So that 7.1 msq...

I'm not even sure what I played through and what the point was....whatever at least I got a new dungeon.

i just finished the msq. and im genuinely kinda angry. ive had 3 and hours of my time wasted on plot points that are all over the place, it feels annoying like they're tryna teach me the same stuff DT was supposed to teach me.. we cant we just move on and stop rehashing the same story...

im gonna say this 1 loud for the class, but this is the WORST patch i've ever done and ive been [playing for 5 years

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

i just finished the msq. and im genuinely kinda angry. ive had 3 and hours of my time wasted on plot points that are all over the place, it feels annoying like they're tryna teach me the same stuff DT was supposed to teach me.. we cant we just move on and stop rehashing the same story...

im gonna say this 1 loud for the class, but this is the WORST patch i've ever done and ive been [playing for 5 years

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The worst part is knowing that they set up this weird cliffhanger and within the first 20 minutes of 7.2 they will completely expose who the baddie is and their motivation

What the actual [Thal's balls!] happened to the writing of this game...

Alternative title of 7.1 Crossroads

7.1 : Who are my parents

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Originally Posted by Raraka

Alternative title of 7.1 Crossroads

7.1 : Who are my parents

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Similar writing quality...


https://www.simplemost.com/wp-conten...ossroads-1.jpg

Yeah I definitely had no idea what the point of 7.1 MSQ was. The quality definitely dipped in recent months and it shows.

I wasn't nearly as annoyed with the patch story in comparison to 7.0.

I'm in the same camp as everyone else who is wondering why they placed the focus on specific characters. I'm very lukewarm on the 'twist' at the end. I don't have much faith in the writing team for MSQ at this point so my expectations are in the ground.

Overall the writing was very mediocre. I had a lot of fun with the dungeon at least.

Now we have: Problem -> Solution within a cutscene -> play happy music and everyone smiles. This is childish and insulting, and I think it all stems from Endwalkers rushed state of storytelling, where they wanted to vomit everything out at us because they couldn't be arsed to write properly and just wanted to cram in as much as they could. So we get a speed version of Thavnair, a speed version of Garlemald, the plot-expositionville of SHarlayan that conveniently knows everything in the world, so we just have to go to them for a solution after one day of research. I hate Sharlayan because it's a convenient tool for the writers now to okay their way out of any problem solving writing, much like how KOANA uses Sharlayan in the New World. "Oh lemme just quickly invent a train whistle that transfers aetheric sounds that mimic a beast, but in an inoffensive way so the Rroneek don't get TOO SCARED in a day! Because Sharlayan powers!"

Dawntrail is way too much of a course correct towards "Oh look at this perfect society where everything is solved by talking and understanding."It's talk-no-jutsu land with rubber bullets, and the occational brawl to try and gaslight you into thinking there's any actual problem happening that can't be solved over some tacos. The shonen anime-level writing is bleeding through really heavily and I cringed with Koana having the fastest ever "oh I love rroneek now" turnarounds and the "I must protect everyone!" suicide jump. In JP it's line for line the exact thing that every shonen anime character yells out too.

Highlights of this MSQ: Someone mentioning that Y'shtola is researching the rift travel (yeah we know) and that she wants to meet us for the key. For her to APPEAR in a scene later to tell us that she is researching the rift travel and that she needs our key eventually. THE SAME THING, 10/10 fan service, 10/10 writing, hand them all the writing trophies and prizes. They still have no idea why they brought the Scions to Tural aside from fan service and problem solving the plot for us.
Oh you don't like Sphene? HAVE TWO SPHENES!

I don't know what needs to happen to the writing, if they have a formula in place I don't think new writers will help. if they chose a line of "Make it really happy and anime" I don't know how they are gonna make this interesting anymore. Unless a new writer fights to put in some NUANCE into the writing at the threat of his/her job and having Yoshi-P or Ishikawa yell at them.

