Critical but constructive: An attempt at Dawntrail feedback [Spoilers]

SPOILER WARNING.

I'm not going to tag every individual thing or the whole post as hidden. You shouldn't be here if you care about spoilers, for Dawntrail* and previous expansions too.

*Mostly early spoilers though because that's all I need to make my point, but discussion posts may go into other aspects.


Part 1: The problem

So, I'll get right into it.

Dawntrail feels like a sidequest (one of the simple ones) sudden got bigger production values, cutscenes, and padding. But left out one very important thing: Substance. It's boring. It doesn't have good hooks (the best was the pre-expansion lead in quest but after that, not so much).

Now if we look back to previous works - a novel could be written on what they did right and the fewer things they did wrong, but briefly. Consider Endwalker: Most players probably assumed Zodiark would be the final boss going in. Instead there was that "wait what?" moment when we defeat him super early and "oh gods what do we do now" as things seem to get even worse and so on. Consider Shadowbringers: Where we explore the past and motives of one character in particular, uncovering many mysteries (and leaving some more), but we still have to deal with a new world's woes and politics.

And then we have drawn. The problem is not that the stakes aren't "Oh no the world's in peril!" (though, that two candidates want to start wars that may drag the rest of the world in means y'all are still beating that drum anyways). But it's shallow. The characters are cartoonish. Even though they do reveal more complex motives sometimes, they still feel cartoonish.

And while there's some interesting lore and worldbuilding in the academic sense, much of the presentation is bad.

Part 2: How to fix it?

So the obvious answer here is: Step up the writing and presentation. This may have world as a side quest, but it's not good enough for the main scenario. Easier said than done, but we've all seen that Square definitely can deliver.

But there's actually an alternative.

Part of the problem is so much of FFXIV is 'hold W until at location, click on person/object'. If the story we get for all this holding W and clicking is anything less than stellar, it wears thin very fast.

So, the alternative? Improve gameplay. FF7R shows Square still knows how to take a game and stuff it to the gills with minigames. Trading up with the Pelu was boring, because all we do is hold W a bit, click, watch a cutscene that didn't need to be a cutscene, and bam. Wow! Turning 500 pel into 10000 pel was so easy, who knew?

Well, what if there was an actual game to it? I mean "item shop manager" is an entire indie genre to pull some inspiration from.

What if we had to drive the Hanu's float? And no square STOP RIGHT THERE I know you're thinking, "we already have a system for mounts and going up to someone and using a mount ability" and STOP IT that's not what I mean. If this were to be added as an activity, it'd to be something that has weight to it, that has inertia and can be crashed if, for example, you start slowing down too late.

Or, how about the cooking? What if instead of just clicking people to progress, there was... an actual cooking activity. Chop stuff, fry it, whatever else. Again, there's entire indie genres around this stuff, you can use them as blueprints on how to make it fun. I know in FF14 it would be simplified, but it's better than "click on person/sparkling object".

So what's the point of me getting into all this? The Dawntrail story could actually be fine in a different context. A context that doesn't rely overwhelming on the story to try to hide the "we're actually just clicking on people for however many minutes for this quest." No one cares if Recettear or Dave the Diver don't have incredibly long and deep and moving plots. With gameplay you can get by on less, and people may feel it's likeable and good enough anyways.

Part 3: Conclusion

But one way or another, the reality is, Dawntrail is disappointing. Things need to improve next time, one way or another.

Square Enix/CBU 3: You're a world class team in a world class company. You can do better. I'll look forward to seeing what you come with for 2026.


Anyone else, well, feel free to discuss what you liked or didn't like and what you feel might help next time.

SPOILERS

I did not love the msq but I did enjoy some parts of it. I thought the rites was handled well but it felt a bit too long and I was disappointed with how certain characters were handled given the story's premise.

What Bakool Ja Ja did by releasing Valigarmanda was serious and yet he isn't punished in any way. We forgive him too easily and the explanation we get for his behavior was because "he was desperate". That part of the story felt a bit swept under the rug and I did not like that.

