damn, you are right about that, he was just hanging around and killed a few robots, only to go hunt and kill a huge lizard at the end as we can see in the launch trailer (trailer is basically what happens after the MSQ)
None of what was hinted at in the trailer happened on the game. 1. We didn't fight big monsters with estinein 2. Thancred didn't get squirrel scene or flirting with ladies 3. Graha didn't get a taco during msq 4. Yshtola didn't get to do any research on the large stones 5. Urianger didn't get his drink 6. Kirile didnt get to get to show off her skills or stand out in the msq 7. Wut lamat only had a small cameo in the trailer but dominated the msq.
I never did get the hate Lyse got. I feel like in her case, most of her actions reflected she was way in over her head and just preferred to brute force anything. It wasn't until she got responsibility shoved on to her she changed (not by much but still).
@@SilverNightbane I mostly agree. My issue with her is that she was such a radical change from Yda. I hated Yda though, so Lyse was a breath of fresh air in comparison.
Same to be honest. I'm currently playing through HW again in NG+ in preparation to dive back into SB. And I've seen snippets of cutscenes that I saw 2 and a half years ago when I first went through SB, and god Lyse's voice acting alone blows Wuk's out of the water. The voice actress is doing a wonderful job at portraying Lyse as this passionate, naive, yet very VERY inconsiderate character, who wants change but does not really understand her own people's plight and where their come from with their apathy.
I didn't like Lyse because, as in the case of Wuk Lamat I wasn't interested in the story of a leader who was clearly unqualified for what they was doing and who was in the position they were in merely due to nepotism and family ties. And because I really did like Yda: Among the Scions who were all geniuses with Phds from Sharlayan (Archons) she was a valuable contrast - a talented fighter, headstrong but enthusiastic, someone you always want on your team. I wasn't happy when they turned the brave fighter Yda into the insecure pathetic Lyse. I get what they were trying to do with her, I just didn't enjoy it. I thought she should have stayed Yda.
I love Talk to Wuk Lamat to start a question Find/Talk to 3 people Talk to Wuk Lamat Talk to Wuk Lamat Finish the quest by talking to Wuk Lamat The expansion
Honestly it's so blatantly obvious they're mostly there for trusts first and foremost, but even that can easily be solved by just....giving us different characters for the "canon" encounters (they've done it before with Lyna, Emet, Hyth and Venat, and even recently with Koana and Zoraal ja) and then have the Scions unlocked for the duty support version.
It legitimately felt like they handed off the writing to some intern who felt "promising" but it fell flat. And now I'm incredibly confused by all the people on Twitter screeching that i can't have a problem with it because it was "her story" not mine and how it's "literally thier favorite and best one ever!" Bro what?
Yeah. I mean, the stuff the expansion is trying can be done well. The problem isn't what the story is meant to be, it just doesn't execute well regardless. The person or persons who did this were not ready.
I don't really understand. If they desperately wanted their Warrior of Light to not be the focus of the story, we could have had the rite of succession be a fucking sidequest or something. The thing with the Warrior of Light is that they've always been the PoV character, that said never, in any iteration of FF14's story, was their presence made redundant as in Dawntrail. Replace us with some random character that has passing combat experience, and you probably would not have changed anything in the Rite of Succession. Every story has made it clear that the Warrior of Light's presence in and their contribution to the story is meaningful to ensure the success of the story. In ARR only you could breach the Praetorium and defeat the Ultima Weapon as you demonstrated equal to the task in the eyes of the Grand Company leaders, HW relied heavily on the WoL's Echo to uncover the truth behind the Dragonsong War, SB has the WoL win allies for Doma by having them complete the Naadam and become the new khagan, ShB has you save yourself from dying in an Eighth Umbral Calamity by absorbing the corrupted light, because only YOU can do that - at least for a longer period of time, EW has Hydaelin set you on a path to uncovering the truth about the Final Days and defeating Meteion as you alone are the sole person who can effectively use Dynamis to stop her. DT on the other hand gives no compelling reason as to why the WoL NEEDS to be there, if the trial can be won by Wuk with or without your help!
@@elrilmoonweaver4723 They've jettisoned everything that made the story a success in the past in favor of giving us a story in which our former MC - the WoL - is barely necessary. I agree. It is inexplicable and if they make it clear we are getting more of the same I won't be playing it.
The promise: "You're going on vacation, no world ending threats, no work, just chill." The reality: "The world is about to end! You must work harder than ever and the only one who gets to chill is the cat stealing all your screentime!"
Thre's A LOT of problems with DT but the initial "hook" doesn't even do it for me. "Hey, help this privileged cat that came out of the blue to become queen, she says she loves her people but in fact, she rarely steps out of her city and instead of getting to know them beforehand to find fierce warriros amongst them, she decides to go and look for one outside of her country" This makes NO sense, aren't there any worhtwile warriors over there? Koana goes and does the same, but in his case it kinda worked with his backstory of studyin abroad. And let's not forget "Hey, you SHOULD come and help because one of the other competitors wants to invade Eorzea with sticks and stones!!!!" That is just fucking stupid, not even after getting 23rd century technology could the "villain's" army stand a chance against a single dragon, and we were supposed to take HIM serioulsy? All of this is why the initial motivation sucks, my character has no real reason to go there, and adventure isn't it, main difference with ARR is that, yes, it could be boring but the entire world was open to you after the first hours and you coul get lost and explore on your own if you wanted to, which could be cool if they actually implemented something similar this time around instead of the same old formula, but I guess they are just way too comfortable to shake things up a bit. (And don't get me started on wuk lamat...)
@@durantes It's a bit off to the side but I had HUGE misgivings about getting involved in a entirely avoidable political struggle from an ethical/philsophical POV. Should every wannabe ruler rock up to us with a sob story and get us to install them? What if WL turns out to be a terrible ruler and we are responsible for something really bad? Aren't we now completely indebted to the defence of Tural, even potentially against Eorzea? Also as OP mentioned all the other insane incompetencies/weak villainy we compete against, largely because Tural is so perfect it prevents any natural conflict that would let us get invested in WL's vision.
I honestly didn't understand why I needed to get on the boat to Tural to help Wuk Lamat. It took until fighting Daddy Ja Ja where he literally just asks you to help Wuk when I felt like I had a reason to be there. The Dawnservant asked me.... After 20 quests and two keystones.
This could have easily been fixed by having her father ask us to observe the Rite of Succession as advisors. We could see all four candidates and offer advice without breaking our neutrality.
This 100% and that "love" for her ppl is the ONLY thing that makes her worthy of the throne in her mind. She doesn't have SINGLE policy. Hell, ppl complain about lack of food and her solution is to hold a festival...and that just happened to be the solution... It was stupid because there's no way they've been doing that for generations and no one knew what the festival was until that moment. Koana get shafted too, his entire goal was to bring techonology to his ppl to make their lives better and the ppl loved him for it as it is shown in the beggining of the story... Until he decides to step out of the contest because... somehow innovation is seen as a bad thing now
yeah, otis shouldve been one of the bosses in the lvl 100 story dungeon instead; probably boss 1 He is there of his own will, he knows what sphene is doing is wrong, he disagrees with her actions; but it is his duty to protect her. better than the narratively lackluster bosses we have for most of the dungeons and he still dies sad death, and still dies for his queen could even have dialogue trying to convince him to stop: "that is not really your sphene just an imitation made in her likeness from the memories of people other than herself" otis: "...... a broken knight for a broken queen"
The powerscale went so high after EW tough, to have stakes with a god slayer he either has to be dumbed down or, face things stronger than him. They make the worse choice: both
Biggest problem I had with Dawntrail was Wuk Lamat. Ok, ok, so her being central to the first half was fine. 6.55 made it glaringly obvious she was gonna be a big deal and that helping her to stop her brothers was the real reason we're going. But towards the end of the rite when we found the Golden City and Krile is supposedly there to get answers for things about her parents and things that have been gnawing at her for her whole life? Yep, we just fuck off from that gate like it's no big thang to focus even more Wuk Lamat who has not only won the rite, but also won over the populace without the majority of the populace actually witnessing her or her deeds. IT MADE NO SENSE. There should have been stubborn Zoraal Ja loyalists. There should have been a questionable reaction from the populace. Wuk Lamat shoulda been so far out of her depth when Solution 9 stuff showed up, WE should have taken center stage and the SCIONS should have STOPPED being CARDBOARD CUTOUTS. Sure, she's the king now or whatever, but she knows jack shit about what's going on. It's a little bit of a mystery to us, at first, but we know what's going on. Weird stuff like that is our forte, our calling, our legacy. Why do I gotta watch this bargain bin Chewbacca with less appealing speech pattern take front and center for 85% of the the spoken dialogue and screen time?! Why are the Scions still following her about like ducklings, like we're still performing the rite for her. Shard remnants from the Lightning Rejoining are out of her depth, and she should have taken a FIRM back seat. But no, no one, not even Krile or Erenville in THEIR OWN ARCS can escape this stupid cat bitch's insufferable, overbearing presence. Finally, the final battle is at hand. The WoL is being told by Sphene that they are the greatest threat to her plans. We put her on the back foot such that she rips a hole in her computer generated reality, and in back in jumps Llama Tea to do more DPS than your entire Azem stone summoned party of WoLs in 1/3rd of the time. God I fucking hate Wuk Lamat.
I mean I thought she was alright... o.o Seriously though, Wuk Lamat is really the victim of this game's writing. Very repetitive, lots of telling and not showing, and draged out pacing.
Oh god I did the same. I recorded my reaction and there were several times during the last zone that I literally just nodded off. You can see my eyes getting heavy during the cutscenes. It's ridiculous.
The fact that we got to neither fight Urianger & Thancred in a friendly challenge, similat to Venat, nor on the train, baffles me. The memes would have been glorious.
DT was just very amateur, as if the failed theatre kid writer kept rewriting until it was just a patchwork mess of stereotypes and ideas, written with only the drive to implement as many of his OCs as possible and have them take all the screentime with WoL shoved to the side. And that's not necessarily a terrible thing, theoretically, because the Warrior of Light being a supporting role is *fine* for the start of a new adventure, but actors are supposed to exit stage left before they overstay their welcome--actors which include the Warrior of Light. Some scenes would have had greater impact if you actually just weren't there, like the final part of the Invasion pt. 1. Perhaps you were out cleaning up some of the enemies, perhaps you went to pursue a suspicious individual, or you fell into an Echo-induced coma. Either way the narrative should have kicked Wok out at that point and shifted to Krille and Erenville making them the central characters for the next part of the MSQ, because goddamn they got robbed.
You don't know how close you are with your opening statement. Since Ishikawa was working on 16 with YoshiP, that left it up to the B team to do the story expansion. The guy who wrote the Mhach storyline was put in charge. It shows.
I mainly play FF games for the story and I skipped so much of the DT MSQ dialog. It was so drawn out, I started falling asleep. About time I got to the skynet section of the storyline, I stopped caring. I'm the savior of the star! This was supposed to be my vacation but instead I got a pupil I didn't want and got stuck playing build-a-leader! 😩😭 The dungeons and trials were fun, though....😅 Dear Stormblood, I apologize for most of the things I've said about your storyline. Raise your head, you are no longer at the bottom of my list.😂
This whole expansion just felt off to me, man. Nothing in the story gave me that "edge of my seat" feeling, characters im familiar with seemed lobomotized, the writing was flat, I literally wasn't invested in the story.I've never once skipped an msq cutscene until now and thats not a good feeling. At least the dungeons n stuff are fun though because if they weren't I wouldnt have finished it.
