FFXIV Dawntrail has been met with extremely mixed reviews. With many players downright angry about it. This video covers the two main reasons why it is not resonating as well as Shadowbringers or Endwalker.
FF14 is a fantasy MMO made by Square Enix. Known for an immense and emotional story that lasted over a decade. Time will tell if Dawntrail can capture the hearts of players and maintain subscribers. And if politically bold decisions will pay off in the long run.
FF14 Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVmZihbEazq_uQOOHR2DYUJUSC99vBZU7
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Hey team!
I knew the second half of this video would rile some people up.
That said, my comments about Dawntrail being "too political" have a specific intent.
It's about the character of Wuk Lamat being divisive amongst the player base. I think its ok to be honest and discuss it.
It's not about narrative politics like, "We shouldn't drain the planet of mako!".
It's also not about if the character SHOULD be divisive. That depends on your beliefs and values.
Cheers, and thank you for watching and commenting!
I am so sorry but you’re take is dreadful, by no means am I a ff14 defender there are clear flaws in how the expansion was made but to simply complain because of a voice actor is beyond farcical. You’re playing a game with cat boys and rabbit people 😭
Can't even log on because their servers can't handle the traffic. I'm not sure it gets any lamer, I will not be resubscribing to watch queue times, thanks but no thanks.
game isn't even out and already the doomtubers are posting their "game ded" videos, lmao
the EN voice is crap, yes. but so are the other EN voices. always have been. just like with every other japanese media. play it in japanese if you want the correct tone and what the developers actually envision for the voices.
I hope this video gains more dislikes…cuz you really dont understand anything lol
Ive never disliked a video so fast and it aint even me fanboying on the game😂
The end is pretty bad. The same creepy little girl being the bad guy trope had me yawning during the final act. Ishikawa is asleep at the wheel.
My issues with DT have nothing to do with its political nature. Literally every expansion has political aspects to it. 1.0 its the empire. In 2.x its Ul'dah in 3.x it HW in 4.x its Empire again. In 5.x its eulmore. And in EW its sharlayan
Like fr politically charged is this games middle name 😂.
My issues are quest design the weird absolutely awful visual cut scenes that look like they should be voiced but I guess aren't giving it some super uncanny valley feels.
The pacing of the story and the nothing burger that was the entire first half of the story. Like the cut scene leading up to the first dungeon I legitimately thought was audio bugged so I skipped it to try and go back to the journal in the inn.
And the scene just doesn't exist apparently. haven't had this many issues with an expansion since stormblood and waiting in line for pipin savage 😂. Its some clown shoes level of bad quality.
If this should be compated to anything compare it to ARR. This is the begining of a new story.
What a stupid take lol
up until the 70% of the vid u spat facts the msq and everything related to it was dogwater but then u mention the trans voice acting for no reason, people dont hate wuklamat cuz of the voice but of the things she say, i play on jp VA and i still hate wuklamat
It has mixed reviews because the writing is atrocious. It’s nothing more deep than that
This expansion is essentially a reset for the game in terms of storytelling & world building. DT just like with how ARR was a reset it had mixed opinions as well. I won't argue that the pacing & continuity was poorly handled but again ARR suffered the same flaws. One thing that DT does do a must better job is it's gameplay as the solo instances were well done, the dungeons actually had some difficulty to them, the trials are still good & in a couple of weeks we'll see how the raids are.
All the jobs feel decent to play for the most part, though still early to see how they will play in raid content. All the side jobs like the gathering/crafting aspects are better than EW. The world is as vibrant & detailed as usual. There's still some good things to say about the expansion & it's not terrible. I'd compare it to again ARR & Storm blood, since the storytelling in both weren't as good. However we have to wait for the subsequent patches to really judge the expansion as a whole cause both ARR & Storm blood had excellent content patches.
*also the discontent with the actor being trans is a non-issue. They're just doing their job, why are people upset at a person for that? It's silly.
they play on steam they have no real reviews
and who cares of a trans VA…..
