Dawntrail is a good Story but not a Great Story. (SPOILERS)

[Bright-Flower]

Considering even the devs had to redesign ARR not once but TWICE, to make it palatable, going to say neither the devs nor the public agrees. I would also rate DT MSQ over the pre patch SB MSQ, simply put because it was hard to get invested into either side of orthard or ala mhigo when you are constantly being yoyo'd between. With DT, I thought the first half was too much world building and kind of a slog but the second half was far better on par with FFXIV brand and way more thought provoking then either side of SB.

While I agree that SB suffered from the region split, it's not really 'constant yoyoing.' We do the first part of the ala mhigo stuff, then go do the entirety of the far eastern stuff in one stretch, and then come back to do the rest of the ala mhigo stuff in a rush. We only really dip into the far east and back once in the base game, and then once in the post patches by doing ala mhigo in 4.1 then focusing on doma in .2 and .3 before going back west.

[Raven2014]

And that Szene in the middle of a Trial is the only valid reason for the Hate on Wuk Lamat. If it wasn't for that szene no one would give so much hat towerds Wuk Lamat. And yes i do not like this szene either. It stops unnecesery the fight and have to wait to long and the english voiceacting is of. The german and japanes are way better and french is ok.

No, I believe you got that backward.

That scene is actually not as bad as most people (myself included) make it out to be.

The reason it is perceived so negatively because it was an accumulation of fatigue and frustration about the character up to that point. It's like the last drop of water that finally broke the dam for many people.

That scene simply cement the feeling of "WE NEVER GONNA ESCAPE WUK LAMAT" that many of us was already dreading at that point. Almost every single scenes or private moment we have with any other NPCs, WL would always insert herself into it.

+ The only time her father finally got a chance for what appeared to be the only serious talk in the entire first half, it was interrupted by Wuk Lamat.

+ When Koana ask us to come with him because he has something to give us, Wuk Lamat had to steal that so she can be the one presented us the reward.

+ When our fellow scion Y'tshola wanted to talk to us, somehow instead of contacting us, she contacted Wuk who standing next to us so Wuk could then relay back to us.

+ When she wasn't with us at Earthshrine, it's because we're trying to rescue her.

+ When she wasn't with us at Shaaloani, we're still constantly reminded of her presence. We have to help her nurse maid, find her present, and resolve the quest in certain way because "it's what Wuk Lamat would do" (CRINGE!)

+ When Krile was trying to study the history of her people. WL just had to act bored and rushed thing.

+ When Cacihua finally depart, guess who just have to insert herself to deliver the last line?

And more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more.

^ if the above sentence annoy you in the slightest, multiply that annoyance by a 1000 factor and that's how much WL annoyed me.


The thing you need to understand is that ... in isolation, most of the things I mentioned probably felt like nitpicking. And it's .... true. Individually they're not that big of a deal, you can even argue some of it makes sense. The problem is ... the game bombarding the players constantly with these things over the course of 30h ... that's why many players just blew up at the last scene. It's less about she's stealing the spotlight, it's about she's stealing the spotlight again for the 100th time. At that point, my reaction wasn't even about the fight itself, but more like: "HOLY ****, CAN I HAVE ONE MOMENT TO MYSELF?!?!? GET LOST, GET OUT OF MY FACE AND NEVER COME BACK, PLEASEEEEEEE". On the other hand, if Lyse showed up and steal the show at the end of the SB MSQ, I probably would still be annoyed, but the degree of anger would not be anywhere close. So when I said DT pissed me off far more than SB ever would, that's the kind of thing I meant. Like ... did you remember anyone getting angry when Gaia showed up to rescue Ryne in Eden?


Edit: also FYI, I went through the MSQ 4 times. The first was in Japanese, the 2nd and 4th were in English and the 3rd was in French. The non-English dud did not make WL better, they just made her less insufferable, at least in my own experience.

[DoomRyder]

The story is bad, the plot elements are extremely poor, your motivation is non-existent, the scions involvement is inconsequential, and your agency and involvement is at an all time low. You are there to beat things into submission, your actual feelings in the story mean nothing, and everyone in the story is there to put Wuk Lamat up. Every single other story in 14 has had flawed characters, problems that needed to be solved and multiple and DIVERSE characters of multiple CULTURES to involve yourself in without having everyone shove it in your face.

