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

[djc]

I really can't believe they actually ran with the whole removing memories of the people who die. Society just wouldn't function normally. They showed Namikka's death in a very controlled manner, but in reality there would be many people dying unexpectedly in various different ways. Can you imagine random senior citizens who perished alone being found by people and nobody knowing who the hell they were? What about those patrolling out in Heritage Found? If they ran out of souls in their regulators and were killed, nobody would remember about them going out for patrol. There could be dozens of random dead bodies out in the wilds with nobody the wiser. What about a surgeon operating on someone who's out of extra souls? If they die on the operating table the surgeon would suddenly blink, staring at a random dead body, blood all over their hands, and be like 'What the hell, who is this? What have I done?' There's almost an infinite number of scenarios where suddenly forgetting someone's existence would lead to dozens if not hundreds of confused people wandering around every single day.

Apparently the writers think that removing memories of dead people is enough to keep people endlessly happy, nevermind that people are constantly being traumatised by stumbling upon dead bodies that nobody recognises or why they're there in the first place. The whole concept really doesn't stand up to even any kind of shallow scrutiny.

[Regis_Paran]

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.

I didn't do sidequests there yet. But from the get go my suspicion was that it's not just the "offending" memory being removed. But also "positive thoughts" put in. And we know it can be done, because Sphene is changing her own "programming".

[Loggos]

I didn't do sidequests there yet. But from the get go my suspicion was that it's not just the "offending" memory being removed. But also "positive thoughts" put in. And we know it can be done, because Sphene is changing her own "programming".

The way I understood it the person is just removed from your memory completely.

For example, in the MSQ we observe how Erenville meets some people from his former village. They all recognise him but they have no idea who his mother even is, although they did know her for sure in the past. Erenville says so himself because he cannot believe how they could have possibly forgotten her.

And in one of the side quests

the aforementioned viera tells you how, when his friend died, all the other friends of said deceased person have already forgotten them. So those friends' minds weren'd fed any positive replacement memories as far as I understand.

(Also, this is another point that I find quite unsettling. Imagine you have a close friend, their parent dies, and you just don't remember your friend's parent all of a sudden. You know this person but where they come from and how they grew up is (partially) purged from your mind. And if you are a close friend then their growing up was most likely also a part of your growing up since you spent time with them in your childhood. So in some way parts of your own childhood (even if it's just tangential memories) would also be gone. Such as spending time at your child friend's house but in your memory there is absolutely no presence of their parent in that house.)

[Eskat]

(Also, this is another point that I find quite unsettling. Imagine you have a close friend, their parent dies, and you just don't remember your friend's parent all of a sudden. You know this person but where they come from and how they grew up is (partially) purged from your mind. And if you are a close friend then their growing up was most likely also a part of your growing up since you spent time with them in your childhood. So in some way parts of your own childhood (even if it's just tangential memories) would also be gone. Such as spending time at your child friend's house but in your memory there is absolutely no presence of their parent in that house.)

Oh that's honestly so full of potential. Imagine a friend group just fracturing in the wake of a death. All of them would hang out together often, forming countless fond memories together, only for all of those to get scourged from their minds, rendering not only their lost friend forgotten, but also gutting so much of the friendship with everyone who remained, taking them from the closest of friends to being acquaintances who they remember little about.

[Regis_Paran]

The way I understood it the person is just removed from your memory completely. (snip)

(Also, this is another point that I find quite unsettling. Imagine you have a close friend, their parent dies, and you just don't remember your friend's parent all of a sudden. You know this person but where they come from and how they grew up is (partially) purged from your mind. And if you are a close friend then their growing up was most likely also a part of your growing up since you spent time with them in your childhood. So in some way parts of your own childhood (even if it's just tangential memories) would also be gone. Such as spending time at your child friend's house but in your memory there is absolutely no presence of their parent in that house.)

I agree completely. That's why originally I didn't accept the "we only remove memory of that one person" explanation . Because 10 seconds of logical thinking finds gaping holes in that. That's why I suspected a second layer to the memory manipulation.. But there was none.

This whole idea should have unsettled me. But it didn't because I couldn't look beyond the horrendous writing of the entire premise.

[Loggos]

This whole idea should have unsettled me. But it didn't because I couldn't look beyond the horrendous writing of the entire premise.

Yeah I feel this so much, haha!

Oh that's honestly so full of potential. Imagine a friend group just fracturing in the wake of a death. All of them would hang out together often, forming countless fond memories together, only for all of those to get scourged from their minds, rendering not only their lost friend forgotten, but also gutting so much of the friendship with everyone who remained, taking them from the closest of friends to being acquaintances who they remember little about.

Oh yeah, that is a really good point! I wonder if all memories the dead person was part of are deleted altogether or if it is just the existence of the person within that memory.

So if you have a friend group and they had an experience together, would that entire experience be removed because the dead person was part of that experience? Causing you to lose many important memories of living people and related events as well only because they are in some way connected to the dead person?

Would the memories themselves remain but there would be a blank space where the dead person used to be, so you know there was "someone" but you just can't remember them for the life of you?

Or do you remember an altered version of the memory without any blank space? And in your mind your friend group always just consisted of the people still alive? So said experience would be remembered as something only the remaining living friends did with you and it's as if the dead person just had never existed?