Dawntrail was written like a bad D&D campaign with the dungeon master forcing a DMNPC on your party that is his favorite character and you must love it because its better at everything than you.
Square Enix tried to save money. They gave the writing to the most inexperienced/lowest tier writer. They gave ALL the lines to the most rookie Voice Actor. It was completely abysmal. Wuk Lamata being pure trash as a character with horrible voice acting only serves to make the whole thing excruciating.
well said, similar feelings. It should be put on BLAST after we had 2 great story MSQs. The writing and certain characters/VAs were shit. Ppl that disliked your video are probably Woke LAMEt fans.
I only have one thing to say: That was the best and most accurate review I've seen of Dawntrail. I have nothing to add and no desire to subtract anything from your Dawntrail review. You were perfect in your assessment. It's just a shame that I very much doubt that things will get any better from now on. Meteion and Hermes were right all along. And we thought it was in Endwalker that despair would catch up with us.
@@durantes I hope I'm wrong. I hope that all the negative criticism that the storytelling is receiving affects the reputation of the game and the DEVs in a way that they revise this writing. At the end of the day, we're not haters, we're players who really like this game. We always want the best from it, and DT's writing was definitely not the best.
I agree 100% The general story idea is good. The way it was written and executed was a crime against humanity. How on earth we came from the last two expacs to now will be a question Yoshi will have to contend with. (I read somewhere that the writer for Dawntrail is a different person this go-round, and it SHOWS) It was the first time I skipped CS and brute forced my way through a MSQ in the whole history of the game. I came expecting more story about Krile and that one gleaner (arg, name fled my mind just now), exploring with them, and learning about their histories and the cultures of this new place. Instead we got....Wukface. Enough said. I disliked her so much that when I got to the dungeons, I rather would have Graha tank for me (I'm the healer) just so I could get away from her insufferable aura. Don't even get me started on the last trial. That Emet wave at the end was gold, btw Had me thinking of Critical Drinker "That's all I have for today. GO AWAY NOW." 😂
I'm a bona-fide worshiper at the altar of Yoshi-P, my fragile self respect is based on playing this game and I've sunk more than 10k hours into it. I'd rate every expansion to date an 11 out of 10 and Dawntrail made me want to quit (or worse). You could write a thesis on all the horrific game design decisions and crimes against story-writing perpetrated in this expansion, CBU3 needs to sort themselves out in VERY short order.
I very vividly remember that when she came to recruit us, and fought that dumb bird, she was shaking with fear. I was really hopeful to be something of a mentor to her, with us given more dialogue to help her. Instead we do two fifth of fuck all. She does it all herself, with us just standing there nodding. The WoL and the Scions, including Krile who had a massive story reveal, were reduced to nothing more than silent nodding side characters. Had we and the Scions had a more supportive role, I wouldn't have cared as much. Edit: "her" being Wuk Lamat. Second edit: The other major issue was that it felt like the only reason Zoraal Ja was even a threat was because of the stupid "honor" bullshit Wuk Lamat insisted on keeping. Had we been allowed to, he would've died a lot sooner. They are running into the issue of having us being God-killers; there's no threat that feels real.
The problem I had aside from the mediocre story and gameplay was how my FC simply spewed constantly how "amazing." Everything was as I was sitting here skipping terrible cutscene after terrible cutscene running around talking to npcs and just not actually playing the game lol
Similar for me. I simply chose not to talk about it with my FC... and if I can't talk about the game with my FC, that does raise some question of what I'm doing there.
I wish I was kidding but am not, been playing XIV since ARR and DT finally made me quit I was hoping for a fresh page, new systems, revamped patch cycle but all we got is more of the same/predictable stale formula but now with horrid storytelling This finally gave me the courage to relinquish my private house, stored my 75M gil in the fc chest and said my goodbyes Il consider EW as the true final arc
11:32 Oh my god, this, and I'm so glad you used Estinien as an example as he's the one I was the most teased by whenever he'd show up and just leave right after, leaving me rather disappointed throughout. Yoshi-P mentions that he doesn't know what to do with the scions...but it's actually simple, really, just make them important to the story and not extras. At the scene where we first met Estinien at Shaaoloni(?), he could've accompanied us for awhile with Erenvelle and even helped out with defeating those bandits before disappearing once more, hell I thought for sure we'd see Estinien again once we uncovered the secret bandit operation anyway. Like why the hell was he even there? What was the point in him even showing up if he's going to disappear once more until the invasion begins and he comes back to fight robots? All the scenes with him are cool don't get me wrong, but a lot of the time it got me thinking after... What was the point of that? Not just him either, a lot of the scions got this treatment as well, and it's a shame as I was excited to see my favorite cast of characters once more...
Please keep making more videos man! You give a fair analysis despite disagreeing on small points, but you know what? You got a sub from me, I want some of my thoughts challenged. Overall, you made great points that I also agree with - One of them being Krile; I felt it was insulting to her character to be out on the side after her arc again. I wanted more of the main cast too, and the first half was lethargic. Good video man, Ill be watching here on in 👏
It took me a long time to get through the hanuhanu and pelu pelu quests because, like you, I kept falling asleep. If DT can be summed up in one word, it would be "boring."
thats DEI for ya. Inputing shit characters and FORCE on you to care about them. JP did a poll on what some of their fav characters were and Woke LAMEt didnt even make top 10 hahaha.
It took me 2 days longer than any other expansion to finish, because I would suffer through a boring cut scene where there's no drama of any kind, and then just stare at the wall for twenty minutes before I could continue.
The Zoral Ja vs Gulool Ja Ja fight was the stupidest thing I've seen in 14 lol not only were we just watching the fight instead of helping (yes I know Galool said he wanted the 1v1) but the moment Zoral Ja revives himself, that should have been where we step in cause all bets are off and not only did he kill Gulool Ja Ja, we ALLOWED him to walkaway LMAOO at that point I said yh this MSQ is dead in the mud. Dawntrail MSQ is shite! Also Wuk Lamat needs to just disappear, worst character in 14!
The WoL has that narcolepsy. They also must have fallen asleep when Bakool Ja Ja started cheating during his 1v1 with Wuk Lamat. Probably should have helped out there too lol.
Wow honestly when I first finished it I didn’t think it was too bad cuz I gave it a huge benefit of the doubt being a new ark but after seeing all the criticism. I’d have to agree. Although while playing I kept waiting for the scions to do something. Like when yshtola showed up I was like oh? Are they all finally gonna do something together again? Nope they all separated lmao that was disappointing. Then hearing the final villain blue brother (forgot his name) explain his reasoning that just fell flat. I was annoyed with that. Cuz all the villains previously were actually likable. My guess is Yoshi didn’t reallly do any writing if at all and just oversaw the interns or something. Knowing how he and whoever other writers like that woman who helped a lot with shadowbringers wrote amazing expansions, it’s obvious they didn’t have much sway or participation in the writing. It felt like a longgggg side quest. Where side quests feel like fetch quests and solving the npc’s issues. Wuk Lamat honestly isn’t a bad character and I liked her father. But they definitely over saturated her and seemed to focus solely on her and her story then just added the scions n us as fillers 💀
Ive said this elsewhere but I genuinely dont think the actual FF14 team wrote this shit. Like whatever your misgivings are about EW, its plot issues dont come anywhere NEAR this level of incompetence and poor writting. Hell even the technical stuff is off Charcoal Bunny Man's mom straight up has UNMIXED voiced dialog like they slapped a raw audio file into the game. Don't even get me started on that Disney song at the end of the story with the peaking audio.
Heh. Funny thing is it actually felt like a Disney product with how cheesy and mediocre the writing was. Tell me someone from the House of Mouse wrote DT, I'd believe you.
I was confused by the English version of Cahciua (Erenville's mother). At first, when you meet her as the walking, or rather bouncing, TV, I thought her accent was because of the medium she was using to interface with us changed it. But then when you meet her as an Endless, it was the same. Didn't she raise Erenville? Didn't they live in the same region while he was a child? Shouldn't she have an Icelandic accent as well, since Erenville as a character was in the game first? Just another of the "what were they thinking" moments for the devs/voice personnel inconsistent/nonsensical choices. Really breaks emersion.
@@annameme1834 I agree with this, I audibly said "huh?" when they revealed the actual person and I heard her voice. I had to do some mental leaps to believe that maybe he got his accent from spending more time with his dad or something. Or maybe her time in Alexandria had her accent change over time, which they could have explained by having Erenville be like "I didnt believe it, you didnt sound like my mother last I had seen her!" They could have capitalized on the fact that they were suspicious that she was luring them into a trap initially and that they were inside a bubble that led to a dimension and advanced time much faster than Etherys... they actually had so many outs for this discrepancy. It just threw me completely out of the story, though like, I couldn't place his accent (you said icelandic so Ill take your word for it.) while she sounded like she was from the US.
@@malikfoxen2045 His english VA is Ari Oskarsson and is from Iceland. They did miss many opportunities, but I'm sure in the other languages there wasn't a variation of accents, so adding this into the story would have been a stretch... but would have been good for the story.
Great video. Fantastic critique! Very much looking forward to the second part. And to be fair, with a list this long, it sounds to me like you're ready to move on. It was fun while it lasted.
Tbh it was boring but with hope to be better experience those quests you mention. And at least for me it never gets better. I stopped played at 99lvl MSQ.
There's a single hook that maybe *maybe* will save the patch MSQ depending on the direction they go in. But if I have to ask you know who to join me I'll be done. So it's...what....November right? Last chance.
You know why? One of the writers for the MSQ was a writer for the beast tribe quests. And now it all makes sense for me. We were doing fucking beast tribe quests through the ENTIRE first half.
Worst thing coming out of this expansion? It's gonna go Downhill from here. It's the problem with many mmorpg, but it's so apparent in FFXIV because it's one of the most story driven mmo out there. GW2 / Black Desert / Lost Ark I couldn't care less about the story, but the action combat is stupid fun. This game? Even the combat is going no where, and now that the main story ended in Endwalker, there's literally nowhere to go. They tried so hard to sell Dawntrail as something new, new adventure, but it's not, it's stale, boring. Sad, I used to love this game, but I guess like many other, it's ended in Endwalker.
Good video, i still enjoyed some of the story and the fights but Wuk Lamat sours the whole thing for me. Hope she doesn't return in the patch stories...
Hopefully Sqaure will see the backlash and respond appropriately. And yeah. The dungeons and trials were actually pretty great. So, kudos for that if nothing else.
What puzzled me the most is that this story has nothing to do with FF14 at all, ok we are on teh opposite side of the world but seems they mentione that the worst threat they faced is Valigarmanda 80 years ago, and what about the Dispair of the Endsinger? Shouldn't have this involved all the planet? Feel like we played another game with another main charcter which they had no money to found so they used the FF14 base to set it up but yes this is annoying and unpleasant and not a vacation at all, it is unpayed babysitting.
During the last parts of the Endwalker campaign, or during the post-patch, it is mentioned that the Final Days were mainly occuring around Thavnair and it did not yet spread a lot to the other parts of the world, however if we hadn't stopped Meteion, eventually it would have affected other areas as well. Kind of a bummer, it would have been awesome to see the entire world in an apocalypse like in Thavnair with Blasphemies all over, but that would have probably been too much work for a temporary effect. And actually, in the lv 90 job quests you will encounter a few Blasphemies in other areas of the world, but it's just singular encounters.
