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

[Voidmage]

The truth is, they've always done this. I first realized this was how they do things when Stormblood was coming out:

• They had ignored the fact Bards abandoned their job or quit the game over cast times being added for 2 years, then suddenly advertised it would be reverted in Stormblood.
• They had ignored how clunky and abandoned the cross-class system was for 2 years then suddenly said it would be addressed in Stormblood.
• They had ignored constant complaints about RNG mitigation (Parry) then suddenly announced it would be replaced with Tenacity in Stormblood so that you at least know it will always reduce the damage of a tank buster.

After that it became apparent this is how they do it. If there is a problem, they will probably address it all the way at the next expansion.

It would be ideal if issues were addressed faster though.

Agree on this.
And that is why I can understand so many players who just give up on giving nice and constructive feedback.
I don't think it is the right decision but I can certainly connect with it.

[Daralii]

The truth is, they've always done this. I first realized this was how they do things when Stormblood was coming out:

• They had ignored the fact Bards abandoned their job or quit the game over cast times being added for 2 years, then suddenly advertised it would be reverted in Stormblood.
• They had ignored how clunky and abandoned the cross-class system was for 2 years then suddenly said it would be addressed in Stormblood.
• They had ignored constant complaints about RNG mitigation (Parry) then suddenly announced it would be replaced with Tenacity in Stormblood so that you at least know it will always reduce the damage of a tank buster.

After that it became apparent this is how they do it. If there is a problem, they will probably address it all the way at the next expansion.

It would be ideal if issues were addressed faster though.

Some issues get fixed, but others just compound patch after patch and either don't get addressed or are addressed in a roundabout way that's detrimental for the game as a whole. Every job's been designed more and more to fit into the 2-minute meta just because several jobs synergized too well because of how their buffs and debuffs synced up.

[ForteNightshade]

She was, and thats why I will still consider Dawntrail Ishikawa's work, she had the power to course correct, but she didn't.

Not to mention, while this may be a hot take of mine. I don't think Endwalker's main story (i.e. 6.0) was great either. It's certainly a mile above Dawntrail, but that's not exactly a high bar. Endwalker suffers from its own pacing issues, predominantly the 81 split where Thavnair, in particular, really starts to drag on. I have similar criticism towards the Moon with the whole Loporrit plot angle reaching a point where I couldn't wait to leave. Another point of contention for me is how much EW relies on poorly timed jokes to break tension. Perhaps the best example is the Puddingway scene after the Final Days hits the Garlemald camp. You have an emotionally charged scene, especially with Julius finally coming to terms with years of brainwashing, then you have the chaos of people becoming monsters all juxtapositioned with a bunny pretending to act like a zombie because he's that obsessed with pudding. It wrecks of current day MCU not letting the serious moments be serious.

And don't even get me started on how horrendously utilized Zenos and the whole Final Days plot arc is. In the latter case, it literally only impacts Thavnair on screen. Everywhere else is regulated to side quests where it's barely an inconvenience.

Suffice it to say, Ishikawa’s writing is not the gospel. She's incredibly talented, and Shadowbringers is by far her magnum opus, but she has her own struggles. Of course, the aforementioned criticism of Endwalker is only my opinion. I do think she would have done better with Dawntrail as its lead again, however he still signed off on a good portion of Dawntrail's story ideas even without writing them herself. And a number of those ideas were just bad no matter who wrote them.

[Jeeqbit]

I have similar criticism towards the Moon with the whole Loporrit plot angle reaching a point where I couldn't wait to leave.

A lot of people say that, but it was obviously intentional. They like to have a part where the story stops off and spends time with something silly and lighthearted, be they moogles, namazu, pixies or loporrits.

It's not actually my thing because I don't have a sense of "cute". But I accept they do it because they want to have a "cutesy" moment in the story like "here's a moogle out of nowhere, look how cute it is" or "here's a loporrit, look how cute they are". I suppose it must appeal to a lot of players that like that stuff.

Another point of contention for me is how much EW relies on poorly timed jokes to break tension.

I see that in a similar way to the above stuff tbh. Not my thing, but I know I'm not the only audience.

[Hallarem]

Snip.

Yeah, I appreciate her for her efforts, but like any people, including Yoshi P. They aren't perfect, the track record just isn't there.
Ishikawa and Yoshi P still (supposedly) had to okay everything that happened in DT, including that horrid SMILE song.

And I agree with the fact that Endwalker was just the downhill start point in terms of storytelling. It was clearly two expansions packed into one.
The pace just wasn't there and the cartoon/anime humor started to rear it's ugly head there, they tried to cutesify Y'shtola and I remember Yoshi P reeling them back on that, because that just wasnt her character. Some clear anime brains were let loose in that writing room.
Zenos didnt have a place in that expansion, he felt like a plot dishrag that they had to force into the scene because they couldnt come up with a plot for him.
The Puddingway scene made me actually mad. Loads of people died and they sign in for a puddingway zombie gag? Disgusting.
You could've honestly deleted the whole of Labyrinthos and maybe even Sharlayan.
Woo guess we have a spaceship that Sharlayan invented out of nowhere, wooooo. What CANT Sharlayan do?
Woo guess we have a magical energy called Dynamis that can legit be used as a writer crutch when a character isnt powerful enough and we can skip the training montage.
Woo guess Thancreds aether deficiency isnt a deficiency anymore. Hello I'm random scientist and just happened to invent a teleporter for people that can't channel their aether, how do you do
Garlemald, all that political scheming with the royal family, the populares and getting to see our antagonists city and how they live.. NOPE, destroyed OFF SCREEN

Now I like the expansion for wrapping a nice enough bow on scenes, I liked everything with Venat, it had powerful scenes with presence, thats what I loved. But the aforementioned traits just soured it for me and left me happy, but worried for the future of this game. AND LO AND BEHOLD DAWNTRAIL happened, they rushed two expansions into one, for a horrendous lackluster expansion with juvenile storytelling.

[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.

[Vhana]

Possibly controversial, but I’ve always felt that Ishikawa’s specific magic was her character work and not her plot or pacing. Her character writing for npcs and the WoL could carry weaker plot points and questionable narrative direction.

And I do miss that in Dawntrail. If I’d love the characters it would be easier to ignore the other problems with the story.

[grinkdaboy]

for me also with ishikawa's writing you get a feeling of how grounded characters are. what their motivations are, why they are doing what they are doing in the story (or at least being able to infer that which i feel is a skill too few games demand of players nowadays) a lot of dt just felt like it happened because the script said so and while there were a few moments like that in ew/shb they were pretty minimal and did not represent the story as a whole

[Turethir]

Possibly controversial, but I’ve always felt that Ishikawa’s specific magic was her character work and not her plot or pacing. Her character writing for npcs and the WoL could carry weaker plot points and questionable narrative direction.

And I do miss that in Dawntrail. If I’d love the characters it would be easier to ignore the other problems with the story.

I absolutely agree with this. Ishikawa's strength is in her character writing and her moment-to-moment work, and that's why I was still able to enjoy Endwalker despite it having a bit of a muddled plot and odd pacing. There were so many lovely character moments that I was still engaged and enjoying what was on screen, and I think she knows how to write the Scions wonderfully.