#fun thing: while there's obviously a LOT of stuff about ysayle in here Despite What You've Been Told is actually the fling w cylva

[shivasdarknight]

well this is gonna make me bawl like a little bitch

[alicesadventuresinffxiv]

Thoughts on Dawntrail MSQ

May as well write up my thoughts on the Dawntrail MSQ while it’s still relevant! (full spoilers for that obviously)

What I Liked

-The new characters (especially Wuk Lamat, Erenville, and Koana) were great! Wuk Lamat in particular started out rough but endearing, and conveying her development into a empathetic and decisive leader was, in my opinion, the main place the story succeeded. In the past I’ve often felt that FFXIV short-changed the arcs of its female characters (Moenbryda, Ysayle, Lyse… even Zero left pretty abruptly), but with Lamaty’i I ended the expansion feeling satisfied with her arc rather than frustrated because I wanted more.

-Thancred, Urianger, and Estinien had just enough screentime - and impactful stuff to do during that screentime - to feel well-used but not overshadow other characters. Estinien showing up as a mysterious stranger in the Wild West was just hilariously perfect.

-The final zone felt a bit like it was trying to have its cake and eat it too with the ambiguity over whether the Endless were people, but I didn’t care because it still repeatedly got me to tear up. Plus the whole conceit of the finale to the Americas expansion being Evil Parasitic Disneyland that you slowly but surely shut down was inspired. And I loved how even before you shut it down, if you went exploring past the warning cordons, you could see the front is just a shallow facade over the machinery that makes the magic happen, just like real theme parks!

-That interdimensional key is definitely related to Azem and I am VERY curious where the story will go with it next!

What I Disliked

-Is it just me, but has the writing felt a lot more… hand-holdy? since 6.0? It’s hard to put my finger on, but it seems like there are a lot more instances where characters basically turn to the camera and explain the subtext of whatever just happened in the preceding scene. Like, there will be a great moment showing how Zero/Vrtra/Wuk Lamat/Koana/etc. has changed as a character… and then the next scene will have the Scions directly talk about “wow [person] sure has grown!” It’s a minor annoyance at worst, but a lot of what I liked about the writing of characters like Fordola and Emet-Selch is that the game trusts you to understand their complexities without handing them to you on a plate…

-Villains are often what make or break a story for me, and in my opinion DT’s trio were the weakest since Heavensward. Bakool Ja Ja was fun as a cartoonish bully, and even more fun as a boisterous “huh, doing good feels good?” new ally, but the transition from one to the other felt really abrupt. (Why bring up consequences for him if they never happen?) Zoraal Ja was a lot like Thordan in that he was critical to the story’s themes but not very interesting or entertaining to watch as a character. And Sphene… I really wanted to like her, the phase transition in the final boss makes me kind of want to ship her with Lamaty’i… but she seems like she’s intentionally written to feel flat and hollow because she’s ultimately more program than person.

-When the twins and the WoL actually got to do some mentoring, it was nice, and I enjoyed the WoL taking more of a backseat role! But most of the time, it felt like the three of us were interchangeable and underwritten, just here to fill out Duty Support roles for Wuk Lamat. Which leads me to…

-As a Krile fan, Krile was by far the biggest disappointment. She tags along the whole journey, she has a personal reason to be invested in the plot… and yet she barely has a character arc. Even after going on this journey and meeting her parents, it didn’t change anything about who she was as a person or what she wanted to do with her life. And despite participating in combat encounters now, she came across even more passive in the narrative than in prior expansions, where at least she did things like tease the other Scions and go behind our backs to recruit Zenos. Here… here she mostly exists to carry around a Plot Trinket earring and wait politely for answers to her questions.

Where’s my lil’ shit who ruthlessly hunted Estinien down with a smile on her face? Hopefully in the patch story…

Overall

I certainly had fun with Dawntrail, but it's not especially high on my ranking of expansions. Of course it couldn't capture the highs of ShB and EW bringing a close to a huge narrative arc, but I wasn't expecting it to. Ultimately, I think I'd place it between StB and HW - losing out to StB only because I am very much a Stormblood Enjoyer and love all the characters from that expansion. Dawntrail's characters haven't grown on me as much, though who knows? Again, maybe the patch quests will change my mind!