judgement. I don't think it's because solution 9 was involved in the marketing so heavily, but that may have played a part too.
Living memory could have been a second floor of the city rather than a dedicated zone, the conflicting messages about how urgent it was to reach sphene really undermined the whole thing. Again comparing with stormblood, both times we're an invading force trying to reach the big boss, both times we've been sneaking about laying the groundwork for our penatrative efforts with the locals, both times the big boss is completely deranged (and also puddling about with souls what a coincidence that it happened twice), the structure, payoff and tone are presented in a more satisfying way in SB. I suspect fordola also helped narritively here, even with the urianger ex machina - the lack of known/named opposition in LM did not do it any favours in my eyes. Not that there was any set up - perhaps suspicious fishman would have worked here if zorol hadn't lethally stabbed him in the back? It'd only have been a short while for him if he'd woken up and come in through the dead baby cave door when it was reopened. As for his motive, who knows?

Broadly what I'm getting at is despite SB msq being the next most flawed, it's a struggle to think of any shared plot elements/themes DT executes in a superior fashion nor any different points that elevate DT above.