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

[ZXN]

I hated Endwalker. So many things just felt so...off that it's hard to explain fully without bumbling words.

Somehow Dawntrail did it all worse. Pacing was awful in many places. Many characters were awful and acted unnatural. Writing decisions at many points were baffling.

Also the "It's a new story so it won't hit as much" shtick I don't buy. Yes it's the start of a "new" story, but they pretty much didn't even try with it as a result. Dawntrail was literally mostly just "Let's copy and paste over many of the Warrior of Lights' accomplishments and big moments, but replace the WOL with our new Fursona OC" without remotely understanding why those accomplishments and moments were so big to our character to begin with and even remotely attempt to build those moments up for their fursona as they just give them to her effortlessly and go "See? Look at how great she is!!!" and force you to agree with it every step of the way.

It's hard to say what they can really do at this point besides telling them "Get your shit together." You could say bring Ishikawa back, but eventually she just won't want to do it anymore, and if they don't have people prepared to take over for her then it's really going to be a rough road story/writing wise. Nobody is going to enjoy telling everyone, or being told, "It'll get better in X.X I promise" for potentially years while every player just ultimately waits for the writers/devs to get their heads out of their asses and get their shit together. WOW players had to deal with this kind of mentality for years, and a good amount of FF14 players' mocked and made fun of them for it, so it's absolutely a road that we don't want to be heading down ourselves with FF14.

[Manamaru]

snip

We went from being the Warrior of Light to the Warrior who likes to watch in many of the cut scenes. Hell, in one of them what's his face even acknowledges that we are a walking nodding force of nature. And if our presence was meant to be as some kind of mentor for Wuk, then that was garbled in the story line of her own "personal growth".

That said, the WoL at this point is a force of devastation. That kind of note could've or still could be used as a driving plot point that turns the WoL's immense power against them. How would the common everyday person behave knowing that you're capable of dps-checking their face in effortlessly and might want to have you locked away for others' safety? That you're not just one bad day away from leveling a town or a village on a whim? Or a character that would use your eager "I'm doing what's right and helping others out" attitude for their own ends and leaving you with the consequences to either try and fix it or leave it. In some ways we've already had that; but now that so far it appears that nothing could stop us if they tried to, who with malicious intent wouldn't be trying to use that for their own gain?

[Hallarem]

We went from being the Warrior of Light to the Warrior who likes to watch in many of the cut scenes. Hell, in one of them what's his face even acknowledges that we are a walking nodding force of nature. And if our presence was meant to be as some kind of mentor for Wuk, then that was garbled in the story line of her own "personal growth".

That said, the WoL at this point is a force of devastation. That kind of note could've or still could be used as a driving plot point that turns the WoL's immense power against them. How would the common everyday person behave knowing that you're capable of dps-checking their face in effortlessly and might want to have you locked away for others' safety? That you're not just one bad day away from leveling a town or a village on a whim? Or a character that would use your eager "I'm doing what's right and helping others out" attitude for their own ends and leaving you with the consequences to either try and fix it or leave it. In some ways we've already had that; but now that so far it appears that nothing could stop us if they tried to, who with malicious intent wouldn't be trying to use that for their own gain?

Please, let's stop with the "WoL is a nuke" narrative already. A black mage could nuke a city with a giant meteor, the world is filled with people who could be a threat to the WoL. Hell, we got floored by a drugged drink. Sure, we are powerful, but that doesn't mean that an actually skilled party of aether users couldn't take the WoL down or a very powerful monster. Any powerful aether user could "take down a village or a town on a whim". Hold someone hostage, use political leverage to get to the WoL.
BUT I do agree that making use of the angle of the WoL being a threath somehow or even the Scions combined meddling with politics in the world being a threath could be used as a story point. Like they awkwardly tried to do when the scions "Disbanded" but who are they kidding, stop with the pretending, everyone likes you and knows you. Why do you even need to hide? They kinda wrote themselves into a corner and tried to somehow do an edgy "oh... the world balance would shift if we did things in the open" pffft please.

The reason why nothing can stop us because we are the main character and we are by design meant to win everything. Not because we are superman/woman. But even then, we HAVE failed before, when we were forced to flee Ul'dah because of political implications. (Where has that writing gone?).

