The Negative Impact of Poor Character Writing on the Quality of Dawntrail's MSQ

[PaleYonder]

Yeah. There was basically no reaction to Krile being from another shard just an “oh cool whatever”.
Even her musing about why Y’sthola didn’t recognize this while answered was just an offside mumbling of her with Y’sthola right next to her.

Thancred and Urianger were just there in the end because “hey look those guys are still here and fight but we don’t show that and also because of the second trial”.
Anyone remember ARR where Thancred was fighting while Y’sthola was casting flow? That was in ARR and DT has nothing in this regard.
No magic bubble, Scions just standing there.
Vitra was also stupid.
You tell me that big dragon and his brood traveled half the world in what, two days?
How convenient.

The most stupid thing though was the finale right before the final zone.
The scions almost all standing back and not coming with us. Sure you guys. You had to protect the gate that was utterly hidden with 4 mages and 2 close combat fighters. Hmhm sure.
There wasn‘t even a scene showing them fighting not anything even implying they had trouble. Guess they just sit back playing cards the entire time, at least Estenien and Thancred.

The more you look the more plot holes shine through.
For me it seems they really wrote themselfs into a trap with the trust system.
They have to include the scions even though they can‘t utilize them.
Why not give us other NPC’s as trust then?
Why not have Bagool JaJa come with us or Koana as well? Heck even introducing a captain of the Guard or something would have worked or even better, don’t kill off Robo-Otis and have him come with us as trust.
Would have also been an interesting meeting with him and his endless version.

The characters are there, the ideas basically write themself.

It's not even unprecedented. In Ktisis Hyperboreia, the Duty Support during the MSQ is with the Ancients, and as much as I'd just keep that team as Trusts forever, it's obviously not quite feasible, so for the Trust system, we've got our Scions along with us in the distant past. Because it's just a dungeon run for fun, it's fine, nobody cares. They could do that again anytime.

Though I'd have much preferred more of our old company along in the zone, and meaningfully doing something too. There's no reason for them to be underused and waiting outside like this, they're our high-level world-threatening supernatural problem solving team. Ah well.

[aTanpopo]

Gods, This is my problem too. Erenville was done so dirty in this expac. Look I know the way they wrote the guy in this expac is that he is grumpy and standoffish but, with the way he talks about his mom whenever shes brought up, it might be reserved but there fondness respect and unending love there. It's obvious he has gripes with her style of parenting ofcourse but there is love there.

This is something that keeps coming back and bothering me- its like the plot points are right there but they just refused to expand on them and im so disappointed. Sure I guess they could touch on them post-msq, but it won't have the same impact than if it was all in the leadup to eventually having to erase Cahcuia. Any time the two are together, we aren't allowed to see them interact because either we are dealing with Wuk Lamat or Sphene. Cahcuia even asks Erenville to tell her about us and what we've been up to together and then they just have him walk off and we never talk about it again. All these leads into development for multiple characters and its just wasted. The interactions are always just implied to maybe have happened off screen I guess??

Also, we are invited to help Wuk Lamat with the rite of succession but then she just goes and asks around the communities she visits for help anyway. Not that i'm against her trying to learn the cultures, I think its a nice theme overall, but I dont see why people in the group couldn't have also contributed to it more (and help them get more screentime in the process). Like, the first (or second depending on quest order I guess) rite, where she has to capture an alpaca: we go around bartering with the Pelupelu and getting this saddle. Why was no one's first though to ask the gleaner, who's literal speciality is capturing live animals, how to capture an alpaca? I guess Erenville's knowledge about nature and the environment, that Wuk Lamat insisted he came along as guide to help with, isn't actually important when it comes to the rite itself. Instead we end up making the entire process even harder by trying to barter with a guy who just doesn't want us to succeed anyway and tries to actively screw us over.

If they got any of the group more directly involved with the earlier sections of the rites, instead of making us split off and just glue us to Wuk Lamat whilst she goes around and asks random villagers for help, maybe it wouldn't make it feel like there was no reason for them to be there in the first place. It really contributes to making everyone else's personalities feel gutted out this expansion. You could probably easily make an argument for how any of the other members could help out in the other rites, I feel like Erenville and the alpaca was just the glaringly obvious one, and I just wonder what possessed the writing team to be this tunnel vision'd onto Wuk Lamat that they just forgot everyone else existed.

[Mints]

I finally connected my XIV account to the forums just so I could post a reply about how OP really managed to voice out all the frustrations I also had with the MSQ this time around in an extremely concise and cohesive manner. It's also great because now I feel less insane for not enjoying the story when it seemed like a lot of people around me were singing praises for it.