Many characters even lament needing to rely on YOU so much, it's a heavy burden. None of this, literally none of this is present in Dawntrail. Wuk is very happy to just use you in every situation then take full credit and glory afterwards. They treat every zone and every peoples' as an almost utopia compared to Eorzea, it's down right insulting with how much we have been through and seen with every other city by this point. The story, the characters, the zone, the GAME, the everything has literally no bite. There isn't even a single moment that has any real lament or tension. I think back to ARR, and even a subplot like Eda and her husband dying is far more thought provoking and feeling inducing than any single moment in all of Dawntrail where they artificially try to fish emotion from you the player while earning none of it.

The MSQ sucks, the story is poorly paced, poorly thought out, and terribly written. It's an extreme injustice to every single scion, especially Krile, and treats you the WoL player as a tool. This is unforgiveable. The raid in contrast has been thoroughly enjoyable and is more inline with what i expected from at least some of the MSQ, so i haven't given up hope for the game. But to forgive, and let go this extreme oversight of poor story telling in a game with 10 years of good to amazing service is going to cause much much worse problems than telling them the truth of the matter.

[Alchemii]

Considering even the devs had to redesign ARR not once but TWICE, to make it palatable, going to say neither the devs nor the public agrees. I would also rate DT MSQ over the pre patch SB MSQ, simply put because it was hard to get invested into either side of orthard or ala mhigo when you are constantly being yoyo'd between. With DT, I thought the first half was too much world building and kind of a slog but the second half was far better on par with FFXIV brand and way more thought provoking then either side of SB.

The Majority of the Public currently disagrees with your take. As the reviews are in and DT is scoring lower than ARR in customer reviews.

[Zaniel]

The thing you're responding to is also an opinion, so the concept of one thing being "better" than another literally can't be "accurate" or "inaccurate."

This is just a weirdo post-facts mondernist viewpoint where we can't tell anyone they are wrong.

Your TASTES are perfectly valid, you can say "I like this" for any reason that is real to you and that is fine. What you can't do is say "this is good". You are trying to argue that "See Spot Run" is superior literature to the Iliad or The Lord of The Rings or King Lear. Your deconstruction consists of saying "all arguments are just your opinion". That is not how arguments work.

[CuteBucket]

Dawntrail had the POTENTIAL to be a good story. There are good ideas in it. The setup of exploring a new continent and playing a game set up to collect things as we learn about the people of this new land and follow the clues to find a "lost city of gold" is a good hook. The problem is in the execution and details:

- Established characters acting like cardboard cutouts of themselves
- A new protag who dominates every scene at the expense of all the other characters
- Flat locals with little to no conflict among any of them, or conflict that is solved so easily as to make it feel trivial

And probably more, that's just what springs to mind. Would the story have been spectacular had this been fixed? Probably not, but I don't need it to be a masterpiece, I just wanted it to be as good as Stormblood at least (recently replayed it on an alt and was pleasantly surprised by how well I enjoyed myself).

The second half also has the makings of a good story, but trips and falls flat on its face on the execution once more. Setup: Another shard (?) merges with the Source in one area and starts to invade, we discover Alexandria and Solution 9 and the soul regulators that keep the citizens trapped outside of the Lifestream in a dystopian cyberpunk city where souls are commodities and the whole place is ran by a rogue AI bent on dominated every Shard to steal its aether to maintain her malfunctioning prime directive: protect her citizens (including the memories of all the dead ones) at all costs. I would love to read that story! It sounds amazing! Too bad instead we got:

- Zero familiarity of the sci-fi and cyberpunk genre it's trying to pull ideas from
- A bland and empty cityscape with nothing to see or do
- No consequence to the fucked up soul regulator system, which is just allowed to perpetuate without consequence despite how horrid it is
- No examination or exploration of how memory and soul tampering would severely warp a person, which had been established canon before now (the raids do, thankfully, but it should have also been explored in the MSQ)
- Sphene is not even remotely subtle nor likable in her villain plans and motivation, but we are forced by the plot and Wuk Lamat to try and understand and befriend her
- A horrible final zone that can't decide if the Endless are real people or not and makes us turn the zone ugly and bland and takes a dump all over FFIX
- Final battle interrupted so that Wuk Lamat can save the day with the Power of Friendship between her and Sphene, a friendship that makes no sense and that we never saw developed.

