Dawntrail, Endwalkers, and the Death of 2.0

[DisgracedDairy]

I want you to consider what would change if Dawntrail had taken place within its own, entirely separate plane of existence, completely isolated from the world of Final Fantasy 14 and the contents of the main story quest. What now, within that story, cannot take place? Off the top of my head, I can think of relatively few things. One, the aetherial conductivity doesn’t exist anymore, so the Hanu’s crops could not have been fixed the same way. Two, Alexandria can’t be a reflection of the source. Three, we couldn’t have recruited the scions for Tural’s succession crisis. And four, Vrtra can’t instantly beat Zoraal Ja’s flying terminators.

Now, let’s try doing the same for Shadowbringers, using the same premise. It has also now been sent to a parallel universe, and anything related to 2.0 has been left behind. But a very strange thing happens. The narrative of Shadowbringers COMPLETELY falls apart. Without the nature of aether, the rejoinings cannot happen. The Flood of Light cannot happen. Without Minfillia, there is no Oracle of Light. There are no Warriors of Darkness. Without the Warrior of Light, there is nobody who can defeat the lightwardens. Without the Ascians, Shadowbringers has no villains. Without the reflections, there can be no Scions, no Crystal Exarch, no Crystal Tower… Shadowbringers REQUIRES the world of Final Fantasy 14 in order to happen. How easy would it be to simply rewrite Dawntrail to be a separate game? The Hanu’s crops aren’t growing? The parade float is somehow the solution anyways, for equally contrived reasons. (You would think the Hanu would have mentioned something about the parade float shooting lasers at some point.) Alexandria might as well be an alien civilization. Everyone except Wuk Lamat could be just replaced with buff yes-men and nothing would change. And if they have problems with Zoraal Ja’s armies, that one bird from the giant questline is always ready to do whatever is convenient to the plot.

The answer to “How does Dawntrail contribute to the narrative experience of Final Fantasy 14,” is that it doesn’t. Because it isn’t a story about Final Fantasy 14. It’s a story about Dawntrail.
My brother, for the longest time, has hounded me about how the Warrior of Light should have died at the end of Endwalkers, and how the story should have picked up with someone else. My problem with that is that it has essentially already happened, and that it’s awful. I miss when the Warrior of Light was integral to the story. I miss when you could do things nobody else could do.

I miss Eorzea. Is this really what we killed it in exchange for?

[Vyrerus]

I miss Eorzea. Is this really what we killed it in exchange for?

To answer this question you actually don't even need to look at Dawntrail. You must needs look back to Shadowbringers and understand what it did to the setting.

Shadowbringers was a wildly successful expansion with top tier writing. However, the lead in, into Shadowbringers was anything but. Emet-selch was introduced out of left field. The immediate threat of the Empire and Black Rose was sidelined. The Exarch's Calling became front and center. It relied on interest in the mystery of what was happening that was demanding the WoL and Scion's souls.

Enter Shadowbringers. As we all know, it was a tale about The First and the time travel enacted by G'raha Tia and the future 8UC timeline to "unwrite" history and allow the Warrior of Light to live. To stop Black Rose. To stop a calamity and Rejoining. And this monolithic undertaking by the plot's designated good guys had them run up against Emet-selch, who as it turned out, wasn't just any old Convocation Ascian. He was the only mentally stable and Unsundered Convocation Ascian of the supposed three Unsundered.

He spoke the truth behind the setting onto us in Shadowbringers, and this truth behind the setting effectively killed Eorzea. In the Fist of The North Star style, "You are already dead."

It did this by way of telling the player that Eorzea and the entire world at large are actually just a fractured future of a world ripped asunder by the struggle between the setting's two major gods that had been at the periphery of the story since 2.0.

It did this without calling attention to nor calling back to any established lore. Simultaenously, it called all of that lore into question. What's the truth? Only what we're told. What about Hydaelyn's side of the story? We'll answer that in Endwalker.

Only... Endwalker came around, and it became clear that they were eager to trim the fat. They wanted to deliver a second Shadowbringers, but they also didn't want to continue telling the story Shadowbringers turned FFXIV into, this is why Venat has a metaphor scene about The Sundering instead of an actual depiction of the event. This is why they hard turned away from aether into Dynamis. The mechanisms of FFXIV were no longer in service to the writers, so to wrest control back into their hands, they introduced whatever would allow them to do that into the story.

Forget the past. Walk away from it. Forge ahead.

This is the mindset that's made Dawntrail. Everything has to be new. Only new things get the spotlight. But they know that the success for XIV financially relies on The Ancients plotline, even though they want desperately to drop that in its entirety. This why Sphene is a Diet Ascian. This is why the backend plot still echoes with that "familiar" ground.

The old lore died in Shadowbringers. Dawntrail is just the first time they're being in your face about it.