#patch 6.1 spoilers

[voidsentprinces]

One more before I go to bed, a last hurrah for Endwalker.

[ainyan]

Let's talk about the Island Sanctuary!

It's been out for a while, it's been updated once. So I'm a little curious about how people put it to use.

[wildstar25]

MiqoMarch Day 23 - Midnight

With their intended voyage into the void only a few days out, Arsay thought it the upmost importance that she steal her partner away to Kugane, that they might share one more fond memory together should things not turn out the way they plan in the thirteenth. It was as they crossed the very same bridge the miqo'te had once sat on together two years prior when Arsay gifted Y'shtola with a bracelet matching that of her own. A token of endearment which, Arsay confessed, she would have given to her fellow scion back then, had nerves not gotten the best of her. While their relationship has undoubtedly changed since the initial purchase of the jewellery, the sentiment remained the same. Y'shtola was someone who Arsay loved dearly and she will forever be grateful to have the seeker's life intertwined with her own. No matter where their free spirits took them, they would always hold each other in their hearts. A promise Y'shtola was more than willing to keep. She slipped the the string of beads around her wrist without a second thought. They were never to come off, not even when the two decided to delay their return to Radz-at-Han in favour of a private bath at the dead of night.

[candycryptids]

I’m taking msq slow so why must this always be the worlds most ENTICING button on the planet

I’ve only just recently beat the first trial! When I said I was takin it slow I was not kidding

*this is in part because I’m doing msq with my spouse and work is making it hard to find time to spend doing any Dawntrail

But also I genuinely don’t wanna rush this expac… so…

[impossible-rat-babies]

me laying in bed like some forlorn Victorian woman thinking about eyrie and estinien

[sironawildrose]

𝔸𝕫𝕖𝕪𝕞𝕒, 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕕𝕖𝕟

Smol Blue Bun facts:(look under read more):

When I picked Azeyma to be Sirona's god in 2020*the year I started XIV*I had no idea how prefect it is with what Azem being the traveler, having a rose name after her*Sirona motto of following the wild roses* and when I picked dancer as Sirona's EW MSQ job then after seeing Azeyma's design and how her mechanics is very dancer like. I can't tell you how happy I was when I pick her to be my WOL god's all the way back in 2020. I really wish Sirona and Azeyma become friends but I want to work on headcanons like this once the Myths of the Realm storyline is over. I really want to do more gposes and making fun WOL headcanons of the storyline in the future!)

[shivasdarknight]

Disconnected 6.5 thoughts below the cut; I've only finished the alliance raid and msq so keep that in mind - also pandae stuff because I'm still miffed about it.

Honestly, it's just a lot of conflicted feelings. On one hand, I'm glad that Zero and Azdaja actually survived the patch; on the other, Zero has been removed from the story right as we were really getting to know her and get used to her being there and Azdaja barely has any presence or lines in her appearances. Tiny Azdaja cute, but narratively she was just...really just Vrtra's motivation and not much outside of herself and very hollow. She was also Golbez's weapon, and now that she's her own person again she struggles to communicate and the most we get is a thanks from her and "Radz-at-Han...home...". Like I want to be glad that they survived patch, but that's such a bare minimum desire considering how the rest of XIV has gone. While Zero got to stand more on her own and be her own person, I just can't help but feel like Azdaja was robbed of so much agency and ironically more so once she was free of her imprisonment.

The writing of this patch series has been all over the place and it's been hard to stay invested in it. 6.1-2 and this patch have been ig the best in terms of msq, but 6.1-2 are still significantly better than 6.5, and then there's 6.3-4. The pacing is all over the place - either lots of fluff, or you're being hit with so much all at once that it barely makes sense - and they're trying to tackle a lot of plot threads while not letting them play out or mature naturally. I loved Zero's arc, but 6.3, 6.4, and the first part of 6.5 all felt like the same story to an extent - like gaining the trust of the Garleans versus the Eulmorans, learning about friendship vs learning about trust and dependability. While 6.3 is the one that had Lapis Manalis and was overall a lot stronger since Rubicante, most of 6.4 felt like fluff that went nowhere. 6.5 still has that fluff problem but actually gets going - and what's frustrating! Is they have some genuinely interesting ideas in there that they don't really capitalize on!

