Definitely one of the biggest flubs of this expansion, especially after it was hyped up as being her moment to shine.. Unless there's something big coming in the patches.. But I struggle to see how.
I hate that all she got is the completion of her name into exactly the FF5 Krile. It legitimately feels like the longest-running joke. All the fun for this character, only to reveal she is not of the Source and that her name, in Japanese, is literally the name the other Krile had in FF5.
I’m probably in the minority, but I viewed it as Krile’s “Alisaie in Stormblood” expansion. For both of them, it was their first big foray on the front lines but they also played second fiddle to another female character. BUT just like Alisaie got great development in later patches and expacs, I’m expecting the same to be for Krile now that she’s “part of the main team” rather than kinda a background Scion.
The Krile storyline didn't bother me at all. I think it's because I thought it to be secondary to her real storyline which is, "I can do this. I want to belong and contribute. I won't stay back while everyone else risks their lives." Even her tag line on the Duty Support backs that up. It was something like "I won't let you down." I looked at it as Krile fully committing to the Scions in this expansion, and not just hanging out to find her friend or continue her friend's work (Minfilia). That was set up in the 6.x patch content and you got to see her grow into the role...even being the primary scion to provide advice and grounding to Wuk Lamat.
Agreed, the fact that all the important points occurred off screen was just heartbreaking. After all the time we spent with Krile, and when she finally learned about where she came from, was we there, did we have a quiet conversation just the two of us, helping her come to terms with the revelations?... nope we were off playing cowboy and dinosaurs. She finally meets her parents' what's the focus? Graha and ice cream, once an actual conversation starts, fade to black.
So I ADORE Stormblood because it had no issue attacking really ugly concepts and ideas and truly exploring how different people acted under Garlean’s cruel occupation despite the disparate story beats and pacing. I feel like DT lacks that. It lacked those hooks and that kind of drama.
I get you, seeing Fordola's story unfold was pretty wild and it tackled the whole "willing traitor to the homeland to make their lives better." Dawntrail was close to that level but shyed away from it, which is disappointing. We almost had a brilliant fully realized story about the weight of expectations and how people cope with it through Bakool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja.
@@Deode-d4h Stormblood demonstrated two sides of the "native traitor" or quisling trope with Fordola and Yotsuyu. One who believed that by helping they would make the lives better for their people even if the people don't appreciate it but in the pursuit of the goal they lost their way and got redemption, the other who extracted revenge on their own people for failure and passiveness to prevent a tragedy and rejected redemption in lieu of revenge. DT almost got the dynamic right with its recurring theme of legacy. How being shackled to one's legacy can lead to a dark path chained to the apst (Sphene, Bakool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja), lead to alack of confidence (Wuk Lamat and Koana), respect for ones legacy and shaping their own legacy (the entire premise of the giants and Wuk Lamat's journey). It is a compelling theme especially among those from strict households it is just that the execution fell a bit short.
Even the way Fordola and Yotsuyu both had similar childhoods and had reasons to resent their own countrymen but while Fordola has made steps towards trying to attone for her actions and be a better person, Yotsuyu went in the opposite direction @@Deode-d4h
In my opinion, it deals with two flavours of colonialism, but that really appears in the second half. You have Zoraal Ja who is conquest colonialism. Wanting power and territory. You have Sphene who is absorbing colonialism, who absorbs resources and people to feed her own people. When they perform shard fusion, she steals a Turali town. The people become hers. She acquires their knowledge by absorbing them and they slowly lose their cultural ties. They appear to stay as workers, whose job is to harvest resources to support Solution 9. This has similarities to Economic Colonialism in modern-day Earth. When Sphene turns into the final villain, it's unsubtle. And weirdly when this gets brought up on social media, people deny it so aggressively. It's interesting.
@@Blahblah-oo7lk Not only that, but in the dichotomy of how countries react to being defeated and occupied with the almost universal acquiescence in Doma and Yanxia contrasted to the way that the Ala Mhigans continued to resist. It would have been interesting to see that honest look at how two different cultures acknowledge and dealt with their own pasts, especially the terrible things that had been done. The two most obvious would be the Mamool Ja and their breeding programs being a recent shadow on their history, contrasted with the Yok Huy's past as conquerors and tyrants.
I personally felt that the story of Tural kinda finished before we ever stepped foot there. Daddy Ja Ja solved nearly all the problems in Tural during his initial journey decades ago. There was nothing really left for Wukie to do except go on a wildlife excursion down the same trail her dad did to learn "the way of the ruler". And sure, there was the whole thing with Zoraal Ja wanting to wage war, but even his "supporters" didn't really seem like they were enthusiastically on his side. Sure, they clapped for him, but they didn't do anything to convince me that they really WERE a pro-war faction - like arguing (perhaps violently, given their support of violence) with the rest of the citizenry, or inciting unrest to push others toward their cause. Just SOMETHING to make it feel real. There's other stuff I could talk about in DT - I legitimately loved the Mamool Ja village story - but I just wish that they did better with the great foundation of a story that they built. Not saying that this is the "cold, hard truth", just how I felt about it.
@@Crusina She failed learning those lessons. If you think she learned them, you fell for extremely shallow story telling. Wuk Lamat was still the same moron she was before DT.
@@JustinStrife I think she sort of did in some instances and in other instances just forgot. I feel like the second half of DT was written by someone else (there are three head writers listed for DT) and though they got some of Wuk Lamat's lessons or that fact she is still learning from her lessons but having difficulty implementing them right, they also written her forgetting or ignoring them. It just highlights DT's major problem regarding consistency. Though it isn't anything terrible like Shadow lands it is jarring from going from the combo of post-SB -> ShB -> EW to well DT, even EW's post-MSQ patches were at least consistent in lore and characterization.
To add, the issue I had with Zarool Ja is that Galool Ja Ja was shown to be compassionate and intelligent, even after the passing of the head of wisdom. He would have surely seen his son become a hateful person and instead of nipping it in the bud nice and early, just went 'ahhh, it'll be fine probably'. I would have preferred Zarool Ja to have been acting kind and compassionate at the beginning, with the loss to the shade just breaking him so he drops the act. Would have added another layer of despair with Galool Ja Ja finding out his son wasn't actually happy all these years, but has been resenting all the pressure of being a miracle child. But that's just my opinion, that may have been hated even more hah!
I had to stop myself from commenting and praising you guys right at the start. The calm, insightful tone of this discussion was deeply welcome. People can debate the quality of Dawntrail, but your content has only been top-tier. My hope for the next multi-expansion arc is that we are going to create a “Counter Etheirys” cobbled together by the remaining shards. The Void, the First, and the Unlost World have all been reduced to scraps. Assuming the last two are in a similar state, you could fuse them all without zones overlapping. This new world would be able to have the kind of geopolitical tensions that are no longer possible in the now-peaceful Etheirys. In addition, if travel between the worlds is possible but restricted, it would allow for characters to be set in or out of the narrative. Finally, the unique nature of this world, being “thinner”, would allow for new rules, powers, and villains to emerge. Assuming Counter Etheirys is not dimensionally isolated like the Shards, it could be a target for Ultima or some other Jenova-like threat.
Idk. I feel like that's pretty unlikely. For one, I don't think they're going to make any major changes to the First to facilitate it being part of another world. But more importantly, I feel like that would be reductive to the Eden storyline of trying to revive the aether of the first, and the Void storyline of Zero and Golbez working together to fix their world. It's not impossible, but I don't see it happening.
I guess the First and Thirteenth are too established for any shenanigans to happen. This does not preclude three other reflections that had Floods happen merging to make a hostile world where rules combine and factions emerge to make a world that will never grow to enjoy the Warrior of Light, and by dint of involving themselves as a neutral party in a complex world will inevitably make enemies of all people in this merged world.
I think one thing people glance over when talking about Alexandria/Solution 9 is how effective of a colonialism narrative it is. We don't dwell much on the fact that *30 years* passed for the people in the bubble, and so for a lot of the young people from the Source, they don't know or don't remember anything else. Their culture was completely overwritten by Alexandria and they don't really remember the one they came from, it's *depressing*. And the native Alexandrians are just so used to the horror that they never question it, and with 7.1 we see they actively *resist* the change. From their perspective, *we're* the invaders who upended their entire way of life, when the elderly Turali would probably see it as the other way around (if they were still alive to tell it). Plus, with how thoroughly Alexandria took over the zone (since everything outside of Everkeep is being constantly pelted by lightning), the Turali really had little choice but to assimilate into the now dominant culture.
One part that's utterly depressing and it's 100% just visual storytelling through assets is in one of the houses in Heritage Found (I think it's the one where we see Namika in her last moments?), you can see an old tattered turali cloth banner. The weight and significance of that piece of cloth being still hung, but completely abandonned to decay, was *poignant*, especially coming from a culture sitting right in between as both colonizers and colonized
Speaking as somebody who has been current with XIV since 2014, I can assure you that the feeling expressed at 42:40 of "so we're just going to wait on that for 3 months?" is just how this works when you are current- honestly, I thought a much bigger case of "supposedly triumphant ending tonally clashing with the reality of a big unsolved problem looming in the background" was how 3.0 ended, where it was hard to feel very good about where Ishgard was because Nidhogg had taken over Estinien's body. The story simply feels different when you can't simply jump to the next patch when you want!
(spoiler) 7.1 was funny in the way Gulool Ja's mom was just really thirsty and only made him give her a kid as a reward and tried to force being a family after Gulool Ja is born. It's so much better than "I saw good in him", it was really fucked up and that's fantastic. I'm so excited to see more of the horror element of this expansion story, and honestly having the opening show just normal society for 5 levels before all that started makes it hit all the more harder.
I don't think it was necessarily just "being really thirsty". There was an element of the Mamool Ja caste system and the breeding of Blessed Siblings within it as well. She was enamoured with him outside of Alexandria, but it was something she could never have so it became an obsession.
I think the problem with Dawntrail's reception is that I agree it's "just fine", but "just fine" for FF14 is different than "just fine" for other media.
It felt like anime filler to be honest. I really wanted to like it, and you know what, I actually really do. All except for the MSQ. Rest of the expansion is great.
In my opinion, DT had a great story! It just had terrible writing. And that's somehow more infuriating then if it was a bad story with mediocre writing. The framework was there, everything was in place, put together, ready to amaze. But it got lost in shipping, kicked around and shattered before it arrived at our doorstep. In other words, it was a good story, but the delivery detracted from it massively. We got our shiny fancy new thing, and it was everything we were hoping for. No wonder we are so upset when the delivery man was so rough with it. 8:15 Eren's mom is the *perfect*, and most obvious example of this. Why did it have to be so obvious? Wouldn't it have been cooler if they foreshadowed Sphene's true nature, by making Cahciua a drone indistinguishable from her normal living body? Indistinguishable to everyone except Erenville, who's relationship with Cahciua and expertise as a Gleaner could help him uncover the truth. Make Eren drop small hints for us players, such as mentioning how Cahciua's movements aren't quiet natural ("I've just gotten a lot less limber with age" Cahciua would respond), or they go for a hug and Eren notices Cahciua has no smell. Small build-ups like this would've made the realisation that she's dead hit like a truck. And then the tidal wave of implications would hit us soon later as we discover the full extent of Living Memory and Sphene's world. I'm almost convinced this was the original plan & intention. What even was the purpose of the supposed resistance group? They should've been used to hack one of the drones to give Cahciua her body, or sneak us into Living Memory, or something. Dawntrail is littered with missed opportunities like this, where in the right hands there's a story, maybe on par with Endwalker underneath. But if I were to write every section I thought a character could've been better written it would be pages and pages of words. Relevant side-note, as I was completing the Moblin yellow quests, I got the impression that there were exactly two writers in charge of those quests. One who cared and respected gobby speak, and one who didn't at all. It was jarring to get one quest filled with the usual gobby-flair, followed by another where the quests starts with 3 gobby words, speaks regular english, then ends with 3 more gobby words. I could be totally wrong on this though, and I don't want to insult any of the writers. Curious if anyone else noticed the same thing.
Just finished watching the video, and loved the proper dive into the story itself. There really was a gem in the rough that wasn't being seen or talked about underneath the torrent of story hate. It's only after you've forgetting the dialogue, that you can reflect on the story itself and see the story that was trying to be told.
"In my opinion, DT had a great story! It just had terrible writing." This is extremely spot on. So many of DT's problems could've been fixed without changing the story at all if the writing was just better. To me it really felt like the writer/s this expansion didn't read/play the game up to this point at all, and just kinda skimmed a summary and took a total guess at the general tone. One of the first things I did when I finished DT was go write for myself a BUNCH of little ways I would've changed the writing to make the points they were clearly trying to hit actually, well, work. It's super frustrating. There's a really good story in there but all I can see is missed opportunities.
As with many things, it's complicated. I think the most disappointing aspect, for me, is that I _know_ they can do better. The pacing isn't always the best with CBU3, but they're usually better about the writing, the amount of character focus everyone gets, and paying off build up.
Maybe they shouldn't let the guy behind the beast tribes be the lead writer of the expansion, I wholeheartedly agree with a passing of torch but they should at least select and train the correct and capable people to do it
I know people would hate it, but personally I would have liked it if one of the scions was in living memory after being caught in the time bubble. Imagine having to turn off the memory of a beloved scion we have been with for all this time. It would have been brutal.
too afraid to kill off a scion because people got attached to characters and it will alienate some people. Instead they decided to alienate even bigger portion by concocting a bad, borderline nonsensical story (nonsensical due to a lot of characters' actions being both predictable and unpredictably stupid). Well done...
Yeah, same. I appreciate how Living Memory’s progression was a reverse-mirror to Ultima Thule, the latter we lit back up, the former we shut-down and turned-off the lights.
We're not the ascians to Living Memory. Living Memory is a world of the dead that feeds off the living. Living Memory/Sphene is the ascians. Speaking of... take a look at Sphene's crown, flip it upside down, and it's remarkably similar to the glyph of a certain as-yet-unseen ascian... I don't think it's a coincidence that Preservation repeated the same process as the ancients in wanting to keep their 'perfect world' alive forever.
