[Thought Experiment] Is Dawntrail's 7.0 MSQ Planned to be "Terrible"?

[JarvieK]

Like many of you, I found the 7.0 MSQ to be a deeply unsatisfying experience.

Let's call it what it is: for many, the 7.0 MSQ was a narrative trainwreck.

But this project was born from a different, perhaps more obsessive, question: When faced with an imperfect and disappointing story, what is the most meaningful and beautiful thing we, as dedicated readers, can build from its ruins?

This 20,000-word analysis is not an attempt to guess the developers' "hidden plan" or to "defend" the story. Instead, think of it as a massive thought experiment in constructive deep reading. It's an attempt to see if we can use the game's own established lore, its decade-long history of narrative techniques, and its easily-missed textual details to build a more profound, more coherent, and ultimately more rewarding interpretation of Dawntrail than the one presented on the surface.

This is not a search for the one, true answer. It's an exploration of the story's fullest potential. In this essay, you won't find definitive predictions, but rather a methodology I'd call it "narrative forensics" for how we can engage with the worlds we love more deeply. The analysis deconstructs:

The Three Keys to FFXIV's Narrative DNA: How recurring patterns like "The Fissure in Memory," "A Portrait of Tragedy," and "The Price of Choice" provide a framework for understanding Dawntrail's flaws as potential clues.

The Skydeep Cenote's True Purpose: A deep-dive into in-game evidence suggesting the dungeon is an ancient armory, not a quarry, with shocking connections to the Ronkan Empire and Pandæmonium.

The "Asymmetrical Narrative" Hypothesis: A core theory proposing that the underwhelming feeling could be a deliberately crafted cognitive filter, designed to turn the player from a passive observer into an active participant in a meta-game.

This essay is my answer to the question of how we can remain engaged and find profound meaning, even in the face of disappointment. It's an invitation to look past the surface and to celebrate the power of analysis to co-create meaning with the text.

If that sounds like an interesting expedition, the full analysis is linked below. All perspectives, critiques, and discussions are welcome.

Full Analysis Here: https://lightning-halloumi-d2f.notio...2cf68dca2beb5b

Thank you for your time.

External Link: A Note on Cross-Community Discourse (A Researcher's Note)

[PercibelTheren]

I think you're giving them too much credit. The writing was already on the decline - I know people love to hype up Endwalker because it had some really good moments, however, the rest of Endwalker was pretty bad. Bad pacing, dull filler quests, endless cutscenes that told us nothing new. Post-Endwalker was even worse - it was a storyline lifted right out of older FF games. A raid series sidequest turned into MSQ. As a raid series side story, it would have been more or less acceptable. As MSQ, it got really boring really fast because, instead of more exploration on the 13th (like I had been hoping for), we were forced to spend time with Zero, someone's Deviantart OC.

I had been hoping that this decline in quality was temporary as the writing team was focusing on Dawntrail. Instead. Dawntrail just turned all the previous writing problems up to 11. Instead of complex characters who evolve, we have flat characters with one or two gimmicks. They barely change and, when they do, it's incredibly abrupt and nonsensical. The Scions are shells of themselves with none of the original personality. Raha had already been turned into "WoL's biggest fan" comic relief in Endwalker but in DT, that is all he is. Estinien is just a comic relief himbo now - again, something that started in Endwalker.

Personally, the biggest sin of the writing for me is that it forces my WoL to be an absolute idiot. There is no other explanation for why we just allowed Zoraal Ja to do his thing like he did in Dawntrail. This, I think, is a symptom of the writers having backed themselves into a corner where the WoL is so powerful that they need to constantly come up with excuses for why we don't just solve problems with our immense capacity for violence. Unfortunately, the reasons they do bring in are so asinine that it makes the WoL seem like a bumbling fool instead of a hero who has saved the world many times over.

All in all, I don't believe Dawntrail is an experiment. I believe it's simply a downward slope of a decline in writing quality that already started in Endwalker. I do not know why this happened - the change in lead writer can't be the only cause considering Endwalker already showed many of these symptoms. It is far from the only story in gaming in the recent years that is horribly written. Maybe the writers are burned out. Maybe SE is putting too much pressure on them. Maybe they just ran out of good ideas. Who knows? The result remains the same - an underwhelming story that left me thinking "why should I care about any of this" the whole way through.

[Cilia]

I think you're giving them too much credit. The writing was already on the decline - I know people love to hype up Endwalker because it had some really good moments, however, the rest of Endwalker was pretty bad. Bad pacing, dull filler quests, endless cutscenes that told us nothing new. Post-Endwalker was even worse - it was a storyline lifted right out of older FF games. A raid series sidequest turned into MSQ. As a raid series side story, it would have been more or less acceptable. As MSQ, it got really boring really fast because, instead of more exploration on the 13th (like I had been hoping for), we were forced to spend time with Zero, someone's Deviantart OC.

...

All in all, I don't believe Dawntrail is an experiment. I believe it's simply a downward slope of a decline in writing quality that already started in Endwalker. I do not know why this happened - the change in lead writer can't be the only cause considering Endwalker already showed many of these symptoms.

