Why do people overreact to Dawntrail MSQ? [SPOILERS]

[HyperiusUltima]

This I'd like to know because what people seem to have missed is that we're coming down from a high of constant world-ending situations in Endwalker. Sure, Post-Patch Endwalker was BAD, but I don't think Dawntrail is horrible or bad as everyone keeps wanting to yell about. I think it's actually good pacing wise, though people focus quite a lot on Wuk Lamat because of the VA controversy since 6.55.

While the story isn't overtly bad in the Rite of Succession half, we learn more about the cultures and such since this is an entirely new world for us - a continent we've yet to explore. People miss the mark that we're going on an adventure of our own. Not to mention? This MSQ is 100 Quests long. That's the shortest we've ever had, though cutscenes do pad that time.

One issue I've seen crop up is "Why isn't WoL in the spotlight?" It's because we're not this expansion. We're essentially along for the ride, enjoying our time with friends we're familiar with. G'raha even says words that are important in regards to the journey in 6.55 and they're referenced in MSQ.

People need to get it out of their heads that we're just 'babysitting' early on, when in reality Wuk was a sheltered cat that begun to learn about her people in the first place. We may not know this til' later, but it's important in regards to her character. This expansion isn't the WoL's expansion as it has been since ARR - it's good to have other characters in the spotlight.

[Mcg55ss]

people are gonna complain about something.....regardless if it is justified or not.

[HighlanderClone]

This I'd like to know because what people seem to have missed is that we're coming down from a high of constant world-ending situations in Endwalker. Sure, Post-Patch Endwalker was BAD, but I don't think Dawntrail is horrible or bad as everyone keeps wanting to yell about. I think it's actually good pacing wise, though people focus quite a lot on Wuk Lamat because of the VA controversy since 6.55.

While the story isn't overtly bad in the Rite of Succession half, we learn more about the cultures and such since this is an entirely new world for us - a continent we've yet to explore. People miss the mark that we're going on an adventure of our own. Not to mention? This MSQ is 100 Quests long. That's the shortest we've ever had, though cutscenes do pad that time.

One issue I've seen crop up is "Why isn't WoL in the spotlight?" It's because we're not this expansion. We're essentially along for the ride, enjoying our time with friends we're familiar with. G'raha even says words that are important in regards to the journey in 6.55 and they're referenced in MSQ.

People need to get it out of their heads that we're just 'babysitting' early on, when in reality Wuk was a sheltered cat that begun to learn about her people in the first place. We may not know this til' later, but it's important in regards to her character. This expansion isn't the WoL's expansion as it has been since ARR - it's good to have other characters in the spotlight.

How many times have you spent 50 hours mentoring a spoiled teenage girl and enjoyed it IRL?

Also, you don't actually want to know why people are complaining. There are multiple threads out there discussing the issues with the game and I've not seen you engaging with the substantive discussion in any one of them. It looks like you are just opening a new thread to create a strawman to mock. It is far harder to construct that strawman in a criticism thread where any sane person can easily see just how much of a strawman it is.

It's easy to say everyone "missed" something when you aren't in a thread where people have already moved on from that criticism a long, long time ago, or have discussed why the issues are far deeper than stakes or the WoL being a side character.

[Biffy]

An annoying character was shoehorned into the main role far surpassing Lyse at her most incompetent, who the majority of the community have a lot of issue with as one of the main criticisms for Stormblood.

Where there is character assassination all around on already established characters and a far more interesting story in that of Krile and Erenville to explore, we spent more than half the expansion watching Wukie learn about her people while asking the dumbest questions. Even at the end, with the threat of Sphene, she asks "What is the rush for an answer?" in response to needing an decision as quickly as possible to terminate the Endless.

The entire succession storyline was a repeat of "talk to 5 people", "go see how Wukie feels about this", "now talk to 5 more people." Wuk is a ditsy airhead in the beginning of Dawntrail and is a ditsy airhead but also the Dawnservant at the end.

I was so disappointed she wasn't crushed to death when Sphene slammed her hand ontop of her during the cringiest scene in the expansion.

[HyoMinPark]

This I'd like to know because what people seem to have missed is that we're coming down from a high of constant world-ending situations in Endwalker. Sure, Post-Patch Endwalker was BAD, but I don't think Dawntrail is horrible or bad as everyone keeps wanting to yell about. I think it's actually good pacing wise, though people focus quite a lot on Wuk Lamat because of the VA controversy since 6.55.

Speaking as someone who plays this game with Japanese audio, I had no idea about this “controversy” surrounding the English VA until my friends told me about it the day early access started. Despite me knowing NOTHING about this, I still could not stand her. Her character was simply unlikable to me.

The only thing I will say is that the Japanese VA was more tolerable than what I heard of the English because of either the voice acting direction for English was bad, or the English VA is simply inexperienced. However, I’ve always felt like the Japanese VAs put better emotion into the scenes compared to English, but that’s just my opinion and I’ve held it way before Dawntrail was even announced.

The “controversy” had no bearing on my opinion of Wuk Lamat—and after finishing the MSQ this morning around 8am, my opinion is unchanged. I still don’t like her.

While the story isn't overtly bad in the Rite of Succession half, we learn more about the cultures and such since this is an entirely new world for us - a continent we've yet to explore. People miss the mark that we're going on an adventure of our own. Not to mention? This MSQ is 100 Quests long. That's the shortest we've ever had, though cutscenes do pad that time.

