The many writing missteps of Dawntrain.

[Zabuza]

Hi all,

Though I have seen a lot of complaints about Dawntrail's writing and characters, I've only seen a few discussed heavily. I thought I would compile a list of examples which highlight the plotholes and poor writing in this game. Even among the list below. I'm sure there are some I've missed. Even without the character of Wuk Lumat, it would not save Dawntrail from being a poorly written story. Just unacceptable mistakes across the board. (Yes I'm aware I made a mistake on the title of the expansion in my thread title. The irony.)



-Most of the rites lacked any sort of tension. Finding an alpaca. Growing some reeds. Cooking food.

-The Vanu apparently did not know their float that was the centerpiece of their festivals was actually a magical device that fertilized their reeds.

-The hostile giants who swore there would be no peace are saved by Wuk Lumat due to a random bird that decides to attack one of the giants. This is not believable and too contrived of a plot occurrence.

-Wuk Lumat, who can apparently beat claimants head on later, is captured by common bandits in the early levels.

-Same joke played over and over. They might have been funny the first couple times, but not the tenth time.

-No feeling of emotion present when Wuk Lumat discovers her biological father. Their interaction barely changes from when they had the elector/claimant relationship.

-Wuk Lumat goes from being captured by common bandits and swat aside by Bakool Ja Ja like a common house fly to being able to defeat Bakool Ja Ja and all his henchman by herself because 'power of friendship'.

-Bakool Ja Ja's redemption being too abrupt. No foreshadowing given that he was this kind of character. He seemed to enjoy every minute of being a jerk before his turnaround. Never any scenes of regret or guilt before then, not even when he is only with his men.

-Bakool Ja Ja releases Valigarmanda upon Tural just to get ahead in the rites of succession. The same Valigarmanda that Gulool Ja Ja and his group were only able to seal. How could he possibly know that anyone would be able to stop Valigarmanda? What was his plan if Valigarmanda could not be stopped? He'd be ruling over a ruined Tural.

-The dreaded beast Valigarmanda, hyped as a terrible nightmare of a creature, does not kill a single person. No devastation wrought.

-Thancred and Urianger, who were hyped from the Endwalker patch quests as having to go against us in the competition, has no payoff. We end up cooperating and journeying with them.

-We just let Bakool Ja Ja walk free after unleashing Valigarmanda because he's sorry.

-Sereel Ja, Zoraal Ja's traveling companion, makes vague references to his own motivations and ambitions. He is anticlimaticly killed by Zoraal Ja before any of them can be realized. Why even mention those ambitions in the game then, if none of them would happen?

-We let Zoraal Ja pick up another soul device and attach it to his head after Wuk Lumat destroys the first one in the duel.

-Zoraal Ja's motivation abruptly changed from inflicting war to appreciate peace into trying to step out from his father's shadow right before his death. Not only was the information given too late to leave an impact but the abruptness of the change is not executed well.

-No indications given of Zoraal Ja being mistreated by his father during childhood. No reason to hate his father to the extent he does of wanting to kill him for 30 years.

-When Zoraal Ja shows up in the palace, Keternam was with him. This confused me. Didn't he slash Keternam in the back? He killed Sereel Ja but spares Keternam and brings him to the palace after taking his keystones? Did I miss something? I genuinely don't know if I missed a cutscene here because this seemed so random to me.

-After Zoraal Ja kills his father, instead of dueling Wuk Lamat then and there to show her he is better than her, he walks away and tells her to come to him so he can prove he's better.

-We let Zoraal Ja walk away after killing his father. Into the safety of his kingdom.

-Zoraal Ja has a son who pops up out of nowhere. No information given as to his mother or his conception. The purpose of Zoraal Ja's son was so that Heritage Found would eventually have someone to rule the kingdom when Sphene and Zoraal Ja inevitably had to die, I guess? I don't know the reason for this character.

-Not enough time given to the final villain of Sphene. Introduced at level 97.

-When we follow Sphene to the child who endures sickness from an aetheric imbalance, we never mention porxies or any way to aid his affliction.

-We let Sphene walk past us and pick up the plot mccguffin that opens worlds after we defeat Zoraal Ja. Everyone but Y'shtola stares blankly at the sky as we let the plot mccguffin slowly drift into Sphene's dimension.

-When we enter the zone of Living Memory, Cahciua tells us that the Endless are just facisimiles of their former selves. We are given to believe they are programmed to do certain things. Yet Cahciua herself proves this notion to be a lie. You're telling me we should think of them as mere facisimiles when Cahciua found a way to commander an Overrunner, bring it to Heritage Found, create her own resistance group and guide us in the destruction of Sphene and her people?

-Cahciua tells us we need to eliminate the inhabitants of Living Memory to demoralize Sphene. This ends up being a complete waste of time since it had no effect on Sphene's drive to complete her directive.

-After the author tells us through Cahciua that the Endless are not real people, we are then told to go talk and get to know the people we're about to kill. This is lunacy.

-Through the course of talking with the Endless, those who learn about us deactiving the terminals are all grateful. No one challenges us and says they don't want to die.