We are presented with a treasure hunt that leads to the void and their turf wars. But instead of going into that, we have to now help with the Garlean reconstruction and making them seem like Oh So Poor Victims when they've spent the last expansions trying to colonize the entire star? Trying to wipe out the religions and cultures of various peoples on Etheirys? Now we have to play nice with them and treat them like fragile glass and give them trade routes and whatnot? Beyond the fact it continues ENW's problem of only showing Garlemald through the eyes of the upper class (problem that extends through all of our focuses, but this especially with the people who were ripped from their homelands and forced to work for the Garleans in Garlemald), it invalidates a lot of the genuine harm they've caused and obfuscates their role in the state of things. I wish this care and attention had been placed in Ala Mhigo instead, but here we are - doing with Garlemald what Ala Mhigo has been starved of for ages now. Oh and now we're back to the Archfiends, and now we're back to the Garleans, and now we keep throwing Jullus in here and the devs really really really want to make him and Zero a thing (the thought of it gives me Fucking Hives), and then we're in Sharlayan, and oh look an arbitrary FF4 reference, and now we're on the moon and now we're on the First, and NOW shit is finally happening.

Like my god, either condense this story into a concise proper trial series (like the Four Lords or Werlyt - honestly a Four Lords structure would've been perfect), or give this the proper attention it deserves as an expansion pack focused on the Void. The turf wars, the restoration of the Thirteenth - also where the fuck was Cylva?? I'm happy to see Gaia again and in a voiced cutscene, but where the fuck are Cylva and Unukalhai? They're literally relevant to it, you can tell Zero about them and vice versa and the most it amounts to is just "Interesting. Anyways-" and there's no progress on any of that. Both of their stories have just halted right when Zero's was gaining momentum and while Cylva's has been in limbo since the end of the SHB role quests.

And Zero. God, Zero. It felt like they were floundering with her for the longest time before they decided to make her follow Cecil's example. I'm glad she's alive, and I really do like the new design for paladin, but honestly the reaper stuff fits her way way better? Aesthetically and design wise, I get story wise that it was about her breaking from the confines of the darkness she'd been submersed in, but her old design was literally so much better orz As in more fitting, more interesting. Yeah ik I'm biased because I love the Vampire Hunter D look, but her immediate shift was just...weird. They floundered with making her the food motivated moe lead and then they just shoved that into her last second - the stuff with wanting to harness the light was fascinating, but it should've been brought in way sooner instead of an extended scene of people eating really hot curry. We were just starting to get into an extremely interesting character and then they went "Arc's over, time for everyone to go home without Zero (:". Yes, I'm now sitting here regretting the fact I didn't listen to my gut feeling about writing romantic stuff with her, especially since GWEN, but I'm mostly miffed from the point of. This is the first major ADULT female character we've had in a bit to be in the main party and now she's just back on the Thirteenth. And with Dawntrail and Tural coming up, we probably won't be seeing her for literal irl years - if at all. I know that not in msq is a better fate than dead, but between her and Lyse and Fordola all getting sidelined when they had the potential to carry some pretty serious story, it's just exhausting. Also the speed at which wolzero and yshtola/zero became predominant sapphic ships, then suddenly there's a lot of zero/jullus, yshtola and zero become increasingly distant with each other, and Zero is removed from msq? What the fuck?

People have been calling the Scions more one-note lately, which I agree. Estinien and Y'shtola were definitely the focus this time to build them up - which is great! I like how they're developing them! - but it seems like they only know how to do one thing with them when there isn't action, which is like. Research and nixie-related threats for Y'shtola, and training and squid with Estinien. Y'shtola has been at her most endearing and likable in these patches, and I really don't want them to strip her of what makes her fun. Estinien was also really good in 6.1 with that merchant (fight me, he knew what he was doing - he is not financially illiterate, he just doesn't give a fuck about material possessions), the stuff with the orphanage and him connecting with the children of Thavnair is really sweet considering his backstory, and he was really great with like Zero and Azdaja and how reliable he ended up being towards the tail end - but him just bailing last second? That fkn fanservice shirt scene? The constant squid shit i'm just. He's one of the most interesting characters that's still alive and relevant (hate that that's a factor in this) and the more they turn him into a joke character the more it feels like they're missing the point with him. Like you can still have him grow from his experiences and actually be fairly carefree without doubling down on food motivation or the "he's the dumb scion" - ENW portrayed that very clearly in all of his interactions with the Scions. Whoever is doing the 6.X patches doesn't seem to get that with the exception of moments like in 6.1 and the later half of 6.5.

