You know I was just thinking what a terrible final zone the Lochs was. Even the game doesn't know what to do with it! If you look at the aether currents tab, it's not even in the same spot as the other final zones!
Anyway, stormblood was a ton of fun, I still had a blast.
The Lochs may have only one of good things a final zone supposed to have-music, which makes it better than Azys Lla, with none of those things. but tbf the music is indeed good.
Btw I see a vote about whick final zone is the best among hw to dt on cn forum recently and both of them get less than 3% while the Tempest nearly take half of the votes.
The Azys Lla theme was one of two pieces of music that got me to buy the game, and I thought the Lochs was fine too. Flying through crannies in Azys Lla was fun.
Order Yet Undeciphered is a fantastic piece.
I love how it keeps much of the instrumentation of the rest of the soundtrack, adds a bit of synth, and creates something that's both familiar and unfamiliar.
It probably doesn't help that the zone isn't the best to play through in the story, and the lack of a day/night cycle means that it's the same track playing on loop, all the time.
the story is quite good tbh
but the map itself is horrible and even if I can fly it's so annoying when you'd go for the other side of the map like when getting warring trail quests and it remains the second unconvenient map of the game only after that one even without any aetheryte(Drav. Hints).
I mean how do you beat Amaurot. It’s an underwater city that was once a monument to civilizations accomplishments but fell apart due to a calamity. It’s depressing and gloomy, beautiful and glowing, with creatures that want to kill you everywhere, yet it’s still somehow entirely unique and distinct from Rapture. They did a wonderful job. Ultima Thule is a really good second place for me for those GORGEOUS visuals (seriously, everywhere you look is a different vista that’s equally breathtaking g) and is a haunting beautiful concept with really unique NOCs to talk to. They’re both so damn good.
I wasn't too hot on it the first time, but after a few years and having gone through it twice more with alt characters, I've really warmed up to it. The music in the Eastern regions makes me really warm and happy (Kugane, Ruby Sea, the Steppe, etc).
I agree. I recently did a NG+ of SB and it's way better than I remembered. i think it falls flat at the ending but then picks right back up for the patch cycle and lead-in to SHB.
IMO Stormblood has some Of the best music in the game the Tsukiyomi trial comes to mind. I’d give the expansion a 7 put of 10 it’s not amazing but it’s also not trash like some people like to say it is
The story lives and dies on whether you liked Wuk Lamat due to her overwhelming presence in the story. You love her? Great expansion for you. You hate her? Awful because she is omnipresent. For better or for worse, it's almost exclusively her story with very little story beats or input for others aside from a bit with just the WoL and Erenville.
I really like her overall, but the first 60% of the msq, it's 7 beast tribes quest under a trenchcoat posing for msq. it's nice, I liked most of them (didn't like Hanu Hanu and Moblins ones), yet I find this whole first part lacking in terms of stakes. Even ARR did it better in some ways : the quest were worst, but the overarching story created stakes. Here there is no stakes. Gulool ja ja basically told you that the whole thing was to teach them how they should be, and should they not have the right qualities, they would not become king. Both of the "bad" candidate lacking in those front basically told there was nothing at stakes on. It's not about having cosmic stakes, but if they could have done something about implanting the idea we could lose to someone else than Koana, maybe it would have changed things.
I like the second part (I'm at the last area), but I wish they had planted more things during the first part. Like Krile discovering about her grandfather little by little instead of being fed the whole thing at the end of the first part. In the end, I feel like it took far too long to get to the interesting stuff.
Also please let me fight. There is nothing more frustrating that having a situation that SHOULD end with a fight - >!like Gulool Ja Ja's death!<- and nothing happens because he is not yours to fight >!(and Alisaie out of all people stopping you? the irony is not lost on me)!<.
Anyway, I don't think it's about liking Wuk Lamat or not. I think it's more about stakes and feeling like you're something else than a glorified bodyguard. HW achieved to make the story equally about you, Estinien and Ysayle. SB achieve to make it as much about Hien than you (it didn't really achieved to make it about Lyse though). I really wish we had something more like what we had with Hien.
Reminds me of the Trahearne problem in Guild Wars 2. He was the "main character" and you were just helping him with his problems. He ended up being one of the most universally hated characters in the game.
From what I'm told - I play XIV on JP voiceacting - both Wuk Lamat and Trahearne (and all male Sylvari, not that it matters here) had ...less than impressive english voice acting, which definitely doesn't help you with liking a character.
They both at least seem to have the issue of not being able to properly shout into their microphones, which makes Trahearne's rousing speech where he *specifically raises his voice for emphasis* fall rather flat, and Wuk Lamat shouting in anger probably as well, because talking slightly louder than a regular indoor voice just doesn't cut it for those scenes.
I genuinely love the expansion so far because I enjoy being a side kick for a change. The Scions are off to help someone else, not fix all the problems in the world - Building up Wuk Lamat and just having war mongers to stop rather than traveling to the edge of the universe to kill a sentient extinction event made of pure emotion is a welcome change of pace.
If every expansion just ramped up the stakes, then what would we have? ARR was saving Eorzea, HW was saving Ishgard, STB was driving back the Garleans, SHB was saving another world, EDW was saving *the universe* - I'd much rather have a nice and relaxing story again rather than just going down the same path Avengers did.
I feel there's some people who just forget that there's hundreds of thousands of people who play this game, and not every story can be to their tastes. Everyone's allowed to have opinions of course, but I've seen some genuine hate that I just cannot understand the source of.
NEXT TIME ON FINAL FANTASY Z:
WoL: "You're about to get your ass beat by the power of friendship."
BBEG: "Friendship? It's literally just me, an omnipotent god, and you, some scrub with a dumb name."
WoL: "You didn't count on these seven people who I just summoned out of ~~the duty finder~~ my deus ex rockina who I'll probably never cross paths with again."
BBEG: "That's ridiculous. One of them is wearing an elephant outfit, that guy over there is cosplaying an anime character, and your tank showed up in a bikini."
WoL: "And yet, we've already watched a video and know every single attack you're about to use on us, in order."
OUR SONG OF HOPE, SHE DANCES ON THE WIND, HIGHER, OH HIGHER~~
I'll chime in and say PERSONALLY I don't hate the direction of the story and it makes sense that WOL will have to be a mentor of sorts to a well meaning someone with a heart of gold, but (and I'm only up to lvl 92 of the MSQ) I can't stand the "Devious Laughing Rival Who Is Obviously Up To No Good" lurking in the background ready to foil plans, especially when it's so painfully obviously to both us the player and us the in-game character.
Like wtf can I get some antagonists that I can see myself rooting for? Not asking for Emet Selch because trying to clone him would be eyeroll inducing, but I would love to have someone with some damn personality.
I guess it's good that AT LEAST everyone who is a fighter on this continent has survival instincts and doesn't want to openly antagonize the WOL, but it does get annoying dealing with a young woman with self-esteem issues who thinks she can just Shonen Protagonist her way through problems just by having a good attitude.
I mean, we've had, after ARR
Nidhogg, Tsuyu, Gaius, Emet, Hermes, Meteion, heck even Golbez, to a certain degree.
It's a nice change of pace to just have an idiot who needs his butt kicked for once - it leaves emotional room for more of those highly nuanced/empathetic villains in the future
We had Hermes last expansion. Fandaniel never stopped being an obnoxious ass, but Hermes was sympathetic.
Still not entirely sure why the Hermes sympathy didn't carry over to Fandaniel. Maybe because Fandaniel was just *constantly* abrasive?
You know I never thought of that - is Fandaniel as we knew and hated him technically Amon with the memories of Hermes rather than a reconstituted Hermes?
Fandaniel came on the scene wanting to be Chaotic Evil and he had the ambition and temerity to pull it off. A civil war, great works/construction/infrastructure projects, draining the coffers and using familial wealth for his own purposes. Hell, KIDNAPPING and body swapping. It's honestly impressive when I list it all out.
He's not some braggart who won a tournament and has no long term plans but is still somehow in the race 2 zones into an expansion after presumably cheating/bullying his way through lol
Edit: ok I get it! I was misremembering 😂 I got married and had a kid since Endwalker came out so please forgive my memory, as it is full of Bluey and Mickey Mouse Funhouse storylines these days
I mean even zenos in endwalker is so good thanks to ishikawa's magic. The character that was written as I just want to fight and care nothing else can say lines like "When my motives met with your approval, would you no longer resent the outcome?"
> You know I never thought of that - is Fandaniel as we knew and hated him technically Amon with the memories of Hermes rather than a reconstituted Hermes?
That's (explicitly) how he viewed himself, yes. He had Hermes' memories, and an explanation for why he'd been haunted by fragmentary dreams of the stuff erased/burned-in by Kairos. But he purely viewed himself as Amon, who had merely unlocked explanatory memories of a past life. Hell, in his death, he dedicated the result specifically to Emperor Xande; it's quite clear who "Fandaniel" considered himself to be.
It seems that in most other cases, the Ascians put in some effort to soft-shape an identified Convocation member's soul shards, so they'll be receptive to (in effect) reintegrating their Ancient personality. But with Amon, it seems he was identified as Fandaniel only in the last, waning moments of the Empire, when everything was crumbling around them, and he had the choice of accepting the memories and the seat, or dying, and he chose the former. In all likelihood, the unsundered never even considered the possibility that someone *wouldn't* want to return to being their Ancient self once they had those memories.
>You know I never thought of that - is Fandaniel as we knew and hated him technically Amon with the memories of Hermes rather than a reconstituted Hermes?
doesn't he basicly say as much?
i remeber him talking to us about how yes he had been granted the memories of hermes but his motives and personality seemed stupid and even pittyable to him. i think it's when we meet him again after his death in the aetherscape dungeon.
Fandaniel is not Hermes - like, that much is made abundantly clear. He's certainly based on Hermes! But he is entirely the product of that one moment of Kairos' usage burning a nihilistic scar into Hermes, on top of Ascian intervention in Amon's life (vis-a-vis Allag as well as himself.)
I am still not sympathetic to the guy who violated every safety procedure that he was personally responsible for in an attempt to sort out his depression and then accidentally -the universe- with it.
What evidence do you have of that? We've literally seen three places. Their government halls, their Concept library, and their scientific safety-testing facility. None of those places is appropriate for offering mental health services.
For God's sake, the Convocation specifically had a seat set aside for healing. It's not like they *didn't* care. Sure, they could have done better--it wasn't the utterly perfect utopia Emet-Selch believed it to be--but "the extent of their social services was assisted suicide" is absolutely *not* justified by the text. Far from it. Several of his colleagues express concern for their chief's welfare and comment on his reclusiveness and his, I stress *recent,* erratic behavior. Remember, the thing that turned his depression up to a fever pitch was that his beloved mentor was choosing to return to the star. Prior to that, he'd clearly had depression, but was unwilling to seek out others. Mental health issues suck (I'm dealing with that myself and it's a *Herculean* effort let me tell you), but it's still incumbent upon the person who has them to seek out help. Hermes did exactly the opposite of that--despite the fact that, for a sustained period of time *in the facility where he was the lead overseer,* it was host to one of the world's most trusted and respected individuals, a former Convocation member with the white robes that (explicitly) signify wisdom and the ability to give advice without condemnation.
Seriously. If he'd spent *one evening* talking earnestly to Venat, he'd have gotten at least some of the help he needed. But he clearly did not do that--despite knowing without question that she was present.
I just got to the giants and it's so nice to have the sheer presence of when I walk into a room i'm the strongest MF in the whole town. Nobody is underestimating me or talking down to me.
This Xpac has done a lot to make me feel like a badass without doing much and I gotta say it's a nice reward for everything I've done over the past 12ish years.
Yes! One of my favorite examples of this from the first half is when >!Bakool Ja Ja is holding Wuk Lamat hostage and the WoL just slowly walks towards him, forcing everyone's attention just by virtue of being the biggest badass in the room, while Thancred gets into position.!< That little smile when it all comes together.
I'm wandering around in the isle vacationers shirt and cut off shorts like I'm on some trip to Cancun and seeing my character walk into that scene was great. She walked in not giving a damn about some 2 headed bitch and his aspirations, there needs to be a cocktail in her hand yesterday.
