JP: Yoshi P should step down, FF14 is a sinking ship, in response to interview

[lolnotacat]

Agreed - stories written for children still abide by the basic rules of storytelling, and having a child audience doesn't equate to the story being bad. Dawntrail doesn't follow any rules - its main character has no meaningful arc, the conflict is weak, there's no actual climax in the plot (there are multiple almost-climaxes, and they're all poorly done), and the stakes are simultaneously all over the place and yet somehow nonexistent. The tone is very juvenile and conflicts are resolved quickly, which I think is where the point of it feeling like a children's story comes from, but I've seen actual children's stories deliver a moral far more gracefully than DT did.

When you think about it, some of our best modern stories are meant "For kids", and that's partially because they have to be kept relatively simple and straightforward while still hitting all the story beats which have appealed to people for the last 5,000 years. Avatar TLA is undoubtedly for kids, but has some of the best character arcs I've seen in a TV series. Same with Star Wars. George Lucas intentionally made it for 12 year olds, but he made sure to follow the heroes' journey and hit all the important story beats.

Dawntrail wasn't written for anyone except the writer. It was clearly so he could pleasure himself to his furry waifu while she ran around being the bestest evar with her only impediment being her lack of realization that she was the bestest evar.

[Archeron]

It's even more embarassing to imagine that people READ this script, and at no point did anyone go "Hey guys, maybe this isn't that good." prior to release, especially with new writers in the house.

[sylphlands]

It's even more embarassing to imagine that people READ this script, and at no point did anyone go "Hey guys, maybe this isn't that good." prior to release, especially with new writers in the house.

This is what worries me the most. There are issues with the writing that a single editor could have caught within seconds. Nothing in this world can convince me that Ishikawa especially, one of the most gifted writers in the games industry IMO, would have greenlit this disaster. What on earth happened in that writers' room??

[ZXN]

It's even more embarassing to imagine that people READ this script, and at no point did anyone go "Hey guys, maybe this isn't that good." prior to release, especially with new writers in the house.

While it's just purely speculation, there IS always the chance that re-writes happened, or that Hiroi could've just been stubborn and constantly going "We're doing this no exceptions" with certain ideas when making and presenting the script that eventually Ishikawa and Oda just had to say yes to the script that Hiroi wrote up, lest they risk potentially delaying the expansion. Hell, it could even be a combination of both given how little direction the English voice actors seemed to have had with line delivery and how some of the characters sounded "phoned in" to some players, so I wouldn't be surprised if certain things were changed around even during the very last minute.

It's all speculation in the end and if said speculations are somewhat true then I don't think Yoshi-P and the devs are too keen on saying it straight out to avoid a PR Nightmare.

[Alchemii]

While it's just purely speculation, there IS always the chance that re-writes happened, or that Hiroi could've just been stubborn and constantly going "We're doing this no exceptions" with certain ideas when making and presenting the script that eventually Ishikawa and Oda just had to say yes to the script that Hiroi wrote up, lest they risk potentially delaying the expansion. Hell, it could even be a combination of both given how little direction the English voice actors seemed to have had with line delivery and how some of the characters sounded "phoned in" to some players, so I wouldn't be surprised if certain things were changed around even during the very last minute.

It's all speculation in the end and if said speculations are somewhat true then I don't think Yoshi-P and the devs are too keen on saying it straight out to avoid a PR Nightmare.

Their best bet would be to let Hiroi, and certain other Toxic individual, go, and then "Leak" it to the public that they won't be returning. There are numerous problems with DT, from the Script to the class designs to "others", but there are only a few individuals that we can point at specifically as a problem.

[GrizzlyTank]

This is what worries me the most. There are issues with the writing that a single editor could have caught within seconds. Nothing in this world can convince me that Ishikawa especially, one of the most gifted writers in the games industry IMO, would have greenlit this disaster. What on earth happened in that writers' room??

Peter principle? Unfortunately the top writers were promoted to positions they were less ideal for.

[Raven2014]

While it's just purely speculation, there IS always the chance that re-writes happened, or that Hiroi could've just been stubborn and constantly going "We're doing this no exceptions" with certain ideas when making and presenting the script that eventually Ishikawa and Oda just had to say yes to the script that Hiroi wrote up, lest they risk potentially delaying the expansion. Hell, it could even be a combination of both given how little direction the English voice actors seemed to have had with line delivery and how some of the characters sounded "phoned in" to some players, so I wouldn't be surprised if certain things were changed around even during the very last minute.

Or it could just be another example of an toxic positive environment. Maybe some people did see a problem, but didn't want to say it because "we're all part of the team".

But tbh, I'm leaning more toward interference. I'm no shy from criticizing the current writers, and has been pretty loud about it. But sometime I feel it's almost irrational to believe a professional writer can be "THIS" bad. And given all the inconsistency sprinkle all over the place throughout the MSQ which ... again, again feel impossible to fathom for a team of writers to not see it. So while I don;t know if it's true or not, and I have no evidence to offer beside conjecture ... but this mess we call DT is reek of inference, either from clueless executive decision or brainless consultants that have no idea what the story is supposed to be about. I feel "last minute butchering" is the most feasible explanation for what happens in DT.

[ObscuraFi]

[Sweet Baby Inc] is a "consulting firm" ( aka political lib/leftie extremist cult)
whos goal is to spread their political views (propaganda) into entertainment media (games,movies..ect)

- They list [Square Enix] as one of their clients on their website.

Good news. Square Enix is now removed from the list. News courtesy of Pirat_Nation on X.

[Alchemii]

Good news. Square Enix is now removed from the list. News courtesy of Pirat_Nation on X.

Bad news. Unconfirmed Rumor is they swapped over to another group called Hit Detection, which does a lot of the same DEI focused stuff as SBI, but without being as well known.

[Rekh]

Disastrously for the skin fearing and right wing extremists square enix understands trends and population numbers. If square enix is ran by professionals they can easily identify the 4chan criminal element surrounding the fringe campaign on the forum and other platforms in regards to square enix deciding to use a voice actress that doesn't look like them and/or is a stand-in for a different race. As the above shows, it's not about Hiroi's writing.