Is Dawntrail the WORST FFXIV Story??
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 มิ.ย. 2024
- This is not a good look for FFXIV...
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ffxiv, Final fantasy xiv, final fantasy x, final fantasy 14, final fantasy xiv, ff14, sprout, 2.0, impressions, review, hot take, Dawntrail, Muk Lamat - เกม
Estinien had the vacation we were promised.
Truer words where never spoken.
Yeah we were babysitting Wuk Lamat instead.
Not to mention: what were the leaders of eorzea doing this whole time?? 😂😂
@@VinlandicSoul leading their pieces of Eorzea to eternal peace I guess🤔✌️😼
This was supposed to be the vacation expac. But no. We had to deal with eugenics, memory altering nonsense, genocide, war crimes, and an outright invasion from another shard. Vacation was cut short. Estinien got lucky.
I swear Wuk Lamat is the newest poster child for the Black-hole Sue trope. The entire cast's characterization bent itself backward to put her in the spotlight, constantly singing her praise for things she didn't do or doesn't have, all characters just have a big drop in their IQ and nod in approval no matter how many stupid things she does, all of her "quirky" flaws bear no consequences in the end, and she somehow became stronger than the Wol/Azem themselves in a fight she has no business with.
And that doesn't even mention how the writer constantly glues her to the Wol's side like those self-insert OCs you usually find in fanfics, the ones that suddenly appear in the plot and somehow become the love-interest of an established main character. That's what she feels like to me with the whole asking to hold hands, staying with her in Tural and her sis-con brother acting jealous.
A lot of characters acted so strange just for Wuk Lamat. Alisae and friends calling her Llama Tea, when she doesn't do that Alphinaud or the other Scions. IIRC, Y'shtola contacted her first with the Link pearl. The writer really forcing the whole world, in-game and IRL, to love her really made her just straight out annoying and even made the dialogue options focus to just love her and cheer her on when we don't want to pick either option. She really is an insane depiction of the Black-hole Sue trope.
I've never actually heard of the Black-hole Sue trope before now, but after looking it up, I would have to agree.
You didn't mention Bakool Ja Ja unleashing the monster that they set up as a world destroyer so he could get a head start on the keystones... Only to get stopped at a taco competition that apparently all the other claimants would have to wait at? He's not just a bully, he's actually a villain until the writing tells us he's not. And the saddest part is, he's one of my favorite characters from this expansion because he's actually entertaining.
Its the reason I can't watch Amazing Race with my family. It's not a race. It's a series of overwrought, manufactured scenes. Just like this flimsy popsicle stand of a plot in DT.
If he wasn't so cartoonishly evil and if he didn't literally try to kill everyone with the nuke monster he might have even been a great charter. He's definitely my favourite character of the expansion for me because it feels like he's the only character that had any growth and actually changed. Everyone else is essentially unchanged by the end of the story.
I think Bakool Ja Ja's stunt there would have made more sense for him to release Valigarmanda in attempt to flex and kill the creature himself only to get stomped like he did against Zareel Ja. And then we have to clean up his mess.
That would have been more in line with what they were going for.
I can’t even finish it man
the dungeons are worth it.
slog through
lv 97 story isnt bad!
...
until the very last trial ending :')
@@amecoeur
yeah that fucking ending.
i audibly groaned
same....
The writing (dialogue and pacing) is shockingly bad. Its like the intern said "To hell with 'show, don't tell', ill manufacture all the emotions!"
The discussion around the DT MSQ is more interesting than the MSQ itself.
I think Wuk'lamat's biggest sin was coming in at the end of the final fight and basically 'winning' it for us.
@@andruism7 lol seriously
Yeah, I was already indifferent to her character but that was the last straw for me by that point. I hope we never have to deal with her ever again.
I think my main issue with Dawntrail's narrative isn't that the WoL isnt the main character, hell most of the expansions we haven't been the lead character outside of Realm Reborn/shadowbringers and the last quarter of Endwalker. The issue is dawntrail gives me no reason to care about what happens to this nation, there isn't a single plot point that forces the WoL and by extension the player feel personally invested, we just stand in the background and nod as Wuk Lamat takes all the credit for the work we personally put in. Then she has the nerve to act like Party leader in the final act despite whats going on being well above her pay grade now.
Like if we had some kinda stake Id be more willing to deal with Wuk Lamat being in literally every scene desperately trying to be the MC like a self insert OC but as is, I could have solved all the problems on my own, the new villain is the weakest least threatening antagonist in the entire game, he's wannabe SMT Chaos hero with daddy issues. He got his butt kicked in his own villain reveal and had to rely on some future tech to just stand a chance. Villains dont have to be a martial threat but look at Thordon who played everyone like a fiddle before he finally took the spot light as MSQ antagonist.
Its telling when the red haring antagonist is more interesting, better developed and more of a threat than the real one.
That's why people defending it by claiming that it's about the WoL being a mentor because they're "too powerful" and will only step up when needed annoy me.
Because NO that's not what happens. Wuk Lamat is the main character right up to the end even when she shouldn't be. The entire story warps around a character that has no business doing what she does.
@@zephyr8072 Yeah I dont get it either, felt more like a babysitter than a mentor honestly.
"We're just a backseater" and "Wuk sucks" are just people feeling bad about the utterly sub-amateur quality storytelling. Neither is the real answer but it's easier to say and understand than the real tragedy: They handed this platinum-level series over to someone unqualified for even a copper trophy.
In ShB I thought ok, hey, maybe it's just a bad junior-level quest text translator they let translate too many scenes. But now, the call is coming from inside the house (which is in Japan) with DT and it's clear the script itself is just trash, the writer has no idea what humanity is while writing and entire 25+ hour movie about the value of humanity, and if they're allowed to do this again, the game is sunk.
@@vazzaroth Serious question. What are your problems with the ShB story? Generally it is the best received of all the expacs. And by the way, I think that movie is longer than 25 hours if you can believe it. (Personally I'm not sure. It felt more like a year.)
@@zephyr8072 So wait please explain when the WOL ever got the Credit for what He/She does in the game except by the Scions lmao? You comment makes no sense. You are not competing in the competition, and there setting up story. When you have a character who can whoop half the people in a Anime universe the story is not always going to be around them lmao. There setting up character development for future expansions moron. The only reason your character was a main in Shadowbringer's Was because they where explaining your connection with Hydaelyn and it was lead up to Endwalker. Not only that Shadow was nothing but plot armor lmao.
So in your opinion A story need to revolve around your character and 100 percent nobody else whatsoever, thus having no plot development other then welp my character is really really op, Yep sound fun alright lmao.
Since ARR I haven’t skipped a cutscene once. But this expansion I couldn’t handle the stupid story and dialogue. It’s about 4 hours before you get access to the first dungeon of the game. This was so bad and Natsuko Ishikawa’s absence is very evident
I havent had the urge to skip cutscenes since ARR here as well. By the last quarter of the MSQ i just felt exhausted.
●Dawntrail is a disaster●
•Lower quality ENG VA because the new Western localization manager got her friends jobs
•The script was written by an former theater playwright who was fired for his low quality works
•The role and side quests were written by veteran writers and were of far greater quality than the MSQ
•Jobs are all so homogenized they practically play themselves
Where do you get this information from?
Kate Cwynar is her name, and she had no business being in such a position in the first place.
I'm not too sure about the role quests being "greater quality" than MSQ. It felt more like a Saturday Morning action cartoon considering what they wanted to do but it mostly boiled down to being a general nuisance instead of actually real harmful stuff.
I'd say the only ones who came close was the one for the Melee DPS role quest and I guess maybe the Healer role quest.
we never found out why the lizard dude following zarool ja, wanted to reach the golden city. bro just gets merked and it never gets mentioned again
Lol no one even asks where the guy went, he legit just vanishes and no one cares.
@@DKarkarov "Alright, the portal is open and... Whats that smell? Does anyone else smell rotting lizard flesh? Must be the portal I guess..."