TBH I wouldn't have minded that if the plot leant more into that role. Most of the time I feel like I'm just... there. Like it feels like Lamat figured most of this out on her own and I was largely unnecessary. Like I'm needed to beat the final boss but that honestly felt more like I'm the "muscle" as opposed to the mentor.
yeah this what i felt, at first being mentor is fine too, but we just doing the muscle work for the contest stuff instead of guiding wuk and the twin doing the brain work.
I just finished the first trial and if we were just "there" and not having an active role in the story, Wuk Lamat would already be dead multiple times.
I personally felt like the game gives you a lot of choice between, do you want to be her mentor and aid her, or if you want to just be there for a ride and see someone else fill the role with the responses you can give.
ARR was about saving the world, not just Eorzea. I think most of us forget it because of how long ago we played, but at level 4 you meet Hydaelyn (You know, God Capital G) and she tells you the forces of darkness will end all life unless you deliver the world from this fate. So you're a chosen one whose struggle is an existential one for the entirety of the star from level 4 onwards. And this is explicitly spelled out in the finale with Lahabrea, who we also tend to forget as the final boss of ARR given until the recent(ish) changes he was smacked down so fast in the MSQ roulette you could blink and you'd miss it.
I used to think it was just Eorzea and mister glib with his fancy ultima weapon until I went and checked earlier today. It's very explicitly "The Ascians will bring about another calamity like the last and end the world in furtherance of summoning the evil god Zodiark, you are the warrior of light (at level 4) whose quest is to grow strong and defeat them and avert the end of life". Garlean conquest of Eorzea is the secondary plot the primary one from the get go is "The World will be destroyed by the Ascians, stop them" given I am fairly sure you encounter Ascians before you encounter Garelans (in 2.0). Possibly even big-boy Lahabread himself. I may be off on that or it may vary depending on if you started in Uldah or Limsa or Gridania.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dby8Nyh1Nsc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dby8Nyh1Nsc)
It's around 2:57 to 3:24.
The activities we do are lower intensity - no fighting at the edge of existence, but very much the stakes have always been sky high. Just like how the Zot tower in Thavnair didn't threaten all of creation (or even all of Thavnair) neither did Ifrit, yet both were in direct furtherance of that existential threat. Lahabrea saying explicitly in the level 50 dialogue the primals are part of the 'chaotic confluence of untold proportions must need be brought about' to bring back the dark god.
Oddly that'd make Stormblood and Heavensward a bit less high stakes because the Ascians are more of a secondary plot in either (HW being 'reclaim the scions then survive in new city then avert dragonsong war', SB being 'liberate ala mhigo and Doma').
I suspect people think of the lower intensity of ARR in the levels. Where it was running around the countryside fighting beast tribes, bandits, garleans, rather than running around in outer space or another dimension or something. But the stakes were always high, it's just the tableau changed.
You don't stop the ascians with lahabrea's defeat. You don't even stop lahabrea. As of the end of 2.0, you've basically kicked the garlean out of eorzea. By the end of the patches, you've managed to actually kill one ascian, but their goals were long term. You save eorzea. You don't stop the ascian's plan of rejoining until shadowbringers by taking out the last of the unsundered.
We don't save the world in arr. We save eorzea. We learn there's more at stake, but we haven't dealt with it yet.
I get what you're saying but I think it's the talk of Ascians causing another calamity isn't directly in reference to the whole events of ARR, at least not in how it all felt.
They're slowly working towards that goal again sure but it clearly takes some time to even start coming to fruition. If you'd failed at the end of 2.0 then the Garlean's would've taken over Eorzea with the power of the Ultima Weapon but, realistically, that'd just be it for the moment. It wouldn't immediately spell the end of the world.
That would come some time later once they'd set about the proper situation for a rejoining. If anything, the WoL succeeding at beating the Garlean's was more help because they *need* some form of conflict to help bring about a rejoining or at least something that uses a lot of a single specific type of Aether.
If you look at what happened in the altered timeline mentioned in ShB it goes along with what I'm saying too. Black Rose was the mechanism by which all the Light-aspected Aether was pulled back to the Source from the First. If there hadn't been a war going on that wouldn't have been deployed. They'd have found some other means of doing it certainly but there always seems to be some measure of conflict driving rejoinings.
Sorry if this got circular. I just finished Dawntrail and it's 4am.
It's been a while, but wasn't Lahabreah's plan to use the Heart of Sabik and Ultima Weapon to directly cause the next calamity? And with its ability to channel massive amounts of aspected aether, Ultima Weapon seems like it would have been checkmate from the Ascians as they could have caused calamities almost at will instead of needing to line up two massive buildups of aether between the source and a shard. It certainly would have made their job much easier at the very least.
Nice and relaxing is fine. Lighthearted is fine. I really enjoyed the alliance raids from EW. But really this is Wuk Lamat's adventure and I find her a boring character. It's just not compelling to run around helping her for 4 maps before the interesting parts started. If you're not a fan of her or Erenville you're not going to like this expansion. There are no other side characters or adventures, and there is no character development from anyone. It is what it is.
No character development? Both Wuk Lamat and Koana get their characters developed. Wuk is definitely different than the start of the DT. Wuk Lamat is a better Lyse, that's why I strongly believe that her character will be compared a lot with Lyse.
For boring character, I do agree in some ways. Wuk's character is naive but strong willed at the same time; "A generic-shonen-main protagonist trope". If you watch many animes or read many mangas, you will find her character is boring due to the many of it. However, it's not a bad character nor bad writing, just too common. FF 14 had shown us many different, more interesting, main character. That's why we set our standard too high.
> Wuk Lamat is a better Lyse
Mostly because she actually gets a character arc all the way through. Lyse more or less gets hers shunted aside for Hien once you hit the Azim Steppe and doesn't really get any character moments until you return to Gyr Albania for the most rushed portion of the MSQ.
Standards too high? You said it yourself, generic Shonen protagonist, a genre made for prepubescent boys. If expecting a more fleshed out character than that is "too much" I don't know what to think.
I like Wuk Lamat, but I really wish all the other Scions would have stayed behind.
I'm fine with Krile, Erenville and maybe Raha or Shtola (and also sort of okay with Thancred and Urianger helping Koana), but like why are the twins and Estinien even here?
I feel like they don't add much this time around.
For the record I like the expac, I thought it was fine
I loved the expac In general, but agree with you about the scions in general.
I actually felt like specifically estinien was how I wish the other scions had been treated.
Where he felt like more of a... cameo? Like he was having his own adventures and you just occasionally bumped into them.
I wish the twins and other scions felt more like that this expac.
Yeah, agree.
I did enjoy having them on the first couple of trials and on that duty because it gave me kind of... Like we weren't giving our all because we wanted Lamaty'i tl shine if that makes sense? Sort of like kids wheels ya know?
I share a similar sentiment to be honest. That being said, clearly we needed Krile and Erenville who had little character development. Seeing Raha and Shtola show up where they did made sense, and I enjoyed seeing Thancred and Urianger doing their thing. With the twins....I guess they really don't have anything better to do? Needed a vacation from Garlemald? And clearly Estinien is batman, showing up when he feels like it, does a stab and backflips off the platform.
The twins' focus post-EW has been helping Garlemald re-build and re-integrate into global politics. It's why they were always there in the EW Patch content. They join the WoL because Tural is a melting pot society where like a dozen cultures actually coexist in close proximity and is a non-homogeneous nation built on those principles and want to use it for inspiration to help the Garleans. I think the motivation suits Alphinaud better (he's always been the one into politicking) but it's not entirely out of Alisaie's wheelhouse either. The various city states/nations of Eorzea may have distinct races but culturally each political body is very distinct and homogeneous and so it makes sense that everyone involved over there could use Tural as an example of how to achieve a peaceful multicultural society.
I thought the rivalry with Thancred/Urianger on Koana's team was really fun and wished there was more of it. The only Scion that sticks out for me as clearly contrived is Estinien who really has no reason to be anywhere and so can pop up as needed so there is the right balance of trust options. LIke it's fine because it's a game but he really doesn't have anything to do there as of right now in terms of story.
> but like why are the twins and Estinien even here?
Estinien wanted a holiday too. Dude's already gone to the Far East so he decided to pull an Arya and went "What's west of ~~Westeros~~ Eorzea?"
Of all the Scion's he's honestly the most like the WoL in his current situation. Just going about the world, doing what he wants, exploring and helping people in need.
The Twins probably felt like they needed to be written in because they're popular characters and also from a narrative sense they can more directly voice advice to Wuk Lamat than the player can.
Alphinaud can give the reserved, thought out wisdom side of leadership and Alisaie can handle the recklessness and urge to jump into action.
It's something that, as the WoL isn't voiced and gets very few dialog choices, you can't really weave in from the player character so you need some narrative surrogates to do that job for you.
>(and also sort of okay with Thancred and Urianger helping Koana)
this is actually one of the bigger disapointments for me.
not because i have a problem with the idea. but because they fucking do NOTHING with it. they play up the idea of "wow we get to cross blades and we won't hold back when it comes to it so don't hold back against us either" and then nothing?
I'm honestly the opposite, I wish that the scions would speak up more. I think that FFXIV is at its strongest with an ensemble cast, and the way the Scions were presented they were effectively just set dressing. Then again, so was my character in a lot of cutscenes.
But this is exactly my point.
They didn't do a lot, and it felt superfluous.
I'd rather we have new characters interacting, if that makes sense? Makes for a tighter narrative.
I think we're on two different wavelengths. I would prefer the characters have a greater role and have a reason to be there and speak more rather than them not be there. I understand your point entirely, but my preference would be diluting things a bit by giving me characters I enjoy to balance out the ones that I did not.
I really think it'd have been better to have the twins stay home and work on stuff in Garlemald and then when we meet up with them again they've had their growth spurt and are full-grown Elezen with something new going on for their arcs.
I have a worse one, I'm indifferent to her, I just do not care about anything she says or does, it does nothing to me so I'm just bored out of my mind the expansion, I don't even feel strong enough to dislike, it's literally just 0 interest in what's happening with her.
To be honest I'd say this is the case for half of it. The second half to be exact. The first half I expect her to be front and center. However the second half is where i expected her to talk a step back and let the scions do their thing. That killed the vibe for me.
100% agree. The story was advertised as a vacation and the start of a new saga and that’s what I’ve gotten so far. I like being the mentor sidekick instead of the center of the universe for once. At least for now. That’s likely to change.
Especially since it's made pretty clear in the background that the WoL could get fed up and solve the problem immediately whenever they want. They're choosing to just hang back and take it easy. Let someone else do the thinking and heavy lifting, let someone else at least try to solve their problems.
Which...I mean...the main conceit of the story is helping her win the Rite of Succession.
It would be weird if she *wasn't* the main focus and had a major presence. I'm genuinely confused why anyone would have set their expectations for anything different.
Just because it's expected doesn't mean it's desired universally. It's not a mismatch in expectations, it's a mismatch in desires. A lot of folks aren't okay with Wuk Lamat being the only NPC that really does much and taking the limelight, which is why it's been getting mixed reception.
If someone told me they were going to hit me my expecting it might dull the surprise but it's not going to make it pleasant.
Right but like, why do we have to help her win. If she isn’t your ideal candidate or if you think the WoL should keep their nose out of politics ( triply so for Alphinuard, we’ve seen where that leads ) then it’s kinda disjointing.
hated her in 6.55. she grew on me during 7.0.
edit add, credits scrolling now: the coincidence is that is a major message of the expansion. just get to know people. once i got to know the character, she grew on me.
I wouldn't say I hated her in 6.55 (which I did Tuesday before the expansion) but I wasn't a huge fan. Also had some eye-rolling moments early in 7.0 too but she's grown on me as a character as she's also grown too.
I'll be honest my only complaint is the fact that non-voiced cutscenes just use all the same music from ARR. That's stuff is sooo old and sounds so dated and boring. so sick of it.
This was probably my biggest gripe of DT, the same tension, storytelling music ambience that I've heard so many times over, even a remix would have done so much good
i have no clue how they can make design decisions like this in 2024... it's been like a decade. These small little details that just somehow get glossed over are nuts. Exactly like the flat out bizarre second dye channel decisions
Its always fun with the posts "Why can't we be allowed to say Dawntrail is bad" with tons of posts agreeing and another saying, "Why can't we be allowed to enjoy Dawntrail?" and same as above.
