As someone who loved it, why I think Dawntrail didn't work for everyone [Spoilers]

[This will include spoilers for the entirety of the 7.0 MSQ]

The (good faith) complaints that I've seen about Dawntrail, on the forums and on social media and amongst some youtubers, have largely been in regards to story focus moving away from our WoL and onto Wuk Lamat. Throughout the game our character takes on much more of a mentorship role as we experience Tural mostly through Wuk Lamat's eyes and perspective rather than our own. In any other Final Fantasy game or RPG she would be our player character and this would be fine, but with the establishment of our own role and agency in the story, I can absolutely see how this shift would rub some people the wrong way.

From a personal perspective I think our WoL's inhabiting a mentorship role at the start of a new campaign arc is kind of amazing, and I was deeply amused by the mmo trope meta narrative of essentially powerleveling Wuk Lamat through the story. I thought it was fun haha, but I can also see how this may have felt rushed or unrealistic based on the established lore of the game. She goes from struggling to land a single hit on Bakool Ja Ja to being strong enough to assist us with Sphene's Queen Eternal form. Again, I thought from a mmo meta-narrative power leveling approach this is fun, but I can see people struggling to accept it. All I can say is that FFXIV seems to operate on Gurren Lagann fighting spirit rules; and if your fighting spirit/haki/dynamis is high enough, you can pull off a lot~

Where I think some things fell apart for me, and maybe did for others also having a problem with how our WoL acted, is in the agency of our decisions. ARR was notoriously bad for having our WoL stand around doing nothing when we very clearly should have been doing something. We'd just stand there looking at a situation escalate that we could jump in and help out in. And to the games credit, each expansion has seemingly gotten better about this. In Shadowbringers and Endwalker we're actively running around in battles and preparing to fight. Shadowbringers especially having Ardbert talk for us and giving us a brief but welcome 'voice' helped bring a lot of tension and weight to the moment against Emet Selch.

But this seemed to take a step back once again in Dawntrail unfortuantely... way too often it felt like my character should step in and help, and didn't. The game constantly suggested that I could step in, and trivialize things, but I just don't. There's times we literally let people just walk away when we could attack them immediately and potentially solve a lot of issues.

Gubool Ja Ja vs Zoraal Ja Ja, stands out to me the most. Gubuul says he wants to take out Zoraal on his own, which is fine, but as soon as he regulates back to life it feels very weird that we don't step in and help. Especially since Wuk Lamat does so and fails.

Earlier there are plenty of scenes where I think we could have humbled Bakool Ja Ja a lot earlier and just... didn't? And we didn't basically because the writing needed to pretend we weren't there so that Wuk Lamat would have her chance for growth later. Something that I am fine with, but for some instances it really seemed to press it too much and we should have acted.

That all said, Living Memory is probably the only part of the game where I felt like my player agency was completely removed. I very much was not on board, and still am not on board, with Cahcuia's assertion that the memories there are just copies and that deleting everyone was a-okay. I am very much hoping this gets recontextualized in 7.3, but it was upsetting to have every option thrown back at me about why we had to press forward only to eventually agree in Cahcuia's suicide plan.

[FF9 Spoilers] I think maybe especially because FF9 is one of my favorite games ever this direction upset me. In FF9 Vivi, Zidane, Kuja, the genomes are all lab grown tools for someone else. By some definition they are all soul-less machines made for a distinct purpose they aren't satisfying. By their 'creators' accounts they are malfunctioning and faulty. But by spending time with them in game we know they are people. We know that whatever constitutes a "soul" isn't something that is divinely bestowed onto them by their creators but something they foster in themselves through the connections they make with others and their own aspirations and dreams. And the people in Living Memory had those! Cahcuia wanted to see more of the world. That one npc just proposed to his long ago partner! They didn't just have old dreams from when they were 'alive', they had things they still wanted to do! And the game forces us to make a decision that seemingly goes against the themes of the entire game where we work together to find a better solution where everyone can survive and pull the plug on all of these people. Heck we give literal ghosts in Ultima Thule a reason to live again, it just felt weird to agree to Cahcuia's framing here when she doesn't have all the connections at her disposal that we clearly do.

Like I said above, I'm hoping this gets recontextualized in 7.3. We didn't destroy the servers after all... Maybe Shtola can talk some sense into everyone. It just felt like my agency was removed in that decision to make the plot go forward and I wasn't a fan. It's weird because it's kind of the first time the game shifts from Wuk Lamat's decision to ours and then it doesn't let us make a choice that feels satisfying.