Considering how far tural is from thavnair, it kinda makes sense that it was pretty much unaffected by the final days. We probably stopped the endsinger before it managed to spread that far
@@Staygold1999 that just highlights how milquetoast the whole final days thing was, tha tit only affected a small sectiojn of the world. It was so strang ehow it kept cutting to sharlayan and the skies were blue?
@collenjets123 We were told way earlier during EW that the final days are something that starts in one place then gradually spreads around the world. The Unsundered described a nearby country suffering from the final days before it got to them as Dynamis has to combat the Aether to spread Meteons influence.
I did enjoy Dawntrail overall, but by the Twelve that first half was a slog! If we could have maybe left Wuk Lamat back at home for part 2, made that more a traditional WoL/scions adventure maybe? I dont even dislike her, just as you said, we needed a bit more focus on the others. Good battle content though! And as usual, Soken knocks it out of the park with the OST.
so many characters deserve better such as Krile, I liked Wuk Lamat at first but the MSQ ruined her for me. Don't get me started on her involvement in the last MSQ raid. Silver lining, Highlanders are 10x hotter with the new update
Dawntrail had some good moments, but the horrible pacing lessened their impact. The lvl 95 dungeon and the lore surrounding it is so good, has so much potential. But it's completely ruined due to how fast we are rushed through the entire Mamool-ja subplot. Honestly the WOL should have just been asked to act like a referee for the rite of sucession, and have spend time with the other promises. and the whole blessed sibling plotline should have been spread over the first 5 levels. It also doesn;t help that the entirity of Shaaloni is just one big filler zone.
From my experience and what you've said so far I agree, the writers for DT did the entire scion cast so dirty that they should have just introduced a group of turali NPCs to join Krile and us instead as we went through each area, that way we'd at least get a better experience out of learning about the new areas, as it would come from a proper native. Less Wuk Lamat would've been amazing, too, she didn't know dick & all about her own people and took up way too luch screen time.
It's kind of like, we could have grown closer to Wuk Lamat, and Kona, but we were never given any real, truly good moments with them. There were so many missed opportunities for us to hit bond building moments, that I kept expecting to happen...and they just were not there. The closest we get are the campfire scene, and the modifying the train. Heavensward actually made me care about Estinien and Ysayle by the interactions we had with them while we were traveling together. About founding out little bits about them, and how they felt about things. I don't know exactly what went wrong, but so much of Wuk Lamat's lines just felt forced and a lot of the things we learned about her were superficial. The fact that she got sea sick was kind of funny, but it was made a huge focus too many times, and only later did it start to be more of a 'right, this is still a problem, but she's got it, moving on' type thing. It's like they didn't believe we would remember unless it was an explicit plot point several times. xp Don't get me wrong, I actually kind of liked Wuk Lamat, but by the end of everything, I still don't think I was as attached to her as I even was Hien, and he was only present for half of SB. Heck, Drusilla from the Reaper quest chain was only there for ten lvls, and by the time I finished the chain, she had become one of my favorite characters who I hope I get to see more of in the future. I get they had a lot to tackle, and a completely new region to introduce, and some stuff to establish for things going forward, but I just don't get how we went from having pretty decent to stellar writing for close to the entire game, then in the interim years, we ended up with something so weak.
I don't get the 'it's just ARR again!" arguments. It's not. ARR had a ton of story that was left unresolved by the end, allowing for further story and expansions. seriously *WHAT* was left at the end of DT? Azem's Key? Okay great. one thing that we know next to nothing about. Hoorah.
If you hated the Filler in Remake, you should thank your lucky stars you never played Rebirth. It's the same game, but with an additional 80 hours of copy/paste Ubisoft open world chores.
I know upon next expac the story skip potions will sell out so much it'll crash the mogshop. Good gooodddd this is the first time since playing i skip the cs's
"the goblins are as stereotypical as the ones in eorzia" Kinda how these "latino inspired" folk are stereotypical hispanics in the english casting :) Thancred and Urianger were literally there to go 🙁 👎 or 😊 👍 to koana's actions.
As a complete new player to FF that joined in middle of EW l;aunch ARR did enough to keep me intrested to keep playing and creating enough plot points i wish to learn as i play on DT fails establishing all above, feels disconnected, with really weak background work done on it Like Wuk wants to rule but got no idea about her own people and land? WTF? I get that devs wanted to made this underdog overcomes all and grows strong and wise tropes to heart in a very bad delivery
Glad I'm not the only person who legit fell asleep during MSQ. It has happened at least a dozen times now. I'll wake up and find myself either dead or autorunning into a wall somewhere. I haven't even finished MSQ yet because of this along with just not having the drive anymore. Usually I can't put the MSQ down and I'm hanging on every word, excited to see what happens next. This is why I usually take a few days off work at the launch of each expansion...but this time I slept through most of the short vacation I took for DT, and that's really disappointing. What a waste.
You know, I never really felt like that big of a side character in the other expansions, even if different characters were center stage, I still felt like he was supposed to be there. We had stakes in the story, people needed us and everything would have gone to shit if we hadn't been there. Heres why I found myself dreading playing the game for the first time ever in all my years of playing: I don't play games to be a side character, even more so when I was clearly not needed (I mean come on, we don't even kill the final boss.) I fell in love with the game because the Scions are amazing, diverse characters who I think could still have been fleshed out even more, making another expansion entirely. I don't care if I'm not the WoL anymore and we aren't officially a group trying to save the word, we're still friends, if not family, and the fact that I spent no time with any of them, pissed me the hell off. No, instead I had to follow around a character that I can only describe as cat girl Naruto, ugh. Everything about her character annoyed me and then she just kept coming back and forgiving everything that happened. Dude set free a monster that could have killed thousands of people, nah that okay you had a hard childhood, you're forgiven. Woman tried to consume your entire plants, eh, it's not her fault, she was made this way, I forgive you. I was just waiting for her to say a speech that ended with, "Believe it!". I don't need some huge end of the world story in order to enjoy a game, but I do need something reminiscent to the game I love in it that last more then five minutes every once in a while. Honestly my favorite part of the game was watching our dragon allies fly in and nuke the enemies. It was probably the only time I actually got hyped in the story.
The twins were in story _exclusively_ to give you people to run Trust parties with for the dungeons (shit, they even had Alisaie _healing_ a couple of them), and Thancred and Urianger were there exclusively for the two Trust trials, and so they could claim in the DT marketing that it was going to be "Scions against Scions" without getting sued. Full stop, that's the _only_ reason those characters were in the story.
Im not so sure Trust is the issue here as i've seen others state they couldve used any other new characters for NPC party members like they did with Ktisis Hyperborea or hell they could even give us the classic "Scion" generic npcs if that was the only goal, i think the real reason is writers just refuse to let go of the scions since it's easier to just write them in than make a new cast that would be equally endearing.
@@xion0713 Sure, they could have, but that would have meant having another character in the place of those Scions in the story. Having the Scions along for the ride was very clearly just an easy shortcut for trusts. A great example is right after Origenics, when Y'shtola, Graha, Estinien, and one other who I've forgotten just run up from behind us, saying something like they'd been called all the way from the capital city via linkpearl and arrived just as we need to go face off with Zoraal and need 4 more trust members. How convenient. Fact is, the Scions _aren't_ "endearing" this expansion. They're cardboard cutouts of characters without even a hint of their established personality or soul. Pretty much the only time in the entire expansion that the writers remembered that the Scions have individual stories and characteristics is the boat ride with Graha. They even left _Krile_ out in the cold, despite this being _her expansion._ It's actually enraging.
@@KaedysKormy point was more or less if Trust was the sole reason they could have just treated it how ARR Duty Support is treated with NPCs manifesting whenever you want to run it and i 100% agree with you about how the Scions are treated in DT but i think its done that way because it's an easy emotional string to tug at to get you invested like the Krile example people were interested in her to see what she would do that's alot easier to rely on than it is to introduce an entirely new character that you then have to work overtime to get people as invested in the characters the frustrating reality is that were now at a point where the Scions are marketing material theyre going to be in everything because from Square's perspective how are we going to sell people a $40 expansion without them
@@xion0713 well, especially given that two examples of new characters they _tried_ to get us invested in were a character they literally super-glued to our face for the entire expansion, and then that character's nanny, whom they put on screen like thrice over 8 levels of quests and then expected us to tear up when she died.
My extensive time in FFXI made the first half fun for me with many familiar races and faces. They were jingling the keys in my face pretty well. Zoraal Ja alone made Dawntrail enjoyable for me, bringing edgy to the overly happy, trope-y narrative the first half was throwing at us. It's the second half that drove me up the wall with Sphene, so I'm looking forward to hearing your opinion on that, lol.
@@durantes so many people mention the problems with the first half but the second half is just as problem filled....we literally become the ascians to a bunch of poor memory ghosts
The Thing is ARR atleast had fully fleshed out world to learn about and explore, and eventually personal stakes in fighting the ultima weapon in the praetorium. I never felt he need to skip cutscenes in ARR. I definitely did in dawntrail.
Completely agree on this. My take is they needed the next expansion to build new characters. Instead they bring the scions in. Everything happening in the expansion is a variation of something they've previously dealt with yet they act out of character by not utilizing their feats to resolve issues. So on one hand they failed to set up characters to replace the scions by including the scions, and then the writing fails to emphasize the feats of those characters. Aether, soul, space/time, and memory manipulation feats from the previous two expansions are ignored when they are all very applicable to the current situation.
The trials, dungeons and the raids are pretty good. Im happy to see they make things more difficult. The story is a doozer. The last 2 zones should be more focused on Krile and much longer story wise. Sad.
Oh, dungeons n raids were kickass. Yoshi P said they were upping the difficulty, and he did not disappoint. I only wish the same could be said with the rest of the expansion.
When playing the game and Wuk won the right of succession I was excited because I thought at that point in the story I would be leaving her behind and the story would finally pick up. Instead I got what felt like hours of lame quest chasing around some old lady’s bracelet or whatever piece of jewelry it was she had stolen. It got to a point where not long after meeting the queen I just started skipping most of the cutscenes. I just wanted to play the game not be on hours and hours of cutscenes or reading text.
Literally Yawntrail. Stormblood is no longer my least liked Expansion storywise. It's Yawntrail. Storywise it sucks ass. Worse pacing than the pacing in stormblood. But I will say the dungeons, trials and raid tier is reall good. That's all the good I can say. Wuk Lamat is the most forced, worst voiced and uninteresting character I have ever seen in this game. I pray that we never see her again. Or if we do. It's one cutscene in a patch that I can skip and then she disappears from the spotlight.
It still worked pretty well when they actually had interesting things to tell you about, but absent of both actual gameplay segments AND interesting story, its quite clear how dated the games systems actually are in comparison to everythiung else around it.
You can tell a game story is bad when they put the more relevant world building lore in the SIDEQUESTS! Particularly the CRAFTING/GATHERING whachumakemake questlines /facepalm. Seriously all the lore in those quests SHOULD have been in the MSQ, as that's what we were promised, not an NPC background simulator of a visual novel.
I actually agree. The dungeons, the trials. Even FATES have been revamped for the better. But with 20+ hours of boring story and godawful writing, it does not make up for it.
I been playing the game with japanese dub and that took some of the edge off. The only part that gained my attention was the "alien invasion" part but it didn't last long. This is just another lore mess and pointless melodrama.
For me Dawntrail was okay. I did like touring the new areas just wish the challenges were more interesting. I did get annoyed at Wuk Lamat showing up in the last fight. I didn't feel she was strong enough to do that and it also annoyed me cause it made me think can't we get two seconds away from her please.