@@gapho5198 Yeah. My favorite part is no one even says his name again after he dies. No one sees it, no one knows where he went, but he died so hard he was erased like he was an endless. One more example of the bad writing of the expansion.
Everything was set up so perfectly until we left the city for the first time…
100%
WoL is no longer Warrior of Light but Wuk of Lamat.
Ahahahha😂😂😂
Wuk Lmao
if you where not braindead and actually payed attention to the story you would understand that you have not been the WOL since like the end of 6.0 lmao.
If you count how many times our character just nods in all the cutscenes it si the Nodder of Light not a warrior anymore.
And the best is that in some scenes Wuk Lamat Axe covers the face of our characters that are always in background.
@@bigtimetimmyjim6486 Whack Lamat
This is the only expansion that Im consistantly skipping cut scenes on. Usually after Wuk says...Well anything really (why did they write her with such a gratingly naive personality and she is so poorly voiced). I want to go help Koana with thancred and urianger SOOOO BADLY.
I like scenes that establish lore. But a rule of storytelling is "Dont tell a story within your adventure that your readers would RATHER be experiancing.". For me its the story of Galool Ja Ja.
The tale of him uniting a continent of warring tribes and establishing a new country is INTERESTING. Waaay more interesting than completing Wuk Lamats dice collection through arbitrary tasks.
I hated the MSQ. Wuk Lamat felt like a self insert by a writer because we weren't even allowed to spend one on one free time with other characters, just that one short Western section and the entire rest of the expansion is just Wuk Lamat. Her voice acting was not good, especially in the later half when the VA needed to give strong emotion and didn't. And the whole thing felt like a children's cartoon, the villains are laughably evil and then just make a total heel turn because everyone in the story is so taken by Wuk Lamat being friendly that they literally had a character tell her she ended decades of bad blood and xenophobia when all she did was promise to give them seeds if she gets the throne.
Just comparing how they handled the politics vs even just Garlemald in EW, it's like DT was written for kids in the single digit age range with how "Friendship is magic" it was.
There's an awesome thread on Reddit that summarizes/translates Japanese players' thoughts on the MSQ. It's absolutely hilarious, they are ruthless
What's the name of the thread?? I've gotta check that out XD
@@sergeantkitty I found it it's called "Japanese reception to Dawntrail MSQ" and I gotta say some stuff there is hilarious, here are some of my favorites:
What happened to the Yoshida who immediately killed Moenbryda? Please kill Wuk Lamat I'm begging you
Can't believe they made the MSQ into one really long beast tribe quest
Feels like they just turned Lyse into a cat
Yoshida's turtle shirt referred to this, huh?
The story skippers won so hard
@@KnightOfCarim2 Turns out it was in r/ffxivdiscussion and I was searching in r/ffxiv. That's hilarious! I'm glad they're roasting the story too.. hopefully Yoshi P and team will start to fix things in the upcoming patches if they know everyone hated Dawntrail.
@@sergeantkitty Go to the Japanese official forum and use Google translate, most players there rip the MSQ to shreds. For once, both Reddit and the official forums are united (over something they both hate) lol.
Bravo!
they copy pasta those trashy overuse shonen anime/manga story
Welcome to Japan my dude. Honestly if you can name 5 shounen series that have anything to do STORY WISE with FFXIV other then Tropes then ya Ill admit your right.
simple answer, yes, dawntrail is the worst shit ever, i really want my money back
should take more money to fix it
@@dale7326 actually yes
The last raid fight when you took out the Azem gem you knew that the gloves were off and this was it, you saved the universe from The End Singer with this and nothing can stop you
Yet ... someone had to come in and save the day.... no thanks, we got this
I feel like I'm Sisyphus pushing this MSQ boulder up a fking hill
We went from becoming the hero of light, to hero of dark, stoper of the endsinger. To Wuks handler. I would of loved to explore this area on our own and figure out what's going on with the land. I think fixing this woulda been have us go and arrive and explore, maybe in the middle of the whole succession. Allow us to see how the new world is and then see who the best ruler is ourselves. Would be a lot less babysitting time and let us still feel like the main char. Feeling like the side char is bitter.
Oh no, it's not like we didn't have a patch before the expansion that let us know we'd be helping wuk and that we'd be a side character
@@masterdeathize It's pretty ridiculous to say that Wuk Lamat is the only bad thing. Yes, she is annoying, but pacing is the biggest problem. And quests design. But after that boring start (first 4-5 hours), it's been better for me honestly. I look forward what is gonna be next lol.
@@relaxedclaw literally one or two quest doesn't make me like someone enough to rule a kingdom.
@@MegaAndyGG This needed to start with a bang and the start feels like a crawl. I'm almost done and it does gget better
@@masterdeathize Well, that's nice to hear. lvl 90-91 was the worst for me. Levels 92-93 had been a little bit better already. So i'm just happy to hear it will be better.
Wuk Lamat: Let's split up! I'll go with the WoL :)
Me: :(
Hated so much this expansion man, so much that I will have to go back to wow classic and play friking cataclysm dude, friking cataclysm
real talk
For real... they should have sidelined her after the right of succession. I had a hard time finishing the MSQ because of her.
Realist review of the game I’ve seen so far
Okay I hated Alisaie and Alphinaud, because they always dropped the ball, acted like spoiled children, and Complete know it all, and i 100 percent had to be put on a leash, so they did not fuck anything else up, but I knew THEY NEED CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!!! Endwalker paid off there characters in so many ways, watching them grow up in front of my eyes brought a tear to my eye. Wuk Lamat needs some time to cook it sounds like you just need to skip the rest of the expansion.
@@scottymorgan7868 That's part of the problem. Wuk Lamat might superficially seem like she needs time to cook, but she gets no cooking whatsoever, she learns no lessons, she just gets a dynamis power up and acts nice and it works. She's an atrocious mary sue.
Toxic positivity is what will kill the game eventually.
The community boosts itself as a selling point of the game.
Genuinely its passive aggressive terminally online weirdos who have to stay in the echo chamber.
They are drones who turned Yoshi-P into a messiah, and voraciously attack anyone who dares criticise their saviour's works, be it FFXIV or the degenerate mess that is FFXVI.
They don't even realise they're pushing the rest of us away with their toxic white knighting.
facts
I hated this expansion. Wuk Lamat was everywhere...this stupid writers self insert....even at the final Boss...she had to be there and ruin a good fight which i longed for.
As I saw someone say elsewhere, Wuk Lamat at the final boss is the equivalent of the collective will of all the Scions and the sum total power of Dynamis from an entire planet channeled into the Warrior of Light. By just being Wuk Lamat. By just being there.
@@zephyr8072 The only way I can reconcile myself to this is to head canon that fight as a deranged fever dream or nightmare caused by temporary brain damage incurred while serving as Wuk Lamat's "retainer" for 30 hours straight.
I was fine with it because you're a mentor to her...except the final trial that was sit down kitty this is big boys time and she ruined it
Where in the story do you mentor wuk though????
This MSQ is such utter garbage. The dungeons and Trials were good tho
I fully disagree, the MSQ is awesome.
You have got to be like, racist to believe this or something man. It’s the same quality as all the other MSQs, except this time it’s about appreciating culture.
@@JackDobbs-fi6ib So I'm a racist because I don't like the MSQ? How does any of this have to do with race? The pacing is atrocious, I don't enjoy a majority of the new characters, and I'm spending a majority of my time doing chores for people.
@@Oblivionknight I wouldn’t positively claim that you are, but I certainly suspect it lol. The majority of EVERY msq is doing chores for people, but all of a sudden when there’s a moral panic about a trans voice actor and the MSQ is about the appreciation of native cultures, people are making a stink about it.
@@JackDobbs-fi6ib I literally didn't even know the VA was trans and I couldn't care less. It has nothing to with native cultures or VA. The story is boring and the pacing is terrible. There are moments that were good, but it was an extreme slog to get through. Learning about cultures can be interesting, but spending 2 hrs dealing with alpaca, 2 hours putting together a float, 2 hours cooking a meal isn't interesting.