Exactly. All we're doing is stopping people who already lived from living out their second lives at the expense of people who never get to live a first one.
43:56 There is a side quest in Solution 9 that involves listening to people's problems after the robo attacks and for one of them is that he automatically received an inheritance from someone and they are sure that someone died during the attack, but doesn't remember who. (Game in French, maybe different in English)
I just kinda felt like all xpacs have their ups and downs, but the ups in Dawntrail didn't make up for the downs. And there were a lot more downs. Mind you this is just the MSQ. Every gameplay system has improved, character model upgrades were great (I play lala), the 24 and 8 man raids are the best we've had in memory. Story can be improved over time, but this is ultimately a video game and as such the video game section is the best its been in awhile.
The issue is that MSQ is the main part of FFXIV, as of base Shadowbringers. Certainly, each activity is a world onto itself, but the supposed draw is now the story, and that did suck. Luckily, Living Memory and the raids and the cowboy town are good enough, and so the gameplay is the draw, but it is hard to describe base Dawntrail’s MSQ as a thing to look forward to.
It drove me absolutely insane that we get introduced to a sickness thats basically identical in cause as the Light sickness on the first or Tempering on the source and yet we just....dont tell Alisiae about it. We just kinda get introduced to it and the WoL is apparently just like "damn thats rough" because apparently we dont get to remember previous expansions to realize we just...know a cure for this thing that torments these people who thing theres no fix. And I dont think we have any reason to think the aether corruption is at the point in which its irreversable since theres no visible transformation. At least not to the degree that we havent seen before. Cuz the kid on the first already had his skin turning porcelain basically. Also Zoraal Ja is Lizard Vergil change my mind
The story isn't done yet. Levin sickness will be cured at some point. That's not the current important thing at the moment. I'm more concerned about how new Sphene is going to conflict with Gulool Ja's authority over Everkeep and what Preservation's end goal is.
@@Dastan117 Even if it might get resolved later, it doesnt improve the fact that in that moment the WoL sees a problem so similar to what we had been struggling against for so long and learned solutions to 2 variants of...and just dont say anything. And i find that a narrative flaw.
@@e-rankluck2594 Also Levin sickness is due to an overabundance of lightning-aspected aether in the area, not having to do anything with the person's soul. People are born with this sickness. Also, although we were there trying to understand her and her motives, Sphene was still our enemy. There WILL likely be a part of the MSQ later on where we will modify the porxies to cure it. This takes time and so far we have only seen just the one case of the sickness. Or even better, just move them out of the dome and see what happens. There are more threatening things currently to the people of Everkeep.
28:00 They did mention that "fateful meetings" were not so unlikely as one might think, but given that we aren't actually part of Living Memory I struggle to conceive how the system would be able to orchestrate that as it has no information on us at all.
I couldn't emotionally connect with a lot of the elements in the later part of DT. The Endless were not people. The game kept wanting to make you feel attached to what was happening, and I just wasn't. Living Memory was an out of control AI's "dollhouse", populated by constructs of people who are already dead. And what makes it horrifying is that these 'fake' versions were being perpetuated by actual souls. Possibly even the very souls of the people that the "dolls" were made to emulate. They're not ghosts. You're not 'freeing' them. You're having an emotional moment inside the Star Trek's holodeck. And Sphene is not a real person either. You can dress up a toaster in a little princess costume and make her say cute things, it doesn't change the fact that its. not. real. Arguing with it, or talking it off the cliff's edge is completely meaningless. Pull the damn plug. Shoot it in the head. Stop talking to it.
It feels like DT tried to appeal to everyone, in every way, but what works for one person doesn't work for someone else, and vice versa. So it all wnded up being mixed for everyone in different ways. It's definitely a "finding our feet again" expansion for BU3. Hopefully they've worked it out for 8.0 and we get more of a definitive direction.
Yeah, the trickiest thing when you dive into discussions about actual details of what people liked you don't like, it becomes apparent that almost any change to make one group of players happier will make another group angrier.
Kyle touched upon something about the rejoining. Zodiark was supposed to keep the natural order and shroud the star and hydaelen shattered it. But now both of them are gone, who or what keeping the reflections from rubber banding back together. It may be slow but everything may start coming back together and we might have to find a way to merge stuff uncatastrophicly
I think the "natural order" bit that Zodiark was maintaining is just the shroud to protect the star from Meteion because it brought back normality. Hydaelyn, I don't think, was ever mentioned to be a key component to keeping the reflections from just rejoining themselves, unless I forgot a conversation. Even if that was the case, Square can just point to the big contraption the Twelve left behind and say "This does that job because Hydaelyn entrusted that particular duty to the Twelve."
Endwalker patch Y’shtola mentions that the reflections are naturally drifting back to the source. It may take tens of thousands of years but yes, they will rejoin eventually.
I may be wrong about this but electrope only works because of the high level of lightning in the area it is- it captures that magical energy. Elsewhere in the world it would be useless, which is a tight way to keep it contained.
Old Sharlayan and the Lopporits offer the same level of technology so even if there were some weird limitation it could easily be overcome with collaboration efforts.
@@TheoVorster We've yet to see whats entirely up with the alliance raids since we're not entirely sure where exactly Sareel Ja wound up (I'm banking on it being another broken off piece of Living Memory like Strayborogh was, given how much electrope is around) but also I'd have to assume most electrope technology essentially has a battery to power it if/when its not plugged into a constant stream of lightning aether. The ships likely had some kind of onboard power source but presumably its less sensible to fuel them long distance cus of how electrope works. I do hope it doesn't become some catch-all miracle element but for now I don't think the couple exceptions we've seen imply there aren't inherent limitations that they can use to explain why the whole world doesn't suddenly have an electrope revolution.
That thumbnail is crazy good. It's really interesting to watch this after seeing y'all go through 7.1 this week. I agree that Dawntrail was just okay. It got us where we needed to be and I look forward to what comes next. I am a bit sad that it's just ok, but it is what it is. I just heard Meteon's theme the other day and was like, dang I should replay Endwalker. Nothing in Dawntrail will likely ever get that reaction from me, and that's disappointing but also, I don't think that's what they were aiming for with this expansion. I never get the emotional urge to replay ARR, so it tracks that DR would elicit similar reactions. Looking forward to everything y'all got coming down the pipeline! Have a good Holiday!
The problem with it being "Okay" is that compared to a lot of everything that came before which was far and beyond "Okay" it is by definition the "Worst Thing Ever."
If you wanted to bring over bits of other reflections, with a minimum of damage to the Source, you could always put it in the Burn. While Y'Shtola did restore the natural flow of aether to it, back in Stormblood, I doubt that life would have returned there already. But I think the more likely application of that tech would be to transplant pieces of land between the First and Thirteenth, to balance the two out. Between that and opening portals, this new way seems the less likely to cause an accidental void-sent invation of the First in the attempt.
I subbed simply because the two of you acknowledge the good in DT instead of just being involved in the hatetrain echo chamber. It shows that you both arent afraid to speak your mind and think freely. Mad respect
Otis told us that Gulool Ja has been taught to read the arcane sigils carved into the electrope. That is how he can identify which pieces have been set to which element. The child is 'gifted' because he learns things quickly, not because he has mutant powers.
a lot of people are saying Electrope doesn't really work outside of the dome, but it's whole sctick is that it converts Aether from one type to another, and EVERYWHERE on the planet has local concentrations of Aether of one flavor or another, it's why we can gather crystals. It would need to be adapted to be used outside of the dome, and I'm sure it's spread would be slow. Remember, only a year or two have passed in the entire game. So while Garlemarld is now selling magitek, I doubt we'll see everywhere using it, just as I don't expect everywhere to adapt Electrope immediately. Garland ironworks putting together a hybrid machine or two though, that I imagine we'll see.
I thought Electrope simply turned Lightning Aether into other kinds of Aether, hence, "Elec"trope. So while useful it wouldn't be overly useful in places without abundant/excessive Lightning Aether.
@@Delritho lighting aether is just the medium through which it works, but if you can change lighting aether to the other types, then you can reverse the process
@@starlightbreaker561 Except I don't believe they've said it works like that, it changes Lightning Aether to other elements, if it could change other elements to lightning they would've mentioned that somewhere.
Electrope specifically converts aether from lightning to not-lightning, as I understood it, and does so efficiently. It's not that it doesn't work outside of the dome, it's that outside the dome, the balance isn't skewed toward lightning so the crazy properties it exhibits start to become less phenomenal. I don't believe the process is reversible. That's not to say that it's useless, it just isn't the wonder rock that it is in Heritage Found.
Something a lot people struggle with nowadays is that media can be “fine” or “pretty good”, as a lot of what I’m seeing is “if it’s not amazing, it’s terrible” or “if it’s not a 9/10, it’s a 1”.
Ya I’ve noticed this a lot myself through the years especially with gaming internet culture which I know the common thought there is it’s the internet we shouldn’t take it seriously but unfortunately times are shifting in a weird direction where that’s not entirely true anymore I think one thing that was a noticeable tell about this Expansion that put it into perspective for me is Yoshida admitting they did a lot of experimenting with this one as in not a full organized plan
But it isn't fine or very good. It's utterly moronic. The only virtue of this story is that it hasn't ruined anything else so far (unlike, say, Endwalker... which was fine, for the most part).
some people also are ok with mediocrity, Is this the worst game ever? not even the slightest, but people who blindly like something because it is FFXIV is crazy to me, the only thing i hate hearing is "it's ok.." like sure, but you guys haven't forgotten we paid for this right, and we keep paying for it ever month. is it really surprising that people expected something more than "just ok"
I am probably one of the minority in actually really really loved the first part of the msq the rite of succession and am not as high on Living Memory. Don't get me wrong I am more positive on Dawntrail as a whole than most people and really do like Living Memory and Alexandra. I also really like Sphene as a character and find a lot of things in Alexander extremely interesting. I just really enjoyed the cultures and how they explored them in Dawntrail and the journey to the golden city. Something about it just hit me right in comparison to part 2. I do think part of it is the living memory parts might have been a bit too on the nose with my life right now and maybe with time it will be better.
I'm actually the same, and it's been tough with all my friends saying the first part was a slog and the second was so good and they wanted more of that. I can understand why people think it was rough, but I was way more interested in learning about the new world and their culture than i was in the last minute end of the world stuff, it had much better vibes to me. I also thought living memory was a bit too on the nose and to me the rhyming with shadowbringers did not work one bit. It felt like they tried to fall back on things they knew worked well, without actually doing the work for it.
I am fully in this camp as well. Yeah, I can understand that the story they were telling in the first half is one that is not everyone's cup of tea, but I think they did a good job with it. It was all about getting to know this brand new continent and its cultures, and it that is what it gave us. Meanwhile, the second half looks cool, and introduces a bunch of cool sounding sci-fi concepts, but the plot was silly and full of weirdness and potential plot holes, the writing for some characters was really bad, and the game as a whole was just generally more concerned with hammering a few specific things into our head over and over that it didn't really take advantage of the setting and characters it was introducing.
The thing with Electrope, is that it only FULLY works in the Dome. It runs on lightning energy, so once you leave the Dome it's basically a battery that will eventually run out of charge. Recharging it outside of Yatsulani/Alexandria would probably be more energy intensive than just using fire crystals or something to that effect.
Doesn’t the recent alliance raid contradict that notion though? It can convert lightning aether to other aether, but it can also be powered by plain old magic too.
@@TheoVorster The way it was explained is that it converts lightning energy into other elements. But you're right that it seems on face value to contradict that fact.. My current theory is that the space/city/whatever that whats-his-face found is another lost district of Living Memory, and thus it was already charged and ready to be used. But who really knows at this point.
@@ExileTwilightI thought the explanation was that it can convert any elementally charged aether into aether of a different elemental charge. I don’t recall it being stated that the starting source of what is being converted has to be only aligned to lightning, just that it usually is because their environment has an abundance of lightning-aligned stuff.
@@TheoVorster Fair point, I could have made a logic leap due to it being called "elec-trope", and it emerging during the start of their lightning 'calamity' (for lack of a better word).
I think that sums up the issue: Nothing works. The dungeons of DT are mostly great fun, but the game has been designed with such poor difficulty grading that they're a huge spike for players who don't know they're terrible. The job system is simplified to a ridiculous degree. The MSQ is a disaster, both in its repetitive gameplay and its terrible storytelling. I don't see anything but the slightly challenging dungeons as at all experimental, either.
@@venabre And that's fine! I like elements of it. I for one enjoy the dungeons not being *completely* braindead and wish they would go farther, but the poor difficulty scaling up to this point has hampered any of that possible progress. But there are objective issues to the expansion, and I think the big reason that people are so negative towards DT isn't because it is experimental and takes big risks, but rather because it fails in so basic areas out of sheer incompetence.
@@TheWickedWizardOfOz1 experimental doesn't have to mean "takes big risks" And I can't take anyone who just says "sheer incompetence" like that seriously. If the problem is the story that doesn't mean the overall product failed. It just means the story failed. The rest is still very well done. And even then, not everyone has a problem with the story. But as always, negative voices are the loudest, and comments like these are a perfect example of how those with a negative point of view towards Dawntrail are incapable of just letting the people that did like it enjoy it for what it is.
@@venabre Well, I think the burden of proof is on people calling it experimental. The story is godawful and I have another thread on this video explaining just a few of my many reasons for stating so - I can import those, but I don't think it is necessary. But the rest of the game is still following the same formula and doubling down on it. How is that experimental? We have the same patch content, the same homogenized jobs. People can enjoy DT for what it is, but the incompetence in story writing and the lack of experimentation in gameplay are quite evident.
The thing that bugged me most about the fan reaction was everyone calling the keystones gym badges… It's a set of seven brightly coloured gemstones. We're collecting Chaos Emeralds.
Happy to always count on the GG boys to add something meaningful to conversations that have been run into the ground by others' stale and exhausting opinions, especially in a nuanced way that's also true to their feelings and doesn't cave to the black and white BEST/WORST THING EVER?!?!? duality the algorithm loves. This is what makes me personally a longtime repeat stream/podcast/video watcher and not just a "eh, I guess I'll watch 2 minutes of this cause it's on my home page" watcher.