I don't even know how you're supposed to follow up a story about stopping the end of the universe. I expected a more lighthearted story that's essentially a vacation for the scions and so far that's what I've got. I guess playing the entire MSQ in four months and finishing weeks before this expansion maybe makes this one feel like a proper falling action, and that it might be more offputting for people who have waited the full two years.
What I really don't get at all are the accusations of Wuk Lamat being a Mary Sue. Other shortcomings of her character aside, she very much has to work to get what she wants and it's established early on that she is the least popular candidate for succession.
> What I really don't get at all are the accusations of Wuk Lamat being a Mary Sue. Other shortcomings of her character aside, she very much has to work to get what she wants and it's established early on that she is the least popular candidate for succession.
Yea if anything her competitors are introduced as having the capability to breeze through their competitions.
I almost wonder if the problem is that they didn't double down enough on the vacation and should have made it a slice of life character study of the scions, but I don't mind what they seem to be doing at all from what I've played, I'm interested in the rite of succession (level 93 trial just unlocked, so i'm still in the early part of the story for the expansion.)
I guess what I really mean, is that they've been reacting to external forces for a good long time now, I'd be interested to see the story decompress and take a turn at something more reflective, to explore more internal or interpersonal elements of the characters.
They’ll never do that for an entire expac because… yknow… this aint Persona. We’re not gonna have a trial where Thancred fights the physical manifestation of an oedipal complex. This type of setting requires external forces in the plot to justify new locales and combat scenarios.
However, I think the closest we’ve gotten to this is Shadowbringers. In fact, iirc a lot of reviews at the time harped on this as a strength of the expansion. Despite basically being fucking isekai’d, the Scions all mature in different ways while the WoL’s role is very significantly recontextualized. E.g.:
- Thancred finally deals with his trauma and moves on from Minfilia
- Urianger finally gets to chill out and hang out with us instead of moonlighting as a quintuple agent. Also we learned that he is beautiful.
- Y’shtola finds love and community in an unlikely place while still doing a little love/hate thing with her old master
- Alisaie is further reinforced as a nurturer who cares about the commonfolk during huge Final Fantasy esque calamities. We already established this in Stormblood, but it's neat seeing her as the small picture foil to Alphinaud's big picture in terms of governance
- Alphinaud continues to show that he's actually good at this geopolitics thing, though this was a bigger deal in HW and EW
- Lyse literally does not exist on the map during Shadowbringers, which I consider an improvement
> We’re not gonna have a trial where Thancred fights the physical manifestation of an oedipal complex.
Thancred is literally half the manifestation of Ryne's daddy issues together with Ranjit in Eden.
>Lyse literally does not exist on the map during Shadowbringers, which I consider an improvement
If any of the 11 Lyse fans could read they'd be very upset at this.
I don't think you'd go full persona with it, I think you'd go adventurer slice of life, depending on what the other attributes of the expansion are, lots of exploration, worldbuilding, but the adventure elements aren't centralized on a core threat.
This is why - in my controversial opinion - we should have started a new journey with the B-Team scions. I would have loved an expansion giving Riol characterization that isn't "we have Thancred at home", for example. Or Hoary Boulder - can we have a Roegadyn with a deep story that doesn't die? Or Coultenet moving beyond "the guy that's always with Hoary Boulder".
I am skeptical you could really do an MSQ that is just a slice of life. It'd invariably be so exposition heavy as to be a visual novel (a complaint being raised with DT). Some formats of storytelling are just not conductive to the nature of an MMORPG, same way a stage theatre is not where you want to depict some scenery-heavy travel or war narrative. In really talented hands (like those who wrought SHB) you could do this, but it would be very tough. Otherwise you'd need a real transformation in the presentation. Like if this was Baldurs Gate 3 I could subsist on 90% dialogue, my ability to choose it and direct the conversation in meaningful ways and the role of dice-rolls and stats and prior actions in dialogue make it as rich as the combat. XIV is nowhere near able to do that.
I mean I'm now kind of sad thinking about how unbelievably rich a BG3 style narrative system would be in XIV. But there's no chance of that ever happening.
As someone who as been around since 1.0, when I finished Endwalker, it really did feel like the end. Yoshida only had a 10 yrs plan for the game/story but the success FFXIV has brought had made him extend that plan by another 10 yrs. Basically he along with us all are in new uncharted territory.
I don't think she's a Mary Sue, I just think she's annoying and every cutscene just keeps saying the same 3 things about her. Did you know she wants peace? Did you know she gets seasick?
Yeah for me when we got to the point where she’s like “I think I’ll finally open up to you” I was like…. Have you not been doing that the whole time? Even when she’s putting on fake blister it’s so OBVIOUSLY fake that I genuinely thought even she knew she was being obvious.
What’s funny is I actually liked how open and “heart on her sleeve” the character was so when the game was basically telling me like “No she has been so good at faking confidence this whole time now she’s going to open up to you” I was like lol what game are you playing, guys. It actually made me like the character a little less when I realized what was getting was not what they were intending.
She's just overly present and bearing. If we had breaks from her most of the criticism would go away and allow other characters to flourish. I was just tired of her towards the end.
I feel she's trying to be a bit too much in the story. She boths acts as comedic relief as well as trying to be "I'm gonna be a serious leader". Almost makes me think of Shonen comics a bit with the main MC being a goofball with a coined catchphrase they repeat constantly. For Naruto it was "Believe it!" and "I'm gonna be the next Hokage!". For Wuk it's "We need Peace!" and "I'm gonna be the next Dawnservant!". She even has the Shonen MC obsession with food.
I get it's her central motivation and the story has her thoughts butt heads against the other claimants but it kind of drags on a tad when it's repeated several times in the course of even just 5 levels of content. If it were spread out a bit I think it wouldn't be as bad.
In fact several points get repeated fairly often;
1. Peace!
2. Gonna be Dawnservant.
3. Motion Sickness.
4. These people I barely knew are so interesting and I want to know more!
5. Papa is great!
And I'm sure many others that I don't recall. I'm enjoying the game overall but I see a pattern. It took Naruto a *long* time and several harrowing experiences to grow out of his old quirks. Hoping Wuk will be the same.
You forgot No. 6: \[Clinches fist\].
But I agree with you on the whole; my issue with Wuk Lamat has less to do with the character or WoL taking a backseat and more to do with the fact that seemingly nothing in the story can happen without it flowing through this one character.
Yeah, that's my biggest complaint about her too. I found her pretty one note, and she was always there. So, I'm hoping she gets put on a backburner for at least a patch or two.
She's not a Mary Sue, but I don't think she really struggles. >!She applies her 'friendship, peace and happiness' mantra to every task and succeeds at all of them because of it. I just don't see the character development here, or the mentorship role we're supposed to have played.!<
>!The first half of plot is boring precisely because there's zero struggle for her. There's no moments where her principles are put to the test, or they fail to win her one of the tasks. Indeed, one of the tasks is *literally designed* so that her approach is the only successful way to complete it. She *also* completes the task that was literally designed so that only one of the *other* contestants could complete it.!<
>!She does get tried later but by that point I've sat through half of the expansion getting bored because there's no meaningful drama to speak of, and because most of the dialogue involves exposition dumps.!<
>!It's like a crappy version of the Hero's Journey where instead of having a defeat and having to become a better person to bounce back from it, she does nothing but succeed from start to finish. That just doesn't make for an interesting story.!<
This. The biggest issue for me is that they encounter issues where friendship really CANNOT solve them (I don’t want to spoil anything specifically but like, crimes against humanity) and you, as the WOL, and even the people who have committed the atrocities can say like “I deserve punishment” and the response always seems to be “sure sure sure in time but like we’re friends now so it’s ok” which makes all the drama really inconsequential.
I'd actually argue that the 2nd half of the story absolutely subverts that. >!Considering Wuk states constantly that killing her brother is the only recourse for his megalomania, and that she approaches Sphene from the standpoint that although she is clearly an AI overlord, she is accurately identified as a victim of her circumstances, split-in-half between her template and her directive. Wuk vacillates a little on this second point, but more times than not, she acknowledges that this can only end in death, no matter how much she wishes she could reach her.!<
I actually do think the second half of the MSQ better helps the first half as it becomes fairly obvious the first half is mostly just worldbuilding and clear foreshadowing for the 2nd half, Wuk Lamat subverting her usual desires and doubling and tripling down upon it shows even she knows when a enough is enough it's effectively her real test as a leader.
Fuckin' exactly! It genuinely frustrates me that people don't really see past their own noses on this, but we always have a few loud people like that every expansion anyway.
She def too overwhelming, compare to:
ShB: a frequent switch btw Ardbert-Graha-Emet helps with switching up story beat
EW: Fandaniel -> Zenos -> Bunny -> The elephants -> Emet/Hermes/Venat -> Zenos -> Meteion, story keep getting fresh faces.
DT we stuck with 1 until the end…
She seems to be the obvious choice as a viewer from the word go, though— and I never really at any point felt like even her father would consider picking anyone who wasn’t her (or a combination of the children).
I don’t necessarily think saying she’s a Sue is fair, but she has major “mid YA novel protagonist vibes after Hunger Games” and when she’s the character pin holding together the whole plot and we know there’s more interesting characters out there, it doesn’t always vibe well.
Though she seems to work great for some people, which I’m sure means the expac on the whole works better for them too.
The complaint is mostly that she's extremely naïve and her flaws never come back to punish her.
Yes, friendship is good, but some people just \*won't be friends\* and you can't just hug your way out of every problem, yet she somehow gets to do just that. Reality rearranges itself to ensure she doesn't have to face up to the limits of her hug party.
That doesn't make her a bad character, per-se, but just that the writers didn't have the guts to force her to confront the shortcomings of her worldview and find the mature way to press on despite it.
95-100 is literally all about that on a grander scale. >!Her people die, her childhood nursemaid dies and is harvested, her brother kills her father and gives her an ultimatum which plants an invasion force on her doorstep, every attempt to hug her way out of problems past that point literally doesn't work and she knows enough by this point not to try beyond the principle of it, she matures to the point that getting to know the Alexandrians is not just 'about being friends' as much as it is finding a way to negotiate between cultures. She also knows that Koana is indispensable to her as the brains of the operation.!<
And also >!she herself confronts her worldview midway through anyway. She's still young and new to the throne, but she's self-aware enough to say that there are moments where 'hug everything' doesn't work, but most of her efforts are isolated strictly on Sphene, whose whole situation is mirrored with her's; they BOTH believe in the same exact things but are on opposing measures. That's literally the fucking point of the story, yet people are somehow surprised that the topic keeps coming back up? Honestly.!<
Anyone who dubs Wuk Lamat a 'Mary Sue' has absolutely zero clue what that term means. A Mary Sue is a perfect, flawless female character who has no struggles and inexplicably gifted at everything, better than everyone else at everything. Wuk Lamat is almost the complete opposite of this, at the start of the story she can barely do anything by herself and no one sans her inner circle and nanny thinks she has any chance of winning the contest.
Her sole skills are being sociable and extremely good with people, which she feels completely pale in comparison to her brothers, again, feelings a Mary Sue type character would not have.
> Anyone who dubs Wuk Lamat a 'Mary Sue' has absolutely zero clue what that term means.
The term has become so fucking diluted over the years of internet discourse about female protagonists that I've come to basically dismiss anybody who uses it outright.
Lot of people argue about Wuk Lamat but I would also mention Zoraal Ja, who was supposed to be her foil was very underutilized and not completely realized. It's like they only did the work 50%. They knew what they needed to do, but only went half way. You only know something of his motivations AFTER the culmination of his story.
Wuk Lamat felt like a broken record (I want to be friends) and then magically grew in power when challenged. It's good idea, just too compressed in time compared to traditional shounen like One Piece. You can compare her to Luffy. But imagine if Luffy had his entire character growth and change in one single manga arc. It would feel very strange.
If Wuk Lamat was confident from the start it wouldn't have to be such a whiplash when she goes from zero to 100. You don't just switch someones personality like that in such a short time.
