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i wonder if she has any special dialogue in the scene if the WoL is a Hrothgar, male or female.

3:33 So that's Thanos'... 😮

I don't know why SE is allergic to voice acting but alot of quests would be amazing if it had them

I really like your breakdown and suggestions. I also felt that the story with Sphene should have wrapped up in the patches.

Yes, it's rushed and not finished. But also the writing is quite bad or non-existent. Also Erenville is almost completely pointless when you have Krile, but for some reason they wanted to displace Krile story with Erenville. When you write according to some vocal fangirls, it will just make the story much weaker.

It really does suck that the writers were so stuck in the mentality that they had to do EVERYTHING in *one* launch expansion that they forgot that they could do a somewhat chill launch expansion that ends on something threatening and unknown, like a Weapon made out of Electrope and then work your way up to Sol 9 and Alexandria in the subsequent patches. They quite literally just forgot. In 3.0 not everything was solved. We only just killed the Pope at the end of 3.0 and it took 2 or so content patches before got to punch Nid around properly. Then after that was more clean-up and set-up for 4.0.

you have to go get the chickens iced coffee!

Normally when i play a new MSQ, i'm not even tempted to skip one dialogue. Somehow, this one..i was tempted more than once. And even the job quest are boring. The "threat" is ridiculous. i don't know what to think, because outside of the story, it's simply gorgeous landscape on gorgeous landscape. Bangers music after bangers and the raids are actually awesome with a more interesting and engaging story than the actual story (outside of living memory part that i call "depression map".

Wish Otis would have been a new main character that would accompany you in future expacs, but they killed him :(

I'll be honest, DT MSQ was a 6/10 for me. The overall feeling of the story dragging at the first part is just... sheer boredom. As a consequence, the pacing becomes even more flawed when things were going way too fast on the second half, not giving proper time to develop, specially the characters and their motivations. Because of this, the writers felt like they needed to make these characters speak out loud what they are feeling in the moment and what motivations they have continuously, losing both subtlety and subtext -- which was actually one of your main points of the video: "show, don't tell". In my opinion, they could really do the Rite of Succession storyline to be the whole expansion, adding "Summer Vacation" and a decent "Rivalry with Scions" themes coming along or, even more, having a hidden objective for us to take on while helping Wuk Lamat in Tural. This would give more time for character development (specially refining Wuk Lamat's traits and explaining both Zoraal Ja and Bakool Ja Ja backstories and motivations), time for us to have a side objective, to have a real conflict with the Mamook people and their beliefs (thus not resolving them in just a couple of minutes) and also... time for us to have fun and explore. Kill monsters around and not pretend they are just... scenery. But, most importantly, giving the Scions to have presence and purpose on the story: interject and interact with the plot points, giving us proper insights and informations -- and I'm not talking about just Erenville or Krile. Using them as background "characters" with the only purpose to serve as combat bodies for us in the Trust system, while highlighting them in the trailers with such an emphasis is so weird. My whole idea was to push the whole "Zoraal Ja finding the city of gold" to the last patches of the post-expansion and had the whole Alexandria storyline to the next expansion. For Dawntrail, we could easily make Valigarmanda the very last boss of the MSQ, since it poses a real threat to Tural. Once freed by Zoraal Ja in a stupid attempt to inflate his ego and try to surpass his father after failing on the Mamook trial, it could be an easy parameter to judge how Wuk Lamat has grown on her strength overall and we could go even further, allowing Koana to use some of his technology to attempt on imprisioning the beast once more and then failing, weakning Valigarmanda at the point that would be feasible to bring it down.

The MSQ failed when i got to cowboy land and my first thought when seeing Estinien was "the plot is dragging out because we finished the Rite and can't fight the ultimate evil yet."

