The Negative Impact of Poor Character Writing on the Quality of Dawntrail's MSQ

[Kaecilius]

As a character that fails, Wuk Lamat is not a mary sue - but simply a character that is never challenged in any way for their failures, nor is ever stimulated to grow and develop, which makes her difficult to relate to and root for. She is presented with very few problems that cannot be solved immediately by the mere suggestion of platitudes of peace and happiness (or, if the situation is really difficult, food), and any difficulties she faces are summarily eliminated by the Scions near uncritical support for her regardless of any legitimate concerns we may have about her capacity to lead a massive, diverse continent. This fundamentally makes her unrelatable to us as an audience, and makes it impossible to connect with her as a human being.

If we're forced to continue hanging out with Wuk Lamat I want the patches to at least address the consequences of her actions.

From the Alexandrians' point of view, we killed their king and queen, destroyed their "heaven", pushed a child as the new ruler and then Wuk Lamat, a foreign ruler, proclaimed herself her guardian, essentially making Alexandria part of the Tuliyollal alliance whether they like it or not.

[SirShady]

If we're forced to continue hanging out with Wuk Lamat I want the patches to at least address the consequences of her actions.

From the Alexandrians' point of view, we killed their king and queen, destroyed their "heaven", pushed a child as the new ruler and then Wuk Lamat, a foreign ruler, proclaimed herself her guardian, essentially making Alexandria part of the Tuliyollal alliance whether they like it or not.

That part made me so mad. Like they actually are appealing to an audience of preteens with no regard for logical storytelling at this point.

Yes, let's install the 5 year old son of the man who was forcibly installed as the new king. Queen Sphene must have truly "loved" her people to put a power hungry dictator in charge of her armies. A decision that leads to him slaughtering her subjects senselessly. What a wise and kind ruler she is! Just put his kid in charge. A kid I doubt they even knew he had. The people will love that. Who would question that?

Oh yeah and remember that whole plot point about everyone freaking out over not having extra lives? Don't worry, the soul harvesting factory is STILL OPEN! Yeah, that makes total sense! No reason to revolt now! Let's go party it up with Wuk Lamat, slayer of our beloved queen!

Did NOBODY check this script?!

[duckorz]

That part made me so mad. Like they actually are appealing to an audience of preteens with no regard for logical storytelling at this point.

Yes, let's install the 5 year son of the man who was forcibly installed as the new king. The guy who slaughtered his own people. Queen Sphene truly did "love" her people to a power hungry dictator in charge of her armies. A decision that leads to him murdering them senselessly. What a wise and kind ruler she is! Just put his kid in charge, the people will love that.

Oh yeah and remember that whole plot point about everyone freaking out over not having extra lives? Don't worry, the soul harvesting factory is STILL OPEN! Yeah, that makes total sense! No reason to revolt now! Let's go party it up with Wuk Lamat, slayer of our beloved queen!

Did NOBODY check this script?!

And like, no, this isn't something that can simply be addressed by the patch quests. Any issue that should be obvious to us should be obvious to the scions at the very least as canonical geniuses that know more way more than us about statesmanship, magic, the rules of the setting, everything, really. If something this egregious just blows past the consciousness of every single character as it happens - it's not material to explore in future patch content, it's a plot hole.

[SirShady]

And like, no, this isn't something that can simply be addressed by the patch quests. Any issue that should be obvious to us should be obvious to the scions at the very least as canonical geniuses that know more way more than us about statesmanship, magic, the rules of the setting, everything, really. If something this egregious just blows past the consciousness of every single character as it happens - it's not material to explore in future patch content, it's a plot hole.

This is what I've been saying. I've had some people tell me "well don't worry, it's setting up for the next part of the story" and "you can't say that Dawntrail's writing hurts what will come after when we haven't even seen it".

Bro. This is stuff that HAD to be addressed in the moment! Why?! Why would any of this be ok? How can they possibly address this many plotholes? Who allowed any of this to happen? I can't wait for 7.1 to come out and it's just going over every horribly written plotpoint in Dawntrail and having the characters explain their reasoning and retroactively adding nuance and logic to 30+ hours of childish MSQ writing.