I think the only storyline that I've really liked so far has been Myths of the Realm. Tataru's whole thing is fine, just really hated dealing with Gaius and Emmanellain. Sil'dihn Subterrane was fun, Rokkon is...tiring. Pandaemonium started promising and ended up leaving me feeling gross at the end. I wasn't really looking forward to Myths of the Realm because it started off with the implication that the Eorzean tribes' gods were "knockoffs" of the Twelve - but I'm glad they specified that it's more that the Twelve took influence from them but at the same time. We still have a pantheon of twelve extremely white humanoids that are supposed to represent the sum of their believers - and thats what they look like? I appreciate the Leviathan stuff in Llymlaen, but it's just disappointing seeing their designs if they're supposed to be a culmination of faith.

The story of Myths of the Realm was way better as it went on, though there are so many boring designs within it which includes gear. Obviously Azeyma, Halone, Llymlaen, and Nald'thal had really nice designs - Nald'thal's is beyond fun - but so many of the others are just Zeus knockoffs or Guys. Byregot, Zeus. Rhalgr, also Zeus. Althyk? Zeus. Or at least old greek man but so much of that Is From Zeus. And again, they're all so fucking white. Conceptually, Eulogia is interesting. In execution, it's...something. I don't hate it, I just wonder how it could be refined. I also don't really agree with this idea that people are saying the ending was just putting in a prayer answering machine because it was pretty clear as to what was happening? The gods weren't there to assist people directly, they were there as aetheric balancing for an unstable star. People worshipping them happened when people caught glimpses of them, and from there the religion came about and began to further and further grant them power. As that religion grew and so did their strength, they harbored aether they wanted to return to the start to help facilitate its stability and longevity - hence why they seek you out and hence the device. Y'know, the device that was meant to collect prayers and funnel it into the star so that they could be released and finally rest. They're a lot like Hydaelyn, but whereas Hydaelyn was conscious because she was directly made of Venat, these twelve were constructs based on their original selves. That they have this much autonomy - especially Oschon - was beyond the original plan and exists because of the faith of the peoples of Etheirys. That story in it of itself is honestly really compelling to me and I really like the conclusion as it makes sense that the remnants of the old world should eventually be laid to rest and allow for the people of today to live without the shackles of the past tying them down. It lets the Twelve actually get to live amongst the people they watched over as people themselves, since they're not really the people Venat worked with. My only thing is that Deryk's conclusion is what I'd wished Venat had gotten. I'm not against him getting that ending - it fits, it makes sense, I really liked it and him - but it feels weird that they meta-textually say that her entire spirit being decimated in your fight against her is a good thing when it just feels like murder in the context of the game. I wish we could've gotten to adventure with her and let her actually see the star she so diligently tried to protect. That Deryk gets to is great, I just wish Venat had been given that chance but we all know why he got to but she didn't.

Myths of the Realm is definitely one of the best stories in the 6.X series so far, but I don't think I can say it's like...any better than stuff like the Void Ark, Eden, Omega, the Four Lords, or even Eureka. At least it's better than Pandaemonium, though - which god. That shit is a mess. I'm going to spare anyone reading this the rant of how insidious it is that they included so many references to notable instances of rape/attempted rape in Greek mythology and named their antagonist after the target of attempted rape, or the fact that this series is a huge step back from Eden in how gd sexist it is (and god especially the fans of this and how they so quickly dropped Ryne/Gaia (who were already just an extension of thanuri) for erich and themis), or the fact that we got to watch Lahabrea immolate a woman ON SCREEN in a really GRUESOME attack that was only revealed last minute that she was secretly evil all along!! With no hints towards that!! So all our female rep is either evil or dead or both!!! No, besides all that, it shares msq's issue of horrible pacing and just a bizarrely written sequence of events that frankly should've been reversed - start with the threat, then go to Elpis to investigate said threat. There's so much fluff in pandae, we spend so much time meandering around, and things that feel like they're gonna matter just never get touched. Not to mention this should've been Erichtonios' story but instead Themis overshadows Everything. Erich never got voiced! In his own story!! And yet we wrap up Themis' story in a side quest series?? Pandaemonium, Kokytos, Themis, Athena, and Hephaistos all get voiced - but what about the fucking emotional core of the story?