The main thing for Dawntrail is that I just felt absolutely nothing for the story. Pre S9 felt like a boring slog, and while it did get interesting after S9, I feel like its pacing was off and ultimately was a plot point that wrapped up very quickly once you got to the last zone. Also, Krile's subplot really wasn't handled very well feeling more like an afterthought. I really hope the patch content can help alleviate this, and whatever they have planned for the future expansions because it's clear we're going to be going to other shards.
I didn't have issues with the MSQ to be honest. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Not my favorite one but it wasn't bad either. My problems are elsewhere like the jobs oversimplification, the glamour system which at this point become a nightmare to deal with. It's not Dawntrail my problem it's FFXIV at this point.
Number one frustration that I think could have made this so much better is the wasted potiential of Zoraal Ja's advisor. I think he was key to a lot of drama, further characterizing Zoraal Ja, and so much more. I remember being excited because I was super convinced he was an Ascian. He wasn't. It could have been so cool. But it's not.
For me the main issue throughout Dawntrail was it's pacing, and I think it stemmed from a fundamentally questionable decision. The plot of Dawntrail sees Wuk Lamat undergoing mirror circumstances to the story we've been on for years, just at a smaller scale. but trying to fit 4 expansions and a base-game worth of lessons and experiences into a single expansion's length simply doesn't work, because in order to fit them in they need to be stripped down to a very basic form, and the entire reason these beats worked through the previous expansions and even ARR is because of how much time could be dedicated to each. Let's take the various groups we meet along the way, we spend very little time with the Hanu, and learn very little of them, what we're left with is a rather shallow feeling people. Same with the Pelu Pelu (though they do get a bit more personality and time spent) and the Xbr'aal, we get there, spend 5 minutes with them, and leave, never to return to the area, having spent almost no time in it at all. While there's room to revisit many of them and add more interest in the patches, first impressions are a thing and I was left not really caring about any of them that much. Also they didn't setup any anomalies or unexplained things in these areas, so it would beg the question of what reason we'd have to really revisit them. At least not in the main story outside side-quests. It just felt like everything was rushed and nothing got the time it needed to develop. I care about the various tribes and civilizations in Aldenard, Ilsabard and Othard because we spent so long with them, revisited them over and over at various points, witnessed their struggles, their victories, their defeats and more. I do not really care that much about any of the groups we encountered in Dawntrail. Perhaps that will change over time but trying to cram that many different peoples into about half an expansion just limits how much development they can truly have. I think nearly every other issue in the expansion arises from the plot beats just not having time to develop, things just happen too fast and we're then always switching gears, it's narrative whiplash.
It's genuinely bizarre how DT feels like a crappy abridged 4kids version of the FF14 narrative as a whole. I can't help but wonder how we ended up with it, and if it's the result of flip-flopping on the idea of trying to make DT an entry point for new players or something like that. I really hope it wasn't just that the new writers were just too scared to do something different.
Dawntrail just didn't resonate with me personally. It's the first expansion in which this happened. I'm willing to wait if the patches will fix this, but if not the game will have a hard time to convince me to play 8.0.
I played World of Warcraft since Burning Crusade to Battle for Azeroth and I hated so much that last expansion's story I left the game, started playing FFXIV since Heavensward and never unsubscribed even a single month. To me Dawntrail was very *very* close to do what Battle for Azeroth did.
Since you’re now at the daily farm part of content, it’ll be easy to check out the Omnicron gathering quests, since you can do them as a fisher. Particularly if you wanted more of Living Memory’s questioning of if they’re alive themes.
You know something. I'm doing some leftover zone quests in DT right now. One thing that strikes me is the "Saturday morning, resolve it all in a single convo" style resolution of so many of the quests (which is fine for a single throwaway quest). The problem with DT is that same level of writing was applied to the entire expansion instead of the nuance that the MSQ normally has.
There's an allied society quest where someone points out the reason they became a thief was because there was actual child labor in the mines they worked in. Wow! That's dramatic and shocking. What will we do to help solve it? Oh they already solved that issue off screen before we even started the quest. That doesn't happen anymore. That's already solved. This happens all the time in Dawntrail. Something that could be dramatic is instantly resolved.
@@yanipheonu looks like a symptom of a rushed writing. For everything in this expansion, unfortunately. The lack of detail, messy pacing, gaps in logic. They cooked something in their head, but couldnt serve it.
Most importantly, that thumbnail is awesome. Continuing onwards and downwards, I've come to realise that one of the reasons I rate DawnTrail so low is that I value the telling of the story more than it's contents. The patch content could be about cleaning up after Storm Valigarmanda and going on an adventure to buy Gulool Ja the right Hot Wheels, as long as it engages me and immerses me in a way that 7.0 failed to do. To RePurpose Kyle's Metaphor, I value the Journey over the destination. Over the course of DawnTrail my feelings for FFXIV changed for the worse, and I lost belief in the writers ability to entertain me. When Wuk Lamat was talking about using smiles as a barometer for leadership, my brain was showing me sepia flashbacks that the game was not providing (or intending). Asahi, Athena, Ilberd, Valens, Teledji/Adeledji, Zenos... beautiful smiles, wholehearted... and insane. The issue comes out as a nitpick, a petty comment of "Hurr Hurr, not all smiles apply to your system Wuk Lamat". The real problem is that I was not engaged or immersed in what the game was doing. Rather than the story telling, engagement was driven by the personal experiences and preferences of individual players and what they could bring to a scene, thus everyone had something different that worked/failed, and everyone wants to "fix" a different part.
I agree, because throughout the whole of FFXIV we learned that the world isn't sunshine and rainbows. Everywhere we went there was a dark side to humanity: Doma, The Steppes, Ishgard, Elpis, Garlemald, Kugane, The three City States, Sharlayan. People with good intentions lead well, but also get betrayed and get taken advantage of. And despite that, the resilience of those of good heart weather these storms selflessly. Aymeric, Hien, Nanamo just to name a few, are examples of these good hearted but not naive leaders. Tural is a different continent yes, but it feels WAY TOO UNREALISTIC in terms of how they built their world that its....its just not FFXIV. It's all bollocks. It fucking hurts to see.
I believe Porxies were imbued with both the memory magic *and* the aetheric rebalancing magic, but ultimately I think the real problem is that even if we treat them, as long as they're still in Alexandria the source of their sickness is still there. Kinda like if you treated a tempered person while Titan is still right there in front of you.
Wuk is generally fine, but her benign oversaturation in the plot makes her the convenient but valid scapegoat for the disparate flaws in the story. Theres too many sepeate things that are good and bad, which ironically makes Dawntrail's main problem be is consistency.
Wuk is NOT "generally fine" and neither is she a "convenient... scapegoat for the disparate flaws in the story." She IS the story. She takes up almost ALL of the screentime. 60% of all MSQ voiced dialogue. You can't call her a scapegoat when she's the the centerpiece of the whole shebang. And that's why she's not "fine" either. When they make so much of the story hinge on one character and that character is about as deep an oil stain on concrete then the story suffers as a result. They took a gamble that players were going to like her and that gamble failed spectacularly. Patch 7.1 feels like they're trying to speedrun the closure of the Wuk Lamat story because they know they screwed up. Like, it took us literally 3 patches to get to Zenos(Forma de Elderbus) and 2 more for Zenos(Ultra Instinct) to reclaim his body but SUDDENLY, SPEEN RETURNED! in one patch. On top of that it feels like they're trying to plug plotholes and misuse of characters from 7.0 rather than actually building on the story(ie. the Koana segment and Zoraal Ja characterization.) Dawntrail's MSQ has been an unabashed failure on almost every front and the only thing saving the game is that the content is the best it's ever been. I have never felt more disconnected and uninterested in the game since I started playing in ARR. If it weren't for the FFXI Alliance Raid I would just unsub and wait for a story skip.
The biggest issue with Dawntrail can be summed up in 1 word. Imbalance. Thr story often focuses on the wrong things, which took away from potential story beats people would have rather seen.
@@Fortexcross I agree with this take completely as someone who's been here since 2015. The story still revolved around Wuk Lamat and she had no depth at all. She was your typical shonen protagonist but for 5 year olds, and turned up to an 11. The universe twisted and bent itself to her whim so that she never failed. She didn't have any real lessons to learn. She came up with everything on her own without others' help. Her power creep was completely un-earned and the way it was written, the Warrior of Light isn't even needed anymore. The world can just send Wuk Lamat. Just horrible. I will not be taking my alts through DT. I'll wait to buy them story skips.
I believe my main complaint on Wuk Lamat was tied up in how they applied the WOL. If we were to be a mentor of sorts, they should have committed to that. At each new location we should have sparred her (even off screen if they wanted to save resources). Then, each time she takes a few seconds to point out what she learned. When Luk goes running off without thinking, the WOL grabs her shoulder and holds her back. Little things like that. Even a few eye rolls at some of her naive approaches and knee jerk reactions would have been warranted. All I saw were a few smiles and nods when she did something right. The WOL is supposed to be worldly and knowledgeable. Standing there with our hands in our pockets thinking, "Wow, I bet that's going to hurt." isn't mentoring.
I don't know why they ended the expansion giving us the key at all. We KNOW 14 will not add new zones for the next 2 years, so we will just have that massive expansion starting plot device sitting there unused for the next 2 years.
For me: Is it the worst expansion (at least comparing ONLY the core zero patch content)? Yes. Is that truly bad though? Mmm... no. Endwalker and Shadowbringers were simply awesome. Heavensward was very good. So basically the expansion to beat was Stormblood, and Dawntrail just couldn't manage it, but I think it puts up an admirable fight. Ultimately, I have better memories of Stormblood. There are aspects that DT wins in but some of that it is just inheriting like better dungeon structure, and being further removed from the old cruft of the first release, so I just don't feel it itself brought enough to the table to beat out SB. Now here's a thing, is it better than ARR? That's not an expansion so bit unfair to compare, but maybe... A lot of the ARR story was a slog, especially on release, and presentation was weak as well, so it is a pretty unfair comparison, but I think I'd say I'd put DT above ARR. As messy as DT is, ARR was messier still, again especially on release.
I said this months ago and I still believe it now this expansion will live or die on its post msq story and how well it sets up the next few years of expansions and if this pull it off this expansion will be like stormblood hated when it was current but thought of positively when looked back on, everyone current expansion is the worst one with shadowbringers being the exception and that was only because all the wow refugees coming over and praising the game and people quickly stopped saying it was bad
Here's another one I don't see bantered around that much. Yshtola's little seeing aether super power. The Devs are going to have to make a decision on whether they want her to keep it. Because in this expansion it got in the way of the story. Yshtola was the prime candidate to go with us to explore the dome. She, literally, lives for that stuff. But, she didn't participate. And, that's because it would have ruined the story. She would have seen Sphene for what she was right away. She said as much later. That is a text book contrived plot that goes against the nature of an established character.
Valid point, but isn't that also Y'shtola's way of normally interacting with the world right now? She's been blind since HW, so I don't see how they'll remove her aether-seeing powers without making her seem like a sitting duck.
That reminds of Arenvald. Arenvald was a promising part of the Crystal Braves/Grand Company until he took injuries that left him in a wheelchair. He is never really revisited upon that because his point of doing secondary stuff the Scions/Warrior of Light cannot do because they are busy on more grander projects cannot really be done anymore. If they go down that path I hope they do not sideline her.
I don't think it's Preservation, unless Mom is in charge of it. A friend of mine thought this and I agree - We think it's Teshaal Ja. Why does 'Sphene' only mention 5000 new headpiece thingys for her people? What if that's the number of souls that Teshaal Ja has determined she needs to bring Zoraal Ja back? She was/is a skilled chirurgeon. She knows how these soul grafts work. Who says she's dead? And I think she ended up taking some DNA from Zoraal Ja to make Gulool Ja and that' why Zoraal Ja had no clue he'd become a daddy ... she's already aware he's comfortable using questionable methods to get what *he* wants, so why shouldn't she? That glassy eyed stare when you see her looking at him is a front for real mania, is what I think. I think 'Sphene' is mommy dearest out for her own purposes, hiding behind a convenient facade to get what she wants. Great video btw gents. I love your positivity and your honesty. :) 7.1 did a lot to redeem Dawntrail for me and I'm looking forward to the future (you guys just popped up on my TH-cam reports btw as my most watched videogame creators of the year). Now can we talk about Arcadion? :D
Thumbnail is gorgeous. That said, THANK YOU for mentioning the regulators. The fact that they are still showing up drove me insane. TBH, I felt like they made little sense to begin with - where were all these souls coming from that could have made this ponzi scheme possible? One would imagine that it could have been made believable if Alexandria ended up conquering the other nations during the war and harvesting the souls of the conquered peoples, with the dwindling supply necessitating the war on Tuliyolal, but that didn't happen.
31:27 I dunno what you guys did to the distorted clip of "they've done it! They the queen's-" but I can't help but hear "repaired" for the first one, and it makes me think we are in for some shit.
Oh I've been waiting for this! Can't wait to watch it as soon as I find time! Lovely video and I agree with most of your points. The only thing that I don't quite understand is the fandom in general saying that Arcadion is better than DT. Living Memory is still be leagues and bounds the most emotional part of DT. Yeah it's not perfect, but I don't think Arcadion has any segment of story that's that impactful. Yeah it sets up great stuff for puture parts of Arcadion but it was just ok for me up until now. Gameplay & OST though was peak!
Arcadion was actually fun for us. Straightforward, likeable characters with a decent storyline and lots of great gameplay and great music. Living Memory was a tiresome attempt at invoking emotion that has been retreaded 3 times over, I was sick of DT at that point and LM just made me want to unsubscribe. I don't know about you or the majority of players, but Arcadion SAVED the game for me.
For those of us who didn’t really connect with the pathos of LM, it was an exhausting diversion before the final battle. Arcadion, by contrast, was full of the stylish charm with that tiny hint of sinister intrigue that feels like the essence of FF.