- Garlemald destroyed offscreen, MISTAKE. We could've gotten a full expansion dealing with a civil war and change in Garlemald, seen the royal family, given Zenos an actual proper storyarc that wasn't some shonen anime villain wank off of "Oh look, cool guy with sword is edgy and like a mad dog." He could've robbed his father of power and we could've had a hand in a rebellion in Garlemald and seen reform, and having them withdraw the empire from their conquered lands. There was so much to that.

- Even after that, we could've explored how BOZJA, how DALMASCA, How LANDIS, NAGXIA and other regions dealt with the power vacuum of Garlemald going away. DAlmasca already had tensions between civilians and the royal family even before the Empire came in. Bozja has several resistance factions that want a say in how the nation is rebuilt, not to mention every other tiny region in ILSABARD WHICH IS STILL COVERED IN A FOG IN THE MAP, while we gallivant to the edge of the universe!

- Long gone are the moments where we argued with Varis about ruling, and how he points out the hypocricy of the city states of Eorzea on how they treat the beast tribes for example. Long gone are the plots of walking a tight rope in political scheming like it was done in Ul'dah. Any sort of nuance that we had in Ishgard. Any nuance of how crappy the Far East is as an estalishment (Yotsuyu) and could brew tragedies.

In summary: Going to the end of the universe was a mistake, it was like WoW going to the afterlife, did I mention SHARLAYAN has a listening post IN THE AFTERLIFE? (ugh..). If only they could be arsed to write more nuanced storytelling that isn't an instant solution. Have world conflicts, have political conflicts that are ONGOING. Have new wars, in new regions. The WoL might be powerful, but the WoL isn't unbeatable.

Go back to the basics, have people have conflicts and arguments, including the scions. Respect your own worldbuilding from before. Every region has it's own problems and power struggles. Tural is a lost cause I think, writing-wise in terms of the MSQ.

It's more important that they are consistent with the tone of their story, Tural is way too much of an utopia that it borders on unbelievable within the world its supposedly in and it has this weird feeling of being a cultural displaycase instead of being actual living breathing cultures. (Funnily enough AGAIN the sidequests shine with their writing on this compared to the MSQ, I highly recommend the rolequests for example.)

Also, speaking of worldbuilding. There's 0 ways of justifying the Ishgard still being stuck in the middle-ages or any other region for that matter, if they just insert whatever tech they fancy from flying mechs to please their plot. If things exist to improve life, it will spread in the world. People argue that Final Fantasy is always a mixture of Scifi and fantasy, yeah.. But there was always a reason in the world for it, there was a reason why one nation had tech and another didnt. And if they insist on just tossing in Allagan stuff that is supposed to be SUPER RARE into the screen all the time, along with space ships, radios and more.

Honestly, FFXIV should just pull the plug on pretending to care about worldbuilding anymore, with their modern clothing glams and such and just make it a scifi game fully with society advancing leaps and bounds. We are getting "SPACE EXPLORATION" in a coming patch. Stop pretending to be fantasy.

simply put, we have B team while whatever SE has forced yoshida to shit out as the next FF game has the A team working on it, FF16 was the beginning of the end for quality control

that 7.1 just felt like a filler, nothing interesting was said for 90% of it

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Originally Posted by arstoka

I wasn't nearly as annoyed with the patch story in comparison to 7.0.

I'm in the same camp as everyone else who is wondering why they placed the focus on specific characters. I'm very lukewarm on the 'twist' at the end. I don't have much faith in the writing team for MSQ at this point so my expectations are in the ground.

Overall the writing was very mediocre. I had a lot of fun with the dungeon at least.

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The big question is if it was more tolerable because it was better or because there was less of it.

I hated the 6.X patch series and it looks like I am going to hate the 7.X series too. I think the new writing team is completely unsure of what new story arch they are setting up because DT and now 7.1 don't feel the like start or foundation of anything new.

7.1 was basically three short stories and a prologue for 7.2. Lets have a funeral and reminds the players that Alexandrians have no idea about deaths (nor emotions), lets help the gecko find out something about his mom, lets retread all the miqo'te native lore because Koana is here now and we love cows.

What are the odds that the fake queen is one of the remaining ascians (if the writers can even remember that some are unaccounted for).

