Revelations from Dawntrail (7.0)

[Tracewood]

Had a feeling

Sphene was going to be our final boss since her appearance on the poster. She seemed to go back and forth on having to kill folks in Tural and other parts of the expansion and even asked Zoraal for an alternate path. Maybe there was a small part of her that wanted us to stop Zoraal but only after he was killing her own people.

When asking her about shutting down the soul machine or any chance of an alternative her flat sounding "no..." is what sealed the deal.

The second stinger ending tells me that we haven't seen the last of her, and the patch quests might focus on relations with S9 folks and adjusting to life without their queen and the chance of death may be a reality for them once they run out of souls.

[Vallavia]

But the second half is were it was weaker for me, in part personal aesthetic dislike of the zones and partly because I was able to predict and map out the rest of the MSQ including almost every single twist from the second settlement in the fifth zone, and of the three things that I liked the most, that two were not predictions has to do with it. Spoilers for 97-100:

I broadly agree.

To me, it felt less like the expansion was divided in half and more like there was the first half, which was very well done, and then two subsequent half baked arcs that don't really connect to either of the other two in any meaningful way. It still worked, I'd say, but I came away from Alexandria still feeling like I had no idea what things were like there which was pronounced by the first half's total cultural immersion. Zoraal Ja's motives are also still rather opaque to me. The tie-in to the deep generational traumas of the Mamool Ja made sense to me as a motive for killing Gulool Ja Ja and generally descending into villainy, but I still don't know how he landed on his political platform being Garlemald 2. Perhaps I missed something...

[Denishia]

Yes, everyone complaining that the first half was weak compared to the second I side-eye a little with the grace that it might be aesthetic differences. I think the 7.1-2 patches will definitely help

everything with Solution Nine/Heritage Found and how they deal with the fallout of the thirty years gap, the regulators, and politics. That's what the first patch or two is traditionally about. And Porxie fixes for lightning sickness.

Zoraal Ja I think part of the problem people are having is that a lot of his angst is the self-inflicted kind and he's an introvert with depression. The comparisons to Zenos that are coming in are apt. Bakool Ja Ja got the hamminess, larger-than-lifeness, and villain team-up to appeal to that side of Zenos. But Zoraal Ja has the extreme strength -yet not the unbeatable superiority- and the dissatisfaction with his life despite his privilege as prince. He's trying to justify meaning to his existence as Resolute Son, to answer the miracle of his life - very much Hermes and EW themes still. Complete with a lack of safety net in the connection with others and blindness to where it was offered. And because the traditional Mamool Ja answer is "conquer others to prove your strength" he has internalized that as the path to display strength. Cue conqueror. Zoraal Ja admits in the end how it's hollow. Also core to him is resentment of his siblings. Their mere existence means that in his mind he wasn't enough for his father and kingdom, which he pinned all his self-worth on. And that's long before the contest and his loss to his siblings. He has as much an inferiority complex as Wuk Lamat. Zenos wanted the adrenaline high and made that his answer to life. Zoraal Ja wanted the assurance that he was the best because that was the false binary of that or nothing.

[17cupsofcoffee]

I broadly agree.

To me, it felt less like the expansion was divided in half and more like there was the first half, which was very well done, and then two subsequent half baked arcs that don't really connect to either of the other two in any meaningful way. It still worked, I'd say, but I came away from Alexandria still feeling like I had no idea what things were like there which was pronounced by the first half's total cultural immersion. Zoraal Ja's motives are also still rather opaque to me. The tie-in to the deep generational traumas of the Mamool Ja made sense to me as a motive for killing Gulool Ja Ja and generally descending into villainy, but I still don't know how he landed on his political platform being Garlemald 2. Perhaps I missed something...

My read on Zoraal Ja was...