Estinien be like: Ayo Meteor you misplaced your toddler

Personally, i enjoyed most of the MSQ perfectly fine, they just did 2 oopsies wich really took me out of it. the first one being in Living Memory, giving us a big Moral Conundrum (Turning off Living Memory ofc) and then telling that there is only one correct answer. turning off the endless went completely against my moral code, and thus the moral code of my WoL. We have always been problem solvers, and in case of emergency have beaten the problems face in, see the literal incarnation of despair in EW. My WoL would have been categorically against just turning everything off because Erens Mom said so. even worse, i felt taunted by having been given the option to refuse once, only for them to say "no, its the only way" and the option being removed. it felt like i was being forced onto the path someone else thought was the best one regardless of what i might think of a complex moral issue, wich really broke the immersion i was enjoying up until that point. i had to skip cutscenes and dissociate hard to even finish the story, since my options were: do what we say or dont finish the expansion, not being allowed to join the endgame content. The second problem was the interference during the final trial. I really enjoyed sphenes character, so i ended up forming quite the bond with her aswell. and as much as i like wuk lamat, that was supposed to be *MY* climactic last struggle of the expansion. her just showing up to steal the show by A: talking nice to sphene, wich i also would have liked to do but didnt get the option to and B: out-damaging the entire party, yknow, the entire party of the greatest heroes from all reflections, since we used the crystal, at least one of wich is at least 8/13th of an ancient, whos literal job it is to kill tribal deities as scion and who has beat a full fledged ancient (hades), Zodiark (even if just pieces, also piloted by fandango), Hydaelyn and the Endsinger. AT LEAST. Wuk does not nearly have the kind of portfolio we do, she should not be able to just show up and steal my thunder. So overall, Good expansion, liked the themes and the characters, had a lot of fun. just made 2 mis-steps wich took me out unfortunately

Thank you for being the first person to call out the plot hole that bothered me the most after the story wrapped up; who the fuck is Gulool Ja's mom? I swear to god he's either a clone or one of the most contrived plot devices I think CS3 has ever come up with. I get his purpose in relation to Zoraal Ja from a narrative standpoint, but how the hell did no one in the story find his existence to be extremely sus. Even Oblivion talks about finding and homing him, but never comment on searching for his mother, or even questioning who she was???

