Positive Dawntrail Narrative Feedback Thread

[ReynTime]

The handful MSQs without Wuk Lamat in the party were decent.

[MoofiaBossVal]

I enjoyed touring the setting of Tural, namely the new city and the first two zones, and the third zone kinda. I liked the Pelupelu, Moblins, and Mamooja. Story held my interest up through the Mamooja village/level 94. I preferred the succession tournament story to what came later.

The Moblins who kidnap craftsmen and then support and cheer them on to make beautiful art, with some people running away to the hidden camp nearby was interesting.

The sidequest in the waterfall zone where the Hanu gaslight the new guard was neat.

The story successfully hyped up Valigarmanda as a threat to fight against, if only it actually paid off on that. I would have been fine if the story had climaxed with fighting a big bad monster bird or Bakool Ja Ja rather than someone with "deep" motivations.

The moment in the cooking arc where Zooral Ja is told that he is not getting a keystone and then stares at Wuk Lamat as if he is contemplating harming his own sister (even if she isn't really) was sad, and scary.

For characters, I liked Gulool Ja Ja, Koana, Bakool Ja Ja as a villain, Zoraal Ja in the first half, and Wuk Evu. Sphene was pretty and sounded nice. Krile's father was a little funny.

Wuk Lamat had a couple funny moments.

Wuk Lamat tracking down Gulool Ja and being upfront that she is going to kill his father, but is also going to take care of him (the son) because if family won't, no one else will, was nice. Also bringing him back to Tuliyollal and the reaction of the guards.

DPS rolequestline was decent. Good idea about someone using shapeshifting magic to try to impersonate key individuals to try to cause war and strife. Funny joke with the Namazu almost being shot. Was nice to see Magnai again, though it's been how many years since Stormblood? And he's a king. He should have found his Nhaama by now. It's becoming a little sad.

I like how the new raid doesn't start with long winded exposition dumps or character introductions, and instead gets you into two fights almost immediately, and then only after the second boss does it take a moment for characters to talk. Prior raids had more appealing premises (saving the world with the Scions, more Ancients) but were hamstrung by slow pacing as you're hanging out with academics who talk talk talk and has loads of exposition.

[Akonyl]

I loved everything from Vanguard onwards. For lasting all of half a zone, I loved Robo-Otis and got attached to him enough that I cried a bit at his death, which is more investment than I had in anything prior in Dawntrail, I think.

[OneBigFish]

There were sore points for me in DT but that's for another thread. I do want to say that despite that, I overall had a good time and here are the highlights (spoilers for whole story):
- Mamool Ja backstory, wish more time was spent learning about their history, pain and suffering to produce the two headed beings and implications going forward. Such a cool story but was resolved in few quests.
- Reveal of golden city at the end of the dungeon. And reveal of Krile being from different reflection and just lore regarding all of this. Just wish we did not have the full stop moment to redirect our efforts after we found the door, slowed down the story a lot in a bad way for me.
- I liked the invasion of city moment (minus the wol doing absolutely nothing part)
- Loved Vrtra!! and that entire cutscene.
- Loved Solution 9/ Alexandria and the idea of soul/memory extraction. Brought out questions like what makes one oneself? Soul? memory? If you lost your memories, would you be the same person? If your memories lived inside a machine, would that machine become you? I actually would love these questions explored.
- I loved the idea of being resurrected after sudden death by using purified souls and concept of merging with feral should. But would like more in depth discussion and ramifications of this. What is person has been resurrected MANY times using many souls? Is that still the same person as they were when they were born? Do the extra souls cause nasty side effects long term?
- Loved Living Memory, I lost someone very important to me recently and Namika/Wuk moment hit me hard.
- I LOVED OTIS both forms!!!
- Krile meeting her parents was awesome but rushed, wanted more time with them. They have a wealth of knowledge that I feel like we could have learned more. Like more about the organization that was doing soul extraction, their facilities, methods, tests, etc. So many questions that we could have asked and learned about.
- Loved all trials and dungeons, very good difficulty.
- Music, fantastic all the way.
- Raids are looking really good and love the arena wwe style.

I think overall there were actually decent amount of strong points in the MSQ. If they had focused on some of these strong points and elaborated on them, story would have been that much more enjoyable. I just wanted more depth. Especially when dealing with really interesting and important topics/information. Generally what they had to work with was really good, but how it was delt with was meh. I hope that this gets improved going into the future.

[Gullis]

I liked the first half of the story. Bakool jaja was a fun bully antagonist, Zone 1-4 were great, and I enjoyed the HanuHanu and Pelupelu a lot.

[TaleraRistain]

I enjoyed Bakool Ja Ja. I thought he had a very good arc. Love the gameplay. Love the Wauchumeqimeqi side quests. The juice lady is positively adorable. The adventuring side quests are great. Love the role quests. Love the story and gameplay of the raids. And my IX loving heart is singing at all the references and the way they had echoes of IX and its themes without rehashing the story. I also enjoyed the world-building and introduction of different cultures. I don't get all the references and I look forward to the spoiler embargo lifting on social media so I can enjoy all the people explaining them. There are also interesting lore tidbits for the future that we've been given. I'm not entirely happy with the MSQ but I can see where things can improve.

[Hypnotic13371337]

My favorite part is when they foreshadowed Cahciua's fate RIGHT as you get to the outskirts town.

Erenvale asks the ppl there about his mom and they say they don't know her at all. Nothing odd at all for us at that point.... But then you learn about the regulators and see what happened to Namikka and when you have THAT context..... you can put together that she is dead already and the regulators wiped their memory of her.

Its SO GOOD, dude