I would have probably liked Dawntrail just fine...if it had been written by any other writing team than the one we had.

[Midare]

If you see yourself as one who skipped or ignored the story, then probably yes, but i don't say that. If you pay attantion to the story then you'll probably be surpised that its actually good and not as bad as some say.

I didn't skip, in fact, I'm seeing the story for a second time by watching a friend play through it. Ran it myself in japanese, and I'm watching him play in english.

To summarize, Poochie doesn't grow at all because she's never shown to be wrong about absolutely anything. Everyone aside from Poochie seems written to be dumber than her and treat her like she's the best thing since sliced bread. Things kind of pick up once you hit Heritage Found but sadly, you still aren't free of Poochie and her desire of "meeting the people!". Krile's story was sidelined when her bit is one of the most interesting parts. Erenville had good development and when it came the time for that to peak, Poochie had to get in the way.

And then...

Speeeeeen, listen to meee!

So no, I wished I had skipped it, but I haven't.

[Oizen]

If you see yourself as one who skipped or ignored the story, then probably yes, but i don't say that. If you pay attantion to the story then you'll probably be surpised that its actually good and not as bad as some say.

I'd have a much higher opinion of dawntrail if I skipped the cutscenes lmao

[SirShady]

If you see yourself as one who skipped or ignored the story, then probably yes, but i don't say that. If you pay attantion to the story then you'll probably be surpised that its actually good and not as bad as some say.

Chiming in with the others here. I marathoned the MSQ because I was so excited to see what this new arc with Krile, Erenville, and Wuk Lamat in a beautiful land full of adventure would bring with it.

I came away after watching every cutscene and reading every optional piece of dialogue EXTREMELY disappointed. I'm not talking sad. I mean I genuinely went to bed a bit depressed.

"That was Dawntrail. That was it. This isn't a dream. It really was that bad. Horrid childish writing. Boring repetitive fetch quests. It was bad and that's that. Credits rolled. I have to live with the fact that I hate the new FF expansion."

I have cancer. One of main things that was helping me keep my head up through treatment was the fact that because I'm not currently working I'd have all the time I needed to soak up the new FF expansion and enjoy my time off. I hate to sound so incredibly dramatic, but the fact that I had to push myself to even finish the expansion is so heartbreaking for me. I didn't come in with high expectations, I just wanted something enjoyable. I got some of the most infantilized writing and tedious series of fetch quests I have ever seen in a video game.

I hate Dawntrail. If you personally enjoyed it, I'm happy for you, but I think it is objectively absolute garbage from a writing perspective and has definitely hurt my trust in the game/devs. I will probably not be buying the next expansion on release moving forward, and I will not be renewing my sub until all the patch quests are out.

[Kozh]

Truth be told, the vast majority in those threads got annoyed and skipped some cutscenes, and even those who didn't were so annoyed at the story that they couldn't even tell the basic theme of the narrative.
As OP said, it is not a great story, but all the people freaking out and even trying to say people should read books are being very disingenuous, even more as they praise all other stories XIV had as the pinnacle of gaming writing while it's just a little bit above of what was given to us in Dawntrail.

I'm sorry, but I don't suffer and force myself to not skip the cutscenes just to be told "you skip cutscene and don't know basic theme of narrative".

Review scores from users are relatively worthless here, since they tend to come from a very specific portion of the gaming population (which both *isn't* the general FFXIV population and *isn't* the kind likely to find stories about positivity and growth their thing). Critics who reviewed both DT and ARR back in the day tend to put them very close to each other, which makes sense to me given their similar nature coupled with DT having sharpened things since the ARR days but following ShB and EW vs. following 1.0.

The thing you're responding to is also an opinion, so the concept of one thing being "better" than another literally can't be "accurate" or "inaccurate."



This is an opinion. What is the obsession with the negative echo chamber around here trying to tell people their opinions are wrong?

So "muh majority opinion is the objectively right" is only valid until they go against your narrative, isn't it?

Come now, you're famous for telling people their opinion are wrong because they're "minority"