#does Wuk Lamat have a lot of weaknesses

[fheythfully]

"I liked Dawntrail a lot" I tell myself as I rewrite parts of the story for my own enjoyment and debate with my friend about the character growth of Wuk Lamat and Koana and realize that no, actually, I did not like Dawntrail's story decisions or Wuk Lamat all that much and I'm tired of pretending to myself that I did 🤡

[tritoch]

Have you got any thoughts to share about Sphene? I saw your post about how misrepresented FFXIV’s female characters are, and I’ve been hoping to see anything more than the typical “Evil AI colonizer etc.” or ��Tragic woman who can never change ever” or “Wuk Lamat’s girlfriend”. Maybe our interpretations will differ but I’ll be happy if you can provide anything more complex than those.

Sure! Throwing all this under a read-more for anyone who hasn't finished 7.0 yet. I think I'll probably expand on this more later but wanted to get initial thoughts down. (Note after writing: I meant this to be brief but uhhhh brevity is not my strong suit sorry. This take just sort of ends abruptly because I realize I'm rambling.) Again, spoilers through the end of 7.0 MSQ.

I think Sphene is the sharpest work the game has done yet in casting the antagonist as the noble double of the protagonist (a well it returns to a lot with Emet, and Zenos, and Golbez, and...). But because the protagonist here is Wuk Lamat and not the Warrior of Light, that's also a much more defined and interesting role. To me, Wuk Lamat is, above all, the Righteous Queen, who rules thoughtfully, wisely, and justly, and whose claim to the throne is justified by her moral clarity. Sphene, in turn, is also a wise and good queen, one who undertakes all her actions with her people first in her hearts, a sense of compassion towards all, and a clear eye for the consequences and costs of her intended course of action. And it leads to utter disaster, for her, her people, and the people of Tural. That rocks!

The first half of 7.0 is about justifying the fact that Wuk Lamat's going to be Dawnservant. Wuk Lamat is compassionate, curious, wise, and open-minded. She wins over rebels and malcontents not by asserting her authority or by strength of force, but by taking her obligations to them (as her subjects) seriously. She knows many of her subjects personally and takes a great interest in their lives, and she respects even those who openly oppose her.

And everything Wuk Lamat does, Sphene does to 11. Wuk Lamat respects her subject peoples and is curious about their cultures? Sphene forcibly annexes Yyasulani, but goes out of her way and expends Alexandria's limited resources to enable the remaining Xak Turali to live in their accustomed way if desired (…to the extent allowed by the new permanent lightning storms and the internal conflicts caused by regulator adoption). Wuk Lamat cares about her people not just in the abstract but as individuals? Sphene visits sick kids, knows them by name! Wuk Lamat understands the burden of rulership is too great and cedes half her power to her brother? Sphene recognizes her own weaknesses and makes a deal with the devil to keep Alexandria's culture alive! Wuk Lamat is willing to die for her people? Sphene will forcibly traumatize herself into being a better queen, if that's what rulership demands.

For an expansion that spends the first half being like "wow isn't this perfect candidate for the crown so likable and humble? wouldn't it be nice to be ruled by a good king?," it sure is funny that the final boss is THE QUEEN ETERNAL and she hits you with attacks like LEGITIMATE FORCE and ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY and ROYAL DOMAIN. This, to me, is Sphene's role: she complicates and questions the themes we've developed in the first half. Most importantly to me, she makes us ask: what is devotion to a people or culture even worth?

There's a thing I kept thinking of constantly during Dawntrail, not because I think it directly influenced the game in any way but because the parallels were so stark and startling. It's Jonathan Hickman's New Avengers #18 (2014). Truthfully, I'm not a big comics guy; I only know this sequence because Ta-Nehisi Coates cited it as inspiration for his Black Panther run on Twitter once (I also didn't read TNC's run, I was following him for politics talk). Forgive me, comics people, if I get any details wrong. The parallels are almost comical, though. It goes like this:

A superhuman secret society formed of some of the smartest heroes (and villains) in the land re-forms to oppose an existential threat caused by incursions from other dimensions that threaten to cause literal collisions between Earth and its alternate dimension counterparts. Seeing no other alternatives, they undertake work on a weapon to destroy these other worlds. T'challa—king of a fictional hyperadvanced nation called Wakanda, and also the superhuman Black Panther—meets with his ghostly predecessors, the previous Black Panthers/kings, for he fears the moral stain on his soul and the souls of the people of Wakanda, if they survive explicitly by killing their alternate counterparts, will be too heavy to bear. His ancestors are not impressed.

To them, there is no question at all. A king's duty may be complex in the execution, but it is simple in its conception. Your people come before all others. Always. This is, must be, the fundamental ethic of a good king. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the social order on which this imagined good monarchy is built. In a situation like this, the only option is to do what you must to protect them. "Will there be a cost? Yes. Might the universe burn? Let it. . . . You will kill them all if it means Wakanda stands. The golden city must never fall."

"I will do what I must" is Sphene's guiding principle. It is so important to her that when she recognizes that her sentimental attachments are making her waver in her duty, she severs them entirely, sacrificing her whole identity to the throne. It is also implicitly Wuk Lamat's position: she has no choice but to fight Sphene because to do otherwise would be to fail to protect her people. In fact, it's briefly even sort of the Warrior of Light's position, as when you tell Sphene before her trial that you understand what you must do, which is shut her down to protect others.

(One quick thought about the Warrior of Light: one cool thing about the antagonist this time being a double in a more exact way than Emet or Zenos is that it means other characters get a chance to relate to her differently than Wuk Lamat. The Warrior of Light, for example, is pressed into her service immediately upon your first meeting as the Queen's Champion, there to defend her if need be against all evil. This role is further affirmed by both robot Otis and Endless Otis, who essentially hand off their role as her knight to you, and reinforced when you flash back to the "might I call upon your aid" moment right before the end. Except, of course, you are loyal not just to her, but to the principles she represents, which her own acts betray, and so your ultimate act of aid is to essentially pass judgment on her and execute her. In a sense, you become the internal safeguard that a political system is supposed to have to protect against this very issue, and which Alexandria explicitly lost when it cast out/forgot Otis. Very Voeburt/ShB tank quests, it owns.)

But really, it's Sphene who embodies this sort of grim logic best. Aside from her transformation into the Queen Eternal, it's also why she suggests you simply become Alexandrians. It's the only way for her to reconcile her values and worldview, which have backed her into a corner where preserving Alexandria has come to mean a maximalist declaration of war on all life outside its borders because the kind of absolutely pain-free life she envisions for her citizens is completely unsustainable.

In this reading, one of Sphene's main beats is to unsettle what has preceded her in MSQ. In nearly all respects, she shares your values. She prizes life, is curious about other cultures, believes in the greatest good for the greatest possible number. But she is also a queen, and therefore irrevocably (in her eyes) tied to her state. Gulool Ja Ja and Wuk Lamat (and Koana) are the mythical wise rulers, thank god--but what if Wuk had inherited a Turali state that wasn't desperately in need of cross-cultural understanding, but one in a state of war? What value would her deep love for the people of Tural have held then? Sphene says, it would have held no value. If the survival of your people means harming the innocent, you harm the innocent. Kingship allows for no alternatives.

But she also concedes, in the very next breath, that she is still kind of wrong. Because what happened here was not inevitable, despite her programming (a brief note: to me Sphene being programmed is exactly the same as Emet being maybe-tempered, it's a fantasy gloss on the idea of social and cultural education. "I was programmed for this" is really no different from "I was trained and educated for this"), because the truth is that this kind of thoughtful, principled devotion to the state and its people is also a form of sentimental attachment, in the end. One that is maintained not because it is natural, and necessary, but because the monarch, too, likes it, and gets something from it.

In so many ways, in so many senses, the monarch is the state. Kings and queens may fancy themselves merely a reflection of their people's needs and desires, but of course even a cursory glance at history will tell you that far more often, states reflect their rulers. Sphene and Wuk Lamat both suggest that their conflict was inevitable, but was it? Or is the truth, as Sphene glancingly acknowledges here, that she turned her own fears and desires into the same policy goals that led to this tragedy? And if so...what does that say of our Good Queen, Wuk Lamat? Perhaps this could be different if they met earlier, says Wuk Lamat. But when? When did Wuk Lamat ever not love her people so dearly that she would not have sacrificed herself for them, or caused mass death for the sake of their survival? When did Sphene not believe the Endless to be people, or the preservation of Alexandria to be the most important thing? Maybe she means "had we met before you met Zoraal Ja," but of course, we the player actually saw their meeting. And we know that Sphene even then was not the hapless naif she'd like to pretend. She always knew exactly what she was doing.