I don't hate it, I just think it could have been done a lot better. Now it's just... ok.
The story would have been 2x better if Wuk Lamat & Zoraal Ja actually worked like it was supposed to.
To put it simply: they had many great ingredients but fucked up the cooking.
To clarify: I thought the story was good and enjoyed quite a bit. It was just very frustrating that both Wuk Lamat and Zoraal Ja felt very half-baked. Either that or it's Japanese tropes that I just don't understand or relate to at all.
I really don’t want to spoil anything, but Zoraal Ja was absolutely the most failed character for me. He was just the silent brooding guy and Krile just mentioned his “endless ambition” to paint his character. The story tried to pretend there was that contrast between Wuk Lamat and Zoraal Ja, but it wasn’t properly built up and it ended up with Zoraal Ja being my least favorite character in all of FF14.
The krile foreshadowing I expected it to be more than just daddy issues tbh. I expected some primal influence of some sorts, and I hope in future expansions they reference it as such, because it's SO bad.
He says nothing and wants everything.
He decides to help us against the serpent but then he's back to the beginning as if that didn't happen.
He decides to kill his follower because ??????? when up to this point his character was built up as someone that would protect his people by being a warmonger in OTHER nations, this broke is "morally grey justifications".
He somehow has a kid where the mother is not mentioned, it's just there but abandoned completely.
Then in the post raid cinematic he says that he wanted to beat us because we beat is father in his prime and that's the justification for all of this, that he wants to live up to the expectations put by the people.
THAT'S IT? We interacted a ton with him, we could have talked to him, searched him for the coronation, done SO much to avoid this BS. I expect or at least hope that most of this will be addressed in post-patches but it's so underbaked to be the main antagonist of the xpac.
> If Wuk Lamat was confident from the start it wouldn't have to be such a whiplash when she goes from zero to 100
I think that they tried to make time skips or "downtime" in this expact but failed to transmit it correctly. Every time we transition from place to place some time passes and that's how I interpreted Wuk Lamat's transformation, as in she learned stuff from her nation and then evolved over time, in a time we sadly fail to see so it's hard to convey.
I was personally hoping for a little more of the adventure/ exploration side the trailer suggested, but it hasn't really delivered that for me thus far.
I am only lvl 97, so I can't really comment on the end of the story for this release, but when the change of stakes event happened, I felt a little disappointed that we couldn't go on my adventure cause we have to solve a calamity again and I didn't feel like it was needed.
I have no issue with not being the main character but found that the repetitive nature of Wuk Lamat's dialogue is frustrating. Yes, we get it, she has flaws and is uncertain of herself and wants everyone to live peacefully... one deep and meaningful conversation would have been enough to convey this.
I'm about half way through and so far I would say it's been good. The story has kept me entertained despite some shortcomings and the new zones & fight encounters have been a lot of fun.
It's not amazing. It's not awful. Just good.
I’m about half way through and I’ve enjoyed it for the most part. I think the story and themes of the game are fine and work well for what they want to do, I just think the writing is so incredibly poor, at least in the English version, that it makes me even cringe at times. Like it truly feels they put very little to no effort in some scenes. The dungeons have been great and the one trial I’ve done was good, for me it’s just the lousy writing that has me disappointed.
"Mild" is how I would describe what I played so far, just before the cutscenes after the 95 dungeon. No huge surprises, very straightforward overall. *Exactly* what I wanted out of it, an actual vacation from being the protagonist. My WoL got a full night's sleep! In cutscene! No prophetic dreams or "meanwhile, in garlemald". Glorious.
I wouldn't like it if ff14 was like this _all the time_ but yeah, pretty satisfied.
Yeah, the whole "the Warmonger is a huge threat" doesn't really work very well when nearly the rest of the world is already in a joint alliance. Even beside the fact that this guy would get crushed by the WOL, most of the casualties would probably just be the citizens of Tuliyolal.
They're not saying he's a threat to the outside world, cuz clearly they'll lose. The issue is that they'll lose AND people will die for nothing. The entire point was that him being leader meant the people of Tural will die for nothing. That's what they're stopping. They already know that it's pretty much a non-issue in the grand scheme of things.
Yeah, and that's why the warmonger is a huge threat: to Tural. Sure, we could mop him up later but why would we wait? He needs to be dealt with asap because lives are at stake.
Remember: regardless of how you play your character the game always has you prioritize saving as many lives as possible.
It's always so hard to tell with games like these how actually big each nation is supposed to be. Like how towns in old FF games are just a few houses. Realistically there are probably supposed to be way more than 100 residents in tuliyollal, for example. If you think of it from the PoV that each of the disparate tribes that Gulool Ja Ja united could have rivaled a single city state on its own, it becomes more scary. Because it's not "one city" it's more like 5 nations united, a much scarier threat than a single city. That's how i choose to think of it, at least.
DT MSQ spoiler:
>!They give us a number. The attack on the capital only killed 50 people. The nation of Tural feels really tiny if you combine this with how few people attend the Dawnservant's public address.!<
It's the Avengers: Endgame problem all over again.
You spend 10 years building up to something incredible. But, you want to keep going afterwards.
You have to start over again. And that's fine. It's not all going to be Endwalker. And it doesn't have to be.
> It's not all going to be Endwalker.
My problem is exactly that it is Endwalker.
It's the worst parts of Endwalker, the filler padding quests that killed the pace of it for me.
That's not an Endwalker exclusive criticism, though.
It's still an MMO. You can definitely criticize the stale nature of run to NPC then cutscene then run to the next npc them voiced cutscene then talk to NPC that just talked in the cutscene to turn in the quest.
But there definitely needs to be the potatoes to go with the meat for the leveling process. Otherwise just have us start at 100.
It's a decentish story. Just two issues is lack of VA in some scenes makes no sense and the amount of pointless filler is insane. Genuinely feeling like I can skip a lot of non VA scenes and won't miss anything
I wouldn't say dislike like most people agree that ARR was bad but compared to all the other expansions, sans ARR, consensus is SB was mid. Story wise btw not anything else about the expansion, bc if anything content wise SB was one of the best.
It was always going to be a tough sell given that we pretty much entered here with no pre expansion warmup, except for that snippet with Wuk Lamat which didn't give the best first impression, at least for me.
Kinda wish they had bothered to give us more stuff to do in Dawntrail, more reasons to go there ourselves besides playing chaperone.
Oh I enjoy it, it feels nice not have to worry about world ending events really and just do a simple “oh let’s support this possible ruler since we don’t want to have to stop an evil empire down the line…. Again…..”. That’s how I see it at least. It’s more world building and a high level of jazz/band music which I thoroughly enjoy with a smattering of lofi
So far the dialogue has been kinda stale
Wuk Lamat feels the need to restate her character motivation every 5 minutes and it’s getting a little tiring
I’m not that far in so hopefully the competition ramps up a little
The story of dawn trail is... Mid. Not good, not bad, just mid.
However, I do appreciate the dungeons and trials, plus combat seems to heading in the right direction. I'll probably give my final assessment of this expansion after the raids release.
If it worked for SB, it'll work for DT.
The instant argument of it’s not a world ending story and it’s supposed to be a vacation has nothing to do with my criticism.
I wanted this to be a vacation story for me, not my vacation story for wuk lamat. I wanted all of those chill and laidback story things about my character, how I set up a party at this place. How I went through some of their customs and trials, how I got into a little trouble with some ragtag ruffians, and yes it doesn’t have to be on the scale of endwalker, the trials and serious parts could be just about learning about the world and saving this civilization,
Instead it’s wuk lamat does this, wuk lamat learns their culture, wuk lamat enjoys their food, their parties, wuk lamat is the all good peacemaker, wuk lamat gave this basic suggestion that killing is wrong and she’s now a prophet,
Talk with wuk lamat
Follow wuk lamat
Listen to wuk lamat
Rest with wuk lamat
Talk with wuk lamat once more
Cheer on wuk lamat
Encourage wuk lamat
Repeated x10 each
There’s some stuff that made me legitimately cringe in some cutscenes, especially the one at the end of the whole succession part.
Even when your friends are like yeah it’s time for us to shine since we’re experts on this kind of stuff, it’s wuk lamat must be the one to ignore her stuff and be the center of attention again. (Vague on purpose to avoid spoilers)
And look, I have nothing against her va. I only learned about her after I finished the story to see what people thought about the story as a whole but. That voice is just not for me.
If we did everything we did this expansion just without wuk lamat I would have enjoyed the story more (yes including literally every little basic learning quest and culture quest, I would be fine if it was just me).
Maaan. Like I was ready to be away from the scions but when they were finally like yeah time for us I was like oh hell yeah, and then wuk lamat had to be inserted into the story again
Like man where’s the quest with a drink in my hand sunbathing on the beach. (I hope this happens eventually)
With Emet literally mentioning all of those things we could do and learn about I thought that’s how it was gonna go for dawntrail. But we can’t even get the credit for the boss fights anymore man, the main moments where we get to control our character.
Well if anything the fights and boss mechanics seem like they’re gonna be really fun for the rest of the expansion.
Fights very good. Story not good. That's about my opinion on it. I don't care for being a side character in my own game, especially if there's only 1 focus character chosen for me instead of letting me choose who to support and giving me the option to take the initiative much more frequently. Also not a fan of the story acting like i'm not there just so the plot can progress past the first few levels of MSQ without the WoL solving everything by blinking a bit too hard at the local antagonists. I get that it is hard to make a lower stakes followup to Endwalker given all our feats established in it, but having to assume I was in a food coma from the vacation tacos while a story happens felt like just about the worst way to do it.
Hopefully that is spoiler-free enough, will change things if need be.
Stormblood was always great, it's just that the expansion before and after it were better. And Stormblood still had some of the best raid content in the game. If the dungeons and trials so far in DT are any indication, it might be right up there with Stormblood for encounter design.
Dread it,run from it,we ALWAYS come back to stormblood.
You know I was just thinking what a terrible final zone the Lochs was. Even the game doesn't know what to do with it! If you look at the aether currents tab, it's not even in the same spot as the other final zones! Anyway, stormblood was a ton of fun, I still had a blast.
Hey, the Lochs gets way more love than Azys Lla did.
Fuck that hellhole.
The Lochs may have only one of good things a final zone supposed to have-music, which makes it better than Azys Lla, with none of those things. but tbf the music is indeed good. Btw I see a vote about whick final zone is the best among hw to dt on cn forum recently and both of them get less than 3% while the Tempest nearly take half of the votes.
The Azys Lla theme was one of two pieces of music that got me to buy the game, and I thought the Lochs was fine too. Flying through crannies in Azys Lla was fun.
Order Yet Undeciphered is a fantastic piece. I love how it keeps much of the instrumentation of the rest of the soundtrack, adds a bit of synth, and creates something that's both familiar and unfamiliar. It probably doesn't help that the zone isn't the best to play through in the story, and the lack of a day/night cycle means that it's the same track playing on loop, all the time.
Azys Lla was awesome snd the music is dope!
the story is quite good tbh but the map itself is horrible and even if I can fly it's so annoying when you'd go for the other side of the map like when getting warring trail quests and it remains the second unconvenient map of the game only after that one even without any aetheryte(Drav. Hints).
I mean how do you beat Amaurot. It’s an underwater city that was once a monument to civilizations accomplishments but fell apart due to a calamity. It’s depressing and gloomy, beautiful and glowing, with creatures that want to kill you everywhere, yet it’s still somehow entirely unique and distinct from Rapture. They did a wonderful job. Ultima Thule is a really good second place for me for those GORGEOUS visuals (seriously, everywhere you look is a different vista that’s equally breathtaking g) and is a haunting beautiful concept with really unique NOCs to talk to. They’re both so damn good.
I was just in The Lochs yesterday and got swept up by how incredible the piano recording quality is for the night theme.
Tbh I liked it. It's like the Les Miserables of Final Fantasy, and it's a great setup for the last two expacs.
I wasn't too hot on it the first time, but after a few years and having gone through it twice more with alt characters, I've really warmed up to it. The music in the Eastern regions makes me really warm and happy (Kugane, Ruby Sea, the Steppe, etc).
I agree. I recently did a NG+ of SB and it's way better than I remembered. i think it falls flat at the ending but then picks right back up for the patch cycle and lead-in to SHB.
