[Thought Experiment] Is Dawntrail's 7.0 MSQ Planned to be "Terrible"?

Like many of you, I found the 7.0 MSQ to be a deeply unsatisfying experience.

Let's call it what it is: for many, the 7.0 MSQ was a narrative trainwreck.

But this project was born from a different, perhaps more obsessive, question: When faced with an imperfect and disappointing story, what is the most meaningful and beautiful thing we, as dedicated readers, can build from its ruins?

This 20,000-word analysis is not an attempt to guess the developers' "hidden plan" or to "defend" the story. Instead, think of it as a massive thought experiment in constructive deep reading. It's an attempt to see if we can use the game's own established lore, its decade-long history of narrative techniques, and its easily-missed textual details to build a more profound, more coherent, and ultimately more rewarding interpretation of Dawntrail than the one presented on the surface.

This is not a search for the one, true answer. It's an exploration of the story's fullest potential. In this essay, you won't find definitive predictions, but rather a methodology I'd call it "narrative forensics" for how we can engage with the worlds we love more deeply. The analysis deconstructs:

The Three Keys to FFXIV's Narrative DNA: How recurring patterns like "The Fissure in Memory," "A Portrait of Tragedy," and "The Price of Choice" provide a framework for understanding Dawntrail's flaws as potential clues.

The Skydeep Cenote's True Purpose: A deep-dive into in-game evidence suggesting the dungeon is an ancient armory, not a quarry, with shocking connections to the Ronkan Empire and Pandæmonium.

The "Asymmetrical Narrative" Hypothesis: A core theory proposing that the underwhelming feeling could be a deliberately crafted cognitive filter, designed to turn the player from a passive observer into an active participant in a meta-game.

This essay is my answer to the question of how we can remain engaged and find profound meaning, even in the face of disappointment. It's an invitation to look past the surface and to celebrate the power of analysis to co-create meaning with the text.

If that sounds like an interesting expedition, the full analysis is linked below. All perspectives, critiques, and discussions are welcome.

Full Analysis Here: https://lightning-halloumi-d2f.notio...2cf68dca2beb5b

Thank you for your time.

External Link: A Note on Cross-Community Discourse (A Researcher's Note)

I think you're giving them too much credit. The writing was already on the decline - I know people love to hype up Endwalker because it had some really good moments, however, the rest of Endwalker was pretty bad. Bad pacing, dull filler quests, endless cutscenes that told us nothing new. Post-Endwalker was even worse - it was a storyline lifted right out of older FF games. A raid series sidequest turned into MSQ. As a raid series side story, it would have been more or less acceptable. As MSQ, it got really boring really fast because, instead of more exploration on the 13th (like I had been hoping for), we were forced to spend time with Zero, someone's Deviantart OC.

I had been hoping that this decline in quality was temporary as the writing team was focusing on Dawntrail. Instead. Dawntrail just turned all the previous writing problems up to 11. Instead of complex characters who evolve, we have flat characters with one or two gimmicks. They barely change and, when they do, it's incredibly abrupt and nonsensical. The Scions are shells of themselves with none of the original personality. Raha had already been turned into "WoL's biggest fan" comic relief in Endwalker but in DT, that is all he is. Estinien is just a comic relief himbo now - again, something that started in Endwalker.

Personally, the biggest sin of the writing for me is that it forces my WoL to be an absolute idiot. There is no other explanation for why we just allowed Zoraal Ja to do his thing like he did in Dawntrail. This, I think, is a symptom of the writers having backed themselves into a corner where the WoL is so powerful that they need to constantly come up with excuses for why we don't just solve problems with our immense capacity for violence. Unfortunately, the reasons they do bring in are so asinine that it makes the WoL seem like a bumbling fool instead of a hero who has saved the world many times over.

All in all, I don't believe Dawntrail is an experiment. I believe it's simply a downward slope of a decline in writing quality that already started in Endwalker. I do not know why this happened - the change in lead writer can't be the only cause considering Endwalker already showed many of these symptoms. It is far from the only story in gaming in the recent years that is horribly written. Maybe the writers are burned out. Maybe SE is putting too much pressure on them. Maybe they just ran out of good ideas. Who knows? The result remains the same - an underwhelming story that left me thinking "why should I care about any of this" the whole way through.

Dawntrail was a story that you happened to not like. That's it.

It's not some grand plan.
It's not some big structural failure.
It's not a secret flaw or saboteur that's keeping the developers from doing the work they really want to do.

You just didn't like a story. Accept it and move on, don't big it up into something it's not and then set up to disappoint yourself further when you're proven wrong.

