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

[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????

[SirShady]

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????

Anything for the bit. Everyone loves a good gag.

[ReynTime]

Anything for the bit. Everyone loves a good gag.

The writers for Dawntrail sure did, with how often they repeated the sea sickness and the glasses hrothgar's hilarious naruto filler character gag.