The Negative Impact of Poor Character Writing on the Quality of Dawntrail's MSQ

[ThorneDynasty]

The IX stuff is mostly fine, with similar but different enough plot points about world parasitism, soul transfers and memory collectives. And just the general themes of mortality and loss.

I admit the first time they played a track from FF9 it did sound pretty jarring to me too, but it ended up making sense toward the end without being too directly lifted.

[Bonoki]

I thought the FF9 music they used was kind of, underwhelming. Which was a shame cause I was looking forward to the FF9 tracks all expansion. Even the references in general feel lukewarm.

[Hirofuji]

That is this expansion in a nutshell. You're so fatigued with the mundane that by the time you get to the fun parts you just have no attachment. I mindlessly clicked through half of the dialogue with Wuk Evu as well before my ears perked up and I realized, "wait a minute, I actually really like this character."

I've had the same experience. By the time I finished the MSQ I had such a bitter taste in my mouth & was so disaffected that I just didn't want to touch the game again. I just closed out of the game and haven't opened it back up since. I liked the dungeons & trials, but when the story was this offensively bad, it makes you not even want to play the game. I have 7,000 hours in this game and I couldn't even force myself to do a single run of the expert dungeons. Every aspect of the expansion has been tainted for me.

[ShariusTC]

they don't even explain how lizzard man can have such power over alexandria army, despite their civilization more advance than his, and sphene literally an ancient war machine that prey on living being souls and overprotect her people for hundreds years, she just give him an absolute priority on control her army without anyway to overwrite his command

i can say they tried to mimic how laguna come into power in esthar but we had tons of flashback cutscene show how laguna lead a revolution to overthrow adel in FF8

[Aulainn]

they don't even explain how lizzard man can have such power over alexandria army, despite their civilization more advance than his, and sphene literally an ancient war machine that prey on living being souls and overprotect her people for hundreds years, she just give him an absolute priority on control her army without anyway to overwrite his command

i can say they tried to mimic how laguna come into power in esthar but we had tons of flashback cutscene show how laguna lead a revolution to overthrow adel in FF8

We must've played a different FF8 because I don't remember any such flashback.
Anyway, they did give the reason. Zoraal Ja had the key to dimensional travel and Sphene gave him the power he bargained for in exchange for leading Sphenes army to get more souls from Zoraal Ja's world. She was dumb and desperate as she admits herself to give that power without failsafe on her end, although we can assume Zoraal Ja wouldn't take the deal without making sure there wasn't.

[ShariusTC]

We must've played a different FF8 because I don't remember any such flashback.
Anyway, they did give the reason. Zoraal Ja had the key to dimensional travel and Sphene gave him the power he bargained for in exchange for leading Sphenes army to get more souls from Zoraal Ja's world. She was dumb and desperate as she admits herself to give that power without failsafe on her end, although we can assume Zoraal Ja wouldn't take the deal without making sure there wasn't.

you missed flashback when laguna being imprison in odine lab, then espcape, spark a civil war and launch adel into space with ragnarok (this literally a CG cutscene)

also sphene is a war machine she can has any safeguard and backdoor she want in her own system, unless you asume lizzard is so good in computering that know all of it, that also remind me about horizon zero dawn, where creator of system has alpha procol but the one who fund it can secretly make an omega procol that never know for her and her co-worker, and can overwrite any command from them

[ThorneDynasty]

Laguna bumbled into the presidential role in a pretty comedic fashion, but it was shown regardless, and he also was mostly a figurehead.

[Brotillian]

Writing this while I'm queue'd up for the Interphos trial.

I think Wuk overstayed her welcome to the point that it was detrimental to the rest of the narrative. I honestly quite enjoyed the first half of the story. I was already prepared for a palate cleanser and I knew we wouldn't get the same level of story as SB or anywhere near the emotional highs EW. I was focusing on the novel and new things like the world-building and colorful characters more than Wuk's antics. Even then, I didn't hate her character. 11 years ago I had felt similar things towards Alphinaud and after being there for his arc he went from my most hated character to one of my favorites. I didn't mind being a supporting character for a while. It was their trial after all and I'm getting to learn more about this vibrant cool new place. It was a little irksome seeing the Scions sidelined so often but I thought they'd get to shine later in the back half of the story.

But then the story shift happened and I go "ah this looks like a job for the Scions!" Y'shtola and G'raha show up and I genuinely believe this is the moment where things shift. Wuk Lamat can stick around but she's gonna take a backseat and watch these people do what they're good at. Y'shtola will come along during every subsequent dungeon and continually have something illuminating to say. Alphi will get bogged down trying to figure out the details of things. Our character will connect with this antagonist in a way that will help him bridge the gap between his siblings. I'd nearly OD'd on the copium the closer we got to the dome. When Estinien showed up and then just left (yet again) I was starting to realize that this is just Wuk's expansion and that the Scions had been sidelined so hard that they were reduced to their tropes to make room for her Wuk as the sole force driving the plot forward while never actually growing.

Okay so I finished that trial and I almost laughed out loud. I was honestly relieved when everyone was sent away and our character finally got a chance to do what only they can do. A bit late but fitting. Only for Wuk to once again be shoehorned into the narrative and take center stage. I feel like these writers wrote their shonen manga story inside FFXIV and just found a blank character in the script to graft us onto. Just tunneled on Wuk Lamat and flattened every other character in the process. Couldn't even give her a good arc in the end either.

All that said, this msq didn't kill the expac for me and I'd still even rate it a 6.5 or even 7/10 but that's because it's being carried by the world-building and future story implications. I liked seeing a new power introduced that could hurt or harm other reflections, that will be interesting to explore. There also seems to be plenty more mysteries touched on throughout the msq. I just hope other characters get a time to shine and they never allow a single individual to overshadow all else again.

[Emergencee]

The original post here is possibly the best description of the problems I’ve had with Dawntrail since the beginning. I truly hope the developers see this, it’s been heartbreaking to see the characters I’ve grown to love treated this way and reduced to shallow, mute caricatures of themselves.

[ThorneDynasty]

I maintain they should have killed most of the Scions in EW - or at least made the disbandment real. The only ones who have any character development to explore are G'raha and Y'shtola at this point. The rest should be cameos at most. We are at fucking Kingdom Hearts levels of flanderization, bringing back fan favorite characters just to say their fanservice lines like "I'm an expert firewood gatherer! (please laugh)", because there's nothing else left to say about them.