Wow, Dawntrail was bad

I wouldn't consider myself the Great Defender nor the Great Critic when it comes to ffxiv.

I've casually enjoyed the game despite it's flaws, accepting the things the game excels at and accepting also the other areas where it could really improve upon.

But boy was Dawntrail bad. :/

And I'm not going to re-iterate everything that everyone else has said, I think most critics are pretty valid. But Zepla put it well when she said this expansion's biggest flaw is that it kills every momentum it has.

Its bewildering how the game manages to hype you up at different moments just to let you down so hard. How come when everything is at stake and we're literally running out of time to save the world again, we end up talking to npcs about their favorite snacks, taking a gondola ride, having ice cream, put on a play, go to a museum, and ride on the back of a capibara... Like, are you for real?

We've just reached the absolute last quest of this expansion and all we did for the past four hours was casually talk to NPCs. While there's a ticking time bomb... And the rest of the team is supposedly busting their ass to keep a gate open... Astounding...

Not that it hasn't been varying shades of this for the rest of the expansion as well. And I've stayed optimistic in hopes the expansion would redeem itself and the negative reception was a bit overblown.

I can accept Wuk Lamat, the poor voice acting, and the lackluster cast of new characters, but the pacing... the absolute lack of any stakes... wow.

Dawntrail can only be considered as an interlude in the series of expansions. So many missed opportunities when it comes to tackling the 'next chapter' after the finale EW delivered.

I can only hope the devs deliver better with 8.0...

Wow... just really wow. :confused:

I love how Dawntrail really doubled down on the flashbacks to events that legit had happened five minutes prior, like the player suffers from short-term memory loss and needs a nudge for even the smallest of things. I was like - seriously, that JUST HAPPENED.

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Originally Posted by Barwara

How come when everything is at stake and we're literally running out of time to save the world again, we end up talking to npcs about their favorite snacks, taking a gondola ride, having ice cream, put on a play, go to a museum, and ride on the back of a capibara

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It's pretty obvious why. We had just entered the area. They want us to explore said area. It is explained in the story how we are able to do it. The process of what she is doing to reprogram herself takes a lot of time and doesn't just happen at the press of a button.

Depends on if it was actually a computer program, but in the kind of programs we have it does take more than a few minutes to code something complex without AI (and even sometimes with it when it's not doing what you want).

It would probably have been of benefit for us just not to find or have the threat presented to us until nearer the end, and just shut them down anyway because they were consuming soul energy that didn't belong to them. But at least they explained the reason.

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And the rest of the team is supposedly busting their ass to keep a gate open...

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There is some reasoning to that. Portals have almost always been unstable in FFXIV so having experts like Y'shtola or Urianger watch it was reasonable. But it seemed excessive to have quite so many people stay behind. Estinien, Alphinaud, Alisaie, Thancred, etc.

They obviously just didn't want to make Duty Support available for the trial so they only sent enough for the dungeon.

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And I've stayed optimistic in hopes the expansion would redeem itself and the negative reception was a bit overblown.

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We haven't seen 7.2, 7.3 or 7.4 tbh. Usually they do good things by the .3 patch.

I will join my fellow FFXIV lover here and say, FFXIV can do no wrong.
If the writing was in your opinion "Bad" it actually isnt, I think we should be more thankful and not greedy and support ffxiv more.

The last zone was perfect, it was so we could enjoy our time and enjoy the work the devs put forth for our enjoyment, the plot doesnt matter as it is a time bubble, so you are wrong. Like Jeeqbit here said

And yes we had the portal experts there, DUH. Be more respectful to the writers room. Any criticism is actually wrong towards the MSQ, because how could they release anything bad with Yoshi P watching over it?

Please support FFXIV with money preferably, you can find ways to do it if you cant find the cash shop. Lets keeep smiling together towards the best MMO ever and not critique them, as they are the best ever and critique doesnt lead to anything good. Just praise them.

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Originally Posted by Barwara

I can accept Wuk Lamat, the poor voice acting, and the lackluster cast of new characters,
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You are more forgiving than me. I can't accept any of this. I expect more for a game I spend like $180 a year on + expansion fees.

My immense disappointment comes from a place of love. I want things to get better, and I know they can do better.

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Originally Posted by Barwara

I wouldn't consider myself the Great Defender nor the Great Critic when it comes to ffxiv.

I've casually enjoyed the game despite it's flaws, accepting the things the game excels at and accepting also the other areas where it could really improve upon.

