Wow, Wuk Lamat is really single-handedly ruining the DT story...

[Bright-Flower]

I still enjoyed the msq all in all, and still put it as a whole package over 4.0. But while I didn't dislike Wuk Lamat or her story, the expansion really would have benefited by spreading things out more.

Spoilers.

Take the Stormblood villainous trio for example. Zenos was 'our' villain, Fordola was 'Lyse's villain' and Yotsuyu the villain for the Doma characters. Lyse was a persistent presence in the expansion. But while I feel Wuk Lamat's arc was better done than Lyse's, Lyse left more room for other people to shine. In DT, all three major villains are Wuk Lamat's villains. Her foils and adversaries to overcome.

Meanwhile characters like Krile and Erenville don't really get many moments to shine outside of the final zone when their stories pay off. Krile gets a couple teases along the way but not much of substance. We get some fun with Erenvilla for like half a zone before the second main plot kicks in. Meanwhile the twins have it even worse, and if not for them filling out trust slots you could really cut them out of the expansion entirely and not miss anything of substance. The same is mostly true for Thancred and Urianger, who outside of one good campfire scene with Koana don't really contribute much. And the idea they teased of having to compete against other scions was even more overblown than the 'become the warrior of darkness thing.' Consisting of exactly one moment where Thancred slighlty inconveniences us in a dungeon and THAT'S IT.

I don't have a problem with Wuk Lamat's story in isolation, the problem is she took the lion's share of focus. (Pun intended.) Lyse was also the protagonist of SB pretty much but gave more room for other characters to shine, though it did end up making her arc feel rushed in how quickly she became resistance leader in the third act.

I still enjoyed the DT MSQ all in all, I don't criticize it because i hate it but because I love the game and hope to see better going forward.

[Daralii]

This stuff about rubber bullets and general 4kids-esque softening of the lore in Dawntrail reminds me of the one Simpsons episode where Marge forces the Itchy & Scratchy writers to remove all the violence, conflict and edge because it's a bad influence, resulting in a completely substanceless episode made to be as inoffensive and safe as possible, that appeals to absolutely nobody besides people who didn't like the show to begin with
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozWpY6Cn67Y
First Poochie now this, truly The Simpsons has predicted Dawntrail once again

When they were trimming the fat from ARR, did they get rid of that one line in La Noscea(I think Aleport or Moraby) that described the water as "colder than a dead whore's crotch"? If not, it's some funny contrast.

[Trevski]

Again, I don't disagree that he is a trope or that the other characters are that but that it is used in a correct way.
Every single character in this game is one trope and a little bit of others next to it nothing more.
He isn't more of a walking trope then the scions are.

Archetypal characters (or "trope" characters...) are perfectly fine and valid to use in writing. Sometimes it's useful to use as a shortcut to get across a character's personality, other times it's the starting point for a more interesting story.

Urianger is an academic's academic. Very close to the 'Absent Minded Professor' archetype. But the game takes those traits of him being too academic, too technical and does some engaging stuff with it (ie, the whole subplot with Moenbryda.)

[OgruMogru]

There was this short scene in the Endwalker patch where Wuk slaps G'raha on the back and he gives her this surprised, uncomfortable look as he nearly falls over. I really liked that scene, because it made her look a bit more Tomboyish, almost dude-bro levels of extrovertedness that could have at times caused issues with her misreading the room or maybe relationships and she'd have to learn to be a bit more understanding of others (and her people wink wink).

But no, the Wuk we got in Dawntrail is ... relatively feminine, all things considered? Almost stereotypically-so actually, where her strength actually comes more from the inside and then she's given cute flaws like being a klutz and playfully emotional to make her endearing. If we swapped her out of Warrior without changing anything else there wouldn't be anything egregious that pops out. The Scions all have a job that suits them. Thancred's a bodyguard, Alisaie is the more aggressive of what is ultimately very supportive twins, Urianger is mysterious, etc, etc. Wuk has a heart of gold, and so she's a warrior, and that's fiiiine but ... I feel like that's not enough.

I ... actually kind of want to blame the VA here as well. I wonder how I'd feel going through DT with JP voices. Unfortunately I'm not enough of a masochist to actually go through DT more than once.

It occurred to me earlier that the Endwalker patch Wuk content might have been the most recently written and recorded. The performance and characterization is a lot more solid. I had no problems with the way she was presented during EW but there was a big disconnect the moment we got into DT proper. It could be a combination of the VA being more confident in the role by that point, the writing being separated somewhat from the msq slog and not chained down by rudimentary exposition and reiteration. EW Wuk embodied the goofy warrior novice nicely but the Wuk in DT would have been better suited as an airhead pictomancer who's focus was on people and culture at large [hence an interest in ART] instead of the overvalued martial prowess of her competitors.

Also I reckon this why she didn't know what ziplines were in living memory despite riding one with us in EW.

