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

[Bunyon]

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!

He honestly felt like an absolute trope of a high school bully, down to running away crying when Wuk Lamat beats him, and then we find out daddy didn't love him...

[Sndman22]

MSQ is soo diappointing. Its like it was written to teach 12 year olds the power of friendship and working together. Im so tired of the lets all hug each other and tell everyone I love you too.
The plot was so predictable. Wuk Lamot was horrible. My opinion is this is a total failure in writing compared to Shadowbringers and even endwalker.

[Mnemy]

I agree with most, except for the Zoraal Ja part. I literally forgot he existed until we got to the Mamool Ja area and then after that we dont know why in the seven HELLS he is doing this. When we get to know his motives too little too late. He was mum the entire time, and he is not a looming prescene from the beginning. I would've loved it if he seem to be this intimidating and looming character but I dont feel anything from him.

And to add to the part about us being a prop to the story, I know alot of people who like the story keeps saying that "the reason why you dont like the story is because you are not the main character" It's not even about us being a main character that I want, I just want to feel like I'm part of the story! Thisi is not just Wuk Lamat's story its supposed to be ours too! As you said the people barely recognize our existence I'm pretty sure the story could exist without us. WE ARE LITERALLY NONEXISTENT. All I want is for people to see our WoL and recognize he's there and you are right, Gulol is the only person who did that, who recognized us. In StB and HW I dont mind Lyse and Alphi+Estinien being the main characters because they are well written and we are still part of the story. We are still there! In DT we are literally like a fly on the wall. We are literally just standing there menacingly and nothing more. No recognition, not character development. Its the "Just standing there menacingly" DLC. I want to be a part of the story. The reason I loved FFXIV from HW to EW is because its not just our friend's journey its also our journey, with character growth both for our old friends and new friends along the way.

I would love for DT to be another part of an amazing catalogue of DLC for me but its not. I really wish I could love it but I felt like shit after playing it.

[genuine_stranger]

MSQ is soo diappointing. Its like it was written to teach 12 year olds the power of friendship and working together. Im so tired of the lets all hug each other and tell everyone I love you too.
The plot was so predictable. Wuk Lamot was horrible. My opinion is this is a total failure in writing compared to Shadowbringers and even endwalker.

I think ShB was the lightning in the bottle moment for FFXIV in form of writing.
EW started off good, but everything that happened after Garlemald began a downward spiral for me personally which culminated in timetravel shenanigans, Elpis and the introduction of the power of friendship: Dynamis.
DT just continues with this form of writing and honestly I'm glad to see how many people dislike it.

[Rolder50]

He honestly felt like an absolute trope of a high school bully, down to running away crying when Wuk Lamat beats him, and then we find out daddy didn't love him...

That was definitely the goal and I feel like it could have worked if he wasn’t quite as cartoonishly evil. Like if it was just the taco thing, the events of the first dungeon, and some idle threats, it’d be fine. But the whole trying to kill electors and especially freeing Valigarmanda should be absolutely unforgivable.

[BlueWarden]

The story definitely falls flat on its face between levels 90-96. While exploring and learning more lore is all well and good, I know I had to take several breaks in between questing because it just felt like the story kept dragging on. Helping Wuk Lamat get the seven chaos emeralds so she can become the next Hokage felt like a chore, but I pressed on. Once I got to Shaaloani and we started looking around for that dumb bracelet I was just about ready to start skipping cutscenes to try and move the story along, but I persisted in case something important happened. Thankfully the story started getting somewhat interesting by level 96 once the dome appears and you get to Heritage Found and then make your way into Night City, besides some other issues here and there along the way.