Some other stuff I wanted to say about MSQ problems and why I disagree with some points/ideas you make in the video (TL;DR they need to stop trying to make every villain misunderstood or redeemable, it worked before but not for this expansion's villains): Gulool Ja's missing mom doesn't really matter to the story. Zoraal Ja's whole character is that he does things for himself and doesn't care about anybody around him, even his own son. So having Gulool Ja's mom there wouldn't add anything to the story. And thinking "how did they get a mamool ja there" when Zoraal Ja, a mamool ja, was already there with his mamool ja followers, and they had 30 years... just seems like the kind of CinemaSins nitpicking caused by shortsightedness. Zoraal Ja's whole dying cutscene shows his self-interested worldview made him the worst father ever. It's not really a redemptive cutscene. Having Gulool Ja's mom as part of the story wouldn't add anything. Having him living like an orphan in Solution Nine because his father abandoned him is enough to convey that Zoraal Ja's attitude and beliefs are wrong. Also, Gulool Ja being alone like that, but finding out that the WoL, scions, and Wuk Lamat care for him regardless of his relation to their enemy, is a good character moment for Wuk Lamat. It fits her personality and made her a lot more likable for me. Where the story really messes up in the second half is trying to make the Endless and Sphene redeemable. They show that they're powered by killing everything and stealing souls. Sphene being friendly at first is a good way to make it so we can go through Solution Nine and the 5th zone without the place being instantly hostile, so the gameplay and story aren't so wildly inconsistent there. But the 6th zone is like a very halfassed attempt to mix up Elpis and Amaurot, giving us this advanced ancient civilization theme park where we're supposed to feel bad for shutting it down, when in reality everything there is an AI construct that takes people's lives just to power it. There should have never been any attempts to make Sphene seem like she wants peace. And Wuk Lamat should have realized that peace was never an option. For one thing, it'd just be nice for the cutesy anime girl to be pure evil. But it'd also give Wuk Lamat another serious lesson in leadership to learn that she didn't in the first half. First half - she learns that the strength of Tuliyollal is all of its different cultures united. Second half - she would learn that you can't make peace with everybody, and to defend her people, she has to go to war. All of the attempts to make the Endless, regulators, and things like that sympathetic fall flat when you go beyond the surface. I mean there's that cutscene when you're first in Solution Nine, where some people are terrified because they don't have any soul cells and haven't "earned" them. That already shows (but not well) that the whole soul cell system is pretty evil since it's literally the rich and powerful in Alexandria and Solution Nine who choose who lives and dies directly. So the story writing really should've leaned into that aspect of why Alexandria's way of life is wrong. Hopefully we get more of that in patch MSQ since it seems like the raid story is already heading in that direction. Gulool Ja Ja, Galuf and Ketenramm saying they saw the golden city without going through the portal isn't really a big plot hole or anything to get upset about. They saw the gate, saw it open, didn't really know why or what was going on, but saw the golden light behind Krile's parents and understood it was some kind of city they were escaping. In that situation, they only get a glimpse of it, and then Krile's parents have to shut the gate. They don't have time to take people through or give a guided tour. So of course, with that little info, it becomes a legend of a fabled golden city hidden deep in Tural. It's also a nice spin on the real world legends of the ancient city of gold that was supposed to be in South America. Later on in the MSQ, Wuk Lamat says that Turali scholars investigated that artifact and learned it was a key, but didn't know how to use it to open the gate. I just found complaints about this part of the MSQ to be weird since it seemed like you skipped a cutscene somewhere and missed out on that info. The good thing is, I think all the negativity around Wuk Lamat means patch MSQ won't focus on her much. It's another Lyse situation, and while I missed Stormblood when it came out, 7.0 MSQ gave me a lot of Stormblood vibes, just without a story as good as the Doma side. We have this unpopular main character who's both incompetent and too heavily focused in the MSQ (WAY worse than Lyse imo, I hate Lyse but at least in the 4.0 MSQ she's not jumping into the battle against Shinryu to take credit for the victory at the end) but we didn't have anybody as well written as Hien, Gosetsu, Yugiri, or Yotsuyu (she's seriously one of the best villains and also one of the few character redemption arcs I enjoyed in this game). I'm also going to say that Erenville was maybe the worst written character because all he does is stand to the side, make sarcastic remarks about Wuk Lamat or whatever's going on, and somehow knows more about Tural than anyone despite not having been there for however many years he said it's been. As somebody who lived in another country for 7 years and then returned back, he should have been more shocked at all the changes instead of being written the way he was. Also it's really lazy writing in general to have somebody whose personality defaults to sarcastic. It makes them seem smart, but what the fuck does Erenville do of any value in the MSQ? I mean that, seriously. At best he's asking other NPCs for info and never returns with anything of value that I can remember in the MSQ. I swear he's only in there because they wanted Cahciua to feel more important to the story. Hopefully, patch content focuses more on Krile's story now, with other scions helping out. It would be really good to have Krile and Y'shtola together in the patch content since Y'shtola's interest in other cultures and the different shards aligns with Krile learning more about the Alexandria shard to better know her parents. There are a lot of good directions the story can go from here, and unlike WOW, they actually listen to what players want and work to adjust where they can. So future patches will most likely push Wuk Lamat to the side and give us more adventures. Also, personally, I still owe G'raha a grand adventure, so if we don't get one in these patches, then we'd better be able to go on one in 8.0. I realize I'm writing a ton here but this is the only video I've seen that actually goes into good depth on why the 7.0 MSQ is bad, even if I don't think I would try and fix it the way you would. Most of the other criticisms/things I've heard about it are pretty much just "Wuk Lamat bad" or people refusing to accept that we can love the game but still find flaws in it.