There's many lifelines our fights had, because we had:

- Help
- A party of adventurers
- The blessing to stop us from being tempered
- A power up like Hraesvaelgars eye
- Obvious main character powers
- A rejoining of souls
- A stupid dynamis blessing (Lets please cast dynamis into the abyss already, its a horrible writers crutch because they cant be bothered to use their own magic system or learn their own lore about aether.)


(And sorry if this comes off as somehow combative, but I am really sick of the "The WoL is a superweapon that cannot be beat ever and is like Goku" argument. That aint it.)

[ReynTime]

Please, let's stop with the "WoL is a nuke" narrative already. A black mage could nuke a city with a giant meteor, the world is filled with people who could be a threat to the WoL. Hell, we got floored by a drugged drink. Sure, we are powerful, but that doesn't mean that an actually skilled party of aether users couldn't take the WoL down or a very powerful monster. Any powerful aether user could "take down a village or a town on a whim". Hold someone hostage, use political leverage to get to the WoL.
BUT I do agree that making use of the angle of the WoL being a threath somehow or even the Scions combined meddling with politics in the world being a threath could be used as a story point. Like they awkwardly tried to do when the scions "Disbanded" but who are they kidding, stop with the pretending, everyone likes you and knows you. Why do you even need to hide? They kinda wrote themselves into a corner and tried to somehow do an edgy "oh... the world balance would shift if we did things in the open" pffft please.

The reason why nothing can stop us because we are the main character and we are by design meant to win everything. Not because we are superman/woman. But even then, we HAVE failed before, when we were forced to flee Ul'dah because of political implications. (Where has that writing gone?).

There's many lifelines our fights had, because we had:

- Help
- A party of adventurers
- The blessing to stop us from being tempered
- A power up like Hraesvaelgars eye
- Obvious main character powers
- A rejoining of souls
- A stupid dynamis blessing (Lets please cast dynamis into the abyss already, its a horrible writers crutch because they cant be bothered to use their own magic system or learn their own lore about aether.)


(And sorry if this comes off as somehow combative, but I am really sick of the "The WoL is a superweapon that cannot be beat ever and is like Goku" argument. That aint it.)

"Who would win? WoL or Kirby???"

[ZXN]

-Snip

By Dawntrail's launch, our WOL just got done literally punching the embodiment of despair and hopelessness in the face and won, along with just recently stopping Zeromus, a literal Semi-immortal shard of Zodiark, directly after. Quite literally NOTHING should be even remotely threatening to our character.

The Endsinger was pretty much the only real chance they had to really "nerf" our character and make it make any sense given she was a universe ending threat compared to what we've dealt with up to that point. They could've made it to where the WOL had to expend a bunch of their armor mcguffin powers to put down the Endsinger, and then follow it up with "losing" Venat's Blessing of Light by essentially transferring it to Zero so she could get that anime power boost and beat Zeromus since she was the only one with the power to seal it away. Then we could've went into Dawntrail as essentially the closest we've been to a "regular" person since ARR, with only the Echo and Azem's Summoning power being carried over from the past 10 year story, and make it a "clean slate" of sorts where we see what we can do when we don't have the insane power of the ancients on our side.

Instead however, we entered Dawntrail as a multiverse level contender and one of the strongest entities literally alive. Yes, we've had help in the past due to people and many, many mcguffins, but it doesn't change the fact we could've solved every single issue in the entirety of Tural in like a week if we genuinely felt like it. I'd be hard to convince me anyone looked at Zoraal Ja, listened to his "I want to go to war to teach people why war is bad" and genuinely go "This guy is a MASSIVE threat, we should treat him seriously..." No, I get the feeling most responses to Zoraal Ja's "ambition" was: "This guy is a fucking moron lmao. My sneezes have more power then this whole nation does lizard boy, get real lmao", or something along those lines, because Zoraal Ja is literally that pathetic of a threat when compared to our WOL. Even Sphene could be seen as a joke given we were really pushed that this was a "Low stakes" expansion, and was then given a being with the means and power to attempt a genocide of the entire source. If someone like Sphene is considered "low stakes" to our current character, then it'll be hard to take anything that isn't a Endsinger level threat seriously.