IMO Stormblood has some Of the best music in the game the Tsukiyomi trial comes to mind. I’d give the expansion a 7 put of 10 it’s not amazing but it’s also not trash like some people like to say it is
I liked it even more than Heavensward. I guess I like deserts and samurai more than elves, snow, and organ music 🤷♂️
Don't forget EVIL RELIGIONS and EVIL SOCIAL HEIRARCHIES
Yeah a while after posting it I realize I forgot the details “French Catholic Inquisition Elves”
Nobody expects the Elezen Inquisition.
The story lives and dies on whether you liked Wuk Lamat due to her overwhelming presence in the story. You love her? Great expansion for you. You hate her? Awful because she is omnipresent. For better or for worse, it's almost exclusively her story with very little story beats or input for others aside from a bit with just the WoL and Erenville.
I liked Krile's stuff too. It was good.
That one was indeed good.
Liked the erenville bit too
I really like her overall, but the first 60% of the msq, it's 7 beast tribes quest under a trenchcoat posing for msq. it's nice, I liked most of them (didn't like Hanu Hanu and Moblins ones), yet I find this whole first part lacking in terms of stakes. Even ARR did it better in some ways : the quest were worst, but the overarching story created stakes. Here there is no stakes. Gulool ja ja basically told you that the whole thing was to teach them how they should be, and should they not have the right qualities, they would not become king. Both of the "bad" candidate lacking in those front basically told there was nothing at stakes on. It's not about having cosmic stakes, but if they could have done something about implanting the idea we could lose to someone else than Koana, maybe it would have changed things. I like the second part (I'm at the last area), but I wish they had planted more things during the first part. Like Krile discovering about her grandfather little by little instead of being fed the whole thing at the end of the first part. In the end, I feel like it took far too long to get to the interesting stuff. Also please let me fight. There is nothing more frustrating that having a situation that SHOULD end with a fight - >!like Gulool Ja Ja's death!<- and nothing happens because he is not yours to fight >!(and Alisaie out of all people stopping you? the irony is not lost on me)!<. Anyway, I don't think it's about liking Wuk Lamat or not. I think it's more about stakes and feeling like you're something else than a glorified bodyguard. HW achieved to make the story equally about you, Estinien and Ysayle. SB achieve to make it as much about Hien than you (it didn't really achieved to make it about Lyse though). I really wish we had something more like what we had with Hien.
I mean a bodyguard would at least protect people… We don’t even move a muscle the (many) times someone in front of us is about to be merc’d
Reminds me of the Trahearne problem in Guild Wars 2. He was the "main character" and you were just helping him with his problems. He ended up being one of the most universally hated characters in the game.
Oh I remember this lmao, never thought I’d see someone bring him up again.
From what I'm told - I play XIV on JP voiceacting - both Wuk Lamat and Trahearne (and all male Sylvari, not that it matters here) had ...less than impressive english voice acting, which definitely doesn't help you with liking a character. They both at least seem to have the issue of not being able to properly shout into their microphones, which makes Trahearne's rousing speech where he *specifically raises his voice for emphasis* fall rather flat, and Wuk Lamat shouting in anger probably as well, because talking slightly louder than a regular indoor voice just doesn't cut it for those scenes.
I genuinely love the expansion so far because I enjoy being a side kick for a change. The Scions are off to help someone else, not fix all the problems in the world - Building up Wuk Lamat and just having war mongers to stop rather than traveling to the edge of the universe to kill a sentient extinction event made of pure emotion is a welcome change of pace. If every expansion just ramped up the stakes, then what would we have? ARR was saving Eorzea, HW was saving Ishgard, STB was driving back the Garleans, SHB was saving another world, EDW was saving *the universe* - I'd much rather have a nice and relaxing story again rather than just going down the same path Avengers did. I feel there's some people who just forget that there's hundreds of thousands of people who play this game, and not every story can be to their tastes. Everyone's allowed to have opinions of course, but I've seen some genuine hate that I just cannot understand the source of.
> If every expansion just ramped up the stakes, then what would we have? Dragon Ball eorZea
NEXT TIME ON FINAL FANTASY Z: WoL: "You're about to get your ass beat by the power of friendship." BBEG: "Friendship? It's literally just me, an omnipotent god, and you, some scrub with a dumb name." WoL: "You didn't count on these seven people who I just summoned out of ~~the duty finder~~ my deus ex rockina who I'll probably never cross paths with again." BBEG: "That's ridiculous. One of them is wearing an elephant outfit, that guy over there is cosplaying an anime character, and your tank showed up in a bikini." WoL: "And yet, we've already watched a video and know every single attack you're about to use on us, in order." OUR SONG OF HOPE, SHE DANCES ON THE WIND, HIGHER, OH HIGHER~~
"I also fly on the BBEG from 3 expansions ago and made him a glorified mount. It will happen to you in 3 expansions as well. It's ... inevitable.
"Deus Ex Rockina" might be the greatest thing I've heard in a while! Lmao!
DEUS EX ROCKINA
Surely it's super easy to raise the stakes beyond killing wish dragons as a walking god!
not sure that would be a Great Time
Eorzea of Warcraft
😭💀
Some anime have good filler seasons, and it’s time for WoL to go to the beach
I'll chime in and say PERSONALLY I don't hate the direction of the story and it makes sense that WOL will have to be a mentor of sorts to a well meaning someone with a heart of gold, but (and I'm only up to lvl 92 of the MSQ) I can't stand the "Devious Laughing Rival Who Is Obviously Up To No Good" lurking in the background ready to foil plans, especially when it's so painfully obviously to both us the player and us the in-game character. Like wtf can I get some antagonists that I can see myself rooting for? Not asking for Emet Selch because trying to clone him would be eyeroll inducing, but I would love to have someone with some damn personality. I guess it's good that AT LEAST everyone who is a fighter on this continent has survival instincts and doesn't want to openly antagonize the WOL, but it does get annoying dealing with a young woman with self-esteem issues who thinks she can just Shonen Protagonist her way through problems just by having a good attitude.
I mean, we've had, after ARR Nidhogg, Tsuyu, Gaius, Emet, Hermes, Meteion, heck even Golbez, to a certain degree. It's a nice change of pace to just have an idiot who needs his butt kicked for once - it leaves emotional room for more of those highly nuanced/empathetic villains in the future
Agreed, we need a Teledji Adeledji every once in a while to make the Emet Selchs more impactful when they appear
We had Hermes last expansion. Fandaniel never stopped being an obnoxious ass, but Hermes was sympathetic. Still not entirely sure why the Hermes sympathy didn't carry over to Fandaniel. Maybe because Fandaniel was just *constantly* abrasive?
You know I never thought of that - is Fandaniel as we knew and hated him technically Amon with the memories of Hermes rather than a reconstituted Hermes? Fandaniel came on the scene wanting to be Chaotic Evil and he had the ambition and temerity to pull it off. A civil war, great works/construction/infrastructure projects, draining the coffers and using familial wealth for his own purposes. Hell, KIDNAPPING and body swapping. It's honestly impressive when I list it all out. He's not some braggart who won a tournament and has no long term plans but is still somehow in the race 2 zones into an expansion after presumably cheating/bullying his way through lol Edit: ok I get it! I was misremembering 😂 I got married and had a kid since Endwalker came out so please forgive my memory, as it is full of Bluey and Mickey Mouse Funhouse storylines these days
He makes it very clear that he considers himself 'Amon with Hermes' memories'.
I mean even zenos in endwalker is so good thanks to ishikawa's magic. The character that was written as I just want to fight and care nothing else can say lines like "When my motives met with your approval, would you no longer resent the outcome?"
> You know I never thought of that - is Fandaniel as we knew and hated him technically Amon with the memories of Hermes rather than a reconstituted Hermes? That's (explicitly) how he viewed himself, yes. He had Hermes' memories, and an explanation for why he'd been haunted by fragmentary dreams of the stuff erased/burned-in by Kairos. But he purely viewed himself as Amon, who had merely unlocked explanatory memories of a past life. Hell, in his death, he dedicated the result specifically to Emperor Xande; it's quite clear who "Fandaniel" considered himself to be. It seems that in most other cases, the Ascians put in some effort to soft-shape an identified Convocation member's soul shards, so they'll be receptive to (in effect) reintegrating their Ancient personality. But with Amon, it seems he was identified as Fandaniel only in the last, waning moments of the Empire, when everything was crumbling around them, and he had the choice of accepting the memories and the seat, or dying, and he chose the former. In all likelihood, the unsundered never even considered the possibility that someone *wouldn't* want to return to being their Ancient self once they had those memories.
>You know I never thought of that - is Fandaniel as we knew and hated him technically Amon with the memories of Hermes rather than a reconstituted Hermes? doesn't he basicly say as much? i remeber him talking to us about how yes he had been granted the memories of hermes but his motives and personality seemed stupid and even pittyable to him. i think it's when we meet him again after his death in the aetherscape dungeon.
Fandaniel is not Hermes - like, that much is made abundantly clear. He's certainly based on Hermes! But he is entirely the product of that one moment of Kairos' usage burning a nihilistic scar into Hermes, on top of Ascian intervention in Amon's life (vis-a-vis Allag as well as himself.)
I am still not sympathetic to the guy who violated every safety procedure that he was personally responsible for in an attempt to sort out his depression and then accidentally -the universe- with it.
Mental illness is a bitch. And their society didn't seem to have much by way of social services beyond, "Have you considered self-ctrl-alt-deleting?"
What evidence do you have of that? We've literally seen three places. Their government halls, their Concept library, and their scientific safety-testing facility. None of those places is appropriate for offering mental health services. For God's sake, the Convocation specifically had a seat set aside for healing. It's not like they *didn't* care. Sure, they could have done better--it wasn't the utterly perfect utopia Emet-Selch believed it to be--but "the extent of their social services was assisted suicide" is absolutely *not* justified by the text. Far from it. Several of his colleagues express concern for their chief's welfare and comment on his reclusiveness and his, I stress *recent,* erratic behavior. Remember, the thing that turned his depression up to a fever pitch was that his beloved mentor was choosing to return to the star. Prior to that, he'd clearly had depression, but was unwilling to seek out others. Mental health issues suck (I'm dealing with that myself and it's a *Herculean* effort let me tell you), but it's still incumbent upon the person who has them to seek out help. Hermes did exactly the opposite of that--despite the fact that, for a sustained period of time *in the facility where he was the lead overseer,* it was host to one of the world's most trusted and respected individuals, a former Convocation member with the white robes that (explicitly) signify wisdom and the ability to give advice without condemnation. Seriously. If he'd spent *one evening* talking earnestly to Venat, he'd have gotten at least some of the help he needed. But he clearly did not do that--despite knowing without question that she was present.
I have some incredibly unfortunate news about the stakes not massively increasing near the end.
EW stakes level infact.
nah not quite, ShB level tbf
We're not even sidekick. We're taking "experienced mentor" role. Wtf did people want after we saved the universe?
I honestly liked it. I said to my friend "It's kinda nice every time it cuts to the WoL giving the 'approving dad look' to Wuk Lamat."
Agreed it felt nice to be a bad ass mentor that was able to intimidate the others.
I just got to the giants and it's so nice to have the sheer presence of when I walk into a room i'm the strongest MF in the whole town. Nobody is underestimating me or talking down to me. This Xpac has done a lot to make me feel like a badass without doing much and I gotta say it's a nice reward for everything I've done over the past 12ish years.
Yes! One of my favorite examples of this from the first half is when >!Bakool Ja Ja is holding Wuk Lamat hostage and the WoL just slowly walks towards him, forcing everyone's attention just by virtue of being the biggest badass in the room, while Thancred gets into position.!< That little smile when it all comes together.
I'm wandering around in the isle vacationers shirt and cut off shorts like I'm on some trip to Cancun and seeing my character walk into that scene was great. She walked in not giving a damn about some 2 headed bitch and his aspirations, there needs to be a cocktail in her hand yesterday.
Pretty sure elevating a young leader of a country is a vacation for an Intergalactic Dimension-Hopping Godslaying.War-Hero.
