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

[Cyrtip]

That scene with Footfalls just made me immediately want to replay EW rather than continue DT. And we were in the middle of one of the biggest budget scenes in the whole expansion.

All I could think when watching that scene was "Man, this is kinda lame."
Like, did the people who animated Omega VS Shinryu in Stormblood get fired? Die of old age? That cutscene, made seven? years ago, was four whole minutes of PEAK. Compare that to Vritra shooting the same fireball 5 times, flailing in the air, then flying in a circle and roaring (Couldnt find a video link for the DT one, its "The Protector and The Destroyer" cutscene 3 in the unending journey).

[PaleYonder]

I've only just gotten to Solution Nine, so I haven't read all the posts to avoid spoilers, but the section in Solution Nine was so incredibly awful, I just had to write this out before I go insane.

Never in my life have I seen an RPG fail at being an RPG through bad writing alone.

(Snip for length)
Not only do I agree with everything, but this was also the exact moment I snapped for real and stopped caring. I started out positive, that moved to patient/optimistic if not thrilled anymore, got disgruntled ca. early into the 3rd zone and as my hopes that it was going to get better dwindled, I saw more and more negatives, and my friend had to sit through my liveblogging snark on how bad this all was.
Solution 9 was where I had enough for good. I kept playing, to finish it once, but I started speeding through irrelevant dialogues, skipping certain cutscenes, and actively wanted it all to end.

[djc]

After 8 years of subscription (approaching 3000 days!), this expansion has finally made me actually activate my forum account just so I can add one more voice agreeing in what an absolute shitshow the MSQ was.

There's nothing really new for me to add that hasn't already been said, but for the first time in the near decade of playing, I'm debating cancelling my subscription. My wife and I have been playing together since SB, and debating the story at length has always been one of our simple pleasures in life. There are plenty of things we have agreed and disagreed upon, but there is one thing that Dawntrail has achieved that no other expansion has been able to, and that is to bring us both to absolute alignment on how bad it was. I'd be impressed if it wasn't so damn depressing.

We have at least been enjoying the expert dungeons and spamming the extremes, but if the storytelling continues in the same mediocre direction, then perhaps it's a sign that we're finally approaching the end of our respective WoL journeys.

[PaleYonder]

Yep, know the feeling, and I'm still debating myself; it really is impressive how fast it managed that with a story that is just so very offensive it cancels out a lot of the other goodwill.
I've still got some virtual bux left over because I didn't seriously expect to quit right after the new expansion hit (joke's on me), so I'm using that up, currently doing some solitary messing around without unwanted feline company, testing out the new classes (Picto is actually really damn fine, pity it arrived so late), catching up on some side stuff on the character, who was intended to be an alt but got promoted to main-and-only purely because I cannot possibly find it within myself to play through that MSQ again, and I'm seeing over time if there's enough fun to be had still despite this, and maybe if they course-correct fast, or if it's more of the same. In the latter case... Well, it's been nice.

[Themarvin]

It is very much spot on Story writing the thing is it hits parts of the world hard on reality, which is why people think it is bad and most of all that it does not take them away from the reality they are trying to escape.

[Loggos]

It is very much spot on Story writing the thing is it hits parts of the world hard on reality, which is why people think it is bad and most of all that it does not take them away from the reality they are trying to escape.

There are people in this thread pointing out how Erenville's grief was not depicted realistically enough because the story trampled all over his realistic and legitimate feelings and the narrative's moralising about how he should just move on didn't represent losing a parent realistically and true to the real world. Or how Wuk's reaction to being adopted and meeting her birthfather had little to do with how real-life people in that situation would have reacted. So I have this suspicious feeling you might not be right about people just being displeased "because it doesn't take them far enough from the reality they want to escape". Instead, they are probably displeased because the writing is just that bad.

[Eskat]

Yeah, if anything it wasn't real enough for me. I wanted them to delve into the details. People in Solution 9 have their memories of others who've died on the regular? Logically that means there's plenty of people in Solution 9 who one day wake up in a double bed, two closets with two peoples' clothes in them. They never remember living with anyone. The existential dread that it puts in me to think that someone I was once so close to could up and vanish and I wouldn't even remember them is terrifying. But the citizens of Solution 9 are vibing, the dead are "in the cloud" so it's whatever. In some of the side quests you get a taste of that horror, and it's so good, but the MSQ doesn't deliver it. I want the citizens of Solution 9 to be putting on a brave face as they all deal with the gnawing sense of something being missing. I want people to treat Erenville's grief with more than just a vague "cowabummer" before chiding him for being dour and withdrawn while the AI ghost of his mother rubs salt in the wounds. I want it to feel real, despite the fantasy. Amaurot hit hard as a fantastical display of magical might, but more importantly, as a monument to one man's grief that he has failed to move past despite literal eons of time. Being too real is certainly not my criticism at any rate.

