Feedback: Dawntrail MSQ thoughts

[Cleretic]

It's also impossible to deny that the Warrior of Light only has a bit part; this may be a "new story arc," but nuggets of wisdom and martial indomitability notwithstanding, we may as well have been an NPC. At least Stormblood had our rivalry with Zenos to keep us invested, and even A Realm Reborn had us playing a bigger part.

I consider this a positive, personally. People on this forum have spitballed how you possibly could have the WoL take a smaller and less central role, often from the perspective of trying to de-power or kill them, which feels like it solves the problem but doesn't really, because the problem is kinda inherent to the gameplay, you can't just say 'this character's weaker now' and expect it to work. It's a hard solve; how do you keep a story about one singular blank-slate protagonist interesting, when they just keep getting stronger but don't exactly become less of a blank-slate.

I think this takes a clever angle, of instead pivoting us into a different role, that uses our history and presumed strength level without just making us the protagonist. We're taking a mentor role, we're the Auron to Wuk Lamat's Tidus (and please don't try to find a Yuna in that metaphor, it will NOT work). Teaching someone else how to take on the role that they strive to attain, using similar tools to our own. If anything I think we could've served to be de-emphasised more, just because while Wuk Lamat clearly did need our help to get inner strength and confidence, as well as a hefty sword arm that she didn't necessarily have early on, it could've served to have someone else take a role in teaching her political leadership. That's a harder role to fill, though, since all the politicians we know are busy, y'know, being politicians. Alphinaud spends the entire expansion doing basically nothing, his skillset is politics-adjacent, maybe he could've taken that role?


That kinda does by nature involve putting a lot of eggs into the one basket, though; a story primarily about a silent protagonist and their mentee is gonna require said mentee to shoulder a lot of the storytelling weight. That's inevitably gonna not work out for some people, because there's no such thing as a universally beloved character, but I actually don't think that's a new problem for the game; Heavensward and Stormblood put a lot of weight on hoping that Estinien and Lyse got over with people. I'd argue that most of both Shadowbringers and Endwalker actually hinge a lot on you liking specifically Emet-Selch and his story, and he isn't even necessarily a very big character in terms of per-scene presence. I also don't necessarily think that's a flaw, though; FFXIV's story is inherently very character-driven, and everyone has different tastes on what they like in characters, so having a polarizing character sorta just means you did the job right. It means the character is strong enough to provoke opinions and feelings.

Genuinely, I would argue that there's really popular FFXIV characters that couldn't handle the sort of spotlight Wuk Lamat does, because that requires a character to be vibrant and multifaceted enough to remain interesting during the entire spotlight. Harchefaunt, Aymeric, Hien, they couldn't remain interesting across that much time. Most of the Scions couldn't manage it. Hell, their prominence in the expansion indirectly sort of shows that Krile and Erenville don't have strong enough personalities to carry an expansion.

[Cilia]

I think this takes a clever angle, of instead pivoting us into a different role, that uses our history and presumed strength level without just making us the protagonist. We're taking a mentor role, we're the Auron to Wuk Lamat's Tidus (and please don't try to find a Yuna in that metaphor, it will NOT work). Teaching someone else how to take on the role that they strive to attain, using similar tools to our own. If anything I think we could've served to be de-emphasised more, just because while Wuk Lamat clearly did need our help to get inner strength and confidence, as well as a hefty sword arm that she didn't necessarily have early on, it could've served to have someone else take a role in teaching her political leadership. That's a harder role to fill, though, since all the politicians we know are busy, y'know, being politicians. Alphinaud spends the entire expansion doing basically nothing, his skillset is politics-adjacent, maybe he could've taken that role?

The problem with shifting the silent protagonist into a mentor role is that a mentor... necessarily has a lot of things to say. Unlike Auron who, being voiced, was able to provide a lot of exposition, was a minor celebrity in Spira, and actually had a personality and goals, the Warrior of Light has none of those - other than "seeking adventure" after the cosmic crises of the past couple expansions, they're a blank slate. A silent protagonist is a terrible fit for the mentor role because mentors necessarily need to say a lot; the net effect is that it winds up looking like Wuk Lamat mentors herself for the most part, which leads to the question of "Why am I even here?" Even in the Warrior of Light's bread and butter role of taking down threats too powerful for anyone else to handle (Sphene / Queen Eternal), Wuk Lamat manages to upstage them.

Again, I don't have a problem with Wuk Lamat being the main protagonist (we were the deuteragonist of Stormblood and the ultimate protagonist of both Shadowbringers and Endwalker; the train's gotta let up at some point) but that doesn't mean she needs to be in the spotlight for 85% of the story.