I'm at the point in the video where you've just finished discussing Living Memory, and I'd like to provide a perspective going against the grain that the zone "mostly succeeded". This is something I've actually felt bad about, because I acknowledge that it brought forth emotional reactions for many people. The section during your stream where viewers shared how it affected them was touching. However, on a gut level -for me-, this zone made me the most cynical about FFXIV's future direction. Not that I won't see where the ride takes it, it's not like anything is set in stone. However, the core conceit I'm unable to shake is how they retreated to the Amaurot style to close out a third straight expansion. A final zone filled with shades of the past, spurred by a sympathetic antagonist, with a capstone dungeon chronicling the dying days of a civilization, all surgically designed to elicit an emotional meltdown. There's nothing inherently wrong with telling this kind of story, and I've read and agreed with analyses even from members of this community how the capstones of these past few expansions touch on different themes. The Living Memory shutdowns were a unique risk in-and-of-itself. Nevertheless, we're at the point where there's a clear *pattern* with the Tempest/Ultima Thule/Living Memory & Amaurot/Dead Ends/Alexandria demonstrably sharing more DNA structure-wise compared to, say, Azys Lla/The Lochs & the Aetherochemical Research Facility/Ala Mhigo. This is not an argument to retreat from fantastical final zones with heavy themes, but to move beyond the conventions of the past few years. If this is our FFXIV life now, I suppose I can find a way to roll with it, but what has weighed on me is that now that we're on a pattern of three, there's this feeling that FFXIV took what was a successful narrative triumph from Ishikawa and have fully fed it through the YoshiP project management machine. And for an expansion meant to build the foundations for the next 10 years, I'm not fully on board with what that communicates.
Yeah, when I hit living memory I needed to stop playing entirely for a couple of days to process the copying and cheapening amaurot feeling. Where I landed was that I think it's an ok way to wrap up the Wuk Lamat mentorship story by paralleling her journey to the warrior of light and making it her amaurot. But I definitely hope future msq moves away from that.
I sincerely hope this is the last time a dying world with people struggling to live is the last zone in an expansion at all in Final Fantasy XIV. With Amaurot, it was a tragic tale of peaceful people wanting their home back. In hindsight this was very idealized, but it is mostly how Emet-Selch remembers it. With Ultima Thule, you can feel the various worlds that have ended and how crushing that is to a person looking for thriving communities, and furthermore you help them gain their passion for life back in the Beast Tribe quests. With Living Memory? You literally are undergoing a world that should not have existed and is kept alive because someone wants a resource-hungry way of living to survive. 7.1 actually confirms this since it seems like the story will focus on how the Sphene was forced to rule in that manner when she otherwise is obviously benevolent and considerate of all sides. And it is a third show of a grieving world desperate to survive. It legitimately is so meta in how Living Memory, for all it is impactful in story and in reflecting on losing a loved one, is a sentimental recycled cheap resource-hungry version of Amaurot and Ultima Thule. It got lucky in that it triggered the memories of people lost so it is more mixed than reviled, but if a fourth ending zone of a lost world desperate to save its people comes back nobody will let it go anymore and people will hate Living Memory for going on for too long.
I agree with you in that I very much would like to see different narrative structures than this. But I would like to offer the view that they are intentionally copying this structure to offer us a "triptych" of sorts. Living Memory being a thematic inversion of Ultima Thule comes through *because* it mirrors the narrative beats. Amaurot contrasted against Alexandria as dungeons (no hope and utter annhiliation vs. building up hope in the aftermath as an example) only works because they echo each other. There's a lot that can be said about *how* these were implemented and whether or not it is effective! At the end of the day I'm getting a little bored with it too. But I think there might be a good faith attempt at larger thematic landscapes here instead of "this works it makes money let's keep repeating this". Maybe a mix of both lol!
Thematically, yes, Living Memory is the opposite of Amaurot, and it is Sphene or Living Memory that is trying to prop up something unsustainable. That is very cool. And yes, to get to the point where we recognize that Living Memory is not a remembrance of past people, it helps that it is yet another lost city so that the first thing we think of is Amaurot. The issue is that it needed to be done at all in a world where part of the promise was not only both vacations and a cool reveal of an unknown world, but the implication that it would be entirely different from any past thing when literally all of it is a badly done reflection of what was done in the past six parts, and save from the Arcadion every other good thing about Dawntrail has heavy asterisks surrounding it.
I like the idea of Alexandria & Electrope! I hated the force feeding of Wuk Lamat! My WOL felt obsolete & not needed until the last fight! The murder of the King right in front of my WOL would have never of happened, why did we just stand there!?! I liked Sphene but hated that the other Scions felt like prop pieces & not as important as they should have made them! We just saved the Universe & we have knowledge & skills that can help! I am hoping it finds its direction in the future! Why wasn't Kryle's & Erenville's parents' storyline much longer!?! I want the new story to be awesome! I am treating Dawntrail as a prologue to the overall storyline!
It was my understanding that electrope works because of the excessive amount of lightning aether. Outside of the dome, it would be significantly less effective.
I finally finished Dawntrail the other day and can go back to watch your playthrough now. Dawntrail was fine, imo. About what I expected. Impossible to top Shadowbringers/Endwalker so this is just laying a new foundation. Could have been done better but oh well.
I am very excited for the patch content. The "Disneyland in FFXIV", "What if Deal or No Deal was crossed with WWE?" and "Hahaha, wouldn't it be funny if y'all stopped being alive? Ah, so fun def joking UNLESS..." are three completely wacky and interesting plotlines.
The WL jumping in scene in the final fight is unwarranted and unexplained and undeserved. There's no explanation on how she suddenly can break through walls/barriers, and why only her? What about the other scions who got blasted away along with her? She has been the baby of the expansion and suddenly she shows up being that ally that saves the day felt undeserving.
They could have fixed the scene a bit by showing Gra'ha and Krile identifying the weakness in the rift and then helping Wuk Lamat, who has the most raw physical power to breakthrough. It doesn't completely fix the problems but for that scene it helps a bit and makes sense in context. I get that the writers were trying to convey that Sphene and Wuk Lamat are supposed to be foils and ultimately wanted a "final" (in light of 7.1) confrontation between the characters but it fumbled a bit too much due to inconsistency and imbalance of the cast.
@@JustinStrife She was always pretty strong but the issue in the beginning is that she lack confidence, which she quickly gained (imo far too quickly). We know that emotions or Dynamis drive the powers of Limit Break in the universe and in the solo duty when she beats Bakool Ja Ja (who was already demoralized and humiliated by practically everyone) her emotions went into overdrive as represented by you being able to spam MULTIPLE limit breaks. The breakign through the rift thing though? Yeah I have no real answer, my head canon (which is not supposed by the game) is that Graha and Krile identified the weakest spot in the rift but Wuk Lamat has the most raw physical power and is powered by Dynamis so she broke through.
@@Blahblah-oo7lk Pretty strong does not equate to her beating her one brother and all of his minions by herself. Pretty strong does not equate to her doing more damage than our entire party against Sphene. Also Dynamis has it's limits on our world. It worked as well as it did in Endwalker, because we were at the edge of the Universe where it was at it's most dense. And you're basically saying she can use Dynamis, in an area where it's less dense, better than we could when we fought Meteon. The amount of twisting and spinning you have to do, to justify what happened in Dawntrail, hurts the brain.
I think I had a different read on this - Wuk doesn't jump into the fight to save you. You were never in danger. She steps into the fight to try and make one final, desperate attempt to save Sphene. And Sphene hears her, but rejects it. I do actually think they should have brought Graha and Krile in as well in that moment, rather than leaving them floating in the void, but she's able to come back in because the barriers are breaking down as Sphene musters her full power to try and hold out against you (the re-record does a much cleaner job of explaining this, thankfully, because it's a bit vague in the original).
I think living memory was designed to put us to the challenge. "Can you do what needs to be done" and the parallel with the ascians is extremely striking
@@DoppelgangerTH Indeed, neither are the ascians attached to us, so sacrificign our mutilated mimickry of life for their world isn't a hard choice either
I kind of coasted through the MSQ until I hit Living Memory. After losing my mom a year and a 1/2 before it came out. The premise of Living Memory hit way different.
Dawntrail is the Meteion of the FFXIV saga. All heart but barely held together by a sheer fabric of ether that is a single thread from ripping apart at any given moment. It is bright and cheery and scatterbrained and very G rated compared to previous expansions. So was Meteion before going emo apocalypse. For all we know, Dawntrail's little rabbit holes will all lead to one big cenote of plot driven darkness and intrigue. Time will tell...
Pretty much agree with what y'all said. It'll be interesting to see how the next expansions build upon DT. Definitely a messy foundation, but not unsalvageable for the long term.
Comparing just the base Point-.0 expansions to each other I’d say I enjoyed Dawntrail a little more than Stormblood but less than Heavensward. So altogether I guess my ranking of the base FFXIV expansions would be: EW ≥ ShB > HW > DT ≥ SB > ARR. Now we will have to wait and see how good its patches are but unless DT’s patches are as good as/better than SB’s patches (which were really strong) I can see DT overall being ranked lower than SB overall. So far DT is a decent expansion but not a great one.
I think it's possible the whole interdimensional fusion is the ascian plot for rejoining on this one. If the was left alone and ate all of the shards, that's just rejoining with more steps. They probably were even accounting for an "accidental" system failure at the backend of it all.
I went into Dawntrail ready to be disappointed, because there was no way it was going to have the same impact as Endwalker. I think in that department Dawntrail's story actually exceeded expectations; I was more disappointed than I was expecting. It's hard to say that the expansion as a whole was bad - we got good music as always, the dungeons and trials were a really good time (+ the raids), but it feels like Dawntrail fails at both telling it's own story and setting up a new one. Was very one and done with the MSQ, I sincerely hope the patch content pulls it together, but my expectations are significantly lower.
'' It's hard to say that the expansion as a whole was bad '', there's no way you can say that because it's not even fully out yet lol. Like fuck sake we're still in 7.1 and people already act like the whole expansion is bad. DT probably has the most content out of any expansion lined up going by the fanfest announcements, and the content itself has been amazing.
@@MarcusMaybenot I think the problem with having this reaction is that it misses the point of having a healthy criticism of what 7.0 gave us. It's not that the beginning or end was flawed, it was that the story telling was done in what I think most can agree was an objectively bad way. It's like that friend who likes to tell stories where the punchline lands, but you'd never know because he doesn't know how to tell stories well. Or that uncle who lived an impressive life, but did too much peyote and now can't tell us about it very well. I don't mind the story as a whole but there were pacing issues and shallow characters that they seem to have meant to filled out more when they simply didn't. What 7.1-7.5 will do, won't undo what's been given to us, unless it is VERY different from every other expansion release. FFXIV rarely looks backward to fix bad content and instead gives us new stuff to help us look forward (something something Forge ahead). 7.0 was fine, but as a staunch defender of ARR (I like street level stories more than killing God stories) this was the worst .0 I've experienced in this game since I began playing 1.0. That speaks more to how great this game has been, and thats not to say that it can't lead to better things, but ignoring what made 7.0 less than great because we haven't seen what else this expansion brings misses the point completely.
I agree with Garrett's take on Krile's story. It needed more depth and time for such an important character.
Definitely one of the biggest flubs of this expansion, especially after it was hyped up as being her moment to shine.. Unless there's something big coming in the patches.. But I struggle to see how.
I hate that all she got is the completion of her name into exactly the FF5 Krile. It legitimately feels like the longest-running joke. All the fun for this character, only to reveal she is not of the Source and that her name, in Japanese, is literally the name the other Krile had in FF5.
I’m probably in the minority, but I viewed it as Krile’s “Alisaie in Stormblood” expansion. For both of them, it was their first big foray on the front lines but they also played second fiddle to another female character.
BUT just like Alisaie got great development in later patches and expacs, I’m expecting the same to be for Krile now that she’s “part of the main team” rather than kinda a background Scion.
The Krile storyline didn't bother me at all. I think it's because I thought it to be secondary to her real storyline which is, "I can do this. I want to belong and contribute. I won't stay back while everyone else risks their lives." Even her tag line on the Duty Support backs that up. It was something like "I won't let you down." I looked at it as Krile fully committing to the Scions in this expansion, and not just hanging out to find her friend or continue her friend's work (Minfilia). That was set up in the 6.x patch content and you got to see her grow into the role...even being the primary scion to provide advice and grounding to Wuk Lamat.
Agreed, the fact that all the important points occurred off screen was just heartbreaking. After all the time we spent with Krile, and when she finally learned about where she came from, was we there, did we have a quiet conversation just the two of us, helping her come to terms with the revelations?... nope we were off playing cowboy and dinosaurs. She finally meets her parents' what's the focus? Graha and ice cream, once an actual conversation starts, fade to black.
That thumbnail is going triple platinum. Wow
Thumbnail is such a great album. Watch out Michael Jackson!
I can already hear the NGE depression in my mind. Thanks for the PTSD guyz! lol
@@MicahBoy The vest hits hard
It’s a thing of beauty indeed
Came to comment on it and it’s top comment
So I ADORE Stormblood because it had no issue attacking really ugly concepts and ideas and truly exploring how different people acted under Garlean’s cruel occupation despite the disparate story beats and pacing.
I feel like DT lacks that. It lacked those hooks and that kind of drama.
I get you, seeing Fordola's story unfold was pretty wild and it tackled the whole "willing traitor to the homeland to make their lives better." Dawntrail was close to that level but shyed away from it, which is disappointing. We almost had a brilliant fully realized story about the weight of expectations and how people cope with it through Bakool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja.
@@Deode-d4h Stormblood demonstrated two sides of the "native traitor" or quisling trope with Fordola and Yotsuyu. One who believed that by helping they would make the lives better for their people even if the people don't appreciate it but in the pursuit of the goal they lost their way and got redemption, the other who extracted revenge on their own people for failure and passiveness to prevent a tragedy and rejected redemption in lieu of revenge.
