Thread: 7.3 MSQ Was Absolutely Terrific

I agreed with OP. (not forgetting the 24man collab brings back nostalgic memories of FF11)

ShB sets the bar very high because it is more of a closure of a 10 year story line.

Looking forward to the new story arc but I do hope they don't drag it too long. We need more villains like Ascians Emmet, Zenos & etc

I felt like the story was good in theory. I just didn't really care for it because it's not my thing. More perfectly good FF9 lore ruined with a sickening amount of electrope and Smile used at an obnoxious moment again instead of starting at the beginning of the track.

Too many cutscenes spent on them nodding their heads at eachother, praising eachother, raising eachother's spirits, thanking eachother and stating the obvious even more than usual. As usual they just need to dare to have someone disagree, get upset, have internal conflict amongst the scions, have sarcastic responses, dare to kill people off sometimes instead of the rubber bullet in Shaaloani (by this I mean it's too convenient that Sphene survived 400 years). And so many of the cutscenes just aren't voiced now.

I feel like the nodding heads thing has always been the case but we've just never had it more noticeable than now because the story had a compelling arc before with the progression through to Endwalker, so there was a clear focus on reaching the end of the Ascians that limited the extent to which it happened, whereas now it's off the rails.

I did like Gulool Ja's path and what they are going to do, but I also felt like they portrayed him as more mature than is realistic for a child. That's not to say that children can't be mature - I was as a child myself, but even accounting for that they were discussing some very adult concepts with him, like complex politics and the sundered world.

I liked the puzzles simply because they are meant to be in a video game. I felt they could have made the puzzels way harder, but you know how the playerbase is. If they had made the puzzles even slightly challenging, people would be complaining about it like they did In From The Cold. We were still inundated with cutscenes though so it's not any sort of big change to how they design the MSQ.

Dungeon was absolutely spectacular. Music was insane, visuals were aesthetically pleasing, and all the bosses were super fun and the 2nd boss especially was wild. I really enjoyed the trial as well

This is always the case though. The FFXIV visual effects, environment design and music teams are the best. There has never been a problem with these things, and in many ways they carry the game through all the other things people have a problem with.

Living Memory restored was the total cherry on top

I wonder if that was due to everyone using NG+ for it or if they actually planned it all along. Because it looked like the sort of thing that was added in a follow-up quest with the knowledge many were using NG+ to restore it.

7.3, to me personally, was good. Wasn't incredible of course, and wasn't as good as 7.2 I felt, but was WAY better then 7.0 and 7.1 story wise. Just a shame that this increase in story quality is happening NOW, when Dawntrail's main story purpose is pretty much over and done with since, like they promised by the looks of how it all wrapped up for the most part this patch, 7.4 will be focusing on giving us the build into the next expansion's main story.

Gonna miss Real Sphene and Shale though. Both became two of my favorite characters and now I gotta start saying goodbye to them as they get thanos snapped and gradually disappear to join the "characters who served their purpose for the main game story" vault to live for the rest of time until they get 5 minutes of freedom sometime in the future.

I was really, REALLY hoping we wouldn't have to resort to more Ascian shenanigans since that always seems like a crutch now, but here we are. I'm assuming that was probably viewed as the easy way to try and win back people who didn't like Dawntrail, but we already ended all the full Ancients, so I don't want to be dealing with more half-baked Fandaniels... and I was really hoping that was the end of Calyx, who I found to be an insufferable anime villain trope.

The story is definitely getting better from 7.0 and 7.1. And the second boss in the new dungeon is actually quite fun as a Healer.

Also, I get the game to give me this image of my character as the WoL has canonically traumatized another person.

Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Same here. I really loved my character actually doing something unique to her job in the post-trial cutscene! I just wish the book in the inn gave us a pause button for the cutscenes so I could get a nice screenshot of that, because my timing on that one sucks!

One thing you can do for good screenshot taking for most cutscenes, ones available in The Unending Journey, is just record the game with something like OBS and then take a screenshot of the recording.