Dawntrail's MSQ story is a disaster and waste of potential. [full spoilers]

[Lady_Silvermoon]

We didn't delete any kid or anyone at the end. The Endless does not even have a soul which has already be tripped from the memory. The memory is not even authentic but already heavily modified to suit the agenda of the creators. Even Sphene wasn't real, it was implied several time the real Sphene wouldn't go to the extreme, her current self is basically just a brainwashed version that's programmed to protect the Endless at any cost. She's just an agent to execute the will of the AI core. The Endless zone was just a simulation, nothing more, nothing that can even remotely imply any sort of moral implication whatsoever. The system is basically just a self-serving AI trying to stay in existence while using real human as fuel.

S9 and the ourskirt are real people. Some argument can be made if the Endless still retain their soul, but as it is they're just data.

Why did I dress up as a bunny to bring joy to programs? Why did Wuk Lamat break into a server to make sure a malfunctioning program knew she empathized with her? The game tells us they aren't people, but the characters do not behave like they aren't people. Don't blame me for that. That's bad writing.

[Lersayil]

We didn't delete any kid or anyone at the end. The Endless does not even have a soul which has already be tripped from the memory. The memory is not even authentic but already heavily modified to suit the agenda of the creators. Even Sphene wasn't real, it was implied several time the real Sphene wouldn't go to the extreme, her current self is basically just a brainwashed version that's programmed to protect the Endless at any cost. She's just an agent to execute the will of the AI core. The Endless zone was just a simulation, nothing more, nothing that can even remotely imply any sort of moral implication whatsoever. The system is basically just a self-serving AI trying to stay in existence while using real human as fuel.

S9 and the ourskirt are real people. Some argument can be made if the Endless still retain their soul, but as it is they're just data.

See, this is why I think they didn't make things clear. They've written themselves into a corner. If they were real, we just committed genocide (justified or not). If they weren't, then like 80% of the emotional string pulling in the last zone was completely empty and meaningless, and we'd be a lot less (if at all) sympathetic towards Sphene and the Endless. And we couldn't have that now can we?

They wanted the proverbial cake, and eat it too.

[PaleYonder]

It really was a mess, wasn't it? Without even getting into the debate on whether the Endless are people or not. Now by that time I had largely checked out except for the characters with me that I actually cared about (the Scions and Erenville), and little mattered anymore, but I was definitely irritated when we had just established that all of this is powered by actual people's souls being consumed, we have no time to lose, and our nice tour guide told us we should hurry up because she can't bear the thought of continuing on at the expense of any more people being consumed - and then the logical course of action to our valiant companion is to stall anyway and talk to all those people for a while because somehow the one lesson that got lodged in her head on this journey was "You have to always talk to all the people and understand them, no matter the circumstances".
And once I'd checked out further and continued going through the motions to finally get this to an end (the game and the Endless' request both), we're asked to turn the fountains back on, using extra aether. The aether that comes from people's souls being consumed. Which is bad. Which is so unbearable these people rather erase their existence, whatever the philosophy of it might be. But the fountains are pretty, so hey. Sorry to the hypothetical nice Miqo'te blacksmith and the Hyur grocer and the Lala innkeep whose souls are getting used up for that; you've got to make some sacrifices for aesthetics. Putting smiles on people's faces is important, you know.

[Raven2014]

Why did I dress up as a bunny to bring joy to programs? Why did Wuk Lamat break into a server to make sure a malfunctioning program knew she empathized with her? The game tells us they aren't people, but the characters do not behave like they aren't people. Don't blame me for that. That's bad writing.

Exactly. Frankly this is hardly the only instance in DT where the writing fail to delivery its intend. They just want to suspend all belief and play make believe. After the revelation of the S9 tower and the process of separating soul and memory, I feel zero emotional attachment to whatever happen next especially I already come across many media with the "AI overlord" plot, which exactly what this is.

It's like the story is actually a terminator subplot but the writers decide to paint a Disney paint over it. Idk, maybe they think that's being clever but that's just bad writing to me, and that's being generous.

See, this is why I think they didn't make things clear. They've written themselves into a corner. If they were real, we just committed genocide (justified or not). If they weren't, then like 80% of the emotional string pulling in the last zone was completely empty and meaningless, and we'd be a lot less (if at all) sympathetic towards Sphene and the Endless. And we couldn't have that now can we?

They wanted the proverbial cake, and eat it too.

The writing make absolutely zero sense since zone 5 onward. For Krile and Erenville it's somewhat understandable. One is seeking closure, like trying to dig up archive of long lost relative. The other is trying to come to term, as someone who lost a parent sometime ago, it's relatable when you want to get pass the denial state of grief. But for Wuk Lamat's obsession with "I gonna talk to Sphene and make her see the error of her way" it makes zero freaking sense. Of course, if the intention were to make the character stupid and obnoxious than it's SSX writing. Otherwise, it's stupid.

