Dawntrail's MSQ story is a disaster and waste of potential. [full spoilers]

[Lieri]

Just like Dawntrail early quests... things stop being fun when you bring politics into it. DT was supposed to be our "vacation to some tropical, magical beach in the middle of nowhere". That's what it was mainly advertised as. Instead we went there to fight for internal politics affairs and had to choose our side... actually we didn't, the writers had decided it for us. And the craziest part is it caused cultural wars outside of it as well (just look at the posts in this forum, they're bringing things outside of the game as arguments). Just pure madness. Why can't a Final Fantasy just act like a Final Fantasy? I feel like the earlier expansions, including early FF series cared less about the cultural trends/problems in real life, that's why the writers could really get into the story (fantasy). It's in the name everyone. We didn't experience FF things until the latter part of MSQ. And that is a fact.

[genuine_stranger]

Just like Dawntrail early quests... things stop being fun when you bring politics into it. DT was supposed to be our "vacation to some tropical, magical beach in the middle of nowhere". That's what it was mainly advertised as. Instead, we went there to fight for internal politics affairs and had to choose our side... actually we didn't, the writers had decided it for us. And the craziest part is it caused cultural wars outside of it as well (just look at the posts in this forum, they're bringing things outside of the game as arguments). Just pure madness. Why can't a Final Fantasy just act like a Final Fantasy? I feel like the earlier expansions, including early FF series cared less about the cultural trends/problems in real life, that's why the writers could really get into the story (fantasy). It's in the name everyone. We didn't experience FF things until the latter part of MSQ. And that is a fact.

Because nowadays, you can't be offensive or have any kind of friction towards any fictional group of people to craft a story of overcoming their differences and fighting for a greater good. Some people will pull anything that they can latch onto out of a game into RL and frame a company as [put a derogatory statement here] to prove the internet their moral high ground before moving on to the next thing they find offensive.
And public companies don't like it when bad news circle around them.

[duckorz]

I've been wondering lately if there was a rewrite fairly late into development that explains a few strange things. It explains the conspicuous lack of voice acting, some of the weird plot/premise inconsistencies with S9/Living Memory appearing to be (and having almost everyone assuming they would be) digital realms but being made into physical places that sorta totally break the worldbuilding, Sphenes design not really fitting Solution 9, there being an unnecessary extra portal to Living Memory that's just an upscaled void gate asset when we already have a visually and conceptually compelling portal to the "golden city" of living memory, the lack of well-directed, high budget cinematographic cutscenes, some of the inconsistencies with the concept art-> full game realizations of areas (why is there a train going through Heritage Found in the liveletter art but not ingame? There are tracks leading into it, was this cut at some point? Why is it called Heritage found, anyway?), the particular lack of Urianger/Thancred dialogue + the unfulfilled scion conflict stuff that might have just been cut entirely, etc.

It's really the inexplicable connection between Solution 9 and Living Memory that doesn't really make sense and the lack of VA, for me. I think this is what happened, super speculative:

-There used to be way more Scion conflict stuff that was cut; it's hard to imagine why Urianger/Thancred would literally be on the boxart/poster art and then have the least amt of voiced dialogue in the expac
-Heritage Found/Solution 9 used to be more explicitly "evil" with how they were mining/extracting Electrope and Souls from the surrounding area of "Heritage Found," and then SE realized that S9 couldn't be too evil or too dystopian, or else it wouldn't work as our last city hub (there would have been way, way, way more to resolve here than in Eulmore)
-Sphenes Motivation used to be different, and she used to be a more explicitly digital entity: She kind of just shows up inexplicably in HF, her connection to Zoraal ja is bizarre and strange, and her line about making us "Citizens of Alexandria" indicates that her initial motivation/programming may have been, at some point, to digitize all life in order to "preserve" it, which makes way more sense for a rogue AI programmed by "Preservation" (atm, her integrating Tural peoples into the system hardly makes sense if her goal is to preserve Alexandrians). This also would explain the visuals of the area and the more programmatic logic/aesthetics/premise of that section of the story and their insistence that they're not real people
-Maybe Solution 9 was also originally digital, given the scale/design/practical logistics of the place, and S9 and Living Memory used to be opposing factions? Their ideological and thematic and aesthetic aims are opposite from one another: Living Memory is, seemingly, meant to signify stasis and conservation (Preservation!); no new people can ever be born, nothing new can ever be made, and everyone is just a digital ghost that cant have new thoughts, new ideas, or new desires (which would, actually, make me feel no guilt for turning them off). Solution 9 is, seemingly, meant to signify expansion and consumption: unsustainably mining the land for electrope and stealing the souls from living people, expanding their order outwards and exploiting neighboring peoples, accumulating power while assimilating everything into its digital monoculture. Them being competing computer worlds/VR makes the conflict between Sphene and Zoraal Ja make more sense, too. If/when they merged these two places, they had to merge together the antagonists and the logistics/function of both areas.
-I still think the souls were always necessary for Solution 9 people to keep living, and the soul economy was always a part of its core concept: However, I think it's possible that they used to also let you live forever instead of just the very silly limitation of only protecting you from... accidents? It would have been way more biting social commentary to make their economy literally a matter of work or die, and the most well off got to live forever, but maybe, again, they thought that was too dark/evil for our hub city?
-This also explains why the townspeople that are... outside of S9 for some reason doing totally unnecessary agriculture are speculating about Namikka having no soul cells left despite it being commonly known information that soul cells dont do anything about old age
-Them merging S9/LM together in the rewrite might explain the new invention/contrivance of/retcon of Living Memory specifically requiring "Aether from Living Things" when afaik that's never been a discrete category of Aether before (it wasn't during 6.x)? Maybe Living Memory, being frozen in time, didn't use to require any consumption of souls to contrast with S9. Sort of the active/inactive dichotomy we saw with light/dark in ShB. Techno-progressivism (to a dystopian extent) vs extreme conservatism (to a dystopian extent) to sort of extend on the progress/tradition premise established with Koana/Wuk Lamat (that also wasn't really a real conflict and abandoned early in the MSQ)
-The entire system of living aether/souls/memory distributed between S9/LM is a bit odd in general and a little overcomplicated, so I could be misunderstanding the insane logistics of this entire set-up
-Sphene is able to just... Digitally control Everkeep with visual effects that suggest computer-y stuff happening, so I have to place some stock in this computer VR world idea, at least a little. The animations/VFX of her manipulating data is a little suspect, even if its explained by her manipulating... Electrope, I guess? A bit of a reach - but she's sort of VRChat/Vtuber coded in her design too, lol

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Sometimes I wonder where all this outrage and objection was back in Endwalker, but eh better late than never I guess.

In Endwalker, a character you've been influenced to adore makes a big speech while her power ballad plays in the background. This has been the woman who has been your guiding light for ten years, you're set up to trust her judgement. Mommy knows best. And even with that major bias built in, they were smart enough to have her destroy a ruined world in the cutscene, not the restored world she actually destroyed, and to be up against whiny baby strawmen making some nonsense argument about perfection. And most importantly, the scene skips from the immediate aftermath to sundered bickering while Venat bleeds black goo. They did everything in their narrative power to influence which side you came down on. The only way to even understand the extent of the damage is to play Nier...otherwise it looks like they went from being Ancients to us. I truly believe most people don't understand the complete horror of what she did to people and that was by design.

But this time we're told by some woman we've never met before we need to kill everyone to demoralize a program and it's okay cause they are not people. But not only do they show every indicator of being people, the characters treat them like people. No power ballad plays as we delete everyone's mommy. Instead the music stops and we are left to look upon the blackened husk of a once vibrant world. Every emotional indicator possible is telling us that this is wrong. And in the end, it ends up being narratively pointless as Sphene didn't even notice they were gone. And unlike the Sundering which created the FF14 world players love and enjoy, all destroying the Endless did was create a blackened husk we'll have to return to for fishing and gathering.

In Endwalker, Venat did it. We, the player, were not forced to do it ourselves. In Endwalker, it had a purpose in allowing us to use Dynamis to defeat Meteion. Venat even acknowledges there was no justice or glory in what she did and she is no hero. Here in Dawntrail, we shut off these terminals because Cahciua wants us to and it doesn't even serve a purpose in the end. It doesn't demoralize Sphene in any way and it changed nothing for the better except ending the lives of some who wanted to move on. But there was also others who did not. Was that really our decision to make on if they get to live or die? Really, we should've just gone straight to Sphene and let them die naturally as they ran out of life energy. Not being the one to pull the plug on them just because bunny Mom wants us to.

Also most people assume Venat spent the time in between looking for an alternative. I'm sure more people would feel differently about it if she spent that time going on boat rides and eating ice cream. Also, she was attempting to save the universe, we are attempting to demoralize a program.

