The many writing missteps of Dawntrain.

[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.

[TheMightyMollusk]

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.

Should it have recharged successfully, things would have turned out differently.

It's even stated that the place we go to fight Valigarmanda is full of crystals that it's preparing to feed on to recharge its power.

Made more explicit when unlocking the Extreme fight. The Wandering Minstrel's setup for it is literally "Imagine if he was at full power".

[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.

[Voidmage]

Genshin Fontaine stuff

I'm going to reach a bit and say there was no real MC in that story. It's a mix of Furina, Neuvilette, Lyney and Navia. All of them are crucial to the plot and the whole thing is more comparable to HW then DT.

What is right about that comparision though is two things.

The first is the protagonist.
The Traveler is not the MC but is integral to the plot. That's what DT needed. The WoL not just being a simple bystander but actually interacting with the whole story. People aknowleding us for more then our strength and the characters actually having a naturla conversation with us and not the stiff nod pingpong we got.
The writers can really learn from Genshin in that regard.
The traveler get's sidelined pretty often in Genshin sometimes even too far but it's always just for a short time not for a whole "expansion".

The second is the world itself.
In fontaine the story marches onward on it's own. The prophecy IS happening Arlecchino is doing things and other characters react to it.
In DT it's more like a stage play.
You have the trials and the learning of the cultures is set in stone from the beginning. The whole plot and the trials wait till we are there, literaly with the trials undermining the whole Valigarmanda stuff.
You learn about the people because the trials and the plot demands it. It is just unnatural.
Compared to the old beast tribe quests where we went to that because we wanted to not because we were told to talk to three npc's.

Meanwhile in Genshin Varshey (was that how it was spelled?) does his own thing. The traveler does their own thing without being railroaded to much.
The WoL in DT is just wandering behind Wuk Lamat the entire time.
Even the wild west zone was railroading with the bracelet. No own reason to do something, no own personality. As much as I like him. Erenville was just there to give us a target. I know that was more or less alwys like that but they can change that. We can be alone for some time, doing our own thing. The sidequests are far better in that regard.
The problem was not just us being sidelined, it was us being soulless and desinterested in all the stuff.

Edit:
The funny thing is. Genshin often get's flak (sometimes rightfully) that it has a great story but terrible storytelling and here we are. Discussing how ff14 can learn from it.

[Daralii]

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.'

Endwalker also had a fair amount of "artificial recreations of lives are still lives" in the Omicron quests. The idea of artificial life in general still counting as life goes back to at least Stormblood with Alpha and Omega's storyline, further back still if you want to count examples like the ixal being Allagan creations.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Endwalker also had a fair amount of "artificial recreations of lives are still lives" in the Omicron quests. The idea of artificial life in general still counting as life goes back to at least Stormblood with Alpha and Omega's storyline, further back still if you want to count examples like the ixal being Allagan creations.

The Ixal and the recreated peoples in Endwalker aren't setting out to conquer other worlds and consume their life force to prolong their existence. Seems like a pretty big thing to leave out of the comparison.

[Iedarus]

I am so annoyed at how they did nothing with Zoraal Ja's crusade against Garlemald. For so long I've wanted Jullus to join us since it would be so cool, from a writing standpoint, to have a Garlean scion. To have him present when this was announced would give him a legitimate reason to be in the competition, and it would give him some character development.

And then there's Krile whose character arc was put on the backburner for so long it was burnt to a crisp. I said before that it would be a smart choice to retire the old scions and add Jullus, Krile, and Zero so they could have fleshed out arcs.

[Vrahjin]

The Ixal and the recreated peoples in Endwalker aren't setting out to conquer other worlds and consume their life force to prolong their existence. Seems like a pretty big thing to leave out of the comparison.

Wasn't that only Sphene though? So deal with the force behind that - and we do by killing her. Could've done that without turning off the terminals (which in the end did nothing at all), and just let the people fade away while still making the fountains work and doing the plays and helping people to give them a happy sendoff if we so wanted.