Yet More Dawntrail Feedback/Critique

*Oh, Spoiler Warning in case it needed to be said

So I recently finished Yak T'el, and I disliked it enough that I'd rather write some literary critique than continue the MSQ. So, here we are. And, just to preface, these are just my opinions as a decent writer and someone who's played a lot of FFXIV. YMMV. Anyways, thus far I've found Dawntrail to be mostly enjoyable, though I think it's easily the weakest writing FFXIV has offered to date. The first 1/2 of the MSQ is a glorified sightseeing tour, the characters (both old and new) are rather flat, and then there's Wuk Lamat, who is just a mess.

She's not an unpleasant character per se, but she is flat as a pancake personality wise. She eats a lot, is rather klutzy, and likes 'peace'. She's basically a shoujo character (think Sailor Moon if you're not familiar with the term), and while that's not a problem in of itself, since Dawntrail (at least the first half of it) is the Wuk Lamat show, the rest of the story follows suit. She's the afternoon cartoon version of FFXIV's major themes, the 'friendship is MAGIC!' to FFXIV's usual "while it is true that man succumbs all too often to anger and avarice, he may yet overcome his baser instincts through the forming of bonds with others".

An easy comparison is Yak T'el's Mamool Ja part versus The Great Ship Vylbrand from post Shadowbringers. In latter, Merlwyb acknowledges Limsa's failures regarding the kobolds, frees one of their leaders from being tempered, and when quite rightly accused of betrayal offers her life up as penance if it would allow their peoples to move forward. Her failures, her responsibility. The result is the beginnings of potential peace, a complex resolution to a complex issue with hope for the future but nothing promised.

With the Mamool Ja, Wuk Lamat spends 20 minutes asking around, gets told the deepest secrets of the most extremely xenophobic remnants of a people who'd been breeding superwarriors at the expense of hundreds of children's lives, and then comes up with a solution in another 20 minutes. Never mind that a small population probably couldn't survive killing that many children over a sustained period of time, that a long suffering native people's problems could be solved in 20 minutes by the enlightened foreigners is borderline insulting. But from a writing perspective it's consistent with the rest of the story. Flat and rushed.

Apart from Kaona and Erenville (the former actually has some character development, and the other seems to have escaped the Wuk Lamat sphere of influence), the other side characters are similar impacted by the rushed and flattened writing. The ex-scions move from having meaningful character development and interactions on the side to being minor narrative devices.

1/2

Things like Thancred struggling with losing Minfilia and taking care of Ryne, Urianger tricking the pixies into brewing him tea, Estinien mistaking Alisaie for Alphinaud, Krile mourning her lack of ability as her friends fly into the unknown, and so on, are quite gone. Alphinaud is now 'the guy who notices obvious things and gets firewood', Krile is a glorified mood ring, and Alisaie is... also here. NPCs who stop being relevant to whatever conversation the MSQ wants to have become immediately ignored, with Wuk Lamat just turning her back on them and dropping more exposition. Usually such characters would walk off, or be acknowledged in some way, but now they're just part of the scenery once their lines are done.

The two antagonists don't have it much better. Bakool Ja Ja's cracking and failure wasn't a bad idea, but it needed to be played properly. You needed to see him wear, become desperate and then break, not go from 'perfectly fine' to 'emotional mess' after an inexplicably buff Wuk Lamat (who couldn't handle him all of 2 zones ago) soloed him and like 30 other guys, through the fortifying power of friendship. That he was even allowed to be walking around free after committing a major crime against the state by freeing the skyruin is farcical, but so was everyone being willing to instantly let it slide after he looks sad for a bit. Meanwhile diet Stormblood Zenos is... sure there.

I don't see a lot of ways to solve this outside of 'write better', but at the very least more time needs to be given to several of these plot points. The Mamool Ja story was insanely rushed. In fact, most of the first half of the MSQ is rushed - points that should be persistent get ignored, tensions are hand-waved, it's a mess. Example - the Visir causes issues for Wuk Lamat, she tries one time to do something about him and is shot down, and that's it. No threats, no tension, one 'he's a jerk' from Erenville, and that's all. Bakool Ja Ja takes one shot at the First Promise (cannot be bothered to remember his name), gets punked, and then that's that. No anger, no resentment, back to posturing.

So, yeah. Up until Yak T'el I enjoyed the story well enough, but I do think this is the weakest writing FFXIV's ever had. It shouldn't be treated like an afternoon cartoon, especially not after the excellence of writing that Shadowbringers and Endwalker displayed. It's fine to be more relaxed and comedic, and I actually enjoyed the concept of being a more guide figure rather than having the Weight of the World riding on my shoulders again, but not at the expense of writing quality. I think the MSQ is about to give a break from the Wuk Lamat show, so hopefully things improve for a while, but I hope changes regarding the writing style are made going forward.