Before anyone tries to come at me with the "if you hate it so much, just play another game" - I like this game. There's a lot I have found within the 6.X series that I like that has spurred my enthusiasm and creativity wrt my writing. Which makes all of this all the more frustrating and disappointing when they can clearly do better but then actively don't. They've fumbled the stories of some of their best characters - yes I am still pissed about Ysayle and the fact that Fordola's been treated like crap - and they continue to pace their stories poorly (which implies cram to me). It's really clear they want to be done with everything from 1.0-6.0 and have no love for that part of the game anymore - it's tangible. But it's such a shame that they're relying so heavily on FF4 to prop this part of the story up instead of the years of unexplored content they've referenced. And I'm saying this as an FF4 liker, all of the FF4 references were really heavy handed and obnoxious. So much for an "unpredictable story", it was probably their most predictable yet (PREDICTABLE=/=BAD AND VICE VERSA UNPREDICTABLE=/=GOOD, im just point it out because they themselves said that fans of 4 "wouldn't be able to guess where this was going" And Yet-).

I want to see them capitalizing on parts of the story where they did really well! Capitalizing on their good writers!! And the frustrating thing about this isn't that this patch was egregiously bad or anything, it was just meh. 6.0 and 6.X as a whole has just been very meh the longer I sit on it.

i oughta replay eden.

[pumpkinmagekupo]

The Beautiful Briny Sea

What a chance To get a better peep At the plants And creatures of the deep

Mizuki gasped loudly and ran up to the huge floor length archways that looked out to the bottom of the sea.

"'shtola! Look! To see these creatures at this angle! how majestic!" Mizuki fumbled for her notebook to start taking notes, forgetting where they were.

"Mizuki we are not here for sight seeing." Y'shtola sighed, with shake of her head but a playful smile tugged at her lips.

Estinien huffed a laugh "When did she turn into a child?" he teased "I was not aware she was so easily distracted."

Y'shtola chuckled "she like this often....though usually when there are far less prying eyes."

"Oh! A shark! how magnificent! Oh! it's so cute...and big..I've never seen one this close." Mizuki gasped, scribbling down in her note pad.

"Mizuki." Y'shtola called, but Mizuki didn't respond and kept mumbling as she made notes.

"fascinating. Oh oh! A baby shark...wait they are called pups if I remember.. To think they grow to such a size."

"Mizuki!" Y'shtola said, raising her voice this time "I am sure you will have ample time for your aquatic research after our exploration of the area." Y'shtola turned on her heals and marched off past the Estinien and G'raha.

Mizuki closed her book with a snap, quickly placing back into her satchel. "Wait! Don't leave me!" she hurried to catch the group up.

[ancillaryjurisprudence]

6.1 pulled Full Metal Panic! memories from deep within

Story that asks "Can these warrior heroes, now that the battles are done and the planet safe, go more than 1 hour without destroying public infrastructure" and the answer is no

[mnemosyne-xiv]

squeenix really thought that this msq would see remia and zero separated for good. jokes on them, remia can open all manner of cross-rift travel gates meaning she'll not only be visiting the thirteenth and the first along with all future shards she visits but will be bringing zero along for the ride into 7.0 ♡ the chaos that these two will bring about shall be glorious

[starlessskyline]

thinking that maybe theias 🥺 and heart melting moment with deryk was when he gives us the backstory of the opo-opo, how he rescued him and nursed him back to health, and now the lil guy follows him everywhere

wint is just: "yeah that sounds like something theia would do", and also "that lil opo-opo is definitely oschon but im not saying anything to theia ill let her figure that out on her own"

[linc-karo-27]

Looking back on 6.x and my guesses from 6.1: Regarding the VAs

I was going to wait until 6.55 to make this but at this point I feel we can make this now with no VA knowledge for the last part. Spoiler for all FFXIV 6.x patches and character spoilers a bit for FFXVI (just because i bring up VAs but no names of characters)

So 6.5 happened and with the alliance raid having voiced G'raha a point I have made since 6.1 is back again: The scions splitting up caused some interesting affect on the English dub, if not every single dub. But as I can only speak for the English - we will be talking about the English specifically.

For anyone who didn't notice or doesn't play the game in English - Jonathan Bailey is back in the dub for............ 3 lines (off topic: his name is ROT 13 looks like onion, therefore i am now shortening it in ROT13 to that). That is if he isn't a side character that pops up in the MSQ in 6.1;6.2 and 6.5. And it reminded me we have had it a lot in this patch cycle: VAs having a handful of lines for one scene.