Criticizing a game for boring fetch quests and predictable dialogue is valid, even if the ones in Dawntrail weren't even particularly terrible for an MMO imo, but calling a game politically-charged just because the voice actor is LGBTQ is reaching. And I'm not even that big of a LGBT supporter, I'm just a live and let live kinda person. If they were trying to send a big direct story message about it then that would feel admittedly weird, but otherwise who cares what the voice actor is in their personal life as long as they're not a criminal or something?
ok.. who gives a shit if they are trans? Thats not in of itself political.
Its the fact they are just REALLY FUCKING BAD.
The japan voices are much better
im almost done it sucks. cyberlizard people.
Square enix is just testing the waters and see if they should add more of this d e i stuff and how its received but even if this wasn't the case the dlc is boring compare to the past dlc, probably give it another year to play down the line, im jumping on The First Descendant till then
I was hoping for actual critique of the game but all you are is a bigot.
What's the name of BGM @ 2:16?
Bro opens his video with steam reviews lmao lost all credibility in seconds
Um…. EVERY MMO HAS FETCH QUESTS HELLO? EVEN OLDER 14 EXPANSIONS HELLO???
Not only that, what were people expecting? Square Enix and the 14 team are rebuilding from scratch to a WHOLE NEW STORY, with a WHOLE NEW START. It's going to take time to build up. We aren't going to have a story with the level of depth that Shadowbringers and Endwalker had to build up to. Those stories culminated in a 10 year build up and payoff.
Second, and a REALLY big point here, WHO CARES IF A VA IS TRANS OR NOT???? If they did a good job, they did a good job. I get some people aren't fans of Wuk Lamat as a character, but the VA did a fine job IMO. If you don't like the voice, there's a skip button for the cutscenes.
I'm all for critiquing the game having a slower story at the start, but the "problems" outlined in this video are hot garbage. Your arguments against this game are really flimsy and not well thought out.
Central has mixed reviews because the people unimpressed didn’t play the entire MSQ. also “too political” get over yourself
Dawntrail was so mid it hurt.
My biggest problem is this: We are not important to the story at all. Not a single bit did I feel like the main character. Wuk Lamat was until the very end. The comment that she is trans is absolute bullcrap tho. It is just a voice actor who was cast because they thought the voice fit the character. Stop overthinking this crap.
I liked the idea of going on to a wild continent with lush nature and the hook for going there was okay, too. Then the adventure began. Copy-paste races with super convoluted new names (except for Hanu Hanu), rinse and repeat forest areas for the first half of the game and a cast so unbelieveably stupid that I, at times, wished I could join Koanas team and actually have fun with a smart lead.
The story indeed is incredibly leftist. You can't go ten steps without hearing Wuk Lamat lament about peace and harmony and friendship and her becoming the dawnservant to preserve it. Its fine I just… GOT IT THE FIRST FCKING TIME!! It is super on the nose and so fcking annoying when you just her the same dialogue for the first half of the expansion.
Nobody is bad, not even the baddies. They just have motives you gotta learn. Even the one who wants to FCKING KILL EVERYONE!! or the other who ALSO WANTS TO KILL EVERYONE!!
The second half isn't any better. The third enemy also wants to kill everyone but for something nice. I guess you can even try to justify genocide if you really want to.
The jump into a new Shard, just after we dealt with the 13th in a super bland post-credit MSQ of EW felt lackluster. It felt rushed and you really could tell that they needed some actual conflict so that there were any stakes at all after the first half. Little explanation, peng, boom, sudden world crisis at our hands.
The design of the game is nice. The update really lets the world breath but the composition is super out of place as is its pacing. You walk and walk and walk. Like…Dawnwalker. Then you watch some talking and then you walk. Until you reach the second half where you walk less but talk more. Dawntalker.
The mixture of the two final zones are interesting but unfit for the overall games idea. Sure it is another world but in the end it doesn't fit the theme. I always felt weirdly out of place in my armor, compared to the people of Night Ci- I meant Solution 9.
The end however was when I really lost patience. A zone with 4 floors where you just talk…. it was happy and sad at times, but it is just too much to bear. Seriously. Why was my character even involved? Why is Wuk Lamat so fcking cute and at the same time so incredible obnoxious? She "wants to learn about people" …. yeah. I surely want to learn more about the people who try to end my entire continent, too.
