Video

If Narut--- Wuk Lamat had stayed in Tuliyollal after the attack, and the story had moved onto Erenville and Krile, this could have been just on par with Stormblood or Heavensward, specially with the Final Fantasy IX themes. But no, Luff- Wuk Lamat had to return. Seriously Japanese writters sometimes just stick to a theme/character and over do it, and this was one of those times. At least i am very tired of anime narratives and specially 25 year old shonen anime narratives.

I am not done with the MSQ but I have skipped more in this Expac than all off the game combine and yes that also includes ARR lol it's very sad because I really wanted to enjoy it but sadly I just can't I am going to play the parts of the Expac that I like which so far are the classes and dungeons and raids but the MSQ I am sadly going to skip because I just really feel not motivated to go through and read/watch.

While I appreciate your honesty and giving legitimate critizism, I simply hard disagree that DT is "worthwhile". The writing alone has so many flaws, with WL overextended screentime as the biggest one, and so many un-used ideas etc, that I have to recommend skipping the story all together, until the robot-invasion, because verything with the rite was basically filler that doesnt have any interesting enough story seeds for future Expansions.

Oh boi, the paper-clip anaolgy makes this so much better to understand... And makes any kind of moral dilemma kinda... moot? Like, they're not real so its ok to delete them? So, we were rpoving Emet Selch right, after all?

Wow, currently running my alts through the story, have looked all around that room and have never noticed the Eye !

My speculation STILL remains: Is queen Jennah Lyssa?

Brilliant review, subbed!

The writers seriously don't have a handle on how to make the player character a deuteragonist. HW managed that, DT fails miserably - you could remove the WoL so far and nothing would change. That is a *terrible* thing to do with the *player* character.

When you mention that "you are a better person for it," it makes me think you don't separate yourself from the narrative and the game, which was already a significant drawback, but you proved me somewhat wrong. I wish you had addressed the logical issue of how they simply bridged the gap of an "age-long war" with just a dinner. Have they never seen war? Do they really think all the maiming, hate, and worse can be forgiven so easily? I'm happy you mentioned how Zoraal Ja is nonsensical, the reason for being so "evil" is simply because "Daddy didn't give me everything for free."??? I'm also very happy you highlighted the problems with the Endless and how we are force-fed the writers' agenda and point of view on them. They literally "hear, feel, and think." Not to mention, the reason Emet-Selch said it's okay to kill is because "we are so thin of Aether." So, Endless don't have Aether in them makes it ok to kill them? I don't think Shadowlands is much worse than Dawntrail story-wise; they both have the same issues with pushing the writer's view of death down the reader's throat. Bottom line, stop accepting the dragon-tyrant. Regarding Sins: As far as unforgivable sins go, dude, I am with you. ESO has it all voiced, so why doesn't Square Enix? They're just becoming lazier and lazier. This isn't a money issue; it's a "greedy issue." The NPCs all having the same model? Honestly, I'm so used to it that I can spot all skeletons and animations on any race or monster. It's really sad at this point.

Awful story writing. Look into who didnt help write this MSQ this time. And it shows.

Whats done is done. Hopefully Square Enix doesn't compound their horrible mistake with the Dawntrail MSQ by continuing to have Wuk Lamat take center stage. As long as she just stays in her little palace and plays no part in the stories of the upcoming patches, things will be much better.

Thank you for the review! You have a lovely voice to listen to, first of all! about FFXIV's Dawntrail, I agree with you completely. I find it sad many people see it as an expansion that has to be 'better' or 'just as fantastic' as the other expansions they loved so dearly. And sadly, those two expansions mainly being Shadownbringers and Endwalker. To me it feels as if ARR/HW and SB have been forgotten and seem to hold no more candle towards 'the peak expansions.' Therefore, forgetting that before ShB and EW, there too was lorebuilding, there too was world building, character- etc. you name it. So overall, I see Dawntrail as just that, new world, new characters, new lore. etc. And we've just stepped into it with what we had. You've said it perfectly that, sure it has its flaws but the journey through it was well worth it. You've also opened my eyes a bit in understanding the Solution 9 part more deeply, and I thank you for that. Keep up the good work! Definitely got my sub!

Can you elaborate on why you think you're a better person for playing FFXIV? o.o

It's the GW girl! I love you!!!