UPDATE: So I've been told by some of you guys that Krile did actually mention why she changed to PCT in a cutscene during 6.55, so that's my mistake for not remembering correctly, mb Also, there are a lot other issues in the expansion that I didn't mention bc they were irrelevant to the MSQ, or I forgot, one of the most obvious ones is the REALLY BAD direction of the NA voice lines, with the biggest proof being, surprisingly not Wuk Lamat, but rather Y'shtola and her xbox headset mic If you don't believe me, change your game audio and watch the cutscenes in the Unending Journey, it's more obvious when there are multiple characters talking and then she speaks with that WW2 radio quality

The very strange thing is that since covid period and being busy with FF16 they expanded the time of patches from 2 to 3 months making contents even more slow and repetitive, they almost took one extra year to build this expansion and the result is something rushed, full of gaps, full of forced stupid choices to just allow the plot to happen. Kryle asks for information about her granfather and we are told when you win the rite you will get those information, ok so we already know who will win no matter what. For the kid i also have the same question what happened to the mother of the kid we know that the amool ja have both parents, so another thing that makes no sense just to have the kid to attract attenion. The funniest part is when we see Zoral Ja give the order to attack and then we see the fight and they we go back to the same cutscene, us waiting there in front of Zoral Ja and the soldier sais they had to retreat after being wiped, it is literally 5 minutes of battle and it is over?

As you mentioned the minigames even in the initial area of DT where you need to fake a trading that is already totally scripted and presented as a minigame but is just a talk to this talk to that they could have used the mechanics of crafting of the Sanctuary Island to make it a real trading game.

Why would anyone from Alexandria accept the supposed son of Zulool ja(The guy who murdered lots of people) as the heir to the throne? He basically has 0 Legitimacy. And why would the little guy even want this responsibility???

Personally, I preferred the second half of the MSQ where you called it rushed cause the pacing there was good. I was enjoying every quest on the 2nd half. The first half was the problem, the pacing there was very slow and not much interesting stuff kept happening till near the end of that first half. The story was good enough for me and I would rank it 3rd under EW and SHB, and i think it's definitely building up something for the future. But oh my god, the quests being mostly cutscenes and not much action was the biggest problem, solo duties were the most fun out of it and there is only like.. 3? I wish there was more and I wish they would do minigames as you said to make things more fresh. Also it was very predictable because they follow the same pattern as SHB and EW "oh the quest is lvl 91, probably we gonna be doing a dungeon soon" i know its not something they can change because they need the duties to always be at those levels, but they could put the dungeon a bit later into 91 quests and not at the first lvl 91 quest, or just make MSQ all sync to ur level if you are 90+ and show the MSQ level as 90 with the arrow icon similar to how they do it with side quests. Overall, I think story was fine for a start of a new saga, but the package of dawntrail (duties, areas, ost, raids, new jobs and job changes, etc) is honestly great and I am looking forward for what they do with future content, just hope they make things more fresh and try to change a bit from their usual patterns.

Great video.

This story is the BFA of ff14 Start off with the thing that was promised [Right of sucession/vacation/] (faction wars} End up with something you said you werent gonna do [Super universe ending threat] (Old Gods again)

what does based mean

Literally just over half of the MSQ objectives are "Speak with Wuk Lamat" Kill things: 17 Singleplayer duty: 4 Enter and beat duty/trial: 9 Speak with [Other characters 104] Speak with Wuk Lamat: 140

Really good vid overall and echos how i feel about DT, good story with a few footfalls. One thing i want to bring up is that in 6.55 they explained why Krile chose PIC. 1 because she was done looking on from the sidelines and her grand gamble with Zenos at the end of EW. And 2, she simply wanted to follow in the archon Relm's steps to both fight and inspire.

If I could have chastised and properly mentored Wut Lmao instead of being a shoehorned cheerleader, my experience would have been improved most definitely. I bloody hate her character and what the writers gave us in contrast to what the trailer made us feel we were getting.

DT wasn't so bad. Imo, I wished the voidsent arc was alot longer and darker X3. I got ideas X3

