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

[duckorz]

And why is it that as soon as he dies she decides she can rewrite her own personality and start killing people? Did she have to delete her own code in order to do that? Why can't she accomplish her plan without deleting her personality? If her armies were defeated during the second assault on Tural (they lost to Estinien and a small group of cowboys!), what makes her think she'll have better success in other shards? Why does she have authority to delete her personality in the first place? Wouldn't the people who created her put checks on her power? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

I think I'll make you go even more insane if I bring up a plot hole that's so insane that I can't believe I didn't notice it when first playing:

Why doesn't Sphene bodyswap while Otis is protecting her? Otis, the one almost good character in this expansion, dies for literally no reason. She bodyswaps away immediately after he dies. She could have done this at any time. Why did he need to defend her. She was never in danger. Why did this happen. This is one of the few almost emotionally resonant moments in the expansion, and it is ruined by a gigantic obvious horrifying plot hole. In a comedy of errors, this obscene unforced error has undermined literally any attempt this narrative has made at approaching being good.

[SirShady]

I think I'll make you go even more insane if I bring up a plot hole that's so insane that I can't believe I didn't notice it when first playing:

Why doesn't Sphene bodyswap while Otis is protecting her? Otis, the one almost good character in this expansion, dies for literally no reason. She bodyswaps away immediately after he dies. She could have done this at any time. Why did he need to defend her. She was never in danger. Why did this happen. This is one of the few almost emotionally resonant moments in the expansion, and it is ruined by a gigantic obvious horrifying plot hole. In a comedy of errors, this obscene unforced error has undermined literally any attempt this narrative has made at approaching being good.

Yep! There's another one! To be honest, I probably didn't give Otis the respect he deserved. He was actually entertaining. I was just falling asleep when I got to his part of the MSQ. He came across as just another overly likeable characters like Wuk Lamat, Sphene, Cahciua where the writing doesn't know how to give them texture or depth so they just pile on as many positive traits/quirks as possible.

Usually just to kill them off later...

I realized later that was the point, and he was supposed to be the overly chivalrous Steiner character, but at that point it just felt like a rip-off and I was just exhausted from the writing too much to have fun with it.

[Icycrits]

That is this expansion in a nutshell. You're so fatigued with the mundane that by the time you get to the fun parts you just have no attachment. I mindlessly clicked through half of the dialogue with Wuk Evu as well before my ears perked up and I realized, "wait a minute, I actually really like this character."

[duckorz]

That is this expansion in a nutshell. You're so fatigued with the mundane that by the time you get to the fun parts you just have no attachment. I mindlessly clicked through half of the dialogue with Wuk Evu as well before my ears perked up and I realized, "wait a minute, I actually really like this character."

I honestly haven't even really logged in since I finished and I don't even know if I care to redeem my full release code. I looked forward to this for months, took time off for it, and I didn't expect to just want to do literally anything else but play FFXIV by the end of it.

[Brotillian]

I honestly haven't even really logged in since I finished and I don't even know if I care to redeem my full release code. I looked forward to this for months, took time off for it, and I didn't expect to just want to do literally anything else but play FFXIV by the end of it.

I think you can still find other things to look forward to in the game, like the upcoming exploration zones, raids, side stories etc. I wouldn't consider the game dead unless Yoshi P comes out and says that the guys who wrote this expac's msq got promotions or would be continuing the story into 7.x and beyond. If that happens I'll pack it up. But til then I'm just going go with the assumption that this is a weak point and the devs will be able to pivot and actually deliver on the potential of the interesting aspects of this setting.

I maintain they should have killed most of the Scions in EW - or at least made the disbandment real. The only ones who have any character development to explore are G'raha and Y'shtola at this point. The rest should be cameos at most. We are at fucking Kingdom Hearts levels of flanderization, bringing back fan favorite characters just to say their fanservice lines like "I'm an expert firewood gatherer! (please laugh)", because there's nothing else left to say about them.

Just killing off characters you don't know how to write for is as amateurish as Wuk Lamat's writing. There is plenty of interesting things they can do with the Scions, you just have to give them to a decent writer.

