Revelations from Dawntrail (7.0)

[Fenral]

I cleared a while ago and might have spent too long digesting this one, but let's see what I can cough up.

WoL dialogue choices (MSQ clear)

I second the feeling that Wuk Lamat stole all my lines. I get that she needs someone edgy to play off of to seem more idealistic, really not thrilled about it being me.

Also, when Gulool Ja is asking the WoL about family, I wanted to outright namedrop the Scions or at least mention something to the effect of found family (given the direction he was about to be taken in), but it wouldn't let me. Endsinger did happen, right? What's with the aloof card?

That Final Zone

I think some variant of Memoria was inevitable. Where FFIX's was the heart of the FF multiverse (!?!?) and included some surprise bosses from earlier games, this one was trying to serve FFIX nostalgia except, as many times as I've played that game, I don't actually remember riding a gondola. That definitely happens in Fantasian, though.

I liked the plausible deniability gondola date. G'raha has no way of knowing this, but the Exarch's timeline did actually survive, but it was still nice that he was around to point out the elephant in the room after seemingly ignoring it through Endwalker.

I could have lived without Amaurot 3 as the final dungeon, though. It's a good recipe for a setpiece dungeon, but I miss the sheer spectacle of the Aetherochemical Research Facility.

All that grumbling aside, I really like Sphene. I feel like the story is usually pretty naive with how it throws about phrases "at any cost" when there's not much cost to be paid, but the entire Alexandria arc goes there. I think she might have actually improved on FFIX Garland by having a slightly more tangible objective than weird metaphysical terraforming. An Ascian was definitely involved in the groundwork here, but I'm curious how and why it got cut short. To be continued in 7.X?

Good Boys All Around

Like, seriously, though. Did the NPC team wake up one day and suddenly remember that Hyur boys are cute? Between the Viper storyline and MSQ post-95, I ate really well, but had no idea any of that was going to be on the menu. That's on top of Bakool Ja Ja earning his card and keeping it, and the surprise Gulool Ja we didn't even know existed.

I was totally expecting Zekowa to live up to his character archetype (the "young gun") and win the duel but die anyway because his opponent was using live ammo, but he circumvented that possibility entirely by drawing faster and shooting the gun. We're not in Heavensward anymore, Toto.

I'm glad that extradimensional lookalikes aren't limited to Rowena and Gerolt.

Shepetto... just kind of exists? You can check in on him after certain events and his position and dialogue changes, but I still don't know why we have a unique face model on a character with only 5 lines in the MSQ. That entire settlement was strangely underutilized.

Overall, I'd put this one around Stormblood tier. Good, but not the best. I think it knew it had the thankless task of being a breather episode after Endwalker and did the best it could within those parameters.

[Alleluia]

Good Boys All Around

Shepetto... just kind of exists? You can check in on him after certain events and his position and dialogue changes, but I still don't know why we have a unique face model on a character with only 5 lines in the MSQ. That entire settlement was strangely underutilized.

Someone pointed out that they might be involved in the tribal quests later, so there's that as a possible usage.

Also

Shepetto in particular stood out to me b/c one of his major dialogue contributions was to talk about Koana. And purposely not in a flattering way, imo. I responded to his blunt assessment of Koana with the third dialogue option(said Koana loves his people as much as Wuk Lamat does.), cus the other two felt like running down Koana in front of strangers to me and I didn't want to do that. Shepetto's expression struck me as... less than impressed. The whole interaction left me feeling like there might be something more personal at play there.

Koana told us he originally came from a cat tribe in xak tel that migrated and abandoned him as a kid. I have a feeling there's more to that story; but even if there isn't and he has the right of it, I can't see us just not exploring that backstory at some point. Maybe Shepetto is involved somehow. A cousin or childhood friend or something, maybe. The dad seemed kind enough and didn't give any indication Koana was anything other than a name to him, so I don't think he's secretly the dad who abandoned him; and therefore Shepetto is probably not his brother. But who knows.