[Bunyon]

1. Zoraal Ja represents what the OP was referring to. Wasted potential. The writers did a terrible job making us sympathize with or relate with him if that was their intent. Waited until the very end to attempt to make him something other than a one-dimensional villain. Unfortunately, by then, it was too late. Was his son supposed to make me relate with him in some way? But his son is not explained whatsoever. He just pops up randomly out of nowhere. I just chalked it up to he had a one night's stand with someone and that was the result. We're told his father spurned him but shown nothing which would indicate he was mistreated. Either commit to making him a one-dimensional villain or make a decent showing of why this character deserves my understanding. The whole theme of feeling alienated because people shower endless praise upon you is very real, but the only indication we get of this is in the middle of our trial fight with him. His character could have been interesting but was executed very poorly and any crumb that would help us understand him came far too late to leave an impact.

For quite a while I thought Zoraal Ja knew more about something ominous that was coming, since his whole deal was how peace led to complacency and the country was unprepared to face war. I thought the whole thing was a slow build up that would maybe not even resolve in this expansion, like his knowledge of other unknown countries preparing for war. But no. It was just daddy issues because unrealistic expectations. So much for that.

[HighlanderClone]

I've been wondering lately if there was a rewrite fairly late into development

Interesting theory. A lot of the issues with EW also arise because of having to condense two xpacs into one.

I don't know why people keep praising FF14 for being so story-focused or that it's an "RPGMMO" when it's so clear that the story has to constantly bend over backwards for its gameplay and MMO formula (Sol 9 as a hub as you mentioned, the necessity of having 3 party members + WoL, the necessity of needing 7 party members + WoL for trials, the necessity of pacing the story so that there's a dungeon every odd level... so on and so forth).

If a rewrite occurred at some point I think it also speaks to just how rigid the formula is (with the release schedule, patch cycle, gameplay systems etc.) that they have to butcher their story just so it can work with the release cycle and gameplay systems.

Honestly I am so tired of FF14's formula and it isn't just the story. If they keep going on this formulaic route the entire game is going to wither slowly.

[Zabuza]

For quite a while I thought Zoraal Ja knew more about something ominous that was coming, since his whole deal was how peace led to complacency and the country was unprepared to face war. I thought the whole thing was a slow build up that would maybe not even resolve in this expansion, like his knowledge of other unknown countries preparing for war. But no. It was just daddy issues because unrealistic expectations. So much for that.

True. I forgot about that but now that you mention it, that was just another one of the setups that had no payoff whatsoever. Along with the setup of competing with Thancred and Urianger in the rites of succession. I thought we might actually have to fight them in a duel at some point, but nothing really happened at all out of that. We conveniently ended up cooperating with them and their claimant and getting paired up with them in the cooking rite, too.

Interesting theory. A lot of the issues with EW also arise because of having to condense two xpacs into one.

I don't know why people keep praising FF14 for being so story-focused or that it's an "RPGMMO" when it's so clear that the story has to constantly bend over backwards for its gameplay and MMO formula (Sol 9 as a hub as you mentioned, the necessity of having 3 party members + WoL, the necessity of needing 7 party members + WoL for trials, the necessity of pacing the story so that there's a dungeon every odd level... so on and so forth).

If a rewrite occurred at some point I think it also speaks to just how rigid the formula is (with the release schedule, patch cycle, gameplay systems etc.) that they have to butcher their story just so it can work with the release cycle and gameplay systems.

Honestly I am so tired of FF14's formula and it isn't just the story. If they keep going on this formulaic route the entire game is going to wither slowly.

True. I've been complaining about this since the story was good. Same amount of extremes released. Same amount of dungeons. The dungeons themselves are structured the same. Two trash pack pull --> Two trash pack pull --> Boss. Repeat this three times and dungeon over. Every single time. Four story raids released. Then later, four savage raids. Next patch, 24 man alliance raid released. Same tomestone formula, same gear reward format. In quests, click on three items. Talk to three people. Looking for missing thing three times. Back in Stormblood we had a quest in the Steppe where we picked up dung. In Dawntrail we get a quest where we pick up dung. Same old song and dance. No variation whatsoever. For a decade. In the quest where we were looking for Valigarmanda with the detector, I was silently hoping to myself that it would take any numbers of times but three to at least give it a slight variation, but nope. Third time's the charm. Yet again.