It being the shortest MSQ we’ve had while also feeling like the longest and most arduous during my progression of it is not a good thing.

This could have been alleviated by making the 6.x portion of Endwalker the “lore and culture” build-up. Or giving us some sort of build up with Wuk Lamat and Tural versus shoving it all into the beginning of the expansion in a 10-hour long exposition. The level 90 MSQ split just felt so long that despite my love and interest for FFXIV lore, I was losing focus and even falling asleep. It was too drawn out and felt very filler-y.

My dislike of Wuk Lamat aside—a lot of Dawntrail suffered from bad pacing, bad writing, overused tropes (don’t get me wrong: tropes are fine when written and used well), and overall just felt like a cheesy Saturday morning cartoon special. And not a good or enjoyable one…

There were a few moments of “good writing”, but GODS were they a step down from just about every other expansion. Say what you want about Stormblood, but I’d rather do it again. I wasn’t expecting Shadowbringers-level of writing because I honestly believe the game’s story peaked there and cannot be topped; but I was hoping for something better than what we got. There are parts that read as if it were written by a preteen doing their first self-insert fanfiction.

One issue I've seen crop up is "Why isn't WoL in the spotlight?" It's because we're not this expansion. We're essentially along for the ride, enjoying our time with friends we're familiar with. G'raha even says words that are important in regards to the journey in 6.55 and they're referenced in MSQ.

It was far worse than it “just not being our expansion”, though. We have had others where we were the “sidekick” to another character (e.g., Stormblood), but they never made me feel as if there was zero reason for my character to even be present. Take out the WoL from most of Dawntrail and insert Random Other NPC, and nothing would change, in my opinion. Same for the Scions. All of the main cast were shells of their former selves; and Wuk Lamat acted as a black hole sucking in anything and everything around her until she was the only thing with any relevance.

The only parts we were really needed was the fights against the Big Bads of the expansion. Which, unfortunately, consisted of 3 trials. And maybe you can argue the final dungeon as well, but I don’t think the others weren’t anything a band of bots couldn’t handle. We didn’t need to be there.

As for other characters that had some spotlight:

I was more interested in the other Promises during the Rite than Wuk Lamat. They were more interesting than her; all had way better character development than her: Koana especially, and we got to see Thancred and Urianger actually mentoring him and bettering him as an individual where as…where was that for our WoL? Weren’t we supposed to kind of be “mentoring” Wuk? I didn’t see much mentoring from my character—just a lot of smiling and nodding and doing whatever Wuk wanted…

Everyone keeps saying Wuk Lamat “has good character development”, but I’ve yet to see anyone actually list what that development was. To me, she was just as one-dimensional at the end of the MSQ as she was during the beginning. I dare say she even treads the line into Mary Sue territory because I didn’t see any inherent flaws in her, and basically everyone loves her. Either previously established off-screen, or they meet her and five minutes later are in love with her and act like she’s the best thing since sliced bread. The only one that didn’t like her was one of the villains, basically.
More on other characters that got some spotlight:

Erenville and Krile had tons of potential for beautiful moments. And they had some amazing stories and growth as character, but all of it was basically shoved into the level 100 quests before the final dungeon and trial. And that was so disappointing for me. I was more invested in them and their story than Wuk Lamat. And when we reached the final dungeon and trial, I finally thought maybe I’d get a reprieve from her shoving herself into every aspect of this story, but NOPE. She has to deus ex machina her way into the final trial and I was just over it at that point. When the credits rolled, I was simply exhausted and had very little energy left in me to care about this expansion’s story.

People need to get it out of their heads that we're just 'babysitting' early on, when in reality Wuk was a sheltered cat that begun to learn about her people in the first place. We may not know this til' later, but it's important in regards to her character. This expansion isn't the WoL's expansion as it has been since ARR - it's good to have other characters in the spotlight.

Except she took nearly EVERY BIT of the spotlight—even from other characters that weren’t even our own. She was ALWAYS THERE. ALWAYS in our faces. And my character had zero autonomy when it came to the limited dialogue options we have when our opinion on something is asked. We either had to agree with her, or praise her. We couldn’t even use the staple “…” silent response. The one time we got to speak up “against” her was to Gulool Ja Ja and not even to her. It was just grating on my nerves.


I’ve never felt so unmotivated to finish the MSQ before Dawntrail. I didn’t go into this expansion with high expections, but I was at least hoping for something a bit more enjoyable than ARR. I didn’t get that. It took me way longer to finish DT than any other expansion simply because I kept losing interest or getting frustrated with Wuk Lamat that I had to pause and do something else. Roulettes. I loaded up a mobile game on my phone mid-cutscene sometimes and sped-read the dialogue because I no longer interested in her monologues about peace and harmony anymore.

People are free to like Dawntrail if they want—but I simply don’t see it. And it ranks barely above ARR for me. And that’s only because the second half of the MSQ had meat to it—but the 90~94 MSQ prior to the fourth zone? I could easily skip it and just not care. And I’m not a storyskipper in FFXIV.


Anyways, that’s my slightly-disorganized rant on it. I have tons of thoughts I wrote down during my MSQ progression, but I’m still recovering from completing it, so a better post will have to just wait.