I am a huge fan of Dawntrail and I love Wuk Lamat for who she actually is. Especially the peak of the first half and the potential the second half brings. With that being said: I can see why Wuk Lamat is the most disliked character this game has probably ever seen along Lyse. For many critics Dawntrail falls or flourishes with Wuk Lamat, depending on what side you are. For two reasons: 1. We are not the main character in this expansion - which of course had the potential to angry a lot of people and it did, even tho we always were the main character more or less and 2. her presence was overdone, to the point of it feels like just for the sake of presence and us mentoring at all costs. I have the feeling that what they are doing since the last couple expansions (alongside us taking a mentor role in atleast Dawntrail), but especially since Endwalker is to build up more and more heroes and characters that follow the WoL footsteps (or to be more precise are build stronger) like Zero and Golbez in the EW patches especially and now Wuk Lamat. Probably to face a really big threat in the future, avengers style. If that is one aim of the writers, I love that premise. That being said, they maybe have overdone it this expansion. Although I didn't mind her presence I can see why the dislike is there.
Not necessarily a jab at you so forgive me if it comes across that way, but i genuinely don't undertstand how people can come away liking something this objectively horribly written. I can understand matters of taste causing division here but there's genuinely nothing here. The writing, the underpinning everything else relies upon, such as theme, morals, and character, is completely botched. It doesnt really matter what the themes of a story is, what the story beats of teh plot are, or what a character at their core is about, if the writing that fuels the train is just god awful below the bottom of teh barrell.
@@collenjets123 Can ask the same to you, why do you genuinely dont like the story or the characters in it and hate it so much. No it's not objectively bad, it's all subjectively at the end of the day, make no mistake here. You dont have to like how they go about it, but others can. It's not a hard concept. People criticise Wuk to oblivion just like Lyse back then, I can see why like I said. They may have overdone it and perhaps could have focused more on the main cast (scions), especially in the second half. You dont have to like the story either, but most people dont really have their gripe with that but how the characters influence the story. If you say there is nothing there, there is just nothing for you there.
I just finished DT msq and I didn't realize people hated it this much til now but like you said after reading people's comments I can understand why. While I don't hate it, I don't love it nearly as much as ShB or EW but those are very tough acts to follow. And like you I don't hate Wuk Lamat but I would agree she definitely could've used some refining. One particular moment that sticks out is when meeting her real father. I wish she could've shown a more tender side but he was just brushed aside and that hurt to witness.
Personally agree with most of this. And its nice people start being more critical cause sfter release dont you dare to say somrthing bad about Wuk... cause shes a perfect character that represents me and if you dont like it and his VA you're transphobic. Also, youre not a babysitter, youre a mentor, grab a dictionary and learn the difference.... Man all the posts were like that and im glad most of those are in silence right now. The character is awful, the VA push me to play JP that with a boring ass story, took me around a week to finish the story thanks to how bored i was and the fact that i had to read subtitles that are not completely accurate. Also thats another thing, i wish subs change from JP or EN voices, cause i know translation is a thing but if you're just adding subtittles give us the literal words or meaning not changing it to make a better fit to the voices and timings ij cutscenes. I do wish it gets better in the following patches, and i hope i wont see or at least having wuk around ne for those
I can see the potential of the story, I see what they wanted to tell. It is painfully obvious, to me at least, who outlined the story and who executed it. I swear to god, some of the dialogue, when you read it out loud, sounds almost like chatgpt wrote it. Its almost unbelievable this got approved. I don't know did they run out of resources or time or what happened but its not good.
Very accurate and amazing review. As much I may have missed out first few weeks of DT's launch, I'm rather saddened as what it became. It is no secret why I eventually felt not only underwhelmed but lackluster with EW as well. Even after 3,000 hours of playtime before my sub ended around in March, I found myself quite burned out with it and had no desire to re-sub the game for a while until maybe, Dawntrail can give me another chance? I didn't think so for the time so, I had more fun with other games such as Baldur's Gate 3 (then 1st and 2nd in the series) and you know what? it was worth it. I'm just glad that I watched the dumpster fire but at the same time, do I even want to suffer the torture of boring as hell MSQ or do the easy way out by skipping all of the cutscenes and enjoy the combat instead? The latter sounds preferable at best and it would only save some of my sanity and not feel sleepy all the time as if it would retain my last bits of enjoyment with FFXIV nowadays.
I'm kinder on this expansion than most, because there were some very compelling things, and I didn't find myself too annoyed or frustrated with Wuk Lamat until towards the end. She even had some moments where I liked her for a while. But I hate that they had to find a way to tie it back to her instead of letting other people shine. I mean, Krile should have been the one calling the shots after learning she was from there. They could have wove her in a bit better to take center stage like all the promotional material seemed to suggest she would be. I think beyond how ridiculously omnipresent she is, that is the number one reason she is the most controversial character she is. She takes away from other characters you already care about and want more time with. Especially Krille. Hell, I think if they had really wanted to, they could have dug far deeper into the vague connection they both had: they were both were raised by a surrogate father and finding their real origins. I think that's a missed opportunity of the expansion. They tried for this sense of found family, but exploring the idea behind biological family versus chosen family versus adoption. I had sincerely hoped they'd dig hard into that with Zoraal Ja. Heck, I think they could have made Galool Ja far more interesting if his father had invested everything into him. To do the opposite of what he felt his own father did for him.
I personally had 2 main issues, the story kinda made no sense, from Iron age (at best) to super futuristic, like wtf?? Second, the shit house rework drg got. Wtf is this glide bullshit? "Lets power slide across the ground to get to flying dragons", yeah because that makes sense. That "rework" completely destroyed my entire rotation and no matter how I rebuild it, it doesn't flow and feel, mehh. Fuck the other classes/jobs, they are all super boring to me and don't have any appeal. Lastly, just for a bonus, Wuk Lamat can piss off and fall off a cliff. Dawntrail is a dawnfail, fuck this expansion
Never felt so bored in a game before, while doing this msq. Dungeons and Trials were good, but this is no excuse to make the whole rest soo boring. It broke my will to play the game after 10 long years. So far my sub runs out on 30 octobre...so probably enough time to see the first part of the "new" story. If Wuk takes a dominant role in it again...im gonna quit.
I was a total fanboy of Final Fantasy 14, but dawntrail has way too much dialogue, i m ok with reading but i m about to start skipping all of it, the action when it happens is ok but so far between is boring, i m going to take a guess and say they got lazy and decided to use filler dialogue to make the game seem longer, but..... i think they failed this time, big time fail for sure
I think the game play, some music ( not that Smile song while we were building a bomb train) and the scenery was beautiful. I just wanted to spend more time with Krile and Erenville. I wish I had more time with Bakool Jaja, and I adored Mablu coming in clutch to help us with the Pelupelu accounting and trading. I actually prefer Pelupelu over Lalas ways of dealing with money. Hopefully we get more of these characters in the upcoming patches.
If they dont immediately resolve it in the patches ff14 is cooked. No way people are going to sit throuhg 2 years of even more awful story. If the next expac ontop of this one is also this horrible? dead game.
I don't think the patches can resolve any of this. It needs to be broken down into rubble and completely rebuilt from the ground. Like what happened with 1.0
@@cheesemuffin8129 I'm saying victim. You can say whatever you want. I just mean, her writing, dialogue, and character were poorly handled. That's all. So sorry if the wording wasn't right.
@@cheesemuffin8129 I'm not...? I'm a Paladin. I don't understand what I said wrong other than using the word victim. Like look man I really am not trying to start some argument or troll each other, I just wanted to say my opinions, you disagree and that's fine, I'd rather just leave it at that and move on.
@@Titanxzero1 the character doesn't exist outside the game, she's just as much as a facet of the writing as lore, worldbuilding, you name it that's like saying that a crap game is "a victim of the development" yeah no shit
I love the FFXIV story and characters and was so hyped for DT. What I found was that it felt like I was playing a game designed for 10 years olds with my old beloved characters lacking depth and purpose. It was so disappointing. I didn't even get a chance to really grow to like the new characters because Wuk Lamat. It wasn't her voice that drove me crazy, or the fact that she was the main character. It was the actual character herself and how immature she was and how she bumbled into the crown. I *despise* those sorts of characters.
![[Part 1] รักมาไม่ทันตั้งตัว❤ หนุ่มสาวโสดถูกจับมาแต่งงานกันกะทันหัน แถมเธอยังเป็นหัวหน้าของเขา?!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/y2pOOMkuFI0/mqdefault.jpg)
Estinien got the vacation we were promised
And he got paid handsomely for fighting Garuul Ja Ja. I feel robbed.
damn, you are right about that, he was just hanging around and killed a few robots, only to go hunt and kill a huge lizard at the end as we can see in the launch trailer (trailer is basically what happens after the MSQ)
When I saw him I said "No! Come back! Take me with youuuuuuu!!"
I hadn't even considered that but it's true lmao
shit take
None of what was hinted at in the trailer happened on the game.
1. We didn't fight big monsters with estinein
2. Thancred didn't get squirrel scene or flirting with ladies
3. Graha didn't get a taco during msq
4. Yshtola didn't get to do any research on the large stones
5. Urianger didn't get his drink
6. Kirile didnt get to get to show off her skills or stand out in the msq
7. Wut lamat only had a small cameo in the trailer but dominated the msq.
If Wuk Lamat accomplished anything it was to get me to apologize to Lyse. I didn't realize how much worse it could get.
I never did get the hate Lyse got. I feel like in her case, most of her actions reflected she was way in over her head and just preferred to brute force anything. It wasn't until she got responsibility shoved on to her she changed (not by much but still).
@@SilverNightbane I mostly agree. My issue with her is that she was such a radical change from Yda. I hated Yda though, so Lyse was a breath of fresh air in comparison.
Same to be honest. I'm currently playing through HW again in NG+ in preparation to dive back into SB. And I've seen snippets of cutscenes that I saw 2 and a half years ago when I first went through SB, and god Lyse's voice acting alone blows Wuk's out of the water. The voice actress is doing a wonderful job at portraying Lyse as this passionate, naive, yet very VERY inconsiderate character, who wants change but does not really understand her own people's plight and where their come from with their apathy.
I didn't like Lyse because, as in the case of Wuk Lamat I wasn't interested in the story of a leader who was clearly unqualified for what they was doing and who was in the position they were in merely due to nepotism and family ties. And because I really did like Yda: Among the Scions who were all geniuses with Phds from Sharlayan (Archons) she was a valuable contrast - a talented fighter, headstrong but enthusiastic, someone you always want on your team. I wasn't happy when they turned the brave fighter Yda into the insecure pathetic Lyse. I get what they were trying to do with her, I just didn't enjoy it. I thought she should have stayed Yda.
@@qamarqammar7629 The idea of Yda was good, but her personality was so cartoonishly airheaded that I couldn't stand her.
I love
Talk to Wuk Lamat to start a question
Find/Talk to 3 people
Talk to Wuk Lamat
Talk to Wuk Lamat
Finish the quest by talking to Wuk Lamat
The expansion
And that's 75% of the game right there.
@@durantes It's a shame to be honest because I was so hyped for dawntrail and wuk lamat
Wuk Lamat says a settlement needs your help.
@@Puddingskin01 I'd rather Preston over Wuk..at least said his line and let the SS be!
Don't forget survey spot for 5 seconds to be told continue north
"Why are the scions even here?"
To be close by for the trust system.
Honestly some at least had their reasons to be there....of course they could've just introduced a few new characters to take their place though.