I just had to get all this off of my chest. Dawntrail felt a lot like Battle for Azeroth in WoW if you compare its storytelling. You get a fun idea about a topic. They feed you this very idea and at the halfway mark you just drop the ball, pick up a pile from the toilet and smear it all over to cover for a new, underdeveloped story. Dawntrail felt like a filler arc from an already boring anime. It did nothing to contribute to the lore, it rather took from it with the future peoples weird hairpins and the resurrection-tech (artifical afterlife). Nothing about that is explained. It is just there.
Yoshi P used a lot of Deus Ex Machina moments to get this shit wrapped up in toilet paper…
>Talk to Wuk Lamat
>Follow Wuk Lamat
>Help Wuk Lamat
>Walk with Wuk Lamat
>Ask about Wuk Lamat
>Carry items for Wuk Lamat
>Give your favorable opinion about Wuk Lamat
>Cheer on Wuk Lamat
>Do chores for Wuk Lamat
>Advise Wuk Lamat
>Get saved by Wuk Lamat
>Dance for Wuk Lamat
>Grovel before Wuk Lamat
>Die for Wuk Lamat
New stories always start out slow. While yes, this isn't as exciting as the past expansions, it fits right in with FFXIV and ARR (1.0 and 2.0). It's the start of a new story. I'm enjoying it thus far. The locations are beautiful, the characters are fun, and it's nice to slow down for once.
Also your ending statement about Shadowbringers is already incorrect as Endwalker was better.
All I know is that ShB was definitely peak.
This review attempt was a Crushing Defeat.
lol my mans thinks having a Trans character is being political. Dawg, existing isn't a political statement
For me it was by far the best expansion. I loved it.
😟
So, I understand where some people are coming from when they think it's boring. The problem is that we ended an entire storyline with endwalker, so we need to set new groundwork for future expansions. Remember, there are no shadowbringers or endwalker without ARR.
As for people who are angry about there being a trans voice actor, you need to look into it to even come to that conclusion. I didn't see it as politically charged and didn't know nor could tell the voice actor was trans. If you don't like the character, that's fine, I didn't care for her myself, but there are a few characters that people love that I don't like.
As for the content this expansion brings, it's top tier, the fights are fresh and fun, and there's an increase in difficulty when it comes to dungeons and raids. The new jobs are fun to play, I'll see how the new raid tier is when it's released, but so far I'd call this expansion slow for the story since it needs to set ground work, but a sucess for the content. I've finished dawntrail, so I think it's fair for me to come to the assessment I came to.
I find ff14 stories boring and hard to digest. The names are impossible to pronounce. This is the first expansion I actually enjoyed. It's fun and whimsical. But yeah, I'm not an ff14 story fan. But I do enjoy the game play.
Yes, the pacing may not be the best. But dear god if all people are fucking complaining about is the fact that the English VA is trans? Then let them bitch. Who gives a shit at this point? Waaa waaa. Time is progressing and not staying exactly the same! Get over it, all I'm hearing is a bunch of bigots whining. Yeah, the characters aren't perfect. No the storyline isn't either. But who cares? It's fun in the end. Not every game is intense action packed heroin needles of fun at all times, during every single hour, minute, second, millisecond of gameplay. Sometimes there has to be fetch quests. Not every expansion can be Endwalker, or Shadowbringers. But if you remember… those expansions had their downsides too. They were boring at points. People will get over it in a week or so, and everyone else will be excited to see the gameplay and content that's in the game.
