Wow, Wuk Lamat is really single-handedly ruining the DT story...

[Rakdar]

Don’t forget sphenes plan is also super mega dumb. She first helps zoraal ja so he can gather souls for her and he effectively wanted too conquer the entire world anyway and did what he promised too sphene as we saw in the attack on the capital. Only for sphene to backstab him pretty early even though he kept all his promises and only took a massive chunk off souls and other stuff for war(something you need normally if you don’t have a mcguffin for shard fusion) and the plan relies on us being super mega dumb idiots letting sphene walk in and take this mcguffin right from us after she effectively told us she was in cooperation with zoraal and was fine with the war and she needed the souls. So effectively she backstabs us twice and we still don’t do anything when she takes a casual stroll and yoinks the fusion device from under us (we really like too watch dumb shit happen and don’t do anything against it 2 times in a row this expansion like idiots)

It's even dumber than that, because there's that cutscene between her and Zoraal Ja(where *only the two of them are present* so she's not trying to deceive us) and she pleads with him to find some way to make peace with us, that with our knowledge we could explore new possibilities to preserve her people. Then as soon as he's out of the picture she forgets about that possibility entirely and goes all in with the "steal their souls" plan. I'm sure if she'd bothered to ask to work with us it would've taken little more than a quick trip to Ultima Thule to consult the Omicron to at least have a really good starting point. We could've helped with the Levin sickness thing for her still-living subjects too, we've dealt with aetheric imbalances like that on multiple occasions by this point and NOBODY brought it up.

And that doesn't even get into how dumb it is for her to be *actively projecting* some of her people's memories in Living Memory while there's a power shortage. Just keep them in the terminals until you can find a solution, Sphene. Save power.

[Shibi]

And that doesn't even get into how dumb it is for her to be *actively projecting* some of her people's memories in Living Memory while there's a power shortage. Just keep them in the terminals until you can find a solution, Sphene. Save power.

That one struck me too. For a computer program it's not very good at managing its resources. 'nice' is a fairly basic server command/methodology to deprioritise less important tasks. Even Windows has it under task manager.

If one is short on memory/speed... most kids know to shut other programs before running the important stuff.

Braindead tech knowledge from bad writers.

[Fiel_Tana]

That one struck me too. For a computer program it's not very good at managing its resources. 'nice' is a fairly basic server command/methodology to deprioritise less important tasks. Even Windows has it under task manager.

If one is short on memory/speed... most kids know to shut other programs before running the important stuff.

Braindead tech knowledge from bad writers.

By Emet-Selching our way through that place the only thing we accomplished was speeding up her programme calculations by freeing system resources.

This entire expansion is just so terribly written, at least there's some joy to be found in laughing about it at this point.

[Ashpd]

- gulool jaja dead and the whole gang just... Yell at zooral and stare at him

Yeah. Like, you overnumbered him. Heck, Azem crystal, summon 7 people (summon 1 Estinien?) and beat ZJ like in that meme.

Come on, i dont believe that Scions, who beat Meteon, dead ends and all finale of EW gonna have problem with ZJ and bunch of robots, created by failed reflection.

[WeakestZenosEnjoyer]

...characters like Krile or the twins. The new characters all have POTENTIAL, even Wuk Lamat. She has potential, as do others. They are all valid archetype characters that could become lovely if written well. But the devs don't seem to know how to translate a character sheet into an actual character. On paper their traits all look great and it can work, but the execution is sorely lacking. The world building, the logic of the event progression, and all the dialogues, they are so often superficial and bad...

"Oh no, the city is threatened by powerful airships! Tech kitty is on the case, what can he whip up with his Sharlayan allies, a cannon perhaps like the one G'raha built for the train? Maybe he'll reverse engineer their technology from the last invasion?"

Actually he allies Radz-at-Han... ???? Good to see you again Vrtra but why are you in this story?!