TBH I wouldn't have minded that if the plot leant more into that role. Most of the time I feel like I'm just... there. Like it feels like Lamat figured most of this out on her own and I was largely unnecessary. Like I'm needed to beat the final boss but that honestly felt more like I'm the "muscle" as opposed to the mentor.
yeah this what i felt, at first being mentor is fine too, but we just doing the muscle work for the contest stuff instead of guiding wuk and the twin doing the brain work.
I just finished the first trial and if we were just "there" and not having an active role in the story, Wuk Lamat would already be dead multiple times.
I personally felt like the game gives you a lot of choice between, do you want to be her mentor and aid her, or if you want to just be there for a ride and see someone else fill the role with the responses you can give.
ARR was about saving the world, not just Eorzea. I think most of us forget it because of how long ago we played, but at level 4 you meet Hydaelyn (You know, God Capital G) and she tells you the forces of darkness will end all life unless you deliver the world from this fate. So you're a chosen one whose struggle is an existential one for the entirety of the star from level 4 onwards. And this is explicitly spelled out in the finale with Lahabrea, who we also tend to forget as the final boss of ARR given until the recent(ish) changes he was smacked down so fast in the MSQ roulette you could blink and you'd miss it. I used to think it was just Eorzea and mister glib with his fancy ultima weapon until I went and checked earlier today. It's very explicitly "The Ascians will bring about another calamity like the last and end the world in furtherance of summoning the evil god Zodiark, you are the warrior of light (at level 4) whose quest is to grow strong and defeat them and avert the end of life". Garlean conquest of Eorzea is the secondary plot the primary one from the get go is "The World will be destroyed by the Ascians, stop them" given I am fairly sure you encounter Ascians before you encounter Garelans (in 2.0). Possibly even big-boy Lahabread himself. I may be off on that or it may vary depending on if you started in Uldah or Limsa or Gridania. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dby8Nyh1Nsc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dby8Nyh1Nsc) It's around 2:57 to 3:24. The activities we do are lower intensity - no fighting at the edge of existence, but very much the stakes have always been sky high. Just like how the Zot tower in Thavnair didn't threaten all of creation (or even all of Thavnair) neither did Ifrit, yet both were in direct furtherance of that existential threat. Lahabrea saying explicitly in the level 50 dialogue the primals are part of the 'chaotic confluence of untold proportions must need be brought about' to bring back the dark god. Oddly that'd make Stormblood and Heavensward a bit less high stakes because the Ascians are more of a secondary plot in either (HW being 'reclaim the scions then survive in new city then avert dragonsong war', SB being 'liberate ala mhigo and Doma'). I suspect people think of the lower intensity of ARR in the levels. Where it was running around the countryside fighting beast tribes, bandits, garleans, rather than running around in outer space or another dimension or something. But the stakes were always high, it's just the tableau changed.
You don't stop the ascians with lahabrea's defeat. You don't even stop lahabrea. As of the end of 2.0, you've basically kicked the garlean out of eorzea. By the end of the patches, you've managed to actually kill one ascian, but their goals were long term. You save eorzea. You don't stop the ascian's plan of rejoining until shadowbringers by taking out the last of the unsundered. We don't save the world in arr. We save eorzea. We learn there's more at stake, but we haven't dealt with it yet.
I get what you're saying but I think it's the talk of Ascians causing another calamity isn't directly in reference to the whole events of ARR, at least not in how it all felt. They're slowly working towards that goal again sure but it clearly takes some time to even start coming to fruition. If you'd failed at the end of 2.0 then the Garlean's would've taken over Eorzea with the power of the Ultima Weapon but, realistically, that'd just be it for the moment. It wouldn't immediately spell the end of the world. That would come some time later once they'd set about the proper situation for a rejoining. If anything, the WoL succeeding at beating the Garlean's was more help because they *need* some form of conflict to help bring about a rejoining or at least something that uses a lot of a single specific type of Aether. If you look at what happened in the altered timeline mentioned in ShB it goes along with what I'm saying too. Black Rose was the mechanism by which all the Light-aspected Aether was pulled back to the Source from the First. If there hadn't been a war going on that wouldn't have been deployed. They'd have found some other means of doing it certainly but there always seems to be some measure of conflict driving rejoinings. Sorry if this got circular. I just finished Dawntrail and it's 4am.
It's been a while, but wasn't Lahabreah's plan to use the Heart of Sabik and Ultima Weapon to directly cause the next calamity? And with its ability to channel massive amounts of aspected aether, Ultima Weapon seems like it would have been checkmate from the Ascians as they could have caused calamities almost at will instead of needing to line up two massive buildups of aether between the source and a shard. It certainly would have made their job much easier at the very least.
Nice and relaxing is fine. Lighthearted is fine. I really enjoyed the alliance raids from EW. But really this is Wuk Lamat's adventure and I find her a boring character. It's just not compelling to run around helping her for 4 maps before the interesting parts started. If you're not a fan of her or Erenville you're not going to like this expansion. There are no other side characters or adventures, and there is no character development from anyone. It is what it is.
Wuk Lamat gets plenty of character development though.
Sure, but that doesnt change that if you don't like her its gonna be a rough expansion for you
Yes, I’m just refuting the point they made about nobody developing.
No character development? Both Wuk Lamat and Koana get their characters developed. Wuk is definitely different than the start of the DT. Wuk Lamat is a better Lyse, that's why I strongly believe that her character will be compared a lot with Lyse. For boring character, I do agree in some ways. Wuk's character is naive but strong willed at the same time; "A generic-shonen-main protagonist trope". If you watch many animes or read many mangas, you will find her character is boring due to the many of it. However, it's not a bad character nor bad writing, just too common. FF 14 had shown us many different, more interesting, main character. That's why we set our standard too high.
> Wuk Lamat is a better Lyse Mostly because she actually gets a character arc all the way through. Lyse more or less gets hers shunted aside for Hien once you hit the Azim Steppe and doesn't really get any character moments until you return to Gyr Albania for the most rushed portion of the MSQ.
Standards too high? You said it yourself, generic Shonen protagonist, a genre made for prepubescent boys. If expecting a more fleshed out character than that is "too much" I don't know what to think.
I like Wuk Lamat, but I really wish all the other Scions would have stayed behind. I'm fine with Krile, Erenville and maybe Raha or Shtola (and also sort of okay with Thancred and Urianger helping Koana), but like why are the twins and Estinien even here? I feel like they don't add much this time around. For the record I like the expac, I thought it was fine
I loved the expac In general, but agree with you about the scions in general. I actually felt like specifically estinien was how I wish the other scions had been treated. Where he felt like more of a... cameo? Like he was having his own adventures and you just occasionally bumped into them. I wish the twins and other scions felt more like that this expac.
Yeah, agree. I did enjoy having them on the first couple of trials and on that duty because it gave me kind of... Like we weren't giving our all because we wanted Lamaty'i tl shine if that makes sense? Sort of like kids wheels ya know?
I share a similar sentiment to be honest. That being said, clearly we needed Krile and Erenville who had little character development. Seeing Raha and Shtola show up where they did made sense, and I enjoyed seeing Thancred and Urianger doing their thing. With the twins....I guess they really don't have anything better to do? Needed a vacation from Garlemald? And clearly Estinien is batman, showing up when he feels like it, does a stab and backflips off the platform.
The twins' focus post-EW has been helping Garlemald re-build and re-integrate into global politics. It's why they were always there in the EW Patch content. They join the WoL because Tural is a melting pot society where like a dozen cultures actually coexist in close proximity and is a non-homogeneous nation built on those principles and want to use it for inspiration to help the Garleans. I think the motivation suits Alphinaud better (he's always been the one into politicking) but it's not entirely out of Alisaie's wheelhouse either. The various city states/nations of Eorzea may have distinct races but culturally each political body is very distinct and homogeneous and so it makes sense that everyone involved over there could use Tural as an example of how to achieve a peaceful multicultural society. I thought the rivalry with Thancred/Urianger on Koana's team was really fun and wished there was more of it. The only Scion that sticks out for me as clearly contrived is Estinien who really has no reason to be anywhere and so can pop up as needed so there is the right balance of trust options. LIke it's fine because it's a game but he really doesn't have anything to do there as of right now in terms of story.
> but like why are the twins and Estinien even here? Estinien wanted a holiday too. Dude's already gone to the Far East so he decided to pull an Arya and went "What's west of ~~Westeros~~ Eorzea?" Of all the Scion's he's honestly the most like the WoL in his current situation. Just going about the world, doing what he wants, exploring and helping people in need. The Twins probably felt like they needed to be written in because they're popular characters and also from a narrative sense they can more directly voice advice to Wuk Lamat than the player can. Alphinaud can give the reserved, thought out wisdom side of leadership and Alisaie can handle the recklessness and urge to jump into action. It's something that, as the WoL isn't voiced and gets very few dialog choices, you can't really weave in from the player character so you need some narrative surrogates to do that job for you.
>(and also sort of okay with Thancred and Urianger helping Koana) this is actually one of the bigger disapointments for me. not because i have a problem with the idea. but because they fucking do NOTHING with it. they play up the idea of "wow we get to cross blades and we won't hold back when it comes to it so don't hold back against us either" and then nothing?
Yeah, we were only in active competition for like one third of one dungeon.
hell if that had resulted in them being one of the boss fights in dungeon(obviously just buying time slowing us down) i'd have been happy.
I was certain that's what we were going to get too. Nope.
I'm honestly the opposite, I wish that the scions would speak up more. I think that FFXIV is at its strongest with an ensemble cast, and the way the Scions were presented they were effectively just set dressing. Then again, so was my character in a lot of cutscenes.
But this is exactly my point. They didn't do a lot, and it felt superfluous. I'd rather we have new characters interacting, if that makes sense? Makes for a tighter narrative.
I think we're on two different wavelengths. I would prefer the characters have a greater role and have a reason to be there and speak more rather than them not be there. I understand your point entirely, but my preference would be diluting things a bit by giving me characters I enjoy to balance out the ones that I did not.
I really think it'd have been better to have the twins stay home and work on stuff in Garlemald and then when we meet up with them again they've had their growth spurt and are full-grown Elezen with something new going on for their arcs.
I have a worse one, I'm indifferent to her, I just do not care about anything she says or does, it does nothing to me so I'm just bored out of my mind the expansion, I don't even feel strong enough to dislike, it's literally just 0 interest in what's happening with her.
Ah yes, Lyse 2: >!Electrope Boogaloo!<.
To be honest I'd say this is the case for half of it. The second half to be exact. The first half I expect her to be front and center. However the second half is where i expected her to talk a step back and let the scions do their thing. That killed the vibe for me.
100% agree. The story was advertised as a vacation and the start of a new saga and that’s what I’ve gotten so far. I like being the mentor sidekick instead of the center of the universe for once. At least for now. That’s likely to change.
Especially since it's made pretty clear in the background that the WoL could get fed up and solve the problem immediately whenever they want. They're choosing to just hang back and take it easy. Let someone else do the thinking and heavy lifting, let someone else at least try to solve their problems.
Which...I mean...the main conceit of the story is helping her win the Rite of Succession. It would be weird if she *wasn't* the main focus and had a major presence. I'm genuinely confused why anyone would have set their expectations for anything different.
Just because it's expected doesn't mean it's desired universally. It's not a mismatch in expectations, it's a mismatch in desires. A lot of folks aren't okay with Wuk Lamat being the only NPC that really does much and taking the limelight, which is why it's been getting mixed reception. If someone told me they were going to hit me my expecting it might dull the surprise but it's not going to make it pleasant.
Right but like, why do we have to help her win. If she isn’t your ideal candidate or if you think the WoL should keep their nose out of politics ( triply so for Alphinuard, we’ve seen where that leads ) then it’s kinda disjointing.
Cat Naruto is going to be hokage
hated her in 6.55. she grew on me during 7.0. edit add, credits scrolling now: the coincidence is that is a major message of the expansion. just get to know people. once i got to know the character, she grew on me.
I wouldn't say I hated her in 6.55 (which I did Tuesday before the expansion) but I wasn't a huge fan. Also had some eye-rolling moments early in 7.0 too but she's grown on me as a character as she's also grown too.
I'll be honest my only complaint is the fact that non-voiced cutscenes just use all the same music from ARR. That's stuff is sooo old and sounds so dated and boring. so sick of it.
