Dawntrail’s Narrative Missteps: Why Natsuko Ishikawa’s Touch Is Sorely Missed

[Nasigno]

Shadowbringers had the background to build for the story, albiet they did ride a lot into the setting they picked the villian they made of Emet Selch was a hard one to match with any others. Heavensward did set a good notion, and even used death to an effective measure as we have seen before. The issue is they never continued having the weight of death sitting around again. Perhaps it is because they did not want to have too dark a tone, or as someone else eluded to the notion of our precious Hydaelyn being less than a beacon of justice and right.

Ultimate Thule had a lot of potential to introduce us into the threat they so made. It was a good method to have the illusions of civilizations and planets lost to introduce the threat with giving how it could manifest outside of a few quests and a single duty roulette. It had potential to be a great showing that could of been used through out the post story to that conclusion with a battle with. But guess it had to be slammed in and done so we could not be bothered on that.

[YumieYumiki]

Shadowbringer was the 4th chapter of the story. Dawntrail is the first chapter of a new one so of course it's not going to deliver any big story beat just yet.

If you want to compare dawntrail with something, compare it with arr up to operation archon. It wasn't a great story either and was an extremely cliche good versus evil story until hydaelyn and the ascians were recontextualized in shadowbringers.

You can't reach the heights of stories like shadowbringers and endwalker without doing a whole lot of setup first.

[Hallarem]

Shadowbringer was the 4th chapter of the story. Dawntrail is the first chapter of a new one so of course it's not going to deliver any big story beat just yet.

If you want to compare dawntrail with something, compare it with arr up to operation archon. It wasn't a great story either and was an extremely cliche good versus evil story until hydaelyn and the ascians were recontextualized in shadowbringers.

You can't reach the heights of stories like shadowbringers and endwalker without doing a whole lot of setup first.

Please, lets stop with the whole "setup" excuse again. A good story is not just its climax. Its the build up, the world building, the pacing. Everything.
Okay. I'll play. What did Dawntrail set up for the future we didnt already know? Other shards exist? We already knew that.
"The writing can be bad, its building up to something" please. I can forgive ARR because it was rushed out to save 1.0.

But we smashed Endwalker (2 expacs together) for THIS? Oooof

[Voidmage]

Shadowbringer was the 4th chapter of the story. Dawntrail is the first chapter of a new one so of course it's not going to deliver any big story beat just yet.

If you want to compare dawntrail with something, compare it with arr up to operation archon. It wasn't a great story either and was an extremely cliche good versus evil story until hydaelyn and the ascians were recontextualized in shadowbringers.

You can't reach the heights of stories like shadowbringers and endwalker without doing a whole lot of setup first.

Even ARR was better.
It had slavery, racism, a continent on the brink of war and other grey areas.
The bad things about it was atrocious pacing, stiff dialogues and mustache twirling villian tropes.

It doesn't matter if DT is the start of a new story. That should only result in maybe a slow start or lower stakes and not in bad writing.
No one was expecting heights but consistent quality writing without a disney princess.

oh... ok lol

You could at least try to read the rest.

[YumieYumiki]

Even ARR was better.
It had slavery, racism,

oh... ok lol

[Daralii]

Shadowbringer was the 4th chapter of the story. Dawntrail is the first chapter of a new one so of course it's not going to deliver any big story beat just yet.

If you want to compare dawntrail with something, compare it with arr up to operation archon. It wasn't a great story either and was an extremely cliche good versus evil story until hydaelyn and the ascians were recontextualized in shadowbringers.

You can't reach the heights of stories like shadowbringers and endwalker without doing a whole lot of setup first.

Yoshida backpedaled and said that 8.0 is the actual first chapter and DT is just an interlude, and it still has a box price and requires a subscription. Unless there is a free option to skip from 6.55 to 8.0, it being a glorified sidequest has always been a bad excuse.

[Barachim]

Right, let's ignore 15 years of experience gained. How often do people who criticise the expansion have to repeat that we didn't expect big story beats and were ready for a low stakes advenure? The big problems of this expansion continue to be horrendous pacing, badly written characters and world building that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It feels amateurish.

All we wanted was a new adventure and to look for the Golden City. But the Golden City has already been found, deflating the excitement for the search instantly, 90-95% of the conflicts on the new continent have already been solved, and we just follow an orange cat around to win the throne, while she yaps on about peace & happiness like a broken record. Which ironically did not make me feel peaceful or happy.

[YumieYumiki]

Yoshida backpedaled and said that 8.0 is the actual first chapter and DT is just an interlude, and it still has a box price and requires a subscription. Unless there is a free option to skip from 6.55 to 8.0, it being a glorified sidequest has always been a bad excuse.

ah yes the interlude that introduced an entire continent and a high tech civilization, I'm sure none of that will come up again

Hopefully there will be some good stuff in 8.0 like slavery and racism

[Daralii]

ah yes the interlude that introduced an entire continent and a high tech civilization, I'm sure none of that will come up again

Hopefully there will be some good stuff in 8.0 like slavery and racism

If you want to argue with the director/producer about what the expansion is, go nuts.

[Kaurhz]

Shadowbringer was the 4th chapter of the story. Dawntrail is the first chapter of a new one so of course it's not going to deliver any big story beat just yet.

If you want to compare dawntrail with something, compare it with arr up to operation archon. It wasn't a great story either and was an extremely cliche good versus evil story until hydaelyn and the ascians were recontextualized in shadowbringers.

You can't reach the heights of stories like shadowbringers and endwalker without doing a whole lot of setup first.

There's a point in terms of reaching story climaxes and unveiling of a lot of characters that had been around for a very long time.

But IMO, none of the problems with the current story are related to it being the first chapter. Obviously, it isn't going to be as big, but first chapter of a story is not an excuse to treat pre-existing lore like an afterthought, or to have some characters put the screentime on a stranglehold, and then you have the issue of where they tried so hard to make you care about characters in 15 minutes only to rinse them out of the story. Like, Shaaloani, and the latter half of Yak T'el, were actually decent -- Good even if you want to be generous about it.