I also dislike the "WOL is a walking nuke" narrative, but unfortunately it rings true to a certain degree, if mainly because they have wrote themselves into this corner in a way. They made the WOL do close to nothing for most of the expansion and made them a nodding, yes-man, cheerleader. I wouldn't be surprised if the devs know there is a "power level issue" of sorts, but don't know how to properly address it yet in a way that isn't just them going "This expansion will end with having a Endsinger Level Threat for WOL to fight and beat" again and again.

[ArchlordPie]

Please, let's stop with the "WoL is a nuke" narrative already. A black mage could nuke a city with a giant meteor, the world is filled with people who could be a threat to the WoL. Hell, we got floored by a drugged drink. Sure, we are powerful, but that doesn't mean that an actually skilled party of aether users couldn't take the WoL down or a very powerful monster. Any powerful aether user could "take down a village or a town on a whim". Hold someone hostage, use political leverage to get to the WoL.
BUT I do agree that making use of the angle of the WoL being a threath somehow or even the Scions combined meddling with politics in the world being a threath could be used as a story point. Like they awkwardly tried to do when the scions "Disbanded" but who are they kidding, stop with the pretending, everyone likes you and knows you. Why do you even need to hide? They kinda wrote themselves into a corner and tried to somehow do an edgy "oh... the world balance would shift if we did things in the open" pffft please.

The reason why nothing can stop us because we are the main character and we are by design meant to win everything. Not because we are superman/woman. But even then, we HAVE failed before, when we were forced to flee Ul'dah because of political implications. (Where has that writing gone?).

There's many lifelines our fights had, because we had:

- Help
- A party of adventurers
- The blessing to stop us from being tempered
- A power up like Hraesvaelgars eye
- Obvious main character powers
- A rejoining of souls
- A stupid dynamis blessing (Lets please cast dynamis into the abyss already, its a horrible writers crutch because they cant be bothered to use their own magic system or learn their own lore about aether.)


(And sorry if this comes off as somehow combative, but I am really sick of the "The WoL is a superweapon that cannot be beat ever and is like Goku" argument. That aint it.)

...the whole point of In From The Cold was to demonstrate that a lot of what you just said is plain wrong.

The WoL is strong, above and beyond what most of the world perceives as the limits of mortal potential. Tataru couldn't even manage a Carbuncle for goodness' sake, and by the time you're in EW, you're able to pop out demi-Bahamuts and demi-Phoenixes effectively at will. The whole concept behind job stones is that possessing them grants you knowledge above and beyond that of normal people, and the WoL not only is capable of collecting them like they're Funko pops, but actively using that knowledge in applied combat situations. It's not just that they're good at combat in general. They can specialize in whatever they want to specialize in and switch between them at will.

Sure, any old black mage could conjure a meteor and nuke a city, but black magic as a discipline was thought lost to the ages until the WoL found a job stone for it at the end of the THM questline. It's hard for "any old black mage" to be considered a threat when, for the longest time, there was no such thing as "any old black mage". The next-strongest user of that brand of magic, aside from the WoL, is probably one of those Lalafells in the THM guild. Imagine In From The Cold, but you're a Lalafell with max 2 stacks of fire/ice, Thunder proc rates are halved, and Transpose is a 2-minute cooldown. That's closer to what "normal" people in this world would consider the pinnacle of black magic.

You bring up things like the political situation at the end of ARR and the fact that the WoL has had help from a lot of different places in the past. Those are all very fair points. The politics thing only worked back then because of how badly Alphinaud (not the WoL) botched things and how it was still relatively easy to consider the WoL guilty by association. Now that they've attained literal "savior of the world" status, I find it far easier to believe that anyone who would consider attempting such a thing again either 1) would give up at the slightest notion that the WoL might get involved, or 2) would make absolutely certain that the WoL is sufficiently distracted while things are happening, and that things wrap up and everyone involved vanishes before the WoL inevitably resolves the distraction situation and comes knocking. Alternatively, the theoretical villain could just be stupid, in which case the WoL shows up and disintegrates them on the spot. (Probably still an improvement compared to DT's writing.)