I don't really agree with most of your reasoning for why the MSQ is bad, but I did think 7.0's MSQ was bad. A few quick fixes that could have made the story way better: All the questions and explanations about Turali culture should have been asked by Krile. It's weird that Wuk Lamat seems clueless about her own culture, and it would have made her personal discovery of "I'm best at leading because I understand how to unify all these cultures that my father leads" a lot better. And, frankly, Krile didn't get enough focus in the MSQ. I liked the part with the Endless versions of her parents, but that was about the only moment in the story that gave her a spotlight, when she should've been featured more. But seriously, just changing who's asking questions about Tural and who's giving answers makes Wuk Lamat more competent, and gives Krile more time. Sphene and all of the Alexandria story was just poorly executed. There's clearly some attempt to make her a sympathetic villain, but the story is basically tech bro billionaires uploading their consciousness to the cloud and android bodies, and how maintaining that uses excessive resources that takes away from actually living people and the environment. We needed an option to say something like that to Sphene, and the scions at least should've realized how fucked up her goals are. They already lean into that with the new raids. Structurally, I enjoyed this MSQ a lot more because it wasn't the exact same formula for 3 expansions in a row. Stormblood - Go to one zone in new continent, do part of it, roadblock, go to a zone in the second continent. Shadowbringers - Go to one zone in new continent, do part of it, roadblock, go to another zone. Endwalker - Go to one zone in new area, do part of it, roadblock, go to another zone. Dawntrail's zones felt way better paced in that regard, like I didn't feel like there was this arbitrary block to make an area stretched out or "come back later." I had more fun exploring in Dawntrail is what I'm trying to say, even if the story wasn't that great. I didn't skip any cutscenes but I did have stuff to watch on my 2nd monitor while some of the lengthier unvoiced cutscenes were playing.

An idea I had about Valigarmanda is that instead of it being Bakool Ja Ja unleashing it, it's actually Zoraal Ja who does it but we don't know it's him until perhaps at the end of the Mamook trial. He wrangles us into it since we're around and he knows Wuk and Koana wouldn't stand idly by. Then perhaps instead of Wuk Lamat saving the red Yok Hui (forget their exact name, Chirgarmur Yok Hui?) and thus allowing them to goto Worqor dor lor, Bakool Ja Ja breaks his facade and is angry they would allow such loss of life over them not wanting to goto their sacred ground. So he then holds them off while we go do the trial. Also at the same time allowing us a moment with Wuk to pass on that some people just simply cannot be reasoned with. It gives us more insight early that Zoraal Ja wants to surpass his father and prove himself ("I'll do better than my father, and slay the Vidraal instead of just imprisoning it more"), and also fix BJJ not being disqualified yet also being okay with potentially causing a lot of lost lives despite his character reveal later on.

my biggest gripe is how they butcher all the scions. none of them have any personality and the way they wrote new characters this expac also didnt make much sense. a combination of lobotomized scions (no one is interested in anything they should be, why does yshtola not care about the chalice?????) and weird story plotholes and decisions (like everyone completely forgetting about valigarmando, bakool is instantly redeemed, otis's death) is what really made it bad for me

dawntrail first half: babysitting a royal lion who barely knew anything about the land she was destined to rule. whether by design or not. makes the royal leader look bad. any leader would make sure his or her kids had some teachers to at least teach basic stuff. also where was scion vs scion. would have loved at least 1 duel with thancred. kick his butt again to make him remember who is superior. dawntrail part 2: we deal with lady golbez (yeah you hear me). Unlike golbez tho, sphene wanted to take peoples souls. To what...keep her pc people souls going. from a reflection that whole downfall was caused by lalafell from the source who escaped their own calamity. inadvertently or not. still kinda funny. where was my vacation? why were the maps so overly large? what was with the track and not get caught quests being back. those are the worst. don't get me wrong. its a cool expansion but it fell flat in so many ways

my main gripe is the living memory part. I think the story up to that part was good and so was the character growth. It wasn't something amazing, it had it's moments, also very good moments, but living memory was downright bad. I think they should just put us up on a path of genocide, where the living memories actually resist us (some could be convinced), but somehow make it something we must do. Having Elene'shpya resist us till the end to not kill his mother, maybe Krille too, ad a 3rd force like Kona pushing through, maybe even some old politicians from Eorzia or Sharlayan making you watch the genocide of those AI from the sidelines. Player could agree with it or not, it would just be pure emotional damage. Convincing Elene to kill his own mother by his own hands because she is AI was the worst part of the story that left a bad taste in my mouth. I'd prefer to see him kicking and screaming, like any normal person would.

