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

[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.

[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.

[noumen0nn]

Thank you for this, genuinely. I don't want to hold ill will toward those who liked the Dawntrail MSQ, but I really worry for what may happen to this game if people continue to be unwilling to criticize it in meaningful ways. So many members of the XIV community fight so hard to make themselves look past glaring flaws out of fear or letting their enjoyment wane; I know because I used to be one of them (granted, Endwalker's flaws are not NEARLY on this level, but the post patches come pretty close). But we need to let Square Enix know that this is unacceptable. I don't know how they can manage to salvage the damage done to the overarching narrative by this expansion, but whatever it is, they have to start NOW, and they can begin by never letting whoever was lead writer this time add so much as a single line of text to the game again.

[ForteNightshade]

She is indeed a textbook example of a Black Hole Sue.

I actually hadn't heard of this variation but boy does it fit her to an absolute tee

You know, I've been arguing the character isn't a Mary Sue because the game stops every 2.5 seconds to TELL us she sucks at everything, but if you look at her actions, she literally succeeds at everything she attempts when there is no logical reason why. Like girl, you just got kidnapped by henchmen, how come you can beat Bakool Ja now?

That scene really irked me for not only how contrived the whole damn setup is with her father but how our character just awkwardly hangs in the background. They're very clearly attempting to portray us as the mentor allowing their pupil to prove themselves except... we don't actually do any mentoring. Which still baffles me why they didn't include even some throwaway scenes of precisely that. It genuinely feels like the writer was so in love with Wuk Lamat they didn't dare want to take the limelight away from her.

[Aulainn]

That scene really irked me for not only how contrived the whole damn setup is with her father but how our character just awkwardly hangs in the background. They're very clearly attempting to portray us as the mentor allowing their pupil to prove themselves except... we don't actually do any mentoring. Which still baffles me why they didn't include even some throwaway scenes of precisely that. It genuinely feels like the writer was so in love with Wuk Lamat they didn't dare want to take the limelight away from her.

I was aggressively gesturing my hands towards my TV when she was kidnapped immediately after the cutscene where we're asked to take care of her. Why are we so pathetically incompetent?

[Aurumis]

I was aggressively gesturing my hands towards my TV when she was kidnapped immediately after the cutscene where we're asked to take care of her. Why are we so pathetically incompetent?

And when we are just watching as the son kills his father?? Like...why nobody does nothing and let's him go???

[ThorneDynasty]

I actually hadn't heard of this variation but boy does it fit her to an absolute tee



That scene really irked me for not only how contrived the whole damn setup is with her father but how our character just awkwardly hangs in the background. They're very clearly attempting to portray us as the mentor allowing their pupil to prove themselves except... we don't actually do any mentoring. Which still baffles me why they didn't include even some throwaway scenes of precisely that. It genuinely feels like the writer was so in love with Wuk Lamat they didn't dare want to take the limelight away from her.

And before anyone says "you can't do this with a silent protagonist", I can still remember my bug son from the Heavensward Vath quests and how that was one of the first times along with the DRK storyline that the game really informed me of WoL's character.

[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...

[ForteNightshade]

I still struggle to understand why Zoraal Ja was even involved with Solution 9 as an antagonist at all. Yeah, yeah, because he wanted power and Solution 9 had power. I get that's what the story tells me and wants me to just go along with. But structurally its just nonsensical and totally ineffective. Why did Sphene just give him total authority over everything? Why not just take the key from him if thats what she needed? Why did Zoraal Ja even feel this was necessary to prove his point? Did he do all of this *just* to prove a point? Why am I watching this fisher price Arbiter transforming into a completely different character all of a sudden with an even more utterly incomprehensible motivation than he had before he went into the portal? What on earth is happening?

Zoraal Ja on the whole feels like he was shoehorned into the villain role both to give Wuk Lamat a legitimate reason to still be involved in the story and to serve as placeholder because, well, once Bakool Ja Ja had his flip, the story had a pretty gaping hole in terms of conflict. Granted, they could have simply had Sphene attack without Zoraal Ja ever being involved but that makes it much harder to portray her as essentially a foil to our "main character", Wuk Lamat.

What's a shame is there was real potential for Zoraal as more an anti-villain. The idea of a warmongering veteran being resentful his peace don't see and appreciate (from his perspective) the tragedy of war could make for a compelling narrative. Especially if he was the one who brought side peace. Unfortunately, they instead turn him into a psychopath whose even makes no logical sense. He wants to conquer the world to show why... conquest is bad? It's once again clear the writer didn't care to dedicate any real time to developing any sort of nuisance to his philosophy. So he just became generic big bad.

I was aggressively gesturing my hands towards my TV when she was kidnapped immediately after the cutscene where we're asked to take care of her. Why are we so pathetically incompetent?

Because we have to be. Otherwise, it wouldn't be the Wuk Lamat show featuring her Understudy of Light.

And before anyone says "you can't do this with a silent protagonist", I can still remember my bug son from the Heavensward Vath quests and how that was one of the first times along with the DRK storyline that the game really informed me of WoL's character.

Hilariously, the exact scene we should have gotten went to Thancred for some inexplicable reason. It's mystifying why we couldn't have a campfire scene with some dialogue options. Heck, give us a silly Rocky montage showing Wuk struggle or some down to earth silliness that might genuinely endear us to her quirks and shortcomings all while not relegating us to NPC background character. There are ways around a silent protagonist, and both our example show that. They just didn't bother portraying any of them.

[Souljacker]

Thank you for this, genuinely. I don't want to hold ill will toward those who liked the Dawntrail MSQ, but I really worry for what may happen to this game if people continue to be unwilling to criticize it in meaningful ways. So many members of the XIV community fight so hard to make themselves look past glaring flaws out of fear or letting their enjoyment wane; I know because I used to be one of them (granted, Endwalker's flaws are not NEARLY on this level, but the post patches come pretty close). But we need to let Square Enix know that this is unacceptable. I don't know how they can manage to salvage the damage done to the overarching narrative by this expansion, but whatever it is, they have to start NOW, and they can begin by never letting whoever was lead writer this time add so much as a single line of text to the game again.

It might not require that level of drastic action, but the direction does need to be reigned back in. SE can't trade on legacy goodwill and laughing at themselves (endless nods) forever, not when other studios are working on real content. They are staring down the barrel of another WoW expac and DAV, both of which have a significant overlap with the playerbase of this game. They needed\need to deliver a more compelling experience to keep people here, and bring them back after the inevitable break to try other those other products.

And right now I don't see a compelling reason to come back, and that worries me. There's so many amazing systems here that other games really should take a lesson from, but SE is its own worst enemy sometimes and can't get out of its own way.