Genuinely, I would argue that there's really popular FFXIV characters that couldn't handle the sort of spotlight Wuk Lamat does, because that requires a character to be vibrant and multifaceted enough to remain interesting during the entire spotlight. Harchefaunt, Aymeric, Hien, they couldn't remain interesting across that much time. Most of the Scions couldn't manage it. Hell, their prominence in the expansion indirectly sort of shows that Krile and Erenville don't have strong enough personalities to carry an expansion.

I think this is putting the horse before the cart - any flaws in characterization (or a lack of depth) can be remedied through clever writing and giving them more screentime. Krile and Erenville don't fall flat because they're poorly characterized, they're poorly characterized because they're not written all that well and don't get a lot of time to shine thanks to the story focusing so heavily on Wuk Lamat. Erenville guides you across Tural and has some moments in the back half of the story, while Krile is basically just there to provide a plot device to get into the final zone (they both have their moments in Living Memory, but Wuk Lamat has her own things there too). They could have had bigger roles in the story, but weren't written to; saying "they lack personality" because of this is a pretty poor defense, IMO.

I want to say this is just a consequence of Hiroi being unused to the ensemble cast, but I couldn't say for sure. Either way, Wuk Lamat being the focus character at the expense of the rest of the cast just didn't work for me. I don't dislike her or anything, but she held the spotlight in places that really would have been better suited to giving it to other people (mostly in the back half of the story).

[ZavosEsperian]

Wuk Lamat is a Blackhole Sue.

I have just the thing for this:

[Cleretic]

They could have had bigger roles in the story, but weren't written to; saying "they lack personality" because of this is a pretty poor defense, IMO.

I don't think this is a problem with Daichi Hiroi at all, but the challenge with Krile and Erenville is that they're designed for a different purpose than 'being the central character of a story', and so giving them a story that they're central to, even a side-story like Dawntrail does, leads to a bit of difficulty in crafting that story. You can't just give them a story like Estinien's or Wuk Lamat's, that doesn't work for them. That's not a problem with them as characters, nor is it a problem of a writer that can't or won't do it; it's like arguing that a motorcycle has entirely the wrong amount of wheels to be an effective bus. So what you need to do is to instead put them in stories that suit the kind of character they were made to be. (Fair warning, exploring this takes a bit, it got away from me.)

Starting with the more typical one first, Erenville was made to be a very low-key supporting character, as well as, chiefly, a non-combat one. He's deliberately a very quiet and reserved character, because he's not designed to have a lot of feelings or opinions; he was designed to idly drop plot details that the main cast acts on later. But unlike Zero, the character Hiroi made to not have a lot to say, he doesn't really have a story reason that begs for the spotlight, nor does he have a skillset that forces it onto him; he's just naturally a quiet character without a massive amount to add to the sort of story MSQs tell. I actually admire them sticking to that, a character in the entourage that just won't fight is genuinely interesting, but he'd really be more at home in a gatherer questline or variant dungeon, and is also what would happen if you took a character from one of those storylines and plopped them into the MSQ.

Krile's a bit more interesting, because while she's not an O.G. Scion, she's designed in much the same vein; she's intended to be a consistent contact of a larger story, someone who gives you the 'Kill Ten Rats' quest, but also gives you a greater context for why doing that is important. Like someone like Y'shtola, that means she's not designed to be an extremely expressive character, or to have a deeply personal story, as it's implied that her major personal growth moments have already happened. Hell, I'm fairly sure she's heavily based on Krile from FFV to shortcut most of that; 'it's Krile, you know Krile' kinda clips past a lot of those questions. To that end, a story like Stormblood Eureka treats her very well; a mystery, and one that requires a lot of legwork for us to do, is a perfect story for her, giving her a lot to do and discover without necessarily needing a lot of emotional storytelling. Even Stormblood Eureka needed Ejika there to be the emotional foil, though.


I actually feel like Dawntrail treats them very well as the characters they are, by building a lot of their parts of the story around what they can and can't do. Erenville mostly takes the backseat, providing worldbuilding information and non-combat solutions to problems, but for a lot of the early story is the straight man to the more emotionally expressive Wuk Lamat... and when it gets to his part of the story, they give him Cahcuia as the emotional counterweight, someone to be emotionally expressive in a way that wouldn't be true for Erenville himself--and to provide the eventual environment for him to be expressive when it comes time for that. Meanwhile, Krile gets a mystery to play to those same strengths as Stormblood Eureka did; but this time, she gets a lot of scenes talking to people about the mystery and its emotional weight, with everyone else in the cast filling the role as Ejika did... and the fact all of her big reveal scenes are voice acted meaning that she can do more than she used to there, too. Her English voice actor is a low-key champion there, she's really good at those quiet, trembling emotions of someone who's just received huge news but isn't the type to be loudly open about it.