I liked the story so far, but i can see some points and even for me there are parts that really drag. On the other hand, shadowbringer, endwalker was the end of a saga. Its like book 2+3 of lord of the rings. After that, dawntrail is book 1 where it starts like 50 pages shire and baggins description. 😛 I also think it kinda has to tone down for a new build up, otherwise u get the "supernatural" effect as i call it or like WoW! Faster, higher from 2 guys hunting ghosts to killing and replacing god! ^^ I think it could have done better and i do think it is meant as that toned down start and stumbling into something big like Frodo basicly did. Sry for my comparisons, but i think it kinda fits. The political stuff, dont know, i dont mind that much. To me it feels the more we cry out woke, the more it feels we still need that. But ya, it can be too much like in some stories. I play japanese voice, so i didnt even know the Wuk Lamat english voice. I also think its a tool to show that diversive, bit utopia kind of peace she wants until we stumble into the dark stuff of the story for contrast.
The problem with Wuk Lamat is shes constantly thrust on you. She's in almost every part of the game and her character is boring and 1 dimensional. The VA isn't the problem its the writing. That is also the second reason Yawntrail sucks, the writing is so shallow and lacks any subtlety. Everything is repeated and spelled out for you multiple times. Things pop up and are resolved almost immediately. The pacing is waaay off where at times where half a zone is literally a side quest worth of nothing. The whole thing felt like one giant slog to get through and even when we get to the interesting parts we have Wuk Lamat's one dimensional take on everything. Not to mention the cringe moments that are supposed to be emotional "everyone pitching in" with an included awful Disney track included. Endwalker had moments like this but that stuff was paid for with 4 expansions of building relationships. In here you have people you met 15 minutes earlier show up like "lets all pitch in" im sorry this isn't what payoff is. Then things happen because the story requires it. Oh we need to get rid of X oh well its fortunate we formed an alliance across the planet to fix this one specific issue. My god what is this. It's just bad and unworthy of the name Final Fantasy 14. We've had low stakes but high quality storytelling plenty of times in this game. People keep using that as an excuse for this drivel. The difference between then and now is the maturity level of the storytelling. This treats us like we're children. Not adults that live in a complex world. I'm actually upset they ok'd this. I'm trying to be as vague as I can because even if its an absolute travesty of a story people still deserve the right to do it themselves and make up their own minds but for me? This mind is made up. Yawntrail is the worst MSQ in FF14. This is coming from someone who likes Stormblood and Lyse as well. Which should tell you something.
"this guy needs a bat to the head" was the comments in my discord when discussing this video.
While the Dawntrail MSQ feels extremely slow. This was definitely a new version of ARR. It was a story that set up to set up some long term characters and all but remove some of the existing ones ones. As for the Wuk Lamat controversy… who cares about the LGBTQ-ness of a voice actress… the character herself is a quality upgrade to Lyse Hext, who she is definitely the story teams redemption tour on creating an espiraing leader character who actually goes through believeable growth.
I am a core gamer with over 20k hours on ff14. The trans thing doesn't really bother anyone as very few players have noticed it either.
Square Enix has completely failed on a completely different level. The add-on is a filler arc like in a manga. It introduces a lot of things that are immediately taken away again. It also doesn't enrich the story itself and above all it doesn't open up a big new story arc. You only get a hook at the very end and that has to last for 2 years until the next add-on.
The second problem is that the first part of the story is basically just exposition, new lore, an unpronounceable amount of complicated names, but remains flat in the narrative because we're basically just doing janitorial work. The second part of the story is simply absolutely unnecessary. Here, someone loved a certain Final Fantasy and incorporated it without paying much attention to the implications with the established world of 14. The bad thing is, even the moral or the premise has been told twice before and better! Doing it a third time just feels worthless. On top of that, we don't actually play the main character, just the babysitter or the cameraman. We ourselves are hardly more, and we're not allowed to grow as the main character.
The third big problem is that the game offers little to no mmorpg content. You have the dungeons and can collect equipment again, but apart from two raids, that's it. According to the statistics, the raids don't interest more than 15-20% of the players, there is simply no further pve content and that has to be enough for 4-8 months. Which it doesn't!
Conclusion:
The addon is simply not good. The story is irrelevant janitor work, in the first part only exploration and in the second part rushed and illogical. Illogical is a big problem of the story, as it also, whether intentionally or not, gets entangled in inconsistencies with the lore. Which is a real shame, because after the whole ascian story it should really be about the character. Which absolutely doesn't happen. To this day, we haven't even gotten any training.