Just finished DT MSQ. As someone who adores FFXIV's story and has played it since ARR, this is the first time I had to skip some of the cutscenes and dialogue for my own sanity. I couldn't take it. I liked Wuk Lamat at first but the more I progressed through the MSQ the more I felt like she was someone's self-insert OC that was constantly being shoved down my throat at every turn. It was suffocating to the point where I felt relief whenever I finally got a moment away from her to go do stuff with other characters. She had such an overbearing presence throughout the entire MSQ that other characters who I assumed would have more character development, like Krile and Erenville, rarely had moments to shine. She wasn't the only problem I had with the MSQ. Most of the dialogue and story itself read like something from a tween's fanfiction or some bland Saturday morning cartoon from the 90's. It was disappointing to say the least, but hey at least the dungeons/trials have been incredibly fun.
that whole fourth zone with erenville was such a relief, it deserved to have been much longer :(
@@oilyfries9304in my opinion the 4th zone was the worst in the whole game, it annoyed me throughout from start to the end.
I tried warning people in 6.X but they didn't listen, almost all of these writing trends started there.
@@ridleyroid9060 To be fair, people were coming down from EW high so we were more hopeful and tolerant toward missteps. Zero could be a bit boring at times but she had clear character developments and didn't hog all the spotlights as much as Wuk, not to mention the plot about Golbez and Durante was quite nice too (even if the Heel-face-turn was too fast). But DT is an absolutely shitshow.
@@Maymei99 I actually disagree, the 6.X patch series had some of the most attrocious dialogue and inconsistent character writing the game has had, well, ever I wager.
I truly find it to be a deplorable sham, for the way it neutered Vritras character by making him a wimpy little moron who somehow doesn't know what an "equitable agreement between nations" was and had to be told by characters who were about 9000 years younger than him and have led a country for approximatly 6000 years less.
It was just poorly written, including Golbez who flip flopped between an emet selch-esque "I do this because I must" and presenting as "muahahaha I am eeeeeviiiilll muahahaha" It was completely scizophrenic and incomprehensible writing. Zero herself is included in this. For some reason, her needing to be compensated because she is a voidsent is treated as a big part of her character, AND YET, is NEVER actually a flaw they lean into in any way. Any time people needed help from her, she'd just take something stupid just to say she has a compensation and she goes and becomes the hero anyway. All they had to do for Zero was just add a couple of scenes where she legitimately lets something despicable (like letting a guy die or letting a scion get seriously injured) because she wasn't properly compensated.
I know that may have made people hate her but what is the point of having a redemption and learning to follow your conscience as being your character arc if it was pointless to begin with, and you would take someone giving you nod of approval as recompense enough to save their life and save the universe.
It was just an awful awful awful story and many of its writing trends (characters learning some immaculate moral lesson, then going to another character, than going "well you see I have this great friend that taught me bla bla bla" while staring at said character). I really did genuinely, for the 1st time in a long time, feel intellectually insulted by the MSQ.
Comparing to that DT post 97 is much superior imo, and was more bearable up to 97. At least you were exploring new zones.
It's all over the internet and it's actually crazy how similar everyone's feedback is. Pretty much every single person feels the same:
- All characters are one dimensional cardboard cutouts
- Wuk Lamat's english VA is terrible (to be fair tho, I didn't like the japanese VA as well, but that's more to do with the character)
- The pacing is abyssmal
- The cutscenes are padded harder than a cell in a mental institution
- The "gameplay" outside of instanced content is hilariously outdated
- Predictable Disney level storytelling
etc etc
And also the ending being Shadowbringers with worse characters.
_Right down to "Remember us."_
Like come on.
Guess I'm the unique one who kinda enjoyed it all then.
@@luciferr09it’s got better closer to the end, despite the story the dungeon and trials are very good
The only place that has people praising it in large numbers is Twitter. 2/3rds of Reddit are ripping into it, 4chan is having a field day, 5chan is hating it more than everybody else and even the offical forums is full of threads talking about DT's issues. Hell even critics are rating it lower than other expansions
I think the keys I've noticed that bind all of those together are:
- The writer never emulates anyone else's worldview, they seem to have a mono-view of reality and think everyone ever born thinks exactly the same way they do and values everything everything exactly like they do, and they write the characters as if they all had a 'lets all get on the exact same page' meeting before every cutscene, including mind reading and ridiculous leaps of logic that are never questioned.
- The writer fails at every corner to create real characterization. No one is an individual, they're just a few traits and 'quirks' that don't matter longer than 5 mins after they're introduced and then forgotten. It's like they lost their notes after writing every chapter or something. Every scene is an episodic entry in an unchanging person's life, all while they claim they're showing us growth.
- They tell and not show every damn time. And then they talk to us about how they're showing... even while they tell us instead. Then they show us a teeny little bit, and go right back to telling and even re-capping the show they showed us so that no one missed anything.
Like what is this middle school level writing, man?????? Then, yea, the pacing and general padding speak to some kind of poor general product/project management to begin with. It's like they need to fire the entire production company and showrunners if this was a TV show. Reminds me of how GoT went down in flames, so I hope they intervene before the next one.
You forgot to mention that during the Wuk Lamat duty, her battle cry is “there will be peace!” 😒
"SPHENE! I FEEL YOUR PAIN!!!!!"
Consistency, meaningful decisions and agency have always been the strongpoints for me. As well as showing that even the best intentions can have bad consequences.
That seems to have all been thrown out the window.
I was one of those toxic positivity people until DT ending.. No more.
Sameeee I literally have had ENOUGH, and then that ending some played just broke the camel's back.
Pray return to the Wuk Lamat
@@1337penguinman Speak to Wuk Lamat
Final Fantasy XIV: I Can't Believe It's Not Shadowbringers
Starring Wuk Lamat
Special Guest Appearance by Rule 63 Emet-Selch
at least you've opened your eyes
The first moment I knew this expansion's MSQ was bad was when I tabbed out of the game at some random point where I feel the writers wanted me to pay attention, and looked up when WoW's prepatch was. I don't even like WoW.
Speaking of WoW this very much feels like the BfA of FFXIV.
A weak, nonsense expac following from a bombastic high.
@@zephyr8072 nah BFA had more interest than that to say the least. This was Barney type of storytelling.
its not our story anymore, its the story of hairy sailor moon
Imagine the smell
What if normal sailor moon is hairy..?
I got really tired of seeing her furry face in every cutscene, with her wide-eyed surprised Pikachu expression.
I refer to her as Furry Lyse.
@@1337penguinman At least Lyse was pleasant to look at, and Sailor Moon, despite her love for peace and happiness, will absolutely choose violence as the first option in most situations.
Yes, it is pretty god awful. I saw a great analogy on the english official forums when someone tried to claim this was your "mentor" arc and you were now Gandalf. A person replied and said "You aren't a mentor, you aren't Gandalf, you aren't even Pippin, you are a nameless random soldier of Gondor." 90% of the agency in this story is owned by Wuk Lamat. 5% is owned by Koana. The rest is owned by a combination of multiple minor characters, Erenville, and two Scions.
You know who has 0% of the agency? You the player and the Warrior of Light. Even the so called main villain had no agency if you pay attention to what is being said in the final zone.
This better be a one expansion story, because there is nothing in this expansion I want to revisit ever for any reason.
i found incredibly weak the more i look into it, the second half was literally just mentally abusing erenville and his mother did not deserve what happened to her
The story is bad. I ended up playing with subs because Wuk Lamat sounds like a flamboyant man. It made me uncomfortable and pissed me off. She's the whole expansion and never shuts up.
I also wasn't invested in the story and I felt like a babysitter dragging my feet, watching myself become the background character. I buy expansions to be involved and invested.
Maybe I'm just old and it's time to go. I've been playing FF14 since 2015. This step down in story doesn't justify $40.