DT almost got the dynamic right with its recurring theme of legacy. How being shackled to one's legacy can lead to a dark path chained to the apst (Sphene, Bakool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja), lead to alack of confidence (Wuk Lamat and Koana), respect for ones legacy and shaping their own legacy (the entire premise of the giants and Wuk Lamat's journey). It is a compelling theme especially among those from strict households it is just that the execution fell a bit short.
Even the way Fordola and Yotsuyu both had similar childhoods and had reasons to resent their own countrymen but while Fordola has made steps towards trying to attone for her actions and be a better person, Yotsuyu went in the opposite direction @@Deode-d4h
In my opinion, it deals with two flavours of colonialism, but that really appears in the second half.
You have Zoraal Ja who is conquest colonialism. Wanting power and territory.
You have Sphene who is absorbing colonialism, who absorbs resources and people to feed her own people. When they perform shard fusion, she steals a Turali town. The people become hers. She acquires their knowledge by absorbing them and they slowly lose their cultural ties. They appear to stay as workers, whose job is to harvest resources to support Solution 9. This has similarities to Economic Colonialism in modern-day Earth. When Sphene turns into the final villain, it's unsubtle.
And weirdly when this gets brought up on social media, people deny it so aggressively. It's interesting.
@@Blahblah-oo7lk Not only that, but in the dichotomy of how countries react to being defeated and occupied with the almost universal acquiescence in Doma and Yanxia contrasted to the way that the Ala Mhigans continued to resist. It would have been interesting to see that honest look at how two different cultures acknowledge and dealt with their own pasts, especially the terrible things that had been done. The two most obvious would be the Mamool Ja and their breeding programs being a recent shadow on their history, contrasted with the Yok Huy's past as conquerors and tyrants.
This is your best thumbnail yet.
I personally felt that the story of Tural kinda finished before we ever stepped foot there. Daddy Ja Ja solved nearly all the problems in Tural during his initial journey decades ago. There was nothing really left for Wukie to do except go on a wildlife excursion down the same trail her dad did to learn "the way of the ruler".
And sure, there was the whole thing with Zoraal Ja wanting to wage war, but even his "supporters" didn't really seem like they were enthusiastically on his side. Sure, they clapped for him, but they didn't do anything to convince me that they really WERE a pro-war faction - like arguing (perhaps violently, given their support of violence) with the rest of the citizenry, or inciting unrest to push others toward their cause. Just SOMETHING to make it feel real.
There's other stuff I could talk about in DT - I legitimately loved the Mamool Ja village story - but I just wish that they did better with the great foundation of a story that they built. Not saying that this is the "cold, hard truth", just how I felt about it.
Incorrect. The trials were to teach lessons. Wuk Lamat needed them to be a ruler. You can see her implement those lessons all throughout her journey.
@@Crusina She failed learning those lessons. If you think she learned them, you fell for extremely shallow story telling. Wuk Lamat was still the same moron she was before DT.
@@JustinStrife I think she sort of did in some instances and in other instances just forgot. I feel like the second half of DT was written by someone else (there are three head writers listed for DT) and though they got some of Wuk Lamat's lessons or that fact she is still learning from her lessons but having difficulty implementing them right, they also written her forgetting or ignoring them. It just highlights DT's major problem regarding consistency. Though it isn't anything terrible like Shadow lands it is jarring from going from the combo of post-SB -> ShB -> EW to well DT, even EW's post-MSQ patches were at least consistent in lore and characterization.
I was also upset at how they did Krile dirty.
Also that thumbnail is killer.
To add, the issue I had with Zarool Ja is that Galool Ja Ja was shown to be compassionate and intelligent, even after the passing of the head of wisdom. He would have surely seen his son become a hateful person and instead of nipping it in the bud nice and early, just went 'ahhh, it'll be fine probably'.
I would have preferred Zarool Ja to have been acting kind and compassionate at the beginning, with the loss to the shade just breaking him so he drops the act. Would have added another layer of despair with Galool Ja Ja finding out his son wasn't actually happy all these years, but has been resenting all the pressure of being a miracle child.
But that's just my opinion, that may have been hated even more hah!
I had to stop myself from commenting and praising you guys right at the start. The calm, insightful tone of this discussion was deeply welcome. People can debate the quality of Dawntrail, but your content has only been top-tier.
My hope for the next multi-expansion arc is that we are going to create a “Counter Etheirys” cobbled together by the remaining shards. The Void, the First, and the Unlost World have all been reduced to scraps. Assuming the last two are in a similar state, you could fuse them all without zones overlapping.
This new world would be able to have the kind of geopolitical tensions that are no longer possible in the now-peaceful Etheirys. In addition, if travel between the worlds is possible but restricted, it would allow for characters to be set in or out of the narrative.
Finally, the unique nature of this world, being “thinner”, would allow for new rules, powers, and villains to emerge. Assuming Counter Etheirys is not dimensionally isolated like the Shards, it could be a target for Ultima or some other Jenova-like threat.
Idk. I feel like that's pretty unlikely. For one, I don't think they're going to make any major changes to the First to facilitate it being part of another world. But more importantly, I feel like that would be reductive to the Eden storyline of trying to revive the aether of the first, and the Void storyline of Zero and Golbez working together to fix their world. It's not impossible, but I don't see it happening.
I guess the First and Thirteenth are too established for any shenanigans to happen. This does not preclude three other reflections that had Floods happen merging to make a hostile world where rules combine and factions emerge to make a world that will never grow to enjoy the Warrior of Light, and by dint of involving themselves as a neutral party in a complex world will inevitably make enemies of all people in this merged world.
that would be cool but that's a massive change, I don't think they'd be able to pull it off
I think one thing people glance over when talking about Alexandria/Solution 9 is how effective of a colonialism narrative it is. We don't dwell much on the fact that *30 years* passed for the people in the bubble, and so for a lot of the young people from the Source, they don't know or don't remember anything else. Their culture was completely overwritten by Alexandria and they don't really remember the one they came from, it's *depressing*.
And the native Alexandrians are just so used to the horror that they never question it, and with 7.1 we see they actively *resist* the change. From their perspective, *we're* the invaders who upended their entire way of life, when the elderly Turali would probably see it as the other way around (if they were still alive to tell it). Plus, with how thoroughly Alexandria took over the zone (since everything outside of Everkeep is being constantly pelted by lightning), the Turali really had little choice but to assimilate into the now dominant culture.
One part that's utterly depressing and it's 100% just visual storytelling through assets is in one of the houses in Heritage Found (I think it's the one where we see Namika in her last moments?), you can see an old tattered turali cloth banner.
The weight and significance of that piece of cloth being still hung, but completely abandonned to decay, was *poignant*, especially coming from a culture sitting right in between as both colonizers and colonized
Speaking as somebody who has been current with XIV since 2014, I can assure you that the feeling expressed at 42:40 of "so we're just going to wait on that for 3 months?" is just how this works when you are current- honestly, I thought a much bigger case of "supposedly triumphant ending tonally clashing with the reality of a big unsolved problem looming in the background" was how 3.0 ended, where it was hard to feel very good about where Ishgard was because Nidhogg had taken over Estinien's body. The story simply feels different when you can't simply jump to the next patch when you want!
(spoiler) 7.1 was funny in the way Gulool Ja's mom was just really thirsty and only made him give her a kid as a reward and tried to force being a family after Gulool Ja is born. It's so much better than "I saw good in him", it was really fucked up and that's fantastic. I'm so excited to see more of the horror element of this expansion story, and honestly having the opening show just normal society for 5 levels before all that started makes it hit all the more harder.
I don't think it was necessarily just "being really thirsty". There was an element of the Mamool Ja caste system and the breeding of Blessed Siblings within it as well. She was enamoured with him outside of Alexandria, but it was something she could never have so it became an obsession.
I think the problem with Dawntrail's reception is that I agree it's "just fine", but "just fine" for FF14 is different than "just fine" for other media.
It felt like anime filler to be honest. I really wanted to like it, and you know what, I actually really do. All except for the MSQ. Rest of the expansion is great.
@@xxJing anime filler that cost $40 and sub fees. Ick.
In my opinion, DT had a great story! It just had terrible writing. And that's somehow more infuriating then if it was a bad story with mediocre writing. The framework was there, everything was in place, put together, ready to amaze. But it got lost in shipping, kicked around and shattered before it arrived at our doorstep. In other words, it was a good story, but the delivery detracted from it massively. We got our shiny fancy new thing, and it was everything we were hoping for. No wonder we are so upset when the delivery man was so rough with it.
8:15 Eren's mom is the *perfect*, and most obvious example of this. Why did it have to be so obvious? Wouldn't it have been cooler if they foreshadowed Sphene's true nature, by making Cahciua a drone indistinguishable from her normal living body? Indistinguishable to everyone except Erenville, who's relationship with Cahciua and expertise as a Gleaner could help him uncover the truth. Make Eren drop small hints for us players, such as mentioning how Cahciua's movements aren't quiet natural ("I've just gotten a lot less limber with age" Cahciua would respond), or they go for a hug and Eren notices Cahciua has no smell. Small build-ups like this would've made the realisation that she's dead hit like a truck. And then the tidal wave of implications would hit us soon later as we discover the full extent of Living Memory and Sphene's world.
I'm almost convinced this was the original plan & intention. What even was the purpose of the supposed resistance group? They should've been used to hack one of the drones to give Cahciua her body, or sneak us into Living Memory, or something. Dawntrail is littered with missed opportunities like this, where in the right hands there's a story, maybe on par with Endwalker underneath. But if I were to write every section I thought a character could've been better written it would be pages and pages of words.
Relevant side-note, as I was completing the Moblin yellow quests, I got the impression that there were exactly two writers in charge of those quests. One who cared and respected gobby speak, and one who didn't at all. It was jarring to get one quest filled with the usual gobby-flair, followed by another where the quests starts with 3 gobby words, speaks regular english, then ends with 3 more gobby words. I could be totally wrong on this though, and I don't want to insult any of the writers. Curious if anyone else noticed the same thing.
Just finished watching the video, and loved the proper dive into the story itself. There really was a gem in the rough that wasn't being seen or talked about underneath the torrent of story hate. It's only after you've forgetting the dialogue, that you can reflect on the story itself and see the story that was trying to be told.
"In my opinion, DT had a great story! It just had terrible writing."
This is extremely spot on. So many of DT's problems could've been fixed without changing the story at all if the writing was just better. To me it really felt like the writer/s this expansion didn't read/play the game up to this point at all, and just kinda skimmed a summary and took a total guess at the general tone.
One of the first things I did when I finished DT was go write for myself a BUNCH of little ways I would've changed the writing to make the points they were clearly trying to hit actually, well, work. It's super frustrating. There's a really good story in there but all I can see is missed opportunities.
As with many things, it's complicated. I think the most disappointing aspect, for me, is that I _know_ they can do better. The pacing isn't always the best with CBU3, but they're usually better about the writing, the amount of character focus everyone gets, and paying off build up.
Maybe they shouldn't let the guy behind the beast tribes be the lead writer of the expansion, I wholeheartedly agree with a passing of torch but they should at least select and train the correct and capable people to do it
I know people would hate it, but personally I would have liked it if one of the scions was in living memory after being caught in the time bubble. Imagine having to turn off the memory of a beloved scion we have been with for all this time. It would have been brutal.
too afraid to kill off a scion because people got attached to characters and it will alienate some people. Instead they decided to alienate even bigger portion by concocting a bad, borderline nonsensical story (nonsensical due to a lot of characters' actions being both predictable and unpredictably stupid). Well done...
23:20 I feel like it was a great reversal of Ultima Thule in Endwalker, which is why in the end I actually love that it stays like that
Yeah, same. I appreciate how Living Memory’s progression was a reverse-mirror to Ultima Thule, the latter we lit back up, the former we shut-down and turned-off the lights.
I just finished dawntrail 8 hours ago, i can finally tune back in to my favorite youtubers! i just know it's gonna be a banger video!
We're not the ascians to Living Memory.
Living Memory is a world of the dead that feeds off the living. Living Memory/Sphene is the ascians.
Speaking of... take a look at Sphene's crown, flip it upside down, and it's remarkably similar to the glyph of a certain as-yet-unseen ascian...
I don't think it's a coincidence that Preservation repeated the same process as the ancients in wanting to keep their 'perfect world' alive forever.
Particularly if you combine the crown with the filigree design that sticks off her hip
Exactly. All we're doing is stopping people who already lived from living out their second lives at the expense of people who never get to live a first one.
You would compare it? Our beautiful antagonists?
@@ahorseofcourse7283 No longer shall man have Shadowbringers to lift him to paradise. Henceforth, he shall Dawntrail.
43:56 There is a side quest in Solution 9 that involves listening to people's problems after the robo attacks and for one of them is that he automatically received an inheritance from someone and they are sure that someone died during the attack, but doesn't remember who. (Game in French, maybe different in English)
It's weird that "Eh, it's okay," which is pretty much the most accurate assessment of Dawntrail, somehow seems like a bold choice.
I just kinda felt like all xpacs have their ups and downs, but the ups in Dawntrail didn't make up for the downs. And there were a lot more downs.
Mind you this is just the MSQ. Every gameplay system has improved, character model upgrades were great (I play lala), the 24 and 8 man raids are the best we've had in memory. Story can be improved over time, but this is ultimately a video game and as such the video game section is the best its been in awhile.
Yet a lot of people claim this is like the end of the world, worse than ARR, just cause of the MSQ
The issue is that MSQ is the main part of FFXIV, as of base Shadowbringers. Certainly, each activity is a world onto itself, but the supposed draw is now the story, and that did suck. Luckily, Living Memory and the raids and the cowboy town are good enough, and so the gameplay is the draw, but it is hard to describe base Dawntrail’s MSQ as a thing to look forward to.
Yeah, the Ups were not in the MSQ to me. The side content and day to day gameplay is more fun, but the MSQ was just downs all the way down
I was disappointed we didn’t get more with Krile.