We know the price of this kind of thinking, this Hobbesian view that states are engaged in a struggle of all against all. Living Memory lets you walk through it. To preserve Tural, we exterminate the Endless. We befriend them, learn about their lives, promise to remember them, and then we destroy them and their homes, leaving nothing but a bleak blank landscape and the sound of wind. This is what Sphene would have done to Tural and Eorzea. Indeed, it's what she's already doing to the people of Yyasulani, because no amount of well-intentioned aid can make up for trapping people under the dome for 30 years and systematically eroding their culture through the resonators.

To me, this is what makes Sphene really work, that way she has of forcing Wuk Lamat and the player to commit the same kinds of sins she has. We'd like to think ourselves better than her, but of course, we've already reconciled with and integrated Mamook's brutal eugenicist regime back into Turali society well before we ever met Sphene. At the end of our long "wow isn't having a wise queen cool???" expansion, we are met with "Legitimate Force" and "Absolute Authority" and see them for what they truly are: nothing but tools of violence. No longer does the idea of the Warrior of Light hanging around Tural as Wuk Lamat's advisor have the same attraction, now that we have been reminded of the way the putatively unquestionable logic of kingship can ultimately lock even the wisest and kindest rulers into a path of war and exploitation and destruction.

I think Sphene is FFXIV's most interesting and nuanced depiction yet of a leader. She really, truly, wants nothing more than to save her people and protect them from pain. But even seemingly loving and compassionate goals like these can readily lead us down dark paths. She's a "hard men make hard choices"-type character, a noble but misguided opponent, but as a loving and elegant fairy queen instead of a grizzled knight or extremely sad man. She fucking rocks.

[anneapocalypse]

On the role of outsiders.

One thing I think makes the Scions' relationship with Wuk Lamat unique isn't that they're mentoring her--I don't really see it as a mentor relationship and for various reasons I think it's better for it not to be that--but that, as outsiders, she finds that she can show vulnerability with them that she's only rarely been able to show with anyone else.

When we meet Wuk Lamat in 6.55, it's pretty heavily telegraphed that she's posturing a lot to cover up some personal weaknesses or insecurities. This made me really curious about her, who she was and what that overconfident demeanor was covering for. And when I got into Dawntrail and started getting to know her, I wasn't disappointed.

(No Wuk Lamat hate on this post, please. Any responses clearly trying to pick a fight will be removed and blocked without reply.)

Wuk Lamat has a couple of foils in this story, but a big one is Sphene, and I love @unmovingtroika's description of Sphene as "unpersoned to an extreme degree." And as a distorted mirror of our main character, Sphene reminds us that any person in a position of authority or heroism is depersonalized to some degree, no matter how down-to-earth or benevolent.

Gulool Ja Ja is really presented to us as very much a people's ruler, the charismatic blessed siblings who united the peoples of Tural through curiosity and open-mindedness and understanding. And that may be largely true, but it's also made of him a myth, a legend inscribed in stone and memory. Meanwhile in the course of Dawntrail's story we also meet the real person Gulool Ja Ja... at least, the one who's left. The man who has spent three years grieving his brother, his ever-present companion, the Reason to his Resolve, a man who for the sake of political stability has had to hide his grief and loneliness from even his own children, as he does his best to carry out the work they had begun together, and complete the Rite of Succession in his brother's absence. And if there are places where Gulool Ja Ja failed to foresee the potential negative outcomes to the Rite, like Bakool Ja Ja's actions endangering his people, we might see there in hindsight the Head of Reason's absence in the final stages of the Rite's preparation. And we see, in some of Zoraal Ja's anger and resentment and insecurity, a glimpse of the ways in which the people's Dawnservant might have failed his own son.

One of Wuk Lamat's early growth moments is when the Scions convince her that she doesn't need to try and hide her obvious seasickness--an affliction she can't help, and which represents no failure of character on her part but which is, well, embarrassing. I love that she seems to particularly connect with Alisaie, who's had her own experiences of feeling inadequate next to her sibling, and feeling the need to prove herself on her own terms.

Could Wuk Lamat have been convinced to drop the act by her allies if they weren't outsiders? The problem is that everyone else in Tural, even her own siblings, are the people she'll have authority over if she wins. Erenville frequently rolls his eyes at his old friend's posturing, and fairly so, but Wuk Lamat doesn't behave that way just because she's insecure. In the same way that her father has had to conceal the death of his brother even from his own children, Wuk Lamat recognizes the danger of showing weakness before the people she will have to rule--especially when she's already aware of her reputation as being less qualified than her brothers. But these outsiders from Eorzea are different. They're allies who will never be her subjects. In private moments, she can be a person with them. She can be vulnerable. She can be Lamaty'í.

(Incidentally, I think this is also why I found Sphene calling her Lamaty'i so unsettling. Initially it seems like a simple misunderstanding, an outsider mistaking a very personal nickname for someone's "public" name. But in the hindsight of what we learn about Sphene, I think it feels a lot worse. Sphene is, consciously or unconsciously, pushing past the walls of formality and reticence that necessarily exist around a ruler when interacting with most people--nevermind a foreign head of state whose intentions are unknown. She's positioning herself as a friend when she is not.)

As the story progresses, we learn the Wuk Lamat and Koana have always been close. Now, in the Rite of Succession, they must treat one another as rivals and can no longer share confidences--at least, at first. Koana's love and protectiveness of his sister emerges with a vengeance when Wuk Lamat is in danger--and I'd venture a guess that he, too, feels safer showing this sudden vulnerability before his allies and those of his sister, because again, they will never be his subjects. While we get only briefer glimpses of Koana's journey with Thancred and Urianger, I'd guess that their friendship has affected him in similar ways.

One of the benefits of blessed siblings is that they are never alone. They bring two perspectives to any situation, but they also have one another to confide in, to understand, to commiserate over the burdens of leadership in a way they can't with anyone else, not even family. Wuk Lamat and Koana taking on the role of Dawnservant together brings the benefit of their very different strengths and perspectives to their people. But it also means that neither must take on those burdens alone. When their allies depart, they will still have one another. There will always be someone at their side with whom they can just be a person.

The tragedy of Zoraal Ja is that he's evidently never had that kind of relationship with anyone. The myth of his seemingly miraculous birth has depersonalized him from the very start. All his life, he has carried the burden of living up to the expectations of the Resilient Son, and has never enjoyed the close relationship his brother and sister have with one another. To the very last, he attempts to live up to the legend alone--and he fails.

One of the biggest themes throughout Final Fantasy XIV is standing together. There is strength in companionship and cooperation, but for that strength to flourish, there must also be trust and vulnerability. Wuk Lamat and Koana ultimately find that in one another, as siblings and co-rulers, but the Scions play the important role of offering them an outsider's friendship in their journeys when they are cut off from one another, and would otherwise be alone. As Ketenramm and Galuf Baldesion once were to Gulool Ja Ja, the Scions to Wuk Lamat and Koana are neither mentors nor subjects, but companions and friends.

[lilbittymonster]

holds up a very tired peace sign

Final roundup thoughts are that Dawntrail was a nice expansion. It wasn't amazing. It wasn't awful. I won't be up at night thinking about it. I won't be calling it the worst expansion ever. It was just....nice.

It told the story it wanted to tell very neatly. The writing has really bounced back from the nightmare of pacing issues that Endwalker had. The stakes were raised in a gradual and believable way. All it's loose threads were woven together neatly by the end. Wuk Lamat had a strong positive character arc without sacrificing her core personality. Koana had the necessary growth to realise that innovation and progress are not at odds with tradition. I think they compliment each other's weak points well.

Most of my nitpicking about the expansion lies in how the writers seemed to be trying to make a WoL x Wuk Lamat....thing happen, and I very much did not care for it At All. It's the same problem that I have with how the Exarch is written in ShB where we cannot say 'no' to him at any point. And frankly, being able to say 'no' is not something that would make the story come to a screeching halt. That's just lazy writing. I would have preferred if we were given dialogue options that gave us more agency in how we interacted with Wuk Lamat. Because the whole forced "we're family now :) you can call me Lamaty'i :)" was REALLY rubbing me the wrong way because, again, there was no way out! I could not at any point say "no, Wuk Lamat, I do not see you as family, you are assuming a level of relation here that just doesn't exist." Kitali wouold have flat out told her "no I'm not calling you that, we aren't family" and no amount of sad wet kitty eyes from Wuk Lamat could make her budge.

Kitali did not want to be here in the first place. She didn't sign on to be a participant in yet another political struggle. She was here with her husband on vacation and to keep an eye on the twins. That's it. And that's what she does for most of the early succession arc. She only gets called into the MSQ when the kidnapping happens, and she and Thancred are off doing their rogue shit together. She and Aymeric stick with the group until the end of the Valigarmanda trial, and after that she goes back to ignoring the political machinations.