FF14 is popular because the storytelling is usually very good. I think that's over now. The story keeps me into FF14. Not the gameplay. That's the weakest part.
I'll come back when the next expansion drops. If it's good. I will not invest in a mmo that bores me and makes me cringe.
1.x beta player, this is the worst MSQ ever in the history of this game. It's so sad. I'm so emotionally invested in the success and failures of this game b/c it's been apart of my life for so long. It's not just Wuk Lamat, it's the constant recapping like I don't know what I just did an hour ago, it's the fact Wuk Lamat has more than double the lines of anyone else in Dawntrail or Lyse in Stormblood, it's the insane plotholes that this game would have never looked over in the past (leaving a kid paralyzed even though we have the cure, an entire city gets wrecked by invasion but a dragoon says they weren't even hard, being ok to genocid an entire people due to their existence but they're the same as the entire populace we build up in Ultima Thule). These points aren't even scratching the surface with how bad it is, and these alone would cause me not to play any other game. It's absolutely a travesty. There's no excuse for this.
The cloying stench of shadow lingers still.
Yeah, there are just so many plotholes it's tragic, I really enjoyed the MSQ from lvl 97 onward because it picked up the pace, but so much shit was left on the table or unaddressed and there were so many nonsensical scenes and dumb actions from characters.
I really enjoyed the last zone, I think thematically it makes sense we are helping these long dead souls be put to rest, but I can see your point with Ultima Thule (although I argue it's a bit different).
If this wasn't the same writer as the dogshit 6.X series (which I complaind about INCESSANTLY when it was out but the discourse became not "is this good" but about whether it was filler or not, which was pointless imo, people shoulda noted the very poor writing trends that started there), then they got someone just as bad.
Where is Ishikawa!? FIX THIS MESS!!!!!!!!!!!
>Talk to Wuk Lamat
>Follow Wuk Lamat
>Help Wuk Lamat
>Walk with Wuk Lamat
>Ask about Wuk Lamat
>Carry items for Wuk Lamat
>Give your favorable opinion about Wuk Lamat
>Cheer on Wuk Lamat
>Do chores for Wuk Lamat
>Advise Wuk Lamat
>Get saved by Wuk Lamat
>Dance for Wuk Lamat
>Grovel before Wuk Lamat
>Die for Wuk Lamat
Literally man
Do Taxes for Wuk Lamat
Gotta cut out
"Advise Wuk Lamat"
cause we dont even get to do that.
Meanwhile in social media and such people are coping about us being a mentor role this time. The fuck we are. We are set decoration, no mentor character.
@@RiseInAfterlife I agree, however I will say at the very least we haven't reached "White Knight Chronicles" level of non-existence, it's a JRPG where you created your character then after the first couple of scenes, your presence is literally ignored, as if you were some ghost following the group.
Reading the comments looks like quitting after ew was the right choice.
It was. I almost did. Hated EW and was hoping 7.0 would rope me back in. Nope lol, utter garbage.
It's the Marvel Effect I think.
When you name something "End" it means it's THE END.
I quit last year during ShB.
ARR: 🤢
HW: 🗿
SB: 🤮
ShB: 🥱
Seems to be. I don't regret saving $59.99 either.
After doing the Zoraal Ja trail. Soken and the encounter design team almost made me forget how mid the story was 🤣🤣
I felt exactly the same way, what a great trial
The hat update for Hrothgars (and Vieras) hasn't dropped. My disappointment is immeasurable and the update is ruined.
If it truly was a "clipping issue" then I wonder why I can wear headwear, where my beard clips through everything and looks stupid. Another reason for why this is absolute and utter BS: Have you ever seen Au Ra wearing anything? Hrothgars and Vieras are just like blue mages, limited.
It's never going to be implemented. Just DL the mod for it.
@@cordeliacentauri1737 I suppose that you are right on this one. At least that way I can get to make glam that way.
At the very least this means Wuk Lamat has no hat to tip.
Warrior of Light has been officially demoted to Lackey of Lamat
Felt like a Disney predictable story. That's what I think we hate the most, a predictable story
It threw me for a loop.
@@minuette1752That's cool bro. Didn't do it the right way for a lot of us though. I genuinely feel like this expansion is the most divisive one, and that's coming from a Stormblood enjoyer. I feel like after getting jipped of our main character position by a new NPC, you have to understand why there are people on the player base that aren't happy with how things ended up going.
@@blaizemarquez2967 We should be the npc and not the main focus. It is not all about the warrior of light especially since well shadowbringers and Elidibus being dealt with.
@@minuette1752 Sorry, but the four preceding expansions says something different. This was like a new RPG, with our character and the scions acting as dumbed down or less driven versions of themselves being crossover characters with the new protagonist, Wuk Lamat. I ended up liking her too you know, but she over stayed her welcome and got away with too much. The merit of her claim literally came from the get go about being willing to enlist our aid. Mid way through the game she must have become a champion of dynamis after barely any struggle since she completed multiple martial feats repeatedly that were totally out of her scope, culminating in her stealing our coup de grace in the ending when we were seemingly getting recognition again. She had character growth, but it wasn't written supremely well, and came at the expense of other characters being decorations most of the time.
In the end it's an opinion. If that's what you want to see, cool, but you can't be annoyed when we suddenly shift course from what we have done every expansion and part of the player base doesn't enjoy that. It's an opinion dude, comprehend your view isn't the only one, and more importantly that none of them are strictly right. Listen and stop thinking when someone says "we" that it has to include you too and you need to take up the banner to protect XIV. Clearly you aren't in the group bud. I'm glad you enjoyed it though, genuinely. That's awesome for you. I hope you understand how loud the discourse is though, trumping Stormblood's hate by far. Far too loud to gaslight them to think differently. Square is likely to not follow suit similarly again to Dawntrail's story though. It's what they did after Stormblood's reception, and I hope for the same this time as well since Dawntrail has an awesome setting and plenty of space for some cool lore additions.
@@blaizemarquez2967 Stormblood was great as well. Man you just do not understand the good guy vs the bad guy in Final Fantasy games. It is never that deep and they make moments that are actually sad, Dawntrail has a lot of them. You seem like the person who only cares about content, endgame that is and complex story, sorry this game has never had a complex story. Do what you will with my words what you will.
I was so frustrated playing this as i felt the WOL was treated like a background character and even when the stakes were risen after Alexandria, Wuk Lamat still insisted on taking the lead while WOL was like "kay". Hopefully Square writes her out of the story like they did with Lyse. At least with Lyse, there were less cutscenes.
“I have to go now. My planet needs me.”
*Note: Wuk Lamat died on the way back to her home planet.*
XIV is not my main game, but I have played since the beginning. For me, XIV was always the game I could chill in, get lost in a story, and relax. The narrative has had highs and lows in all these years, and I am still a staunch defender of Stormblood post-story.
So with my background out of the way. I was cautious going into Dawntrail, I tried to keep an open mind. However, I had no interest in anything going on. Nothing pulled me in and invested me. After about an hour I was like why don't I care? There was for me at least, nothing to grab my attention right away and hold it. In my opinion, all forms of media need that grabbing moment early on, or else who cares?
This is the first time in 10 years that I skipped 99% of the dialogue. I would glance at it in the text box after to get the gist of it. The constant fetch quests made me want to fall asleep, and if I hadn't been playing with someone I probably would have. The cadence was slow, and it stayed there. I felt no amazing build-up, and I would have been happy with just a little bit, just a touch. It was just drudgery.
Our character felt like they were reduced to just an average everyday person (and arguably babysitter), and not the gods-defeating savior of humanity. Wuk Lamat for me was underwhelming, they didn't have an intriguing personality, and the voice acting felt flat (in English at least) and unemotional.
The moments that had the opportunity to be amazing just weren't. I never felt emotional highs and lows. It almost feels like they were trying to play it safe, too safe.
I made it to the end and didn't feel anything. Nothing. The game whose narrative through the years could make me feel unshakable rage, and also drive me to tears, did nothing. What I did feel was relief that it was over. This is a tragedy.