But boy was Dawntrail bad. :/

And I'm not going to re-iterate everything that everyone else has said, I think most critics are pretty valid. But Zepla put it well when she said this expansion's biggest flaw is that it kills every momentum it has.

Its bewildering how the game manages to hype you up at different moments just to let you down so hard. How come when everything is at stake and we're literally running out of time to save the world again, we end up talking to npcs about their favorite snacks, taking a gondola ride, having ice cream, put on a play, go to a museum, and ride on the back of a capibara... Like, are you for real?

We've just reached the absolute last quest of this expansion and all we did for the past four hours was casually talk to NPCs. While there's a ticking time bomb... And the rest of the team is supposedly busting their ass to keep a gate open... Astounding...

Not that it hasn't been varying shades of this for the rest of the expansion as well. And I've stayed optimistic in hopes the expansion would redeem itself and the negative reception was a bit overblown.

I can accept Wuk Lamat, the poor voice acting, and the lackluster cast of new characters, but the pacing... the absolute lack of any stakes... wow.

Dawntrail can only be considered as an interlude in the series of expansions. So many missed opportunities when it comes to tackling the 'next chapter' after the finale EW delivered.

I can only hope the devs deliver better with 8.0...

Wow... just really wow. :confused:

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But Dawntrail isn't even over yet. It should be "is", not "was".

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Originally Posted by Barwara

I can accept Wuk Lamat, the poor voice acting, and the lackluster cast of new characters

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so you can accept what makes a story/show bad then. but yeah it was really the longest 30h of my life, i can't even count of many times i face palmed at most situation/dialog in DT. thing was written for 7 years old kids with less than 2 minute of focus.

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Originally Posted by Dorito_Burrito

But Dawntrail isn't even over yet. It should be "is", not "was".

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with what we've gotten in 7.1, can't expect anything

This might be a bad take for some, but I don't think thr voice acting was all that bad for Wuk Lamat. My issue comes with how the character was written as well as the pacing of dawntrail. Wuk Lamat also overstayed her welcome, I would have liked to be rid of her after the first half, but that's coming from someone who didn't like the character even back in endwalker patches.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

I will join my fellow FFXIV lover here and say, FFXIV can do no wrong.
If the writing was in your opinion "Bad" it actually isnt, I think we should be more thankful and not greedy and support ffxiv more.

The last zone was perfect, it was so we could enjoy our time and enjoy the work the devs put forth for our enjoyment, the plot doesnt matter as it is a time bubble, so you are wrong. Like Jeeqbit here said

And yes we had the portal experts there, DUH. Be more respectful to the writers room. Any criticism is actually wrong towards the MSQ, because how could they release anything bad with Yoshi P watching over it?

Please support FFXIV with money preferably, you can find ways to do it if you cant find the cash shop. Lets keeep smiling together towards the best MMO ever and not critique them, as they are the best ever and critique doesnt lead to anything good. Just praise them.

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Please make donations in the form of mogstation mounts, outfits, and emotes. Word of mouth is nice but money is better.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

There is some reasoning to that.

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I mean… the fact that there’s a reason why things happened the way they did doesn’t excuse the poor writing. Doesn’t make the gameplay fun. The devs could have written the same story differently but made it so the player feels more engaged with what they are doing. That’s just a writing issue. I consider the plot not uninteresting, just very, very poorly executed.

Guess you missed that it was intended to be a vacation, or interlude, after Endwalker. It's supposed to be be light (even though we end up saving the universe again but whatevs). You missed the point.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's pretty obvious why. We had just entered the area. They want us to explore said area. It is explained in the story how we are able to do it. The process of what she is doing to reprogram herself takes a lot of time and doesn't just happen at the press of a button….

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Respectfully Jeeq, them pulling an explanation out of their magic hat doesn‘t make the pacing any less odd. It‘s just another example of the writers forcing the plot into a certain direction while simultaneously ignoring the natural flow of the story to the detriment of the player experience. There‘s a reason many people have an issue with this and many other zones, and you are not helping by blindly defending it.
Nobody cares about the explanation if it isn‘t convincing or the result isn‘t satisfying.

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Originally Posted by Xapapetsu

Please make donations in the form of mogstation mounts, outfits, and emotes. Word of mouth is nice but money is better.

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Exactly, money is love and gives SE and Yoshi P happiness. I think we need to support them, so they understand how perfect their choices are and how much we love the formula.

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

I love how Dawntrail really doubled down on the flashbacks to events that legit had happened five minutes prior, like the player suffers from short-term memory loss and needs a nudge for even the smallest of things. I was like - seriously, that JUST HAPPENED.