It was Aymeric who dragged them along to Yak T'el, and Kitali wound up spending more time with the vipers than anything else. I haven't been bothered to actually level the job, but it's yet another dual wielding job to add to her repertoire, she'll be fine at viper day camp while the MSQ happens. And making sure Aymeric doesn't die of spice while they're there. He's gotten better but he is still very Ishgardian. Kitali would have been more interested in exploring the Ja Tiika forest and wallowing in her nostalgia for Rak'tika than anything else. They aren't there for the blessed siblings lore dump, but they tag along for the Skydeep Cenote dungeon as backup.

There is not nearly enough Estinien in this expansion for my tastes but at least I know what he's doing once he leaves Sunperch, so that makes my job easier.

I'm sure I'll waffle back and forth a bit on it by the time I actually get around to replaying it and writing out fic for it, and by the pace I'm going at it'll be several years from now, but it makes the most sense to me for Aymeric to remain behind in Tuliyollal following the attack. He isn't there for a lot of the Solution 9/Heritage Found stuff and they wouldn't see each other again til the final zone. He and Estinien would be sharing guard duty at the gate waiting for Kitali to come back through.

I kind of enjoyed not having Kitali be the main character of the expansion the same way she wasn't the main character in Stormblood. I really don't feel like it had to be the Warrior of Light with Wuk Lamat for the trials of succession arc. It just needed to be a strong adventurer. And even once the plot twists kicked up, we still weren't the main character, but being the WoL and our past experiences did end up being important enough to necessitate our presence. Compared to the previous two expansions, it was such a weight off Kitali's shoulders. Still, again with the "the whole world depends on me to save it" exhaustion, but lighter in comparison.

And Wuk Lamat ended up being the one to actually save it with the power of friendship. Love that for her. I'm glad that they kept her characterisation solid throughout the whole expansion.

I don't have any true investment in the expansion. I enjoyed it, but I'm more interested in the little bits and pieces about the future of interdimentional travel that they've been poking at since ShB ended. And if I'm being honest I think I'm starting to burn out on the game entirely. I've been meaning to replay some other games for a while now, and I think I need to take the time to do that and recharge.

I'll end this post with the best screenshot of the game.

He's gonna be a great dad some day.

[oddnub-eye]

Throwing my hat into the Dawntrail review ring now that I've had the time to sit on it.

Pacing is definitely Dawntrail's weakest point, but I think an...underrated feels like a weird word to use here, but its all I got, so underrated "weak point" of the expansion is that a lot of it feels like a lot of the set pieces can fall victim to a bit of player dissonance.

Like, the biggest victim of this is Valigarmanda, who gets a ton of hype in the build up to his trial, but as you settle in for the fight, they start hyping it because its a big bird that controls the weather and -

Oh hey final boss of 3 expansion ago, what are you doing here?

Its not totally unexpected from an expansion meant to set up a new story arc, but it feels like a fair few of Dawntrail's set pieces suffer from the sequel problem of "Member of the old cast is way too strong to scale to a challenge that would reasonably be a satisfying challenge for the new cast"...except they can't write around that problem because the overpowered question in character is you, the player character.

Like, the scenes where Koana reminds Wuk Lamat that she hasn't surpassed her father yet because Valigarmanda hadn't fully recharged its aether or when Allisae talks about how dreadful fighting the shade of Gulool Ja Ja would have been if Koana's team hadn't helped just like

Don't land.

Not 5 levels ago in the Endwalker Patch Quests we had a scene dedicated to our allies hyping us up about how we've overcome every challenge possible, right before we smack around what amounts to a voidsent primal made from fusing a dragon and the remnants of fucking Zodiark's aether. In Endwalker proper, we outright kill Zodiark, fight the Endsinger into becoming Metion again, beat Zenos, etc etc. There's nothing in Dawntrail that makes me go "yeah, this is a reasonably high stakes situation for the Warrior of Light" until Sphene and Alexandria come in. And that wouldn't be a problem, but it also feels like the expansion wants us to feel the same level of triumph we get from actually overcoming the challenge like it did in previous expansions - and while its fun on a gameplay level, when it tries to give that same feeling on a story level, it all falls apart.

One of the best set pieces in the expansion is the duty where you play as Wuk Lamat to fight against Bakool Ja Ja. The Warrior of Light is removed from the situation, complete with dialouge options to be a bit cheeky about it:

(say hi to Klar everyone)

You can be encouraging or warning or just outright trollish. Its the same as back when Wuk Lamat was kidnapped and the Warrior of Light captured Bakool Ja Ja's attention so well they were able to set up Thancred and Koana up to do the actual important parts of the rescue.

These are both set pieces that write around the Warrior of Light extremely well while letting the new characters take the spotlight - Wuk Lamat's duty allowing her to affirm her growth and show off her resolve by defeating Bakool Ja Ja in a one on one, and Koana showing his care for his sister by being the one to actually catch her.

Ultimately - in spite of going on about it for 6ish paragraphs, this is a relatively minor nitpick. It's something I only really felt for a moment before getting swept into the excitement of the next story beat, and only really bugs me further on deeper reflection. But it does contribute to a feeling that I think is the root of a lot of people's issues with Dawntrail (that being that the Warrior of Light feels really awkwardly implemented).

Most of the set piece issues do utterly vanish once we hit solution nine, however. Zoraal Ja going full Vergil in particular absolutely fucking rules.

That being said, outside of the pacing (which has been talked about enough) and the hit-or-miss nature of the set pieces, Dawntrail is a very good expansion. In particular, I think Dawntrail really shines in its characters.

Wuk Lamat is a very fun character to follow (and she better be, given how central she is and how much circles back to her). Her character arc is less about needing to grow or evolve her ideals, and more about needing to refine them and understand what they actually mean. Its not a particularly dramatic transformation, but it is nevertheless fun character growth to watch.

Bakool Ja Ja is Bakool Ja Ja. What else is there more to say.

Koana went in a character direction I really wasn't expecting. While his ideals and vision is thoroughly proven false, the background with his abandonment provided a background to those ideals that I didn't expect going in, rather than him being set up as someone purely enamored with progress for progress' sake. Staking his anti-tradition viewpoint in his birth parent's abandoning of him also set up a fun contrast where he is able to make the decision his birth parents weren't: he's able to change his ideals to accommodate for the people who matter for him, his birth parents weren't.

Zoraal Ja is fucking goofy. And I love him for it. There's a lot to read into his character - and he probably would have benefited from like...an echo flashback or a few more levels to let him stretch his muscles, but ultimately his themes of expectation and how they crushed him do come through. It is also the case that he spends most of the expansion doing Metal Gear Villian monologs, gets really close to becoming a cyborg, and goes full Vergil complete with summoned swords. He may not have been the most cooked antagonist, but he had insane amounts of sauce about it.

Sphene. Sphene Sphene Sphene. Admittedly, I did not have the best first impression of Sphene. I streamed a lot of the back half of dawntrail to the homies and so a lot of Sphene's screentime was eaten up by us going "i don't trust her." and fossil fuel jokes. However...Sphene gets stronger the longer you have time to sit and think on her. Sphene's in-built purpose to preserve Alexandria at all costs was always going to clash with the base of "Queen Sphene" that she was built on - and one was always going to break. Its very reminiscent of the tragedy of Elidibus, who was so dedicated to his purpose that he, ironically, forgot what his initial motivation even was. Elidibus lost his reason, and Sphene ultimately resolved to cast aside "herself". Bringing the "meta" aspect of the inevitability of tragedy to the literal text of Sphene's story only makes the overall tragic nature of her story that much stronger, in my opinion. Ironically, that "criticism" of how untrustworthy Sphene seemed that I referenced earlier ends up being retroactively heartbreaking: you watch as Sphene builds up sympathetic scene after sympathetic scene with the knowledge that you'll probably confront her eventually, just like she does.

Her trial does, however, suck shit. Which is a little disappointing since most of the dungeons, duties, and trials absolutely knocked it out of the park in the gameplay department.

That's another thing that's really good about Dawntrail. The combat and design of most of the encounters felt really good. It was challenging without being frustrating (except for Sphene), and everything felt learnable without sacrificing challenge. It makes me really want to actually do the raids for this expansion right away instead of putting them off like I have the rest of them (although I probably should do Bahamut and Pandaemonium first for story reasons).

Solid story, extremely solid gameplay, with one moderate flaw I didn't even bother to talk about and one nitpick I blew up into 6ish paragraphs. All in all, I'd say that's a damn solid - no, damn good, expansion.