It drove me absolutely insane that we get introduced to a sickness thats basically identical in cause as the Light sickness on the first or Tempering on the source and yet we just....dont tell Alisiae about it. We just kinda get introduced to it and the WoL is apparently just like "damn thats rough" because apparently we dont get to remember previous expansions to realize we just...know a cure for this thing that torments these people who thing theres no fix. And I dont think we have any reason to think the aether corruption is at the point in which its irreversable since theres no visible transformation. At least not to the degree that we havent seen before. Cuz the kid on the first already had his skin turning porcelain basically.
Also Zoraal Ja is Lizard Vergil change my mind
The story isn't done yet. Levin sickness will be cured at some point. That's not the current important thing at the moment. I'm more concerned about how new Sphene is going to conflict with Gulool Ja's authority over Everkeep and what Preservation's end goal is.
@@Dastan117 Even if it might get resolved later, it doesnt improve the fact that in that moment the WoL sees a problem so similar to what we had been struggling against for so long and learned solutions to 2 variants of...and just dont say anything. And i find that a narrative flaw.
@@e-rankluck2594 Also Levin sickness is due to an overabundance of lightning-aspected aether in the area, not having to do anything with the person's soul. People are born with this sickness. Also, although we were there trying to understand her and her motives, Sphene was still our enemy. There WILL likely be a part of the MSQ later on where we will modify the porxies to cure it. This takes time and so far we have only seen just the one case of the sickness. Or even better, just move them out of the dome and see what happens. There are more threatening things currently to the people of Everkeep.
28:00 They did mention that "fateful meetings" were not so unlikely as one might think, but given that we aren't actually part of Living Memory I struggle to conceive how the system would be able to orchestrate that as it has no information on us at all.
I couldn't emotionally connect with a lot of the elements in the later part of DT.
The Endless were not people. The game kept wanting to make you feel attached to what was happening, and I just wasn't. Living Memory was an out of control AI's "dollhouse", populated by constructs of people who are already dead. And what makes it horrifying is that these 'fake' versions were being perpetuated by actual souls. Possibly even the very souls of the people that the "dolls" were made to emulate. They're not ghosts. You're not 'freeing' them. You're having an emotional moment inside the Star Trek's holodeck.
And Sphene is not a real person either. You can dress up a toaster in a little princess costume and make her say cute things, it doesn't change the fact that its. not. real. Arguing with it, or talking it off the cliff's edge is completely meaningless. Pull the damn plug. Shoot it in the head. Stop talking to it.
It feels like DT tried to appeal to everyone, in every way, but what works for one person doesn't work for someone else, and vice versa. So it all wnded up being mixed for everyone in different ways.
It's definitely a "finding our feet again" expansion for BU3. Hopefully they've worked it out for 8.0 and we get more of a definitive direction.
Yeah, the trickiest thing when you dive into discussions about actual details of what people liked you don't like, it becomes apparent that almost any change to make one group of players happier will make another group angrier.
Kyle touched upon something about the rejoining. Zodiark was supposed to keep the natural order and shroud the star and hydaelen shattered it. But now both of them are gone, who or what keeping the reflections from rubber banding back together. It may be slow but everything may start coming back together and we might have to find a way to merge stuff uncatastrophicly
I think the "natural order" bit that Zodiark was maintaining is just the shroud to protect the star from Meteion because it brought back normality. Hydaelyn, I don't think, was ever mentioned to be a key component to keeping the reflections from just rejoining themselves, unless I forgot a conversation. Even if that was the case, Square can just point to the big contraption the Twelve left behind and say "This does that job because Hydaelyn entrusted that particular duty to the Twelve."
Endwalker patch Y’shtola mentions that the reflections are naturally drifting back to the source. It may take tens of thousands of years but yes, they will rejoin eventually.
That thumbnail is amazing!!!!
I may be wrong about this but electrope only works because of the high level of lightning in the area it is- it captures that magical energy. Elsewhere in the world it would be useless, which is a tight way to keep it contained.
The electrope vehicles, ships and robots they used to invade the city worked just fine.
Or is literally just electronics, which means it'd need a power source.
@@yanipheonuplus the recent Alliance raids are literally being made possible in-universe because of electrope being used outside the dome.
Old Sharlayan and the Lopporits offer the same level of technology so even if there were some weird limitation it could easily be overcome with collaboration efforts.
@@TheoVorster We've yet to see whats entirely up with the alliance raids since we're not entirely sure where exactly Sareel Ja wound up (I'm banking on it being another broken off piece of Living Memory like Strayborogh was, given how much electrope is around) but also I'd have to assume most electrope technology essentially has a battery to power it if/when its not plugged into a constant stream of lightning aether. The ships likely had some kind of onboard power source but presumably its less sensible to fuel them long distance cus of how electrope works. I do hope it doesn't become some catch-all miracle element but for now I don't think the couple exceptions we've seen imply there aren't inherent limitations that they can use to explain why the whole world doesn't suddenly have an electrope revolution.
That thumbnail is crazy good.
It's really interesting to watch this after seeing y'all go through 7.1 this week. I agree that Dawntrail was just okay. It got us where we needed to be and I look forward to what comes next.
I am a bit sad that it's just ok, but it is what it is. I just heard Meteon's theme the other day and was like, dang I should replay Endwalker. Nothing in Dawntrail will likely ever get that reaction from me, and that's disappointing but also, I don't think that's what they were aiming for with this expansion. I never get the emotional urge to replay ARR, so it tracks that DR would elicit similar reactions.
Looking forward to everything y'all got coming down the pipeline! Have a good Holiday!
The problem with it being "Okay" is that compared to a lot of everything that came before which was far and beyond "Okay" it is by definition the "Worst Thing Ever."
If you wanted to bring over bits of other reflections, with a minimum of damage to the Source, you could always put it in the Burn. While Y'Shtola did restore the natural flow of aether to it, back in Stormblood, I doubt that life would have returned there already.
But I think the more likely application of that tech would be to transplant pieces of land between the First and Thirteenth, to balance the two out. Between that and opening portals, this new way seems the less likely to cause an accidental void-sent invation of the First in the attempt.
Thumbnail & Garrett in a vest next tier
I subbed simply because the two of you acknowledge the good in DT instead of just being involved in the hatetrain echo chamber. It shows that you both arent afraid to speak your mind and think freely. Mad respect
1:24 -- TBF, a number of us are now thinking 'Wait for it...' for a completely different reason...
Wait for it...
WAIT FOR IT....
WAIT FOR IT!!!
BAM!
Looking forward to their stream of it
That is a top-notch thumbnail
Otis told us that Gulool Ja has been taught to read the arcane sigils carved into the electrope. That is how he can identify which pieces have been set to which element. The child is 'gifted' because he learns things quickly, not because he has mutant powers.
a lot of people are saying Electrope doesn't really work outside of the dome, but it's whole sctick is that it converts Aether from one type to another, and EVERYWHERE on the planet has local concentrations of Aether of one flavor or another, it's why we can gather crystals. It would need to be adapted to be used outside of the dome, and I'm sure it's spread would be slow. Remember, only a year or two have passed in the entire game. So while Garlemarld is now selling magitek, I doubt we'll see everywhere using it, just as I don't expect everywhere to adapt Electrope immediately. Garland ironworks putting together a hybrid machine or two though, that I imagine we'll see.
I thought Electrope simply turned Lightning Aether into other kinds of Aether, hence, "Elec"trope. So while useful it wouldn't be overly useful in places without abundant/excessive Lightning Aether.
@@Delritho lighting aether is just the medium through which it works, but if you can change lighting aether to the other types, then you can reverse the process
@@starlightbreaker561 Except I don't believe they've said it works like that, it changes Lightning Aether to other elements, if it could change other elements to lightning they would've mentioned that somewhere.
@@Delritho why wouldn't it work in reverse?
Electrope specifically converts aether from lightning to not-lightning, as I understood it, and does so efficiently. It's not that it doesn't work outside of the dome, it's that outside the dome, the balance isn't skewed toward lightning so the crazy properties it exhibits start to become less phenomenal. I don't believe the process is reversible. That's not to say that it's useless, it just isn't the wonder rock that it is in Heritage Found.
Something a lot people struggle with nowadays is that media can be “fine” or “pretty good”, as a lot of what I’m seeing is “if it’s not amazing, it’s terrible” or “if it’s not a 9/10, it’s a 1”.
Exactly
Thank you for saying the truth.
Ya I’ve noticed this a lot myself through the years especially with gaming internet culture which I know the common thought there is it’s the internet we shouldn’t take it seriously but unfortunately times are shifting in a weird direction where that’s not entirely true anymore
I think one thing that was a noticeable tell about this Expansion that put it into perspective for me is Yoshida admitting they did a lot of experimenting with this one as in not a full organized plan
But it isn't fine or very good. It's utterly moronic. The only virtue of this story is that it hasn't ruined anything else so far (unlike, say, Endwalker... which was fine, for the most part).
some people also are ok with mediocrity, Is this the worst game ever? not even the slightest, but people who blindly like something because it is FFXIV is crazy to me, the only thing i hate hearing is "it's ok.." like sure, but you guys haven't forgotten we paid for this right, and we keep paying for it ever month. is it really surprising that people expected something more than "just ok"
I am probably one of the minority in actually really really loved the first part of the msq the rite of succession and am not as high on Living Memory. Don't get me wrong I am more positive on Dawntrail as a whole than most people and really do like Living Memory and Alexandra. I also really like Sphene as a character and find a lot of things in Alexander extremely interesting. I just really enjoyed the cultures and how they explored them in Dawntrail and the journey to the golden city. Something about it just hit me right in comparison to part 2.
I do think part of it is the living memory parts might have been a bit too on the nose with my life right now and maybe with time it will be better.
I'm actually the same, and it's been tough with all my friends saying the first part was a slog and the second was so good and they wanted more of that. I can understand why people think it was rough, but I was way more interested in learning about the new world and their culture than i was in the last minute end of the world stuff, it had much better vibes to me. I also thought living memory was a bit too on the nose and to me the rhyming with shadowbringers did not work one bit. It felt like they tried to fall back on things they knew worked well, without actually doing the work for it.
I am fully in this camp as well. Yeah, I can understand that the story they were telling in the first half is one that is not everyone's cup of tea, but I think they did a good job with it. It was all about getting to know this brand new continent and its cultures, and it that is what it gave us.
Meanwhile, the second half looks cool, and introduces a bunch of cool sounding sci-fi concepts, but the plot was silly and full of weirdness and potential plot holes, the writing for some characters was really bad, and the game as a whole was just generally more concerned with hammering a few specific things into our head over and over that it didn't really take advantage of the setting and characters it was introducing.
Garrett: Kyle . . . .
Kyle: Yes, Garrett . . .
Garrett: Worst. . . . .
Kyle: Motherf******, never loved us. . . .
The thing with Electrope, is that it only FULLY works in the Dome. It runs on lightning energy, so once you leave the Dome it's basically a battery that will eventually run out of charge. Recharging it outside of Yatsulani/Alexandria would probably be more energy intensive than just using fire crystals or something to that effect.
Doesn’t the recent alliance raid contradict that notion though? It can convert lightning aether to other aether, but it can also be powered by plain old magic too.
@@TheoVorster The way it was explained is that it converts lightning energy into other elements. But you're right that it seems on face value to contradict that fact.. My current theory is that the space/city/whatever that whats-his-face found is another lost district of Living Memory, and thus it was already charged and ready to be used. But who really knows at this point.
@@ExileTwilightI thought the explanation was that it can convert any elementally charged aether into aether of a different elemental charge. I don’t recall it being stated that the starting source of what is being converted has to be only aligned to lightning, just that it usually is because their environment has an abundance of lightning-aligned stuff.
@@TheoVorster Fair point, I could have made a logic leap due to it being called "elec-trope", and it emerging during the start of their lightning 'calamity' (for lack of a better word).
@@ExileTwilight I mean, it's also possible that whats-his-face uses lightning magic to wield electrope.
2:31 "Everyone wants to fix something different"
I love this. This to me sums up Dawntrail's experimental approach perfectly
I think that sums up the issue: Nothing works. The dungeons of DT are mostly great fun, but the game has been designed with such poor difficulty grading that they're a huge spike for players who don't know they're terrible. The job system is simplified to a ridiculous degree. The MSQ is a disaster, both in its repetitive gameplay and its terrible storytelling. I don't see anything but the slightly challenging dungeons as at all experimental, either.
@TheWickedWizardOfOz1 I dunno man. I liked Dawntrail ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@venabre And that's fine! I like elements of it. I for one enjoy the dungeons not being *completely* braindead and wish they would go farther, but the poor difficulty scaling up to this point has hampered any of that possible progress.
But there are objective issues to the expansion, and I think the big reason that people are so negative towards DT isn't because it is experimental and takes big risks, but rather because it fails in so basic areas out of sheer incompetence.
@@TheWickedWizardOfOz1 experimental doesn't have to mean "takes big risks"
And I can't take anyone who just says "sheer incompetence" like that seriously. If the problem is the story that doesn't mean the overall product failed. It just means the story failed. The rest is still very well done. And even then, not everyone has a problem with the story. But as always, negative voices are the loudest, and comments like these are a perfect example of how those with a negative point of view towards Dawntrail are incapable of just letting the people that did like it enjoy it for what it is.
@@venabre Well, I think the burden of proof is on people calling it experimental. The story is godawful and I have another thread on this video explaining just a few of my many reasons for stating so - I can import those, but I don't think it is necessary. But the rest of the game is still following the same formula and doubling down on it. How is that experimental? We have the same patch content, the same homogenized jobs.
People can enjoy DT for what it is, but the incompetence in story writing and the lack of experimentation in gameplay are quite evident.
The thing that bugged me most about the fan reaction was everyone calling the keystones gym badges… It's a set of seven brightly coloured gemstones.
We're collecting Chaos Emeralds.
Where’s that DAMN Fourth (Reflection) Chaos Emerald???
ARCADIAN TOO GOOD TO BE HERE LMAOOO
Yeah it's weird. The combat content is amazing in dawntrail even if the story content is forgettable
Happy to always count on the GG boys to add something meaningful to conversations that have been run into the ground by others' stale and exhausting opinions, especially in a nuanced way that's also true to their feelings and doesn't cave to the black and white BEST/WORST THING EVER?!?!? duality the algorithm loves.