-Wuk Lumat somehow breaks through the Sphene's barrier with no explanation given whatsoever. Power of friendship, I guess?

-By the end of the game, if you measure by damage done in the final trial. Wuk Lumat is stronger than us, the Warrior of Light, and our entire group. This is the girl who got captured by bandits and swatted aside by Bakool Ja Ja earlier in the story. Again... power of friendship?

-Wuk Lumat never suffers any consequences for her naive actions. Her answer is always the right one, even when it makes no sense. It would've been more compelling to have her spare someone like that hostile giant, who clearly did not want love and peace, only for them to kill people when she leaves them alone. We could have seen how she would handle it when her Peace and Love ideology didn't work. Zoraal Ja could have been an ideal candidate for this and the ultimate example of putting Wuk Lumat's ideology to the test. Unfortunately...

-Wuk Lumat never tries to understand Zoraal Ja in the same way she goes out of her way to understand complete strangers. For all she harped on about family and understanding those different from you, she didn't try to reach out to Zoraal Ja in any way.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Additional player mentioned examples of poor writing below:

The Scions being mere shells of their former selves not true to their own characters. This is of course, in part due to Wuk Lumat sucking up all the limelight.

Dawntrail's stance on genocide running counter to what is expressed in Shadowbringers and Endwalker where the previous expansions told us genocide is not okay under any circumstances. Dawntrail tells us genocide is okay under certain circumstances.

Dialogue choices that force us to agree with the character, whether it be all of the choices being different ways to say the same thing, or our dialogue choices being eliminated until we choose the 'correct' answer.

[Fawkes]

I think Kettleman has a single line of dialogue saying he was knocked out and his stones were taken, but it happens a while after he wanders back into the MSQ so it's totally reasonable to think it was weird. They definitely made it look like he was murdered.


I thought it was weird how Bakool Ja Ja got one punch man'd by Zoraal Ja, and Zoraal Ja's advisor guy was like "he might prove useful", and then Bakool Ja Ja starts doing a bunch of nonsense that isn't going to help him win like releasing the bird, and apparently running away after annoying Koana in that mountain dungeon instead of just walking to the top and getting a free stone. So you'd think the pay off would be that Zoraal Ja was making him do that, but it never comes up again and he was just doing stupid stuff on his own I guess?

[PercibelTheren]

I think Kettleman has a single line of dialogue saying he was knocked out and his stones were taken, but it happens a while after he wanders back into the MSQ so it's totally reasonable to think it was weird. They definitely made it look like he was murdered.

I remember being extremely confused when he showed up because the cutscene made me believe he had been murdered.

[Aurumis]

I think Kettleman has a single line of dialogue saying he was knocked out and his stones were taken, but it happens a while after he wanders back into the MSQ so it's totally reasonable to think it was weird. They definitely made it look like he was murdered.


I thought it was weird how Bakool Ja Ja got one punch man'd by Zoraal Ja, and Zoraal Ja's advisor guy was like "he might prove useful", and then Bakool Ja Ja starts doing a bunch of nonsense that isn't going to help him win like releasing the bird, and apparently running away after annoying Koana in that mountain dungeon instead of just walking to the top and getting a free stone. So you'd think the pay off would be that Zoraal Ja was making him do that, but it never comes up again and he was just doing stupid stuff on his own I guess?

I thought he was murdered because of how the scene is done and nobody talking about what happened to him xD he comes by and talks about it being too normal, not panicked or something coming before something happened. I mean he had time to recover and send a messenger to inform the dawnservants but he just did nothing...

[Xieldras]

The fact that there is no setup for the future expansions' own MSQ either. We went from a vacation being the maid to a political contestant, to a world-ending scenario within the same expac. There was no time to properly breathe between Endwalker and this one, no setup to be explored in 8.0. No mystery to be unearthed in the future. Even fanfiction writers know to put down some breadcrumbs for future chapters.

This plus Wuk Lamat tells me there is some fear in having player numbers dip after the climax we had last expansion (which was 10 years of buildup), so they had to pull out the big stops to keep players around.

[Daralii]

The fact that there is no setup for the future expansions' own MSQ either. We went from a vacation being the maid to a political contestant, to a world-ending scenario within the same expac. There was no time to properly breathe between Endwalker and this one, no setup to be explored in 8.0. No mystery to be unearthed in the future. Even fanfiction writers know to put down some breadcrumbs for future chapters.

This plus Wuk Lamat tells me there is some fear in having player numbers dip after the climax we had last expansion (which was 10 years of buildup), so they had to pull out the big stops to keep players around.

The only real breadcrumbs at this point are Meracydia and the hourglass. The former has obviously been in the background for a long time and is the last remaining thing on Emet's bucket list of things for us to do, and unless the writers forgot the order of Calamities, the latter seems able to go to any shard at any point in time.

[Zabuza]

Can we add how hamfisted "dissenting" dialogue choice were handled this go around?
In the past, while obviously leading to us doing what the plot wanted anyway, they at least got different or shocked reactions and served as a way of expressing our characters discontent with what plot dictates the next step ought to be.
This time they often get immediately downplayed and twisted into something completely different from your selection to keep up the happy go lucky atmosphere or feel like a multiple choice quiz where "wrong" answers give you the feedback that they're wrong and are subsequently removed from the selection until you either click on the "correct" choice or it's the only one left to pick so the game can go on like that was your heartfelt initial reply in the first place. At that point why bother?

