Wow, Dawntrail was bad

[Barwara]

There is some reasoning to that.

I mean… the fact that there’s a reason why things happened the way they did doesn’t excuse the poor writing. Doesn’t make the gameplay fun. The devs could have written the same story differently but made it so the player feels more engaged with what they are doing. That’s just a writing issue. I consider the plot not uninteresting, just very, very poorly executed.

[Jeeqbit]

I mean… the fact that there’s a reason why things happened the way they did doesn’t excuse the poor writing. Doesn’t make the gameplay fun. The devs could have written the same story differently but made it so the player feels more engaged with what they are doing.

I agree they could have added more gameplay. The ones that stick out most to people are the train scene and the cooking where you have no control over the situation. They have demonstrated the technology to do it though because we actually enter an aim mode during other expansions where we fire at NPCs that play hide and seek, and there is a cutscene where we select and choose food in Shadowbringers at Mord Souq. Didn't they even do just that in Urqopacha for the pelupelu merchant?

That’s just a writing issue.

I'd argue the gameplay issues aren't to do with writing but the decision of what technology to use to portray the story (cutscenes instead of gameplay). Some of the bloat was also not particularly story related but just that they wanted to over-explain everything in case people skipped or forgot the previous MSQ.

Respectfully Jeeq, them pulling an explanation out of their magic hat doesn‘t make the pacing any less odd.

I agree that it's odd, I was just making the point that it was technically explained because I've seen many people talk as if it wasn't explained.

[Zarkovitch]

Yeah the story is kinda ass on that one, but gameplay felt better imo.