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

I hated the 6.X patch series and it looks like I am going to hate the 7.X series too. I think the new writing team is completely unsure of what new story arch they are setting up because DT and now 7.1 don't feel the like start or foundation of anything new.

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They're setting up more rift travel, it's the only real plothook they got left that can carry the story. What happens to the Alexandrians really don't move the story unless they all go evil, and finding out more of the lizard mom won't do much to set up a new story.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

The big question is if it was more tolerable because it was better or because there was less of it.

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It certainly wasn't better, in my opinion lol
There were only two parts that intrigued me and one was resolved by Wuk Lamat at the beginning of the patch. The other was the dungeon notes themselves hinting at a more interesting plot that we aren't likely to see.

Just finished it, the stuff with Gulool Ja was alright I guess. I was interested in it but it seems they already resolved that plotline.

The stuff with Koana genuinely feels like the biggest MacGuffin they've ever done. They took one of the cool things about Koana and just wrote it off. Because Tural can't have flaws, it has to be 100% perfect where nothing bad happens with no bad people, everyone has to get along just fine.

The random hunter showing up that just so happened to be at the village when Koana's parents were killed and explained away as "I heard them say "Protect our son!!!"" just took me out of it. That whole portion of the MSQ was so awful. It just perfectly solved every issue they had within a single day. The issue with the train tracks scaring the animals, solved perfectly. The conflict between the train operators (if you can call it a conflict) and the nomadic tribe, solved perfectly. All it took was the death of a single monster and it just fixed every single issue.

I seriously don't know what they're doing or expecting out of this. I enjoyed DT's story for the most part. It had flaws but it's no where near as bad as people make it out to be. But this is something entirely different. This genuinely is probably the lowest MSQ has ever been. Unvoiced Side quest content is more interesting than this.

I'd rather go back to Post Patch ARR.

That said the fight content is great. Newest dungeon is my favorite dungeon now. I wish I could be as positive about the story content.

Bad writing is SE big plan to expose fake streamers, change my mind

How did some of y'all survive the 5.1 MSQ lmao, that one was like 90% about the Eulmore mayor election.

I would say 7.1 has been better than the 6.1 MSQ since it directly addresses loose ends left from the main MSQ.

You got to fight a chupracobra that uses the bottomless pit trap card with hovering rocks that look like testicles and then sperm when they overlap with the other mobs and the tail sticks out.
You got to explore Baxter stockmans lab before he gets turned into a fly mutant after he gets approval from lizard shredder to begin human mutagen trials.
The person we killed comes back to life in multiple versions. Yeah we get to run in a circle story wise until we hit a pole and knock ourseleves out.

I liked it.

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Originally Posted by Vintersol

I liked it.

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I wish I was you. I truly do.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

I don't know what needs to happen to the writing, if they have a formula in place I don't think new writers will help. if they chose a line of "Make it really happy and anime" I don't know how they are gonna make this interesting anymore. Unless a new writer fights to put in some NUANCE into the writing at the threat of his/her job and having Yoshi-P or Ishikawa yell at them.

- Even after that, we could've explored how BOZJA, how DALMASCA, How LANDIS, NAGXIA and other regions dealt with the power vacuum of Garlemald going away. DAlmasca already had tensions between civilians and the royal family even before the Empire came in. Bozja has several resistance factions that want a say in how the nation is rebuilt, not to mention every other tiny region in ILSABARD WHICH IS STILL COVERED IN A FOG IN THE MAP, while we gallivant to the edge of the universe!