[Fenral]

95-97 zone:

Someone pointed out that they might be involved in the tribal quests later, so there's that as a possible usage.

Also

Shepetto in particular stood out to me b/c one of his major dialogue contributions was to talk about Koana. And purposely not in a flattering way, imo. I responded to his blunt assessment of Koana with the third dialogue option(said Koana loves his people as much as Wuk Lamat does.), cus the other two felt like running down Koana in front of strangers to me and I didn't want to do that. Shepetto's expression struck me as... less than impressed. The whole interaction left me feeling like there might be something more personal at play there.

Koana told us he originally came from a cat tribe in xak tel that migrated and abandoned him as a kid. I have a feeling there's more to that story; but even if there isn't and he has the right of it, I can't see us just not exploring that backstory at some point. Maybe Shepetto is involved somehow. A cousin or childhood friend or something, maybe. The dad seemed kind enough and didn't give any indication Koana was anything other than a name to him, so I don't think he's secretly the dad who abandoned him; and therefore Shepetto is probably not his brother. But who knows.

Yeah, there's something there, hopefully MSQ and not allied society related.

At most I was able to deduce that both Shepetto and Koana have purple eyes, though not the same shade of purple. Also, he's height 0 tail 0 (like G'raha) rather than being a new body type, so the illusion of youth is the result of making his head slightly larger than normal, which also makes him slightly taller than my height 4 WoL.

Anyway, if you talk to him after the attack on Tuliyollal, he mentions being treated as too young to fight and (unwillingly) having to stay back, so I think he might be too young to know Koana personally, but there could still be a relation. Erenville mentioned going back to Shaaloani to investigate the increased monster hostility (which is also brought up and left unresolved in the side quests there), so I do think it's likely some part of 7.X will take us back there sooner or later. It will probably end with the WoL and/or Koana acquiring a new fanboy as Koana deals with the unexpected impact of his Ceruleum mining venture.

99-100 Zone:

Speak with Wuk Lamat once more.

That is kind of the crux of the problem, though it's arguably a necessity after 2 expansions of the Warrior of Light being the protagonist. The epic payoff of Shadowbringers and Endwalker necessitated tying them into Amaurot's backstory; now that we've left it behind they're kind of adrift. That said the fact Wuk Lamat virtually monopolizes the spotlight really rubbed me the wrong way, when places like Heritage Found / Solution Nine and Living Memory could have easily had more story relevance for supporting characters like Erenville and Krile.

You are definitely not the only one I've heard that complaint from. (My sister cleared MSQ ahead of me and spent the day after bellyaching about Krile's lack of character focus while I was still on Iron Chef).

I'd classify Wuk Lamat as an "expansion heroine" in the vein of Nashmeira from Treasures of Aht Urgan. (They tick a lot of the same boxes, come to think of it.) I like her more than not, but only because I've become very accustomed to that character type at this point. It may be rose-tinted goggles, but I do feel that Alphinaud shared his day in the limelight much more gracefully with Estinien and Iceheart despite the similar level of focus. He was also established back in 2.0 (as was Lyse, a bit indirectly) so it didn't feel like we were suddenly taking a back seat to an entirely new character.

Hopefully we're about to settle into catching up with everyone else now and can just leave patch 7.0 itself as the "hope you like Wuk Lamat" part of the story.

Aside from epic adventures all but making the Scions a found family, there's also the Fortemps back in Ishgard, who we're all but an unofficial adoptee of. Not being able to say "I have many close friends that may as well be family" was, indeed, a very strange thing especially when you know where Gulool Ja Ja is going with it.

And here, I get that not everyone playing should be expected to have a writing degree, but I do feel like the WoL was a little more genre-blind than usual despite the fairly obvious lessons in play. I don't dislike the message, per se, but I wish it wasn't so consistently delivered as something my character needed to learn. It took a long time for us to get to the variety of choice we had by Endwalker, so it feels we regressed a bit.