The stuff about "starting a war to unite people/show them the value of peace" wasn't really any kind of coherent ideology that he held - everything just ties back to his feelings of inadequacy compared to his father and his siblings. His father stopped a bunch of wars and brought about peace, so he needs an even bigger war that he can win, to show that he's a worthy successor.

The same goes for his plans to take over the world in the back half of the expansion - Wuk Lamat and Gulool Ja pretty much outright say it when they return to Tuliyollal after defeating him:

Wuk Lamat: He claimed he wanted to bring the entire world under his dominion. But that was just a means to achieve his true desire.
Gulool Ja: My grandfather... He was a great person, right?
Gulool Ja: Maybe... maybe my father wanted to prove he was his own person. That he wasn't just a great person's son.

[Denishia]

My read on Zoraal Ja was...

The stuff about "starting a war to unite people/show them the value of peace" wasn't really any kind of coherent ideology that he held - everything just ties back to his feelings of inadequacy compared to his father and his siblings. His father stopped a bunch of wars and brought about peace, so he needs an even bigger war that he can win, to show that he's a worthy successor.

The same goes for his plans to take over the world in the back half of the expansion - Wuk Lamat and Gulool Ja pretty much outright say it when they return to Tuliyollal after defeating him:

Exactly! While he and Bakool Ja Ja are very similar, the nuance in divergence in motives and expectations is why they don't have the same path.

Bakool Ja Ja knows exactly what he's supposed to do as a Blessed Sibling - and while conquer better territory for Mamook is a bit amorphous when it gets scaled up to Tuliyollal's Succession Rite, it is grounded in the deep-rooted hopes and concerns of his society. That's why by attacking the root cause of Mamook's problem, the lack of resources and food, allows Bakool Ja Ja to address his actual issue. He loves his people and hates the sacrifice of his siblings and people. He wants that to stop. At its core his motives aren't self-centered, so Bakool Ja Ja will chose to change his methods to get his goal. His superiorty complex as Blessed Siblings is foisted upon him and he tries and fails to live up to it for others.

Zoraal also has the Miracle Birth Super-strong Heir expectation upon him. But as he is the first of his kind and the nation so new, his problem is that he doesn't have a strongly defined cultural blueprint or a concrete problem to solve. Both are nebulous enough that the uncertainty is what's causing Zoraal Ja angst: the path forward for their nation, and just how exception should a blue-scaled Hoobigo child be. He thinks "okay even mightier conqueror is my path" because martial strength is what he's good at and therefore decides that's what his focus should be. He wants self-validation but has set himself an impossible and unfulfilling goal and it never gives him the assurance that he wants. He needed what Erenville got from Cahcia's last scene: "You are enough and I am proud" and to have believed it instead of choosing not to.

Gulool Ja ironically is in a much healthier position because he has a precedent.

[Chasingstars]

Level 95 Zone Spoiler, Japanese vs English

When riding the rroneek and traveling with Erenville in Shaaloani there is a few differences between the english and japanese versions of the text. Its still a discussion about how a town was built only a few years ago, water is scarce, people turned to cacti and the berries they have to quench their thirst. Yet what I want to highlight is that in regards to ceruleum, aka blue phosphorous water in japanese.

JP Erenville: "Notice that cavity in the road. You should be able to see the hole filled with water."
NA Erenville: "See that hole there? Some might hope to find water there, but it is brimming with ceruleum."

JP Erenville: "The strange sight of it spontaneously combusting in the sunlight...maybe it's reminiscent of death, but there seems to be a strange tale passed down to the locals."
NA Erenville: "The eruption of flames from within make for a spectacle, inspiring cautionary tales of people who wandered too close."

JP Erenville: "Apparently some people consider water sacred. Was it the Whalaqee tribe?"
NA Erenville: "The Whalaqee, meanwhile, show great reverence to ceruleum and its blue flames..."

As what made me interested in researching into it was when the conversation happened in english, surely he would have noticed one of my jobs of

Blue Mage

If he was that familiar.