I probably for the first time will not play the patches. For those who are XIV main-liners, I really do hope that the patch content is better for you. I hope for you that they pull it together, and give you all that you deserve for supporting for so long. That being said, please remember that it is not bad to voice your opinions. The only way to get through to the devs is to let them know what you enjoyed, and what you didn't. That is the only way to create change. Don't listen to the people who will tell you that you are wrong, and your opinion is wrong. It isn't. You pay money and put time into the world that SE is creating. That makes your voice important.
Take care.
I'm going to go and have a wuk lamat (a shit, hold my beer).
Wuk Lamat is basically Naruto hell she even has the same color scheme and has the ancient power of Talk-no-jutsu
“I’m gonna become the next dawnservant believe it”
Naruto but without all the hardships he endured that can make the audience more sympathetic and understanding towards him, and without all the hard work he put in to become stronger and achieve his goals. So essentially its just Boruto with Naruto's personality slapped on >.> I LIKE Naruto, Wuk Lmao is just fcking annoying.
The Naruto from Zabuza arc alone had more depth than the entirety of Wuk Lamat's journey throughout the MSQ
I wanted to help koana instead, he was based like Shikamaru
Dawntrail is so bad that I'm leaving the game. Endwalker was the writing on the wall, but Dawntrail is the wrecking ball. After 10 continuous years of faithful subbing and nearly daily playing, I'm calling quits. Maybe YoshiP did me a favor by letting the game go so off-kilter... he's released me to fly free.
You planning going to a different MMO?
I will also quit after 9 long years
Maybe going back to wow classic
bye 🙋
Yeah don't blame you. You lived the best years of the game. Fly away :)
I just load The First Descendant. Maybe that will be good!
I'm just so bored with Dawntrail. Fetch quests after fetch quests. Wuk Lamat been with us 24/7 😑 She's kinda annoying, and never go away. It's just boring af. I still like the new zones tho. And maybe the first new dungeon gonna be good. I don’t know. Very bored at the moment tho. I want to like the game, but it's pretty f*cking hard to like it lmfao.
let's go on another adventure on Etheirys when a new dawn breaks once more, hopefully to a brighter day.
I wanted to like Dawntrail, I really really wanted to, and I kept gaslighting myself into loving the game and thinking it was an amazing story. Dawntrail has some good parts, the dungeons for example, as well as the combat for trials are not bad changes, the graphics update is drop-dead gorgeous and is so much better looking than I initially thought. The small changes like Dual Dye Channels, options to turn off other people, and the changes to blacklist are very very welcome QOL changes that I can't live without.
The MSQ was marketed entirely different than what it actually is, that it honestly feels extremely misleading. It was marketed as a fun anime filler episode, one where the WOL would go on a brand new adventure and take a break. And in that adventure we would have "The rite of succession" where the WOL and "some scions" would compete against each other for their promise to become Dawnservant. But it fails on that as well, Thancred and Urianger at the beginning say "How it excites me to compete against fellow scions" but throughout the expansion we don't even get to compete with them. We don't even get a single duty fighting Thancred or Urianger, and they could literally be cut out of the entirety of the expansion and literally NOTHING would change at all. Not just that, but Gulool Ja Ja also ruins any intrigue the story could have had when he literally states that none of the would-be leaders are ready, and that the rite of succession is entirely made for that. However, this doesn't mean Wuk Lamat is good, it just means that out of all the competitors who are not Wuk Lamat (Or Koana to some extent), none of them are actually competent to become a leader to begin with. As in, anyone with a pulse could see that it would be beyond awful if Bakool Ja Ja became dawnservant, since he is a fascist who only cares about Mamool Ja (nobody would support him but mamool ja, nothing but overthrowing), Zoraal Ja is just Roman Empire generic expansionist (Boo, bootleg Garlean empire AGAIN) and Koana is a Capitalist?!?! (Kind of interesting, but isn't even competition), so even from the beginning you already see that these people can't become the dawnservant which makes it extremely predictable. Not just that, but there is no political intrigue, instead of these ideologies clashing, kind of like how America was split up between colonial entities and people vying for power, there really is none of that in Dawntrail. Honestly, it makes me feel like the expansion itself should have been about Gulool Ja Ja becoming leader, that would have been WAY MORE INTERESTING than this boring rite of succession. Imagine if maybe we only had 2-3 scions come with us, and we were in the party that helped Gulool Ja Ja become leader, and we trace our own path in this brand new continent. So much interesting characters could have been established, characters we train together with, (who are of all the different tribes in tural) and every single character could have their own time to shine as we meet them in each of the different locations. Instead, the WOL is relegated to a boring mercenary / sellsword, and is basically invisible for the entire expansion.
Instead of having rivals, they are immediately established as "someone who should be stopped" and essentially it makes the story of DT more dire than it should be at first glance. Wuk Lamat's only qualifications are also that she "loves peace" like okay? She literally has nothing else to offer as a leader to begin with. It just feels like a very mediocre shonen where we are teaching Wuk Lamat very very basic things, and basic concepts. This would be fine as the first expansion in the entirety of the story, but after 5 expansions, and 10 years of development, nobody wants to go back in time to ARR anymore. Every single tribe in Tural is honestly extremely boring too, and the entirety of Dawntrail can be described as a bunch of very disjointed tribe quests masquerading as a MSQ. Pelupelu are traders? The bird people are passionate about reeds in the ground, the cat people love xibruk pibil and used it to stop fighting. The funny thing honestly, is that the only tribe that was even somewhat interesting is the Mamool Ja, Mamook actually had a pretty interesting backstory that was dark, and was very well done. It was the only part of the expansion which even made me slightly emotional. Other than that, each of the rites which you have to do are like follows: Go to place > Exposition Dump > 5 minute cutscene of only talking > One of her brothers / Bakool Ja Ja shows up > Wuk Lamat says she isnt smart / strong / good enough > Bakool Ja Ja does something dumb > Wuk Lamat talks to people in village and does very basic anthropology > Wuk Lamat does extremely basic thing > Wuk is praised as a smart jelly bean adorable kitty kat who can do nothing wrong. > Wuk gets keystoned and rants about how much she now knows about Tural. Rinse and repeat, that's the entire expansion for the first half in a nutshell.
What drives me nuts and has for awhile is how 75% of the quests in this game are "Go to 3 places" or "Talk to 3 people" or "Click on 3 objects". Final Fantasy 14 - The Quest of Three. Its so mundane and stale.
And besides the story and Wuk Lamat. The expansion is a copy paste of the same systems from the last 2 expansions. Same = number of zones, number of instances and when they open, number of trials and when they unlock, roles quests, crafting and gathering quests, aether flying in zone unlocks, collectibles. There is no new gameplay its a new paintjob and not an interesting one, its pretty though.
Yoshi p copy pasterino everything. Look at ff16 same moggle as ff14. We all got robbed and scammed by him and soken.
If I had to describe DT MSQ it would be
Estinien having the time of his life, while the WoL got stuck babysitting discount Naruto.
Internal transcript excerpt from Dawntrail development.
"Wuk Lamat should be louder, angrier and have access to a time machine."
"Whenever Wuk Lamat isn't on the screen, all the other characters should be asking 'Where's Wuk Lamat?'"
The best zone they've ever made gets turned into the worst zone they've ever made for dumb insipid story reasons
I honestly cannot believe how trash the story is in dawntrail, its so strange to me. I played the game from start to finish, loved it so much, shadowbringers and endwalker are so good. wtf happened? Who did they hire for wuk lamat voiceover, she clearly didn't give a shit. Its unreal how bad the voice acting is compared to others, it seems almost like a parody at times.
Yeah, Whack Lamat's voice lines were 80's Voltron levels of phoned in.
i refunded the xpac 1 hour in.
it was tolerable until, during the tour, when we got to the gate closed off barring the bridge to Yok Tural or whatever is called, my WoL was gawking at the massive Gate and Poochie went of on a little tangent, "yeah so that gate and bridge are more important than you listening to my dreams and aspirations, ok...?"