Honestly it's so blatantly obvious they're mostly there for trusts first and foremost, but even that can easily be solved by just....giving us different characters for the "canon" encounters (they've done it before with Lyna, Emet, Hyth and Venat, and even recently with Koana and Zoraal ja) and then have the Scions unlocked for the duty support version.
It legitimately felt like they handed off the writing to some intern who felt "promising" but it fell flat. And now I'm incredibly confused by all the people on Twitter screeching that i can't have a problem with it because it was "her story" not mine and how it's "literally thier favorite and best one ever!" Bro what?
That way she handles the ai girl in act 2 is ridiculous and the voice acting hurt.
"We both want to live!" Then just kills them all.
Yeah. I mean, the stuff the expansion is trying can be done well. The problem isn't what the story is meant to be, it just doesn't execute well regardless. The person or persons who did this were not ready.
Yep can't say anything bad or you get people telling you you're not thinking about the new story right lol
I don't really understand. If they desperately wanted their Warrior of Light to not be the focus of the story, we could have had the rite of succession be a fucking sidequest or something. The thing with the Warrior of Light is that they've always been the PoV character, that said never, in any iteration of FF14's story, was their presence made redundant as in Dawntrail.
Replace us with some random character that has passing combat experience, and you probably would not have changed anything in the Rite of Succession.
Every story has made it clear that the Warrior of Light's presence in and their contribution to the story is meaningful to ensure the success of the story. In ARR only you could breach the Praetorium and defeat the Ultima Weapon as you demonstrated equal to the task in the eyes of the Grand Company leaders, HW relied heavily on the WoL's Echo to uncover the truth behind the Dragonsong War, SB has the WoL win allies for Doma by having them complete the Naadam and become the new khagan, ShB has you save yourself from dying in an Eighth Umbral Calamity by absorbing the corrupted light, because only YOU can do that - at least for a longer period of time, EW has Hydaelin set you on a path to uncovering the truth about the Final Days and defeating Meteion as you alone are the sole person who can effectively use Dynamis to stop her.
DT on the other hand gives no compelling reason as to why the WoL NEEDS to be there, if the trial can be won by Wuk with or without your help!
@@elrilmoonweaver4723 They've jettisoned everything that made the story a success in the past in favor of giving us a story in which our former MC - the WoL - is barely necessary. I agree. It is inexplicable and if they make it clear we are getting more of the same I won't be playing it.
I've never skipped dialogue or a cutscene in an MSQ before. Until Dawntrail. Brutal pacing.
The promise: "You're going on vacation, no world ending threats, no work, just chill."
The reality: "The world is about to end! You must work harder than ever and the only one who gets to chill is the cat stealing all your screentime!"
Wuk Lamat: WE SAVED THE WORLD WITH LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP
Me, covered in the blood of all her enemies: is that what we're calling my sword now?
Thre's A LOT of problems with DT but the initial "hook" doesn't even do it for me. "Hey, help this privileged cat that came out of the blue to become queen, she says she loves her people but in fact, she rarely steps out of her city and instead of getting to know them beforehand to find fierce warriros amongst them, she decides to go and look for one outside of her country" This makes NO sense, aren't there any worhtwile warriors over there? Koana goes and does the same, but in his case it kinda worked with his backstory of studyin abroad. And let's not forget "Hey, you SHOULD come and help because one of the other competitors wants to invade Eorzea with sticks and stones!!!!" That is just fucking stupid, not even after getting 23rd century technology could the "villain's" army stand a chance against a single dragon, and we were supposed to take HIM serioulsy? All of this is why the initial motivation sucks, my character has no real reason to go there, and adventure isn't it, main difference with ARR is that, yes, it could be boring but the entire world was open to you after the first hours and you coul get lost and explore on your own if you wanted to, which could be cool if they actually implemented something similar this time around instead of the same old formula, but I guess they are just way too comfortable to shake things up a bit. (And don't get me started on wuk lamat...)
You said it, dude. I've got two more reviews in the works. And some of what you mentioned here is gonna come up. Believe that.
@@durantes It's a bit off to the side but I had HUGE misgivings about getting involved in a entirely avoidable political struggle from an ethical/philsophical POV.
Should every wannabe ruler rock up to us with a sob story and get us to install them? What if WL turns out to be a terrible ruler and we are responsible for something really bad? Aren't we now completely indebted to the defence of Tural, even potentially against Eorzea?
Also as OP mentioned all the other insane incompetencies/weak villainy we compete against, largely because Tural is so perfect it prevents any natural conflict that would let us get invested in WL's vision.
I honestly didn't understand why I needed to get on the boat to Tural to help Wuk Lamat.
It took until fighting Daddy Ja Ja where he literally just asks you to help Wuk when I felt like I had a reason to be there. The Dawnservant asked me.... After 20 quests and two keystones.
This could have easily been fixed by having her father ask us to observe the Rite of Succession as advisors. We could see all four candidates and offer advice without breaking our neutrality.
This 100% and that "love" for her ppl is the ONLY thing that makes her worthy of the throne in her mind. She doesn't have SINGLE policy. Hell, ppl complain about lack of food and her solution is to hold a festival...and that just happened to be the solution... It was stupid because there's no way they've been doing that for generations and no one knew what the festival was until that moment. Koana get shafted too, his entire goal was to bring techonology to his ppl to make their lives better and the ppl loved him for it as it is shown in the beggining of the story... Until he decides to step out of the contest because... somehow innovation is seen as a bad thing now
Endwalker and Shadowbringers are the best expansions
Ngl I'd rather return to the Waking Sands than ever see Wuk Lmao again.
We're gods and primal slayers and we can't even protect Otis from one stupid beast. Fuck this game.
yeah, otis shouldve been one of the bosses in the lvl 100 story dungeon instead; probably boss 1
He is there of his own will, he knows what sphene is doing is wrong, he disagrees with her actions; but it is his duty to protect her.
better than the narratively lackluster bosses we have for most of the dungeons
and he still dies sad death, and still dies for his queen
could even have dialogue trying to convince him to stop: "that is not really your sphene just an imitation made in her likeness from the memories of people other than herself"
otis: "...... a broken knight for a broken queen"
The powerscale went so high after EW tough,
to have stakes with a god slayer he either has to be dumbed down or, face things stronger than him.
They make the worse choice:
both
You wanted to be a Mary sue we get it
@@Soniman001 Am I wrong doe??!?! Fucking normies just spouting random trigger words
@@The_Lesser_Evil Yes, you are. Just because *we* are strong doesn't mean Otis is.
Biggest problem I had with Dawntrail was Wuk Lamat. Ok, ok, so her being central to the first half was fine. 6.55 made it glaringly obvious she was gonna be a big deal and that helping her to stop her brothers was the real reason we're going. But towards the end of the rite when we found the Golden City and Krile is supposedly there to get answers for things about her parents and things that have been gnawing at her for her whole life? Yep, we just fuck off from that gate like it's no big thang to focus even more Wuk Lamat who has not only won the rite, but also won over the populace without the majority of the populace actually witnessing her or her deeds. IT MADE NO SENSE. There should have been stubborn Zoraal Ja loyalists. There should have been a questionable reaction from the populace.
Wuk Lamat shoulda been so far out of her depth when Solution 9 stuff showed up, WE should have taken center stage and the SCIONS should have STOPPED being CARDBOARD CUTOUTS. Sure, she's the king now or whatever, but she knows jack shit about what's going on. It's a little bit of a mystery to us, at first, but we know what's going on. Weird stuff like that is our forte, our calling, our legacy. Why do I gotta watch this bargain bin Chewbacca with less appealing speech pattern take front and center for 85% of the the spoken dialogue and screen time?! Why are the Scions still following her about like ducklings, like we're still performing the rite for her. Shard remnants from the Lightning Rejoining are out of her depth, and she should have taken a FIRM back seat.
But no, no one, not even Krile or Erenville in THEIR OWN ARCS can escape this stupid cat bitch's insufferable, overbearing presence.
Finally, the final battle is at hand. The WoL is being told by Sphene that they are the greatest threat to her plans. We put her on the back foot such that she rips a hole in her computer generated reality, and in back in jumps Llama Tea to do more DPS than your entire Azem stone summoned party of WoLs in 1/3rd of the time.
God I fucking hate Wuk Lamat.
I mean I thought she was alright... o.o
Seriously though, Wuk Lamat is really the victim of this game's writing. Very repetitive, lots of telling and not showing, and draged out pacing.
@@Titanxzero1 she's just shit, her archetype is horrendous and made for children which I find offensive!
@@SILVERONIN Agreed. I'd be hoping to see her gone asap if I were playing still.
I can't argue with that. Her presence was grossly oversaturated. And it robbed other characters of much needed attention.
@@Titanxzero1
I don't disagree. Wuk was horribly handled, whatever the writer's intentions were.
It feel asleep several times during the MSQ, in my uncomfortable office chair. It's not just you.
Oh god I did the same. I recorded my reaction and there were several times during the last zone that I literally just nodded off. You can see my eyes getting heavy during the cutscenes. It's ridiculous.
Yeah this was a massive miss. Wuk Lamat is bad.
The fact that we got to neither fight Urianger & Thancred in a friendly challenge, similat to Venat, nor on the train, baffles me. The memes would have been glorious.
DT was just very amateur, as if the failed theatre kid writer kept rewriting until it was just a patchwork mess of stereotypes and ideas, written with only the drive to implement as many of his OCs as possible and have them take all the screentime with WoL shoved to the side.
And that's not necessarily a terrible thing, theoretically, because the Warrior of Light being a supporting role is *fine* for the start of a new adventure, but actors are supposed to exit stage left before they overstay their welcome--actors which include the Warrior of Light. Some scenes would have had greater impact if you actually just weren't there, like the final part of the Invasion pt. 1. Perhaps you were out cleaning up some of the enemies, perhaps you went to pursue a suspicious individual, or you fell into an Echo-induced coma. Either way the narrative should have kicked Wok out at that point and shifted to Krille and Erenville making them the central characters for the next part of the MSQ, because goddamn they got robbed.
You don't know how close you are with your opening statement. Since Ishikawa was working on 16 with YoshiP, that left it up to the B team to do the story expansion. The guy who wrote the Mhach storyline was put in charge. It shows.
I mainly play FF games for the story and I skipped so much of the DT MSQ dialog. It was so drawn out, I started falling asleep. About time I got to the skynet section of the storyline, I stopped caring. I'm the savior of the star! This was supposed to be my vacation but instead I got a pupil I didn't want and got stuck playing build-a-leader! 😩😭
The dungeons and trials were fun, though....😅
Dear Stormblood,
I apologize for most of the things I've said about your storyline. Raise your head, you are no longer at the bottom of my list.😂
This whole expansion just felt off to me, man. Nothing in the story gave me that "edge of my seat" feeling, characters im familiar with seemed lobomotized, the writing was flat, I literally wasn't invested in the story.I've never once skipped an msq cutscene until now and thats not a good feeling. At least the dungeons n stuff are fun though because if they weren't I wouldnt have finished it.
Dawntrail was written like a bad D&D campaign with the dungeon master forcing a DMNPC on your party that is his favorite character and you must love it because its better at everything than you.
Game was co-opted by SBI
Square Enix tried to save money. They gave the writing to the most inexperienced/lowest tier writer. They gave ALL the lines to the most rookie Voice Actor. It was completely abysmal. Wuk Lamata being pure trash as a character with horrible voice acting only serves to make the whole thing excruciating.
well said, similar feelings. It should be put on BLAST after we had 2 great story MSQs. The writing and certain characters/VAs were shit. Ppl that disliked your video are probably Woke LAMEt fans.