Cahciua: We have to kill all the Endless to make Sphene sad.

WoL: What? I don't want to participate in a genocide.

Cahciua: Don't worry. They're not real people.

WoL: But I fought against someone who in the past who espoused that line of thinking. Killing innocents is wrong.

Cahciua stares at you intensely.

WoL: Yes bunny mom. We'll kill all the Endless bunny mom. I'm sorry bunny mom.

Cahciua: Yes, exactly! Such a great idea you came up with. Glad we're on the same page.

They explained that: after struggling against the ice for 80 years, it's batteries are almost empty. It's basically half dead and just wants out to recharge. We kill it in it's half dead state.

What was the point of hyping it up as being so powerful then if it wasn't going to do any damage? It couldn't even kill some random giant NPCs? Why do we need a group of 8 powerful warriors to take it down if it's not strong enough to even kill a single person? This story does a lot of setup and hype at certain points only for it to turn into a complete non-payoff in the end.

That, at least, is not a misstep.
They are TRAPPED inside a tiny dome with a static version of some dumb ass disneyland.

Yah, after 400 years, I too would beg the WoL to turn that forkin' terminal off. That is NOT an existence worth living, especially considering the cost.

Debatable. Are they aware and remembering what is happening to them the entire 400 years? To what extent are they aware and to what extent do they match the people whose memories they are based off of? Either way we had no right to turn off the terminals and the game frames it as a mercy killing through Cahciua but then frames it in a darker way once you strip the area barren of life.

You can add,

- When reaching living memory, there is this quest were you have to get his ring for a guy that want to asks the women he loved to marry her, but he died before her. sHe tells us he died before her, and she didn't marry anyone after that. Except she is not supposed to remember him then since he had they both had a device, or they wouldn't be endless, and she should have forgotten him when he died, and it's a memory without him that should have been archived.

- The society where you forget your parents, children, loved ones is presented as something beneficial and sustainable, yet every quest and side quest that talks about that show how disfonctionnal it is, and how those people benefits from remembering them. All this seems more like a façade than something than something thought through.

- The game tells us endless are not humans, then spends 3 hours showing us how human they are. Not only the game show you the opposite of its discourse, but for a game insist on the "You don't always die when you physically die", that does not sit very well. It sends you the message "being alive is not about your state of consciousness nor ability to think for yourself", which make a lot of Ultima Thule guys not alive, I guess.



Don't you think this deserved to be made clearer? I'm pretty sure the guy that wanted to ask his the woman he loved was pretty unhappy about disappearing without a say. Don't you think it's kinda hard to believe that in 400 years, nobody expressed that to anyone, and just rolled with it, and when you arrive, suddenly everyone is okay with dying? To me it's a facility to not make the player feel bad about what's happening. The whole thing deserved a better development, but there was no time.

-I interpreted this as the woman didn't marry anyone else because 'power of love'. Even though she didn't remember him... a subconscious impulse remained. It would be right up these writers' alley. Either way, you are right that is another example of poor writing since it isn't explained at all and it goes contrary to what the writers had said before.

-To be fair, Wuk Lumat, who is typically positive and accepting of other cultures, called Sphene's culture 'disturbing'. I didn't do the side quests. But this is yet another example of mixed messaging along with the point you made after this.

-This was partly mentioned in one of my points in the OP.

Yes, they all express being okay with dying when we arrive and yes, it is all done for the express purpose of trying to make us, the person sitting behind the screen, feel okay with deleting these people. It is very strange when Shadowbringers told us that 'genocide is not okay, no matter how understandable the reasoning' to Dawntrail's 'No matter how unsettling it is, there are certain circumstances in which genocide is okay.'

I disagree on bakool jaja having no foreshadowing, there were multiple small lines from him beforehand where he goes "I won't let them die in vain" or "we must retreat, for the sake of our kin"
I'd argue bakool jaja is the best written character in the expac

Then why does he so enjoy bullying Wuk Lumat? How does that further his cause? Why release Valigarmanda, a beast that could have very well ruined Tural? Don't get me wrong, I liked the scene where he poured his heart out, but given some of his previous acts and behavior, it seems to have run contrary to his previous character.

[Turtledeluxe]

At this point there have been so many review threads all sharing so many common points that I think we can safely say it's not just critics, but also players that find this expansion incredibly divisive at minimum, and one of the most flawed xpacs at the worst.

I wasn't around for it but i just can't see even StB getting so many players critical.

[Zaniel]

The worst part of that list is that you're only just getting warmed up. There's plenty more material to add to it.

[Zabuza]

The worst part of that list is that you're only just getting warmed up. There's plenty more material to add to it.

This was only what I remembered off the top of my head. If I went back and watched all the cutscenes again for more plotholes, that means I would've put more effort in than these writers did for the Dawntrail story. Can't believe we went from Shadowbringers/Endwalker 6.0 to this.