The hell were they thinking when doing "Newfound adventure" back on 6.1???

[Aniya_Estlihn]

It was one probably light-hearted statement amid a whole presentation of what we would actually be doing and seeing there. People for some reason have seized on it as if he walked on stage, said "we're off to the beach!" and showed nothing but shots of the Scions doing tourist stuff.

Except, he's had interviews after fanfest where he's said it is a vacation arc, the 6.5 MSQ has told us we need to take vacation three times, and he recently said they want to provide players with the "ultimate catharsis" after Endwalker finished the previous arc. By all accounts, 7.0 isn't going to be that serious and anyone expecting it to be are setting themselves up for a major disappointment when the narrative turns out to be super self contained with little to no stakes that linger afterwards. Will there be a villain and conflict? Always, he even said as much at fanfest that while it's a vacation story, its still an FFXIV expansion. Obviously though, with his catharsis and lowering the stakes comments, it's not going to be world ending, it's not going to even be high stakes. I suspect it'll be something relating to the Rite of Succession and some mustache twirling doof is going to pop up, screw up what's going on by trying to unearth/awaken an ancient evil to conquer Tural and we'll take that down near the end; probably in the city of gold.

That said, I find it sad that many are starting to discredit everything that's been said about Dawntrail's narrative; he's said a lot, is foolish and only this playerbase would willingly do so because they've convinced themselves that SE lies about the game all the time. I don't believe this is the case with your statement, to clarify, I'm just bothered by the sudden negativity and lack of trust they have for a dev team and director/producer who have an incredibly solid track record of not blowing smoke up our behinds.

Either way, its far more than one statement at fanfest and more like a dozen-plus across fanfest and various interviews afterwards. Its not a one-off statement in the slightest.