I only have one thing to say: That was the best and most accurate review I've seen of Dawntrail. I have nothing to add and no desire to subtract anything from your Dawntrail review. You were perfect in your assessment. It's just a shame that I very much doubt that things will get any better from now on. Meteion and Hermes were right all along. And we thought it was in Endwalker that despair would catch up with us.
I'm flattered you think so! And I am afraid you're right. Story writing this mediocre can't be a good sign.
@@durantes I hope I'm wrong. I hope that all the negative criticism that the storytelling is receiving affects the reputation of the game and the DEVs in a way that they revise this writing. At the end of the day, we're not haters, we're players who really like this game. We always want the best from it, and DT's writing was definitely not the best.
I agree 100% The general story idea is good. The way it was written and executed was a crime against humanity. How on earth we came from the last two expacs to now will be a question Yoshi will have to contend with. (I read somewhere that the writer for Dawntrail is a different person this go-round, and it SHOWS) It was the first time I skipped CS and brute forced my way through a MSQ in the whole history of the game. I came expecting more story about Krile and that one gleaner (arg, name fled my mind just now), exploring with them, and learning about their histories and the cultures of this new place. Instead we got....Wukface. Enough said. I disliked her so much that when I got to the dungeons, I rather would have Graha tank for me (I'm the healer) just so I could get away from her insufferable aura. Don't even get me started on the last trial. That Emet wave at the end was gold, btw Had me thinking of Critical Drinker "That's all I have for today. GO AWAY NOW." 😂
Yooo I do that too with G'raha 😂 purely out of spite
@@vanzta 😂
I still have not recovered from the wuk overdose😢
@@stevegs76 Talk to Wuk Lamat lol
I'm a bona-fide worshiper at the altar of Yoshi-P, my fragile self respect is based on playing this game and I've sunk more than 10k hours into it. I'd rate every expansion to date an 11 out of 10 and Dawntrail made me want to quit (or worse). You could write a thesis on all the horrific game design decisions and crimes against story-writing perpetrated in this expansion, CBU3 needs to sort themselves out in VERY short order.
I very vividly remember that when she came to recruit us, and fought that dumb bird, she was shaking with fear. I was really hopeful to be something of a mentor to her, with us given more dialogue to help her. Instead we do two fifth of fuck all. She does it all herself, with us just standing there nodding.
The WoL and the Scions, including Krile who had a massive story reveal, were reduced to nothing more than silent nodding side characters. Had we and the Scions had a more supportive role, I wouldn't have cared as much.
Edit: "her" being Wuk Lamat.
Second edit: The other major issue was that it felt like the only reason Zoraal Ja was even a threat was because of the stupid "honor" bullshit Wuk Lamat insisted on keeping. Had we been allowed to, he would've died a lot sooner. They are running into the issue of having us being God-killers; there's no threat that feels real.
I agree. We're at the point where our character has to stand around so that bad things can happen. It's ridiculous the lack of effort shown.
The problem I had aside from the mediocre story and gameplay was how my FC simply spewed constantly how "amazing." Everything was as I was sitting here skipping terrible cutscene after terrible cutscene running around talking to npcs and just not actually playing the game lol
Similar for me. I simply chose not to talk about it with my FC... and if I can't talk about the game with my FC, that does raise some question of what I'm doing there.
I mean to each their own not everyone is going to hate the story like many other do either
The rvb reference earned my sub.
I wish I was kidding but am not, been playing XIV since ARR and DT finally made me quit
I was hoping for a fresh page, new systems, revamped patch cycle but all we got is more of the same/predictable stale formula but now with horrid storytelling
This finally gave me the courage to relinquish my private house, stored my 75M gil in the fc chest and said my goodbyes
Il consider EW as the true final arc
This ain't an airport mate. You don't have to announce your departure. See you in the next expac.
11:32 Oh my god, this, and I'm so glad you used Estinien as an example as he's the one I was the most teased by whenever he'd show up and just leave right after, leaving me rather disappointed throughout. Yoshi-P mentions that he doesn't know what to do with the scions...but it's actually simple, really, just make them important to the story and not extras.
At the scene where we first met Estinien at Shaaoloni(?), he could've accompanied us for awhile with Erenvelle and even helped out with defeating those bandits before disappearing once more, hell I thought for sure we'd see Estinien again once we uncovered the secret bandit operation anyway. Like why the hell was he even there? What was the point in him even showing up if he's going to disappear once more until the invasion begins and he comes back to fight robots? All the scenes with him are cool don't get me wrong, but a lot of the time it got me thinking after... What was the point of that? Not just him either, a lot of the scions got this treatment as well, and it's a shame as I was excited to see my favorite cast of characters once more...
Please keep making more videos man! You give a fair analysis despite disagreeing on small points, but you know what? You got a sub from me, I want some of my thoughts challenged. Overall, you made great points that I also agree with - One of them being Krile; I felt it was insulting to her character to be out on the side after her arc again. I wanted more of the main cast too, and the first half was lethargic. Good video man, Ill be watching here on in 👏
It took me a long time to get through the hanuhanu and pelu pelu quests because, like you, I kept falling asleep. If DT can be summed up in one word, it would be "boring."
thats DEI for ya. Inputing shit characters and FORCE on you to care about them. JP did a poll on what some of their fav characters were and Woke LAMEt didnt even make top 10 hahaha.
It took me 2 days longer than any other expansion to finish, because I would suffer through a boring cut scene where there's no drama of any kind, and then just stare at the wall for twenty minutes before I could continue.
The Zoral Ja vs Gulool Ja Ja fight was the stupidest thing I've seen in 14 lol not only were we just watching the fight instead of helping (yes I know Galool said he wanted the 1v1) but the moment Zoral Ja revives himself, that should have been where we step in cause all bets are off and not only did he kill Gulool Ja Ja, we ALLOWED him to walkaway LMAOO at that point I said yh this MSQ is dead in the mud. Dawntrail MSQ is shite! Also Wuk Lamat needs to just disappear, worst character in 14!
Yeeeeah. I was so pissed after that scene. It doesn't reflect well on any of us.
The WoL has that narcolepsy. They also must have fallen asleep when Bakool Ja Ja started cheating during his 1v1 with Wuk Lamat. Probably should have helped out there too lol.
Wow honestly when I first finished it I didn’t think it was too bad cuz I gave it a huge benefit of the doubt being a new ark but after seeing all the criticism. I’d have to agree. Although while playing I kept waiting for the scions to do something. Like when yshtola showed up I was like oh? Are they all finally gonna do something together again? Nope they all separated lmao that was disappointing. Then hearing the final villain blue brother (forgot his name) explain his reasoning that just fell flat. I was annoyed with that. Cuz all the villains previously were actually likable. My guess is Yoshi didn’t reallly do any writing if at all and just oversaw the interns or something. Knowing how he and whoever other writers like that woman who helped a lot with shadowbringers wrote amazing expansions, it’s obvious they didn’t have much sway or participation in the writing. It felt like a longgggg side quest. Where side quests feel like fetch quests and solving the npc’s issues. Wuk Lamat honestly isn’t a bad character and I liked her father. But they definitely over saturated her and seemed to focus solely on her and her story then just added the scions n us as fillers 💀
Ive said this elsewhere but I genuinely dont think the actual FF14 team wrote this shit. Like whatever your misgivings are about EW, its plot issues dont come anywhere NEAR this level of incompetence and poor writting. Hell even the technical stuff is off Charcoal Bunny Man's mom straight up has UNMIXED voiced dialog like they slapped a raw audio file into the game. Don't even get me started on that Disney song at the end of the story with the peaking audio.
Heh. Funny thing is it actually felt like a Disney product with how cheesy and mediocre the writing was. Tell me someone from the House of Mouse wrote DT, I'd believe you.
I was confused by the English version of Cahciua (Erenville's mother). At first, when you meet her as the walking, or rather bouncing, TV, I thought her accent was because of the medium she was using to interface with us changed it. But then when you meet her as an Endless, it was the same. Didn't she raise Erenville? Didn't they live in the same region while he was a child? Shouldn't she have an Icelandic accent as well, since Erenville as a character was in the game first? Just another of the "what were they thinking" moments for the devs/voice personnel inconsistent/nonsensical choices. Really breaks emersion.
@@annameme1834 I agree with this, I audibly said "huh?" when they revealed the actual person and I heard her voice. I had to do some mental leaps to believe that maybe he got his accent from spending more time with his dad or something. Or maybe her time in Alexandria had her accent change over time, which they could have explained by having Erenville be like "I didnt believe it, you didnt sound like my mother last I had seen her!" They could have capitalized on the fact that they were suspicious that she was luring them into a trap initially and that they were inside a bubble that led to a dimension and advanced time much faster than Etherys... they actually had so many outs for this discrepancy.
It just threw me completely out of the story, though like, I couldn't place his accent (you said icelandic so Ill take your word for it.) while she sounded like she was from the US.
@@malikfoxen2045 His english VA is Ari Oskarsson and is from Iceland.
They did miss many opportunities, but I'm sure in the other languages there wasn't a variation of accents, so adding this into the story would have been a stretch... but would have been good for the story.
Great video. Fantastic critique! Very much looking forward to the second part. And to be fair, with a list this long, it sounds to me like you're ready to move on. It was fun while it lasted.
I did the alpaca quest, currently doing the boat festival quest and I give up. I do not hate myself enough to play this.
Tbh it was boring but with hope to be better experience those quests you mention. And at least for me it never gets better. I stopped played at 99lvl MSQ.
I will say it is worth pushing yourself to play the side content which thank fully does not involve Wuk lol
There's a single hook that maybe *maybe* will save the patch MSQ depending on the direction they go in. But if I have to ask you know who to join me I'll be done. So it's...what....November right? Last chance.
You know why? One of the writers for the MSQ was a writer for the beast tribe quests. And now it all makes sense for me. We were doing fucking beast tribe quests through the ENTIRE first half.
@@WalkerRileyMC They need to do what they did to Lyse. Shove her in the background and never let her get into the spotlight again.
Worst thing coming out of this expansion? It's gonna go Downhill from here.
It's the problem with many mmorpg, but it's so apparent in FFXIV because it's one of the most story driven mmo out there.
GW2 / Black Desert / Lost Ark I couldn't care less about the story, but the action combat is stupid fun.
This game? Even the combat is going no where, and now that the main story ended in Endwalker, there's literally nowhere to go.
They tried so hard to sell Dawntrail as something new, new adventure, but it's not, it's stale, boring.
Sad, I used to love this game, but I guess like many other, it's ended in Endwalker.
Good video, i still enjoyed some of the story and the fights but Wuk Lamat sours the whole thing for me. Hope she doesn't return in the patch stories...
Hopefully Sqaure will see the backlash and respond appropriately. And yeah. The dungeons and trials were actually pretty great. So, kudos for that if nothing else.
What puzzled me the most is that this story has nothing to do with FF14 at all, ok we are on teh opposite side of the world but seems they mentione that the worst threat they faced is Valigarmanda 80 years ago, and what about the Dispair of the Endsinger? Shouldn't have this involved all the planet?
Feel like we played another game with another main charcter which they had no money to found so they used the FF14 base to set it up but yes this is annoying and unpleasant and not a vacation at all, it is unpayed babysitting.
You're right. I never even thought about it, but there should have been a blasphemy or two causing trouble. No primal summoning either.