[ThorneDynasty]

It's not even that hard to fix that scene. Right after the camera zooms on WoL's faces, have her immediately run after Wuk Lamat - Make it just a split second lapse of judgement of letting her run off, having her end up kidnapped anyway despite WoL immediately taking measures. Instead they made the Scions look like absolute morons.

[Voidmage]

That is this expansion in a nutshell. You're so fatigued with the mundane that by the time you get to the fun parts you just have no attachment. I mindlessly clicked through half of the dialogue with Wuk Evu as well before my ears perked up and I realized, "wait a minute, I actually really like this character."

That was my expirience also. At the end I was left so defeated that I just clicked the dialogue away everytime Wuk Lamat sproke.
Then I had a couple of points in the last zone where I was like "wait, that stuff is actually kinda inter- nevermind, Wuk Lamat's face is on screen again".

It's just sad. There was potential here and there like, as in OP's post the Graha talk or Kriles parents but the negative far outweight the positive.

Every time Wuk Lamat was zoomed in on my screen I had to look away at the end.

Funny anectode:
At the last boss I was so shocked by her appeareance that i just typed "not her again" and got a lot of player recommendations. Maybe that was because of my stupid gameplay but I want to believe otherwise. xD

[Hirofuji]

That is this expansion in a nutshell. You're so fatigued with the mundane that by the time you get to the fun parts you just have no attachment. I mindlessly clicked through half of the dialogue with Wuk Evu as well before my ears perked up and I realized, "wait a minute, I actually really like this character."

I've had the same experience. By the time I finished the MSQ I had such a bitter taste in my mouth & was so disaffected that I just didn't want to touch the game again. I just closed out of the game and haven't opened it back up since. I liked the dungeons & trials, but when the story was this offensively bad, it makes you not even want to play the game. I have 7,000 hours in this game and I couldn't even force myself to do a single run of the expert dungeons. Every aspect of the expansion has been tainted for me.

[ReynTime]

Yep! There's another one! To be honest, I probably didn't give Otis the respect he deserved. He was actually entertaining. I was just falling asleep when I got to his part of the MSQ. He came across as just another overly likeable characters like Wuk Lamat, Sphene, Cahciua where the writing doesn't know how to give them texture or depth so they just pile on as many positive traits/quirks as possible.

Usually just to kill them off later...

I realized later that was the point, and he was supposed to be the overly chivalrous Steiner character, but at that point it just felt like a rip-off and I was just exhausted from the writing too much to have fun with it.

The way Yoshida advertised Dawntrail as having a lot of connections to IX was almost as overhyped as the Scions being divided. Apart from the motivation of the final antagonist faction all the callbacks to IX are extremely surface level, with the song rips being egregious in how randomly chosen they are, with no connection to their original purpose. So even in the classic FF tie-in Dawntrail falls short, when you look back at how better Final Fantasy 1 through 6, plus 8, were integrated into the game.
I'm sure some overzealous fan has been trying really hard somewhere on r/ffxiv or twitter, to convince everyone that

the last area is "basically memoria" even though by that logic Shadowbringers was doing a callback to Memoria through the ruins of Amaurot

All the Final Fantasy IX names and terms could be replaced by any random made up name and nothing would change.

[CaptainLagbeard]

The way Yoshida advertised Dawntrail as having a lot of connections to IX was almost as overhyped as the Scions being divided. Apart from the motivation of the final antagonist faction all the callbacks to IX are extremely surface level, with the song rips being egregious in how randomly chosen they are, with no connection to their original purpose. So even in the classic FF tie-in Dawntrail falls short, when you look back at how better Final Fantasy 1 through 6, plus 8, were integrated into the game.
I'm sure some overzealous fan has been trying really hard somewhere on r/ffxiv or twitter, to convince everyone that

the last area is "basically memoria" even though by that logic Shadowbringers was doing a callback to Memoria through the ruins of Amaurot

All the Final Fantasy IX names and terms could be replaced by any random made up name and nothing would change.

Yea they really didn't use much of IX, mostly just names and visuals. It's not retelling the story of IX or taking plotlines from it directly. It's at least trying to stand on it's own merits, even if it doesn't really do an amazing job at it...