lets do this…
Hello everyone I am Jmulls of Jmulls Gaming and welcome to my little corner of the internet!
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In today’s video, I react to your hot takes for Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail !
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The real question with this expansion is: where the F did kid Gulool Ja came from?
You couldnt havevthe scions playing a major role because it would become a white savior narrative
The reason dawntrail isnt doing darker themes is because it would of involved colonialism. As a person of color no fucking thanks. Especially after Stormblood was so colorist.
The Role Quest and Tulliyolal Delivery Quest are better written than the DT MSQ. Like we get to learn more about Tural, explore their cultures in an intimate level and how our actions affect their ways in a meaningful way than what we did in DT MSQ as whole.
I feel like DT MSQ let us explore culture like we’re in a theme park attraction while the side content allow us to explore more than just the surface. Is a damn shame and wasted potential.
I think the merging of Sphene's world and ours should've already begun prior to us heading over to the island. Then during the rite of succession, you are running into weird buildings that shouldn't exist. Running into ppl with memory issues.. maybe someone coming back to life. You'd be introduced to Sphene early on but she wouldn't reveal who she was right off the bat. She'd be looking for someone to help her.. which then she would find Zoraal Ja. There would be moments between them in the story that flesh out both of them further. Then you understand them working together. Then you could que in the post Rite of Succession stuff with a couple changes since you'd already know the players involved.
Imagine the final zone has you erasing people whom you've ran into out in the world since you didn't know that they were a part of that system at the time. That would made it a bit more impactful instead of just throwing Krile's parents in there.
Personally I think DT is great and a breather. I mean I'm glad I'm not some deity saving a teenth again. I like just being…..my character. Plus give it a break it's a launch of a new era minus the hydaelen zodiark stuff. Enjoy it for what it is
Yaana and Honey B Lovely should join the main cast. Yaana might have relatives on the source and Honey clearly craves adventure.
yeah the game is in maintenance mode. the devs don't give a fuck anymore
Dawntrail, and Endwalker but that's another story, feels like it should have been two expansions, or at least an expansion and patches. Dawntrail is supposed to be a vacation expansion, an expansion where things chill out, bad things happen, giant monsters risk destroying the countryside like Valigarmanda, but still pretty chill. But instead it ends up being another save the world plot line, the escalation has gone down, but its still huge. Like the writers were worried people wouldn't be invested in a regular vacation plot so amped everything up significantly.
If it were up to me, it should have been a country exploring journey. Learning the surface levels of the cultures of Tural and how different they are, and helping people along the way. And during the second half be the actual Rite of Succession where we learn the deeper differences of Tural. And at the end of the expansion you build up to Sphenes appearance for the patches. Add in some proper build up of characters like Bakool Jaja and actual characterization for Wuk Lamat instead of making her the most one note happy go lucky character who learns but doesn't evolve as a character.
My hot take:
DT MSQ isn't actually as bad as people make it out to be, y'all are just misremembering previous expansions MSQs better than they actually were.
After defeating the being that had killed 99.9 percent of the universe, you can no longer narratively present a convincing threat to the WoL. The WoL should have died in 6.x. All it would take is letting Golbez succeed with a rejoining while the WoL is in the 13th. Then it's not a matter of the WoL being defeated or overpowered. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The world ended and everything, including you, gets absorbed into the Source. 7.0 should have been a time skip and you are now playing the next incarnation of Azem. You get to meet the next generation of Scions. It would have been awesome.
The first hot take is absolutely what I thought when I saw literally the afk completely irrelevant scions in DT. If only they had died in EW it would have been a true masterpiece, sure, they were there to give a message, but the resurrection at the end felt meh. I was so thrilled when I saw Thancred confront Meteion and then disappear, only to have that squashed with the mass resurrection a few minutes later.
At the end of endwalker I told graha that I wasn't sure about the whole thing
Both being a kingmaker and playing another expansion after being disappointed by EW
Graha told me to go there ans see how things were, that I needn't decide now
It was just a nod to "try out the expac before you rule it out" but also worked for me because to me my character was doubtful about the whole thing and wasn't commiting to anything
Like many have mentioned, I feel like the pacing of 7.0 was definitely weird. I don't really blame the writers as writing a pretty much brand new story is very difficutl, but given the current 7.0 story we have, I think one of the following to options could have made it better:
1. Make the whole Tural part a lot longer with slower pacing, more "boring" world-building, and more time to know the new cultures and see the Scions interact with the new world. Then in later patches do the Alexandria story (like the post 6.0 story about Zero and the Void).
2. Start the whole story with Alexandria invading Tural. People in Tural already know about and have some connections with Sharleyan, Eorzea and the rest of the world, so let the story start with them asking for help due to not being able to stop Alexandria. Let us spend more time learning about Tural after we've stopped Sphene, or even during the war while we're working together to hold them back. This I feel would make the trip to Tural more justified, though it would mean discarding the "WoL on vacation" vibe.
They're likely going to give more context on Alexandria and the portal key in the patches so we'll probably have to see how they handle that part to properly evaluate the choices they've made in 7.0 so far.
Brute Bomber got more characterization in the 10 minute fight you fight him in then Zarool Ja in like 10 hours of MSQ
To be honest, with the story, I feel if they started with dome showing up, and Erenville asking the Scions help, then we get introduced to Tural, the leader and his kids as side characters that would join us once a while, while exploring Alexandria and souls stuff more, and focused on showing instead of telling.. i think this would have been completely different and way better than the garbage we suffered through, and going through the different cultures with seeing not telling, like how we did in every other expansion, specially in SHB.