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Even the guy from Memento had a better memory! And he had to leave sticky notes everywhere!

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Originally Posted by Barwara

I mean… the fact that there’s a reason why things happened the way they did doesn’t excuse the poor writing. Doesn’t make the gameplay fun. The devs could have written the same story differently but made it so the player feels more engaged with what they are doing.

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I agree they could have added more gameplay. The ones that stick out most to people are the train scene and the cooking where you have no control over the situation. They have demonstrated the technology to do it though because we actually enter an aim mode during other expansions where we fire at NPCs that play hide and seek, and there is a cutscene where we select and choose food in Shadowbringers at Mord Souq. Didn't they even do just that in Urqopacha for the pelupelu merchant?

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That’s just a writing issue.

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I'd argue the gameplay issues aren't to do with writing but the decision of what technology to use to portray the story (cutscenes instead of gameplay). Some of the bloat was also not particularly story related but just that they wanted to over-explain everything in case people skipped or forgot the previous MSQ.

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Originally Posted by Mondschnee

Respectfully Jeeq, them pulling an explanation out of their magic hat doesn‘t make the pacing any less odd.

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I agree that it's odd, I was just making the point that it was technically explained because I've seen many people talk as if it wasn't explained.

I thought Dawntrail was pretty good. The arguments against it here pretty much fall flat for me. I found no problem with the pacing in the final zone because the game never actually signaled it as a race against time, the momentum going into the zone was compatible with the momentum held throughout it. Expecting the story to suddenly change tact at the eleventh hour and no longer care about the peoples and cultures of the places we visit... it requires either a fundamental misunderstanding of the narrative or an expectation of moral absolutism that would have been unprecedented in the expansion.

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Originally Posted by Bad_Luck

Guess you missed that it was intended to be a vacation, or interlude, after Endwalker. It's supposed to be be light (even though we end up saving the universe again but whatevs). You missed the point.

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You can make a vacation or light-hearted story that is still well-written and actually fun to experience.

This "vacation" felt like a chore.

The whole concept behind the story was bizarre. I am still at a loss why I as the WoL/player had this role in the story. Especially given I have no relationship with the nation's history or people and have no faith in Wuk Lamat as a leader whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's pretty obvious why. We had just entered the area. They want us to explore said area. It is explained in the story how we are able to do it. The process of what she is doing to reprogram herself takes a lot of time and doesn't just happen at the press of a button.

Depends on if it was actually a computer program, but in the kind of programs we have it does take more than a few minutes to code something complex without AI (and even sometimes with it when it's not doing what you want).

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I think that bit probably would have gone over a bit better if they made it less than we were choosing to do the actions in going and meeting the Endless and more something that was essential to do in the process. I suggested in another thread it could be something like having to handle glitches in the system before being able to access the terminal. Or they could have been the gatekeepers of lesser terminals and we had to solve their issue before we could shut the sub-terminals down. Then it's not us choosing to essentially waste time but performing necessary steps integrated into the storyline.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

I thought Dawntrail was pretty good. The arguments against it here pretty much fall flat for me. I found no problem with the pacing in the final zone because the game never actually signaled it as a race against time, the momentum going into the zone was compatible with the momentum held throughout it. Expecting the story to suddenly change tact at the eleventh hour and no longer care about the peoples and cultures of the places we visit... it requires either a fundamental misunderstanding of the narrative or an expectation of moral absolutism that would have been unprecedented in the expansion.

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You don’t see a pacing problem with Sphene taking the key and going “now it’s time to kill you all” suddenly becoming “let’s eat ice cream and go on a gondola ride because old Spheney is bad at maths”?

Just because the writers “explain” a pacing change doesn’t mean it actually makes any sense

I learned from dawntrail ice cream and parental death go together.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

I found no problem with the pacing in the final zone because the game never actually signaled it as a race against time, the momentum going into the zone was compatible with the momentum held throughout it. Expecting the story to suddenly change tact at the eleventh hour and no longer care about the peoples and cultures of the places we visit... it requires either a fundamental misunderstanding of the narrative or an expectation of moral absolutism that would have been unprecedented in the expansion.

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It's you who doesn't understand the concept of proposition and reception at a fundamental level. It's not about what the story tells you or wants you to feel, it's about player experience. You can tell players to think a certain way all you want, if they are not convinced the reception isn't gonna be good. If you enjoyed it, good for you, but making ignorant and arrogant comments about people just not understanding the story isn't the strong argument you think it is, in fact it highlights a problem contrary to your own belief.