[mentorcrown]

okay i have slept on it and now have somewhat coherent thoughts about the dawntrail msq... less mad than i was when i first finished the game lmao

tl;dr overall it was an okay expansion. not a great one but not bad either. im looking forward to seeing where the game takes us

in terms of where id rate it in my personal scale-- where my personal scale does not indicate i hate an expansion, just that i dont enjoy it as much as other ones-- its below stormblood but above heavensward.

personal scale now: shadowbringers > endwalker > stormblood while zenos is on screen > rest of stormblood > dawntrail > heavensward while ysayle is on screen > ARR > rest of heavensward)

rest is under a read more because it contains blatant spoilers for the MSQ

things i loved

i loved all the ff9 references. ff9 is my most beloved game

i love you wuk lamat. i love you koana. i love you erenville.

the dungeon/trial design is top notch. lots of fights in endwalker feel very flat and not at all challenging. not this time. everything was great. it was engaging. parts were difficult in a good way. loved how even it was basically the same mechanics we've seen before, it was presented in interesting ways

dragons?? in MY dawntrail??? more likely than you think aka mission status sick cutscene

gripes(??)

the pacing was off. some parts felt completely unnecessary. especially the weird cowboy bandit thing ill be honest i could not have cared less than i did. i think that entire map could have been better spent focusing on the nomadic cat tribe(s).

first half of the story was stellar i loved that. it was a bit too expositiony in parts but i still loved every part of the first half (desert story not included). (this was at least partly because by my wife is an anthropologist and was fangirling the entire time)

second half was weak as fuck. i dont know why they needed to rehash the same thing we've seen the past 2 expansions. we did not another emet-selch archetype. i feel like the entire S9 stuff could have been handled so much better than it was.

the theories that people had pre-release about how s9 was likely a hidden city that did trade with the rest of tural. and that one of the brothers were likely working with them to destabilize tural; that story would have been so much better. they still could have had it be a shard idc. they could have kept the azem stuff too. i just did not care one little bit to have emet-selch/amaurot 2.0.

hated the "we have to save the world but lets fuck around as much as possible while our friends hold open the gate" plot sooo much. i get why we did it but holy hell the pacing shift from 'this is world ending' to whatever the hell was going on in the golden city was like Why.

did find the krile parents and erenville mother thing soft though. even if i am still livid about how they dangled erenvilles mother in front of him several times. the poor guy

i dont care about the scions. i DONT CARE about the scions. STOP SHOWING ME the scions. why are these old people not retired yet. rehash the scions. give me a new main cast. the twins and graha can stay.

[ferrocyan]

2, 3, 17, 21 for the ask game Gotta get that Tart Lore

2. first thing to do in tuliyollal: go to the resplendent quarter, oh wait sorry that's what i do haha. man not to be lame but having something of my culture present in my favorite game feels so fucking good. but what tart does first thing is check out the adventurers hub, and that would be.. wherever the role quests are, i assume. otherwise he's sticking close by krile. he's rly excited to get to spend time w her for now!

3. initial impressions

wuk lamat: very ambitious. tart really likes that in a leader. he was intrigued enough to come all the way across the sea, but seeing her decide on how she wants to realize her vision of peace cements tart's belief in her completely. tbh he's naive enough to brush off gulool ja ja's concern for wuk lamat too www he's totally on board w her being the dawnservant. tart does look down on her combat abilities though. what kind of warrior has no defensive buffs (grumble grumble)

koana: pretty impressive. ...uhh so i wrote tart out of the part where wuk lamat got kidnapped, alisaie was the one doing all that stuff, so. tart never interacts w koana and has no opinion on him -.-)b

bakool ja ja: nothing. when erenville said at their first appearance that bakool ja ja has no vision for how he'd rule beyond winning the contest, tart completely discounts him. he does find the fight with wuk lamat interesting, though, and after everything's over he hangs out with bakool ja ja a lot. the mighty calls tart his lackey and he's cool w that www

zoraal ja: a mirror. tart recognizes a lot of himself in zoraal ja, in his fixation on warfare and his demeanor and lack of resolve. zoraal ja's ideology is so weak it's ridiculous. and tart definitely laughed on finding out that zoraal ja named himself the king of resolve to sphene's queen of reason. beyond the recognition tart also projects on zoraal ja a lot, in how he thinks that men like them are nothing but tools and zoraal ja was stupid for fooling himself into thinking he could become a king, when in reality he was just a tool for sphene's resolve. tart's just using him as a medium for self-loathing. he doesn't think much of zoraal ja otherwise.

17. family and legacy: i gotta admit i don't find the family theme resonant for tart at all, but legacy? oh fuck. sphene is someone made to preserve her people's legacy to the point of killing others. that really makes me think back on how tart has treated his parents' legacy up to now, and i realize that he's been ignoring it. he's resigned that it will keep being erased, he doesn't try to preserve it but instead focuses on making sure c'astarhte kasvert will be known and remembered by the world. his own legacy is all that matters. so seeing sphene fight so hard to preserve all her citizens, even those who had died, throws into sharp relief how little tart has done for his own family. he feels terrible about it! sphene inspires him so much to do better. tart really admires her as not just sphene the queen of alexandria, but sphene the endless who carries all her people's memories.

21. summary of the journey: witnessing the rise of a great ruler. wuk lamat has proven herself to all of her people, as well as the world outside tuliyollal. there is no greater honor than to take part in her journey.

[sjofn-lofnsdottr]

I want to start out by saying I am not a Dawntrail hater by any stretch, I enjoyed going through the MSQ in spite of its flaws, but I really think this is completely misunderstanding a lot of the good faith criticisms of how Dawntrail handled our character, and really overstating how the MSQ is rarely about the Warrior of Light. The story's themes throughout the game might not be about the Warrior of Light specifically, but to say the story has rarely ever been, so who cares if Dawntrail isn't either ... well, I can't say I agree.

This got super long so I'm gonna hide it under a cut.

ARR and its patches aren't solely about the Warrior of Light, because it does do a ton of world building and character introducing and ground-laying (just like Dawntrail is doing), but their journey to being a hero of the realm and becoming the Warrior of Light is ... a huge part of the story. It gives us, the players, a personal reason to care about all the world building and characters introduced and ground being laid. The Warrior of Light is more or less a blank slate, but they're still a big component. Even so, lots of people think of it as a weak introduction, and I think it's because it doesn't give you many times to reflect or show how you, the player, think your character is dealing with things. The Warrior of Light is very much smiling and nodding and fist punching enthusiastically as they get swept into being the hero that the world needs. They're a little harder to connect to as a result, although it starts to change a tiny, tiny bit in the final patch, where the writers and the cutscene animators seem like they're starting to realize they can't have the Warrior of Light smiling and nodding and fist punching their way through everything. And hey, that does seem to be the patch where lots of people start to think 'okay, maybe this DOES get good like people say.'

Heavensward and its patches aren't solely about us, but it's the first time it flirts seriously with the idea of us being a role model for Alphinaud (something Dawntrail is trying to recreate with Wuk Lamat), and shows the hope we bring with us as we refuse to accept the 'inevitable' conclusion, how our involvement with something can completely change the course of where things seem to be going otherwise, how we inspire others to be the best versions of themselves. We experience things that give us a personal stake in the outcome of the goings on, because we form new relationships and watch the tragic end of a few of them. And there's another important step: the Warrior of Light starts to get chances to actually show their emotions, express how they feel about the goings on at important junctures, and they are a better character for it. The game is encouraging you to get connected to your character, and I think that's a big reason people are so attached to Heavensward in spite of some major weaknesses it has compared to later expansions.

Stormblood and its patches aren't solely about us, and 4.0 itself gets so maligned in part because it's the first time it's as little about us as the game had ever been to that point, fair or not as that assessment might be (<insert rant about how 'no Lyse does NOT steal credit for shit we do, shut the fuck up' here>). Even so, it gives us a personal stake in the form of Zenos and the beginnings of his arc with you. It also shows us being a role model and source of emotional support for Lyse (again, like Dawntrail is trying to do!), more material support for Hien, and so on. We still have our specific role to play, the role no one but our character can play. And once again, the game pauses occasionally to let the player reflect on what's happening and how their character might feel about things. Sure, they're on rails as far as plot goes, but the game still lets you have some small amount of 'canonical' input on how your character feels about those rails. And we get little chances to listen to Lyse, alone, and give her some little words of comfort or advice or encouragement. We get that with Alisaie too, in the patches. Moments where you do feel like your character is friends with these characters, that the Warrior of Light is more than someone smiling and nodding and fist punching in response to things being said at them, rather than to them.