And in regards to that after scouring the zone, an observation and a hypothesis

The Whalaqee can't be found anywhere in the zone. Which makes some sense as there is no Lapis Canyon. And because of how JP-Erenville sounds not that familiar with the Whalaqee, it would suggest they are one of the more remote tribes that was discovered by Martyn and Whastrach.

[Fendred]

Doesn't seem like anyone has brought this up yet, but...

... the original Queen Sphene is strongly implied to be alive given the available lore on the Endless. She is a first generation endless, so her soul and memories are stored together. It is mentioned in the story text that she has a "special" storage device on her head. What we were interacting with was a version of Sphene stored in the living memory that also manages Alexandria. The original Sphene would not be able to project herself in that way. So much like how there were two versions of Ottis, there is another version of Sphene inside that crown depicted at the end. We just have no idea where it is.

[Raiya]

Doesn't seem like anyone has brought this up yet, but...

... the original Queen Sphene is strongly implied to be alive given the available lore on the Endless. She is a first generation endless, so her soul and memories are stored together. It is mentioned in the story text that she has a "special" storage device on her head. What we were interacting with was a version of Sphene stored in the living memory that also manages Alexandria. The original Sphene would not be able to project herself in that way. So much like how there were two versions of Ottis, there is another version of Sphene inside that crown depicted at the end. We just have no idea where it is.

Goddamn Forum limit is a right pain sometimes... -.-

It would be quite interesting if the Original Sphene was still "alive" as such, though her body might be dead it's possible her soul and memories were interred in a tomb of sorts. It should also be noted that when we play the final dungeon, in the last section notice that what looks like the wall we see at heritage found is being constructed as well as what appears to be the BASE of Solution 9 being constructed AROUND the ruins of Castle Alexandria. Gonna take a bet the original sphene could be interred there, it would also be a good way of allowing Sphene a 2nd chance considering her AI version was compelled by her own programming to seek out other shards to siphon. It would also be in a sense a way of helping ol Gulool Ja as not only is he alone right now but his Aunt Wuk will be needing to deal with her own issues regarding Tullyaloi and would have difficulty trying to run an Advanced Kingdom she has limited knowledge of even with Koana helping her. However if the scientists who developed the memory extraction had decided to keep her original soul and memories intact and interred them as a backup incase anything happened it would be a way of bringing her back.

[Yuella]

I think we will meet

the Ascian who was prepping the shard for a lightning calamity in the patches. Either Pashtarot or Halmarut

[Cilia]

Late to the party - work, school, and D&D DMing are all slowing me down. But oh well.

Overall MSQ

A bit underwhelming, with all of the pacing issues I've come to expect with Daichi Hiroi's lead. The first half is a sluggish tournament arc that sees us learning about all the cultures and customs of Tural (not bad), but it takes a long while to reach an already apparent conclusion - our support meant Wuk Lamat had an almost insurmountable advantage thanks both to our martial prowess and practical wisdom we've picked up on our adventures. Combat trials or no, having most of the (ex-)Scions in her corner, including the famed hero who saved the star times over, made the Rite a foregone conclusion. (Not to mention her character, a melding of the best traits of Zidane and Garnet to go along with the IX references, made her obviously most suited to rule - sheltered upbringing notwithstanding.)

The back half - the conflict with Alexandria - was interesting enough, even if the pacing was again somewhat stilted. The reflection's sudden appearance and overwriting of Yyasulani to create Heritage Found was a good way to kick it off, along with Zoraal Ja's attack on Tuliyollal, but it drags considerably from your arrival in Heritage Found until the inevitable showdown with Zoraal Ja. Living Memory is again a bit draggy, but it's emotionally overwhelming enough to keep you invested.

As for the story itself... it's about what I've come to expect from Hiroi. Adapting a previous game's story to the XIV setting, melding various characters into ones appropriate for the new setting, and recasting the heroes of the original game as antagonists in some fashion. It's not bad, but it's gotten a little predictable, and while I do like IX thanks to being somewhat derivative of it Dawntrail suffers from one of its key problems - an overfocus on a few key characters to the detriment of the rest of the cast.