[Remember_The_Name]

...and the plan relies on us being super mega dumb idiots letting sphene walk in and take this mcguffin right from us after she effectively told us she was in cooperation with zoraal and was fine with the war and she needed the souls. So effectively she backstabs us twice and we still don’t do anything when she takes a casual stroll and yoinks the fusion device from under us (we really like too watch dumb shit happen and don’t do anything against it 2 times in a row this expansion like idiots)

Oh, thank you for reminding me about this cutscene. The one after lvl 99 trial. The cutscene was so bad I paused midway just to put down my glasses, pinch the nose bridge and slo-o-owly exhale.
Sphene's dumb agenda aside, this is a new level of lazy writing. Couldn't they just play around with her having control over the Everkeep interior to secure the mcguffin?! She shown us in the S9 solo duty that she can create floor/walls, teleport/deconstruct them to make pathways.

Imagine the following:

After the Zoraal Ja trial is over, we go to pick up the "loot" he dropped, but then the arena starts to "dissolve" separating us and the Key. Party takes a step back in shock while Sphene "materializes" in front of the Zoraal's throne (yes, she is the bloody hologram, of course she can do that without need to lug some androd around) and proceeds with her yapping. She may even eventually take a sit on it to show us who is the real boss of this facility! The key then gets delivered to her via a flying platform (the one we saw in Skydeep Cenote to transport us). Y'shtola tries to Fire the key and fails, party members try to approach her across the gap in the arena. Sensing danger, Sphene just removes the rest of the floor in a single motion. Graha cathches us all in the levitate spell, but now we are unable to reach her in time, before she theatrically floats away with the key. After her departure, Everkeep snaps back to "default settings", restoring the floor on which Cahciua body drops to and we proceed with the story.

I wrote it in 15 minutes. It might not be the best idea ever, but, in my humble opinion, it is already better than Sphene just walking through the entire party, yoinking the Key and disappearing. While everyone, except one Scion, did absolutely fucking nothing.

Also, why during mentioned solo duty Sphene could not just remove parts of the floor with enemy soldiers on it? Or teleport some big debris on top of them to crush? Isn't she literally the GLaDOS of this place?

I agree that the unsutainable model of gathering aether until there isn't any left is stupid as hell, not fitting for the AI like Sphene. Just form a Matrix-like second world within terminals and rotate memories around from real world and digital to conserve power.

And you know what is the most fucking funny thing? Scions would have probably figured something out and come up with the solution for Sphene, if not for that damned brown cat always stealing the spotlight and talking to her instead of them ALL THE TIME.

During our first encounter wtih Spene in front of the Meso Terminal, we could've let Graha' "Previous-expansion-I-talked-to-robot-so-hard-it-regained-the-meaning-of-life" Tia cook for 5 minutes and there would be no need to shut down terminals anymore or fight at all...

[Mortex]

It's even dumber than that, because there's that cutscene between her and Zoraal Ja(where *only the two of them are present* so she's not trying to deceive us) and she pleads with him to find some way to make peace with us, that with our knowledge we could explore new possibilities to preserve her people. Then as soon as he's out of the picture she forgets about that possibility entirely and goes all in with the "steal their souls" plan. I'm sure if she'd bothered to ask to work with us it would've taken little more than a quick trip to Ultima Thule to consult the Omicron to at least have a really good starting point. We could've helped with the Levin sickness thing for her still-living subjects too, we've dealt with aetheric imbalances like that on multiple occasions by this point and NOBODY brought it up.

And that doesn't even get into how dumb it is for her to be *actively projecting* some of her people's memories in Living Memory while there's a power shortage. Just keep them in the terminals until you can find a solution, Sphene. Save power.

The ironic part is that mecha otis is effectively the perfect endless. He doesn’t need soul energy too ruction and remember everything from his last life and did life for over 200 years and then somehow they did realise how fukked this is for the entire living memory plot so he dies saving a drone that has sphenes data echo on it. As we later see she can just jump drone bodies like a ascian does. Also don’t we forget they said endless are the most happiest memories of these people only for endless Otis to get memory ptsd for whatever reason.

