Dawntrail Story Review & First Impressions (Spoilers)

In this video, I want to discuss my experience with the story of FFXIV's Expansion Dawntrail. Overall my experience has been positive, but during some parts I felt like it needed some tidying up and more extensive exploration or gameplay elements. Let me know your own thoughts about the story down below!

00:00 Introduction
00:46 Zones
01:39 Duties
01:53 Soundtrack
02:42 Focus on Wuk Lamat
05:12 Filler Cutscenes
06:12 Pacing Problems
08:40 Gameplay Elements
09:52 Predictable Characters
11:34 Unbelievable Plot Developments
12:55 Unbelievable Characters
14:24 Scions as Mascots
14:50 Retreading Old Plots
16:08 Outro

[paulmd]

The utter failure of making the entire thing about Wuk Lamat is unforgiveable. We ALREADY had a main story. . . Krile and the mystery of her grandfather's connection to the City of Gold. We travel across the ocean to a new land where no one knows you are the WoL and you can just adventure like a normal person (a normal person that CRUSHES DUNGEONS!).

Imagine a scene where you get accosted by bandits and your team laughs at them threatening you. So many opportunities for this to have been a fun adventure. Instead. . . Help Wuk Lamat. . . Accompany Wuk Lamat . . . Join Wuk Lamat . . . Help Wuk Lamat. . . Listen to Wuk Lamat . . . Play as Wuk Lamat. . . . Help Wuk Lamat. . . BARF.

[youtousim]

I feel like they did Bakool Ja Ja dirty. The dungeon would have been a prime opportunity to face the horrors of his countless sacreficed siblings, and maybe lift his torment there. Instead we get another seemingly random temple with a fancy exit. Didn't they explicitly mention sealing those away for fear of danger?

[SeikiKisaki]

The Mary Sue problem aside, one of the less irritating and more disappointing thing for me is the fact that the world now seems to operate on children's TV show logic. How did Tural get its peace? Just talk to people and feed them tacos. It kinda cheapens the previously serious world building. Imagine if Aymeric had fed Nidhogg some tacos, we would never have lost Haurchefant. If we had only made some tacos for Zenos, he would've been a chill guy to hang with. Emet-Selch's tacos could have prevented Hydaelyn from splitting the star. Or if the Ancients had invented tacos, Meteion would never have gone insane in the first place.

[blizzardstar]

THANK YOU - I had the exact same reaction to Otis' death. Sphene's most defining quality is that she wants to protect her people at all costs, so allowing him to sacrifice himself for her when she's not in any real danger was so stupid.

[SuperRamos]

I think a positive, interpretation for the Otis death, is that he was able die protecting the Queen, the one thing he was unable to do in life, and his biggest regret.

[FadeBlackSS]

The problem with having a bad story in FFXIV is that the game is built around the story. You literally can't progress unless you go through it so if it's slog to get through, you really feel it. Even if you skip cutscenes, doing the fetch quests and "go here" quests still feel really bad and I feel like thats why some people dislike this expansion so far.

[zen_]

So basically, the story goes downhill once Ishikawa stops writing it.

Looks like I haven't missed much from not preordering Dawntrail for early access. I'll still be getting it at some point, but the reviews have me feeling like we should apologize to Stormblood for treating it too harshly at the time.

[MedGoh]

Watch cutscene introducing new area -> talk to Wuk -> talk to three NPCs -> report to Wuk -> watch cutscene of Wuk talking to NPCs about understanding them and their struggles and wanting to save them all no matter what -> console Wuk and repeat.

Snoozetrail. Insane that as the WOL we’re taking a backseat to babysit a new character that just isn’t fleshed out at all with her entire personality being “I will save everyone even if they’re evil!!” and “together we’re stronger!” as if we haven’t seen that a hundred times before.

Story-wise, Erenville’s section was honestly the only saving grace. Still with insane cutscene lengths and tedious quests, but it was heartfelt.

Thankfully, we got fantastic dungeons and incredible places such as Solution Nine and the wild west town.

[bryzzt]

I had thought that in EW, the scions should've stayed gone. Let the WOL deal with hope and doubt in their own way in the new expac. But it seems they brought them all back for.. someone else to kinda take over anyways? Perhaps the patch content will correct, but I'd say narratively this is my least favorite since ARR. Disappointing.

[kazahana]

I really hope SE's reaction to the Wuk Lamat criticism is not to double down and give her even more screentime to try and redeem her.

They just need to let her fade into the background and bring the focus back to the WoL. Or at least create a new second protagonist more like Ryne who actually works with the WoL instead of stealing the spotlight from them in every single cutscene.