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correct me if i'm wrong, isn't illsabard map being covered in fog \ clouds because those areas are uncharted? probably due to the occupation of garlemald preventing modren scholars from traveling through the continent to chart it, still, it is weird that corvos is still not visible on the map even though it is the entery point to illsabard from thavanir

it is also known about illsabard having a harsh terrain and weather so that could be another reason

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

Now we have: Problem -> Solution within a cutscene -> play happy music and everyone smiles. This is childish and insulting, and I think it all stems from Endwalkers rushed state of storytelling, where they wanted to vomit everything out at us because they couldn't be arsed to write properly and just wanted to cram in as much as they could. So we get a speed version of Thavnair, a speed version of Garlemald, the plot-expositionville of SHarlayan that conveniently knows everything in the world, so we just have to go to them for a solution after one day of research. I hate Sharlayan because it's a convenient tool for the writers now to okay their way out of any problem solving writing, much like how KOANA uses Sharlayan in the New World. "Oh lemme just quickly invent a train whistle that transfers aetheric sounds that mimic a beast, but in an inoffensive way so the Rroneek don't get TOO SCARED in a day! Because Sharlayan powers!"

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Can we complain then, about how this has been a thing ever since ever? Because no one used to complain about this when the Scions constantly pulled solutions out of nowhere because 'they are so smart'. A problem that really rose in question in Shadowbringers and got worse in Endwalker. If anything, the level of the story is almost the same, with just less appeal to the emotions to seem remarkable.

Half of it was stuff that should have been in the 7.0 MSQ, and the other half with galool and the ending should have taken up more of it

Did Koana ever even mention he resented his parents before he outright said it while regretting he had done so? His arc with hating his parents until he finds thr truth about them is such a played out trope, you could see it coming a mile away

I Feel like the WoL could have been absent from this whole story arc and nothing would change.

With how powerful Wuk had gotten by the end of the 7.0 story, she should have no problem going to that facility or putting down that dinosaur thing. We are only there cause shes sandbagging HARD to keep us around

When Speen (Fake sphene) Said she had a solution to the problem, I half expected the writers to make her say "Solution Ten!"

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Originally Posted by Raraka

The worst part is knowing that they set up this weird cliffhanger and within the first 20 minutes of 7.2 they will completely expose who the baddie is and their motivation

What the actual [Thal's balls!] happened to the writing of this game...

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I'll go one step further with this.
Either the last boss of the dungeon was Galool jas mom based on the echo we got (The head scientist is crossed off cause he was the 2nd boss) or his mom is the bad guy because she was the only new character introduced that we diddn't meet/saw the end of, only implied (The queens aide, sure. but he was seemingly effected by the neo regulators. That'd be a bit weird if he was the badguy.... unless he was faking)

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

...ive had 3 and hours of my time wasted on plot points that are all over the place, it feels annoying like they're tryna teach me the same stuff DT was supposed to teach me..

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(lol, kind of like figuring out which 7.1 thread to post in to talk about the MSQ because people creating all different sorts of threads to discuss it. Oh well, I'll settle on this one without the annoying spoiler drop-down formats in every post. If you're in a thread titled 7.1 MSQ, you better expect to see "spoilers."


Quite frankly, this patch's 7.1 MSQ was absolutely pathetic that I can't imagine that it took longer than a few minutes to come up with.

This segment of the MSQ is the very definition of "contrived." I can't think of a better word to describe what I just sat through. Nearly every. single. conflict is resolved 10 minutes later, which I can deal with, but the problem is they are all resolved through incredibly artificial coincidences.

(Obvious 7.1 MSQ spoilers in case you somehow wandered into a thread titled 7.1 msq not expecting to see discussion about it)

1) Not exactly the worst offender, but nearly everything concerning Gulool Ja's mother. The Backroom couldn't find anything about Gulool's mother, but when the WoL and Scions go out and actually talk to like 3 people in-person, suddenly we probably know where Gulool's mother was. We kill the dungeon's last boss and somehow before it dies we get our favorite dues ex machina: The echo. Okay, mama mamool worked there and had the hots for lizard Zenos, case closed. But just for good measure, let's look for records of her in the facility's database. Oh btw guys, Gulool's good with computers now so don't worry about it.