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Originally Posted by Bad_Luck

Guess you missed that it was intended to be a vacation, or interlude, after Endwalker. It's supposed to be be light (even though we end up saving the universe again but whatevs). You missed the point.

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If it's supposed to be a vacation, why we being dragged along for the first half and then thrown a yet another apocalyptic scenario in the second half?

Now I personally don't mind the Alexandria stuff, but wuk and the whole rite of succession stuff does literally nothing for the story. They're not a vacation, they're babysitting one of the most obnoxious characters in all of Final Fantasy.

Yeah, it was bad. I started skipping cutscenes halfway through the story.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's pretty obvious why. We had just entered the area. They want us to explore said area. It is explained in the story how we are able to do it. The process of what she is doing to reprogram herself takes a lot of time and doesn't just happen at the press of a button.

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Is it, though? This would be a good argument if the whole cinematic leading up to Living City and the initial conflict with the Meso Terminal didn't SCREAM urgency at the top of its lungs. The fact we suddenly have enough time to faff around is paradoxical. Even if some of the faffing around (Krile's parents, Cauchia) had some legitimately good writing, the framework is intrinsically flawed from the start. It's one of the worst offenders of the writers not understanding pacing or the importance of time or its absence.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Depends on if it was actually a computer program, but in the kind of programs we have it does take more than a few minutes to code something complex without AI (and even sometimes with it when it's not doing what you want).

It would probably have been of benefit for us just not to find or have the threat presented to us until nearer the end, and just shut them down anyway because they were consuming soul energy that didn't belong to them. But at least they explained the reason.

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See that's the thing. It COULD, and SHOULD, be better. That's been the argument upheld by Dawntrail's critics the whole time. This came hot on the heels of EW and with SHB still on people's minds (because honestly, SHB and EW are kind of a two part conclusion to the Zodiark and Hydaelyn storyline).

Here's the thing. Even if you have more time than the story implies, why on earth do you risk the lives of millions on the Source and its shards by cutting it so close, just to get to know someone? Aren't the priorities a little out of whack, even for today's culture?

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

There is some reasoning to that. Portals have almost always been unstable in FFXIV so having experts like Y'shtola or Urianger watch it was reasonable. But it seemed excessive to have quite so many people stay behind. Estinien, Alphinaud, Alisaie, Thancred, etc.

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Definitely done for the script, but it's one of the few moments that didn't make me raise my eyebrows. They were partly meant to maintain a portal that--quite frankly, few mortals had ever crossed, as well as being a last line of defense in case we failed (totally not because we were too busy faffing around too long).

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

We haven't seen 7.2, 7.3 or 7.4 tbh. Usually they do good things by the .3 patch.

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I vehemently disagree with this. In the past, the MSQ *was* one of the good things. One of the best things about this game. It used to be a big moment for much of the fanbase whenever a patch dropped to see where the story would be going next.

I can't speak for anyone else, but all I feel about the upcoming patch is indifference.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

You don’t see a pacing problem with Sphene taking the key and going “now it’s time to kill you all” suddenly becoming “let’s eat ice cream and go on a gondola ride because old Spheney is bad at maths”?

Just because the writers “explain” a pacing change doesn’t mean it actually makes any sense

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Yep there was no problem there because the narrative didn't actually go like that at all.

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Originally Posted by Mondschnee

It's you who doesn't understand the concept of proposition and reception at a fundamental level. It's not about what the story tells you or wants you to feel, it's about player experience. You can tell players to think a certain way all you want, if they are not convinced the reception isn't gonna be good. If you enjoyed it, good for you, but making ignorant and arrogant comments about people just not understanding the story isn't the strong argument you think it is, in fact it highlights a problem contrary to your own belief.

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Wow you're rude. Fortunately I have a policy for dealing with comments like yours.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

Wow you're rude. Fortunately I have a policy for dealing with comments like yours.

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I'm rude for making a counter argument while using your own rhetoric and calling you out for looking down on players who didn't like the story as much as you did? Okay. :thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by Exmo

I thought Dawntrail was pretty good. The arguments against it here pretty much fall flat for me. I found no problem with the pacing in the final zone because the game never actually signaled it as a race against time, the momentum going into the zone was compatible with the momentum held throughout it. Expecting the story to suddenly change tact at the eleventh hour and no longer care about the peoples and cultures of the places we visit... it requires either a fundamental misunderstanding of the narrative or an expectation of moral absolutism that would have been unprecedented in the expansion.