While I don't agree that Endwalker was bad, I do agree it had flaws (mostly pacing) and there are circumstances behind that.

1. Shadowbringers was mostly Natsuko Ishikawa given free reign. Endwalker was a collaborative effort between her, Banri Oda, and maybe Koji Fox and Yoshi-P. Their styles... clash, to put it lightly.
2. Endwalker was a late-in-development mashup of two planned expansions - one a war with Garlemald, the second actually concluding the Hy/Zo myth arc. A second "War with Garlemald" expansion after Stormblood was deemed redundant, and in the interest of finishing the Hy/Zo myth arc they mashed it into the concluding expansion. Hence pacing issues.
3. Post-Endwalker (6.X) is from a different writer / writing team led by Daichi Hiroi. He has worked on stuff for this game in the past (Shadow of Mhach, Pandaemonium, assistant to Yasumi Matsuno for the Ivalice derivative side content), though I can't say I'm super impressed with it. Either way, it was not disguised as being filler content for Dawntrail's preparation, so I'm not going to be so harsh on it. Filler content is usually bad. Add in the constraints they have to work in when writing for this game and...

Dawntrail's had its own issues - the Scions being present but not engaged with the plot, excessive focus on Wuk Lamat, and Lamaty'i's shounen characterization in a game that's been quite seinen in tone since Shadowbringers - but while I did not enjoy the first two acts, the third has been pretty good.

No, I don't think the writing quality going downhill is a clue there's some grand experiment to make Dawntrail garbage on purpose. Endwalker had too many fingers in the pie and some last-minute rewrites that screwed it up; post-Endwalker was the understudy's first crack at big time content; Dawntrail was advertised as being a "beach holiday" expansion and that's what it was for half of the story (relatively speaking). I agree that writing's not as good as past content, but that doesn't mean it's worthless garbage.

[Veritas-Ancora]

Post-Endwalker was even worse - it was a storyline lifted right out of older FF games. A raid series sidequest turned into MSQ. As a raid series side story, it would have been more or less acceptable. As MSQ, it got really boring really fast because, instead of more exploration on the 13th (like I had been hoping for), we were forced to spend time with Zero, someone's Deviantart OC.

Some of us enjoyed the FFIV content.

[Cleretic]

Dawntrail was a story that you happened to not like. That's it.

It's not some grand plan.
It's not some big structural failure.
It's not a secret flaw or saboteur that's keeping the developers from doing the work they really want to do.

You just didn't like a story. Accept it and move on, don't big it up into something it's not and then set up to disappoint yourself further when you're proven wrong.

If you must interrogate it, and get more meaning out of it than 'I didn't like it', then my recommendation is actually that you completely reject any assertions of inherent quality, and instead consider why things do and don't resonate with you specifically. Don't call Dawntrail 'bad' and Shadowbringers (or whatever your favorite expansion is) 'good', becuase there is no measurable difference between good and bad things; ask yourself why one story did work for you, and why another story didn't.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Dawntrail was a story that you happened to not like. That's it.

It's not some grand plan.
It's not some big structural failure.
It's not a secret flaw or saboteur that's keeping the developers from doing the work they really want to do.

You just didn't like a story. Accept it and move on, don't big it up into something it's not and then set up to disappoint yourself further when you're proven wrong.

If you must interrogate it, and get more meaning out of it than 'I didn't like it', then my recommendation is actually that you completely reject any assertions of inherent quality, and instead consider why things do and don't resonate with you specifically. Don't call Dawntrail 'bad' and Shadowbringers (or whatever your favorite expansion is) 'good', becuase there is no measurable difference between good and bad things; ask yourself why one story did work for you, and why another story didn't.

Right—because when loads of people are saying the same thing, it must still just be a personal issue.

[PercibelTheren]

Dawntrail was a story that you happened to not like. That's it.

It's not some grand plan.
It's not some big structural failure.
It's not a secret flaw or saboteur that's keeping the developers from doing the work they really want to do.

You just didn't like a story. Accept it and move on, don't big it up into something it's not and then set up to disappoint yourself further when you're proven wrong.

If you must interrogate it, and get more meaning out of it than 'I didn't like it', then my recommendation is actually that you completely reject any assertions of inherent quality, and instead consider why things do and don't resonate with you specifically. Don't call Dawntrail 'bad' and Shadowbringers (or whatever your favorite expansion is) 'good', becuase there is no measurable difference between good and bad things; ask yourself why one story did work for you, and why another story didn't.

There are fairly objective measures of good quality writing, though. I don't think anyone is going to tell you that stilted dialogue is a good thing, for example. Same goes for bad pacing and similar issues Dawntrail is absolutely plagued with. There are absolutely things that come down to taste (personally, I hated Wuk Ewu and didn't find him funny at all), but if a house is structurally unsound, you can't tell me I don't like it just because of the color of its walls.

[Dikatis]

Right—because when loads of people are saying the same thing, it must still just be a personal issue.

There are fairly objective measures of good quality writing, though. I don't think anyone is going to tell you that stilted dialogue is a good thing, for example. Same goes for bad pacing and similar issues Dawntrail is absolutely plagued with. There are absolutely things that come down to taste (personally, I hated Wuk Ewu and didn't find him funny at all), but if a house is structurally unsound, you can't tell me I don't like it just because of the color of its walls.