Wuk Lamat herself felt unnecessarily shoved into everything and felt like someone's self insert at times. I get she was central to the story, but she may as well had taken the WoL's place and just done everything herself, we're just there for emotional support along with the rest of the Scions. Though I feel maybe she'd be more tolerable if her voice acting in English wasn't so atrocious. I also found it silly how in one instance Bakool Ja Ja deflects her attack like she's nothing, cementing himself as an actual threat, only for Wuk to beat not only him but several dozen dudes at the same time singlehandedly using the power of friendship sometime later. I imagine she'll be a part of the story moving forward in the upcoming patches but I pray she's another Lyse and she never shows up again outside of a random appearance here and there in the story post-Dawntrail.

I know this is meant to be the starting point for a new story arc and the next ten years so hopefully they're able to turn things around, because they dropped the ball hard considering the negative reception so far.

[MoofiaBossVal]

The biggest issue with Dawntrail's story is that it's overall boring. This is the first expansion story where I lost interest half way through and abandoned the story to go level up alt jobs rather than have a desire to see what happens next. The problem is 1. there is little tension and 2. there is a lot of padding both on the micro and macro level.





The story began to lose my interest around the first trial. The expansion hyped up this Vidraal so much, with how it breathes everlasting fire with its massive firey claw marks still burning on the mountain 80 years later, and how the even the Dawnservant couldn't slay it so he had to trick it into freezing itself into its own everlasting ice. And then the giant elder on the top of the mountain took us to the gravestone that was made in remembrance of those who fought against the Vidraal. Then Bakool Ja Ja frees Valimarganda from its prison, and apparently it unleashed a firery conflagration upon the giant's village... which doesn't kill anyone, or evaporate the fountain water, or burn any grass. We then run back to the Giant's village, and they start talking about how the Skyruin is going to kill countless people and how they must send messengers to nearby villages and tell them to evacuate. But then we just walk up to Valimarganda and kill it just like that. The most powerful Vidraal ever. The cool monster advertised on the cover of the game. And it didn't kill anybody or wipe out any towns. No heroic sacrifices required to stop it. What a let down. Even the Vidraal in the Viper questline actually managed to kill some nobodies offscreen. This massively deflated tension as you knew there weren't really any stakes.




This was then cemented with the cooking competition. I was hoping we would get paired up with Zooral Ja or even Bakool Jaja, but we get paired back up with Koana and the other Scions. Then I was hoping we would lose the competition (finally! A setback! Some tension!), and then have to be confronted with the awful reality of having to rob another claimant of their keystones in order to win, or having to persuade another claimant to pool both our keystones together and the tension of there being a betrayal. But no, the heroes just win just like that. Then we go to the Mamooja Village, and Zooral Ja and Bakool Ja Ja get ejected from the succession competition, so now it's just between do-gooder A and do-gooder B. From then on, I never felt like there was any threat in the story, not even when Alexandria attacks Tuliyollal, or when Wuk Lamat stands off against Zoraal Ja, or when Sphene initiates interdimensional fusion. This is terrible. You need suspense, a question in the audience's mind of "I have to turn the page to find out whether or not the heroes succeeded", which Dawntrail doesn't have. Even as much as Endwalker dropped the ball, it had suspense for me until the final zone, with the Forum being presented as menacing, the standoff in Garlemald, the high tension bodyjacking scene, and even the end of the Elpis arc. It wasn't until Urianger and Y'shtola "sacrificed" themselves in Ultima Thule that I realized it would all turn out okay and the tension deflated. Also look at how Stormblood and Shadowbringers created tension early on with a little blood, with the frustrated youths kicking the old man and Yotsuyu has the young man kill his parents, or when Alisaie's friend turns into a zombie or that au ra girl in Eulmore with the lump in her throat turns into a sin eater. Valigarmanda torching a village, losing the cooking competition, etc, would have helped a lot.


The other issue is pacing. Dawntrail's main story is very long, but it feels like little actually happens in it. There is a lot of repetitive dialogue scenes, mainly of some variation of Wuk Lamat saying "I want to learn your culture" or "I want to bring happiness to everybody!" or "I suck, don't I?". But there are also several long winded soliloquies from other characters, after I was already quite soliloquied out by Endwalker and then especially the EW patch story. The sluggish pacing combined with the lack of tension makes for a very boring story experience past level 93/94.

