Why are people settling for an "ARR Tier" story?

[Zaniel]

How on Hydaelyn's green earth did you get from here to Kardashians?

Because it is a media example of something that is objectively utter trash but people still like it, like Dawntrail.

[Zaniel]

That's not what "objective" means, you're entitled to have your opinion and shout from the rooftops that you think Dawntrail sucks if you want to. But if there are people who disagree with you, then that's subjective, not objective.

Same with the Kardashians actually, there are people who give a toss about them. One man's trash is another man's treasure and etc.

I know the difference between objective and subjective and I used the term deliberately. Dawntrail, by any sane measure and example of historical or contemporary writing the way it is used and consumed by humanity, is OBJECTIVELY bad. If you submitted this script to a even partly normal writing class or movie/game production house you would be told to go back, reread your class notes and start again. If you disagree that's fine, you aren't a bad person but you are still incorrect. I'm sorry.

[Sotaris]

wall of text

I probably hold a unpopular opinion among the rest of the vocal minority here, but ARR was fine. DT is fine thus far.

I didn't go in expecting SHB-EW type of writing or impact. Probably the story will be developed well and good in post patches and you'll look back and realize "hey DT wasn't so bad after all.".

It's fine disliking the story, it's also fine to like it.
But can we stop the circle jerking already, we have so many threads here and a million posts on reddit. If you want to critic the expansion, at least consolidate it into 1 thread like the healers did for the "Healerstrike".

[freekyfreezer]

I honestly believe a majority of people are only calling ARR bad because they started playing comparatively recently (meaning during 5.x or 6.x) and whichever friend recommended the game to them probably couldn't stop talking about how incredible Shadowbringers is. Being told to "wait" until you see the story four expansions into the future turns ARR into a slog and you appreciate the character building that occurs during ARR much less. I have been playing MSQ up to Shadowbringers for a second time on an NA alt and the ARR story is honestly good for what it needed to do.

Comparing Dawntrail to ARR or saying ARR2 is needed is a poor take in my opinion. I doubt Wuk Lamat will play anything more than a random arc side role in the MSQ beyond 7.x, and the same holds true for all the other new characters. Besides a deeper character building of Erenville, there is really nothing Dawntrail has done to forward the WOL or any of the main characters in any way or shape. Note that I am explicitly not mentioning Krile because although they have advertised her to be another integral part of the expansion MSQ, her character has not at all been developed, her focus on exploring the origin of herself has been borderline ignored, and even her newly taken job has not been shown besides for the one battle cutscene as we went from Shaaloani to the entrance of the Level 97 dungeon. The rest of the Scions have been just the same as in the other four expansions, except with no strife to explore upon, such as Thancred's struggle with Ryne, or Urianger being suspected to work undercover against us, or Yda/Lyse trying to find a new purpose in her life after the death of Papalymo. Honestly there was not even a single reason to have Estinien in the Dawntrail MSQ except to avoid an angry mob of Twitter WOLship simps. Same with Y'Shtola. Did we really need her to appear in the MSQ just so she could say "mmmh yea this giant gaping hole that could fit an entire continent through it looks like an interdimensional rift"? Sometimes, in this context, less is more.

I am not hard to please, by the way. After all I thought the Watch Dogs 1 story was great (unlike a great many people). This personal note just underlines how much went wrong in the Dawntrail MSQ.

[PaleYonder]

Yeah as others have said already, ARR had real strengths for what it was. Even purely storywise, I enjoyed it as a new player, building up the world, the lore, not least my own character. Some parts are painful, like the pre-Titan fetchquesting, and that doesn't get any better with nostalgia, it's just bad, period. Dawntrail is almost all pre-Titan fetchquesting.
In ARR, I really loved the political set-up with the city states all being different flavours of awful, with awful leadership and awful people in their unique ways. And I enjoyed the irony of the pirate city being arguably the leat immoral one at least to its own citizens (we don't talk about the beast tribes). And they were all creating their own problems, immediate ones and slowly brewing bigger ones. As a dark fantasy fan, all this appealed to me a lot. It just also had a fun pretty anime veneer, and a lot of the random NPCs had funny lines to say if you talked to them (I miss that attention to detail now).
If we got that, I'd be much happier with Dawntrail.
At the same time, that was the new player experience, and upon replay it's the nostalgia for the new player experience and the fresh feeling of a new alt with nothing unlocked yet and the world your oyster, a return to simpler times for a bit until things get real again. Thats not what I expect from the latest expansion after everything that came between. And I simply liked the expansions a lot better.

And I love building alts and making up new characters and playing parts of their journeys. I only have one Azem but several characters with their own business, and I've always loved replaying the expansions and yes, even ARR (minus some stretches). Sometimes I also just turn on new game plus because I get a mood e.g. "I want to play Endwalker again." Same for any expansion. I love all of them.

This time it's different. This time, in the middle of the new main quest I'd been looking forward to, I thought "I want to play Shadowbringers." That's not how it should be.
And also this time, after having finally finished the MSQ and being relieved to do so, should I stay subscribed: I know I never want to play this expansion main quest ever again. One time was painful enough. And the writing was on the wall early into playing it. So I've started gradually consolidating my alts to park for an indefinite amount of time, and the game character I played this on is now my main and my only played character. A complete change in habits.

[MatthiusAbysswalker]

They should have just called this expansion "Fetch Quest". Utter waste of time.

[Honalee]

I felt the story was great to be honest; I just felt there was a pretty huge misfire in the implementation of that story.

[Asako]

As a story skipper I thought the story was great. A lot less boring instances with random NPC's and straight to endgame. It was great. More of this please and less of the 'emote to some scrub' or 'use say chat to talk wet to some chump'.

More of this please.


To those complaining about the story, it's the opening chapter, you don't get finale energy in the prologue of a story.

[Daralii]

As a story skipper I thought the story was great. A lot less boring instances with random NPC's and straight to endgame. It was great. More of this please and less of the 'emote to some scrub' or 'use say chat to talk wet to some chump'.

More of this please.


To those complaining about the story, it's the opening chapter, you don't get finale energy in the prologue of a story.

Yoshida said during his damage control tour that this isn't the opening chapter. 8.X is allegedly the actual opening chapter, so they could have just finished 6.X with us getting the hourglass and skipped DT entirely.

[Honalee]

I honestly felt, while the story itself wasn't bad, the implementation of it was... I also felt on a whole, this story gave us actually much less story "real estate" than ARR did... ARR set up so many things, from the Asians, to the Garleans, to the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story, to Ala Mhigo, etc... There was NONE of that kind of setup in Dawntrail...

That, in addition, to Wuk Lamat essentially hyjacking the entire expansion and giving the WoL Player Character almost no breathing room to explore and solve issues on their own was a pretty big issue... We hadn't seen those kinds of things happen with Lyse, Hien, Exarch, or Ryne, even Minfilia, and the devs need to get back to that kind of story telling, combined with MUCH more actual "gameplay" between the cutsences... Which are wonderful, but we also need more "gameplay" and good gameplay in a video game.