Shadowbringers and its patches aren't solely about us either, especially not if you're going to insist ARR isn't about us at all using the logic that the story spends a lot of time teaching us about Eorzea and its factions and how they come together against the threat they face. There's a ton of world building and character introducing and ground-laying crammed into Shadowbringers (just as it is in Dawntrail), contrasting our Source with their Reflection. Lots of characters besides you grow and change over the course of the story, sometimes because of your example or the hope you bring, sometimes not, just like previous expansions. As one example, Ryne has an entire journey to becoming a hero in her own right. She isn't your charge, and yet you still get a few moments with her to specifically give her words of encouragement or advice, to be a role model for her. And in the end, she's going to be the one who picks up the hope she helped bring to the world and make sure to continue to nurture it and bring it to people who need it after you leave.

Endwalker certainly isn't solely about you. Even here, in this end-of-an-era finale, it's still world building and ground laying and introducing new characters to potentially develop further later, after the end. It does have the most time spent on how your character is feeling, gives you so many opportunities to reflect on your character and their journey, and, for the first time in a while, gives you extended periods of time where it's just your character, alone, driving the story at all. But it doesn't focus on them to the exclusion of all else, and its larger themes are certainly far beyond just your character. Other characters get important moments besides you, too. They get closure, or a spotlight to show just how far they've come since you first met them, or moments to show who they were before they met you so you can see how they became the person you met. The Warrior of Light is undeniably the main character here, but they are in no way, shape, or form the only character who matters.

Endwalker's patches take a step back from being so focused on the Warrior of Light, and is more focused on developing Zero as the main character this time, while giving Vrtra, Estinien and Y'shtola time to shine as well. Even so, this arc gives you and your character times to reflect on things, to speak with Zero and help her on her journey, to feel like a character, if not the character.

Where Dawntrail stumbles, in my opinion, is not in deciding the main character is Wuk Lamat. It's that it's the first time the game seems actively disinterested in spending time trying to make extra sure the player has a personal stake in what's happening, or to urge the player to continue to mentally develop their character like it had gotten so good at in the past. It's that I really got the sense after a while that Wuk Lamat and her character development was the only thing that mattered, at the expense of everyone around her. This is not, I must stress, Wuk Lamat's fault. It barely has anything to do with Wuk Lamat specifically. I do not hate Wuk Lamat.

In fact, I like Wuk Lamat! I think her journey in the first half is strong enough to forgive and ignore how the other characters that get to have character development often skip steps to get there, and just how little the lead writer gives a shit about the Warrior of Light as a character. People keep saying in the story's defense that we're in a mentor role in Dawntrail, and I agree that's the intent, but it's not handled as well as it could've been. Which is a shame, because a theme about the Warrior of Light since nearly the beginning is that one of the things about them is they inspire people to become their best selves, and I'd love a bigger focus on that when the story being told is supposed to be 'smaller scale.'

Wuk Lamat looks to us for support and approval pretty much any time she does anything, and that's a great first step to solidifying our mentor status, but I can count on one hand the number of times the game (across BOTH of Dawntrail's arcs) let me decide how my character wanted to show that support or approval. And forget giving actual advice, everyone else on your team has plenty to say on that front in your stead, and the Warrior of Light is back to smiling and nodding and hand-punching in agreement, rather than it feeling like they have any personality whatsoever. So when Lamat'yi tells you she considers you family, when she claims there's no way she could've gotten here without your specific help, when she asks you to stay, it rings a lot more hollow to me than Alphinaud telling you how important your presence has been to him and who he's grown into, or when Lyse tells you that she absolutely could not have come so far without your help, or Zero trying to figure out the feelings she's feeling about you, or even just Ryne lighting up whenever she sees you're back on the First. I think that's a shame, because the potential is there!

And then the second half happens, when the game literally says it sounds like a job for the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, and then does nothing to really show why that would be said, other than to name drop them to reassure everyone the writer remembers that's a thing. They needed to either keep the second half threat something very narrowly focused on Fantasy North America, so it continues to feel entirely justified to just follow Wuk Lamat around and focus only on how the first half's arc informs the second half in the form of her leadership style, or the game had to accept that it was, in fact, a job for the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, that this is our speciality. At the very least, it needed to accept that the story had gotten bigger than just her and let everyone else get to develop more so that when they have their moments later, they feel earned rather than like steps were skipped and we have to fill them in ourselves. I cried a bit over Krile and Erenville, but I still felt frustrated at the wasted potential, especially when it came to Krile. Erenville at least got half a zone to interact with us and show his character off a bit more to us without Wuk Lamat stepping all over him, Krile got fuck all. Erenville got the tiniest bit of "he's marginally more open with people and the idea of having friends now, although he probably still needs a boatload of therapy to deal with his abandonment issues" character development, Krile got a couple of trivia factoids added to her biography and her character changed ... not at all from any of it, to be honest.

And even if I accept it's only Wuk Lamat that really matters, she keeps going through things we have had to experience and reckon with in our own role as Hero, yet we offer her no words of advice or encouragement or even knowledge. Other characters do that for us, without any input from us. They kept pairing us with her, and I kept thinking "okay here it is, here's the time I'll get to let my character reflect on all this bonkers shit or give her some advice that was hard-won through his own experiences" and the game just kept going "yeah no, none of that here!" and has Wuk Lamat spout a platitude at us about learning about other people's culture for the zillionth time or whatever instead, which we smilenodpunch in response to. That is a huge disservice to Wuk Lamat!

The game this time around has rarely felt it important to give the player a chance to further connect with their own character, which is not a big deal when it's a class quest, or a raid or trial series, but when it comes to the MSQ, the thing everyone has to do and everyone is going to want to feel connected to in some kind of way, something that takes tens of hours to get through, it makes it a lot harder for a lot of people to push past and just enjoy the story being told, especially when it feels like a big step back on that front as compared to previous expansions.

So really, even if I concede the story has rarely been 'about' the Warrior of Light, this is the first expansion where it felt like the game only has my character there because this is an MMO and it has to put my character there, that it would be just as content to tell this story without him being there to watch it at all. The first time that I feel I could freely skip 90% of the cutscenes when I replay it as a different character because the different vibes just aren't there, there's no little moments to show how Warrior of Light A is different from Warrior of Light B. Hell, I could've been playing the role of Alisaie the entire time and felt more involved, because at least she gets to comfort and encourage and advise and dispense information. She seems like the character Lamat'yi would want to convince to stay on in her government, to call family, to look to approval. When Alisaie refers to Lamat'yi that way, it feels earned. Which is great for her, and a nice way to show how she's growing up into the person she's been aspiring to be! But it further drives home how little of that my own character did as far as all that went.

Basically, I don't need the story to be about, or even mostly focused on, the Warrior of Light, I truly don't. But I do not want to go back to the smilenodfistpunch days where my character stands around while everyone else talks past him, and I'm meant to believe that's Very Inspiring and has Forged Strong Bonds. Don't tell me I'm a mentor and then have me do no actual mentoring. Don't make me watch someone struggling with complicated experiences and feelings my own character has dealt with and have him say nothing. Do not tell me the story has shifted to something that threatens the Source and its Reflections, say this is Definitely a Job for the Scions, and immediately ignore that was said and continue keeping most of them in cameo roles. Extra do not say that and then fail to give my character a chance to show he actually retained anything he learned over the course of his adventures. Even ARR's WoLs would do no-dialogue-choice hand gesturing explanations when it made sense for them to! And for God's sake, when he's finally doing the thing everyone in the universe agrees is his fucking job, don't interrupt it to give me the sense the writer wishes with his whole heart this could've been a RP section playing as Wuk Lamat instead.

Reminder: A Realm Reborn wasn't particularly about us. It was about the Eorzean Factions, it was about the Scions of the Seventh Dawn and their interactions with and thwarting Gaius and the XIVth Legion. We were just a useful champion slowly growing to fame but not truly a Warrior of Light until literally the prelude to the Castrum raiding mission.

The Parting of Glass wasn't about us either. It was, once again, about the world. And how it had begun changing after Gaius's fall and the brief period of peace away from Garlemald's Shadow. About Alphinaud beginning his arc of growth with hubris and the creation the Crystal Braves and what it might of looked like IF the Scion's good nature was lent to anyone and everyone. And thus opening itself up to the very corruption Minfilia feared to move away from the Waking Sands and to the Rising Stones in the first place.