Oh, right, and a few too many story contrivances, like the entrance to the Golden City just so happening to be in the area we're already wandering around once we get the final Keystone. But I'm not mad about that.

Speak with Wuk Lamat

Apropos of which - overfocus on a key character, meet Wuk Lamat. I don't have a problem with her character, but Wuk Lamat gets a ton of character focus to the detriment of the rest of the cast. I can get behind the idea that Dawntrail is "her" story, but she has by far the largest amount of screentime of any character at the expense of everyone else. We've had other characters like this - Lyse in Stormblood, for instance - but she didn't eat up screentime the way Wuk Lamat did nor did she really steal our thunder, since we still had a narrative role in that story (our budding rivalry with Zenos). We're just here to be a mentor and guiding hand to Wuk Lamat, meaning we have less narrative agency that we did even in A Realm Reborn. Even our big narrative purpose - defeating seemingly insurmountable odds through moxie and summoned allies via Azem's crystal - got upstaged by Wuk Lamat at the very end.

Nobody else has anywhere near as much story relevance - Sphene tries, but she's hamstrung by only showing up in the last third-ish of the story. Erenville and Krile, the ostensible deuteragonist and tritagonist, respectively, have much, much smaller roles - and just when it seems like you've shaken Wuk Lamat by venturing into Xak Tural alone with Erenville, circumstances conspire to put Wuk Lamat in the spotlight once again.

Like I mentioned, this may be because she's a meld of Zidane and Garnet, and IX's story focused heavily on those two (along with Vivi) to the detriment of the rest of the cast, but... man.

Zoraal Ja is motivated!

He wanted to surpass Gulool Ja Ja by uniting the world under one banner like how his father united Tural, and saw war as the only means of achieving that end. Falls off the slope after he loses the Feats of Repast and the Brotherhood, but I found him pitiable enough. The burden of the expectations put on his shoulders as a "miracle" due to being the first trueborn child to a two-headed Mamool Ja was just too much, and his taciturn nature made him bottle it all up inside. Without anyone to lend him a steadying hand he never found his own purpose in life and devoted himself to simply surpassing his father however he could - and when it was clear he couldn't do so alone, he... did not take it well.

The Far Edge of the Gate

Sphene is basically a melding of Garnet and Garland from IX, with the former's kindness and the latter's grim purpose. The story spent a long while introducing her in Heritage Found, but I feel this worked to her advantage - although I figured she would be antagonistic in the end, spending time getting to know her made our mission in Living Memory more difficult than it should have been. Unlike with Garland in IX, I did feel kind of bad about having to kill her, even if she was just a hologram / AI.

Moving Forward

As per usual I expect 7.1 - 7.3 will deal with the political fallout of 7.0, though I couldn't venture a guess as to who the "true" final boss (Nidhogg, Tsukuyomi, Warrior of Light Elidibus) is or if they're going to go a different route. Interested to see what's in the Arcadion, and curious as to what the Trial series will be (more tural vidraal, probably). I imagine in 7.4+ we're going to figure out how to use the key to open portals to different worlds via the gate at the bottom of the Skydeep Cenote.

One last note - the Twelfth was the reflection rejoined in the Second Umbral Calamity of Lightning, meaning time dilation aside it was probably not Alexandria's reflection. Rather, we know from the First and Thirteenth that a Flood (and thus plausibly a Rejoining) tips the aetheric balance of another reflection towards the opposite element. The Third was rejoined to the Source in the Fourth Umbral Calamity of Earth, so my guess is that the reflection Living Memory is on (that was destroyed by the Storm Surge / "Flood of Lightning") would have been the Eleventh. Time dilation being a thing, that's just a guess though.

Speak with Wuk Lamat again.