Such little actual combat and gameplay during the msq has ruined the game. If the msq is going to be the big part of your game, you cant have it be a visual novel. Genuinely debating about demanding a refund due to such a crap experience.

A guildwars 2 youtubet bashing on Dawnstrail. The MSQ was great and it was 10 time alot better than the last 3 expansion of Guild wars2. And it's probrably why she's hating on FF14 cause all GW2 players are leaving her game to go play FF14.

edit: tl;dr SB , but worse. My analysis of the expansion is in the final trial I was just yelling "THIS IS THE COOLEST FIGHT EVER." then you know who shows up and I just exclaim, "WHAT?!? WHY ARE YOU HERE?!?". Midnight to 6 instantly. Wuk Lamat's NA VA was so ... not good. Like such lack of expression. She meets her dad and finds out he's alive and there's literally ZERO emotion or acknowledgement of it. I didn't skip any cutscene until that last zone and I couldn't take it anymore. I skipped all but 1 of the Otis cutscenes.

On Zoraal Ja not receiving any growth in the thirty year bubble- I can actually believe that. He created an enemy in his mind, and then isolated himself from that “enemy” and created for himself an echo chamber of mechanical soldiers to allow that hatred to fester. Even if he no longer cared about his father specifically, he was forced to brood on his expansion via conquest mentality for thirty years while his civilization could do nothing but try to escape the barrier and he had nothing but ambition left when he finally did.

look like it was a good call to stop playing it at endwalker only downsde is that i should've stopped at the end of stormblood, when the war arc gets thrown to the recycle bin and comes out has an isekai fanfic for me that was the point where the story was really bad :/

Hard disagree with most of the story, but that's part of storytelling itself. Sometimes you're not going to connect with parts of the audience. Otis isn't a good example of a solution because his soul was tied to that robot body, and the Endless have no souls. There is an immediate threat to the world and the alternative is turn off simulation of dead people, or let people die to feed the simulation. Sucks, but the main theme for that quarter of the game is learning to let go. Perhaps they could've presented that better, I dunno, it clicked with me, but it is what it is. As for the technical complaints, yes, unfortunately SE has been regularly using 14's success to fund their failures. The MSQ at bare minimum should be fully voiced by now, but SE is incapable of looking at their piles of money and reinvesting it into their primary cash cow because at the end of the day they're gonna assume it'll still pump out cash. And it just does.

The problem with voicing the entire MSQ would make the file size potentially go over 300GB (some people will have to wait at least a week to download the entire game.) Aside from the monetary costs, this should be taken into consideration because you don't want your playerbase that paid for a sub to be able to download the game to miss out on their money spent in days waiting for a patch to download. That aside model diversity would be nice, but I believe FF needs an engine revamp before introducing more ingame models. Hopefully they won't make the same mistake in this regard with development as WoW devs with their spaghetti code

The amount of voice acting required to cover entire msq would soon turn this game into memory devouring villain

Sad, but agreed. As a long-time ffxiv player that's played since ARR, the story of Dawntrail was disappointing, and felt like a step backward. Even if you do find Wuk Lamat to be an interesting and well-written character, it's just very slow and flat. I think it's actually fine to be unsettled with the outcome of the endless, because to me that means that it's a multi-faceted situation without a cookie-cutter solution. (That's far and away the only time the story presents a theme in a way that warrants actual discussion and engagement though, and by the time I got there I had already been disengaged by the previous story.) But it sounds like some people aren't just unsettled, they were unsatisfied. I wanted the story to dive a bit deeper into it, so that, even if you disagree with the outcome, you can still be satisfied with the events.

Ive played on and off since 2017. I dont pre order anything i always wait a few days/week after a game launch to see how its being received. Seeing all bad reviews for dawntrail really makes me not want to buy this. Especially since ff14 players are pretty nice and chill, so the fact an expansion has everyone universally upset tells me they REALLY messed up the expansion.

