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

[Mondschnee]

I've been enjoying his work. For the most part I was nodding along and saying, "Right on, right on," but he did start to lose me with his critique of Living Memory. I admire his passion, but by that point in the story I just didn't care about Living Memory or the Endless. There were too many unanswered questions, too many contrivances, too much time-wasting and faffing about--let's just shut it down so I can defeat the Big Bad and go home. Stories that question how to define life and consciousness have been done countless times, and in far better ways.

I get it. Personally, I felt really empty while doing Living Memory, because it just felt weird going on a sightseeing tour knowing that we would shut all these terminals down, and the zone's concept also felt like a bad copy of Ultima Thule.
But I get what he is saying. Shadowbringers did a much better job at exploring the moral ambiguity that came with certain topics, while Dawntrail pretended like there is no moral ambiguity to what we were doing. Instead of doing some "sightseeing", I do wish they would have dived into the justness of it all more, and not treated all of the endless as if they were a hive mind sharing all the moral standards and wishes.

But this was also a problem with Tural as a whole. We spent the first few levels of the story learning that different people in Tural have different goals and wishes, yet when Wuk Lamat became Dawnservant, they all cheered to her preaching about smiles and happiness without ever having learned what this actually means. It's just not realistic, which made it seem immature.

I'm just shocked, if anything. Previously, the writers were never afraid to explore moral topics to keep the narrative interesting.

[ReynTime]

For what it's worth, I'd like to add this review series by Durantes to the pool of Dawntrail feedback.
He is pretty harsh with his feedback, but it's worth listening to because he breaks down critical points extremely well.

Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJiYJXd4vaE
Wuk Lamat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fdIcjviRFo&t=1s
The villains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl0_kt7CyRE&t=2397s

And just like Thancred once said: "And if that sounds harsh, it's because we care."

Saw his Endwalker critique in the past. He makes points I hadn't considered before.

My only criticism is that he's like every other XIV content creator who uses their player character in videos... Interrupting themselves with unfunny non sequiturs and tangents about themselves or their roleplayed character from time to time.

"Here's my character doing funny thing, btw irrelevant nonsense comment, anyway where was I?"
Every XIV video creator who uses their avatar wants to be a Josh Whedon character.

[CuteBucket]

I wasn't a big fan of how the Scions were handled in Endwalker but it was more of a minor gripe for me, not a massive problem. It has escalated to a massive problem. They were interchangeable cardboard Scion standees that existed to fill a slot in Duty Support. I don't hate the Scions by any means, I know why they want to keep some tried and true characters around. But this ain't it.

Either commit to some or all of Scions being a major part of the story, or don't bother to bring them along at all and just give them brief cameos of them doing their own thing. All of now, they were relegated to the peanut gallery of offering useless lines that added nothing to the story or their characters for most of the expansion, or, in Alisaie's case, flat out talked over and ignored when she brings up some valid points in the later 2/3rds of the game.

I much prefer the proposal that from here on out, we focus on one or two Scions to bring with us for part of the story. Let them trade the spotlight with each other as opposed to trying to cram them all under it at once (endwalker) or get shoved out of it and left to linger by the edges by the new character(s) (dawntrail).

[Hallarem]

Why would we care about a computer program (Sphene) and fake people (No, not in the Emett way. These are just memories, not people). Those were the points that had me checked out. Among other things, but if were only talking of the final zone.
Yeah, their choice of giving Erenvilles mom and him a different accent was weird. Switched to JP anyway after the poor direction 7.0 had on the English side.

[Daralii]

Why would we care about a computer program (Sphene) and fake people (No, not in the Emett way. These are just memories, not people).

They both want you to care and not care about them, because they dedicate so much time to humanizing them and them being deleted is supposed to be tragic, but you also have Erenmom repeatedly saying that you aren't supposed to feel bad about deleting them because they aren't really alive(unlike the exhibits in Meteion's museum).

[ZXN]

Why would we care about a computer program (Sphene) and fake people (No, not in the Emett way. These are just memories, not people).

I won't lie: I cared. I genuinely felt bad going through Living Memory and just mass deleting everyone. Hell I won't lie: a certain scene involving a bunny mom and son made me cry. Sure they are just memories, and ultimately it is a "morals" things whether to keep them running or shut them down. But my entire thought process when I was going through Living Memory was just "Imagine how these people must feel, essentially being forced to be "kept alive" for eternity because some group of people made a robot princess and gave it a flawed premise of keeping their kingdom "alive" no matter what and no matter the cost..."

And then you actually talk to them and you realize NONE of them give a single fuck what happens to them. They know they're already dead, so they genuinely don't care at all if they are kept running or shut down. Combine that with the fact you're CONSTANTLY told over, and over, and over to not feel any guilt or sadness for what happens to any of them, while they also constantly try to force emotional moments down your throat, left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth once all was said in done.