2) We need the railroad between Shaaloani and Heritage Found up and running so more people can be reunited with their families. But the FFXIV buffalo. We need a quiet train and to make sure the FFXIV buffalo don't get scared-off by a whistle for getting too close to the tracks. But why are they getting too close to the tracks? Oh, a big scary monster is coming, that's why. Let's kill the monster. Oh no, the monster is basically invulnerable. Good thing we have just the right NPC to make it not invulnerable. We did it! And now we can use said monster's scales in trains to not-as-badly scare FFXIV buffalo off if they get too close to the tracks with their mortal enemy's aether imprint that they were literally showed cowering in fear of before 5 minutes ago. Hurray! Train problem solved in 20 minutes.

3) Basically, most of Koana: "I need to learn more about the Hhetsarro to solve this problem. BTW did you guys know I originally came from this tribe? But I was left behind as a babe, probably because my parents hated me, I dunno." "Also, I only had this FFXIV buffalo for an hour and a half, but if anything happened to him I would kill everyone in Tural and then myself." Random dude after you kill the big monster 5 minutes later: "Oh hey, this reminds me of the time I saw a young couple basically sacrifice themselves against this type of monster." Koana: "OMG THEY WERE MY PARENTS! I never could have imagined that they would have reasons! Now I suddenly have closure after bringing this issue up 10 minutes ago..."

4) The people of Solution Nine aren't coping or adjusting. Well, that's too complicated to resolve in this MSQ patch. So instead of giving them closure, we'll make a cliffhanger where everyone's memory is wiped to forget Sphene ever died, mysteriously bring in a clone, and further leave things ambiguous with Yshtola finding some form of Sphene collapsing in Living Memory... Did you notice us giving ominous close-ups of people's regulators? Hmmm... Could that be related?

Hyperbole and sarcasm aside, that's basically the synopsis of the entire patch's MSQ. I don't know what's worse, getting flashbacks of things that literally just happened within the hour or every issue being so neatly resolved 20 minutes later through coincidence. Once in a while it's fine, but so many in the span of an hour? It all just comes off as lazy and uninspired, which I guess is becoming DT's actual main theme, next to "parents, 'mirite?"

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Originally Posted by Cidel

Oh btw guys, Gulool's good with computers now so don't worry about it.

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Shale got Gulool Ja Alexandrian edition Mavis Beacon lol

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Originally Posted by Cidel

Hyperbole and sarcasm aside, that's basically the synopsis of the entire patch's MSQ. I don't know what's worse, getting flashbacks of things that literally just happened within the hour or every issue being so neatly resolved 20 minutes later through coincidence. Once in a while it's fine, but so many in the span of an hour? It all just comes off as lazy and uninspired, which I guess is becoming DT's actual main theme, next to "parents, 'mirite?"

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But ok for real even though I enjoyed 7.1 more than 7.0 I 100% agree everything was way too perfectly tied up neatly with a perfect bow.

I can get over thinking some of these things could have been introduced in 7.0 then wrapped up in 7.1, which could have given us more time with the Alexandrian “how do we deal with grief” and Sphene 2: I didn’t die electric boogaloo stuff. But the perfectness of tying up plot threads and so quickly was just not great.

And you didn’t mention it but even Wuk Lamat finding us to start the MSQ was too quick and perfect too. She just happened to be walking around, conveniently stumbled in the restaurant at the perfect time to overhear the guy struggling with coming back to tullioyolal and having the perfect solution to his problem. And lucky her we are just one table away and she was just hoping she’d randomly find us during her random walk abouts.

And it just cascades from there, Koana’s 20 years of (misguided) resentment gone in an afternoon. Buffalo problem just needed one predator down and the grazing issue and the train issue also solved. Gulool Ja mystery mom and birth origins also solved shortly and he takes it perfectly well with no concerns or issues about this new information.

It was a "just okay" anime filler episode, but when I think back the prior X.1 patches like post-war Ala Mhigo and Doma, or the main plot of trying to get back home in time in 5.1, or even 6.1 with the setup for the selfcontained arc with you working for the dragon king to go to another world, this just pales in comparison.

Yepp. Crossroads feels incomplete because Mankrik's wife was not there.



Cheers

Koana got Lamatified xD Maybe they buckled under the Wuk Lamat criticism and were like yo, lets just have Wuk and Koana swap places. That ought to solve the issue~

Infantile.