Heavensward isn't about us. It is about Alphinaud's continue growth, learning of Ishgard's past and history. Hubris, arrogance and narrow viewing lead Alphinaud to steps of the Foundation, it has lead Estinien astray and made Ysayle believe she is a messiah incarnate. And through the journey, each of them grow as they learn the terrible truth about the Dragonsong War. Estinien in particular has his eyes opened and no longer simply seeks revenge on Nidhogg but to get to the bottom of it all. So no other shepherd's son has to live as he has. Ysayle learns she is a shade and a faux Shiva not truly Hraesvelgr's beloved or even in the same category as her. She learns swallow such delusions and embrace what Saint Shiva stood for in its entirety. Which means leaning to lay the road for peace between Ishgard and the Dragons and opening a path to this by sacrificing herself for those she loved so dearly. Alphinaud learns from all of this and more and is humbled by the duty of a knight, the fervor of a dragoon, the sacrifice of a saint, and the courage of his companions and of Sharlayan's arrogance from Master Matoya. To put others before himself and allow others to support him when he falls.

The Far Edge of Fate isn't about us. It was about how Ishgard carries on after Thordan and the Heavens Ward are shown to be the monsters they are. How the remnants of the church, the knights of Ishgard, and the civilian population react to the realization with rejection. How facing off against Nidhogg possessing Estinien, the Warriors of Darkness, and the machinations of Ilberd force Eorzea and Ishgard to look inward and know truly where they should go from there. To ignore the easier road and take the higher path no matter the strife and hardship it provides them. Because when they reach the otherside they would be better for it. Finding that courage, after five years of procrastinating and hemming and hawing, the Eorzean Alliance finally begin to mobilize to free Ala Mhigo from Garlemald and perhaps take on the Empire itself.

Stormblood isn't about us. It is about Doma and Ala Mhigo fighting for the survival of their people and cultures. Facing the parts of their society that were spurned and used as tools of hatred against their principles. That provided the necessary cracks required for Garlemald to break them down and oppress them in the first place. And how reforging under those values and those long histories of violence can make a new path and come to terms to over throw the tyrants who fed on their weakened states and make a strong unity still.

A Requiem of Heroes wasn't about us, it was about the world facing down the barrel of war with Garlemald. And uncovering its origins, its founding father was an Ascian. How Varis is forced to face down the lie as Elidibus wears the skin of his son and the great grandfather he and other Garleans were taught was a walking god in all but name was a sham and a daemon bent on causing more pain and suffering than mankind ever deserved. How the effigies of hate and pain choose to use their fervor to help their people instead of turning against them once more. How every person can change and be given a second chance. How that second chance is what that person requires or if they are pushed the wrong direction, can caused tragedy to unfold. And lastly, it is about our companions, slowly. One by one. Being dragged to the unknown. The story slowly taking away the players on the stage until finally...

Shadowbringers was about us. It was about how we were instrumental to the world so much that it lost nearly all hope in another timeline. How a group of your fondest friends began and how your comrade's furthest decendents acting on the hope of your legend and stories. To provide a plan of action and lead to happier world. How even when everything seems lost and gone and your purpose seems to turned everything around you into twisted monstrosities. That you can bring the night and wait in comfort for a dawn to bring better days. And the tenacity of your aid providing a world on the brink, the love, the compassion, the understanding, the strength, and the will to stand up to a flood of destruction and spit fate in the eye. Even it costs them everything, they keep fighting until they can see a brighter tomorrow.

Death unto Dawn was about what the tomorrow brings. How it could be another fight but to find what is WORTH fighting for. The memories of those you fight and lived amongst, old studies and things of the past being made to provide the answer to the future, making right wrongs even against those you had wronged unfairly, and to gather together and keep each other safe. You are not alone out here. There are those who will help you along to a brighter future.

Endwalker was about you and yours. About how everyone reacts to an uncertain future in different manners. How some would make ready to flee at the approaching storm, while others would fight, and others might even push you further to the edge. But even when all is lost, call upon the memory of happier times to light the way with hearts aligned shining brilliantly against despair and finding your place amongst those memories.

Growing Light was about us teaching another to hear, feel, and think and experience the world seemingly gone. That everything needn't be give or take. It can be a charitable, warmer place if we make it. It can be kinder and even in the face of unrelenting and undying destruction. Hope will spit out a tooth and stand up once more.

I say all of this because, I've seen people mad that Dawntrail is leaning hard about being about Wuk Lamat and others. To which I say so what if Dawntrail is about Wuk Lamat and Koana? So what if its not about us? We've had four story lines about us. Now we must impart what we've learned to the future as they face similar and sometimes overwhelming odds. To stand tall against the onslaught and make their own choices, their own way to bring a smile to all they hold dear. How family needn't be blood related, they can just be a group who sit down at the table at the end of the day. And speak, laugh, cry, and love. Unto this trail to dawn we shall light way for the future of our world and everything this new dawn brings is worth it.

[otterlyanonymous]

I want to preface this by saying that I want only the best things for Wuk Lamat and think that she will have her arc rounded out more in patches. I think wherever we leave her ahead of 8.0 will feel better than it does right now. That said, comparisons to Lyse really are unfair. I'll put in a cut since I have a rant.

Stormblood is largely about making choices and accepting what comes of them. Lyse's story arc is rooted in that she consistently chooses to be kind, to be compassionate, to give chances, and to expect the best of people. She seems naive, but she knows exactly what she's doing. Her main challenge in SB is accepting that some people will use that kindness and acceptance to hurt others and exploit weaknesses, and that if she chooses to keep these core beliefs, she'll have to have an answer for that. She is more than capable of standing alone and coming up with solutions to confront problems. She's a very strong character all around, but strongest in heart and conviction. (You have a point about the outfit tho, bless her heart.) Dawntrail is more of a vacation. Already it's a bit softer, we're mostly here for the beach and the tacos and because Emet-Selch basically triple-dog dared us to look for the Golden City. Wuk Lamat is seeking a position that she has the best building blocks for out of the options available, but she is not ready to take up. It's heavily hinted, if not outright said, that she doesn't have a lot of experience in any respect. Like, I honestly don't know what she's been doing for 17-20ish years besides swinging an axe and chugging Shonen Protagonist juice when visiting other places in Tural and learning about its culture were options that seem like they would have been feasible for the Dawn Servant's child. She doesn't plan, she starts out lying to the group about her thoughts and feelings, and she doesn't really have a clear-cut code. Sure, she's devoted to helping people and does a pretty good job of doing so, but there's no thought process or ownership of her own. She openly says that she's doing it for her father's people, to make her father proud. In confronting Sphene in Living Memory, she's not happy about shutting it all down, but she's very quick to accept that this is the mission. Even a "Well it's your people versus mine" kind of line would have sufficed. (If it was there, I'll take that point back, but I don't remember it). That's not even getting into the general vibe that if she's not attached to the WoL or Erenville at the hip, she will run the risk of ending up face down in a ditch or hanging out of a morbol's mouth.

Overall, she ends up feeling like a child who would not have gotten even close to winning unless the WoL & Co came in to play kingmaker. Much closer to another idiot...

The game even points it out after Wuk Lamat comes clean about her seasickness, with Alphinaud making a remark about their similar follies.

Man, I'm replaying Stormblood on a casual alt and the Lyse-Wuk Lamat comparisons absolutely SHIT on Lyse???

Like Stormblood was absolutely Lyse's Story but even at it's most egregious it didn't come anywhere near as In Your Face as Wuk's Story in Dawntrail?? Which is frickin' wild???

Like for real my biggest Stormblood Main Character Complaint is Lyse's first outfit design. Legit all I think about when she's on-screen is how unsupportive her white-ass bra is, and how likely she's dealing with wedgies with her white-ass booty shorts. Fucking for realsies, the rest of her OG outfit is great! But her "I'm 12 and unsure how to deal with puberty" undies-vibes drive me fuckin' nuts.

At least the recent graphic update saved Hien and Gosetsu's outfits? To the point that I'm probably gonna buy Hien's samurai outfit for my Xaela dude who hasn't even unlocked samurai??

Anyway outfit aside, Stormblood MSQ Lyse isn't HALF as frustrating as Dawntrail MSQ Wuk Lamat is, good christ can we stop shitting on Lyse for 5 dang minutes

[fheythfully]

I decided to put my rewrite here after all so if anyone is curious feel free to check it out! I tried to place more focus on Koana and Krile's involvement where it made sense to me, and I changed aspects of the final zone to suit my own personal tastes. I also touched upon Zoraal Ja's characterization in the second half as the canon one did not make sense to me. I will also note that the first half of the MSQ is entirely missing because my WoL would never even participate.

This isn't going to be for everybody. But if you're curious, read on!