???????????????????
first off, how dare you? we came with you from malms away to place your ass on a throne you obviously have no deserving right to be on. Just cuz your Papa was a hotshot. You don't deserve shit Poochie. At least Lyse got shat on by most of the NPC's in Stormblood
Update: I rebought the game and refunded it again a second time, noticed the game still looks like utter shit
I did not have a "bad" time per se, I still enjoyed it. But Wuk Lamat was too much focus on. I argue she's worse than Lyse.
Anyway, hopefully they bring back Ishikawa for post-dawntrail or atleast for the next full expansion... She's the goat.
I think what makes Lyse worse to me is that they butchered what was once a fun character before dumping her into an alliance leader role to rot. At least wuk lamat had no character to ruin
@@BlaizeTheDragon Lyse was far better than Wuk Lamat tho.
Lyse was dropped into the position after the leader died and was defnitely underprepared and faced with actual foes, Yotsuyu in Doma that wants to govern everyone to death and the Garlean Terminator Zenos in Ala Migho.
Wuk lamat has absolutely no adversaries except a half baked character thats defeated by her (*groan*) singlehandedly after she remembers that she's awesome (*GROAN*).
Lyse had to do stuff to unite the people and grow into a leader which wasnt depicted that well tbh.
Wuk lamat is universaly liked from the beginning for no reason.
I'd go as far as say Wuk Lamat is an absolute Mary Sue. Her appearance at the trial made me yell out in rage irl.
Really needed to introduce wukky in like 6.3 or earlier, and just deny her request to go on an adventure with her, since there are more important things happening, then at after the void issue was dealt with, reintroduce her getting desperate and betrayed etc, to invoke sympathy. But as for the whole 7.0 story? Fuck, it'd need some reworks, like seriously, who signed off on this?
Did Sweet Baby inc work on this story or something?
no a pink hair chick named Kate Cwynar was the lead English localizer.
I think the biggest problem is this toxic positivity culture, if Blizzard or Bungie released a blunder like this, it would be hell on earth for them.
But for some reason we just allow Square Enix to get away with it.
5 years of the same exact boring and homogenized jobs, which judging by the hotfixes they already announced, is looking more like 7 and a half years. People are TIRED.
Honestly, leveling jobs in this expac I still see people with negative ability to play their jobs somehow. It just goes to show that, no matter how stupid easy you make this shit, people will still fuck it up. That being said, I did EX1 and loved it, and the dungeons have been a significant step up.
I think it’d be nice to have a balance. But I’d choose toxic positivity over some of the toxic negativity that existed in WoW. That ultimately ends up creating a really poor relationship between the devs and the player base.
@@supergold9390 Whichever leads developers to work on the god damn game.
@@SlinkyRock the hotfixes just announced are presumably due to negative feedback from the JP community so it’s not exactly that they aren’t working on the game. It’s just not in a direction that you like, which is an understandable grievance. I’ve mostly seen negative sentiment about those changes so I’m not sure how the toxic positivity applies in this instance.
@@supergold9390 Nah. It's been ten years with the same exact questing gameplay.
Say what you want about Blizzard but WoW went above and beyond to make questing more enjoyable. This is just one of many examples of XIV being a mediocre game that doesn't get updated.
It's fine to grift for SE but these people do NOT deserve your loyalty.
I completely agree with everything you’ve said. It makes me scared for the future honestly but with people breaking their stupid toxic positivity , the team behind dw can only improve now. And I was wondering , who were you referring to when you mention that person in storm blood who hated our character? I can’t figure it out who it might be 😂
So what happened is Natsuko Ishikawa, the writer of Shadowbringers and half of Endwalker (Banri Oda wrote the bad half) got promoted to writing manager and isn't doing the actual writing anymore. This expansion was written by people who previously had only written side stories and job quests. And they weren't even *good* side stories and job quests. And on the American localization side of things, the woke obviously got hold of this localization. Wuk Lamat's voice talent is trans. Male to female trans voices sound strange at the best of times (as a logical outcome of forcing a psheuofemale voice out of a man's voicebox), so the voicework for Wuk Lamat sounds really strange for that reason. It's probably also what limits their emotional range, since forcing their male vocal chords to produce a female-adjacent sound probably absorbs a lot of their energy and limits their range significantly.
I'm in agreement overall. Dawntrail isn't just mediocre, it's *bad*. The content is fine, in a lot of places the level and duty design team absolutely killed it. But the writers and localizers dropped the ball and then stabbed it with a screwdriver.
Dawntrail's story is a steady downwards slope until, when Sphene is introduced, it falls off a cliff
The thing that people dont realize is that this writing went downhill actually in late 6.4 / 6.5 with Zero, who was really interesting at first then was written to undergo the flattest character arc in the game.
Yeah, the later half of EW is a major reason why I'm still hesitant to buy this expansion.
well said thats why I hated post 6.0 patches in EW
Like the fucked up part of expansion the content around it is nice but jesus the story is plot hole more than swiss cheese
Who is he talking about around 44:00, regarding the character from Stormblood? Im watching my friend go through it now, and I have no clue who he's referencing. Is it supposed to be Fordola or Zenos?
Fordola, surely
#BringBackIshikawa
Even though ARR is better, it's nonsense to compare the two in the first place. ARR came out 10 years ago or something. You'd except something that came out in 2024 would raise the bar, not put it back to a decade in the past
The worst part of DT for me is that the story had potential. Complex ideas were hinted at in both halves of the story, but they were either given simple, unrealistic solutions (Wuk Lamat solving Mamook's problems in 15 minutes) or were ignored entirely in order to focus on something much less interesting and relatable (the usage of regulators in Solution 9 and the implications of using the dead to sustain the living). The story had some good characters, but they were relegated to side characters to overfocus on Wuk Lmao, which is a shame considering that XIV's story is usually great at giving its characters equal screentime.
At the very least, the writers and Kate Cwynar should be let go. Several of the new English VAs need to be replaced as well.
pink hair chick first time I saw her I said yh 14 is going down a dark path
@@SILVERONINappears you were correct. Not only has she sabotaged the English version, but she’s also provided her fellow cultists with an ideological/political/fetishistic defense of the otherwise indefensible story. They’re constantly repeating the claim that anyone not in love with this story is only pretending to hate it for political reasons, i.e. they feel personally attacked when others don’t worship their “representation” and believe they’re politically under siege when people actively criticize it. Compound that with this game’s preexisting “toxic positivity,” where genuine fans simply refuse to criticize the games legit flaws, and it’s a recipe for disaster…unless you’re Sony.
I was being easy on DT giving it the ARR pass. But no, it doesnt deserve it or earned it.
This is the 5th expansion, where is the talent to show for it?
This is the worst expansion MSQ so far, how did this get approved by every level of leadership?
Where was YoshiP?
being distracted with ff16 production i would guess, maybe its all a ploy to show whos the real boss in square enix, and things turn to shit if he is less involved in them xD
He was playing Elden Ring; that's how BLM's damage got completely nuked. Manz wasn't paying attention
Didn't yoshi p mention during a live letter in EW they will let the young and aspiring writers and developers lead the new series of ffxiv? Well that was a mistake.
All the characters were comically bad....they were straight-up caricatures. the lead up was boring as hell. There was zero actual motivation from anyone and it was so one-dimensional. None of them had ACTUAL policies...this was quite literally like watching the US elections with everyone weirdly culty. We stood in the background the entire time, doing absolutely nothing and just let people die knowing we could have prevented the whole damn thing because shit plot. They killed everything that we were from previous expacs (We were the first to dive in and do what needed done when our character knew what was going on only to now sit on the sideline knowing what's about to happen.) and the writers made sure to let us know this as our character gave raised eyebrows and glares at all the right people but because Wuk Lamat we decided to do NOTHING. This expac put so much innocent blood on our hands...we might as well have cut the city down ourselves.