During the last parts of the Endwalker campaign, or during the post-patch, it is mentioned that the Final Days were mainly occuring around Thavnair and it did not yet spread a lot to the other parts of the world, however if we hadn't stopped Meteion, eventually it would have affected other areas as well. Kind of a bummer, it would have been awesome to see the entire world in an apocalypse like in Thavnair with Blasphemies all over, but that would have probably been too much work for a temporary effect.
And actually, in the lv 90 job quests you will encounter a few Blasphemies in other areas of the world, but it's just singular encounters.
Considering how far tural is from thavnair, it kinda makes sense that it was pretty much unaffected by the final days. We probably stopped the endsinger before it managed to spread that far
@@Staygold1999 that just highlights how milquetoast the whole final days thing was, tha tit only affected a small sectiojn of the world. It was so strang ehow it kept cutting to sharlayan and the skies were blue?
@collenjets123 We were told way earlier during EW that the final days are something that starts in one place then gradually spreads around the world. The Unsundered described a nearby country suffering from the final days before it got to them as Dynamis has to combat the Aether to spread Meteons influence.
I did enjoy Dawntrail overall, but by the Twelve that first half was a slog! If we could have maybe left Wuk Lamat back at home for part 2, made that more a traditional WoL/scions adventure maybe? I dont even dislike her, just as you said, we needed a bit more focus on the others. Good battle content though! And as usual, Soken knocks it out of the park with the OST.
Yep. The fights were spectacular. I can't argue with that.
I have to admit that ew bored me so much until I got to the moon. I was less bored in the first half of dt.
so many characters deserve better such as Krile, I liked Wuk Lamat at first but the MSQ ruined her for me. Don't get me started on her involvement in the last MSQ raid. Silver lining, Highlanders are 10x hotter with the new update
Dawntrail had some good moments, but the horrible pacing lessened their impact. The lvl 95 dungeon and the lore surrounding it is so good, has so much potential. But it's completely ruined due to how fast we are rushed through the entire Mamool-ja subplot. Honestly the WOL should have just been asked to act like a referee for the rite of sucession, and have spend time with the other promises. and the whole blessed sibling plotline should have been spread over the first 5 levels. It also doesn;t help that the entirity of Shaaloni is just one big filler zone.
From my experience and what you've said so far I agree, the writers for DT did the entire scion cast so dirty that they should have just introduced a group of turali NPCs to join Krile and us instead as we went through each area, that way we'd at least get a better experience out of learning about the new areas, as it would come from a proper native.
Less Wuk Lamat would've been amazing, too, she didn't know dick & all about her own people and took up way too luch screen time.
It's kind of like, we could have grown closer to Wuk Lamat, and Kona, but we were never given any real, truly good moments with them. There were so many missed opportunities for us to hit bond building moments, that I kept expecting to happen...and they just were not there. The closest we get are the campfire scene, and the modifying the train.
Heavensward actually made me care about Estinien and Ysayle by the interactions we had with them while we were traveling together. About founding out little bits about them, and how they felt about things. I don't know exactly what went wrong, but so much of Wuk Lamat's lines just felt forced and a lot of the things we learned about her were superficial. The fact that she got sea sick was kind of funny, but it was made a huge focus too many times, and only later did it start to be more of a 'right, this is still a problem, but she's got it, moving on' type thing. It's like they didn't believe we would remember unless it was an explicit plot point several times. xp
Don't get me wrong, I actually kind of liked Wuk Lamat, but by the end of everything, I still don't think I was as attached to her as I even was Hien, and he was only present for half of SB.
Heck, Drusilla from the Reaper quest chain was only there for ten lvls, and by the time I finished the chain, she had become one of my favorite characters who I hope I get to see more of in the future.
I get they had a lot to tackle, and a completely new region to introduce, and some stuff to establish for things going forward, but I just don't get how we went from having pretty decent to stellar writing for close to the entire game, then in the interim years, we ended up with something so weak.
I don't get the 'it's just ARR again!" arguments. It's not. ARR had a ton of story that was left unresolved by the end, allowing for further story and expansions. seriously *WHAT* was left at the end of DT? Azem's Key? Okay great. one thing that we know next to nothing about. Hoorah.
If you hated the Filler in Remake, you should thank your lucky stars you never played Rebirth. It's the same game, but with an additional 80 hours of copy/paste Ubisoft open world chores.
I know upon next expac the story skip potions will sell out so much it'll crash the mogshop. Good gooodddd this is the first time since playing i skip the cs's
"the goblins are as stereotypical as the ones in eorzia"
Kinda how these "latino inspired" folk are stereotypical hispanics in the english casting :)
Thancred and Urianger were literally there to go 🙁 👎 or 😊 👍 to koana's actions.
Urianger might as well have been a cardboard cutout, I feel like he spoke 2 sentences the whole game
Came for dawntrail bashing stayed for that silky voice 🥵
As a complete new player to FF that joined in middle of EW l;aunch ARR did enough to keep me intrested to keep playing and creating enough plot points i wish to learn as i play on
DT fails establishing all above, feels disconnected, with really weak background work done on it
Like Wuk wants to rule but got no idea about her own people and land? WTF? I get that devs wanted to made this underdog overcomes all and grows strong and wise tropes to heart in a very bad delivery
I just couldn’t agree more and happy to see in not the only one being massively disappointed.
Glad I'm not the only person who legit fell asleep during MSQ. It has happened at least a dozen times now. I'll wake up and find myself either dead or autorunning into a wall somewhere. I haven't even finished MSQ yet because of this along with just not having the drive anymore. Usually I can't put the MSQ down and I'm hanging on every word, excited to see what happens next. This is why I usually take a few days off work at the launch of each expansion...but this time I slept through most of the short vacation I took for DT, and that's really disappointing. What a waste.
You know, I never really felt like that big of a side character in the other expansions, even if different characters were center stage, I still felt like he was supposed to be there. We had stakes in the story, people needed us and everything would have gone to shit if we hadn't been there. Heres why I found myself dreading playing the game for the first time ever in all my years of playing:
I don't play games to be a side character, even more so when I was clearly not needed (I mean come on, we don't even kill the final boss.)
I fell in love with the game because the Scions are amazing, diverse characters who I think could still have been fleshed out even more, making another expansion entirely. I don't care if I'm not the WoL anymore and we aren't officially a group trying to save the word, we're still friends, if not family, and the fact that I spent no time with any of them, pissed me the hell off.
No, instead I had to follow around a character that I can only describe as cat girl Naruto, ugh. Everything about her character annoyed me and then she just kept coming back and forgiving everything that happened. Dude set free a monster that could have killed thousands of people, nah that okay you had a hard childhood, you're forgiven. Woman tried to consume your entire plants, eh, it's not her fault, she was made this way, I forgive you. I was just waiting for her to say a speech that ended with, "Believe it!".
I don't need some huge end of the world story in order to enjoy a game, but I do need something reminiscent to the game I love in it that last more then five minutes every once in a while. Honestly my favorite part of the game was watching our dragon allies fly in and nuke the enemies. It was probably the only time I actually got hyped in the story.
The twins are literally there just to fill out the Duty Support.
The twins were in story _exclusively_ to give you people to run Trust parties with for the dungeons (shit, they even had Alisaie _healing_ a couple of them), and Thancred and Urianger were there exclusively for the two Trust trials, and so they could claim in the DT marketing that it was going to be "Scions against Scions" without getting sued. Full stop, that's the _only_ reason those characters were in the story.
Im not so sure Trust is the issue here as i've seen others state they couldve used any other new characters for NPC party members like they did with Ktisis Hyperborea or hell they could even give us the classic "Scion" generic npcs if that was the only goal, i think the real reason is writers just refuse to let go of the scions since it's easier to just write them in than make a new cast that would be equally endearing.
@@xion0713 Sure, they could have, but that would have meant having another character in the place of those Scions in the story. Having the Scions along for the ride was very clearly just an easy shortcut for trusts. A great example is right after Origenics, when Y'shtola, Graha, Estinien, and one other who I've forgotten just run up from behind us, saying something like they'd been called all the way from the capital city via linkpearl and arrived just as we need to go face off with Zoraal and need 4 more trust members. How convenient.
Fact is, the Scions _aren't_ "endearing" this expansion. They're cardboard cutouts of characters without even a hint of their established personality or soul. Pretty much the only time in the entire expansion that the writers remembered that the Scions have individual stories and characteristics is the boat ride with Graha. They even left _Krile_ out in the cold, despite this being _her expansion._ It's actually enraging.
@@KaedysKormy point was more or less if Trust was the sole reason they could have just treated it how ARR Duty Support is treated with NPCs manifesting whenever you want to run it and i 100% agree with you about how the Scions are treated in DT but i think its done that way because it's an easy emotional string to tug at to get you invested like the Krile example people were interested in her to see what she would do that's alot easier to rely on than it is to introduce an entirely new character that you then have to work overtime to get people as invested in the characters the frustrating reality is that were now at a point where the Scions are marketing material theyre going to be in everything because from Square's perspective how are we going to sell people a $40 expansion without them
@@xion0713 well, especially given that two examples of new characters they _tried_ to get us invested in were a character they literally super-glued to our face for the entire expansion, and then that character's nanny, whom they put on screen like thrice over 8 levels of quests and then expected us to tear up when she died.
My extensive time in FFXI made the first half fun for me with many familiar races and faces. They were jingling the keys in my face pretty well. Zoraal Ja alone made Dawntrail enjoyable for me, bringing edgy to the overly happy, trope-y narrative the first half was throwing at us. It's the second half that drove me up the wall with Sphene, so I'm looking forward to hearing your opinion on that, lol.
Oh, I've plenty to say about her.
@@durantes so many people mention the problems with the first half but the second half is just as problem filled....we literally become the ascians to a bunch of poor memory ghosts
What a pile of hot garbage was this expansion. Well put video!
i hate the excuse this should be ARR, why do you wanna experience ARR again ?ffs
The Thing is ARR atleast had fully fleshed out world to learn about and explore, and eventually personal stakes in fighting the ultima weapon in the praetorium. I never felt he need to skip cutscenes in ARR. I definitely did in dawntrail.
@@collenjets123 This. ARR was fine and fulfilled its purpose.
Completely agree on this. My take is they needed the next expansion to build new characters. Instead they bring the scions in. Everything happening in the expansion is a variation of something they've previously dealt with yet they act out of character by not utilizing their feats to resolve issues. So on one hand they failed to set up characters to replace the scions by including the scions, and then the writing fails to emphasize the feats of those characters. Aether, soul, space/time, and memory manipulation feats from the previous two expansions are ignored when they are all very applicable to the current situation.
The trials, dungeons and the raids are pretty good. Im happy to see they make things more difficult. The story is a doozer. The last 2 zones should be more focused on Krile and much longer story wise. Sad.
Oh, dungeons n raids were kickass. Yoshi P said they were upping the difficulty, and he did not disappoint. I only wish the same could be said with the rest of the expansion.
When playing the game and Wuk won the right of succession I was excited because I thought at that point in the story I would be leaving her behind and the story would finally pick up. Instead I got what felt like hours of lame quest chasing around some old lady’s bracelet or whatever piece of jewelry it was she had stolen.
It got to a point where not long after meeting the queen I just started skipping most of the cutscenes. I just wanted to play the game not be on hours and hours of cutscenes or reading text.
It really is embarrassing how badly they dropped the ball with this expansion.