A year has passed since the Final Days. Elle receives a request to be a champion of Wuk Lamat, Princess of Tural in her contest for the throne, which she rejects. She has no interest in involving herself so heavily in such foreign politics, especially now that the Scions have finally disbanded and she is freed from political machinations. Krile goes off to find out more about her grandfather, and Raha joins her in support as friend and fellow Student interested in tracking the history of their founder. The Students have no issues with letting them go, as they are a) not the only members and b) the Students have been fine without one or both of them absent in the past.

As for the other Scions, the twins remain in Garlemald during these vital times of trying to make other nations sympathetic to their once aggressors and conquerors. Y’Shtola has retreated to Matoya’s Cave for relaxation, recuperation, and to continue researching a means of traveling between Shards. 

Elle inevitably ends up in Tural, whether for the same or similar reason as Estinien. She has her duel with Gulool Ja Ja, 1v1 or perhaps even the two of them against him. She receives a pass to tour the continent. She and Estinien come together and apart in an easy camaraderie, knowing they are here to go whichever way the wind blows. Elle is having a great time, in this land where she can be a tourist and an unknown. She hangs out in Tuliyollal a lot, watches her friends who have joined their Promises and the Trials. She thinks Koana too reliant on Sharlayan technology and scoffs at his naivete and disregard for his own history and culture, but respects the innovations he has brought back such as the aetherytes, dirigibles and trains, making life for all the people across the country easier. She thinks little of Wuk Lamat, who does not have the favor of the people and has done nothing to present herself as someone for the people. She is known for her youthful behavior and casual manner, but she has done nothing with her title. She respects Zoraal Ja for his vaunted strength and leading the Landsguard, being actively involved in the government and general well-being of the people across the country.

She hangs out with the Scions here and there while they are in the city, but tries to avoid them if she hears of them being present while doing their Trials. She is a passive watcher and she likes it that way. When Wuk Lamat and Koana are announced as dual Dawnservant, she believes it makes sense when looking at both their weaknesses and strengths.

She defends the city when it is suddenly attacked. This is the point where she gets involved: she and the Scions seek each other out, regrouping for this new threat, and she is brought up to speed by Erenville and Raha, who had gone off into Xak Tural and found the Barrier after the Dawnservants' crowning. The battle and death of Gulool Ja Ja happens. Zoraal Ja issues his challenge to both Promises, who both had brought down the shade of their father at his strongest.

The Scions decide to band together once again, as it is obvious these invaders are unknown to the region. Wuk Lamat demands to come along when it is discovered Zoraal Ja had been there, but she is talked out of it. Both heads are needed in the city at this dire time. The Scions enter the barrier and find this merged, temporally distorted world… Elle is shaken. She had just been here on her travels, and now Xak Tural is of a different world entirely.

It is her, Krile, and Raha, with Erenville as their guide and also desperate to see what has happened of his home. The other three Scions (Thancred, Urianger, Estinien) had stayed behind to help fight in case an attack comes again. They Pearl back to the city, and it is determined that Koana will come to help ascertain the new technology; the Scions are, after all, on his and Wuk Lamat’s land now, and he is one of the rulers. Wuk Lamat stays behind to finish shoring up defenses and bolster the people.

The four meet outside the barrier and take Koana in. The time distortion seems to have started stabilizing the moment they first entered, perhaps with the literal hole they’d made of Vanguard; when before it was a controlled entrance, it is now a gaping ruin. Through Pearling the Scions outside the barrier, they determine the ratio of which time seems to pass (they keep often checking in to keep track of it). Time is still passing quicker inside the Barrier than outside, but at a much more manageable rate. That’s good: it gives them more time to infiltrate but also gives Zoraal Ja more time to prepare and grow tired of waiting for his siblings.

They run into Sphene, who is pegged immediately as suspicious and an enemy threat upon the reveal of her being Queen. Koana is not having it and demands her forces withdraw from Tuliyollal. Sphene tries to tell them that the army is entirely under the control of Zoraal Ja, to which they question her on how he even came to be in control of it. She tries evading and the party isn’t having it. The villagers of The Outskirts come to her defense, rallying around their Queen, which is what clues the party in to how beloved she is and how the citizens of Tural have truly integrated into their new lives. The Namikka sequence is shown here, with Koana quietly pointing out that she was Wuk Lamat’s nursemaid.

Still wary of Sphene but recognizing the need to parley – a move led by Raha, drawing on his experience as the Exarch, and becoming something of a mentor in diplomacy to watch for Koana – they allow her to invite them into Everkeep. Krile points out privately that the technology looks similar to what they had encountered with Wuk Lamat at the gate to the golden city. Raha and her briefly discuss how perhaps by entering, they are also completing a part of her grandfather’s previous quest, and perhaps may find out more about Krile’s parents. Elle finds out here that Krile is actually from this reflection.

While Sphene is off registering them as visitors, they run into Erenville’s mother as the Outrider. The three Scions exchange uncomfortable looks at seeing her in this manner, having just been given a brief window into the way souls are used and treated in society here. Which disturbs them all greatly, by the way. They find out more about the soul and memory cleansing system, which Elle finds difficult to believe entirely, knowing what she does about the colors of souls, Shards, and Ascians having found recognizable souls even after them being stripped of memory by the Lifestream and forcibly being given the memories of their Convocation selves. The entire thing actually reminds her of the Ascian’s crystals, actually…

We agree with Cahciua that Zoraal Ja needs to be brought down. They ask how Sphene is perceived and everyone gets cagey, because they don’t want to reveal she is an Endless. It is noticed. They decide that it will be a two pronged approach to take Zoraal Ja down: one by them and the rebels, the other with Wuk Lamat and Koana, as the challenge demanded. Krile asks if there’s no other way, as this makes them seem like bait. Koana replies that this is their brother and their responsibility and they will not stand down. Cahciua tells them to meet her in the city.

We get into Solution Nine. No one trusts Sphene but plays along as they need to be here to properly meet with the rest of the rebels, anyhow. They stick together and refuse to separate in enemy territory. Sphene briefly describes the different areas of Solution Nine before finally bothering to tell us the history of her Shard. “Ascians,” the Scions quickly conclude. The sudden lightning storm and miraculously convenient discovery of electrope just screams of their machinations. Even more reason to suspect this Queen, they think, after hearing of exactly how long she has been around, leading her people. She departs eventually, leaving them to it, asking them to get to know her people.

Krile and Raha are somewhat interested, but admit that there is no time. Koana is fascinated with their technology but is disgusted by their reliance on it to go as far as the soul system, giving him another poignant moment of realizing the importance of humanity amidst technology. They quickly are flagged down by a covert resistance member and taken to the hideout, where it is quickly brought to light that Krile’s earring is actually a USB left behind by her parents, who are also the founders of this movement!

Everyone sticks around as the contents are unveiled: we see data logs, video recordings. Her parents both appear and introduce themselves, speaking to their daughter, as she was the intended recipient of this information. They mourn that she is watching this, as it means she has found her way back to this Shard, which means the rejoining has happened, something which they ultimately gave their lives to prevent. They also express bittersweet joy that she has indeed found her way back home, but urge her to, if still possible, to stop the rejoining and Sphene specifically, who they reveal will seek to invade other Shards to absorb to sustain the Endless.

The recording reveals the following: the existence of the Endless, and Sphene’s own existence as one but more importantly, being an AI created specifically for the purpose of forever sustaining her people through any means possible; the journey of the Millala from the Source to this Shard and the artifact. The recording finally concludes with their request to also erase the existence of the Endless, who they describe as being a perversion of life due to their need for human life in order to exist, and nothing more than “ghosts in the machine” that is Sphene and the society she and the Preservation group have built. They reassure Krile that they loved her from the moment her mother became pregnant, and they feared for her future in their world, especially once Preservation discovered her Echo. Giving her up was their only chance at giving her a future, with their world being past the brink of salvation. 

It is an overall bittersweet scene as Krile both weeps at seeing her parents and their hello, goodbye, and request all in one. She is determined than ever before to fulfill this wish of her parents… and now we all have the uncomfortable conversation about the Endless and everything we just learned. Cahciua continues to evade answering about her own existence. The Scions don’t push as it is not their business, and Erenville doesn’t ask, but he knows. Of course he knows.

We are all in agreement to kill Sphene and erase the Endless now in addition to killing Zoraal Ja. The question of Alexandrians’ existence on the Source must be answered after this is done, but Koana assures the members of Oblivion that as Dawnservant, he and his sister will work to ensure their societies co-exist peacefully. Since you know, it’s obvious they can’t go back to their Shard and this Barrier must be brought down.