I half liked Dawntrail Msq. I did enjoy the rite of succession arc though Wuk Lamat at times felt odd, though I did enjoy her character at times. The second half was jarring for me and it dragged on and on. The brief respite in the fourth zone refreshed me but I noticed when Wuk Lamat came back...and acted as if she never grew at all from the Rite of succession, it felt odd. Combat excellent, Dungeons Excellent, but quest design is severely aging. Also the over abundance and dependence on walking escort quests was lazy and made it boring. They are way too in love with this quest design and it needs to stop. Music is great yet at certain story beats was jarring and odd with certain story beats. For example the ascension to dawnservant, did they really need to play the loud super overly cheerful music over her speech and drown the crowds cheering?? It felt like a clumsy cheesy Lion King Disney scene at that beat. I feel like Post EW should have been an entire expansion...its a missed opportunity, I feel like we should of stayed the main hero and started saving other shards. Exploring new areas and people. With this expansion, we now knocked out two more shards with a blink of an eye...could had been two possible expansions. I dont know, this feel rushed and that is my interpretation.

Imagine keeping a society of Endless with limited resources where some would cease to exist. Why weren't they given the freedom of choice when -the resources to keep them alive were so limited-? Makes no sense. I can't sympathize with Cahciua shutting down people who could very well enjoy their "existence". Yeah, let us organize a fountain lightshow before killing everyone :)

Do the ff14 trailers the expansions ever live upto itself in the real game? As i played ff11 for 3 years, my favorite game ever, i played ff14 in 2014 for a few weeks but i just didn't like it with it's over the top tables on the screen and magic stuff and camera being far away during group battles, i miss the simple romanticness of being a real warrior needing to team up in ffxi having a real adventure with people around the world instead of the solo ff14 but ever since i stopped playing i watched the expansions trailers and are blown away by them, heavensward and all tbe others, is the game like the trailers thst blow me away and it gets better and like those trailers after the little weeks i played? If so if it gets like the trailers i might come back.

I personally disliked it at start. I got pelupelu as my first task and I hated every second of their quest line. This community never grown at me. After that the birds were cool, first dungeon was OK, but defenetely not as good as first dungeons in last two expansions. The characters were acting super cwrtoonish and annoying. But going deeper in the story the characters became more likeble and even early annoying behavior started to make more sense. And after I just got used to it, we reached the second part. I will not lie when I say, I almost turned off the game, with never coming back when I saw another empire with mythical modern technology coming for us. I am quite tired of this empire reuse. BUT, I recollected myself and gave it a chance. While I am not entirely sold on the girl that is copy paste from metrion and the shadowbringers reuse of "for us to survive, you must die", I loved it, totally. The story of the city, the entire idea of electricity and the crisis for resources, this was one of the best cyberpunk stories in years and it is not a cyberpunk game. It was so good that I forgive them for reusing metrion. Shutting down the city, that absolutely intentionally used most human NPCs for the entire expansion exactly to force you feeling worse doing it, adding multiple cool or important characters in the city we shut down to spice it up. And most importantly, the bold move of leaving the city dark, stony apocalyptic distopia for the player once you shut it down, totally loved it. I believe it is absolutely intentionally to make the players feel the weight of their actions better, totally hit the spot. They really need to voice the damn game.

You know guys , There is one thing that makes Dawntrail REALLY wierd to me . In this story line the ENND OF DAYS was not that long ago, red skys , animals and citizen becoming malformed beast , DESPAIR was the name of the day . I has k you all gentlemens , does tural seems to have been exposed to blasphemies AT ALL ? Look at the Despaired lizard folks at the bottom of the jungle , THEY WOULD HAVE TURNED INT OA TIDE OF BLOOD THIRSTY FRENZIED BEAST ! This whole bloody setting can only make sence if you IGNORE THE LORE !

(SPOILERS!) ... ... ... ... The part where the story _really_ went off the rails for me was when we first went to Heritage Found and all of the people there had the same thing on their head that Baddie Brother (because I can't be bothered to remember his name) had on his head. Despite that, we were just happy to go along with the story without asking "What are those things?" immediately. Plus the fact that the Queen herself doesn't have one. Isn't that, I dunno...A GIANT RED FLAG? Yet our character, who has seen all kinds of shit through various reflections and realities just goes, "Yeah, I'd like to learn about farming!" I checked out of the story at that point and began skipping. Painfully stupid writing. I went into a rant after this and typed like four other paragraphs of irritations but I just deleted them all. There are too many glaringly obvious writing problems with this story to even get into in one CZcams comment. I really hope that 7.x is better. The JP players hate the story too, so maybe there is hope after all.