I enjoyed it, basking in wholesome challenges and seeing how the dysfunctional family works. Then the 'out of nowhere' escalation through Zoraal Ja and what follows. It felt like playing two completely different stories with different themes and aspects to them. I honestly experienced it like a chill breath of fresh air and liked it.

No it wasn't. This was the start of a brand new decade long saga, as said by Yoshi-P said, so like ARR, and literally any story ever made, you need to do story/character/plot point building, in order to set up things that will happen in future patches, and the next titled Expansion, and the people that truly don't understand this, are people that have never read a book in their entire life, and shouldn't be taken seriously

The first 3 half zone are very very boring , the interesting are int about Erenville , zorall ja , gulool jaja I hated the come back to the capital city I liked the cow boy pause zone with erenville I liked the two last zone Dungeons are good with scions and others guys messing aroud in the dungeons

Who the heck wants more single instances? I want to play with my friends. This game actively discourages you from playing with friends through the MSQ...like WTH?

What I find disappointing is that even if you don't make larger structural changes, there is a good story under all the unfinished and rushed bits. It feels like there was nobody to go through the whole story and review it critically before it went into production. I like to compare its state as when you accidentally handed in the essay from two weeks ago where all the parts are present, but they really are not cohesive and polished yet. Now, unless the devs somehow make the unprecedented step of fixing the MSQ (which will not happen), the whole Tural story that has so much potential basically has been ruined. Yes, the gameplay is great this time, but I would not underestimate how a bad story can definitively sour it for players. A part of the WoW Shadowlands exodus moved to other MMOs because Blizzard absolutely ruined the story and beloved characters (e.g., Arthas, the Lich King, turned into 35 Anima to be forgotten). After two story lines that are of questionable quality, FFXIV is for me already on the "keep an eye on that" list and the patch MSQ will decide it for me if I just play something else. And speaking of gameplay, I read somewhere an interesting suggestion regarding how to show the progression of Wuk Lamat in her fighting abilities: if we are Kakashi, then just let us have sparring matches with her once in a while. We would ofc kick her butt, but by making the fights more difficult over the MSQ progress, we could clearly feel the progression. Would also make her last confrontation with Bakool Ja Ja a lot more meaningful. (edit: also where is that Zenos/Ranjiit style solo duty where we play as Wuk Lamat to just lose against Bakool Ja Ja!? Here it would be quite effective, as it's not our WoL) One thing I also noticed is that some very important key points that you as player need to agree on or understand to enjoy a part of the story are not clearly communicated or rely on that the player views a thing in a specific way. A minor example is the bird people forgetting their ritual (I was fine with that, others got their immersion broken). A major one is the whole Living Memory zone that spawned discussions over that the WoL "murdered" the Endless.

It's not just Wuk Lamat, but her voice that was insufferable to listen to. We got so many voiceless cutscenes, but whenever they were voiced, they were marred by nails on a chalkboard that was that voice. It sounded amateur compared to everyone else and the inflections were mostly off. Anyone with any kind of acting experience could immediately point it out.

Your head-canon about the orbs (Soul, Memory, Lifeforce) is 100% correct. EN translators did an oopsie. In JP they continually reference Soul, Memory, Lifeforce and the two orbs that get sucked out during that cutscene are Soul+Memory and Lifeforce. That is why Alexandria has a big ol' facility to separate Memory from Soul.

i really liked the msq (one of the only people in my FC that did lol), but was glaringly aware of the flaws it had, and knew it would garner a lot of hate, so it's nice to see a chill, nuanced, but still critical take when all I've been seeing is either blind love or blind hate without much explanation. Great video! Subscribed.

I think another problem is a lot of the quests just feel like needless busy work, like talking to tons of npc's just to waste the players time when one npc could have told us everything the writers wanted us to know. Like the lead up to the train was a slog and the silly disney song they play during the construction of the train was not earned. Really good analysis of some of the issues in the msq though.