Another issue is that there is very little actual gameplay compared to watching visual novel cutscenes. Again, compare to Stormblood where you get to do a lot of solo duties. You are advancing into Gyr Abania with the Eorzean Alliance, then you duel Zenos, then you running around Kugane with a Namazu, then you fight Zenos again, then you are competing in a tournament on the Steppes, then you're fighting Garleans, then you fight more Garleans and Fordola blows up a tower, then you are infiltrating Ala Mhigo, etc. And this all happens in half the length of Dawntrail's storyline. Whereas in Dawntrail, you just have one or two segments where you follow an NPC while hiding behind rocks, the Wuk Lamat vs Bakool Ja Ja duel, and... I'm trying to think of what other solo duties there were. Number of dungeons and trials I think is the same but again stretched out over a longer period of time, and way more time spent watching repetitive cutscenes.



I think people have already covered the individual writing problems. The main character of the story being unlikeable (the English dub casting is a major contributor) and unworthy of the role you are trying to install her in. The egregiously hypocritical and hilariously psychopathic ending where the heroes commit mass murder and it is passed off as a good thing with smiles and piano music. I'm not against the outcome, but it should have been presented as a straight forward "well it's or them, people are going to fight for their civilization and no one is going to change their stance so let's just get to it then" like when fighting Emet at the end of ShB, rather than trying to bend over backwards trying to justify it with all the inane moralizing.

[HighlanderClone]

The biggest issue with Dawntrail's story is that it's overall boring. This is the first expansion story where I lost interest half way through and abandoned the story to go level up alt jobs rather than have a desire to see what happens next. The problem is 1. there is little tension and 2. there is a lot of padding both on the micro and macro level.

The lack of stakes is definitely the worst it has ever been in Dawntrail. To be honest I think it was already pretty bad in ShB and EW, where you just know that none of the Scions will ever die ever again. They're just gonna pull out a random NPC to kill off instead in ShB and EW. Now DT doesn't even have those...

The moralizing has also become really grating. It's 4-year-old level of moralizing. Stuff that you read to your kid in bed. Not to adults. I don't understand how people still find "power of friendship" compelling as a functioning adult human.

[ThorneDynasty]

The lack of stakes is definitely the worst it has ever been in Dawntrail. To be honest I think it was already pretty bad in ShB and EW, where you just know that none of the Scions will ever die ever again. They're just gonna pull out a random NPC to kill off instead in ShB and EW. Now DT doesn't even have those...

It wasn't even that they aren't allowed to die, they aren't allowed to even fail significantly. Remember G'raha's offscreen Mega-Float that somehow saved hundreds upon hundreds of people stuck in those giant tower columns when the entire structure disintegrated - represented by a couple Thavnairian's lying on a beach afterwards?

I don't want to overuse the phrase, but what are you going to call that if not writing for children?

[Taliriah]

I thought the msq was ok. It had the difficult task to lay out the basis for a new story arc almost "from scratch". They couldn't rely too much on the legacy of the previous arc (imagine the groans if it as all about the ascians once again)

Now in the past they did something that I always thought really helped tie the story together: they would lay the foundations of an extensions msq in the post patch of two extensions before.

Post ARR prepared StB with the woman's refugees storyline, Yda/Papalymo working for the Ala mhigo resistance, and of course Ilbert's BS.

Post heavensward prepared ShB with the warriors of darkness/oracle of light story.

Post StB prepared endwalker with Zenos survival and the resulting regicide and garland empire implosion.

Now the problem is that post ShB focused entirely on setting up endwalker, probably because they hadn't decided yet what the new arc would be. So in DT they had to lay everything out from scratch which is why it feels like two stories in one (the succession story and then the invasion form another shard story).

Note that since post EW cooked some stuff with the 13th we can safely assume the 13th will be a major part of 8.0's story.