If you must interrogate it, and get more meaning out of it than 'I didn't like it', then my recommendation is actually that you completely reject any assertions of inherent quality, and instead consider why things do and don't resonate with you specifically. Don't call Dawntrail 'bad' and Shadowbringers (or whatever your favorite expansion is) 'good', becuase there is no measurable difference between good and bad things; ask yourself why one story did work for you, and why another story didn't.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Dawntrail was a story that you happened to not like. That's it.

It's not some grand plan.
It's not some big structural failure.
It's not a secret flaw or saboteur that's keeping the developers from doing the work they really want to do.

You just didn't like a story. Accept it and move on, don't big it up into something it's not and then set up to disappoint yourself further when you're proven wrong.

If you must interrogate it, and get more meaning out of it than 'I didn't like it', then my recommendation is actually that you completely reject any assertions of inherent quality, and instead consider why things do and don't resonate with you specifically. Don't call Dawntrail 'bad' and Shadowbringers (or whatever your favorite expansion is) 'good', becuase there is no measurable difference between good and bad things; ask yourself why one story did work for you, and why another story didn't.

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Right—because when loads of people are saying the same thing, it must still just be a personal issue.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Dawntrail was a story that you happened to not like. That's it.

It's not some grand plan.
It's not some big structural failure.
It's not a secret flaw or saboteur that's keeping the developers from doing the work they really want to do.

You just didn't like a story. Accept it and move on, don't big it up into something it's not and then set up to disappoint yourself further when you're proven wrong.

If you must interrogate it, and get more meaning out of it than 'I didn't like it', then my recommendation is actually that you completely reject any assertions of inherent quality, and instead consider why things do and don't resonate with you specifically. Don't call Dawntrail 'bad' and Shadowbringers (or whatever your favorite expansion is) 'good', becuase there is no measurable difference between good and bad things; ask yourself why one story did work for you, and why another story didn't.

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There are fairly objective measures of good quality writing, though. I don't think anyone is going to tell you that stilted dialogue is a good thing, for example. Same goes for bad pacing and similar issues Dawntrail is absolutely plagued with. There are absolutely things that come down to taste (personally, I hated Wuk Ewu and didn't find him funny at all), but if a house is structurally unsound, you can't tell me I don't like it just because of the color of its walls.

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

Right—because when loads of people are saying the same thing, it must still just be a personal issue.

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

There are fairly objective measures of good quality writing, though. I don't think anyone is going to tell you that stilted dialogue is a good thing, for example. Same goes for bad pacing and similar issues Dawntrail is absolutely plagued with. There are absolutely things that come down to taste (personally, I hated Wuk Ewu and didn't find him funny at all), but if a house is structurally unsound, you can't tell me I don't like it just because of the color of its walls.

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Cleretic's point is that this isn't a "planned failure" or whatever. The writing they gave us was flawed and easily criticized and a lot of people disliked it including you. That's it. It's not some grand conspiracy. There's plenty of people who like Dawntrail's story who don't frequent the forums so they don't comment here because of the Forum's (justified) reputation of a circlejerk of negativity and hateposting.

Again, there are plenty of valid criticisms of Dawntrail's writing that I agree with, but it's not intentionally bad.

For all its faults, Dawntrail is sincere in its themes of the weight of legacy, the importance of understanding the people you live with (even your enemies), and the dangers of toxic nostalgia. While it could have been executed better, the writer's themes still showed through and came together powerfully in the finale of the main story. And the patch story continues to build upon this with the dark sides of Alexandria and the reintroduction of Queen Sphene to give a contrasting voice to its current state.

I enjoyed Dawntrail's main story a lot. We asked for a summer vacation expansion and we got it. Heck, I'm more sympathetic to Zoraal Ja than most since I know what golden child burnout looks like.

It's fine to criticize something, but to descend into conspiracy theories like this feels wrong when there's nothing to corroborate it.

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Originally Posted by JarvieK

* The Fissure in Memory (from Merlwyb's amnesia to the Ancients' altered past)

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Merlwyb's amnesia is not trauma based as claimed in the article, rather it is the same magic that caused the entire realm to forget the last "Warriors of Light" that Louisoix saved from Bahamut. That's the adventurers' squadron she tried to prioritise. Just...FYI.

And as mentioned in the article, I would more closely follow Occam's razor than believe that there's a secret narrative built underneath Dawntrail, or "cognitive filtering", or alien engineers, or whatever. The presentation just doesn't really support this and the whole thing is a bit of a reach. What you see is what you get, for better or worse.

But far be it for me to tell you not to analyse it in whichever way you find comforting or engaging.

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Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

Merlwyb's amnesia is not trauma based as claimed in the article, rather it is the same magic that caused the entire realm to forget the last "Warriors of Light" that Louisoix saved from Bahamut. That's the adventurers' squadron she tried to prioritise. Just...FYI.