What I think Endwalker did especially well with it's writing is not only put us in the drivers seat but also look past our WoL and talk directly to us, the player. I think for everyone when Venat asks "Has your journey been good? Has it been worthwhile?" it just... pulled at all of our heartstrings because she wasnt asking our character this; she was asking us.

I don't agree that our WoL always needs to be in the drivers seat. I liked Wuk Lamat's arc a lot and I really enjoyed Sphene and Zoraal Ja as villains. And honestly the entire first half of the expansion that others have said was slow just had me smiling the whole time. The second half has me really intrigued where things will go, especially with Azem's symbol on the key! But... I think the game does need more moments where we react in ways that make sense for our character. Where we're not just standing around. Where the game looks past our WoL and talks to us directly. I think we'll get more of that, especially with the Azem forcus, and am excited to see where our journey goes.

Honestly I said a lot about complaints with the game to give my own personal thoughts on what Ive heard from others contextualized into some of my more minor gripes, but I do want to reiterate that I actually really loved the story. I love Zoraal Ja's villain arc and his obsession with legacy in a game that cares a lot about inherited legacy. I loved basically every scene with Wuk Lamat and really enjoyed her character as a whole, even if I think some of her earlier naivete on some stuff didn't make a ton of sense given that she was essentially a princess of the kingdom. She gave me really strong Luffy energy and I wanted to see her succeed. I also loved Sphene as this like natural progression of ascian logic where we gotta kill everyone to bring back our loved ones, but oof, I still do hope we can figure out a better solution that the "pulling the plug is good actually" stuff we got in the end haha.

The key phrase is 'interactive fiction'. Daichi Hiroi could have written the most riveting script ever, but it would have been equally ineffective so long as he ignored the medium that he is writing for.

This isn't just an issue of underutilizing the storytelling potential of the medium. MMOs hit natural pacing lulls as they send you out to new map locations or get you learn about hub/gameplay features (i.e. 'take this crate from point A to point B so that we can show you a new area that we built'). Passive media like TV shows, movies, and plays don't have to deal with this. It's essential that the player feel like they're driving the narrative or else even the best written story will drag on, especially when you consider the comparative length that it takes to play through these scenes. And I think that's Dawntrail's central problem - it might have been fine watching it as a movie without the usual MMO filler (depending on personal taste, of course), but it just doesn't work as a game experience.

I'd actually be curious to know how many player dialogue choices were offered across the MSQ. With Ishikawa's writing, it always felt like she was genuinely curious about the player experience of her story, through the dialogue choices. They didn't have to be particularly deep or meaningful choices, but there was always the option to crack a joke or offer a contextual insight based off of optional content that you had cleared as a player. It felt personal, even when you weren't the center of a given scene.

With Dawntrail, I was surprised when a dialogue choice was actually offered, and it seemed to follow the classic 8-bit approach of 'do you agree, or do you agree?'

I wouldn't say that the story was bad, and there certainly were some great character moments, especially around Erenville and Cahciua. I do have some lore concerns around how Hiroi has utilized existing story hooks (especially in the context of the shards, simply because there's a limited number of them to build future stories off of). But I think the biggest issue with his writing is his indifference to the player's role and feeling of player engagement within his story. That might be acceptable in a short side storyline, but not in the MSQ.

I hope that their senior writing team takes a closer look at what's happened here and manages to troubleshoot it.

I think the part of our WoL that bugs me the most, apart from our ARR levels of inaction, is that we don't do any mentoring. You know who was mentoring? Thancred & Urianger. They did more work on Koana over time, and you can see it, than we ever did with Wuk. Wuk would say we are doing something and we'd just do it. We couldn't tell her no or offer an alternative idea or say why something was a bad idea. We did nothing to actually educate her or share our characters life experiences to improve her journey. Our dialogue choices through out DT are just agreeing to whatever plan she comes up with and not being able to show any kind of hesitation or unease at her propositions.

Which is odd since we could do that in the post-patch content of Endwalker. We can flat out say we're unenthusiastic about helping her when we're with G'Raha. But now that we're with her we're basically 100% Team Wuk Lamat which feels off. If any kind of mentoring happened it must be a 'you fill in the blanks yourself' type of writing but I don't see it.

