Does anyone else feel like the Dawntrail MSQ was too predictable?

[FlowerMilk]

I genuinely feel like if you only watched the voiced cutscenes and just skipped all the other, unvoiced dialogue, you would still know exactly what was going on in the story and not really miss anything. It's so predictable and repeats itself so much that it was just straight up boring by the end of it. It feels like a World of Warcraft tier story written for people who don't want to read any of the quest text and just want to watch the cutscenes and nothing else. And I quit WoW for FFXIV specifically because I hated that.

I feel like Stormblood suffered from the same problem for some of the story, we knew what Lyse and Hien were going to do and they did it, but we just didn't know how they were going to achieve those goals so it was at least still interesting in that regard. Other expansions like Heavensward, Shadowbringers, and especially Endwalker were not predictable at all, I genuinely had no idea where the story was going for all of those expansions and they kept me on the edge of my seat wanting to play more to find out. Wanting to play the follow up patch story, too, to find out more.

I just never got the same feeling with Dawntrail at any point. The only parts that were unpredictable were with Krile and Erenville and we did not get enough at all of them, I wish we had got more, especially Krile.

[hydralus]

"Too" predictable? Nah. I don't particularly care if a story is predictable or not. I just want it told well. Hell as you said Endwalker was unpredictable and it was terrible. The story is rife with stupidity for the sake of plot progression and character destruction to the point of uselessness. It's like they didn't know how to end things and just slapped together a finale and didn't care how they got there. Thank God I don't play this game for the story else I might be upset.

[Petroglyph]

Once they revealed Koana I was like "Either he's gonna be the leader, or they're gonna wind up together." All I needed was a little more "resolve and reason" to know. But I kept my hopes up. The other two competitors were both Mamool Ja so I knew right away that neither of them were gonna be allowed to be that important or pose a real challenge to the throne, because all Square did was talk about humanizing the allied societies. A classic "give em rights but nobody's ready for them to run for [goverment position]". The other one died in office.

Sure enough, both mamool ja were assholes. When my last hope vanished for a companion Mamool Ja was the teams. They just stuck the two player races together and the two lizards together, which was the final straw. So from the start, the game tells you not to worry about the other two; the two more human ones are gonna win.

That was my largest annoyance with predictability: at no point was I under any illusion Wuk Lamat was not going to get the throne, and also share it with Koana.

Sphene was also, pretty obviously, the BBEG of the expansion from the moment they introduced her in the gameplay trailer, so I only had to wonder when she was going to come in and threaten us. I predicted Sphene being like an ancient slumbering AI under Solution 9, but was only half wrong about that... ._.

[1313]

yes because the target audience is 5 years old

[GrizzlyTank]

Well written stories will be predictable to a point.

For dawntrail it was rather an issue of genre shift away from the way previous stories were told.

[Teraluna]

There are multiple descriptions pinned to the story. From the launch of the expansion, these have been discussed in the many posts disappointed with it.
Summarising: Poorly written.
Once players are met with that, the breakdowns naturally follow.

[Hyperia]

I don’t mind predictable as long as it’s a fun ride, all I want is a good story and happy ending.

[CamuiKushi]

The "twists" were signposted so hard I thought for sure they were red herrings, but nope!

The other two competitors were both Mamool Ja so I knew right away that neither of them were gonna be allowed to be that important or pose a real challenge to the throne, because all Square did was talk about humanizing the allied societies. A classic "give em rights but nobody's ready for them to run for [goverment position]". The other one died in office.

This is also why I thought the "Zoraal Ja gives me such bad vibes" from Krile made me think it was a red herring. "No way are they gonna make the two non-humans antagonists!" I told myself "They surely wouldn't backpedal on the tribal society humanising they did through Endwalker". Nope! If there's anything shocking to come from this expansion it's how fast they walked that back.

I don’t mind predictable as long as it’s a fun ride, all I want is a good story and happy ending.

True, sometimes the obvious thing is the most satisfying thing.

[Mansion]

Gonna be with the majority here, predictable doesn't mean bad.
If that's of any interest to you, I've studied literature for years and there is a popular theory called "the monomyth" by Joseph Campbell, which essentially consists in saying most hero stories follow a (very) similar path.
And usually it's a good exercice to make a great story in a frame that the audience already knows (see how classic european theater or Greek antique theater was written for instance).

Back to FFXIV, while it doesn't always relate to the monomyth because it isn't strictly speaking a hero's path from start to finish, there is a general succession of events in each expansion.
My personal favourite is still heavensward, but there was absolutely no doubt in the beginning that the Church were the bad guys for instance, and it wasn't hard to put pieces together along the narrative to understand the dragons' story. I had the same feeling in most of FFXIV's storytelling ever since I started playing actually, but I enjoyed most of it.
From a different point of view, Endwalker tried the surprising elements with things like Dynamis or Meteion, and I personally didn't like how these crucial elements came to light at the end of the story.

For Dawntrail, it was very easy to guess how things would unfold, which isn't a big deal in itself. To me the main problem is the pacing (which is hard to handle in a game where you have to grind XP to progress as it gates the story) and also how the game itself can't escape its own shape, knowing that there will be 5 leveling dungeons, 3 trials, 6 zones etc. It just forces the game into a shape that doesn't feel like it flows naturally with the story they want to deliver.

[Oizen]

Well yeah cause its was a re-run of shadowbringers gate kept by 10 hours of beast tribe quests.
It also became very apparent very early on anything that could remotely challenge Wuk Lamat wasn't going to happen