I'm someone who prioritizes how characters are written above a lot of other things when it comes to story. They are the backbone of what makes a story meaningful to me and with how well XIV was doing in terms of fleshing them out, especially the Scions, reading this entire MSQ felt like a slap in the face. I didn't really mind Wuk Lamat's constant appearance. What irked me was that she had so much screen time and yet so little of it was used meaningfully.

FFXIV has always had an obsession with the NPCs interacting with you, which is understandable. But I've always felt that the strongest points of character writing, or showing of a character, were when the NPCs were interacting with other NPCs (eg. Estinien, Ysayle and Alphinaud in HW. Varis with all the leaders in SB. Thancred and Ryne in SHB. Quite literally Emet-Selch and the Scions. Urianger and Moenbryda's parents in EW.) . At our core, the WoL is a blank slate and while they have done it in the past, the dialogue options we can have will not go past a certain template. It gets a bit tiring whenever NPCs only get interactions with us, character writing isn't just about having said character talk to MC, it should also show how they bounce off other characters who have their own ideaologies and different ways of life. Many people have already said we are supposed to be the mentor figure but why should it only be us? Wuk Lamat has the most allies of the contestants and yet she barely has meaningful conversation with any of them. Why does she have to spend so much alone time with the WoL? Why could she not be talking more to other characters like the twins, Krile, or her childhood friend Erenville? It really contributes to her lack of growth when she only gets the same answers from different people void of personality and is also another reason why nothing really makes the player feel attached. I really expected Wuk Lamat and Krile to be talking more and bouncing off each other but there was just none of that despite them being around each other the entire expansion.

[Mints]

The Scions have always been funneled into specific groups since Endwalker. Endwalker is my favourite expansion but I noticed when the twins and G'raha were always in one group, with Y'shtola mostly always in the other with Urianger and Thancred. This got worse in Dawntrail. When characters split up, it's always in the same groups. It gets so tiring because I want to see them talk to each other. When we first get time with Koana, he has to be alone with us for some unknown reason. Why Thancred and Urianger had to be away from us instead of possibly acting like a bridge? I do not know. When Tuliyollal was under attack and Y'shtola called it a reunion of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, yet not a single person in that scene even spoke of calling Thancred and/or Urianger back or even considered the notion until Shaaloani. It felt as if those two suddenly didn't exist. Others have already said it but despite being childhood friends, Wuk Lamat (or any of the other Scions) barely shows any concern for Erenville and him having to deal with his hometown destroyed and his increasing realization that his mother is dead. When Sol9 was attacked, it bothered me that no one questioned if he was safe when he wasn't in the hideout even though he is the only character in the party that cannot fight. You just had to take Cahcuia at her word that she sent the rest out. It makes all of them feel so lifeless and uncaring when it felt like SHB worked so hard to make them feel like a team. To make every other side character feel like they mattered. A lot of these moments where characters just didn't feel like themselves or didn't do what I thought would be natural for characters to do in those situations really took me out of the immersion because wow...they really are just lines of code. There's little to no humanity in the way they speak. These aren't the characters I know and love.

[Mints]

It's just a lot of these coupled with inconsistencies or outright nonsensical happenings that are littered throughout the MSQ that really drive home how it's just not very well-written. Listing them out in short sentences: Wuk Evu not telling the Hanuhanu about their own tradition as their crops wither. The Moblins not being able to discern what seems like basic living condition problems and needing an outsider to teach them about it. The entire kidnapping sequence making Wuk Lamat look weak and us look like incompetent idiots. Koana supposedly being smart yet comes up with the most primitive plan to lure out the kidnapper when he was shown to be able to discern the problem with the Hanuhanu crops at one glance. Valigarmanda supposedly being a world-ending threat, yet there is no consequence to the Yok Huys for it being set free nor is there consequence to Bakool Jaja, the one who set it free. Random bird attacking the conquerer Yok Huys out of nowhere because somehow that was the best way they could think of to show Wuk Lamat's kindness. Bakool Jaja's joke of a redemption arc and how his actions prior do not line up at all with his supposed reason for desperation. The entire cowboy segment where I have to get exposition about the area from a corrupted guy instead of someone more meaningful like maybe Iwaate. A lot of these things add up that by the time we get to the final 2 areas, there just isn't enough left in me to really get as invested when they try and evoke an emotional reaction. It falls flat because all these earlier instances have left such a bitter feeling in my mouth and there's too little emotional buildup to really fully blossom into anything meaningful by the end. It's a shame because I really did like the theme they chose, but the execution is done so poorly it makes me wonder why they chose this to begin with.