So I dislike the entirety of the DT MSQ, but I still believe that the second half is worse than the first. The first half was boring with plenty of nonsensical plot points, but I cannot really blame SE for making Wuk Lamat the focus of this arc, since it actually is her story. She did not really grow or change much as a result of her journey, but I think that the narrative's transgressions aren't that bad, although it is far cry from ShB or the best parts of EW. Yeah, the boat plot was dumb, Bakool Ja Ja releasing Valigarmanda is non-sensical self-sabotage at a point where he is actually winning the crystal hunt, and Wuk's jump in power level is jarring, but I was able to overlook them because they did not really lead anywhere worse. The second half, on the other hand, is a clusterfuck. First, Wuk Lamat still being the focus makes absolutely no sense and she should 100% be sidelined for Krile, or even Erenville; this should not be her story. Second, Zoraal Ja devolves into a character who was an antagonist, but seemed to have complex ideas of how peace relates to war only to turn into a mustache-twirling Sat morning cartoon villain. Third, the story introduces a really interesting concept of a society being based around souls as a type of currency...and they do nothing with it; right when we are about to learn about more, the story changes to this tangentially-related dilemma involving the Endless, which has no real moral ambiguity and is basically trying to substitute emotional manipulation for actual coherent storytelling. The cutscene during the final trial sums up exactly how I feel about it; it is both insulting and hilariously incompetent.

I feel like a good chunk of the narrative flaws for Dawntrail can be summed up to the possible inexperience for the 2 head writers for it. AFAIR, one writer specialized in Tribal Quests while the other is the one who wrote The Sorrow of Welryt. Kinda shows who wrote what, honestly. While I get Ishikawa can't ALWAYS be the head writer (because she's been promoted for one), I feel like her input on the whole thing would have given it more narrative cohesion. A lot of things feels disjointed and boring, the whole "Talk to Wuk Lamat" became the new "Pray return to the Waking Sands". The other problem I've had is that the story beats Dawntrail tries to tread were things we already went through. Our WoL sets foot in a completely brave new land, giving us a chance to learn of the cultures and people? Stormblood and Shadowbringers. A new female character introduced that is thrust into a role of responsibility they probably aren't the least bit ready for? Lyse. A new male character who wants to do what is best for his people in his country? Hien. There's also the fact that when we later find out about Sphene's "immortality" it feels like a bit of an odd choice to have Otis sacrifice himself. It feels like a cheap ploy for tugging at our heartstings. Also... actually Krile DID explain how and why she's a Pictomancer now. As to the how, she said it's actually a branch of magic that was taught in Sharlayan and created by Archon Relm ages ago. As for the why she swapped from healer to Pictomancer, it was because during Endwalker, when you went deeper into the Lifestream, she felt like she could have done more, heck, she probably felt that way for a long time now. So she basically picked up Pictomancy... And I think they explained all that in 6.55 when she saved your party with Wuk Lamat in that one instance dungeon XD

i just finished it yesterday and i would give this DLC story mode a 7.8/10 reason its not an 8 is because i liked Heavensward and Storblood and they're both roughly the same. ShB and End Walker (dont talk about these two bcuz they were amazing so 10 for ShB and 11 for EW) As for DT. Its got some interesting points but mostly it was so boring to start with. doing quests that npc make you do (as it is an mmo) but ultimate it got super good after that desert map (im not saying name for spoiler reasons) so yea... but then again, its the beginning of a new arc so. only time can tell if this arc story is gonna be better than the first one.

At first, I did not agree that they should have made the MSQ story longer, but your explanation of making the second part of the story longer lasting through the next patches seems like it would have been a great idea. I agree that Sphene character should have lasted longer and could have been a great twist to later betray us. I feel like they had so many great opportunities with different characters, but they chose to put so much Wuk Lamat that even her dialog is repeating almost every cutscene. They should have taken notes from Stormblood with Lyse.

This is possibly my favorite cutscene. Top 5 for sure.

IT’S BACK! YES,I LOVE THIS SERIES!❤

One of the only things that was able to help G'raha get through the hells he's been was our collection of stories and how we overcame impossible odds. If our story helped him get through several apocalyptic events, then he deserves to fan boy as much as he wants.

1:43 "Oh Erenville, you kind and naive fussy bun bun."