That was the word I was missing to describe 7.0. It finally came to me after I played 7.1...

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Originally Posted by Regis_Paran

Infantile.

That was the word I was missing to describe 7.0. It finally came to me after I played 7.1...

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That's the word I was looking for.

The patch is ... inoffensive but infantile. Wuk Lamat isn't a blight on the patch MSQ a la 7.0 but as a whole it's a giant nothing-burger. Koana's "moment" was eye-rollingly painfully embarrassingly nonsensical. Nothing in the 7.1 MSQ is a direct insult to our intelligence but nor is it something to actually be interested in (plot-wise), we'll have to wait and see if the cliffhanger goes somewhere cool or stupid, who knows at this point. I don't think anyone will HATE it but nor will anyone remember it.

Once again the dungeon was cool, so there's that, the design and battle team putting in overtime to carry the writers.

from now on i am not going to be doing msq on patch day. i am not going to waste my time. i will just skip all cutscene and watch it on youtube. because this patch was just a waste of my time

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Originally Posted by St0rmy

Just finished it, the stuff with Gulool Ja was alright I guess. I was interested in it but it seems they already resolved that plotline.

The stuff with Koana genuinely feels like the biggest MacGuffin they've ever done. They took one of the cool things about Koana and just wrote it off. Because Tural can't have flaws, it has to be 100% perfect where nothing bad happens with no bad people, everyone has to get along just fine.

The random hunter showing up that just so happened to be at the village when Koana's parents were killed and explained away as "I heard them say "Protect our son!!!"" just took me out of it. That whole portion of the MSQ was so awful. It just perfectly solved every issue they had within a single day. The issue with the train tracks scaring the animals, solved perfectly. The conflict between the train operators (if you can call it a conflict) and the nomadic tribe, solved perfectly. All it took was the death of a single monster and it just fixed every single issue.

I seriously don't know what they're doing or expecting out of this. I enjoyed DT's story for the most part. It had flaws but it's no where near as bad as people make it out to be. But this is something entirely different. This genuinely is probably the lowest MSQ has ever been. Unvoiced Side quest content is more interesting than this.

I'd rather go back to Post Patch ARR.

That said the fight content is great. Newest dungeon is my favorite dungeon now. I wish I could be as positive about the story content.

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Hello breastie!!!

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Originally Posted by Reldhir

Koana got Lamatified xD Maybe they buckled under the Wuk Lamat criticism and were like yo, lets just have Wuk and Koana swap places. That ought to solve the issue~

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I just want to know what the difference is between these two characters having a cool 'moment' and someone like, I dunno, Thancred, Y'shtola, Estinien, G'raha, etc having one is lol.

I feel the quality of writing has definitely shifted from mature to childish, and I am worried they are trying to pursue a younger audience, hence, the shift in tone.

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

I feel the quality of writing has definitely shifted from mature to childish, and I am worried they are trying to pursue a younger audience, hence, the shift in tone.

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the problem is all game are becoming worst as time goes as much as I hated endwalker I can say the writing have quality in it since DT is meh trying to not hurt anyone or anything like legit in heavenward you have racism at is worst and in dawntrail it's just"all a big family" but I play in Japanese so it save me that on CS xx).

but ya I think the lefties are just being overwhelming that they are influencing the game now and to a bad point I'm my book

Ok. So I just wanna say. My character would never look like shes questioned if what she did was wrong. Honestly Speene threatend the first. In turn she Threaten everyone my Wol calls friends. That includes Ryne and Gaia..... Speene chose her path. Thus peace was never an option.

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Originally Posted by Regis_Paran

Infantile.





That was the word I was missing to describe 7.0. It finally came to me after I played 7.1...

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I was actually thinking this yesterday. DT pulled in such a visceral reaction because the writing actually is in line with other AAA games today in the sense that the dialogue and pacing are inherently infantalizing.

I have a feeling this will become a more common observation as we get further away from 7.0. Like you I feel like it hit me kind of retroactively.