I'm not yet ready to throw my hat into the "It was Ascians! Again!" ring just yet. I can't imagine they would go through the whole Rejoining business if they had the doohickey that could brute force dimensional fusion, but Yoshi-P did say to remember both the Ascians and the Twelve...

There's probably a catch to explain why it's not as direct as it seems. The Milalla couldn't use it to go back the way they came, which seemed to suggest their shard was rejoined after they evacuated... until the other shoe dropped and their shard was actually the Source all along. Emet-Selch mentioned both the city of gold and the advanced civilizations on the shards, so it's likely he at least knew about Alexandria and was trying to steer us there. It could also be something as basic as not being capable of the scale required for a complete Rejoining, though we never did see how much Mother Eternal would have merged the dimensions, or if that scale only became possible now that Hydaelyn isn't actively maintaining the boundaries. Please look forward to the expodump.

[Alleluia]

95-97 zone:

Yeah, there's something there, hopefully MSQ and not allied society related.

At most I was able to deduce that both Shepetto and Koana have purple eyes, though not the same shade of purple. Also, he's height 0 tail 0 (like G'raha) rather than being a new body type, so the illusion of youth is the result of making his head slightly larger than normal, which also makes him slightly taller than my height 4 WoL.

Anyway, if you talk to him after the attack on Tuliyollal, he mentions being treated as too young to fight and (unwillingly) having to stay back, so I think he might be too young to know Koana personally, but there could still be a relation. Erenville mentioned going back to Shaaloani to investigate the increased monster hostility (which is also brought up and left unresolved in the side quests there), so I do think it's likely some part of 7.X will take us back there sooner or later. It will probably end with the WoL and/or Koana acquiring a new fanboy as Koana deals with the unexpected impact of his Ceruleum mining venture.

Hope so. He was one of my favorite things to come out of Dawntrail.

[Iscah]

95-97 zone:

Yeah, there's something there, hopefully MSQ and not allied society related.

At most I was able to deduce that both Shepetto and Koana have purple eyes, though not the same shade of purple. Also, he's height 0 tail 0 (like G'raha) rather than being a new body type, so the illusion of youth is the result of making his head slightly larger than normal, which also makes him slightly taller than my height 4 WoL.

Regarding the character customisations

I haven't done a direct comparison on heights, but the hairstyle Shepetto uses is the same style (and same face) I use for my character Zi'aba and it is very fluffed up around the back of the head, and I've thought before that it makes his head look bigger than it actually is. It works well for shorter characters since they just end up smaller overall, so making the head look bigger balances them out a bit.

I need to play around with it, but I suspect the actual customisation they've done is just removing the thick eyeliner that has been added to face 3 during the character redesigns, which on the standard faces (and G'raha) is covering up that they've moved changed the shape of the eyelid a lot. At one point while discussing the character changes at the benchmark stage I had experimentally photoshopped a version of Zi'aba with the eyeliner erased back to skin colour, and it ended up looking not unlike Shepetto's face.

I'm generally not happy with the alterations to male Miqo'te faces – not just my own two characters but a lot of NPCs just have an off look about them.

[Alleluia]

Regarding the character customisations

I haven't done a direct comparison on heights, but the hairstyle Shepetto uses is the same style (and same face) I use for my character Zi'aba and it is very fluffed up around the back of the head, and I've thought before that it makes his head look bigger than it actually is. It works well for shorter characters since they just end up smaller overall, so making the head look bigger balances them out a bit.

I need to play around with it, but I suspect the actual customisation they've done is just removing the thick eyeliner that has been added to face 3 during the character redesigns, which on the standard faces (and G'raha) is covering up that they've moved changed the shape of the eyelid a lot. At one point while discussing the character changes at the benchmark stage I had experimentally photoshopped a version of Zi'aba with the eyeliner erased back to skin colour, and it ended up looking not unlike Shepetto's face.

I'm generally not happy with the alterations to male Miqo'te faces – not just my own two characters but a lot of NPCs just have an off look about them.