I don't think it's perfectly executed, but I think they took the right angles with both of them, they both have the story that suits them. I think to perfectly nail them they'd just need one more scene each; maybe one of Erenville getting clever in front of Cahcuia in Heritage Found, so she can gush about how far he's come, and I'd maybe like to replace the scene of Krile telling us what Gulool Ja Ja told her with just the scene of Gulool Ja Ja telling her himself, or add one with Koana contrasting her quiet optimism with his simmering resentment about the same subject.

[TaleraRistain]

A little further for me. I think Wuk Lamat's presence was acceptable up to the 2nd trial. She had a purpose/stake in seeing her brother dead. I was okay with her up till there. But that is it for me. She should have left the party after the return to tuyilolyal. Krile and Enenes'shypa should have taken center stage as well as the WoL. Sphene is a WoL problem.
Even Raubaun had the sense that zenos wasn't his problem.

This. I loved Wuk Lamat and I loved helping her in the rite of succession. I was even happy to have her there through the second trial since that was her fight. But that's the point where she should have left the story. Then it would have allowed the WoL and the player to develop a personal connection with the antagonist. I was unfortunately missing that in this expansion in comparison to prevoius expansions. We also carry the soul of Azem, who was both a wanderer and a protector of the star. It was our place to fight that fight, not Wuk Lamat. It would have capped off the expansion nicely, as Wuk Lamat's mentor stepped up to handle their normal duties.

I've seen complaints that the city leaders in previous expansions used the WoL as nothing but a weapon. But I never felt that way. I felt they relied upon us and looked to us for help. Here, I felt like the WoL was just a weapon being pointed at something.

[honest_psycho]

Most of the Scions couldn't manage it. Hell, their prominence in the expansion indirectly sort of shows that Krile and Erenville don't have strong enough personalities to carry an expansion.

This is entirely due to a lack of talent and creativity of the writer, because he wanted to put WL on a pedestal, WHICH IS THE POINT OF CONTENTION, NOT THE LACK OF UNDERSTANDING.

And again, I don't care about your wordsalad, implying that everyone who doesnt get it is just an idiot.

Bu now I'm 100% sure, you have some personal, emotional reason to defend WL this much, and youre just hidding behind some intellectual mumbo-jumbo to hide it.
Otherwise you would have accepted that other people just have a different opinion about her exessive screentime.

But go ahead, write as many paragraphs as you want, we're not dumb enough to fall for this.

[Palladiamors]

This is entirely due to a lack of talent and creativity of the writer, because he wanted to put WL on a pedestal, WHICH IS THE POINT OF CONTENTION, NOT THE LACK OF UNDERSTANDING.

And again, I don't care about your wordsalad, implying that everyone who doesnt get it is just an idiot.

Bu now I'm 100% sure, you have some personal, emotional reason to defend WL this much, and youre just hidding behind some intellectual mumbo-jumbo to hide it.
Otherwise you would have accepted that other people just have a different opinion about her exessive screentime.

But go ahead, write as many paragraphs as you want, we're not dumb enough to fall for this.

Cleretic does this all the time. You did a good job but it's probably best for your sanity if you bow out. You proved your point very well, anyone can see that.

[honest_psycho]

Cleretic does this all the time. You did a good job but it's probably best for your sanity if you bow out. You proved your point very well, anyone can see that.

Aww, thank you very much for your concern.
But don't worry, I kinda enjoy debating like this, despite my tone.

Like solving a hard logic puzzle!
But yeah, I'm gonna tone it down.

[Cleretic]

Cleretic does this all the time. You did a good job but it's probably best for your sanity if you bow out. You proved your point very well, anyone can see that.

They're really not, don't give them that credit. They've ignored the things I actually said about everything in favor of just continuing to fire off personal attacks, and beg the question on a point that honestly I don't think they've ever actually articulated. I just put them on ignore because it's the same non-argument again and again, no matter what I say.

I said 'it's okay to have preferences'; they claimed that I meant it as an insult, before saying that I should accept that people have preferences. They seem to really think that I have some secret, argument-compromising personal and emotional reason that I like Wuk Lamat, when... honestly, we all know that preferences are personal, I have always been open about liking Wuk Lamat, and that I just like putting into words why I think she, and other parts of the story, work. And those reasons are things like 'Wuk Lamat has an arc I relate to and is well-suited for the lead role she has', and 'Krile's story is well-picked to suit the character she is'.

If they really think I have some secret, compromising or nefarious reason for liking Wuk Lamat that I'm just not saying, then I think they should just come forward with the accusation, because nobody's going to hear it if you don't say it out loud. And if you think they proved their point about it, maybe you can share what that point is.

[honest_psycho]

They're really not, don't give them that credit. They've ignored the things I actually said about everything in favor of just continuing to fire off personal attacks.

Here's a quote from YOU earlier.:

No. That is only a problem for you, and it's largely because you aren't very good at reading this story

You're the last person here who has any right to complain about personal attacks.
Every "mean" comment directed at you came AFTER that.