And as mentioned in the article, I would more closely follow Occam's razor than believe that there's a secret narrative built underneath Dawntrail, or "cognitive filtering", or alien engineers, or whatever. The presentation just doesn't really support this and the whole thing is a bit of a reach. What you see is what you get, for better or worse.

But far be it for me to tell you not to analyse it in whichever way you find comforting or engaging.

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Thank you for pointing this out. I've verified this claim and it is correct that Louisoix's spell combined with a massive amount of aether "emission" caused the NPCs, including Merlwyb, to lose their memories.

It doesn't contradict my theory at all. In fact, it reinforces it. The idea that a massive aetherial event can directly alter memories on a massive scale is an even stronger piece of evidence for my "cognitive filter" hypothesis.

Thanks again and I will continue to check and make sure this analysis series is based on ground truth.

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Regarding your final point, which is the most important one: "What you see is what you get"

I fully respect this perspective. It's a pragmatic and perfectly valid way to perceive not only a game, but a valid worldview in general.

However, my entire project is built on a fundamentally different philosophy of reading. I don't believe that the value of a text lies only in what is explicitly presented (the in-game MSQ). For me, the most rewarding part of engaging with a world like FFXIV is the act of "constructive deep reading" that uses the textual evidence to build a more coherent, more meaningful, and ultimately more beautiful interpretation than what's on the surface.

My analysis isn't meant to claim that "I've found the hidden truth deployed by the writers", but an exploration of the story's fullest potential. It's an argument that "what you see" is merely the foundation, and the real joy comes from what we can build upon it.

So you are right, from a WYSIWYG perspective, my theory is indeed "a bit of a reach." But my goal is precisely to "reach" beyond that, to see what treasures might lie in the depths.

There is no 'objective way to measure the quality of art.' There will always be exceptions, and ways to poke holes in any kind of means of measuring the 'quality' of art. It is as simple as 'you didn't like the story.'

While I liked Dawntrai's story, and find the themes its exploring interesting, I did find some of the pacing, and dialog kind of janky. But what I found janky is is likely going to be different for what others found janky. I am more interested in what it is trying to do instead of what it fails to do. It's just simple irony that Dawntrail, a story that has themes of legacy, burden, and expectations has a little bit of a case of sequelitis. No grand conspiracy.

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

I think you're giving them too much credit. The writing was already on the decline - I know people love to hype up Endwalker because it had some really good moments, however, the rest of Endwalker was pretty bad. Bad pacing, dull filler quests, endless cutscenes that told us nothing new. Post-Endwalker was even worse - it was a storyline lifted right out of older FF games. A raid series sidequest turned into MSQ. As a raid series side story, it would have been more or less acceptable. As MSQ, it got really boring really fast because, instead of more exploration on the 13th (like I had been hoping for), we were forced to spend time with Zero, someone's Deviantart OC.

...

All in all, I don't believe Dawntrail is an experiment. I believe it's simply a downward slope of a decline in writing quality that already started in Endwalker. I do not know why this happened - the change in lead writer can't be the only cause considering Endwalker already showed many of these symptoms.

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While I don't agree that Endwalker was bad, I do agree it had flaws (mostly pacing) and there are circumstances behind that.

1. Shadowbringers was mostly Natsuko Ishikawa given free reign. Endwalker was a collaborative effort between her, Banri Oda, and maybe Koji Fox and Yoshi-P. Their styles... clash, to put it lightly.
2. Endwalker was a late-in-development mashup of two planned expansions - one a war with Garlemald, the second actually concluding the Hy/Zo myth arc. A second "War with Garlemald" expansion after Stormblood was deemed redundant, and in the interest of finishing the Hy/Zo myth arc they mashed it into the concluding expansion. Hence pacing issues.
3. Post-Endwalker (6.X) is from a different writer / writing team led by Daichi Hiroi. He has worked on stuff for this game in the past (Shadow of Mhach, Pandaemonium, assistant to Yasumi Matsuno for the Ivalice derivative side content), though I can't say I'm super impressed with it. Either way, it was not disguised as being filler content for Dawntrail's preparation, so I'm not going to be so harsh on it. Filler content is usually bad. Add in the constraints they have to work in when writing for this game and...

Dawntrail's had its own issues - the Scions being present but not engaged with the plot, excessive focus on Wuk Lamat, and Lamaty'i's shounen characterization in a game that's been quite seinen in tone since Shadowbringers - but while I did not enjoy the first two acts, the third has been pretty good.

No, I don't think the writing quality going downhill is a clue there's some grand experiment to make Dawntrail garbage on purpose. Endwalker had too many fingers in the pie and some last-minute rewrites that screwed it up; post-Endwalker was the understudy's first crack at big time content; Dawntrail was advertised as being a "beach holiday" expansion and that's what it was for half of the story (relatively speaking). I agree that writing's not as good as past content, but that doesn't mean it's worthless garbage.