The lack of interactive fiction definitely also stands out to me. Theres so little actual action the game has you do in the MSQ outside of dungeons and trials. We did get some solo trials to go through, which were fun, but I don't know if they compare at all to the garlean soldier body swap, thancreds stealth mission, the lead up to the Venat fight and on elpis, etc.

I thought for sure they'd add more of all that kind of stuff and instead we just got a lot of dialogue. And like, I really liked the dialogue! But idk I wanted more actual gameplay moments :V they don't even need to be combat related, let me help Wuk Lamat catch an alpaca idk

I think it's great to try exploring the actual, story-built reasons that people may not like a story, and I think you generally made some decent points here: this is a story where the WoL explicitly does not step forward and take point, where other people are fighting fights that we feel we could win, and that some people don't like that. This is true, but I think it's worth underlining that there is a reason; this is not our fight, to such a degree that us stepping in would actually be a detriment. Yeah, we could've beat Bakool Ja Ja's ass like three separate times, and all it would have done is prove his point: that might makes right, and that Wuk Lamat can't fight for herself. Similarly, Zoraal Ja walked into the throne room that day intent on proving two things: that his views on conquest are stronger than his father's and siblings' views on peace, and that he can pull the trigger on this gun aimed at Tural at any time. None of this would actually be proven wrong by us stepping into that fight; it would just prove in his mind that Tural is weak, and needs protecting from the big strong Eorzean. ...not to mention that we still didn't really know how he was getting back up every time, so chances were pretty good that we couldn't stop him either and he'd just go 'and even Eorzea's best can't stop me', and that might actually be worse. (Especially because this fanbase HATES plot-losing solo duties.) Doesn't excuse Koana not shooting the guy once he was clearly breaking his own rules of combat, but I think he was more hamstrung by the much bigger problem: that if Zoraal Ja dies, then nothing is stopping those airships from reducing Tulliyolal to slag.

I don't agree with you on Living Memory, but I actually suspect I'm not supposed to; waaaay early in Dawntrail's development, before we even had a name or setting for it, an interview mentioned we'd make a difficult choice. And our predictions were often on the lines of 'the Scions get split over a subject', 'we have to pick between two factions and neither is great'; elements that ended up present, but not especially difficult. But I think that choice came far later: I think that choice was Living Memory. And yes, it wasn't a choice we the players got to make... but it's not one that we ever would've picked otherwise. There was no secret third option, no way for everyone to be happy, if they even were at this point (Living Memory sure felt like a melancholy ignorance of the present more than it felt like a true happiness). We had to act somehow, and when the choice boils down to 'us or them' only a fool wouldn't side with 'us', even if doing so carries an iron weight.

But also, you qualified 'good faith' right at the start, and as much as I want to have good faith discussions and don't want to dwell on what I'm about to say, I think it does have to be said: not everyone is arguing in good faith. We all know that, and we have to call it out when we see it if we want to have a conversation without it. Otherwise, it'll just get derailed into garbage.

Yeah I basically agree with all of that Celeretic. I guess my thing with Living Memory is less we had to make a difficult choice and more how that choice is presented.

We have entire nations states we can call upon to help us with things and solve problems. I think the game was trying to say that we just didn't have the time anymore to act in a way that saved everyone, but it was presented in this kind of "natural death" "all people die" "what's going on here is weird and gross" that decidedly didn't sit well with me. And I think this is mostly because of Cahcuias very specific framing since Graha at least was like "if I could do this and talk to people I lost again I probably would".

But certainly the zone would have emotionally hit a lot harder for me if we actually told everyone what was going on (Kriles parents are the only ones that guess at it) and they themselves directly said they'd be fine sacrificing themselves to prevent more life from being loss even if they wanted to keep surviving.

I honestly felt very similar to Emet Selch saying that their fractured existence wasnt worth it and pulling the plug was doing them a mercy.

Certainly agree tho that all of living memory existing at the price of all other life was too high, but also in a post-endwalker world where dynamis brought long dead civilizations back to life in ultima thule... It just doesn't seem to thematically track, and certainly just felt like a choice we're forced to make because that's what the plot required rather than taking into account everything we've experienced this far and the connections and knowledge we've made and attained.

I guess I didn't expect that the answer to the launch trailer question "With your strength, could you have held fast to that which is dear without sacrifice?" Ended up being "no"