Cleretic's point is that this isn't a "planned failure" or whatever. The writing they gave us was flawed and easily criticized and a lot of people disliked it including you. That's it. It's not some grand conspiracy. There's plenty of people who like Dawntrail's story who don't frequent the forums so they don't comment here because of the Forum's (justified) reputation of a circlejerk of negativity and hateposting.

Again, there are plenty of valid criticisms of Dawntrail's writing that I agree with, but it's not intentionally bad.

For all its faults, Dawntrail is sincere in its themes of the weight of legacy, the importance of understanding the people you live with (even your enemies), and the dangers of toxic nostalgia. While it could have been executed better, the writer's themes still showed through and came together powerfully in the finale of the main story. And the patch story continues to build upon this with the dark sides of Alexandria and the reintroduction of Queen Sphene to give a contrasting voice to its current state.

I enjoyed Dawntrail's main story a lot. We asked for a summer vacation expansion and we got it. Heck, I'm more sympathetic to Zoraal Ja than most since I know what golden child burnout looks like.

It's fine to criticize something, but to descend into conspiracy theories like this feels wrong when there's nothing to corroborate it.

[Cleretic]

Cleretic's point is that this isn't a "planned failure" or whatever. The writing they gave us was flawed and easily criticized and a lot of people disliked it including you. That's it. It's not some grand conspiracy. There's plenty of people who like Dawntrail's story who don't frequent the forums so they don't comment here because of the Forum's (justified) reputation of a circlejerk of negativity and hateposting.

You're largely correct, but also my point was that quality is not an objective truth. It is meaningless to say that any piece of media is 'good' or 'bad' as accepted fact, because they're not: they're subjective responses to a thing. And we all know this, because the best Simpsons episode would be a terrible Game of Thrones episode, because the subjective audiences for both of those shows are watching them for different things.

If you don't have an explanation for why the thing you don't like is bad, you don't have a fact, or even a reasoned opinion in my book: you have a gut reaction. I'll listen to opinions, but I'm not listening to gut feel masquerading as fact.


To bring it back to FFXIV: I dislike Shadowbringers' story, because a lot of the ideas it has that I consider interesting are ideas that it squanders by either actively defeating the entire purpose elsewhere (Eulmore), or by just having the ideas in complete isolation and never really managing to tie them into anything (Il Mheg). I think it primarily succeeds for people by pinning its appeal on the journeys of two specific characters that hit quite well for a lot of people who are prone to really openly celebrate those types of stories, but in one case I find both the character to be decent but the story to be a complete nothing (the Crystal Exarch), and for the other I find the character to be actively unpleasant and the story to be morally repellant (Emet-Selch). As a result, while Shadowbringers has individual moments that I quite like, the actual story leaves me cold. This is not an objective statement that Shadowbringers is bad; it is a subjective statement that I don't like it.

Meanwhile, I love Dawntrail! I think the story mostly knows what it's doing and is constantly building on itself to compound that particular story (mostly; the first trip to Shaaloani's a dud), which as Dikatis says, is a story about legacy, and understanding; I'd also add 'the purpose and meaning of leadership' to the story's theme, and object to 'toxic nostalgia' only to say that I think Dawntrail is more about the place and purpose of memory, with Yok Tural laying down a positive relationship with it that Alexandria then corrupts and poisons. I find every character and their stories really compelling, with them both being broadly fun to experience and resonating well with my own feelings and experiences. Again, this is not an objective statement that Dawntrail is good: it is a subjective statement that I like it.

Are there ways that I would do it differently? Personally, yes, but I wouldn't even call it improvement, just changing it to be more to my personal tastes and wants for the story.

[Chasingstars]

(mostly; the first trip to Shaaloani's a dud)

Personally it was the second trip to Shaaloani where the story went worse, not the first. Rushed pacing where you don't even get to meet the inhabitants of Heritage Found before Zoraal Ja and Sphene's influence happened. Its meant to be some big game-changing moment, but instead its cheapened by the lack of proper emotional connection to what the territory was before. If the dome and solution 9 and the lightning storms happened to somewhere we already visited, it would be more weighted as we been there before. Such as when the various towers that sprang up with the lunar primals and lunar tempered, that was more impactful because those were attacks on established places that we had visited. If the dome appeared where Shaaloani was, not Heritage Found, that would have created a stronger narrative as we actually got to spend time with and learn from the people who lived there as the people met there would have aged 30 years and any who died well nobody would remember them except for the player and Erenville.

The closest emotional connections you can even have is Namikka, Wuk Lamat's nurse maid who is already middle-aged, and Cahciua, Erenville's mom, which we didn't even meet her before she became an endless as she was at best mentioned. Imagine how much more impactful the story would've been if we, for example, talked to Cahciua in our first trip to Shaaloani, then we met the robot she is remotely controlling there would be a stronger sense that she is fine because viera are naturally long-lived, only to then much more harder shatter that illusion the player has to reveal that she is an endless.