[Mints]

A bunch of people have tried to say that the earlier expansions also had similar levels of writing but I disagree. Earlier expansions didn't treat me like I was 10 and didn't feel the need to regurgitate the theme of the expansion every few quests. Base ARR had more consequence than anything in Dawntrail. I'm not going to say that the massacre was super well-written but the tonal shift it did is still one of the more impactful moments and it had a lasting impact by forcing the Scions to permanently move out of the Waking Sands. Tuliyollal got attacked but most of it has gone back to normal by the end of the expansion that it doesn't feel like much was lost. Dawntrail has a bad habit of telling us what we should be feeling about certain characters/events (The last area and Sphene being extremely big examples of this.) Stormblood didn't tell me whether I should forgive Yotsuyu or not, it left that decision up to me. It showed us an alternative to her life and did not use it to erase the atrocities that she had committed. It allowed me to understand her and come to my conclusion more than the expansion themed around understanding. I would say the same of Ilberd, Emet-Selch, Hermes, Venat and Meteion. Whether people agreed with their actions or not is not the point, the point is that the story was written in a way that we could see their motives and their reason for it and still choose how we would judge them. Being void of both that choice and consequence in Dawntrail just shows how shallow and almost fearful the writers were when coming up with this MSQ.

This ended up long but I really hope future MSQs can be better. I cannot see myself continuing to play if this is the quality that I have to deal with for the next 10 years.

[Toffle]

OP's post honestly gave name to the off-feeling I'd been having abou this expansion. There were moments I enjoyed, but there were also so many things that kept pulling me out of the story and breaking immerssion, because I kept thinking: The Scions wouldn't do that? The WoL wouldn't react like that? There were just so much tonal dissonance it was striking. And the 2nd Half felt so very rushed...

Reading through the thread, there's so many points that have been brought up that I've felt for myself.

I can still remember my bug son from the Heavensward Vath quests and how that was one of the first times along with the DRK storyline that the game really informed me of WoL's character.

This resonated so well, like I've thoroughly enjoyed that with Zero and Wuk Lamat they've been trying to steer us into this role of Mentor, rather than an OP Godly Dues ex Machina fix for everything cause we're that powerful now. But I've been sorely disappointed that it's mentorship in implication only, with absolutely no real action. I want my WoL to have an active part in fulfilling that role. We could have contested Wuk Lamat's decisions at certain times, we could have asked her, based on OUR experiences with various nations, whether she had considered XYZ perspectives on certain matters. We could have had that cliche mentor-mentee disagreement where Wuk Lamat decides to ignore us to prove a point which... could have lead to that kidnapping. Instead, as 'Mentor' we're effectively useless, just standing there. I think it's GREAT that WoL is taking a ~slight~ backseat, knowing that we're ready to step up when things DO hit the fan. But don't make us an accessory. Make our 'mentorship' role have actual value.

Not only that, WoL has been multiple times been implied to be traumatized by witnessing that "assassination" of Nanamo. She should be hyper-protective of Wuk Lamat. And the camera has the fucking gall to zoom in on our face as she watches another young heiress wander off alone with a suspicious stranger - Is that doubt we are supposed to interpret on her face? No. The game makes you wait around doing fucking nothing three times before the thought hits our character's head that the contender for one of the largest empires in the world maybe might be a target.

This too, was also something that frustrated me. We, as the WoL and as players, have born witness to SO many of these events where someone going off alone in a time of turmoil = something happening to them. The WoL should, and does, know better. So, why did we let her walk off without a bodyguard??? Why were we portrayed to be so foolish, and the Scions so incompetant. All of us have so much experience behind us, and we all just waited there... The scene felt quite embarrassing, because it undermined so much of our past experience.

[1/2]

[Toffle]

Thank you, I'm glad I'm not alone because it felt the same way to me. [...] I really didn't like how they treated Erenville in the last zone.

Your entire run down of Erenville and his mother through that whole arc was just spot on. Exactly what I felt. It felt like such a huge disrespect and disservice to the situation, and made everything feel so dismissive. One additional issue which could open a can of worms, but I didn't enjoy that Erenville's family had such a hugely different accent to him. It made it feel even more impersonal, like there was no family connection beyond outward appearance. As even voices go a long way to showing family connection. Wuk Lamat's adopted family all sound similar to each other, even so far as terms of endearment. Erenville was raised and mentored by his mother. Yet there was no family unity in that decision, even her term of endearment (in English) felt so... teasing rather than affection, so all those heartfelt voiced moments had an extra layer of... distance... between them.

One thing that really blew my mind was the treatment of Bakool Ja Ja, When we finally hear his backstory (in a 1 minute exposition instead of across the MSQ) it becomes clear that he has a fully legit reason to want to win at all costs.