[PaleYonder]

It's insensitive, too, especially if we take the game's word that these are not the real people but just AI programs.
Especially for Erenville, who's just processing the fact that his mother is dead, which has been obvious for hours and he knows it, this is just not something he should have to go through. And if they're not real, it's not even proper closure. One can have a nice conversation with the AI, but in the next sober moment it would sink in that the conversation didn't happen with the real people anyway, and one's just dug too deep and made oneself more miserable.
It's very human to want to try anyway, and I relate, but I also think making them go through with this is unconscionable as a friend.

Now, it's on the writing and the execution again: If Wuk's first well-intended naive suggestion to go talk to everyone was painted as the short-sighted thing it was, an oversight of individual empathy for the sake of a broad-brushed ideal and charging in, and we as the WOL got to say, "No, my friends have copies of relatives here, this'll mess with them, I'm not allowing this," it'd be interesting, and it'd show an actual character flaw in Wuk that maybe she'd actually reconsider and course-correct, and we'd have a moment of character growth. But things are on rails, and the rails don't know where they're actually going because there's no solid philosophical fundament here.

With Ishikawa's writing, I sometimes disagreed with philosophical points, and my WOL and I had to come to different conclusions and my head-story would diverge in some cases based on that, but I didn't mind that; the philosophies were there, and I got to engage with a literary counterpart and pick apart my own views within this fantasy framework, and I enjoy that a lot.
This zone lacks that. As others have said already, the writing doesn't follow its own baseline of what is what, and who is a person and who, or not. If they're real people, this is all terrible and tragic and should at least get a bit of weight even if we make the same decisions. If they're parasitic programs, why are we even bothering with any of this?
If they could live peacefully and things were happy and not a drain, we could leave them alone. If they are not only fake AIs but the whole thing, including the act of sustaining them, is a huge drain of aether that has to come from real people's souls, as Cahciua suggests, why are we not brushing aside all ideas of going to talk and shutting the thing down right now?
In that case, since it's a game and of course we should explore the new shiny zone: To go and wander around and "understand the locals" would only have worked if we didn't get a resistance briefing right at the start but maybe wandered in cluelessly through some plot contrivance and tried to figure out what was even going on. And if then we learned this was what the game says it is, then we'd know our course of action. But going in fully knowing? What are we even doing?

[Shizzle]

I agree the pacing and writing was disjointed from the start and dare I say rushed? It felt like from Toliyollal to Shaaloani it was one writing team to a secondary team once arriving inside the dome. The lack of combat the whole way through was a boring walk from A to B to C and talk to 3 random NPCs the whole way along with a mix of hey look we can do Altered Carbon and Cyberpunk too instead of stacks we use "Soul Cells" /puke and it way off to how FF9 portrayed the issue as well, I am just glad now I've tortured myself through the main MSQ getting my tank through Duties and roulettes I wont have to worry about how bad the writing to Stormblood 2.0 is let's be honest Stormblood's writing was better than this yawn fest.

A few caveats Wuk was cringe for me from the start but started to warm up to me with some small character growth being noticed towards the halfway mark then she goes straight back to naive nice gal lets talk to these people living within the enemies dome after we all agreed we were going there to end Zoraal Ja. It also seems they all forgot how his troops were stealing the souls of her civilians they killed within Toliyollal during the cutscene of the invasion of Toliyollal.

I was in dis-agreeance with my WoL's writing and dialogue choices at this point to be fair our choices never had meaningful impact on how a situation was ever resolved anyway, but in my mind inside Heritage Found with Wuk's constant need to understand people and wanting to talk to them after it becomes painfully and predictably clear these aren't "real" people more so after the first half hour being in the zone where you meet a resistance with the same goal as Wuk's and the Scions who flat out tell you the reason they're against Sphene and Zoraal Ja yet we get the WoL in their usual Derp nod agreeing with a clueless Wuk sure lets talk to fake people to get to know them.... uhm besides them not being real are we forgetting already the reason we stormed the place for Wuk? In my head canon my WoL would've been reminding Wuk of her vow and duty and to proceed with the missions plan as we had all agreed not sitting around eating popcorn and talking to endless people who for more than annoyance of a choice of words the enemy let alone the questionable and obvious fact Sphene and her people are a threat to not only Wuk and the people of Toliyollal but also the entirety of Eorzea due to the fact they need aether to keep the machine running. Plot armor be damned the extended MSQ better have some meaningful story and better writing or I think this'll be the last expansion I bother with . I get it though which is sad but even great stories come to a end due to idea burnout with writing. Disappointed to say the least with this expansion's story or lack there of.

[Colt47]

So we hit the unholy trifecta. Elidibus was right. We are Death.

Reaper Mains be like: "I've been waiting for this moment. The moment I can finally do my job title proud!"

[Reinha]

It's insensitive, too, especially if we take the game's word that these are not the real people but just AI programs.
Especially for Erenville, who's just processing the fact that his mother is dead, which has been obvious for hours and he knows it, this is just not something he should have to go through. And if they're not real, it's not even proper closure. One can have a nice conversation with the AI, but in the next sober moment it would sink in that the conversation didn't happen with the real people anyway, and one's just dug too deep and made oneself more miserable.
It's very human to want to try anyway, and I relate, but I also think making them go through with this is unconscionable as a friend.