The msq was boring
Literally Yawntrail. Stormblood is no longer my least liked Expansion storywise. It's Yawntrail. Storywise it sucks ass. Worse pacing than the pacing in stormblood. But I will say the dungeons, trials and raid tier is reall good. That's all the good I can say. Wuk Lamat is the most forced, worst voiced and uninteresting character I have ever seen in this game. I pray that we never see her again. Or if we do. It's one cutscene in a patch that I can skip and then she disappears from the spotlight.
Now i know I'm not alone in thinking that FFXIV story telling is gameplay-wise atrocious... 😂
It still worked pretty well when they actually had interesting things to tell you about, but absent of both actual gameplay segments AND interesting story, its quite clear how dated the games systems actually are in comparison to everythiung else around it.
You can tell a game story is bad when they put the more relevant world building lore in the SIDEQUESTS! Particularly the CRAFTING/GATHERING whachumakemake questlines /facepalm.
Seriously all the lore in those quests SHOULD have been in the MSQ, as that's what we were promised, not an NPC background simulator of a visual novel.
Wuk Lmao and LmaoTea. Thats her name to me and my friends now 😂
Just makes me even gladder I chose EW to quit lol
Ouch...
@@Titanxzero1 At least EW managed to do that right. ;)
ya bro you aint missing much. Snoozefest. better off playing No Mans Sky or another replay through Baldurs Gate 3
@@lolcat5303I thought EW was good but to each their own.
Bye have a wonderful day
I remember being so bored near the beginning of the expansion, I just stopped and booted up a different game.
What kills me is that outside of the MSQ, this extension is top notch.
But the MSQ..is the worst
I actually agree. The dungeons, the trials. Even FATES have been revamped for the better. But with 20+ hours of boring story and godawful writing, it does not make up for it.
I been playing the game with japanese dub and that took some of the edge off.
The only part that gained my attention was the "alien invasion" part but it didn't last long.
This is just another lore mess and pointless melodrama.
For me Dawntrail was okay. I did like touring the new areas just wish the challenges were more interesting. I did get annoyed at Wuk Lamat showing up in the last fight. I didn't feel she was strong enough to do that and it also annoyed me cause it made me think can't we get two seconds away from her please.
This was the first expansion I hit skip with. I hate woke Lamat
I am a huge fan of Dawntrail and I love Wuk Lamat for who she actually is. Especially the peak of the first half and the potential the second half brings.
With that being said: I can see why Wuk Lamat is the most disliked character this game has probably ever seen along Lyse. For many critics Dawntrail falls or flourishes with Wuk Lamat, depending on what side you are. For two reasons: 1. We are not the main character in this expansion - which of course had the potential to angry a lot of people and it did, even tho we always were the main character more or less and 2. her presence was overdone, to the point of it feels like just for the sake of presence and us mentoring at all costs. I have the feeling that what they are doing since the last couple expansions (alongside us taking a mentor role in atleast Dawntrail), but especially since Endwalker is to build up more and more heroes and characters that follow the WoL footsteps (or to be more precise are build stronger) like Zero and Golbez in the EW patches especially and now Wuk Lamat. Probably to face a really big threat in the future, avengers style. If that is one aim of the writers, I love that premise. That being said, they maybe have overdone it this expansion. Although I didn't mind her presence I can see why the dislike is there.
Not necessarily a jab at you so forgive me if it comes across that way, but i genuinely don't undertstand how people can come away liking something this objectively horribly written. I can understand matters of taste causing division here but there's genuinely nothing here.
The writing, the underpinning everything else relies upon, such as theme, morals, and character, is completely botched. It doesnt really matter what the themes of a story is, what the story beats of teh plot are, or what a character at their core is about, if the writing that fuels the train is just god awful below the bottom of teh barrell.
@@collenjets123 Can ask the same to you, why do you genuinely dont like the story or the characters in it and hate it so much. No it's not objectively bad, it's all subjectively at the end of the day, make no mistake here. You dont have to like how they go about it, but others can. It's not a hard concept. People criticise Wuk to oblivion just like Lyse back then, I can see why like I said. They may have overdone it and perhaps could have focused more on the main cast (scions), especially in the second half. You dont have to like the story either, but most people dont really have their gripe with that but how the characters influence the story. If you say there is nothing there, there is just nothing for you there.
I just finished DT msq and I didn't realize people hated it this much til now but like you said after reading people's comments I can understand why. While I don't hate it, I don't love it nearly as much as ShB or EW but those are very tough acts to follow. And like you I don't hate Wuk Lamat but I would agree she definitely could've used some refining. One particular moment that sticks out is when meeting her real father. I wish she could've shown a more tender side but he was just brushed aside and that hurt to witness.
Personally agree with most of this. And its nice people start being more critical cause sfter release dont you dare to say somrthing bad about Wuk... cause shes a perfect character that represents me and if you dont like it and his VA you're transphobic. Also, youre not a babysitter, youre a mentor, grab a dictionary and learn the difference....
Man all the posts were like that and im glad most of those are in silence right now. The character is awful, the VA push me to play JP that with a boring ass story, took me around a week to finish the story thanks to how bored i was and the fact that i had to read subtitles that are not completely accurate. Also thats another thing, i wish subs change from JP or EN voices, cause i know translation is a thing but if you're just adding subtittles give us the literal words or meaning not changing it to make a better fit to the voices and timings ij cutscenes.
I do wish it gets better in the following patches, and i hope i wont see or at least having wuk around ne for those
I can see the potential of the story, I see what they wanted to tell. It is painfully obvious, to me at least, who outlined the story and who executed it. I swear to god, some of the dialogue, when you read it out loud, sounds almost like chatgpt wrote it. Its almost unbelievable this got approved. I don't know did they run out of resources or time or what happened but its not good.
Very accurate and amazing review. As much I may have missed out first few weeks of DT's launch, I'm rather saddened as what it became. It is no secret why I eventually felt not only underwhelmed but lackluster with EW as well. Even after 3,000 hours of playtime before my sub ended around in March, I found myself quite burned out with it and had no desire to re-sub the game for a while until maybe, Dawntrail can give me another chance? I didn't think so for the time so, I had more fun with other games such as Baldur's Gate 3 (then 1st and 2nd in the series) and you know what? it was worth it.
I'm just glad that I watched the dumpster fire but at the same time, do I even want to suffer the torture of boring as hell MSQ or do the easy way out by skipping all of the cutscenes and enjoy the combat instead? The latter sounds preferable at best and it would only save some of my sanity and not feel sleepy all the time as if it would retain my last bits of enjoyment with FFXIV nowadays.
Based af review so far. Thank you!
Woketrail!
I'm kinder on this expansion than most, because there were some very compelling things, and I didn't find myself too annoyed or frustrated with Wuk Lamat until towards the end. She even had some moments where I liked her for a while.
But I hate that they had to find a way to tie it back to her instead of letting other people shine. I mean, Krile should have been the one calling the shots after learning she was from there. They could have wove her in a bit better to take center stage like all the promotional material seemed to suggest she would be.
I think beyond how ridiculously omnipresent she is, that is the number one reason she is the most controversial character she is. She takes away from other characters you already care about and want more time with. Especially Krille. Hell, I think if they had really wanted to, they could have dug far deeper into the vague connection they both had: they were both were raised by a surrogate father and finding their real origins.
I think that's a missed opportunity of the expansion. They tried for this sense of found family, but exploring the idea behind biological family versus chosen family versus adoption. I had sincerely hoped they'd dig hard into that with Zoraal Ja. Heck, I think they could have made Galool Ja far more interesting if his father had invested everything into him. To do the opposite of what he felt his own father did for him.
I personally had 2 main issues, the story kinda made no sense, from Iron age (at best) to super futuristic, like wtf??
Second, the shit house rework drg got. Wtf is this glide bullshit? "Lets power slide across the ground to get to flying dragons", yeah because that makes sense. That "rework" completely destroyed my entire rotation and no matter how I rebuild it, it doesn't flow and feel, mehh. Fuck the other classes/jobs, they are all super boring to me and don't have any appeal.
Lastly, just for a bonus, Wuk Lamat can piss off and fall off a cliff.
Dawntrail is a dawnfail, fuck this expansion
Never felt so bored in a game before, while doing this msq. Dungeons and Trials were good, but this is no excuse to make the whole rest soo boring. It broke my will to play the game after 10 long years. So far my sub runs out on 30 octobre...so probably enough time to see the first part of the "new" story. If Wuk takes a dominant role in it again...im gonna quit.
I was a total fanboy of Final Fantasy 14, but dawntrail has way too much dialogue, i m ok with reading but i m about to start skipping all of it, the action when it happens is ok but so far between is boring, i m going to take a guess and say they got lazy and decided to use filler dialogue to make the game seem longer, but..... i think they failed this time, big time fail for sure
I think the game play, some music ( not that Smile song while we were building a bomb train) and the scenery was beautiful. I just wanted to spend more time with Krile and Erenville. I wish I had more time with Bakool Jaja, and I adored Mablu coming in clutch to help us with the Pelupelu accounting and trading. I actually prefer Pelupelu over Lalas ways of dealing with money. Hopefully we get more of these characters in the upcoming patches.
Waiting on Part 2
why is nobody talking about the final days seemingly were not a thing in the new world?
It was stopped in its tracks with Thavnair and it only slightly spread out to Eorzea and Yanxia, it never crossed the Pacific or Atlantic
Apparently, we're supposed to be a mentor of sorts. Feels like we're being the ones told, not taught, the same lesson over and over, though. Feelsbad.
I used to be a huge ff enjoyer before all this woke exposition!!!
"woke exposition" way to call yourself out lmao.
Hopefully the Patches are better for dawntrail and god willing that the next expansion will be good like Endwalker Shadowbringers
If they dont immediately resolve it in the patches ff14 is cooked. No way people are going to sit throuhg 2 years of even more awful story. If the next expac ontop of this one is also this horrible? dead game.
I don't think the patches can resolve any of this. It needs to be broken down into rubble and completely rebuilt from the ground. Like what happened with 1.0
I also had my issues with mostly Endwalker's pacing but after playing Dawntrail I realized that I was complaining on a high level
My problem is that u don’t have a relationship develop with wuk lamat so it’s hard to really care about her.
The ff14 bots who spend more time defending the game than playing it found the video. 🤣😂
The dawntrail MSQ takes about 35 to 40 hours, so cutscenes is over 50% of the runtime.
Worst part is not being able to skip this garbage to play the next expansion...
Honestly, Wuk Lamat is really the victim of this game's writing. Very repetitive, lots of telling and not showing, and draged out pacing.
Symptom, not victim
@@cheesemuffin8129 I'm saying victim. You can say whatever you want. I just mean, her writing, dialogue, and character were poorly handled. That's all. So sorry if the wording wasn't right.
@@Titanxzero1 You must be a Gunbreaker main, as that was a hell of a Double Down.
@@cheesemuffin8129 I'm not...? I'm a Paladin. I don't understand what I said wrong other than using the word victim. Like look man I really am not trying to start some argument or troll each other, I just wanted to say my opinions, you disagree and that's fine, I'd rather just leave it at that and move on.
@@Titanxzero1 the character doesn't exist outside the game, she's just as much as a facet of the writing as lore, worldbuilding, you name it
that's like saying that a crap game is "a victim of the development" yeah no shit
I love the FFXIV story and characters and was so hyped for DT. What I found was that it felt like I was playing a game designed for 10 years olds with my old beloved characters lacking depth and purpose. It was so disappointing. I didn't even get a chance to really grow to like the new characters because Wuk Lamat. It wasn't her voice that drove me crazy, or the fact that she was the main character. It was the actual character herself and how immature she was and how she bumbled into the crown. I *despise* those sorts of characters.