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

[HighlanderClone]

This deserves a bump. I read it on xivd and I had a few thoughts but don't really have the time to write it down right now...

Character is, I believe, the single most important component of storytelling.

To go back to what I said at the start, I think what makes FFXIV special is in how it treats its characters, but that's not entirely true. What makes FFXIV special is how Natsuko Ishikawa treats its characters.

I agree with most of your points but the biggest thing I don't agree with is that character writing is the biggest problem this expansion. Wuk Lamat is annoying but an equivalently serious problem is the complete absence of depth with the story's themes...

I will expand on it later. I know that a lot of people enjoyed ShB, EW because the characters were written decently in those two xpacs. But IMO the themes also got shallower and shallower and deep philosophical issues are just raised without much exploration. Ishikawa to me is a worse writer than what came before because she doesn't seem to care much for sociological storytelling. An entire avenue for depth has been removed with her writing. One of the biggest reasons why I thought Les Miserables or War and Peace are great works is because they tell the story of a society through its characters. ShB and EW don't have much of that and therefore despite the stakes actually feels less epic than SB IMHO.

Subjectively IMO her writing is also less mature. Even in ShB and EW it feels like problems are solved too easily, which robs us of the opportunity to sit with and ponder certain facets of the human condition. The worlds become far less grounded starting in ShB and entire societies start to feel like props that exist just so Ishikawa can moralize about hope.

I am not saying sociogical storytelling is superior, just that the importance of character writing depends on your own preferences. A deep story typically needs to be deep across several dimensions, like character, society, theming. I genuinely think focusing on just the character writing means that the story in FF14 will never be profound and match the heights of great literature. Although, perhaps I should not be expecting a video game to deliver writing as profound as the classics in the first place...

Also with DT we have nothing. So I suppose improvement in any direction would be positive.

[JohnLakeside]

This deserves a bump. I read it on xivd and I had a few thoughts but don't really have the time to write it down right now...



I agree with most of your points but the biggest thing I don't agree with is that character writing is the biggest problem this expansion. Wuk Lamat is annoying but an equivalently serious problem is the complete absence of depth with the story's themes...

I will expand on it later. I know that a lot of people enjoyed ShB, EW because the characters were written decently in those two xpacs. But IMO the themes also got shallower and shallower and deep philosophical issues are just raised without much exploration. Ishikawa to me is a worse writer than what came before because she doesn't seem to care much for sociological storytelling. An entire avenue for depth has been removed with her writing. One of the biggest reasons why I thought Les Miserables or War and Peace are great works is because they tell the story of a society through its characters. ShB and EW don't have much of that and therefore despite the stakes actually feels less epic than SB IMHO.

Subjectively IMO her writing is also less mature. Even in ShB and EW it feels like problems are solved too easily, which robs us of the opportunity to sit with and ponder certain facets of the human condition. The worlds become far less grounded starting in ShB and entire societies start to feel like props that exist just so Ishikawa can moralize about hope.

I am not saying sociogical storytelling is superior, just that the importance of character writing depends on your own preferences. A deep story typically needs to be deep across several dimensions, like character, society, theming. I genuinely think focusing on just the character writing means that the story in FF14 will never be profound and match the heights of great literature. Although, perhaps I should not be expecting a video game to deliver writing as profound as the classics in the first place...

Also with DT we have nothing. So I suppose improvement in any direction would be positive.

I'm playing EW atm and noticed the people of FFXIV just feel empty and culture-less. Like they no longer feel as if they to exist after I exit the game. I realized that what theyre missing is something like a "sociological" heart. So I searched google for Ishikawa and "sociological" and found your comment.

I couldn't agree more with what you said. I LOVED the DRK quests and was super excited when I found out Ishikawa was heading ShB and EW. The people and settlements in ARR-SB had weight to them. They felt real. They had that certain element of soulfulness and life.

I'm still on EW, but starting in ShB, I felt the side characters we meet in the settlements along the way just lost something. They all feel the same. Like the people in Palaka's Stand in EW feel the same as the people in Wright in ShB. Sure, one is Indian inspired, but thats about it. There's just a certain groundedness that's missing. This was really glaring in Eulmore in ShB. I was not convinced at all by their moral, societal, and political transformation.

Edit: I'm in Radz rn and even the people there feel the same as the Crystarium people. Just kinda your boilerplate people experiencing a time of great distress. They just seem to be missing that certain something. I cant even articulate what that is, but its not there.

[ReynTime]

I'm playing EW atm and noticed the people of FFXIV just feel empty and culture-less. Like they no longer feel as if they to exist after I exit the game. I realized that what theyre missing is something like a "sociological" heart. So I searched google for Ishikawa and "sociological" and found your comment.

I couldn't agree more with what you said. I LOVED the DRK quests and was super excited when I found out Ishikawa was heading ShB and EW. The people and settlements in ARR-SB had weight to them. They felt real. They had that certain element of soulfulness and life.

I'm still on EW, but starting in ShB, I felt the side characters we meet in the settlements along the way just lost something. They all feel the same. Like the people in Palaka's Stand in EW feel the same as the people in Wright in ShB. Sure, one is Indian inspired, but thats about it. There's just a certain groundedness that's missing. This was really glaring in Eulmore in ShB. I was not convinced at all by their moral, societal, and political transformation.

Edit: I'm in Radz rn and even the people there feel the same as the Crystarium people. Just kinda your boilerplate people experiencing a time of great distress. They just seem to be missing that certain something. I cant even articulate what that is, but its not there.

Nameless NPCs in the settlements of ARR like Swiftperch, Aleport, Golden Bazaar, etc, are written like they have their own little backstories, and the settlements themselves have long pasts leading to what they are when you visit. Meanwhile settlements like the ones in later expansions are basically "this is place where we fish then send fish to city" and the like. To me that's one of the biggest differences.

It also makes the fact after Heavensward the number of hamlets with houses you can enter became a lot more scarce be more than just a coincidence. It highlights how little care they started putting into the design of those locations beyond a surface level.

[Basteala]

Nameless NPCs in the settlements of ARR like Swiftperch, Aleport, Golden Bazaar, etc, are written like they have their own little backstories, and the settlements themselves It also makes the fact after Heavensward the number of hamlets with houses you can enter became a lot more scarce be more than just a coincidence. It highlights how little care they started putting into the design of those locations beyond a surface level.

I hadn't thought about that, but you're absolutely right. It's very frustrating from an RP sense, as well.

[CuteBucket]

Nameless NPCs in the settlements of ARR like Swiftperch, Aleport, Golden Bazaar, etc, are written like they have their own little backstories, and the settlements themselves have long pasts leading to what they are when you visit. Meanwhile settlements like the ones in later expansions are basically "this is place where we fish then send fish to city" and the like. To me that's one of the biggest differences.

It also makes the fact after Heavensward the number of hamlets with houses you can enter became a lot more scarce be more than just a coincidence. It highlights how little care they started putting into the design of those locations beyond a surface level.

This may actually be a point in Ishikawa's favor. Checking the staff credits of each expansion shows that that in ARR and HW, Ishikawa was predominantly writing sidequests and side NPC dialogue like this. The first time she is listed as a lead writer is in SB working along with Banri Oda. Both of them are co-writers for SB, ShB, and EW. But as she became a lead writer, naturally the job of writing the sidequests and minor NPCs fell to newer members of the writing team and thus are *not* written by Oda and Ishikawa.