Dawntrail Retrospective

Having finished 7.3 yesterday and had time to digest everything, I wanted to post a more comprehensive summary of how it all felt now that the primary story arc of DT has come to a close.

tldr: pretty good but a lot of the cracks in XIV's format and type of storytelling are showing and I hope SE works on that

• Overall, Dawntrail is one of my favorite expansions. The new characters and locations were great, I enjoyed the story and themes, I thought the pacing was good, and the patch quests worked to wrap up a lot of what we saw in base 7.0. Wuk Lamat remains one of my all time favorite characters. Real Sphene really grew on me in the patches and I'm really impressed by the writers putting in the work for her in such a comparatively short amount of time, leveraging Queen Eternal's screentime to work as a great contrast.
• I love me some cyberpunk nonsense. S9 was tailor made to appeal to me specifically. The themes of conquering death vs letting it occur naturally are a great place to go with that. Culture clash is always fun to explore and I'm glad we finally got the chance to work with the S9 citizens to reshape their city and society in a way that gives them a fuller experience of existence.
• I wish we'd gotten more time in Tural. This expansion was promised as a Tural expansion and while we did get a majority of the new zones there, when the story pivoted away from Tural into S9 focus at level 97, it pivoted hard and we rarely went back to Tural. While it didn't bother me as much as others, it still feels rough to spend such a large time away from the place that we began and that we were promised as our locale for the expansion. This is only exacerbated by the patch quests being set almost entirely in S9 - while if we take the story as a whole and see that it's roughly 50/50 for Tural vs S9 focus, the real-world time of over a year spent nearly exclusively in S9 makes it feel like we abandoned Tural early on.
• Some promises were made about cultural consultants and while their presence was evident, I hope SE keeps them around for longer or maybe gets them to look at the overall story for future expansions that delve into topics like culture clash, colonization, and meeting new (to us) societies, especially ones based on real-world indigenous cultures. The cultures themselves were presented (as i understand) accurately and respectfully, but the S9 portions generally sidestepping the colonization issue and things like Koana's backstory bringing up a common and harmful trope regarding native american children make it feel like the story as a whole was not seen by cultural consultants or sensitivity readers.

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• I genuinely loved how many women were in this expansion in prominent societal and narrative positions. Wuk Lamat, Krile, Shale, Sphene, Cahciua, Mablu and Liplu, the list is larger than them and it's such a breath of fresh air. Many of them also had really good development or starring moments of importance, and most didn't feel disposable or treated as existing only for male character development. I realize we probably won't get spoiled like this again, but it was so nice seeing women take the center stage for this expansion, and I would love to see more women in prominent narrative positions in the future.
• XIV's format of things like new dungeons, the expac level structure (X3, X9, and X0 trials, dungeons every odd level, 6 zones, needing enough companions for Trust in dungeons, etc) is becoming apparent as a hindrance on the stories XIV can tell. I hope the team takes the opportunity to explore alternatives or different ways to include the content alongside the story they want to tell. I completely understand how difficult game development is, so I'm not holding my breath on this one, but I think there's some really interesting format changes XIV can make for the betterment of their game and future expansions.
• A lot has been said about the role of the Scions in this expansion, so I won't reiterate much aside from to say that I think most of them should be put on the shelf for a bit. Give new characters or underutilized returning characters the room to shine. Trust dungeons can use temporary NPCs for all I care. There was no reason to have Alisaie and Alphinaud along with us for most of this story. If the scions are to be present, make them like Estinien - off doing their own thing, showing up for moments that suit their niches or critical story moments to lend a hand, and then they vanish again. Let us spend some time away from them so it feels all the better when they come back.
• I really enjoyed the role of the WoL as a mentor character with a reputation. The idea of being an explorer, a mentor, a figure who is more than just a fighter, is an excellent direction to take. I hope we get more like that in future expansions.
• The animation quality this expansion, and 7.3 in particular, was SUPERB. Such great facial expressions and movement, it really made the characters feel alive and special!
• Please please please give us more hero moments where we get to see our WoLs fight, defend, shoot, etc etc. I know there's so many jobs to account for - game dev is hard and time consuming - but it absolutely felt AMAZING to see my WoL defending Sphene with her Paladin shield and then leaping in with her sword to destroy the server in 7.3.
• Immense credit as usual to the sound and music team. Lots of bangers this expansion, esp the Alexandia-related music and trials. Love y'all, keep up the great work!
• 7.3 puzzles were okay. I get that puzzles need to be easy and characters need to give hints. I love the idea of puzzles but some harder ones would go a long way.

I will not be reading replies to this thread, having learned my lesson last time. I hope everybody has a good day. Or don't. I'm not your mom.

I enjoyed the xpac in some ways, I am so sick of FF14 being this hub queue game though. There is almost no adventure and its just duty finder and teleports. It's getting repetitive.