There were so many ways they could have shown it too. In those moments he was alone they could have shown the *weight* on his shoulders, the act dropped without an audience. They could have had a private talk about the *cost* of this battle between the two brothers. Something hinting that there's more beyond the facade of MIGHT AND POWER!!! His loss to Wuk Lamat could have weighed heavier, and had him hold onto that feeling of dawning horror that he might actually not succeed, and draw it out before he retreats. He just needed the smallest amount of nuance in the early game to lay down the hints that there was more to him.

Secondly, the setting appeals much more to Koana and his ambition for technological advancement for Tural in a way that can potentially challenge him on his worldview.

That entire arc was built to give Koana a deep seated reality check, and it honestly shocked me that he wasn't part of it. It would have been better to role reverse them. Wuk Lamat staying behind, seeing her make a diplomatic move to ally with Thavnair, and endear them to her cause with her heart and her passion. To have Koana see this advance world, and understand the horrors of what can happen when you advance too fast, and forget that people are *people*. Seeing how their loss of culture is reflected in their lack of appreciation for life with how easily they came to accept the soul-technology. Their people, who took 30 years to lose their values. There was such a deepseated revelation missed out on being explored.

[2/2]

[Archaeothyris]

I came here from Twitter! A very insightful post from both OP and everyone replying. I've been thinking about the MSQ ever since I finished it (and even during it), and I was SO disappointed with so many things in it that I've recorded several voice memos of myself just arranging my thoughts about it. And, after reading through this entire topic so far... I genuinely do not have anything meaningful to add to this. This topic honestly just feels like such an exact explanation for how I felt about the story, that there is no possible way for me to phrase it better than it already has been by all of you.

I just wanted to come chime in, offer my support and say how glad I am to see people who share my views about the Dawntrail MSQ who are so articulate and frankly, correct, with their critiques. I'll be bookmarking this topic for sure and coming to check up on it later, share it with friends who want to know my stance on the MSQ and stuff like that.

Let's hope that the patch quests are better, although... I dunno. I can't say I have too much hope, there's too many holes in the Dawntrail cheese already. I can only hope that they move whoever's been in charge of some of the side quests, aether current quests and role quests to help out with the MSQ, because there are a lot of them that actually slap super hard.

Edit: actually no i do have something to say because i got so inspired by that erenville discussion, so let me continue below

[Archaeothyris]

I really didn't like how they treated Erenville in the last zone.

From the start of Erenville finding out the truth about Cahciua, I had a bad feeling about it, and that bad feeling just got worse the longer the final zone went on. Nobody was comforting him or even checking up on him, nobody seemed to care at all and I didn't even get the dialogue choices to care. If anything, sometimes the characters would say something so outrageously rude that I had to get up from my chair and just walk around in my apartment to process what I just witnessed. An example:

After you come back down from the capybara ride (which honestly felt like a very private and emotional moment that Erenville and Cahciua should've just shared by themselves without the WoL because they haven't been able to connect 1-1 AT ALL for years), if you talk with the rest of the cast before continuing, here's what they have to say:

G'raha: "We'll be there for Erenville."
Me: Thank you G'raha, finally someone expresses any sympathy for this man. Better late than never.

Krile: "It will be hard, but let us send Cahciua off with a smile."
Me: Okay, perfectly reasonable thing for Krile to say.

Wuk Lamat: "We saw you from below. It looked like you were having fun."

I actually laughed when I saw that, I was so utterly flabbergasted. What do you mean it looked like we were having fun? The person who's supposed to be your childhood friend (which hasn't felt that way at all btw) is going through probably the worst times of his entire life right now. Not even once have you comforted him, checked up on him, or seemingly cared whatsoever about anything else but your weird obsession with Sphene who we met only a few hours ago. And now you say this? What part of your childhood friend's mental anguish when confronted with the reality that he must (essentially) kill his own mother looks fun?

How am I supposed to believe that she is a kind, sympathetic and wonderful person who wants to protect everyone and make sure everyone's happy, when she contradicts that supposed character so often?
Everyone acts as if Koana is the socially inept one, but he's the only person who goes to Gulool Ja Ja's side as he's dying on the floor. Meanwhile Wuk Lamat just stands there not doing anything when she sees her father dying, even though in other scenes she's seen screamcrying and begging for an already dead civilian to drink medicine, or repeatedly begging to help the Heritage Found hunter, or repeatedly begging to help Sphene. It feels almost deliberate, how she goes out of her way to ignore the people closest to her in favour of prioritizing literally everyone else.

Sorry, I got a bit off-track. I just still get mad as I'm typing this. It's all just so weird. I genuinely just hated the last zone aside from the part with Krile's parents and Erenville clapping back at Cahciua..