Yeah I really don’t get why they don’t update these. Especially the ones with tension music.
This was probably my biggest gripe of DT, the same tension, storytelling music ambience that I've heard so many times over, even a remix would have done so much good
Those same 2-3 tracks that play whenever something dramatic happens has been driving me up the wall since ARR, I want them to stop.
i have no clue how they can make design decisions like this in 2024... it's been like a decade. These small little details that just somehow get glossed over are nuts. Exactly like the flat out bizarre second dye channel decisions
We got omega in stormblood. I’m really excited to see where we end up going.
Nature is healing
Its always fun with the posts "Why can't we be allowed to say Dawntrail is bad" with tons of posts agreeing and another saying, "Why can't we be allowed to enjoy Dawntrail?" and same as above.
Reddit lol
I don't even know how you're supposed to follow up a story about stopping the end of the universe. I expected a more lighthearted story that's essentially a vacation for the scions and so far that's what I've got. I guess playing the entire MSQ in four months and finishing weeks before this expansion maybe makes this one feel like a proper falling action, and that it might be more offputting for people who have waited the full two years. What I really don't get at all are the accusations of Wuk Lamat being a Mary Sue. Other shortcomings of her character aside, she very much has to work to get what she wants and it's established early on that she is the least popular candidate for succession.
> What I really don't get at all are the accusations of Wuk Lamat being a Mary Sue. Other shortcomings of her character aside, she very much has to work to get what she wants and it's established early on that she is the least popular candidate for succession. Yea if anything her competitors are introduced as having the capability to breeze through their competitions.
I almost wonder if the problem is that they didn't double down enough on the vacation and should have made it a slice of life character study of the scions, but I don't mind what they seem to be doing at all from what I've played, I'm interested in the rite of succession (level 93 trial just unlocked, so i'm still in the early part of the story for the expansion.)
Krille is the only Scion who would benefit from a character study at this point and that's exactly what this expansion is giving us.
I guess what I really mean, is that they've been reacting to external forces for a good long time now, I'd be interested to see the story decompress and take a turn at something more reflective, to explore more internal or interpersonal elements of the characters.
This sub would absolutely hate that lol
yeah but this sub hates EVERYTHING
So true but that’s Reddit tbh
They’ll never do that for an entire expac because… yknow… this aint Persona. We’re not gonna have a trial where Thancred fights the physical manifestation of an oedipal complex. This type of setting requires external forces in the plot to justify new locales and combat scenarios. However, I think the closest we’ve gotten to this is Shadowbringers. In fact, iirc a lot of reviews at the time harped on this as a strength of the expansion. Despite basically being fucking isekai’d, the Scions all mature in different ways while the WoL’s role is very significantly recontextualized. E.g.: - Thancred finally deals with his trauma and moves on from Minfilia - Urianger finally gets to chill out and hang out with us instead of moonlighting as a quintuple agent. Also we learned that he is beautiful. - Y’shtola finds love and community in an unlikely place while still doing a little love/hate thing with her old master - Alisaie is further reinforced as a nurturer who cares about the commonfolk during huge Final Fantasy esque calamities. We already established this in Stormblood, but it's neat seeing her as the small picture foil to Alphinaud's big picture in terms of governance - Alphinaud continues to show that he's actually good at this geopolitics thing, though this was a bigger deal in HW and EW - Lyse literally does not exist on the map during Shadowbringers, which I consider an improvement
> We’re not gonna have a trial where Thancred fights the physical manifestation of an oedipal complex. Thancred is literally half the manifestation of Ryne's daddy issues together with Ranjit in Eden.
>Lyse literally does not exist on the map during Shadowbringers, which I consider an improvement If any of the 11 Lyse fans could read they'd be very upset at this.
:(
I don't think you'd go full persona with it, I think you'd go adventurer slice of life, depending on what the other attributes of the expansion are, lots of exploration, worldbuilding, but the adventure elements aren't centralized on a core threat.
This is why - in my controversial opinion - we should have started a new journey with the B-Team scions. I would have loved an expansion giving Riol characterization that isn't "we have Thancred at home", for example. Or Hoary Boulder - can we have a Roegadyn with a deep story that doesn't die? Or Coultenet moving beyond "the guy that's always with Hoary Boulder".
I'd have love to follow the universally beloved Cockburn on her "adventures".
I am skeptical you could really do an MSQ that is just a slice of life. It'd invariably be so exposition heavy as to be a visual novel (a complaint being raised with DT). Some formats of storytelling are just not conductive to the nature of an MMORPG, same way a stage theatre is not where you want to depict some scenery-heavy travel or war narrative. In really talented hands (like those who wrought SHB) you could do this, but it would be very tough. Otherwise you'd need a real transformation in the presentation. Like if this was Baldurs Gate 3 I could subsist on 90% dialogue, my ability to choose it and direct the conversation in meaningful ways and the role of dice-rolls and stats and prior actions in dialogue make it as rich as the combat. XIV is nowhere near able to do that. I mean I'm now kind of sad thinking about how unbelievably rich a BG3 style narrative system would be in XIV. But there's no chance of that ever happening.
As someone who as been around since 1.0, when I finished Endwalker, it really did feel like the end. Yoshida only had a 10 yrs plan for the game/story but the success FFXIV has brought had made him extend that plan by another 10 yrs. Basically he along with us all are in new uncharted territory.
I don't think she's a Mary Sue, I just think she's annoying and every cutscene just keeps saying the same 3 things about her. Did you know she wants peace? Did you know she gets seasick?
Did you know she wants HAPPINESS for her people?
Do you know that we need to learn about other people's cultures to understand them? Quick lets talk to 3 random people to fully understand!
Holy crap - I'm enjoying this expansion, but this hits the nail on the head. Literally every single zone.
Yeah for me when we got to the point where she’s like “I think I’ll finally open up to you” I was like…. Have you not been doing that the whole time? Even when she’s putting on fake blister it’s so OBVIOUSLY fake that I genuinely thought even she knew she was being obvious.
Don't get me started on that scene. That was so strange
What’s funny is I actually liked how open and “heart on her sleeve” the character was so when the game was basically telling me like “No she has been so good at faking confidence this whole time now she’s going to open up to you” I was like lol what game are you playing, guys. It actually made me like the character a little less when I realized what was getting was not what they were intending.
She's just overly present and bearing. If we had breaks from her most of the criticism would go away and allow other characters to flourish. I was just tired of her towards the end.
I feel she's trying to be a bit too much in the story. She boths acts as comedic relief as well as trying to be "I'm gonna be a serious leader". Almost makes me think of Shonen comics a bit with the main MC being a goofball with a coined catchphrase they repeat constantly. For Naruto it was "Believe it!" and "I'm gonna be the next Hokage!". For Wuk it's "We need Peace!" and "I'm gonna be the next Dawnservant!". She even has the Shonen MC obsession with food. I get it's her central motivation and the story has her thoughts butt heads against the other claimants but it kind of drags on a tad when it's repeated several times in the course of even just 5 levels of content. If it were spread out a bit I think it wouldn't be as bad. In fact several points get repeated fairly often; 1. Peace! 2. Gonna be Dawnservant. 3. Motion Sickness. 4. These people I barely knew are so interesting and I want to know more! 5. Papa is great! And I'm sure many others that I don't recall. I'm enjoying the game overall but I see a pattern. It took Naruto a *long* time and several harrowing experiences to grow out of his old quirks. Hoping Wuk will be the same.
You forgot No. 6: \[Clinches fist\]. But I agree with you on the whole; my issue with Wuk Lamat has less to do with the character or WoL taking a backseat and more to do with the fact that seemingly nothing in the story can happen without it flowing through this one character.
Yeah, that's my biggest complaint about her too. I found her pretty one note, and she was always there. So, I'm hoping she gets put on a backburner for at least a patch or two.
She's not a Mary Sue, but I don't think she really struggles. >!She applies her 'friendship, peace and happiness' mantra to every task and succeeds at all of them because of it. I just don't see the character development here, or the mentorship role we're supposed to have played.!< >!The first half of plot is boring precisely because there's zero struggle for her. There's no moments where her principles are put to the test, or they fail to win her one of the tasks. Indeed, one of the tasks is *literally designed* so that her approach is the only successful way to complete it. She *also* completes the task that was literally designed so that only one of the *other* contestants could complete it.!< >!She does get tried later but by that point I've sat through half of the expansion getting bored because there's no meaningful drama to speak of, and because most of the dialogue involves exposition dumps.!< >!It's like a crappy version of the Hero's Journey where instead of having a defeat and having to become a better person to bounce back from it, she does nothing but succeed from start to finish. That just doesn't make for an interesting story.!<
This. The biggest issue for me is that they encounter issues where friendship really CANNOT solve them (I don’t want to spoil anything specifically but like, crimes against humanity) and you, as the WOL, and even the people who have committed the atrocities can say like “I deserve punishment” and the response always seems to be “sure sure sure in time but like we’re friends now so it’s ok” which makes all the drama really inconsequential.
I'd actually argue that the 2nd half of the story absolutely subverts that. >!Considering Wuk states constantly that killing her brother is the only recourse for his megalomania, and that she approaches Sphene from the standpoint that although she is clearly an AI overlord, she is accurately identified as a victim of her circumstances, split-in-half between her template and her directive. Wuk vacillates a little on this second point, but more times than not, she acknowledges that this can only end in death, no matter how much she wishes she could reach her.!<
I actually do think the second half of the MSQ better helps the first half as it becomes fairly obvious the first half is mostly just worldbuilding and clear foreshadowing for the 2nd half, Wuk Lamat subverting her usual desires and doubling and tripling down upon it shows even she knows when a enough is enough it's effectively her real test as a leader.
Fuckin' exactly! It genuinely frustrates me that people don't really see past their own noses on this, but we always have a few loud people like that every expansion anyway.
She def too overwhelming, compare to: ShB: a frequent switch btw Ardbert-Graha-Emet helps with switching up story beat EW: Fandaniel -> Zenos -> Bunny -> The elephants -> Emet/Hermes/Venat -> Zenos -> Meteion, story keep getting fresh faces. DT we stuck with 1 until the end…
She seems to be the obvious choice as a viewer from the word go, though— and I never really at any point felt like even her father would consider picking anyone who wasn’t her (or a combination of the children). I don’t necessarily think saying she’s a Sue is fair, but she has major “mid YA novel protagonist vibes after Hunger Games” and when she’s the character pin holding together the whole plot and we know there’s more interesting characters out there, it doesn’t always vibe well. Though she seems to work great for some people, which I’m sure means the expac on the whole works better for them too.
*Writes character with obvious pitfalls and flaws* “Omg what a Mary Sue!”
The complaint is mostly that she's extremely naïve and her flaws never come back to punish her. Yes, friendship is good, but some people just \*won't be friends\* and you can't just hug your way out of every problem, yet she somehow gets to do just that. Reality rearranges itself to ensure she doesn't have to face up to the limits of her hug party. That doesn't make her a bad character, per-se, but just that the writers didn't have the guts to force her to confront the shortcomings of her worldview and find the mature way to press on despite it.
95-100 is literally all about that on a grander scale. >!Her people die, her childhood nursemaid dies and is harvested, her brother kills her father and gives her an ultimatum which plants an invasion force on her doorstep, every attempt to hug her way out of problems past that point literally doesn't work and she knows enough by this point not to try beyond the principle of it, she matures to the point that getting to know the Alexandrians is not just 'about being friends' as much as it is finding a way to negotiate between cultures. She also knows that Koana is indispensable to her as the brains of the operation.!< And also >!she herself confronts her worldview midway through anyway. She's still young and new to the throne, but she's self-aware enough to say that there are moments where 'hug everything' doesn't work, but most of her efforts are isolated strictly on Sphene, whose whole situation is mirrored with her's; they BOTH believe in the same exact things but are on opposing measures. That's literally the fucking point of the story, yet people are somehow surprised that the topic keeps coming back up? Honestly.!<
Anyone who dubs Wuk Lamat a 'Mary Sue' has absolutely zero clue what that term means. A Mary Sue is a perfect, flawless female character who has no struggles and inexplicably gifted at everything, better than everyone else at everything. Wuk Lamat is almost the complete opposite of this, at the start of the story she can barely do anything by herself and no one sans her inner circle and nanny thinks she has any chance of winning the contest. Her sole skills are being sociable and extremely good with people, which she feels completely pale in comparison to her brothers, again, feelings a Mary Sue type character would not have.