[Zaniel]

It's really jarring because the rest of DT is filled with themes about family and siblings and so forth yet Solution 9 is an absolute about face where you never remember your parents but it just whiplashes into it and never addresses it, what's more Wookie Lmao and the Scions seem pretty chill with this nightmare whereas in other timelines Alphinaud would be leading a revolution to topple Sphene.

[Post]

There's this side quest in the theme park portion of Living Memory that's about a little boy that's looking for his brother. I recommend doing it if you haven't, but I'm going to explain how it ends below.

Living Memory returned him to being a child because that's when he was happiest, playing with his little brother, but once he he comes to the realization that he can't find his brother because his brother didn't get on the last train out of Shaaloani before Heritage Found appeared, and he immediately becomes an elderly man, wistfully recalling working on the railroad with his brother and much of the rest of his life, and in the gap of his memories left by the machine, he chooses to find joy in knowing that his brother barely knows that he is gone yet and has his whole life in front of him. It's so tragic I'm getting choked up recalling it now, and thinking about my own brothers.

Yeah. I cried a lot in Living Memory, so very clearly the zone and all its implications impacted me, but it was NOT from the MSQ characters or the dialogue or any of that. It was just the setting, visual storytelling, musical direction, and having a bit of my own personal experiences to draw upon and empathize with. And the nagging sense of a huge, HUGE opportunity wasted... Hopefully they'll do better going forwards.

[Loggos]

Yeah, if anything it wasn't real enough for me. I wanted them to delve into the details. People in Solution 9 have their memories of others who've died on the regular? Logically that means there's plenty of people in Solution 9 who one day wake up in a double bed, two closets with two peoples' clothes in them. They never remember living with anyone. The existential dread that it puts in me to think that someone I was once so close to could up and vanish and I wouldn't even remember them is terrifying. But the citizens of Solution 9 are vibing, the dead are "in the cloud" so it's whatever. In some of the side quests you get a taste of that horror, and it's so good, but the MSQ doesn't deliver it. I want the citizens of Solution 9 to be putting on a brave face as they all deal with the gnawing sense of something being missing. I want people to treat Erenville's grief with more than just a vague "cowabummer" before chiding him for being dour and withdrawn while the AI ghost of his mother rubs salt in the wounds. I want it to feel real, despite the fantasy. Amaurot hit hard as a fantastical display of magical might, but more importantly, as a monument to one man's grief that he has failed to move past despite literal eons of time. Being too real is certainly not my criticism at any rate.

Spot on. All the implications and logical consequences of deleting memories of a dead person were glossed over in the MSQ and most people don't even do the (non-blue) side quests.

(There is one with a grieving viera withouth a regulator whose friend has died and who asks you to organise a proper send-off with him.)

The fact that not remembering somebody was just so normal and fine by everyone, because apparently the majority of people found no fault with the "remembering the dead is painful, hence bad! Please remove anything unpleasant, eww!" philosophy was so weird considering you also lose all of your happy memories with them.

What if your wedding or the birth of your child or a special day with your parents, your friends, your siblings etc. was the happiest moment in your life? It would be gone (as long as you are still alive and not in Living Memory yourself).

And yeah, as you mentioned, just on a logistical level, forgetting people creates big logical problems and consistency gaps in a society (like the partner of a deceased person waking up in a home for two).
But also, a person being associated with just anything important (a task, a job, an important event etc.) would be deleted from the public memory. Wouldn't these memory gaps cause confusions or (administrative) problems?

In addition, even if you do not wear a regulator, seeing everybody else forget a person instantly while you don't must be so painful and isolating. You have nobody to talk to, nobody to share your grief with.
If you met another person who loved the one that died as much as you but wouldn't be able to share this memory with you...it must cause so much cognitive exhaustion and pain.
Perhaps this constant tension of being the only person that remembers somebody and thus having the loss of the person being rubbed in even more - or being the only sad person in a sea of happy people who don't get why you are grieving and who might even be irritated by it (since everybody is supposed to be happy) - might create a lot of (peer) pressure to give in and also use a regulator.

And lastly, it is also a dilemma for people who don't want to have their memories altered but want to use souls because the way I understand it those things can't be separated?

So if you want to have this life insurance but don't want to forget people this will put you in a tough spot. You might say "well just live responsibly, just like normal people do" (which I agree with btw) but it might lock you out of social opportunities like certain jobs. Though, what's worse in my opinion, imagine you are somebody who does not use a regulator and you then observe other people actually make that decision to wear one, essentially showcasing that their own life insurance is more important to them than remembering the people they love. Some people may see no issue with it and hold the position that your own survival comes first. But if you are a loved one, a child, a parent, a partner, without a regulator and you see the people close to you opt for one, the knowledge that they will forget you if you die before them and that this is a price they are prepared to pay can still mess you up.