Dawntrail, Endwalkers, and the Death of 2.0

[DisgracedDairy]

(This post will contain spoilers.)

Hello everyone. I’ve been a fan of this game for a fairly long time. I have not had the fortunate misfortune of having played through 1.0 and witnessing its glorious rebirth into 2.0, nor have I played its spiritual predecessor, Final Fantasy 11. I haven’t done any Ultimates, and I haven’t completed a single savage raid series. But I have been around long enough to have witnessed the majority of this game’s lifespan, and to have experienced what is offered within the context of this story, its characters, and its content. When I was first introduced to the setting of Hydaelyn, now retroactively titled the planet of Etheirys, I became enamored with the reality that the people of its world inhabited, and the lives they surely must have led. I watched a world become bathed in flame with eyes only restrained to my ocular cavity by my desire to keep watching the cinematic while a siren-like voice comforted the broken and tired of the realm by telling them that their lives, no matter how brutal and short, were worth living. For a very long time, I have refrained from putting pen to paper and actually writing any sort of commentary. For a very long time, I felt no need to. After years of silence on this forum, I have decided to throw my hat into the ring, and have a proper try at expressing myself and my feelings towards this game. Before I can start this post with a clear conscience however, I want to take the time to talk about some of the hostility surrounding the discussion of this expansion, the MSQ, and the game as a whole in this preface.

I had originally planned on placing a “Criticizing the Critics of the Critics” segment here, but I thought it was too long and too harsh. Instead, I will summarize with these choice words; If you are here to say “I enjoyed it,” “Go play something else,” or “Stop attacking (buzzword),” I invite you to stop being so reductive and to strive to produce meaningful commentary. In the case of that first sentiment, you always have the option to keep playing. With that brief (but nonetheless important) segment out of the way, allow me to illustrate why I’ve written this post. I want to ask you, the reader, an important question.

“What makes Dawntrail a story about Final Fantasy 14?”

[DisgracedDairy]

To some, this will be a dumb question with an obvious answer. After all, the name of the expansion in its totality is Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail. It is made by the same developers, overseen by the same producers, and published by the same company. What we fail to realize in drawing these conclusions so hastily, however, is that Final Fantasy 14 is not just a game. Pong is just a game. There is nothing else in it except 2 digital paddles, a simulated ball, and the programming which holds it together. In pong, there IS nothing else but a game. What makes Final Fantasy different from pong, among other things, is that Final Fantasy 14 is also a narrative experience. It has stories, characters, and concepts. With this knowledge, let’s refine this question some more.

“How does Dawntrail contribute to the narrative of Final Fantasy14?”

On a surface level, this expansion hypothetically gives us a plethora of new content to work with. There is the continent of Tural, divided into the northern and southern halves. There are the various tribes shown to us, the Hanu-Hanu, the Pelu-Pelu, the giants of Xak Tural, the Moblins, and even what we would consider to be just the “Normal People'' living in Tural. The Endless, Alexandria, Solution 9… All of these add to the Dawntrail experience (which in and of itself, has its own separate problems, but you can read about that elsewhere on this forum). But on a fundamental level these additions are almost all flawed, because they’re missing a kind of narrative glue that tactfully and efficiently intertwines the old with the new. Lore.

A lot of people really liked Endwalkers. That’s great. I did not. Aside from the plot holes, the creepy cultist inclinations of the supposed good guys, strawmanning of characters and societies we are given a first hand experience of in the very same expansion, Dynamis becoming the new MacGuffin, social darwinism, then hurriedly panicking and retconning said concept, hiding the truth about religion after an expansion about how hiding the truth about religion is bad, and other grievances… Above all else, it committed one unforgivable sin for me. I understand that when people look at Endwalkers, they see the finale of a glorious journey with their friends at their side. I don’t begrudge these people this view. But when I look at Endwalkers and its intentions as a whole I see something entirely different; A hurried frenzy to erase everything that was unique about 1.0/2.0 in its entirety. To make anything and everything about Eorzea irrelevant.

[DisgracedDairy]

Do you remember playing through 2.0, and meeting the tempered? I do. I remember watching as scared, terrified people were corralled like animals and brought before what were the twisted gods of Eorzea, distorted beyond recognition by their dogmatic believers. (I think if you read about Garuda, she was a heroic figure who made some great sacrifice at some point in her conception, before we came to know her in ARR.) And then, in only an instant, their eyes were turned to the glory of their new master, casting off their fears and doubts to murder, kidnap, and pillage in their name. And the worst part was; there was no turning back. That person was now dead to the world, their minds and bodies forevermore caught in the endless spiral of primal worship. The only cure was death. It was an important part of the setting, I believe. It made Gaius and his agenda different in an important way. Even though we had opposed him, we sought solutions for the same problems. Real problems with difficult solutions, and no easy shortcuts.

And then Covid happened. Somebody looked in the mirror and said, “No. I don’t want to play with Eorzea anymore. Get rid of it.” And from that point onward, the Main Story Quest had the explicit purpose of annihilating any reason to ever have to tell a story about Eorzea ever again. One of the longest and highest quality quest chains in existence, the Dalmascan Resistance quests, end abruptly and unsatisfyingly. Any mystery or question about the setting had to die. Who are the 12? A convocation parallel, maybe? No. They’re just 12 random ancients that randomly show up out of nowhere and commit suicide by cop. What about the tempered? Miracle cure shows up overnight. I wouldn’t have minded it so much and indeed I didn’t, (and I thought the formerly tempered beastmen were handled pretty well up until that point,) if the story didn’t have the audacity to throw the tempered against you again AFTER you had already cured it. The shattered reflection, the 13th? The Crystal Tower just solves it like it was a crossword puzzle for preschoolers. Garlemald? It beats itself offscreen. What we are left with is a bleak and soulless husk of a world that I once liked. And at the end of it all, I’m left wondering why we tried so hard.