Yes, the WoL has had lots of help from the sources that you named. That's the difference-maker. That's what elevates them from "legitimately talented martialist" to "force of nature". Even if you come up with something that should, on paper, be equal or greater than the WoL in battle, the WoL will always show up with someone or something to even the odds. Contrast Zoraal Ja (or whichever Ja Ja was the First Promise, IDR). The guy who kills his own sycophant solely because he, personally, solely, has to be the hero all by himself. Zoraal Ja is strong and augmented with Alexandrian tech, but he still loses in the end to the guy who's strong AND brought backup. The Ja Jas back in ARR thought they could just win every fight forever by tempering everyone. And then the WoL shows up and can't be tempered.

I like to believe that the WoL's unpredictability is their least-discussed strength. The third pillar alongside "legitimate inherent talent" and "laundry list of friends and magical blessings" that all add up to them being this universe's Goku equivalent. Like, look at Vauthry at the tail end of his arc. "You can't kill me if you can't reach me. So I'll fly my magical angel island away and guard it with my flying army. You'll just get shot down if you try to fly up here." And then the WoL responds to that by organizing a bunch of craftsmen and having them build a giant robot that grabs Vauthry's island, enabling the WoL to climb up there the old-fashioned way and storm the place. On paper, that solution works, but you'd have to be nuts to come up with it.

[Hallarem]

snip

Okay, how about a summoner then, how about a talented monk.
The WoL has his advantages, he's clearly superior to a lot of people, if not most. I just don't like it when a main character of a game who will automatically in MOST CASES win is suddenly lauded as "unbeatable" and putting anyone up to them makes no sense. When the magic system / job system in this game CLEARLY shows how aether works in the lore and that could easily put up an opponent for the WoL. OF COURSe he will win, he is the main character and by the logic of the story he WILL win. Doesn't mean there can't be a worthy opponent.

The writing team has written themselves in a corner slightly, but its still nothing that can't be course corrected.
Though the end of the universe jump the shark dynamis moment made it very very very hard to write out of that dumb corner. But I do hope they try.

[ScartPearl]

We went from being the Warrior of Light to the Warrior who likes to watch in many of the cut scenes. Hell, in one of them what's his face even acknowledges that we are a walking nodding force of nature. And if our presence was meant to be as some kind of mentor for Wuk, then that was garbled in the story line of her own "personal growth".

I’ll be honest, I don’t mind not being the center of attention, but things need to be justified. For better or worse, the WoL defeated the greatest threat in the universe single-handedly. There are certain situations where it doesn’t make sense for the WoL to just stand by and watch—it goes against their very nature.

What really bothered me, though, was the lack of character development with Wuk Lamat. She’s described as a princess who’s never left Tuliyollal, to the point that she doesn’t even know her own people. And yet, the way they handled her "growth" was frustratingly shallow—she gets everything handed to her on a silver platter, without struggle, without learning that failure is an essential part of growth.

She needed to fail. Because it’s through failure that we learn and grow, but instead, she breezed through every challenge, and in some cases, the solutions were outright ridiculous. It felt like she was succeeding just because the story needed her to, not because she earned it.

A perfect example of this is the final fight with Sphene. What irritated me wasn’t that someone broke the barrier and joined the fight—it was who broke it. Are you seriously telling me that Wuk Lamat is stronger or more capable than G’raha Tia, who has all the knowledge of the Crystal Exarch? That makes no sense. G’raha is incredibly powerful and intelligent, and it’s completely unrealistic to portray her as having the strength or knowledge to surpass him, especially given how immature she still was at that point.

[TaleraRistain]

There are certain situations where it doesn’t make sense for the WoL to just stand by and watch—it goes against their very nature.

I wanted to scream at my screen during a certain throne room scene. The WoL would not just STAND THERE while someone is being killed. And some lame line about honor is not going to change that.

[ScartPearl]

I wanted to scream at my screen during a certain throne room scene. The WoL would not just STAND THERE while someone is being killed. And some lame line about honor is not going to change that.

YES, exactly! I wanted to scream too! The WoL has been through so much, fought gods, and saved entire worlds—there’s just no way they’d stand there and let that happen. That line about "honor" was such a weak excuse, it made my blood boil. It completely goes against everything the WoL stands for! That scene was so out of character, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

I mean, it's obvious they wanted to kill that character, but they could have written it in a much smarter way! That scene felt just plain stupid. I think even those who liked the expansion have to admit that it makes absolutely no sense.