This is what makes me personally a longtime repeat stream/podcast/video watcher and not just a "eh, I guess I'll watch 2 minutes of this cause it's on my home page" watcher.
This is genuinely the best, most considered, intelligent discussion of the expansion from any content creators. Amazing job.
The main thing for Dawntrail is that I just felt absolutely nothing for the story. Pre S9 felt like a boring slog, and while it did get interesting after S9, I feel like its pacing was off and ultimately was a plot point that wrapped up very quickly once you got to the last zone. Also, Krile's subplot really wasn't handled very well feeling more like an afterthought.
I really hope the patch content can help alleviate this, and whatever they have planned for the future expansions because it's clear we're going to be going to other shards.
I didn't have issues with the MSQ to be honest. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Not my favorite one but it wasn't bad either. My problems are elsewhere like the jobs oversimplification, the glamour system which at this point become a nightmare to deal with. It's not Dawntrail my problem it's FFXIV at this point.
Number one frustration that I think could have made this so much better is the wasted potiential of Zoraal Ja's advisor. I think he was key to a lot of drama, further characterizing Zoraal Ja, and so much more. I remember being excited because I was super convinced he was an Ascian. He wasn't. It could have been so cool. But it's not.
For me the main issue throughout Dawntrail was it's pacing, and I think it stemmed from a fundamentally questionable decision. The plot of Dawntrail sees Wuk Lamat undergoing mirror circumstances to the story we've been on for years, just at a smaller scale. but trying to fit 4 expansions and a base-game worth of lessons and experiences into a single expansion's length simply doesn't work, because in order to fit them in they need to be stripped down to a very basic form, and the entire reason these beats worked through the previous expansions and even ARR is because of how much time could be dedicated to each. Let's take the various groups we meet along the way, we spend very little time with the Hanu, and learn very little of them, what we're left with is a rather shallow feeling people. Same with the Pelu Pelu (though they do get a bit more personality and time spent) and the Xbr'aal, we get there, spend 5 minutes with them, and leave, never to return to the area, having spent almost no time in it at all. While there's room to revisit many of them and add more interest in the patches, first impressions are a thing and I was left not really caring about any of them that much. Also they didn't setup any anomalies or unexplained things in these areas, so it would beg the question of what reason we'd have to really revisit them. At least not in the main story outside side-quests. It just felt like everything was rushed and nothing got the time it needed to develop. I care about the various tribes and civilizations in Aldenard, Ilsabard and Othard because we spent so long with them, revisited them over and over at various points, witnessed their struggles, their victories, their defeats and more. I do not really care that much about any of the groups we encountered in Dawntrail. Perhaps that will change over time but trying to cram that many different peoples into about half an expansion just limits how much development they can truly have. I think nearly every other issue in the expansion arises from the plot beats just not having time to develop, things just happen too fast and we're then always switching gears, it's narrative whiplash.
It's genuinely bizarre how DT feels like a crappy abridged 4kids version of the FF14 narrative as a whole. I can't help but wonder how we ended up with it, and if it's the result of flip-flopping on the idea of trying to make DT an entry point for new players or something like that. I really hope it wasn't just that the new writers were just too scared to do something different.
I got some BAD news for you about the 7th Reflection... it's already gone. It was destroyed in the 7th Umbral Calamity. By Meteor. So yeah.
The VIIth reflection being wiped out by a meteor is so on the nose. And yet, still so cool.
Dawntrail just didn't resonate with me personally. It's the first expansion in which this happened. I'm willing to wait if the patches will fix this, but if not the game will have a hard time to convince me to play 8.0.
I played World of Warcraft since Burning Crusade to Battle for Azeroth and I hated so much that last expansion's story I left the game, started playing FFXIV since Heavensward and never unsubscribed even a single month.
To me Dawntrail was very *very* close to do what Battle for Azeroth did.
Since you’re now at the daily farm part of content, it’ll be easy to check out the Omnicron gathering quests, since you can do them as a fisher. Particularly if you wanted more of Living Memory’s questioning of if they’re alive themes.
You know something. I'm doing some leftover zone quests in DT right now. One thing that strikes me is the "Saturday morning, resolve it all in a single convo" style resolution of so many of the quests (which is fine for a single throwaway quest). The problem with DT is that same level of writing was applied to the entire expansion instead of the nuance that the MSQ normally has.
There's an allied society quest where someone points out the reason they became a thief was because there was actual child labor in the mines they worked in. Wow! That's dramatic and shocking. What will we do to help solve it?
Oh they already solved that issue off screen before we even started the quest. That doesn't happen anymore. That's already solved.
This happens all the time in Dawntrail. Something that could be dramatic is instantly resolved.
@@yanipheonu looks like a symptom of a rushed writing. For everything in this expansion, unfortunately. The lack of detail, messy pacing, gaps in logic. They cooked something in their head, but couldnt serve it.
how HOW did you resist the urge to end this video by cutting to one second of 'Smile'
Most importantly, that thumbnail is awesome.
Continuing onwards and downwards, I've come to realise that one of the reasons I rate DawnTrail so low is that I value the telling of the story more than it's contents. The patch content could be about cleaning up after Storm Valigarmanda and going on an adventure to buy Gulool Ja the right Hot Wheels, as long as it engages me and immerses me in a way that 7.0 failed to do.
To RePurpose Kyle's Metaphor, I value the Journey over the destination. Over the course of DawnTrail my feelings for FFXIV changed for the worse, and I lost belief in the writers ability to entertain me.
When Wuk Lamat was talking about using smiles as a barometer for leadership, my brain was showing me sepia flashbacks that the game was not providing (or intending). Asahi, Athena, Ilberd, Valens, Teledji/Adeledji, Zenos... beautiful smiles, wholehearted... and insane. The issue comes out as a nitpick, a petty comment of "Hurr Hurr, not all smiles apply to your system Wuk Lamat". The real problem is that I was not engaged or immersed in what the game was doing. Rather than the story telling, engagement was driven by the personal experiences and preferences of individual players and what they could bring to a scene, thus everyone had something different that worked/failed, and everyone wants to "fix" a different part.
I agree, because throughout the whole of FFXIV we learned that the world isn't sunshine and rainbows. Everywhere we went there was a dark side to humanity: Doma, The Steppes, Ishgard, Elpis, Garlemald, Kugane, The three City States, Sharlayan. People with good intentions lead well, but also get betrayed and get taken advantage of. And despite that, the resilience of those of good heart weather these storms selflessly. Aymeric, Hien, Nanamo just to name a few, are examples of these good hearted but not naive leaders. Tural is a different continent yes, but it feels WAY TOO UNREALISTIC in terms of how they built their world that its....its just not FFXIV. It's all bollocks. It fucking hurts to see.
I believe Porxies were imbued with both the memory magic *and* the aetheric rebalancing magic, but ultimately I think the real problem is that even if we treat them, as long as they're still in Alexandria the source of their sickness is still there. Kinda like if you treated a tempered person while Titan is still right there in front of you.
Wuk is generally fine, but her benign oversaturation in the plot makes her the convenient but valid scapegoat for the disparate flaws in the story. Theres too many sepeate things that are good and bad, which ironically makes Dawntrail's main problem be is consistency.
Wuk is NOT "generally fine" and neither is she a "convenient... scapegoat for the disparate flaws in the story."
She IS the story. She takes up almost ALL of the screentime. 60% of all MSQ voiced dialogue. You can't call her a scapegoat when she's the the centerpiece of the whole shebang. And that's why she's not "fine" either. When they make so much of the story hinge on one character and that character is about as deep an oil stain on concrete then the story suffers as a result. They took a gamble that players were going to like her and that gamble failed spectacularly.
Patch 7.1 feels like they're trying to speedrun the closure of the Wuk Lamat story because they know they screwed up. Like, it took us literally 3 patches to get to Zenos(Forma de Elderbus) and 2 more for Zenos(Ultra Instinct) to reclaim his body but SUDDENLY, SPEEN RETURNED! in one patch. On top of that it feels like they're trying to plug plotholes and misuse of characters from 7.0 rather than actually building on the story(ie. the Koana segment and Zoraal Ja characterization.)
Dawntrail's MSQ has been an unabashed failure on almost every front and the only thing saving the game is that the content is the best it's ever been. I have never felt more disconnected and uninterested in the game since I started playing in ARR. If it weren't for the FFXI Alliance Raid I would just unsub and wait for a story skip.
The biggest issue with Dawntrail can be summed up in 1 word. Imbalance. Thr story often focuses on the wrong things, which took away from potential story beats people would have rather seen.
@@Fortexcross I agree with this take completely as someone who's been here since 2015. The story still revolved around Wuk Lamat and she had no depth at all. She was your typical shonen protagonist but for 5 year olds, and turned up to an 11. The universe twisted and bent itself to her whim so that she never failed. She didn't have any real lessons to learn. She came up with everything on her own without others' help. Her power creep was completely un-earned and the way it was written, the Warrior of Light isn't even needed anymore. The world can just send Wuk Lamat. Just horrible. I will not be taking my alts through DT. I'll wait to buy them story skips.
@@Fortexcross Honestly it sounds like they could have done anything with the patch and you'd still be mad.
I believe my main complaint on Wuk Lamat was tied up in how they applied the WOL. If we were to be a mentor of sorts, they should have committed to that. At each new location we should have sparred her (even off screen if they wanted to save resources). Then, each time she takes a few seconds to point out what she learned. When Luk goes running off without thinking, the WOL grabs her shoulder and holds her back. Little things like that. Even a few eye rolls at some of her naive approaches and knee jerk reactions would have been warranted. All I saw were a few smiles and nods when she did something right. The WOL is supposed to be worldly and knowledgeable. Standing there with our hands in our pockets thinking, "Wow, I bet that's going to hurt." isn't mentoring.
I don't know why they ended the expansion giving us the key at all. We KNOW 14 will not add new zones for the next 2 years, so we will just have that massive expansion starting plot device sitting there unused for the next 2 years.
I think it's interesting that you see the Key as an hourglass, to me it conveys more of a "Holy Grail" imagery.
10/10 thumbnail
For me:
Is it the worst expansion (at least comparing ONLY the core zero patch content)? Yes.
Is that truly bad though? Mmm... no. Endwalker and Shadowbringers were simply awesome. Heavensward was very good. So basically the expansion to beat was Stormblood, and Dawntrail just couldn't manage it, but I think it puts up an admirable fight. Ultimately, I have better memories of Stormblood. There are aspects that DT wins in but some of that it is just inheriting like better dungeon structure, and being further removed from the old cruft of the first release, so I just don't feel it itself brought enough to the table to beat out SB.
Now here's a thing, is it better than ARR? That's not an expansion so bit unfair to compare, but maybe... A lot of the ARR story was a slog, especially on release, and presentation was weak as well, so it is a pretty unfair comparison, but I think I'd say I'd put DT above ARR. As messy as DT is, ARR was messier still, again especially on release.
I said this months ago and I still believe it now this expansion will live or die on its post msq story and how well it sets up the next few years of expansions and if this pull it off this expansion will be like stormblood hated when it was current but thought of positively when looked back on, everyone current expansion is the worst one with shadowbringers being the exception and that was only because all the wow refugees coming over and praising the game and people quickly stopped saying it was bad
I only hope before we hop Dimensions and Space Travel, we finish up the Scource with the still Weakened Garlemald and unexplored Meracydia
I hope we get some kind of “Lord of War”-style story with Garlemald.
Here's another one I don't see bantered around that much. Yshtola's little seeing aether super power. The Devs are going to have to make a decision on whether they want her to keep it. Because in this expansion it got in the way of the story. Yshtola was the prime candidate to go with us to explore the dome. She, literally, lives for that stuff. But, she didn't participate. And, that's because it would have ruined the story. She would have seen Sphene for what she was right away. She said as much later. That is a text book contrived plot that goes against the nature of an established character.
Valid point, but isn't that also Y'shtola's way of normally interacting with the world right now? She's been blind since HW, so I don't see how they'll remove her aether-seeing powers without making her seem like a sitting duck.
That reminds of Arenvald. Arenvald was a promising part of the Crystal Braves/Grand Company until he took injuries that left him in a wheelchair. He is never really revisited upon that because his point of doing secondary stuff the Scions/Warrior of Light cannot do because they are busy on more grander projects cannot really be done anymore. If they go down that path I hope they do not sideline her.
@@iantaakalla8180 Yshtola needs a smart mouthed, free spirit, risk taking student to mentor. Karma and all that. :D
I don't think it's Preservation, unless Mom is in charge of it. A friend of mine thought this and I agree - We think it's Teshaal Ja. Why does 'Sphene' only mention 5000 new headpiece thingys for her people? What if that's the number of souls that Teshaal Ja has determined she needs to bring Zoraal Ja back? She was/is a skilled chirurgeon. She knows how these soul grafts work. Who says she's dead? And I think she ended up taking some DNA from Zoraal Ja to make Gulool Ja and that' why Zoraal Ja had no clue he'd become a daddy ... she's already aware he's comfortable using questionable methods to get what *he* wants, so why shouldn't she? That glassy eyed stare when you see her looking at him is a front for real mania, is what I think. I think 'Sphene' is mommy dearest out for her own purposes, hiding behind a convenient facade to get what she wants.
Great video btw gents. I love your positivity and your honesty. :) 7.1 did a lot to redeem Dawntrail for me and I'm looking forward to the future (you guys just popped up on my TH-cam reports btw as my most watched videogame creators of the year).
Now can we talk about Arcadion? :D
It was pretty stablished that she is gone?
@@fredy2041We didn’t explicitly see her die.
@@fredy2041 how so? Like the original Sphene, you mean? ;) we haven't seen a body ...
I think this is the most positive I've heard anyone talk of Dawntrail.
Thumbnail is gorgeous.
That said, THANK YOU for mentioning the regulators. The fact that they are still showing up drove me insane.