This is broken up by a Pearl saying that Wuk Lamat has grown impatient and is on her way to join us and engage Zoraal Ja in their fight. We rush to Vanguard to meet her and find her and Zoraal Ja already engaged in battle. We arrive just in time for Sphene to also appear and reveal her involvement and basically everything we already knew and/or suspected. Koana tries to appeal to her that he and Wuk Lamat can find a way for their people to co-exist peacefully, but the existence of the Endless must be ended. She staunchly refuses. Zoraal Ja gives the order for his troops to fire on Tural. In-game cutscenes of Vrtra and the dragons - alliance bolstered by Estinien! - play, the Scions defending the tribes, etc.

Zoraal Ja is incensed by this defeat and gives the order to start harvesting Alexandrians for their souls. He “kills” Sphene when she protests. He tells his siblings to challenge him at the top of Everkeep if we wish to stop his rule, one or both, he cares not. We rush back to Everkeep to the massacre, with Oblivion fighting back. Sphene is running around screaming but being useless. There is no pity for her: she wanted this upon our own people. She disappears after visibly going crazy.

Koana returns to Tuliyollal to take charge as there needs to be a Dawnservant present during this turmoil. Wuk Lamat joins up with us and is determined to bring her brother down, especially after seeing him turn on the people he has been king of for the past thirty years. So the party is: Elle, Wuk Lamat, Krile, and G’raha, with Erenville still sticking around. We are about to depart when we get a Pearl that Urianger, Thancred and Estinien are on their way to assist us. We meet them in Heritage Found, and they let us know that Vrtra and his brood should be all the assistance the people need for the time being. 

We ascend to the summit and fight Zoraal Ja. We find out that he had broken under the pressure put on him by his people a long time ago, driven by Sareel Ja ever since he was a young child. He has been mad this entire time, but hid it exceptionally well. His desire to bring war to Tural and the rest of the world so that the people could then know true peace (a very privileged take, by the way; the rest of the world had just stopped being under constant war by Garlemald, they know war and true peace, thank YOU very much) was an idea born of this madness. That’s pretty much it. He is a pitiful man who had been used and manipulated by Sareel Ja, the true puppeteer this entire time, who had grand ambitions of his own of ruling Tural and then the entire world. Once he was free of Sareel Ja, there was no longer a leash and his madness consumed him, explaining why he went from “I must defeat my father with my own strength” to “I must defeat my father through any means possible, including cheating via using the souls of beasts more capable of battle than I.”

Anyway…

We kill him. Sphene appears and delivers her monologue, her programming clearly ramped up into overdrive, where she tells Zoraal Ja’s corpse “thank you” for letting her discover that the memories of the original Sphene had only been holding her back in what must be done. She reveals the key/artifact and disappears into a portal after telling us she will now commence the fusing of worlds. Cahciua has also stopped working.

Well, the Scions have some experience in this, thanks! Wuk Lamat returns to Tuliyollal, now that her duty is done, to continue restoring as much order as possible and to help prepare should we fail. The Scions all know what must be done: we must enter their Reflection, but how? Oblivion also confirms Cahciua’s existence as an Endless.

Raha and Krile point out the entrance they had found in the Cenote. But how do we open it? While we are Oblivion HQ recovering and debating this, it is revealed that Zoraal Ja… has a kid. Who now has been passed the authority of the king. Hmmmmm. Well, we’re certainly not going to take a child somewhere this dangerous!

But what do you know: the datalogs Krile’s parents left behind reveal that they keyed in their daughter secretly into the gate! So off we go, child put out of our minds for the time being. We open the gate. It is stabilized due to Krile’s personal access; it is the legacy her parents had left her. She has a moment of honouring her parents. Urianger and Estinien decide to remain in case of needs for magical or martial might or knowledge.

We step through with Elle, Krile, Raha and Thancred. Erenville demands to come along, since there is a good chance his “mother” will be there and he deserves answers. We marvel at this golden world, perpetually caught in twilight. We go down and who do we meet but Cahciua herself? The situation, she tells us, is this:

This world is a dream for the dead’s memories. It is stopped in a perfect moment, multiple perfect moments from all across time that it has existed once for the living, fused together to be the perfect dream. The people we see are not people at all, they are, as Krile’s parents had said, “ghosts” created and held alive (and hostage, might I point out!) by the machines which also hold Sphene. They do not think themself dead: they think themselves very much alive, and their programming does not allow them to question their strange existence.

Cahciua reveals that she herself had thought herself alive here, too, when she first came to be, but a serendipitous accident led to her discovering a temporary “hole/glitch” back into the real world and so she had to face the horror of realizing she was actually dead, and a replica. This sudden horror, such a strange and irregular emotion for the machine hosting her, overrode the directive to never think on her existence further. Through observing the real world through that hole, she discovered also that her existence and that of the Endless was being upheld through the life force of others, including Turali innocents who Sphene intends to further kill and consume. And those who HAVE already been killed and consumed earlier in Sphene's and Zoraal Ja's attack on the country.

She echoes the plea of Krile’s parents: to end the existence of the Endless, who are the dream of a machine, and feed on the lives of others.

We start shutting down the terminals. Elle has that canal ride with G’raha, though, talking about  this perverted existence and understanding the desire to hold on to what was dear to us and now lost… They discuss Emet-Selch, and how this city is so much like the Amaurot he created. His creation was born of grief; this one born of a machine struggling to complete its objective in a world rapidly allowing it less and less options. They admit to each other that the real Sphene must have loved her people very much indeed, for the memories - even enhanced as they were by Observation - to drive a machine to this kind of desperate action until the machine could not take it anymore, must be very strong indeed.

We see Krile’s parents when we check the coliseum and see the crowds watching the fights. Krile is encouraged by Raha and Thancred, who know of losing parents and children, to approach them. Krile is scared to, caught between wanting to talk to them and knowing logically that they're not actually her parents. Raha bolsters her by accompanying her.

They strike up a conversation, politely asking about the fights. Her parents are politely pleasant. Raha leads the conversations when Krile visibly fumbles in trying to ask if they have a daughter: he asks if these matches are something children can enjoy, as he has a young daughter, Lyna, who is rambunctious and would enjoy watching but he worries about the potential extreme violence. The parents reply positively, and Raha follows up with, do you have children yourself?

The moment of hesitation is visible as the programming fights with their current happiest memories vs their differently happy and bittersweet memories of Krile. They respond that yes they do, a baby, who is back home being watched while they enjoy a night out. Raha subtly encourages them to talk about their daughter, something the parents are all too happy to do. They gush about her temperament, and exchange jokes about who she'll take after - appearance, intelligence - as Raha masterfully leads them in a way only a politician and parent can. We can clearly see that they love their young daughter very, very much. Krile is tearful but happy to hear them speak of a baby her in this way. She of course learns her name, afterwards asking; what a beautiful name, is it a family name? And the two talk a bit more about their families, so Krile finds out more about grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins she once had. Perhaps somewhere in the real world is a descendant, which is an interesting thought.

The four are having such a nice conversation that the parents actually invite them out for a meal after the match, finding out that they're new to the area. After a brief silent exchange with the party in the distance, who nods, Raha and Krile disappear with the facsimile of her parents.

They have a nice meal and find out more about her parents: their jobs (they have a daughter but their programming skips to the before, when they're still happy with their work and employer) and their lives as a whole. Krile is happy when it ends to have gotten a chance to do this.

In the meantime, the rest of the party had been busy finding the terminal. 

It’s difficult for the group to shut down the terminals, of course. This little bubble of time and existence is strange and uncanny to them, but the people inside believe themselves to be alive, so they act alive. The comparison to Emet-Selch is traded between Elle, Raha and Thancred. Thancred is the one who points out that they denied Emet-Selch’s desires on the basis that his people were already dead, and their return would require the death of those still living. These dreamt up data ghosts are also echoes of those already long gone, and the genocide Sphene wants would not bring them back to life: it would continue their existence as ghosts. Nothing can bring these people back to life.

As children of those who exist here as ghosts, Erenville and Krile quietly chime in, their request is to end this perverted afterlife masquerading as their parents. 

Everything is shut down. Erenville has his goodbye with Cahciua in private. We do the Alexandria dungeon, we kill Sphene. Elle bids her goodbyes to the girl who had once been Sphene a long time ago, whose joyful and tearful voice we had heard in the AI Sphene’s memories. The princess who had once loved her people so wholly and desperately deserves that one last farewell.

We return. The artifact is given to Elle, who recognizes it as one of Azem’s. I wait for post-MSQ patches to even try approaching the mess that is Zarool Ja’s random kid being made King. 

"I liked Dawntrail a lot" I tell myself as I rewrite parts of the story for my own enjoyment and debate with my friend about the character growth of Wuk Lamat and Koana and realize that no, actually, I did not like Dawntrail's story decisions or Wuk Lamat all that much and I'm tired of pretending to myself that I did 🤡