I did like the scenes with Zoraal . My favorite parts were when he challenged his father and then later in the MSQ with Wuk Lamat.

Wuk's whole thing is "friendship and community" so I was pleasantly surpised when she revealed she intended to kill her own brother. It was interesting to see her resolved to kill Zoraal.

I did not enjoy the tour in the lost world. I thought it was a bit jarring even though we are told there is plenty of time to smell the roses before the queen actually harvested any souls. It just felt very off and I couldn't really enjoy that section of the MSQ.

With all that being said I don't think it's as bad as people think and I'm glad they were willing to experiment. I hope they take the criticism to craft a stronger MSQ.

I did like the MSQ. I thought the Rite of Succession storyline was fun, I liked Wuk Lamat, I enjoyed not being the baddest dude on the block for once... but even for me the cutscenes dragged on and on and on. If I wanted to play a visual novel, I would play a visual novel!

The worst offenders were the two assaults on Tuliyollal that were just big cutscenes. They should have been playable. Fighting through the first one (And The Land Would Tremble) only to arrive in the throne room too late to help, would have made so much more sense storywise, too... but they wanted us to see the duel and I guess forgot the WoL has the Echo?

Seriously, we had one Echo flashback in all of 7.0. I counted.

If you want to accommodate the people who hate actually playing the game, add a Super Duper Easy difficulty for them where they literally can't die. They get their story, the rest of us get the gameplay we want, and everyone wins!

For me is more of a pacing problem.
Far too much Wuk Lamat, far too little of other characters. And she being too repetitive make her a boring character.

If they cut 50% of Wuk Lamat and gave the time to other characters to shine, the game would have been bette.And Wuk Lamat would have remain one of the favorite characters. Right now she is obnoxious. Pray return to Wuk Lamat.

what i personally dont understand is why we needed Wuk as "hook" in 6.55
as we already had one with Krile wishing to find out the origins of her grandfathers letter.

without being preemptively hired (without real knowledge of other potential options and possible repercussions mind you) i think it would have allowed the writers to not constantly give the player the feeling of constantly getting dragged around from one mundane task to the next but at first trying to solve a mystery with krile while the 1st halve of the rite plays out seperately from us.
nobody would know we are the WoL, we run into the contestant, we see them doing there thing but we arent involved yet, Thancred and Urianger are still hired by Catboy, Wuk gets Kidnapped, Catboy asks for help because his to scions say good stuff about us, we find Wuk, we beat Bully Ja ja to1/2 health, but he does his blinding spell to escape... and now we get involved into the rites, with a far better understanding of the situation, actors and maybe possible consequences.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Malganis_L

what i personally dont understand is why we needed Wuk as "hook" in 6.55
as we already had one with Krile wishing to find out the origins of her grandfathers letter.

without being preemptively hired (without real knowledge of other potential options and possible repercussions mind you) i think it would have allowed the writers to not constantly give the player the feeling of constantly getting dragged around from one mundane task to the next but at first trying to solve a mystery with krile while the 1st halve of the rite plays out seperately from us.
nobody would know we are the WoL, we run into the contestant, we see them doing there thing but we arent involved yet, Thancred and Urianger are still hired by Catboy, Wuk gets Kidnapped, Catboy asks for help because his to scions say good stuff about us, we find Wuk, we beat Bully Ja ja to1/2 health, but he does his blinding spell to escape... and now we get involved into the rites, with a far better understanding of the situation, actors and maybe possible consequences.

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I think an answer to this is also explained by the plot - the "succession" is a main part of the storyline, and with it going on, Tuliyollal is very wary of outside "interference." It's our association with one of the competitors that lets us into Tural to begin with. Remember as well that we were also already on good terms with Erenville, so even though we didn't know Wuk Lumat herself, we trust Erenville, and Wuk has his vote of confidence. We wouldn't have been able to do any mystery solving with Krile without first being allowed to enter Tural in the first place. Even Estinien, as random as he is, gets personally invited by the Dawnservant for a duel, and it's the awesome fight he gives that grants him the pass to explore the northern half of the continent (which we later get when Wuk becomes Dawnservant).