It feels like a tragedy, the things you're saying. Simply because we all know why the negatives happened. Because of Square Enix's financial irresponsibility. Apparently in Japan there's a "loud American" stereotype worker who is an American who will tell the boss what the workers won't due to societal norms. My question is, where is Square Enix's "loud American"

I love Dawntrail because I save so much time playing and watching cutscenes.

Dawntrail has interesting things to say, interesting lore to show, but the way these are all presented to us is very lackluster. You likened the events that happen in the last zone of DT to The Burning of Teldrassil and the attack which you take part of as a Horde player. I need to specify that, I was also very uncomfortable participating in the Burning of Teldrassil, but I will be honest, nothing in the MSQ gave me the same understanding and empathy for the Endless that I had for the Night Elves going into the pre-patch of BFA. A few lines of dialogue speaking with characters I cannot remember the name of outside of the major characters from each sub-zone, does not equate to years and years of knowing the Night Elves. All of this to say, that despite the MSQ's insistence that we are basically committing genocide, it fails in its mission to make some players care. The characters I cared about were actually Krile and Erenville. Especially Erenville, whose inner turmoil is just heart-wrenching to watch. I felt more bad for the characters rather than the nameless endless that we erased.

I feel like a big missed opportunity was that Koana wasn’t present for any of Solution 9. He’s a new character marked to lead the kingdom, with one of the biggest flaws he develops from being a focus on integrating foreign technology without concern for culture. Solution 9’s a part of his kingdom integrated into a high tech foreign kingdom for 30 hours, with cultural exchange going both ways. Outwardly Sphene’s everything he idealizes wanting to be but can’t express well as a leader. He’s tailor made to be a great foil to that section, just odd they don’t use him.

The reason there is two different Otis's is because the living memory Otis is his memories given form from 400 years prior and robo Otis is his soul give a vessel to use. By this explanation gives why living memory Otis didnt know wuk lamat, wol and friends.

The voice actors don't know our characters names. So voiced scenes would have to refer to us as "adventurer" or some such - our character's names we give them would never be spoken.

For me, Dawntrail is the worst story in FFXIV. I realize that enjoyment of the MSQ is subjective to the player, but it just didn't work for me. The graphics improvement is really nice, though.

Loved that, whenever there was a crowd cheering, all NPCs with the same model would move in perfect synch. That look so bad

Even your bunny got turned gothic at the end of all that lol

stop wasting money on DEI / ESG consulting companies, use that money on more voice acting

its a "filler" expansion, untill the big 8.0 reboot (also dropping the PS4), so they are holding off the big story guns for later.. .... that said, it had too many slice of life moments, not enough action, it re-used too many older story concepts, had some unlogical things.. & it had a few DEI / ESG BS moments (but less towards to later 3/4 of the story) ... but it had good bosses, good character actors, and was still overall fun (but caught myself wanting to skip cutscenes more than ever)

It's funny when you sit down and really think about the parts of this expansion that would have been pushing the stated agenda of companies like Sweet Baby Inc, e.g.; - Wuk Lamat's voice actor, likely hired through nepotism by a lady with neon-coloured hair and a history of pushing for DEI related garbage - the infantile "diversity is our strength because the food thoooooo" throughout the entire story - the utter lack of consequences from previous conflict or conflict from differences in culture, except when it's specifically to make the Mamool Ja look stupid for being racist or whatever - the only food eaten ever is apparently tacos, which is the extent of cultural understanding of southern america for left leaning americans - the dumbing down and marginalization of characters that have existed before SBI's influence on Squeenix - that bloody awful song in the credits You realise that a significant portion of the terrible things in this expansion is a result of their involvement. Hell, the only praise Dawntrail has gotten is purely focused on the combat mechanics of the game, which SBI have no control over because they are a company of grifters that have no talent. Crazy.