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Agreed.

Although I will say that I, personally, think they went a little too far off-course in that final zone; I recall realising that I'd pretty much forgotten about the whole 'Messo terminal countdown' thing from some point after canal town until we reached the point before we had to say goodbye to Cahciua.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

Yep there was no problem there because the narrative didn't actually go like that at all.


Wow you're rude. Fortunately I have a policy for dealing with comments like yours.

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How did the narrative go then

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

Agreed.

Although I will say that I, personally, think they went a little too far off-course in that final zone; I recall realising that I'd pretty much forgotten about the whole 'Messo terminal countdown' thing from some point after canal town until we reached the point before we had to say goodbye to Cahciua.

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That's fair. It was backgrounded quite heavily. Personally I didn't mind that - if it had been more prominent I think it could have interfered with the personal stories being told. How one deals with aging, the march of time, the loss of one's parents, are things that we all face - most of us without also trying to save the world. But I get where you're coming from with finding it was too subdued.

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Originally Posted by Barwara

Its bewildering how the game manages to hype you up at different moments just to let you down so hard. How come when everything is at stake and we're literally running out of time to save the world again, ...

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I agree that the story was bad. But the extremely bad pacing you mention above has basically been a "feature" of FF14 from the very beginning.

Remember ARR? The Garleans kill half the Scions, capture the other half. We even see an Echo cutscene where Livia mentions regarding Minfilia "The High Priestess of the Scions... I cannot wait to hear her scream". And the WoL's immediate reaction is... to completely ignore the Scion's plight, and instead go onto another bug hunt (Garuda this time). And while they're at it, they also fix all the self-inflicted problems of the braindead papists in Coerthas. The Scions suffering and dying? We look into this another day.

Or take Titan. Being immune to tempering does not qualify you as a Titan slayer... being able to follow even the most stupid of orders does (i.e. to waste hours of precious time by dishing up a dinner from all around the world, including recovering a lost vine sort THAT NOBODY EVER ASKED FOR in the first place).

I'm not defending this garbage writing. But I think it's unfair to hold it specifically against DT, when the series has been plagued by this from the very beginning.

Dawntrail is perhaps the first piece of FFXIV content where I've actively skipped cutscenes. By the second zone, I was seriously bored of the storyline, and I don't think any other piece of XIV content has done that to me before.

I was hyped for the expansion for a good 5-6 months before release and within the first week or so playing, I'd already had enough and took a break from the content.

Certainly didn't enjoy that they kept the Scions in the expansion solely because of Duty Support/Trusts, whereas I was excited for an expansion with 6.5's Wuk Lamat, Erenville, Krile, Alphi and Estinien. Also, it's funny how a talking corn cob is perhaps the most popular character lmao.

Not to mention that the supposed light hearted vacation exansion also included another end of the world scenario, a culture's eugenics programme to form the perfect being, more sci-fy themes, a cross-shard invasion and so on.

Anyway, can't complain too much, Dawntrail managed to help me cut down my playing time :D

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

I agree that the story was bad. But the extremely bad pacing you mention above has basically been a "feature" of FF14 from the very beginning.

Remember ARR?

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You're absolutely right, but ARR is far away and I would argue you shouldn't keep newer expansions to the same standards. If anything, we should be seeing less and less of these 'writing' mistakes. But you are right - every expansion suffers from time to time from these pacing issues. You just feel it less when an expansion succeeds at all the other things - telling an interesting story and evoking emotions in you.

I personally found SB to be sluggish as hell as well, in a similar way to DT. Too much dialoguing with NPCs. But, in SB our character still had some agency, and there was a certain amount of action to counterbalance all the politics. I mean at least that's how I remember it, but its also a bit far away by now.

In DT I found there was just not enough action to counterbalance the... talking.

We arrive to Tuliyollal, and we talk to NPCS, get to know the place. Cue in cutscenes of NPCs talking.

We visit every other place in Tuliyollal, we talk to NPCs, get to know and understand them. Cue in cutscenes of NPCs talking.

We get to Solution Nine, we talk to NPCs, get to know and understand them. Cue in cutscenes of NPCs talking.

We get to Living Memory, we talk to NPCs, get to know and understand them. Cue in cutscenes of NPCs talking. Cue in some actually heartfelt moments.

I get it that the main theme was coming to understand other people that have different views from you, and different cultures, and getting to accept them, but this happens inevitably in every single expansion anyway...

The duties and dungeons felt so far in between I felt starved for action during the entire expansion. I got all glamoured and ready for WAR before entering Living Memory and then realized I over-dressed for the occasion.