[oszaszi]

Story was frustrating, lots of smart people in our team, none voices what we all think - why Graha only says at last second that the big enemy plan is just simply not sustainable... but not just this, lot of the times there were frustratingly obvious arguments to be had but instead we just either said "friendship wooo" or "fight bad booo"... come on. Gameplay is muuuch better than before, credit where credit is due. Tho the first extreme trial is not so much difficult but more like a dance dance revolution reaction game. Visual update causes a lot of lags to a lot of people. I put most stuff to low setting and i have i9 core cpu with 3080rtx gpu and i still have lag with extreme high resulted benchmark. I cant imagine what its like for other people with lower performing hardware.
Music: Big Dinsey Copy pasta... I did not like majority of the voiced musics and im sad that some ambient music can only be heard for few minutes. Like dungeon 2 battle music.
I am unhappy with Wuk Lamat's voice for 1 reason only, I think the direction was not well given to the voice actress because there are scenes where the voice is very underwhelming even though the body language would deem much more animated voice paired to the character. Like the last fight, she comes in, she speaks with very casual voice... compare it to how Thancred entered the Hades fight? And you will get what i mean. But I really liked how passionate Bakool Ja's voice actor was. I really believed at the start they are a bully and at the end the emotions come through, (look, his turning to good suddenly made no sense, but credit where credits due, the voice actor did best with what they had)

[XOProductions]

The story simply had too much Wuk, her arc should have wrapped up after winning the contest. Second half of the expac should have been WoL, Krile, and Erenville focused.

[kwdolpm]

I think one of the worst parts about the whole story was the way zoraal ja killed gulool ja ja, how we were just standing there and watching the duel while outside the civilians were still being murdered by zoraal jas puppet soldiers. Wuk lamat later says that she didnt want to tarnish gulools honor by stepping in but i still think it was absolutely terrible we didnt confront him then. That is because i do not consider gulool ja ja putting his „honor“ over the fact that his people are being slaughtered right outside his palace by his own son. Not to mention that he won the duel and kiled zoraal ja, then he just comes back to life, kills him and walks away, while we, the savior of the world watch that mass murdering psycho go. Yeah, sure he stopped his attack but we should have killed him right then and there, permanently. This fact pisses me off because you could argue that him killing all those people in solution 9 later on is just because of us not stopping him at the first opportunity. So yeah, not tarnishing gulool ja jas honor in a bullshit cheated duel killed a bunch of civilians and endangered all of tural and even the world.

[cordeliacentauri]

I think you nailed it on why wuk lamat is such a badly written character at 4:48. She has all the qualities and personality opposite of a nation's leader. Throughout the ordeal of the rites, not one of the challenges teaches sacrifice or choosing the lesser evil.

[Coaltergeist]

They kept billing dawntrail as the "vacation" expansion, and to me personally, our time in Shaaloani (or however you spell it) was the only time where it felt like we were just kinda vibing. Just going somewhere and helping/interacting with folks along the way. In that sense it's actually my favorite zone in the expansion (or maybe also because it's based on Texas, where I live?). Honestly my thoughts on DT are basically the same as what you've said here other than that. Kinda disappointed about the MSQ, but I've been really enjoying the launch from an mmo-standpoint

[Havenscythe]

I thought the same thing with the last zone, it’s completely the same as Amaurot. Walking around a “phantom” city and arguing with Sphene about ideals. The last fight where Wuk Lamat saves the day is also ridiculous. How does she go from barely being able to phase Bakool Ja Ja with her strongest attack to being stronger than the WoL and SAVING us??

[rancen]

I dont need the WoL to be the savior of everyone all the time but WoL and the scions being literal observes and mascots most of the time made playing through the story a drag

[kazaream]

A cutscene should be a reward to watch, not being used to pad the story and tell us literally nothing. Wuk was very obnoxious and I could not stand her at all. There are a lot of writing inconsistencies and Wol while being presented as a mentor yet doesn't act as a mentor at all. A ton of answers we give all involve praising Wuk to heaven. It was nauseating.

Another issue is that they rehashed a ton of writing plots, the whole train part was just a copy of working with everyone on Talos in ShB. Zoraal Ja killing his father like Zenos killed Varis. Some scenes were straight copies. Sphene reminded me immediately of Myste and his excessive use of aether to keep memories alive. I can keep going on how unoriginal the story was.

I can't stomach even replaying this story on my alts.

[youtousim]

I share your sentiment about the story, Wuk Lamat and the concept of rule and happyness. What left a sour taste more than the story itself though was the way it was told. This doesn't feel like our story anymore, or that of our companions. But someone else's. Which would be fine if people would act in a believable way. Something they did very well before, and in FF16 as well. Less Disney please. And more Final Fantasy.

[Tsuba_Nick]

THANK YOU. Why is Wuk lamat the forefront in so so many incredibly important decisions and discussions. On what authority? She never bothers to learn anything or try meaningfully. Just smiles and family.
I agree so so so much on all your points. So many contrived decisions, exactly like a poorly written anime.
They need to hear our feedback cause the writing of dawntrail was inexcusably bad for a big part.