Living Memory reminded me of Ultima Thule. I didn't care at all about Ultima Thule though if mainly because a certain cat girl opened her mouth and told us Azem's magic could bring all our friends back but "We CaN't UsE iT fOr ThAt" and pretty much screamed at us how we were going to get the perfect ending for everyone, but I certainly understand the emotional feeling they were going for with each area and losing the scions bit by bit just to forge ahead. With Living Memory I, essentially, "felt what I should've felt with Endwalker's Ultima Thule" emotion wise...

And then the entire zone tells me from start to finish to not fucking care because nobody else does.

I was hopeful for Krile's interaction with her parents...which lasts about 10-15 minutes and has Wuk Lmao complaining the entire time we're learning about the Milala because "ha ha me dumb learning hurt brain" and then we move on and Krile is thrown back into the garbage like she was the whole expansion because the devs and writers must just really hate Krile. Then Erenville's interaction with Cahciua did make me cry as I said earlier, but she pretty much didn't care at all about Erenville's feelings the entire time as we shut down each terminal, and then practically guilt tripped him into forgiving her and going out and seeing the world she can't anymore before we delete her.

After that I completely just didn't care anymore and I wasted my emotion card on a zone full of NPCs that the writers essentially made to laugh at and mock players like me for caring in the first place.

[genuine_stranger]

Why would we care about a computer program (Sphene) and fake people (No, not in the Emett way. These are just memories, not people). Those were the points that had me checked out. Among other things, but if were only talking of the final zone.
Yeah, their choice of giving Erenvilles mom and him a different accent was weird. Switched to JP anyway after the poor direction 7.0 had on the English side.

I was so done with the story and the whiplash Living Memory with its pacing caused that I skipped through it. I couldn't care less anymore.
Like, here is an entity which decided to delete her restrictions to become more efficient in amassing souls, and we're told how important it is to shut her down. Just to go on a mandatory side quest to get to know the memories of long gone people, for exactly what reason?

The whole zone felt like it was trying to manipulate you to get emotional, while simultaneously telling you that you shouldn't care.
And the one thing that I can't stand is when writers try to manipulate me.

[Allegor]

I was so done with the story and the whiplash Living Memory with its pacing caused that I skipped through it. I couldn't care less anymore.
Like, here is an entity which decided to delete her restrictions to become more efficient in amassing souls, and we're told how important it is to shut her down. Just to go on a mandatory side quest to get to know the memories of long gone people, for exactly what reason?

The whole zone felt like it was trying to manipulate you to get emotional, while simultaneously telling you that you shouldn't care.
And the one thing that I can't stand is when writers try to manipulate me.

To me, the failure of Living Memory was that literally nobody cared. Like, we're supposed to believe these people are still alive, right? fine, then imagine you find out you aren't "you" but leftover memories and the real you is already dead. That alone is arguably traumatic enough, but then when you come to accept it and live your second life peacefully in this utopic city, some foreigners come out of the blue and overtly say yeah, we've come to shut down this place, you'll all be dead dead now. Those people should be terrified, hostile even, but nah, they'd even happily show you the direction of where the control system is located, whatever.

The whole zone just feels like a waste of time both as the WoL and as a player.

[Daralii]

To me, the failure of Living Memory was that literally nobody cared. Like, we're supposed to believe these people are still alive, right? fine, then imagine you find out you aren't "you" but leftover memories and the real you is already dead. That alone is arguably traumatic enough, but then when you come to accept it and live your second life peacefully in this utopic city, some foreigners come out of the blue and overtly say yeah, we've come to shut down this place, you'll all be dead dead now. Those people should be terrified, hostile even, but nah, they'd even happily show you the direction of where the control system is located, whatever.

The whole zone just feels like a waste of time both as the WoL and as a player.

It's like they deliberately tried to invert Ultima Thule for some reason.

[Xeronia]

I suppose my biggest issue with Dawntrail is not only did it repeat a lot of EW's mistakes it somehow had worse pacing and worse script writing. I may hate the events of how EW played out but I won't fault it was very good about character actions making sense for them and dialogue that was in character and fun to read. I am pretty sure everyone changed personality in DT to bend to what the narrative needed of them. Alisaie and Alphinaud are the biggest offenders but it happen to almost everyone involved including the antagonists.

I also really want to hit on the pacing as I never want to see "Go talk to 3 NPC's to learn about the culture/ the objective" again. As I have been playing WoW I want to note a system they have had for expansions now that was used very well in their latest expansion. When you do a quest you may see a white speech bubble from nearby NPC's and clicking them gives you a "Stay a while and listen" option. Thanks to this a lot of supplementary lore is in those and not being filler quests for the main story which really aided the pacing of the narrative.

Anyway if you enjoyed it more power to ya, maybe it just really isn't my cup of tea but I do hope to see improvement in the future, it is a real odd day when I enjoyed a WoW main story more then FFXIV.