I'm in the camp "they are just programs" and the whole last zone was utterly ridiculous and bad storytelling. Why are we parading around entertaining an AI? Just shut it down. Why are we trying to remember the random AIs so that they can live on in our memory when they are not even people? Why are we letting AI mom condescend to Erenville, who is already in pain from the loss of his mother?

It's like they came up with a concept of separating soul from memory but failed to show how nonhuman the memory AIs are. They should have felt like soulless computer programs just adhering to their programming and running their memories in a loop, unable to form new emotional connections or react with feelings. Then Wookie's maid-mom-AI wakes up from the loop and starts talking like she's really there and the whole concept falls apart. There was also nothing about Erenville's mom's personality that suggested she did not have a soul, unlike Otis.

[McGrump]

Hello fellow gamers,

I'm also adding my two cents

Scions
Their arch is done and we're supposed to be dissolved, can we just move on and get a fresh crew? Are you seriously telling me that there's no one else in the world that can be as competent as them? It's like they're so afraid to let them go that the dissolvement feels so hallow and inconsequential. At some point, I even said out loud "NO" when Y'shtola mentioned the "unofficial reunion" in her dialogue. It's like they can't commit to their creative decision. Also, I find it condescending that 2 rich teenagers are sent at the behalf of the Garleans to explain to them how to live in harmony with the rest of the world. Alisaie and Alphy DON'T need to learn about peace, Garleans do. They should have sent Julius or another representative, not outsiders and especially not kids to lecture them...

Wuk Lamat
I used the Japanese voices so the whole "I can't stand her voice" doesn't apply here. After reading a few posts here, i do see the resemblance of her and past Alphy post ARR and yes, I understand why people are unhappy with how she got it easy and faced no consequences for her naivety. I think the difference is that Alphy thought he knew better while she listens to advices. She actually wants to learn about other cultures, but her solutions to problems are very superficial, which is a weak point of Dawntrail: the whole thing is superficial.

Story
Concepts, solutions, philosophies, everything is on the surface in this expansion. We see no resistance with any of the races when we encounter a problem. They accept change without a second thought. remember how it was a challenge for the Ishgardian people to accept the dragons? Now, everything is solved in 2 minutes, which is also something that I noticed in the post endwalker MSQ. We conveniently find a portal that was guarded by Vishap's device, we conveniently have those gem thingies to go in the void world without being affected by the void, we don't get swarmed by voidsends when we get there, we conveniently find a way to fix the inbalancement of the void, we conveniently find a way to fix the First. It's the same here. Like everything can be solved so easily, right? RIGHT?! It just made stop caring for the lack of stakes.

Part 1

[McGrump]

Part 2
Zoraal Ja
Honestly, I was very curious about Zoraal Ja at the beginning since he seemed the calculative and silent type. He gave the impression that he wanted Tural to expand (a tad like Garlemald, which would have been interesting if we actually had a garlean with us), but we didn't spend enough time with him to actually get to know him and his real motive. Why world domination? His ego? Power? It seems unfair that we had time to connect with Koana, but nothing was done to make us work with Zoraal Ja and maybe establish a connection with him and maybe learn of his motives. The way he speaks (the few times that he does) suggest how he was raised VS Koana and Wuk, but it would have benefited to hear his thoughts BEFORE the end of his fight. He really feels like a wasted potential.


Last zone
Visually, I really don't like it, but that's my personal opinion (lack of visual harmony and sense). When I first arrived, I had no idea how to interpret the whole thing: it just looked like an amusement fair in the middle of a tech city. The first thing that came to my mind was: aren't they supposed to be saving energy to have Endless roam around? This to me just screamed "excess" with the disregard of the livings.


Endless and using souls
The whole concept is superficial and leaves the player base conflicted. When I first heard that they were using souls for everything, I was honestly disgusted. The way the hunter girl simply "waste" 1 soul just to show us how the whole mechanic works and brushes it off like it was nothing actually pissed me off. They show you how the living forget the dead and Sphene tries to explain to you that it's to ease the suffering. So the living can't mourn, great... so they're supposed to remember their loved ones when they die. Wouldn't it be weird to forget you had a wife, remarry, die and remember that you had a first wife once you die? Wouldn't that mess you up emotionally? This just feel like a mess. Then there's the whole thing about "is a memory an actual person or JUST a simulation?" I think this is what gets the players the most. Again, it's an interesting question, but they force us to chose the "delete" answer instead of exploring the possibilities. Why not put the memories inside robots like Otis for instance? There was clearly a distinction between his robot and Endless version. Not enough time? Well, Sphene didn't exactly gave us the option to talk even though she clearly cares for those Endless. You'd think "trying everything" to save them would start by trying things less radical than world invasion. Since this whole ordeal is introduced in the end game, it seems we don't have time to open that Pandora box.