TBH, I felt like they made little sense to begin with - where were all these souls coming from that could have made this ponzi scheme possible? One would imagine that it could have been made believable if Alexandria ended up conquering the other nations during the war and harvesting the souls of the conquered peoples, with the dwindling supply necessitating the war on Tuliyolal, but that didn't happen.
thumbnail game unmatched
THANK YOU! Thank you for not making me feel like the only one with Cachuica dislike.
The fact that Arcadion is way more interesting to talk about is...quite something isn't it.
31:27 I dunno what you guys did to the distorted clip of "they've done it! They the queen's-" but I can't help but hear "repaired" for the first one, and it makes me think we are in for some shit.
Well that thumbnail was inspired 😂
This honesty is why I love Garrett.
edit: no, that is *not* what anyone is saying Garrett!
Kyle's "if I had done it" edit was fantastic lmao
Oh I've been waiting for this! Can't wait to watch it as soon as I find time! Lovely video and I agree with most of your points. The only thing that I don't quite understand is the fandom in general saying that Arcadion is better than DT. Living Memory is still be leagues and bounds the most emotional part of DT. Yeah it's not perfect, but I don't think Arcadion has any segment of story that's that impactful. Yeah it sets up great stuff for puture parts of Arcadion but it was just ok for me up until now. Gameplay & OST though was peak!
Arcadion was actually fun for us. Straightforward, likeable characters with a decent storyline and lots of great gameplay and great music. Living Memory was a tiresome attempt at invoking emotion that has been retreaded 3 times over, I was sick of DT at that point and LM just made me want to unsubscribe. I don't know about you or the majority of players, but Arcadion SAVED the game for me.
For those of us who didn’t really connect with the pathos of LM, it was an exhausting diversion before the final battle. Arcadion, by contrast, was full of the stylish charm with that tiny hint of sinister intrigue that feels like the essence of FF.
Seeing how electrope affected people in Alexandria, that makes a lot of sense as to why it wouldn’t come to the old world
I'm at the point in the video where you've just finished discussing Living Memory, and I'd like to provide a perspective going against the grain that the zone "mostly succeeded". This is something I've actually felt bad about, because I acknowledge that it brought forth emotional reactions for many people. The section during your stream where viewers shared how it affected them was touching. However, on a gut level -for me-, this zone made me the most cynical about FFXIV's future direction. Not that I won't see where the ride takes it, it's not like anything is set in stone.
However, the core conceit I'm unable to shake is how they retreated to the Amaurot style to close out a third straight expansion. A final zone filled with shades of the past, spurred by a sympathetic antagonist, with a capstone dungeon chronicling the dying days of a civilization, all surgically designed to elicit an emotional meltdown. There's nothing inherently wrong with telling this kind of story, and I've read and agreed with analyses even from members of this community how the capstones of these past few expansions touch on different themes. The Living Memory shutdowns were a unique risk in-and-of-itself.
Nevertheless, we're at the point where there's a clear *pattern* with the Tempest/Ultima Thule/Living Memory & Amaurot/Dead Ends/Alexandria demonstrably sharing more DNA structure-wise compared to, say, Azys Lla/The Lochs & the Aetherochemical Research Facility/Ala Mhigo. This is not an argument to retreat from fantastical final zones with heavy themes, but to move beyond the conventions of the past few years. If this is our FFXIV life now, I suppose I can find a way to roll with it, but what has weighed on me is that now that we're on a pattern of three, there's this feeling that FFXIV took what was a successful narrative triumph from Ishikawa and have fully fed it through the YoshiP project management machine. And for an expansion meant to build the foundations for the next 10 years, I'm not fully on board with what that communicates.
I hadn't even made the parallel to Amaurot but now that you've said it, I feel stupid for not noticing sooner 😅
Yeah, when I hit living memory I needed to stop playing entirely for a couple of days to process the copying and cheapening amaurot feeling.
Where I landed was that I think it's an ok way to wrap up the Wuk Lamat mentorship story by paralleling her journey to the warrior of light and making it her amaurot. But I definitely hope future msq moves away from that.
I sincerely hope this is the last time a dying world with people struggling to live is the last zone in an expansion at all in Final Fantasy XIV.
With Amaurot, it was a tragic tale of peaceful people wanting their home back. In hindsight this was very idealized, but it is mostly how Emet-Selch remembers it.
With Ultima Thule, you can feel the various worlds that have ended and how crushing that is to a person looking for thriving communities, and furthermore you help them gain their passion for life back in the Beast Tribe quests.
With Living Memory? You literally are undergoing a world that should not have existed and is kept alive because someone wants a resource-hungry way of living to survive. 7.1 actually confirms this since it seems like the story will focus on how the Sphene was forced to rule in that manner when she otherwise is obviously benevolent and considerate of all sides. And it is a third show of a grieving world desperate to survive. It legitimately is so meta in how Living Memory, for all it is impactful in story and in reflecting on losing a loved one, is a sentimental recycled cheap resource-hungry version of Amaurot and Ultima Thule. It got lucky in that it triggered the memories of people lost so it is more mixed than reviled, but if a fourth ending zone of a lost world desperate to save its people comes back nobody will let it go anymore and people will hate Living Memory for going on for too long.
I agree with you in that I very much would like to see different narrative structures than this. But I would like to offer the view that they are intentionally copying this structure to offer us a "triptych" of sorts. Living Memory being a thematic inversion of Ultima Thule comes through *because* it mirrors the narrative beats. Amaurot contrasted against Alexandria as dungeons (no hope and utter annhiliation vs. building up hope in the aftermath as an example) only works because they echo each other. There's a lot that can be said about *how* these were implemented and whether or not it is effective! At the end of the day I'm getting a little bored with it too. But I think there might be a good faith attempt at larger thematic landscapes here instead of "this works it makes money let's keep repeating this". Maybe a mix of both lol!
Thematically, yes, Living Memory is the opposite of Amaurot, and it is Sphene or Living Memory that is trying to prop up something unsustainable. That is very cool. And yes, to get to the point where we recognize that Living Memory is not a remembrance of past people, it helps that it is yet another lost city so that the first thing we think of is Amaurot. The issue is that it needed to be done at all in a world where part of the promise was not only both vacations and a cool reveal of an unknown world, but the implication that it would be entirely different from any past thing when literally all of it is a badly done reflection of what was done in the past six parts, and save from the Arcadion every other good thing about Dawntrail has heavy asterisks surrounding it.
I like the idea of Alexandria & Electrope! I hated the force feeding of Wuk Lamat! My WOL felt obsolete & not needed until the last fight! The murder of the King right in front of my WOL would have never of happened, why did we just stand there!?! I liked Sphene but hated that the other Scions felt like prop pieces & not as important as they should have made them! We just saved the Universe & we have knowledge & skills that can help! I am hoping it finds its direction in the future! Why wasn't Kryle's & Erenville's parents' storyline much longer!?! I want the new story to be awesome! I am treating Dawntrail as a prologue to the overall storyline!
18:59 I had clear blue skies in this cutscene for some reason.
It was my understanding that electrope works because of the excessive amount of lightning aether. Outside of the dome, it would be significantly less effective.
I finally finished Dawntrail the other day and can go back to watch your playthrough now. Dawntrail was fine, imo. About what I expected. Impossible to top Shadowbringers/Endwalker so this is just laying a new foundation. Could have been done better but oh well.
That 32:57 cutaway to Kyle just vibin XD
Saving to Watch Later (still stuck at work), but I wanted to say, what a beautiful thumbnail and title combo, truly inspired. Bravo.
I am very excited for the patch content. The "Disneyland in FFXIV", "What if Deal or No Deal was crossed with WWE?" and "Hahaha, wouldn't it be funny if y'all stopped being alive? Ah, so fun def joking UNLESS..." are three completely wacky and interesting plotlines.
The WL jumping in scene in the final fight is unwarranted and unexplained and undeserved. There's no explanation on how she suddenly can break through walls/barriers, and why only her? What about the other scions who got blasted away along with her? She has been the baby of the expansion and suddenly she shows up being that ally that saves the day felt undeserving.
If ANY of the Scions could break through that wall/barrier, it would be Graha or Thancred. Wuk Lamat's power creep was so unearned.
They could have fixed the scene a bit by showing Gra'ha and Krile identifying the weakness in the rift and then helping Wuk Lamat, who has the most raw physical power to breakthrough. It doesn't completely fix the problems but for that scene it helps a bit and makes sense in context. I get that the writers were trying to convey that Sphene and Wuk Lamat are supposed to be foils and ultimately wanted a "final" (in light of 7.1) confrontation between the characters but it fumbled a bit too much due to inconsistency and imbalance of the cast.
@@JustinStrife She was always pretty strong but the issue in the beginning is that she lack confidence, which she quickly gained (imo far too quickly). We know that emotions or Dynamis drive the powers of Limit Break in the universe and in the solo duty when she beats Bakool Ja Ja (who was already demoralized and humiliated by practically everyone) her emotions went into overdrive as represented by you being able to spam MULTIPLE limit breaks. The breakign through the rift thing though? Yeah I have no real answer, my head canon (which is not supposed by the game) is that Graha and Krile identified the weakest spot in the rift but Wuk Lamat has the most raw physical power and is powered by Dynamis so she broke through.
@@Blahblah-oo7lk Pretty strong does not equate to her beating her one brother and all of his minions by herself. Pretty strong does not equate to her doing more damage than our entire party against Sphene. Also Dynamis has it's limits on our world. It worked as well as it did in Endwalker, because we were at the edge of the Universe where it was at it's most dense. And you're basically saying she can use Dynamis, in an area where it's less dense, better than we could when we fought Meteon. The amount of twisting and spinning you have to do, to justify what happened in Dawntrail, hurts the brain.
I think I had a different read on this - Wuk doesn't jump into the fight to save you. You were never in danger. She steps into the fight to try and make one final, desperate attempt to save Sphene. And Sphene hears her, but rejects it. I do actually think they should have brought Graha and Krile in as well in that moment, rather than leaving them floating in the void, but she's able to come back in because the barriers are breaking down as Sphene musters her full power to try and hold out against you (the re-record does a much cleaner job of explaining this, thankfully, because it's a bit vague in the original).
10/10 thumbnail. I knew i recognised it from somewhere. Haven't done the 7.1 msq yet. So will be back to watch after i complete it.
Zoraal Ja is good for that "unrepentant asshole who you just need to kick their ass". Like Dragon Pope, Weird Mech Milk Man, and Hermes/Amon.
I stand by what I've said, I think DT has a lot of good ideas that were perhaps not as well used as it could be. A little too much tell not show.
I think living memory was designed to put us to the challenge. "Can you do what needs to be done" and the parallel with the ascians is extremely striking
except we werent really emotionally attached to anything within living memory so that choice wasnt that hard at all.
@@DoppelgangerTH Indeed, neither are the ascians attached to us, so sacrificign our mutilated mimickry of life for their world isn't a hard choice either
I kind of coasted through the MSQ until I hit Living Memory. After losing my mom a year and a 1/2 before it came out. The premise of Living Memory hit way different.
Garrett: Are we really going to let them play finders keepers with an entire nation?
Me: Well.... It is the American expansion, so its on point
Dawntrail is the Meteion of the FFXIV saga. All heart but barely held together by a sheer fabric of ether that is a single thread from ripping apart at any given moment.
It is bright and cheery and scatterbrained and very G rated compared to previous expansions. So was Meteion before going emo apocalypse. For all we know, Dawntrail's little rabbit holes will all lead to one big cenote of plot driven darkness and intrigue.
Time will tell...
Great video; also thumbnail is some retro album art I need for the DT OST.
Living memory is now dead memory
No, just a mess...
Pretty much agree with what y'all said.
It'll be interesting to see how the next expansions build upon DT. Definitely a messy foundation, but not unsalvageable for the long term.
Comparing just the base Point-.0 expansions to each other I’d say I enjoyed Dawntrail a little more than Stormblood but less than Heavensward. So altogether I guess my ranking of the base FFXIV expansions would be: EW ≥ ShB > HW > DT ≥ SB > ARR.
Now we will have to wait and see how good its patches are but unless DT’s patches are as good as/better than SB’s patches (which were really strong) I can see DT overall being ranked lower than SB overall. So far DT is a decent expansion but not a great one.
I think it's possible the whole interdimensional fusion is the ascian plot for rejoining on this one. If the was left alone and ate all of the shards, that's just rejoining with more steps. They probably were even accounting for an "accidental" system failure at the backend of it all.
I went into Dawntrail ready to be disappointed, because there was no way it was going to have the same impact as Endwalker. I think in that department Dawntrail's story actually exceeded expectations; I was more disappointed than I was expecting.
It's hard to say that the expansion as a whole was bad - we got good music as always, the dungeons and trials were a really good time (+ the raids), but it feels like Dawntrail fails at both telling it's own story and setting up a new one. Was very one and done with the MSQ, I sincerely hope the patch content pulls it together, but my expectations are significantly lower.
'' It's hard to say that the expansion as a whole was bad '', there's no way you can say that because it's not even fully out yet lol. Like fuck sake we're still in 7.1 and people already act like the whole expansion is bad.
DT probably has the most content out of any expansion lined up going by the fanfest announcements, and the content itself has been amazing.
@@MarcusMaybenot I think the problem with having this reaction is that it misses the point of having a healthy criticism of what 7.0 gave us. It's not that the beginning or end was flawed, it was that the story telling was done in what I think most can agree was an objectively bad way. It's like that friend who likes to tell stories where the punchline lands, but you'd never know because he doesn't know how to tell stories well. Or that uncle who lived an impressive life, but did too much peyote and now can't tell us about it very well. I don't mind the story as a whole but there were pacing issues and shallow characters that they seem to have meant to filled out more when they simply didn't. What 7.1-7.5 will do, won't undo what's been given to us, unless it is VERY different from every other expansion release. FFXIV rarely looks backward to fix bad content and instead gives us new stuff to help us look forward (something something Forge ahead).
7.0 was fine, but as a staunch defender of ARR (I like street level stories more than killing God stories) this was the worst .0 I've experienced in this game since I began playing 1.0. That speaks more to how great this game has been, and thats not to say that it can't lead to better things, but ignoring what made 7.0 less than great because we haven't seen what else this expansion brings misses the point completely.