Mustn't upstage Lammy Sue, even if it would save lives!
28:00 Yeah, they pulled a Zenos again.
Even though people were unhappy that they pulled a Zenos with Ran'jit in Shadowbringers. But at _this_ point it's completely and utterly ridiculous.
In Endwalker when they wanted to do a low point they actually put some thought into it in a manner that both put you in an actual stressful situation and demonstrated the power of the WoL.
But here where RIGHT BACK to the villain with scripted immunity. It is AWFUL.
By far the worst expac story.... "but its another storytelling since the beginning and whatever.."
Yes, man. I was so prepared for slow things since the the annoucement of EW, but I wasnt expecting that would be so bad... and one of the things that drives me crazy its the super cliche anime shounen friendship power, peace and love.
Plus the quests are super annoying like its same thing in past expacs:
- Speak with Alphinaud
- Speak with Alphinaud
Cs cs cs
- Speak with Alphinaud
- Speak with Alphinaud
Cs cs cs
- Speak with Wuk Lamat
- Speak with Wuk Lamat
At least the dungeons and boss fights are fun.
You need more "Speak with Wuk Lamat" to be representative of how it plays out
I also thought koana was going to be a low key bad guy.
And then there’s wuk lamat, don’t get me started on her voice acting in English.
She sounded more whiny than anything else in situations where she’s supposed to be emotionally passionate
Same, I thought Koana was going to be the antagonist, but I ended up wanting to side with him and give him the throne.
And considering he's the one who actually does any ruling, planning, thinking, and diplomating, he's the real king who handles all the hard work while Poochie just off doing whatever she wants and takes credit for things she doesn't do.
I told myself I was sure EW would be my stop for FF14. However, I wanted to give Dawntrail and the subsequent patches to see what they were cooking. I'm stopping after this expac. I'll play with friends, but I won't be going any further.
I personally only have a problem with the first half of the story. You get a load of world building and tribe lore, without ever needing it at the end. Beginning with the 4th region i liked nearly everything.
For me i also personally have much more caring feelings for Otis than wuk lamat, but i dont feel she is a bad written character, its just that the pacing in which she was present in contrast with how many excuses existed to send the scions away was horribly managed. I mean 2 scions didnt even appear until the end basically. Thats just my opinion though.
I agree, I nejoyed nearly everything from Shalooani afterwards. I really felt that they tried to bait and switch with the worldbuilding, but it didn't hit as hard because they already showed solution nine in the marketing material.
"ITS A RESET" cried the fans as they played their level 90 character.
LOL, underrated comment
Man for real. Did any job actually get anything other than a couple extra ogcd attacks?
@@Void-qz1zd some disappointing visuals to go with them. Do those count?
HAHAHAHA
The only reason I sat through Dawntrail is so that when the next expansion is out, I can play it. I hate Wuk Lamat.
Can't even believe I'm saying this, but Dawntrail made me preorder War Within... I was planning to spend the next few months with ffxiv, but I can't force myself to. This crap expansion destroyed all my motivation. I struggled so much to force myself through it and now I'm so burned out and disappointed. First time ever I feel like I wasted money on ffxiv, and I've bought so many things in it over the years.
I slugged it to the Forth zone and turned it off Tell you what if it’s gonna be like this next seven years I’m done
Okay so this is kinda going to be a rambling about the good and the bad of the story, what kept me going, etc. THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR THE END AT THE VERY END BUT I DIDN’T TALK TOO MUCH IN DETAIL BC I KNOW YALL ARE STILL FINISHING UP. This expansion had me having mixed feelings. Overall I did end up enjoying it, despite hiccups and predictability early on. In someways despite the fetch quest and slower pace of the first half, I overall enjoyed the kind of ‘The Amazing Race’ feeling of it. I think that the biggest problem was that two of the candidates were just so obviously bad for the country and the other parts of the world that it seemed obvious that they weren’t going to make them win. I think my biggest criticism of the story was Bakool Ja Ja. I think a redemption could have been convincing, because when I got to the part where we did learn his real motivations he really was revealed to be that lame bully kind of character that is shaped by a society that rests their existence on him alone. It was harrowing in a way, and even though I was mad at him for the things he had done and was annoyed by the lack of response from the Giants examiner especially. They could have tried to make it convincing, in lore it seems that these two headed mamool ja are supposed to be some of the most powerful types of people to walk around. I could understand if maybe the examiners were afraid to deny him especially if the contest for whatever reason did go south for the other candidates, but they really didn’t give ANY reason at all, which was weird.
I wouldn’t say Wuk Lamat is so one dimensional (except maybe in her humor which did get a bit grating.) I think her arc about naivety could have been handled a little better, but I think they touched on all the parts that made it make sense to me. She starts out as a character who screams for peace and ends as a character who screams for peace, but I do think that her understanding of peace does change throughout the story. At first peace is just the opposite of her Zoraal Ja, just simply not fighting. No war, no violence. But throughout the course of the expansion she realizes that peace is not an inherent trait or just simply an ideal, but is a byproduct of emotional and material requirements being met by her own people, and that the nation that her father created was not as peaceful as she was led to believe. That it still had lingering issues as a result of Galool’s presence as a leader (especially in regard to Bakool’s motivations and the problems of the Mamook). Not to say that he didn’t do a great job, but Wuk really wanted to take it a step up. She didn’t just want to preserve the peace, but she wanted to fortify and strengthen it with her newfound knowledge of what she thinks peace is.
As I said before the Bakool Ja Ja bit did wrap up and 180 very quickly, which I do agree is bad, but that isn’t to say there isn’t value to come from the interactions we did get between Wuk and Bakool. In a way, a character I think we all expected to be a bigger threat being pacified by having their material needs met, and having the emotional burden of an entire race be taken away from him. He believed he was superior not only because of Galool’s existence, but because he needed to be for a society that told him to. I wish when Wuk told him she understood where he was coming from, but said that his actions were not okay, I wish the writers had done more with that moment. In that moment I wished that Bakool had become more present in the story especially going into the second half, and I think he would have served as a good counterpoint to Wuk throughout the rest of the expansion, and it would have helped make a redemption feel more earned.
What I really loved about Wuk Lamat is that moment of depression where her idealistic peace is challenged by the attack on her city. She’s learned that peace is earned up to this point. She’s learned a more nuanced view of peace, and is now faced by an enemy that doesn’t care to understand, and is simply an insecure conquerer. Wuk Lamat now as a leader, has to make a decision that made her change as a character. (Zoraal Ja is also a static character, but I think that the writers did a good thing by revealing that his motivations were ultimately ridiculous. “ we must fight so people know and appreciate peace “ whatever dude. I think anyone who called him out on that in their critiques are right to do so. The story even recognizes that this is ridiculous, because when we finally get to the end he basically states that he was insecure, and that his motivations were him rationalizing this ridiculous goal of his.) When Wuk Lamat says she will kill her own brother, it felt like a major moment for her. Part of it was out of anger and frustration at her father’s death, and in that episode the WOL tells her to calm down, but it’s not like she didn’t still kill her brother, so I don’t really agree with the claim where she goes from peace to KILL BROTHER to peace.
The part of the expansion that really won it over for me was the last bit. I know you haven’t finished it yet so I won’t get too into detail but it handled familiar themes in a very different way, and I think made you as a player feel so much more responsible. The final area was one of my favorite parts. And I felt for the main antagonist, and I wish the writers had shown some more effort at Wuk and the antagonist to try and work stuff out, but at the same time I’m glad that it was ultimately decided that it would be untenable. The power scaling of the story had gotten so high, that I’m glad that we had no alternative to make things work out. Especially because I feel like this whole area was the entire thematic idea of memory keeping people alive taken to its extreme. The ending was probably one of my favorite moments of the game so far, which makes me feel so all over the place about this expansion.
Sorry for the unorganized essay i didn't realize i had written so much until i finished. But tbh ive just had a lot of thoughts about the expansion and have not had anyone to talk to about it yet.