[DisgracedDairy]

I want you to consider what would change if Dawntrail had taken place within its own, entirely separate plane of existence, completely isolated from the world of Final Fantasy 14 and the contents of the main story quest. What now, within that story, cannot take place? Off the top of my head, I can think of relatively few things. One, the aetherial conductivity doesn’t exist anymore, so the Hanu’s crops could not have been fixed the same way. Two, Alexandria can’t be a reflection of the source. Three, we couldn’t have recruited the scions for Tural’s succession crisis. And four, Vrtra can’t instantly beat Zoraal Ja’s flying terminators.

Now, let’s try doing the same for Shadowbringers, using the same premise. It has also now been sent to a parallel universe, and anything related to 2.0 has been left behind. But a very strange thing happens. The narrative of Shadowbringers COMPLETELY falls apart. Without the nature of aether, the rejoinings cannot happen. The Flood of Light cannot happen. Without Minfillia, there is no Oracle of Light. There are no Warriors of Darkness. Without the Warrior of Light, there is nobody who can defeat the lightwardens. Without the Ascians, Shadowbringers has no villains. Without the reflections, there can be no Scions, no Crystal Exarch, no Crystal Tower… Shadowbringers REQUIRES the world of Final Fantasy 14 in order to happen. How easy would it be to simply rewrite Dawntrail to be a separate game? The Hanu’s crops aren’t growing? The parade float is somehow the solution anyways, for equally contrived reasons. (You would think the Hanu would have mentioned something about the parade float shooting lasers at some point.) Alexandria might as well be an alien civilization. Everyone except Wuk Lamat could be just replaced with buff yes-men and nothing would change. And if they have problems with Zoraal Ja’s armies, that one bird from the giant questline is always ready to do whatever is convenient to the plot.

The answer to “How does Dawntrail contribute to the narrative experience of Final Fantasy 14,” is that it doesn’t. Because it isn’t a story about Final Fantasy 14. It’s a story about Dawntrail.
My brother, for the longest time, has hounded me about how the Warrior of Light should have died at the end of Endwalkers, and how the story should have picked up with someone else. My problem with that is that it has essentially already happened, and that it’s awful. I miss when the Warrior of Light was integral to the story. I miss when you could do things nobody else could do.

I miss Eorzea. Is this really what we killed it in exchange for?

[DisgracedDairy]

If you enjoyed this post, I recommend reading the thread titled,"The Negative Impact of Poor Character Writing on the Quality of Dawntrail's MSQ," which helped inspire this post. Because I believe that in addition to its characters, its worldbuilding has been left behind in recent times as well.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...racter+writing

[koko-on-da-forumz]

It's always the story lol.

Replace the writers and I'm sure you'll be just as happy as you were before. This is just a five(?) year long blip on the radar (6.1 - 7.5?).

For better or worse, the game is doing fine in terms of player count, much better than it would when the game was better. What can ya do?

[GrizzlyTank]

Essentially, the story have lost the intricacies and connections that made it more mature. Following the fall of the empire we now lack through world building that went on previously and are left with much more isolated and simpler stories.

Sharlaya was too sterilized in EW and became friendly with us too easily, a nation that straight up bailed on their old territory at the hint of resistance and would send assassins to deal with wayward information, and Garlemald cut too short.

[Sivante]

The apologist in me would like to point out that this is meant to be the setup for the next period of time. A lot of things can change now: ton, atmosphere, political approach. New foundations for new structures can be built now, and I got the impression walking into DT that this was the point of DT and to not expect too much for that reason.

That being said... that was all the apologist in me can dredge up. DT would not be excused as a stand-alone FF game, and as an expansion it offers a lot of fun stuff, but narratively across 21 hours of cut-scenes I did not see a foundation for something interesting built. I just saw cheap jokes, emotional music inappopriately placed or misunderstood, and a good measure of pushing for forced and artificial emotional responses. Dawntrail had a core tenet of letting go of the past and I would remind you of that: I would, but ironically it seems SE couldn't follow that advice and by irony's law alone brought the Scions into this mess, and the WoL as well.

So... I don't know. I want to apologize for it but there's naught much I can apologize for here. I could go into the weeds on extreme and precise examples but barring spoilers, everything from the second half onward left a discomfort in the pit of my stomach that I know for a fact was not what the writers intended. This just feels like a terrible setup to excuse some fanciful 'what-if' ideas someone wrote before hand. An entire expansion of 'I want X, but first, I have to do Y to setup for it.' Which would be fine but the narrative foundations are just uninspired and unimpressive to me personally.

Dawntrail felt less like a story about FF14, and more like a webcomic joke about FF14 that loaned nothing more than an elbow to your side as someone chides "You like it? You like it, right? Tacos. Who doesn't love tacos. Yep, they love it."

I will say I enjoyed the dungeons, trials, and raids a great deal removed of story however. But in a game that is 99% story, and gate-keeps your ability to play the game by how much story you've taken in, it does seem a bit inexcusable to end up where we are.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

What can ya do?

Keep complaining until they do better. Why do you think gameplay improved so much? People were like "great story, but the gameplay was too easy" for EW and now we have more challenging gameplay. So it's not like they don't listen, it's like they can only hire competent people for one department at a time or something.

[genuine_stranger]

Kind of feels like we are entering the post Avengers: Endgame saga of FFXIV.

Let's see how bad it can get!