Wuk Lamat character is so boring and cliche I was rolling my eyes they almost got stuck inside my head, (I played with Japanese VA and it was so good on that regard) and tbh Wuk Lamat is the worst friend ever, because when Sphene hinted at where to look for Erenville’s mother, Lamat brushed it aside and went to learn about how they grow crops in Alexandria, and he has no choice to wait since he can’t fight till Wuk Lamat took a tour around their farms and HELPED them WTF
Here's my hot take:
We've never met the Real Sphene.
We met an AI construct of Sphene that was an accidental Paperclip Maximizer, except instead of turning the universe into paperclips, her directive was to turn the universe into fuel to perpetually preserve Alexandrian Citizens.
The REAL Sphene that died in the flashback at the Alexandria dungeon wasn't like the one we met at all.
She was made from second and third hand accounts of citizens who may have met or saw her and gave their imperfect data to the construct.
The REAL Sphene is one of the splintered shards of an ascian, likely Altima, and since the crown regulator is free from the Sphene.exe program, it will resurrect the real one using the soul of the Altima that Gaius killed on the source during his time as the Shadowhunter.
The old parts of ff14 are great actually. Only been playing for a little over a year, but I remember really enjoying ARR. It felt more like a game where the pieces were building slowly. At the time of DT release, I felt like I needed to rush to trials and crafting gear bis. Totally different experience from when you begin to the later expacs.
"The old heads" are only 30-40… it'll be 20-40 years before most of the "Old heads" die off. Not everything needs to be made for gen z who dont even really game in the field of MMORPG's. They play things like minecraft and fortnite which is fine as well. Different markets for different interests is okay. After all if i wanted to sell golfclubs I dont go to a football stadium. Its called target audiences.
My hot take is Wuk Lamat is a Primal with how everyone behaves around her (including the WoL) all instantly love and worship her
I'll be honest. I 100% think what could have saved this initial story is indeed pacing. The Rite of Succession should not have concluded with 7.0, it's way too fast, and has almost no development, it should have been given in stages, possibly ending on perhaps 7.3, it really felt rushed and Wuk Lamat develops way too fast and in a stereotypical manner of C tier anime where the plot can't focus on deeper points before doing time skips, only here there are no time skips, so it ends up looking much worse. Even Zero in EW didn't develop as fast as Wuk and she's literally a side character
My hot take is:
I believe the storytelling aspect of the game should stop, and should have stopped with EW. It's okay to leave mysteries out in the world, it leaves a lot for creative thinking to the players for RP purposes or theorizing and allows the devs to flesh out this game into a "proper" MMORPG instead of starting on great ideas for a patch then completely forgetting about them when the following patch/expansion rolls around. There's so much potential in this game just left behind: Squadrons(Yes I know they SORTA evolved into Trusts, but there's still potential there for our Squadron npcs), Egi-Glamour, Island Sanctuary, and Chocobo Racing/Breeding just to name a few.
Now will this ever happen, and do I expect them to do this? No, because they have built their audience up around the storytelling aspect. But it is a shame when low points/quality like in DT arise because of a lot of themes have already played out for general story telling beforehand. The only place they can go from here that will "top" everything else would be our Source and Shards is only one "Bubble" in the grander universe that has their own "Bubbles" with an even bigger puppeteer orchestrating Everything. And other than that of finishing up what's left to explore of the source and other shards, basically rehashing a lot of stuff that's already been done to an extent in themes alone.
This sorta ties into the final Hot take in the video, and I agree with them on the part about moving onto the next FF MMO. Just cause another FF MMO comes out doesn't mean XIV won't continue to receive updates. In fact, FFXI just got their "final expansion" in 2023. They'll never give up on XI as they won't for XIV. The best way I can put it is: "If you have one lemonade stand that's doing really well, why wouldn't you open up another?" That opens up so much room for additional funds to the company. And like a lot of XI players did when XIV came out(outside of the issues with 1.0 lol), there would be a wave of players in XIV that would go check out the next FF MMO. I know I would.
With that, to clarify again: No I do not expect any of this to happen, or at least anytime soon. Maybe in 7years minimum we'll get an announcement trailer(nothing more than just that) to the next FF MMO, but that's about it. Is fun to ponder on is all, please do not take it seriously reader.
The one thing that disappointed me the most in DT is the fact that we did not get way more glamour dresser space. This really p*sses me off.
There's just a lot of things that are too similar to Endwalker but not as good. Valigarmanda's whole plot was similar to Zodiarc in that they were sealed, is expected to be a huge threat, gets free but dies early into the expansion only Zodiarc had a few expansions to be built up. Sphene and the last area was too similar to a certain emo bird and last expansion's last area.
I suspect Krile/Erenville and Alexandria/Sphene were the original expansion, and something happened along the way to get Squenix to wrap Wuk Lamat around it like an expired burrito.
Fingers crossed that patch content salvages the good stuff!
My hot take is people who are disappointed are people who became spoiled with fan service. For example you mention Eistinien coming along with WoL in Shaloni. What you're asking for is a fan service. Estinien is a lone wolf and has been since we knew him. It wouldn't have made any sense if he came along.