Like the entire endless plot would have worked when they would never be forgotten by the Alexandrian people and they could have visited them in living memory. With the forgetting part what goal do the endless serve even ??? They are just computer programs same as Sphene and there is no empathy situation happening, it’s just use effectively pulling the plug on a soul vacuum that is used for something the living can’t even rember.

[Mortex]

Oh, thank you for reminding me about this cutscene. The one after lvl 99 trial. The cutscene was so bad I paused midway just to put down my glasses, pinch the nose bridge and slo-o-owly exhale.
Sphene\\\\'s dumb agenda aside, this is a new level of lazy writing. Couldn\\\\'t they just play around with her having control over the Everkeep interior to secure the mcguffin?! She shown us in the S9 solo duty that she can create floor/walls, teleport/deconstruct them to make pathways.

Imagine the following: [HB]After the Zoraal Ja trial is over, we go to pick up the "loot" he dropped, but then the arena starts to "dissolve" separating us and the Key. Party takes a step back in shock while Sphene "materializes" in front of the Zoraal\\\\'s throne (yes, she is the bloody hologram, of course she can do that without need to lug some androd around) and proceeds with her yapping. She may even eventually take a sit on it to show us who is the real boss of this facility! The key then gets delivered to her via a flying platform (the one we saw in Skydeep Cenote to transport us). Y\\\\'shtola tries to Fire the key and fails, party members try to approach her across the gap in the arena. Sensing danger, Sphene just removes the rest of the floor in a single motion. Graha cathches us all in the levitate spell, but now we are unable to reach her in time, before she theatrically floats away with the key. After her departure, Everkeep snaps back to "default settings", restoring the floor on which Cahciua body drops to and we proceed with the story.

I wrote it in 15 minutes. It might not be the best idea ever, but, in my humble opinion, it is already better than Sphene just walking through the entire party, yoinking the Key and disappearing. While everyone, except one Scion, did absolutely fucking nothing.

During our first encounter wtih Spene in front of the Meso Terminal, we could\\\\'ve let Graha\\\\' "Previous-expansion-I-talked-to-robot-so-hard-it-regained-the-meaning-of-life" Tia cook for 5 minutes and there would be no need to shut down terminals anymore or fight at all...

It made me say out loud “what in the flying shit is happening here”. Like we know she wants souls for the sustaining of the Alexandrian people and she told us “ yep I worked with him attacking you” only for us to help sphene not even around 3 mins later and forgetting this happened only for sphene to casually stroll in between the entire sicion group and take the fusion device and only after this does happen shtola tries doing something. When the entire hero party has to lose a big chunk of brain cells for the plot too happen then you know some one shit the bed writing wise

[Mortex]

Also I did just remember the moment they play smile while we build a weaponised train that also functions as a bomb for getting us into the bubble. It’s like “see how good all the people work together now building weapons of large destruction after you helped them” ( we didn’t even help people expect the forest lizard people because the ready was so happy anyway)

[CamuiKushi]

I'ma be real, despite a few hiccups along the way I was having a blast with the majority of Dawntrail. I switched my brain into "Saturday morning cartoon" mode and enjoyed it for the shallow experience it was.

I enjoyed the majority of the succession competition (even the Pelupelu trading sequence gave me a laugh each time the pointless UI for it popped up) and I had a great time hanging out in the wild west with Erenville and teaching a gang how things are done in Eorzea. I was even happy to hang out with Wuk Lamat again beyond the dome and find out the mysteries of Heritage Found and Solution 9 despite how obvious some of the twists were.

Then the crisis with her brother happened, I was ready to get pumped up and have a final showdown with the resilient son after it had been built up from the beginning of the expansion. The WOL, one of my favourite scions and the fun new character were lining up for a hero pose. I had my finger hovering over the screenshot key in anticipation, and...



It honestly felt like the biggest **** you from the devs.
I was really trying to be charitable and give the devs the benefit of the doubt, that there'd be SOME kind of payoff with Wuk Lamat. But there really wasn't. In the end it felt like they didn't even want to be making an FF14 expansion.