And least people forget, walking from NPC to NPC for dialogue and watching a cutscene of NPCs talking doesn't constitute good gameplay. I mean, FFXIV is ultimately a combat and a role-playing game.

If there's no combat to be had because we're talking everything out, and if we as the main character have no role to play other than standing by, then what is the point? And if people want to argue that there's no combat to be had because this is a vacation-themed expansion, well I'd argue there's plenty of different kind of instances and duties that could have been imagined to just keep us more engaged. Mini-game kind of instances, solving puzzles, more exploration-type duties, idk... anything.

But lets not kid ourselves, vacation wasn't the point of this expansion, we essentially went through another doom plotline that was a slight rehash of SHB and EW.

Yeah the story is kinda ass on that one, but gameplay felt better imo.

It's called Yawntrail for a reason and 7.2 doesn't hype me up at all been playing other games and I'm probably just gonna come back for Savage and probably not do the story again until way later.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

I agree that the story was bad. But the extremely bad pacing you mention above has basically been a "feature" of FF14 from the very beginning.

Remember ARR? The Garleans kill half the Scions, capture the other half. We even see an Echo cutscene where Livia mentions regarding Minfilia "The High Priestess of the Scions... I cannot wait to hear her scream". And the WoL's immediate reaction is... to completely ignore the Scion's plight, and instead go onto another bug hunt (Garuda this time). And while they're at it, they also fix all the self-inflicted problems of the braindead papists in Coerthas. The Scions suffering and dying? We look into this another day.

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First of all, if we're comparing to ARR, that in itself was a problem. I understand both are beginnings, but holding the current xpac to the standard of the oldest version of the game most of us played is not good.

Secondly, in case you have forgotten, the WoL and survivors were in hiding, and ultimately rebuilding some measure of ability to strike back in a meaningful way. That arc with Cid *did* happen, you know. So did navigating the politics of Ishgard while trying to get the Enterprise, which plays an important role in taking the fight to Gaius and rescuing the Scions. Certainly more than trading wool for an alpaca saddle that Zoraal Ja didn't even need to get the job done, or standing and waiting while Wuk Lamat was obviously in trouble. Come on. At least try.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

Or take Titan. Being immune to tempering does not qualify you as a Titan slayer... being able to follow even the most stupid of orders does (i.e. to waste hours of precious time by dishing up a dinner from all around the world, including recovering a lost vine sort THAT NOBODY EVER ASKED FOR in the first place).

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Okay I spoke too soon. This IS a good argument. The Company of Heroes arc was terrible beyond words. Honestly this may be a hot take, but most of Limsa's MSQ is pretty bad, and just has you playing errand boy like a level 5 alt in World of Warcraft.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

I'm not defending this garbage writing. But I think it's unfair to hold it specifically against DT, when the series has been plagued by this from the very beginning.

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I think the issue is that we got out of it with HW and certainly with SHB, EW, and even STB to an extent. DT is such a huge step back to a lower standard of writing. It's only natural that fans are going to push back so SE takes the hint that we're got going to sit tight and let it stay that way.

was?? still is

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Originally Posted by Barwara

In DT I found there was just not enough action to counterbalance the... talking.

We arrive to Tuliyollal, and we talk to NPCS, get to know the place. Cue in cutscenes of NPCs talking.

We visit every other place in Tuliyollal, we talk to NPCs, get to know and understand them. Cue in cutscenes of NPCs talking.

We get to Solution Nine, we talk to NPCs, get to know and understand them. Cue in cutscenes of NPCs talking.

We get to Living Memory, we talk to NPCs, get to know and understand them. Cue in cutscenes of NPCs talking. Cue in some actually heartfelt moments.

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It wasn't just the amount of talking, but the quality of it, too. Like if the dialog was good, and the character interactions were enjoyable, people would rightly bitch about the attack on Tullyolal not being a duty (solo OR dungeon. Come on Square, that was bad), and maybe some memes of MGS4 or past FF games that skimped on gameplay in favor of being a VN or movie.

But the thing is that if the game is just a glorified VN, the story is even more under a microscope because gameplay isn't going to be there to save it. "There is no Game", ironically, had better story and gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Barwara

I get it that the main theme was coming to understand other people that have different views from you, and different cultures, and getting to accept them, but this happens inevitably in every single expansion anyway...

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EW literally did this in a way more interesting way with Garlemald and the Void, too, while telling their own stories, not having "diversity good" be the ENTIRE story