I will also say that I agree the music has been amazing. I also have enjoyed most of the encounter design so much. The final boss has some of my favorite music and mechanics for a casual fight. Geninuely had so much fun, especially bc it was the first time I ever got to use healer lb3 in casual content.
What you said about the "Toxically Optimistic" FFXIV fans is so dead on. I'm a die hard, multiple decade long Final Fantasy fan, but I can be honest when Square serves up mediocrity/bad content. But some fans are just toxically optimistic. I had FC members jumping down my throat for criticizing Dawntrail. I even tried explaining that like with 1.0 FFXIV, constructive criticism saved the game but nope, they would not settle for anything less than rating the expansion 12/10.
Special shoutout to Kathryn Cwynar for her contributions in making Dawntrail the worst story in the entire FF franchise ☺
Really worth reading her interview with PC Gamer, 'FF14 Dawntrail dev was nervous about the “bold approach” to Wuk Lamat'. She set herself up there. :D
@@lolcat5303 I mean if the bold approach was annoying with terrible VA. but remember the twins were once annoying. even if their VA was still better
@@zeehero7280 People must have pretty low standard on VA quality lately if her voice acting qualifies as terrible.
Kate is a translator/localization team. Ishikawa's assistant is the new writer of dawntrail. What you on about?
@@cordeliacentauri1737kate 😂
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
I think it's because Sweet Baby inc involvement.
Definitely!
I see comments where they say Estenian had a better adventure than we did.
I happen to agree. I think the route they should have went was for us to just go and explore Tural. Have our own adventure. Meet the different peoples and cultures. Maybe even meeting Wuk Lamat and the others on our journey. First as spectators in seeing them compete for the throne and hearing about it from the local populace. To then befriending Wuk Lamat and coming to her aid. Maybe we could have saved her on one of the trials against a beast or something and then parted ways. Got further in the story by exploring. Meet Koana at some part and assist him with something such as being attacked by Ba Gool Ja Ja.
It should have been us adventuring and the right of succession naturally coming into our paths. For it to cultivate with us coming together to save Wuk Lamat and Koana in the end. Koana could still realize Wuk Lamat was better for the throne. Wuk Lamat would prove she wasnt as strong as she acts and realizes the importance of allies and learning about her people.
We could have even been summoned by the Dawnservent in the middle of our roaming to thank us for watching out for his children and also wishing to fight us.
By our wanderings we would have heard the tales of how he united Tural. We would experience the land ourselves and come close to its people to the point where, once all paths led to the golden city (a feat we would also try to do regardless of the rite of succession) we would wish to save it from Sphene.
We would be exploring and shepherding its people. Which would circle back to what we did as Azem before the world was Sundered.
I actually enjoyed the rite of succession for the most part. I also liked the old west zone, though it was basically filler. But when I realized Wuk Lamat was going to come to the new content with us, and the fact that she never really got over her frustrating talks of peace, ended up killing it for me.
Yes it is. Worst expansion ever. I hope they do a very good turn around or this game wont last another 10 years
The weird naming of people and places is a wrong move. You need a gamer to at least remember them for a better impression. More than half of the characters and places in this game , tbh I still have a hard time remembering them. Currently in the 92-23 range of MSQ and has been generic thus far.
Thanks for telling us you're a racist who cannot handle other cultures to your own. True G*mer right here.
@@ridleyroid9060 ah yes everything is racist nowadays to you silly westerners
It may be bad but that doesnt matter since there soooooo much to do for me from previous expansions , that i can sink my teeth into, mount farming , housing , crafting , alt gearing , unique items and more
Nah, perfectly fine. Hell I'm all caught up and tbh the story is the LAST thing I play the game for. I like to raid, collect mounts, minions, craft, help others, learn every single class - if I played for the story I would've quit in ARR & i wouldn't have missed anything. While shadowbringers was my favorite expansion, it doesn't touch the stories of my favorite games ( majora's mask, ffix, ffvii ( og ). it was enjoyable, but that's it. everything else keeps me coming back.
By far, yes it is
Very well said. I feel a bit awkward and suspect about the story when I playing through it, but after hearing your summary I already 100% sure dawntrail have "DEI" influence in the story.
Oh, definitely.
yep
What character from Stormblood are you taking about that hates the Warrior of Light but turns around on them? Fordola? Ejika? (Garlean) Ramza?
It's disheartening to hear how bad the story is. But I can also view it similar to another live service game Fate Grand/Order (a gacha game). Where the story is the main draw but you spend so little time in comparison that as long as the dungeons and aesthics are on point can kind of overlook it.
Yep right there with you. I kept hoping st the last zone there would be some kind of redemption or twist or something... But nope... Same boring ass shit all over again... Let's go learn about all these people that we don't care about. I really hope the writer is fired and I am not interested in this game anymore. I quit playing and am over it. Such a shame as I've been here from the start.
What you mention about the people banning and attacking when we criticize something in the game is very true, I even ended up being insulted for making a polite criticism. In many non properly working contents there are always the super enthousiasts that no matter how bad is the content they praise it as if it is gold.
It's not just the worst expansion MSQ, it's one of the worst stories in any game I've ever played. There's 30 quests of meaningful plot and 70 that are contrived scenarios to get the player to do busy work to fill time. It's horrible.
I hate Dawntrail hard.... made me delete this shit game!
Previous expansions set up high expectations when it comes to story and quality of writing. This... not quite sure what this was supposed to be. I literally started to groan in cringe with every cliche they could pull and utter lack of depth for its characters. Even my wife, who is very kind person got a moment when she looked at me mid cutscene and ask in visible disgust whether some characters (looking at you Bakool Ja Ja) are turning into Jar Jar Binks. And regarding toxic positivism- it that's how you really feel about story, liking it and all, I guess it's matter of taste and that is okay. However, I strongly disagree, that some characters should get a free pass from scrutiny and criticism cause you know, they represent virtuous characteristics. For the love of Hydaelyn, don't put your head in sand stating this writing was good through gritted teeth because you are afraid cancel culture.
Just taking about the absurd mess with the names:
Erenville: "There's a small settlement to the southeast of here─Luwateninyawawsa.
Meet me there and I'll explain everything."
I started making up names for these areas, I hate this expansion lol
Spoiler : Sadly, the ending that you havent reached yet is not much better, tropy, nonsensical and abrupt cut with a lot of 'WHAT THE F' things going on and just moving like its been a great journey while it was an excruciatingly mid to bad babysitting session
And the godawful disney music playing everytime the power of naivet...friendship prevails makes me actually ashamed of being a fan of the game. That's not normal
@@orb8540 What game have you been playing? Endwalker literally involves defeating the living embodiment of despair with the power of hope and friendship my dude.
@@habuowe3483 I dunno what you've been drinking but no one criticizing the power of friendship, it's a staple of Final Fantasy, I'm criticizing the awful track that plays like a bad anime spinoff ost 3 times during MSQ. And the conflation between the power of conviction and trust (or friendship), and arrogant ignorance (Wuk Lamat). Basically Wuk Lamat is Alphinaud pre-crystal braves.
@@orb8540 Wuk WAS, until, ya know, the entire second damn half of the game happens. Once again, what game did you play?
@@orb8540 Its funny? Because one of the few things I haven't seen critiqued is the soundtrack? Once again, I had no issues with it.
The wol never fought Bakool Jaja. He ran away before we could. People could sense how dangerous we were. Bakool Jaja's shift was because he was abandoned and exiled for failing to beat Wuk Lamat. His father was the one that urged him to be a bully. He was living up to certain expectations placed on him that he never wanted for himself. Wuk Lamat vowed to find another way for his people that didn't rely on blessed siblings, thus ending the cycle of sacrifice. His helping Wuk and having respect for her makes sense. Of much of my criticisms of the story, that followed logically.
I haven’t struggled to get through MSQ since ARR but hey of DT is ARR 2.0 then there will be a Shadowbringers 2.0….eventually.