I agree on some of the customization change stuff. Like, the twins have noticeable puffiness under their eyes that I do not recall existing before. Their mom had it, but I thought it was a sign of age, not just a family trait. I mean, I suppose it makes them look more like their mom to have it now, but still, it was jarring. To be fair, I'm mostly not noticing it now. lol

[Iscah]

I agree on some of the customization change stuff. Like, the twins have noticeable puffiness under their eyes that I do not recall existing before. Their mom had it, but I thought it was a sign of age, not just a family trait. I mean, I suppose it makes them look more like their mom to have it now, but still, it was jarring. To be fair, I'm mostly not noticing it now. lol

Puffiness under the eyes seems to have been an all-round curse across lots of character models, and in at least one case I think it has been deliberately added and not just the new "realistic" lighting casting shadows differently. It's really disappointing and I hope they can fix it, or change their mind if it was a stylistic choice.

It's making some of my characters look like they haven't slept for a week.

[Fenral]

Regarding the character customisations

I haven't done a direct comparison on heights, but the hairstyle Shepetto uses is the same style (and same face) I use for my character Zi'aba and it is very fluffed up around the back of the head, and I've thought before that it makes his head look bigger than it actually is. It works well for shorter characters since they just end up smaller overall, so making the head look bigger balances them out a bit.

I need to play around with it, but I suspect the actual customisation they've done is just removing the thick eyeliner that has been added to face 3 during the character redesigns, which on the standard faces (and G'raha) is covering up that they've moved changed the shape of the eyelid a lot. At one point while discussing the character changes at the benchmark stage I had experimentally photoshopped a version of Zi'aba with the eyeliner erased back to skin colour, and it ended up looking not unlike Shepetto's face.

I'm generally not happy with the alterations to male Miqo'te faces – not just my own two characters but a lot of NPCs just have an off look about them.

And this is the part where I have to settle for sending my condolences, because W'fharl looks absolutely gorgeous post update, even in standard environmental lighting. I guess in my particular case, the obvious differences result in something closer to what I wanted than I could pull off with the original spec (especially with the eyes), and in some cases fixed things I considered to be outright errors in the original meshes. The most I changed was adding a little color to the lips since it blends more naturally now, and using a flesh-tone eyeshadow to adjust the permanent guyliner. I have faith that you can find something that works.

But back to the less off-topic topic:

Face 1 Eye 6 is the largest mancat eyes can go (over Face 3, surprisingly, as compared in the benchmark 2 editor) and even a side-by-side comparison shows Shepetto has some ginormous peepers. I think he might actually be using a female Miqo'te face (they're noticeably wider) but with the texture of male face 3 (including eyelashes), since the update standardized the UVs. Not the most important Lore topic, to be sure, but I think it narrowly slides in under sekai settei (世界設定).

[Cilia]

WoL dialogue choices (MSQ clear)

I second the feeling that Wuk Lamat stole all my lines. I get that she needs someone edgy to play off of to seem more idealistic, really not thrilled about it being me.

Also, when Gulool Ja is asking the WoL about family, I wanted to outright namedrop the Scions or at least mention something to the effect of found family (given the direction he was about to be taken in), but it wouldn't let me. Endsinger did happen, right? What's with the aloof card?

Speak with Wuk Lamat once more.

That is kind of the crux of the problem, though it's arguably a necessity after 2 expansions of the Warrior of Light being the protagonist. The epic payoff of Shadowbringers and Endwalker necessitated tying them into Amaurot's backstory; now that we've left it behind they're kind of adrift. That said the fact Wuk Lamat virtually monopolizes the spotlight really rubbed me the wrong way, when places like Heritage Found / Solution Nine and Living Memory could have easily had more story relevance for supporting characters like Erenville and Krile.

Aside from epic adventures all but making the Scions a found family, there's also the Fortemps back in Ishgard, who we're all but an unofficial adoptee of. Not being able to say "I have many close friends that may as well be family" was, indeed, a very strange thing especially when you know where Gulool Ja Ja is going with it.