But the biggest problem of all is that the story doesn't add anything that you could see as an antagonist. There is a plot at the very end, which the players now make up as to where it could go. But that's simply not enough for 2 years of waiting for the next addon. There is far too little to do in the game for that and to treat an mmorpg like a single player, then square enix must abolish the subscription fee and not demand a full price game 3 times a year. Because they have been delivering far too little content for years.
In short, square enix is stuck in the past. The dubbing of the main story alone is inconsistent, 50% is read and it makes no sense why. Then boring fetch-quest, nothing big exciting, no openworld, no new systems except a few updates. In short, they need to expand their team, they need to stop developing only in japan and get the perspective of good developers worldwide.
It simply cannot be that they take steps backwards to develop other games like Final Fantasy 16. They get a lot of money and a lot of respect from the players, but this is not given back. Even simple gatcha games on smartphones are prettier and more interesting to play these days. Even the story, here you can see that Square Enix no longer dares to try an adult story. The game is rated 12+ in some countries, a complete mistake. It needs to focus on adult content, it needs to deal with losses and not just keep tugging at the tear ducts. What makes me personally even more angry is how carelessly they are dealing with it.
It's just not a good add-on!
we were promised an adventure, I dont care if it was epic. Yoshi said it was going to bring the mmo back to what mmos made mmos special. I expected group quests, large combat zones, something like Bozja but as the MSQ experience. Dumb to hope for that, but Bozja and Eureka are in the game and have a cult following, so its not unreal to think the way I did, esp after all he said.
(also all zone enemies can be killed by auto attacking and going afk, you will regen more health then damage they deal, the entire game of this expansion feels empty, pointless, and not thought out. feels verrrrry uncanny, lonely and depressing.)
I'll admit, I am less than thrilled with the MSQ. Didn't know the VA for Wuk Lamat was trans, just that she was annoying as all hell. I can definitely tell they're laying the foundation for stuff going forwards, but this xpac was just boring.
agree the game is boring, def. but not because the game is too political in my opinion. i dont care if the voice actor is trans or not, tbh i also didnt notice. the VA is good, character is just poorly written. FFXIV is also probably one of the games with the biggest LGBTQ community out there, so i think its also fine to throw them a bone and support a trans voice actor – I wouldn't exactly say that is shoving something political in peoples faces. The game has had so many VAs over the years.
i think the game being bad is more of a result of what you discuss in the first half there, boring fetchquests, ever-the-same formula. its just so incredibly stale at this point. you feel, like some reviews have pointed out, a "cameraman". you go from cutscene to cutscene and you have so little agency of what your character actually does or how you progress, except maybe having a lot of input in dressing them with glamour. its all super on rails and it starts more and more to feel like a very long visual novel with some limited endgame activities. i was actually very into the story before, but even with the excellent story it was an issue that it just all feels so un-interactive – my favorite parts of FFXIV thus have been mostly player-made content like hangin out with people in their houses and doing group activities, and doing savage/ultimate raids…which are also becoming a bit stale, because they are always so mathematical and rigid, and difficulty comes most often from memorizing patterns rather than skill expression and reactivity. but other than that, the game doesn't really feel like a game.
This isn't a new problem. The gameplay loop of FF14 is fundamentally broken. Every MSQ is 30 hours of reading an average story and 10 hours of gameplay. This time the story is bad.
Imagine being so pathetic you get upset over a trans voice actor playing a character in a video game. The VA for Wuk Lamat did an amazing job. I played through the entire expansion and it was fantastic. The gameplay was great, the dungeons have been much harder than other content and the lore of the new areas are even better.
The fact dumbasses are being political over a video game, please quit playing. You will be doing us a HUGE favor leaving. You won't like the story because it's "woke" anyways according to your political views. Won't miss ya.
Dawntrail was great. And this is someone who's completed the ENTIRE story now and progging EXs as we speak.
can you point to anything about either one of your points other than didnt like fetch quests, which is essentially the beginning of every 14 expansion, and VA is trans therefor game is political. because those sound like your fishing for reasons to hate the game.