"Well actually, the bird people weren't REALLY starving because they couldn't remember the ritual they do to harvest their crops every year. They just were pretending for the sake of the feat. It was all a funny ruse!" "Ohhhh, okay!"

"Well actually, a lot of the people of Solution 9 WERE pissed, and there's a rebel faction trying to kill Wuk Lamat and the newly installed king. And he HAS to be the king, because all operations of Solution 9 will cease without him since he was given authority and there's no way to give it to someone else." "Ohhhh, okay!"

"Well actually, a lot of the people of Erenville's village do harbor a grudge against the Alexandrian's after they were forcibly taken from their home and forced to live in a sci-fi hellscape for 30 years. You just never met them in the MSQ until now." "Ohhhh, okay!"

I would legitimately actually prefer that at this point instead of anything new. Give me Ishikawa's Dawntrail. Bring some level of humanity into this script. Salvage something from this garbage.

[Kaecilius]

"Well actually, the bird people weren't REALLY starving because they couldn't remember the ritual they do to harvest their crops every year. They just were pretending for the sake of the feat. It was all a funny ruse!" "Ohhhh, okay!"

This one is particularly egregious because you can *see* the writers deciding to forgo all logic to give us a morality lesson of why there is value to respecting the traditions of cultures, especially since it's mirrored by Koana fixing the issue with a Sharlayan alchemical innovation.

This wasn't about traditions; this was as if I suddenly forgot I had to go to work in order to feed myself.

[SirShady]

This one is particularly egregious because you can *see* the writers deciding to forgo all logic to give us a morality lesson of why there is value to respecting the traditions of cultures, especially since it's mirrored by Koana fixing the issue with a Sharlayan alchemical innovation.

This wasn't about traditions; this was as if I suddenly forgot I had to go to work in order to feed myself.

It's actually so insulting. I see that Square Enix tried to get their representation right in regards to the real-life counterparts of a couple of these zones, but I have a hard time saying "the really nailed the cultural diversity" when they also pull crap like this.

"The stupid natives can't remember their yearly traditions that allow them to live. Don't worry savages, the white (catwo)man is here to remind you all how to feed yourselves!"

Big yikes.

Not to mention, referencing other cultures in FFXIV is cool, but that's not what I play the game for. I'm not going to overlook crap writing just because the name of an area translates to something in another language. Was I supposed to drop all criticism when the native Americans were all hunky-dory cat people perfectly fine with having their land ravaged by the cowboys? That didn't seem entirely accurate either.

[Malthir]

It's actually so insulting. I see that Square Enix tried to get their representation right in regards to the real-life counterparts of a couple of these zones, but I have a hard time saying "the really nailed the cultural diversity" when they also pull crap like this.

"The stupid natives can't remember their yearly traditions that allow them to live. Don't worry savages, the white (catwo)man is here to remind you all how to feed yourselves!"

Big yikes.

Not to mention, referencing other cultures in FFXIV is cool, but that's not what I play the game for. I'm not going to overlook crap writing just because the name of an area translates to something in another language. Was I supposed to drop all criticism when the native Americans were all hunky-dory cat people perfectly fine with having their land ravaged by the cowboys? That didn't seem entirely accurate either.

Apart from the one member of the tribe that knew and just didn't tell everyone, watching you kids starve for the bants I gues????

[Lady_Silvermoon]

If we're forced to continue hanging out with Wuk Lamat I want the patches to at least address the consequences of her actions.

From the Alexandrians' point of view, we killed their king and queen, destroyed their "heaven", pushed a child as the new ruler and then Wuk Lamat, a foreign ruler, proclaimed herself her guardian, essentially making Alexandria part of the Tuliyollal alliance whether they like it or not.

And then mentioned they weren't happy with it when these people have been happy with everything up til now including their own deletion. We FINALLY do something to upset someone in this expansion and taking over their government was it? We've murdered your monarchs and ended your afterlife, erased all your loved ones, but THIS was the final straw? This one?