Now the story isn't even around to save this game. I'm glad criticism is plentiful, because people kept insisting these devs can do no wrong and devs need to see that there are indeed problems that need working on. When the players continuously praise the devs for everything they do, they get complacent and start thinking they can put in less effort and get away with anything.

[RatCopter]

Wasted potential really is the phrase for this expansion.

Zoraal Ja was too much show and not enough tell. You were left guessing exactly what the fuck his problem was right up until you killed him, at which point it was too late to really digest his character. I figured that his issue was just one of legacy, but he barely spoke to anyone, so you never got a really obvious clue until he's defeated, at which point the point is kinda moot.

Bakool Ja Ja has changed too suddenly to a good guy with no pushback from the people he had previously tormented. Being that his primary problem (that being the conditions of the Mamool Ja) being solved without actually being solved by Wuk Lumat and the scions "oh yeah, lemme call up some supplies from Sharlayan that'll take whatever amount time to get here", he has a lot to answer for if you want to actually get use out of his character, which I feel would be welcomed by the players. He should be going on some kind of journey or redemption or something. But nah, he's just hanging out in Tuliyollal like nobody knows or cares he released Valigarmanda.

Wuk Lamat was used far too much in what feels like the writer's desperate attempts to force the players to like her, when they didn't really have to do that, and it's resulted in the opposite. Like they wanted to just have her come in and immediately be as popular as any one of the Scions without going through the work they did to get that love. Dial back her presence somewhat (and that bloody weak stomach joke that long outstayed it's welcome), treat the concept of diversity and differing peoples working together despite past aggression with an actual adult lense instead of this trite "haha the food tho" through the story, and treat the WoL like an actual partner and not a cheerleader, and you've got a good character. And for crying out loud, don't have her do my job for me on the final boss and do more damage in a single than 8 players can crank out during their entier combined openers.

Living Memory was absolutely wack, and that's not even taking into consideration that for a supposedly time sensitive, world ending threat, you had the freedom to just gallavant around the place at your leisure because there was, at the time, nothing better to do while you waited. There was a moral dilemma there that was completely diluted by everyone just being okay with ending everyone's lives/unlives there. Everyone. Your companions just said "yeah we should do this" and didn't really do any kind of agonizing over the decision, outside of Erenville mentioning it in regards to his mother. The people of Living Memory didn't really care, didn't try to stop you, and some actively encouraged you to end it because they lived their lives already, they had a good time here, oh it must be time to go, that's fine, it's all just peachy. Sphene doesn't even mention that you just spent the past couple of hours killing off a sizable portion of her people.

It's salvagable in post expansion content. Just gotta hope they're taking a lot of notes from this fumble. And, side note, I kinda hope that the empty plaque in Tuliyollal that details Galuul Ja Ja's journey is capped off with the image of his Wuk Lumat, Koana, and Zoraal Ja finishing off Valigarmanda. His kids coming together to finish the foe he wasn't able to vanquish would be a nice way to round that story off. Adds a little to the tragedy when you realise it was at that point Zoraal Ja had actually stepped out of his father's shadow, even if he never realised it.

[MoonPhaseAlpha]

I finally made it to Shaaloani and all I got was this crummy bracelet. I need this on a t-shirt.

Story wise, I think most of the 4th zone of Shaaloani was a waste. But hey, Texas now has dinosaurs so I can't be all mad at it.

[BakoolJaJa]

Bakool Ja Ja has changed too suddenly to a good guy with no pushback from the people he had previously tormented. Being that his primary problem (that being the conditions of the Mamool Ja) being solved without actually being solved by Wuk Lumat and the scions "oh yeah, lemme call up some supplies from Sharlayan that'll take whatever amount time to get here", he has a lot to answer for if you want to actually get use out of his character, which I feel would be welcomed by the players. He should be going on some kind of journey or redemption or something. But nah, he's just hanging out in Tuliyollal like nobody knows or cares he released Valigarmanda.

Bakool Ja Ja "reveal scene" was such a jarring 180. And so comical with that over the top friendship crap. The two heads speaking in unison to thank Wuk Lamat was I think the cringiest moment of the entire expansion for me. Just... Ugh. I otherwise loved the 3d zone so much, but it's like the MSQ was going out of its way to make me hate it. Such childish writing. Everything in 3d zone. Friendship, friendship, sudden power of peace and friendship, terrorist character is now a friend, sad moment, buut, power of friendship!