[Luca_]

Never before have I walked away from an expansion's story with my thoughts on it being "well, that was stupid." It all just feels so... superficial and unsatisfying. The characters, the plot, the conflicts; the entire thing had this pervasive feeling of everything being a little off, and it doesn't even bother to answer most of the massive questions it raises.

I don't really have a lot to add since OP explained things very well, but my biggest concern is this:

How and why did they create an expansion that rivals base Endwalker in length (which was longer than normal so that they could fully wrap it up and focus on something else in patch quests) with nearly double the cutscene runtime as Stormblood and still not manage to address all of their plot points?

Something has gone very wrong in the writing team and I don't think it can all be blamed on Ishikawa's absence.

[Glacierre]

Well... truthfully I'm at a loss for words. I'm sitting here at my computer wanting to express just how much I disliked the MSQ and I find myself speechless. I had no expectations and yet Dawntrail still failed to meet them. I am absolutely not canonizing Dawntrail in my WoL's story. I'm sorry to be so harsh, but it's actually offensive and insulting to me and my character's intelligence.

The story is awful. The characters are cardboard cutouts. I didn't mind Wuk Lamat at first but then she became the worst character in the game, easily. Do the writers think we're 10 year olds? It's baffling how this happened after coming off of deep and mature expansions like ShB and EW. There's no nuance to the story. No one acts like humans. Seriously, everyone got lobotomized. I don't have a problem with low stakes; I read contemporary fiction and there's no cosmic world ending threats in contemporary fiction. I don't have a problem with the WoL becoming a mentor character; after all, in my canon she has already retired and it was a good option to have the WoL become a mentor with how powerful they are. But wow they dropped the ball here. I'm completely unable to suspend disbelief!

The plot just can’t keep the momentum up at all. Something exciting happens and then the pace completely drops when we have to go cheer people up or learn about a culture or make dinner when people are dying. The dialogue options are baffling. We all just stand there when we could be murking people on the spot. The Scions don't do anything. We are shown no history between the Promises and their dynamics are not believable. The sudden raise in stakes is offensively bad. The writing is just nonsensical. Bakool Ja Ja 180° personality change and instant forgiveness after his crimes. Zoraal Ja starts a war because war is bad and he wants everyone to know that war is bad... but also because daddy issues. Huh? The only portion I liked was Shaaloani because it was just the WoL and Erenville having a chill adventure. I cared about the town and its problems and I loved learning about them and helping them. There was combat sprinkled in and the WoL had the most agency/dialogue options out of any portion of the MSQ. It wasn't just a wiki page lore dump or Wuk Lamat saying "I LOVE PEACE!!!!!!!" for the thousandth time. (1/2)

[Glacierre]

I just can't understand what happened here. FFXIV has had a great track record. They are capable of writing great stories; it's their main marketing point and they know that! I've always played the game in English and never thought about switching, but the LA studio was so bad that I switched to French. The OST has been nothing but bangers but the music in DT was most of the time forgettable. Worst of all was that gospel song... I'm a very sentimental person and yet when that started playing I actually laughed out loud. I felt so uncomfortable from second-hand embarrassment. Is something happening at Square? I hate to be so harsh, but DT was a disappointment in every single department except maybe the combat content and the graphical update. Why would they give the lead character that hogs 90% of the screentime an amateur VA with no experience? Why would they hand off the MAIN STORY to someone who clearly doesn't know the basics of storytelling? I just really don't know what could have possibly happened behind the scenes. It's beyond baffling.

I don't want to dislike the game— why would I after the money and time I've put into it? But this legitimately killed my goodwill and interest in the story going forwards. I'm no longer looking at the future of the game with excitement, but rather a morbid curiosity with how their next few decisions will affect the business of the game. I really just can't understand what happened here. I'm only writing this because I care about the game and I genuinely want things to get shaken up at Square, and I hope adding my thoughts will help make that happen. I apologize for being so blunt and scathing, but I'm in disbelief. (2/2)

[BigBoom550]

I think part of it is that Ishikawa knew how to stay on-task and on-message, and she at least tried to put new spins on old concepts.

Dawntrail felt like they couldn't decide what they were going for. The Scions are taking a backseat, except they get yanked in as soon as they need warm bodies. Wuk Lamat as covered elsewhere on the forums is all at once the tour guide, expositor, protagonist, comedic relief, and the 'downer' of the group. She was playing all the roles the party should have been playing by herself.

Alexandria, in other threads- nobody can quite decide what the heck to think of it because it goes all sorts of ways. They want you to think the Endless aren't alive, but the Endless demonstrably change in personality and opinion on-screen. Cachiua actively resists the system, Namikka's thoughts on the 'happiest moment of her life' change when she sees Wuk Lamat's grown up (which is a whole nother kettle of debatable worms but I digress)... and then we're told 'nope, we're not alive, pull the plug Kronk!'

They danced back and forth between what they wanted you to think, what role a character was supposed to play. They had the idea of Erenville and Krile's stories, but those were consumed because again, Wuk Lamat was playing their narrative roles. They couldn't be given time because you can't have two comic reliefs in the party, you can't have two melancholics, so one has to go! And so Erenville and Krile had their roles pushed to the side to make room for Wuk Lamat to do it, and... when their stories hit they were so abbreviated it hurt.

Whoever was in charge of keeping the writers on a cohesive theme, cohesive storyline, and coherent plotting was on sabbatical because like... for every point they try to make, an opposite is made, and sometimes the opposite point is made better.