That Final Zone

I think some variant of Memoria was inevitable. Where FFIX's was the heart of the FF multiverse (!?!?) and included some surprise bosses from earlier games, this one was trying to serve FFIX nostalgia except, as many times as I've played that game, I don't actually remember riding a gondola. That definitely happens in Fantasian, though.

I liked the plausible deniability gondola date. G'raha has no way of knowing this, but the Exarch's timeline did actually survive, but it was still nice that he was around to point out the elephant in the room after seemingly ignoring it through Endwalker.

I could have lived without Amaurot 3 as the final dungeon, though. It's a good recipe for a setpiece dungeon, but I miss the sheer spectacle of the Aetherochemical Research Facility.

All that grumbling aside, I really like Sphene. I feel like the story is usually pretty naive with how it throws about phrases "at any cost" when there's not much cost to be paid, but the entire Alexandria arc goes there. I think she might have actually improved on FFIX Garland by having a slightly more tangible objective than weird metaphysical terraforming. An Ascian was definitely involved in the groundwork here, but I'm curious how and why it got cut short. To be continued in 7.X?

Dead Mall Zone

I see Living Memory as the antithesis of Ultima Thule; it's not bad as a final zone, but really, we could use a little more variety than "already dead civilization(s) recreated from memory." It's definitely meant to invoke Memoria, though the presence of other people and shutting it down are markedly different. (Memoria, in IX, is some kind of weird metaphysical space that also leads you back through spacetime to the original Crystal; the whole reason you have to stop Kuja is because if he succeeds it'll cause a temporal paradox and unmake life altogether.) Whether or not it's the nexus of the Final Fantasy multiverse isn't exactly elaborated upon.

I also liked Sphene, even if she was hamstrung by well... not being Wuk Lamat. I also agree that she improved upon Garland (IX ver.) though in the sense that she had feelings of guilt and remorse, but no option except to stay the course. Garland, to his dying word, feels no remorse or regret for what he does, and Sphene being conflicted about it yet powerless to do anything else puts me in mind of Elidibus (only worse, because there's no indication Elidibus would have chosen a different path were he able to). Getting more screentime and a more sympathetic proper introduction helped immensely (Garland is introduced nuking Alexandria right when you think Bahamut's been routed by Alexander; Sphene is glimpsed during the attack on Tuliyollal but isn't properly introduced until you go to Heritage Found, where she's nothing but as kind and helpful as she can be until Zoraal Ja is dealt with).

Compare Garland's dying thought of "Even if I was created for a singular purpose, I do not regret being born into this world." with one of Sphene's being "I should never have been created." The difference in tragedy is damn palpable.

I'm not yet ready to throw my hat into the "It was Ascians! Again!" ring just yet. I can't imagine they would go through the whole Rejoining business if they had the doohickey that could brute force dimensional fusion, but Yoshi-P did say to remember both the Ascians and the Twelve...

[Alleluia]

Speak with Wuk Lamat once more.

That is kind of the crux of the problem, though it's arguably a necessity after 2 expansions of the Warrior of Light being the protagonist. The epic payoff of Shadowbringers and Endwalker necessitated tying them into Amaurot's backstory; now that we've left it behind they're kind of adrift. That said the fact Wuk Lamat virtually monopolizes the spotlight really rubbed me the wrong way, when places like Heritage Found / Solution Nine and Living Memory could have easily had more story relevance for supporting characters like Erenville and Krile.

Aside from epic adventures all but making the Scions a found family, there's also the Fortemps back in Ishgard, who we're all but an unofficial adoptee of. Not being able to say "I have many close friends that may as well be family" was, indeed, a very strange thing especially when you know where Gulool Ja Ja is going with it.

Tank Role Quest spoilers:

You cna tell someone Ishgard is a second home to you in the tank role quest, which is close to what you are saying, kinda. I havn't finished them, yet, so I dunno if the Fortemps themselves make an appearance, yet. But yeah.