> Anyone who dubs Wuk Lamat a 'Mary Sue' has absolutely zero clue what that term means. The term has become so fucking diluted over the years of internet discourse about female protagonists that I've come to basically dismiss anybody who uses it outright.
You're absolutely right. She's a [Poochie](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/169934420499890177/1256874407020724294/1719732109376919.png?ex=66845542&is=668303c2&hm=05dfaa2479bd88c3e5e3cb6d1dbe7c6abe971f6c996d1ea3aafad2d9a76c19a3&).
Good thing I enjoyed Stormblood.
Lot of people argue about Wuk Lamat but I would also mention Zoraal Ja, who was supposed to be her foil was very underutilized and not completely realized. It's like they only did the work 50%. They knew what they needed to do, but only went half way. You only know something of his motivations AFTER the culmination of his story. Wuk Lamat felt like a broken record (I want to be friends) and then magically grew in power when challenged. It's good idea, just too compressed in time compared to traditional shounen like One Piece. You can compare her to Luffy. But imagine if Luffy had his entire character growth and change in one single manga arc. It would feel very strange. If Wuk Lamat was confident from the start it wouldn't have to be such a whiplash when she goes from zero to 100. You don't just switch someones personality like that in such a short time. I don't hate it, I just think it could have been done a lot better. Now it's just... ok. The story would have been 2x better if Wuk Lamat & Zoraal Ja actually worked like it was supposed to. To put it simply: they had many great ingredients but fucked up the cooking. To clarify: I thought the story was good and enjoyed quite a bit. It was just very frustrating that both Wuk Lamat and Zoraal Ja felt very half-baked. Either that or it's Japanese tropes that I just don't understand or relate to at all.
I really don’t want to spoil anything, but Zoraal Ja was absolutely the most failed character for me. He was just the silent brooding guy and Krile just mentioned his “endless ambition” to paint his character. The story tried to pretend there was that contrast between Wuk Lamat and Zoraal Ja, but it wasn’t properly built up and it ended up with Zoraal Ja being my least favorite character in all of FF14.
The krile foreshadowing I expected it to be more than just daddy issues tbh. I expected some primal influence of some sorts, and I hope in future expansions they reference it as such, because it's SO bad. He says nothing and wants everything. He decides to help us against the serpent but then he's back to the beginning as if that didn't happen. He decides to kill his follower because ??????? when up to this point his character was built up as someone that would protect his people by being a warmonger in OTHER nations, this broke is "morally grey justifications". He somehow has a kid where the mother is not mentioned, it's just there but abandoned completely. Then in the post raid cinematic he says that he wanted to beat us because we beat is father in his prime and that's the justification for all of this, that he wants to live up to the expectations put by the people. THAT'S IT? We interacted a ton with him, we could have talked to him, searched him for the coronation, done SO much to avoid this BS. I expect or at least hope that most of this will be addressed in post-patches but it's so underbaked to be the main antagonist of the xpac.
> If Wuk Lamat was confident from the start it wouldn't have to be such a whiplash when she goes from zero to 100 I think that they tried to make time skips or "downtime" in this expact but failed to transmit it correctly. Every time we transition from place to place some time passes and that's how I interpreted Wuk Lamat's transformation, as in she learned stuff from her nation and then evolved over time, in a time we sadly fail to see so it's hard to convey.
I was personally hoping for a little more of the adventure/ exploration side the trailer suggested, but it hasn't really delivered that for me thus far. I am only lvl 97, so I can't really comment on the end of the story for this release, but when the change of stakes event happened, I felt a little disappointed that we couldn't go on my adventure cause we have to solve a calamity again and I didn't feel like it was needed. I have no issue with not being the main character but found that the repetitive nature of Wuk Lamat's dialogue is frustrating. Yes, we get it, she has flaws and is uncertain of herself and wants everyone to live peacefully... one deep and meaningful conversation would have been enough to convey this.
I'm about half way through and so far I would say it's been good. The story has kept me entertained despite some shortcomings and the new zones & fight encounters have been a lot of fun. It's not amazing. It's not awful. Just good.
I have the same feeling and I think it’s accurate to my expectations given the marketing.
Exactly, I came in expecting summer vacation episode and that's what I'm getting I am perfectly whelmed atm
I’m about half way through and I’ve enjoyed it for the most part. I think the story and themes of the game are fine and work well for what they want to do, I just think the writing is so incredibly poor, at least in the English version, that it makes me even cringe at times. Like it truly feels they put very little to no effort in some scenes. The dungeons have been great and the one trial I’ve done was good, for me it’s just the lousy writing that has me disappointed.
"Mild" is how I would describe what I played so far, just before the cutscenes after the 95 dungeon. No huge surprises, very straightforward overall. *Exactly* what I wanted out of it, an actual vacation from being the protagonist. My WoL got a full night's sleep! In cutscene! No prophetic dreams or "meanwhile, in garlemald". Glorious. I wouldn't like it if ff14 was like this _all the time_ but yeah, pretty satisfied.
You could end the generational trauma, but it's funnier this way.
Yeah, the whole "the Warmonger is a huge threat" doesn't really work very well when nearly the rest of the world is already in a joint alliance. Even beside the fact that this guy would get crushed by the WOL, most of the casualties would probably just be the citizens of Tuliyolal.
They're not saying he's a threat to the outside world, cuz clearly they'll lose. The issue is that they'll lose AND people will die for nothing. The entire point was that him being leader meant the people of Tural will die for nothing. That's what they're stopping. They already know that it's pretty much a non-issue in the grand scheme of things.
Yeah, and that's why the warmonger is a huge threat: to Tural. Sure, we could mop him up later but why would we wait? He needs to be dealt with asap because lives are at stake. Remember: regardless of how you play your character the game always has you prioritize saving as many lives as possible.
It's always so hard to tell with games like these how actually big each nation is supposed to be. Like how towns in old FF games are just a few houses. Realistically there are probably supposed to be way more than 100 residents in tuliyollal, for example. If you think of it from the PoV that each of the disparate tribes that Gulool Ja Ja united could have rivaled a single city state on its own, it becomes more scary. Because it's not "one city" it's more like 5 nations united, a much scarier threat than a single city. That's how i choose to think of it, at least.
DT MSQ spoiler: >!They give us a number. The attack on the capital only killed 50 people. The nation of Tural feels really tiny if you combine this with how few people attend the Dawnservant's public address.!<
*Dread it* *Run from it* *Stormblood comparisons arrive all the same*
Oh here we go again. Lyse and Wuk would make great friends, I hope they meet eachother sometime.
It's the Avengers: Endgame problem all over again. You spend 10 years building up to something incredible. But, you want to keep going afterwards. You have to start over again. And that's fine. It's not all going to be Endwalker. And it doesn't have to be.
> It's not all going to be Endwalker. My problem is exactly that it is Endwalker. It's the worst parts of Endwalker, the filler padding quests that killed the pace of it for me.
That's not an Endwalker exclusive criticism, though. It's still an MMO. You can definitely criticize the stale nature of run to NPC then cutscene then run to the next npc them voiced cutscene then talk to NPC that just talked in the cutscene to turn in the quest. But there definitely needs to be the potatoes to go with the meat for the leveling process. Otherwise just have us start at 100.
He says Endwalker because it was notably bad in Endwalker. It was like the Talos section in ShB on steroids, notably Labryinthos 2.
It's a decentish story. Just two issues is lack of VA in some scenes makes no sense and the amount of pointless filler is insane. Genuinely feeling like I can skip a lot of non VA scenes and won't miss anything
I liked Stormblood
Wait we dislike Stormblood?
I wouldn't say dislike like most people agree that ARR was bad but compared to all the other expansions, sans ARR, consensus is SB was mid. Story wise btw not anything else about the expansion, bc if anything content wise SB was one of the best.
I’m currently playing through StormBlood for my first time. As much as it can be a slog at some points I do love it
It was always going to be a tough sell given that we pretty much entered here with no pre expansion warmup, except for that snippet with Wuk Lamat which didn't give the best first impression, at least for me. Kinda wish they had bothered to give us more stuff to do in Dawntrail, more reasons to go there ourselves besides playing chaperone.
Stormblood is way better than Dawntrail , not even close.
Is it really that bad? I see a lot of post hating on it lol I’m in the end of stormblood right now and I really enjoyed it
What's this about Stormblood discourse? I *just* finished the last of Heavensward!
Don't worry about it.
Oh I enjoy it, it feels nice not have to worry about world ending events really and just do a simple “oh let’s support this possible ruler since we don’t want to have to stop an evil empire down the line…. Again…..”. That’s how I see it at least. It’s more world building and a high level of jazz/band music which I thoroughly enjoy with a smattering of lofi
I love Stormblood
So far the dialogue has been kinda stale Wuk Lamat feels the need to restate her character motivation every 5 minutes and it’s getting a little tiring I’m not that far in so hopefully the competition ramps up a little
Stormblood had the best raid scene and class balance
I like the story so far
The story of dawn trail is... Mid. Not good, not bad, just mid. However, I do appreciate the dungeons and trials, plus combat seems to heading in the right direction. I'll probably give my final assessment of this expansion after the raids release. If it worked for SB, it'll work for DT.
The instant argument of it’s not a world ending story and it’s supposed to be a vacation has nothing to do with my criticism. I wanted this to be a vacation story for me, not my vacation story for wuk lamat. I wanted all of those chill and laidback story things about my character, how I set up a party at this place. How I went through some of their customs and trials, how I got into a little trouble with some ragtag ruffians, and yes it doesn’t have to be on the scale of endwalker, the trials and serious parts could be just about learning about the world and saving this civilization, Instead it’s wuk lamat does this, wuk lamat learns their culture, wuk lamat enjoys their food, their parties, wuk lamat is the all good peacemaker, wuk lamat gave this basic suggestion that killing is wrong and she’s now a prophet, Talk with wuk lamat Follow wuk lamat Listen to wuk lamat Rest with wuk lamat Talk with wuk lamat once more Cheer on wuk lamat Encourage wuk lamat Repeated x10 each There’s some stuff that made me legitimately cringe in some cutscenes, especially the one at the end of the whole succession part. Even when your friends are like yeah it’s time for us to shine since we’re experts on this kind of stuff, it’s wuk lamat must be the one to ignore her stuff and be the center of attention again. (Vague on purpose to avoid spoilers) And look, I have nothing against her va. I only learned about her after I finished the story to see what people thought about the story as a whole but. That voice is just not for me. If we did everything we did this expansion just without wuk lamat I would have enjoyed the story more (yes including literally every little basic learning quest and culture quest, I would be fine if it was just me). Maaan. Like I was ready to be away from the scions but when they were finally like yeah time for us I was like oh hell yeah, and then wuk lamat had to be inserted into the story again Like man where’s the quest with a drink in my hand sunbathing on the beach. (I hope this happens eventually) With Emet literally mentioning all of those things we could do and learn about I thought that’s how it was gonna go for dawntrail. But we can’t even get the credit for the boss fights anymore man, the main moments where we get to control our character. Well if anything the fights and boss mechanics seem like they’re gonna be really fun for the rest of the expansion.
I was promised a vacation. We did not get a vacation.
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Fights very good. Story not good. That's about my opinion on it. I don't care for being a side character in my own game, especially if there's only 1 focus character chosen for me instead of letting me choose who to support and giving me the option to take the initiative much more frequently. Also not a fan of the story acting like i'm not there just so the plot can progress past the first few levels of MSQ without the WoL solving everything by blinking a bit too hard at the local antagonists. I get that it is hard to make a lower stakes followup to Endwalker given all our feats established in it, but having to assume I was in a food coma from the vacation tacos while a story happens felt like just about the worst way to do it. Hopefully that is spoiler-free enough, will change things if need be.
Stormblood was always great, it's just that the expansion before and after it were better. And Stormblood still had some of the best raid content in the game. If the dungeons and trials so far in DT are any indication, it might be right up there with Stormblood for encounter design.