[Vyrerus]

This stuff about rubber bullets and general 4kids-esque softening of the lore in Dawntrail reminds me of the one Simpsons episode where Marge forces the Itchy & Scratchy writers to remove all the violence, conflict and edge because it's a bad influence, resulting in a completely substanceless episode made to be as inoffensive and safe as possible, that appeals to absolutely nobody besides people who didn't like the show to begin with
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozWpY6Cn67Y
First Poochie now this, truly The Simpsons has predicted Dawntrail once again

Now we just need the Simpsons episode where someone else comes to Springfield and pretends like they made/own the characters, for when the FFXI 24 man comes out, and FFXIV tries to act like it's just a shard of Etheirys.

[Bright-Flower]

Now we just need the Simpsons episode where someone else comes to Springfield and pretends like they made/own the characters, for when the FFXI 24 man comes out, and FFXIV tries to act like it's just a shard of Etheirys.

That's not going to happen.

They might work their own version of FFXI into FFXIV lore like they did with Ivalice, Doma etc, but they're not going to come out and say 'FF XI was actually one of our reflections all along.'

[All_Nonsense]

That's not going to happen.

They might work their own version of FFXI into FFXIV lore like they did with Ivalice, Doma etc, but they're not going to come out and say 'FF XI was actually one of our reflections all along.'

idk, I don't trust the writing team not to do that atm. Of course it sounds like a ridiculous premise that would never be allowed to happen, but DT would have been called the same if you'd told most people about it 6 months ago instead of how it was advertised as a fun and relaxing vacation.

[Mortex]

Also don’t forget wuk almost talk no jutsu a freaking Computer program hellbent on saving the people of Alexandria into becoming a “good person”. Maybe I should try that when my pac is acting up at some point so he feels bad and stops whatever he does. Like thinking about it they told us endless are already dead and a perversion that needs souls too function and we shouldn’t feel bad ending them. Why do they think we would care about sphene in any way when they told us don’t care about the endless. It’s like so brain rotting after I thought about it again. She’s a murdering ai memory of a person that died 1000 years ago and poochie tries talking with it……….

[gumas]

That and people always forget that ARR showed us how deadly adventuring can be with the adventurers dying in the first dungeons.
There is also the whole thing with the elementals in Gridania or the poor people right infront of Ul'dah.

There was so much grity stuff in ARR, DT should be ashamed of itself because it's a completely unrealistic world.

Remember back in early arr days went we about to enter dungeon (manually) you always see a couple of npc adventurer who stand at the enterance, They just npc and has nothing to do with your msq, but everytime you finish the dungeon and leave, you can see that npc adventurer also done their own exploring, and some of them got their own story to explore

-The oldman elf and young elf woman start fine but at the end the oldman got hurt and decide to retire
-The small group of young adventurer start with high morale, later they all sad because one of them die because he got pinned by falling big rock (which actually you can see in the dungeon because its blocking your way so you took different path, when i heard that i was like "omg its that big rock that block my path?")
- and off course who cant forget edda adventure, start as minor npc and become personal matter that we need to deal with

Arr was "slice of life" yes bjt if you check for further detail you can find its not all sunshine and rainbow, DT is just pure slice of life at least on the first half

[Niervel]

Wuk Lamat is an absolutely atrocious character with one of the worst vocal performances ever recorded (EN), and yet Wuk is not single-handedly ruining DT. Rather, Wuk is a symptom of a rot festering at the very core of this expansion's story.

That rot is simple: the lead writer was unable to conceptualize that there exists a world outside of his own perception. The plot feels stream-of-consciousness, wherein the author believes everything they write is immaculate and needn't be concerned with fitting in with the story or the world in the slightest.

One-pass, no-review, send to prod: a character will be demonstrated to be using a linkshell; the next scene will suggest that they have no means of communication because communications are jammed; and in the same scene another character will use a linkshell with zero issues. "Communications are jammed!" was a cool idea the writer had in one breath, and in the very next breath it was decided that it'd be cool if someone communicated something really mundane via linkshell.

There is nothing that can be salvaged from Dawntrail. It has no characters. It has character concepts, at best. Its plot is a complete mess, because it's trying to create a drama out of empty, vapid silhouettes.

The head writer deserves all of the rancor and more. Every previous expansion has had multitudinous voices, which has often had deleterious effect: Shadowbringers' midgame is clunky and reliant on cheap pratfall-deaths as a replacement for tension; Endwalker's pacing is absolutely all over the place and whoever wrote Garlemald certainly didn't write the Loporrits. And yet here, in Dawntrail, everything sounds like this one, singular writer. Everything is about Wuk Lamat, how cool peace is, and how it's so great and awesome to solve all of your problems just by talking with people. Absolutely. Everything.

It feels like the lead writer became a tyrant with creative control, and decided that this expansion would be his absolute opus!: and well, that's such a comforting thought for anyone struggling. No matter how hard life might get, no matter how hard it might be to see the light of morrow: at least you didn't write Dawntrail.

Square should charge double, triple, or even quadruple the price of a story-skip for this expansion, and it would still be a bargain. Having suffered through it, there is genuinely no reason beyond utter masochism to not spam escape at the advent of every cutscene.