What I've gathered thus far is that MY vacation with MY friends will start once I am able to stop holding Wuk Lamat's hand. This is becoming torture. If this is the experimental expansion to test-drive a new idea, then I think the varied data they're getting should be useful. Don't quite know what the choice dialogue was hoping for, but I am not simping for Miss Mittens. Erenville can hold her hand, she can go to the bathroom by herself, and I am going to go exploring and have some ME time.👍

The MSQ really did not justify killing all of the Endless. It lacked any plot details that created a sense of urgency and necessity for killing them all. Especially because, if we had put them all into hibernation instead, the energy requirements would have been reduced, giving us even longer to solve the issue before they were lost permanently. We also could have gone directly into the central mainframe and killed the Queen without shutting anything else down. This would have given us time to move the Endless into robotic bodies during the ending scenes. Then we could have had a bunch of Otis-like robots walking around Solution 9. Genocide averted. I think the plot was more interested in the interpersonal ramifications of killing your own parents for the greater good, rather than the ethical implications of whether the Endless deserved to live, which is just bad writing.

The devs did say that after ending the 10 year long story that the next expansion wanted to be a fun adventurous feel. A very light tou he and cheek a yet charming tone. It to be like the Mario sun shine or vacation from being the savior of everything. In that perspective they succeeded in what they were going for. Instead of you being the hero you’re taking a break and teaching someone to become the new hero of their land.

It was really up and down for me, also I didn't like some of the themes while I loved some others. I have to say though what's up with the voice direction in it? I think they got some really good VAs (we know Wuk Lamat already) but sometimes, they just got the flat out wrong direction. For me, the initial mentor position was actually cool to me - I prefer being the advisor or support, so I actually didn't mind that, and yet like you say I really think they just didn't get a grasp on how to deliver some elements. Also, I have to say, there is one scene that might have been the largest implausible turn-based cutscene I have ever seen, where it was frustrating to see the inactivity of the characters. I really liked the battle content though, some of the best for sure. I am quite curious about what the patch content will bring.

Why does it seem like every race acts like typical humans do? Their speech, thoughts, actions, personalities…very human. But re-skinned as various races. 😅

Dawntrail is by far the worse FFXIV expansion for me from a story perspective. The plotline is too predictable. No new narrative hook for the new overarching story (like literally, this could've been lumped as filler under the Hydaelyn/Zodiark saga). But most jarringly is the lack of any compelling characters. The scions (WoL included) were turned into Wuk Lamat's cheerleading squad with no agency whatsoever. Even the main antagonist barely had any time to be properly developed. Wuk Lamat herself felt like a generic battle Shonen protagonist and was too naive to be a believable leader. Compare her with the Crystal Exarch, for example. He also had lofty high morals and unshakable faith in his people. But it was grounded in a very clear realism with solid proof of his beliefs, as well as proper understanding that sacrifice is inevitable (not everything can be solved with friendship speeches). But what's by far the most concerning to me is the theme of the expansion. It's retreading old tropes that were already explored way better in past expansions (the concept of death's inevitability and its acceptance as a natural part of life rather than as a reason to despair). Living Memory felt like a revisiting of Amaurot. The antagonist felt like a failed attempt to replicate Emet-Selch. And to top it all off, it was all presented in a very "Disney-like" manner that lacks maturity and nuances. This lack of new direction is worrisome because it bespeaks a lack of confidence on SE's side in their own writing. They basically played it far too safe, with revisiting what they thought worked in the past, and keeping options completely open by having no clear new story arc. It's very disappointing. Is it a good story by "MMO" standard? Yes, but that's not a very high standard to begin with. Is it a good story by Final Fantasy standard? Absolutely not. It's very average and not particularly compelling. Most jobs remain as boringly dumbed down as they were in Endwalker, unfortunately. And I'm appalled to see that SE's knee jerk reaction to criticism about VPR's supposed "busyness" is to simply plan on dumbing it down as well (reducing positional requirements and lessening the fast pace, according to their Lodestone post). The saving grace of this expansion for me personally is that they're clearly trying to level up their encounter design and come up with new ideas for mechanics (though it still boils down to finding the safe spot for the most part). This got me excited to see what they cook up for the Savage tier and Eden Ultimate. The return of midcore content with a new Bozja-like zone will be much welcome as well.

The writer was either incompetent or had no passion. Maybe even both. I think if you played through DT again you would have an even more negative opinion.

Wait ... what ... you enjoyed the expansion? It was hard to tell that you did after 12 minutes of nothing but negative things to say about it, lol. A section of what was good would have been appreciated in the review. It is good to have both, positives and negatives. Yet, 12 minutes of negatives and a few seconds of positives, no one would actually believe you enjoyed it.