6.1 had Gemma Lawrence [Krile], Peter Bramhill and Tim Watson all pop up for a handful of lines to never be seen again. Bethan Walker and Colin Ryan [the twins] have this in 6.4 when they are there to just set off the teleporter. This patch is so clear that they realised the pool of who they had to call had shrunk by a mile and didnt clearly know how the deal with the usual additional voices pool of patches prior (in English they ended up very clearly calling people *specifically* for bosses, hello Joe Dempise [Ardbert] in the Myths Raid and Jeremy Ang Jones [Hermes] as the P10 boss - people came in from the ffxiv alumni for other jobs and got asked to do bosses because suddenly they had so little VAs in the dub they had to leave it to fill roles).

When 6.1 released I said on instagram in a rant that this was because of ffxvi, they had split the team internally dub wise and now had to quickly fill the additional characters with the 7 VAs they had (and oh god in 6.1 you can tell, hello [redacted] who im 70/30 on being Jonathan, sometimes you do really try to hide your accent and it doesnt fully work does it?) .

this was until I saw that XVI cast on the PS Blog: there was no scions or even core characters in that dub. And when others showed me the BTVA entries when it came out: there was less than 10 XIV alumni in there, with most being new people to the RPG dubbing crew as such. This wasn't its fault.

6.3,6.4 and 6.5 is a lot better on this, new characters meant new VAs and they quickly found a way to fill holes but I am saying this now: this is the new normal for patches, maybe not expacts, but everything else - they are gonna have to work with smaller pools of VAs than before as it looks like the scions "pair" up for tasks and not every patch is gonna have huge amount of these.

What about that "3 lines omg" thing?

simple. get used to having bg characters sometimes all share a VA. like 2 or 3 have a VA in common. Because it must be a pain to have to round up someone for 3 lines. and this is not even specific to the likes of JB and co who have other projects we know about, it is everyone. Many of them aren't London based!

Its just a new issue they all now have, and I feel its gonna be interesting to see how we deal with it come 7.x

[aotopmha]

I hate that all of the fun adventure stuff in FF14 is so terribly paced.

(Spoilers for everything.)

I adored the underwater setting of The Ruby Sea, but it was right in the middle of another series of fetch quests after an overwhelming amount of them in the above-ground area of The Ruby Sea.

I adored Azim Steppe, but it was at the top end of another series of fetch quests right after anything in The Ruby Sea.

I adore Il Mheg, but it was much less economic with its storytelling than the zones before it.

All of ARR is a pacing mess, making you go to six different places once and then do it again instead of focusing on the zones one by one.

And this continues in Dawntrail. The entire first "half" of it has a much better structure than ARR, but I think each area outstays its welcome to some degree.

I love being in them, as I've said, they're some of my favourite zones in the entire game, but once again, so much of exploring them is just reading a expositional wall of text.

I think the Valigarmanda set piece is one of my favourite "adventure" set pieces of the game, and the Yok Huy are probably the most interesting specifically Turali culture out of all of the cultures explored in Dawntrail (so far) with all of their connections.

Why can't we have a story that is substantial all the way through, even during these slow and adventureous parts?

I've made a couple of posts about really enjoying just going on an adventure and just exploring a new land and our role as mentor/support in this expansion, but I have criticisms within this microcosm.

You can use the intro areas of a story to just go all in on fun character interactions and to make all of the relationships you play with substantial.

Aside from treading old ground with some of the themes, I think the expositional nature of Dawntrail is my personal second major criticism of it.

I feel like there are so many points where they could've gone the extra mile with character interactions, but they just didn't.

We're just "told" some of the fun moments we could've seen.

But then when we do actually get substantial character moments, they're some of the best moments in the story.

Even just making the different claimants interact with each other much more often would've already made a much more substantial substory that can stand and still be good on its own, not just be a lore seed, which you can turn back to when you need it later.

I think the Endwalker patch content actually did this balance pretty perfectly.

Some great character moments combined with exposition and learning about a new culture.

6.1 is still my favourite bit of "adventure" storytelling in this narrative because we got all of that together.

The hate for those patches can suck it.

It's such a prevalent problem with the writing of this story that I'm not sure it'll ever go away, but I sure wish it did.

It just desparately either needs more editors or a realisation that more words don't always make for a better story.

I'd be fine to get a shorter MSQ if every part of it was immediately relevant and meaningful.

[wildstar25]

^ The face of someone who is so overcome by love for their girlfriend

Seriously this scene was so cute I love when they give Y'shtola cool magic scenes (still so !!! about her limit break back in the stormblood patches. The way they repurposed the Yuna summoning dance makes me insane in a way I cannot articulate) I knew about this scene for a while but I made sure to never watch it voiced until I saw it in game. So glad i did that, it's always so much better that way.

Anyways wolship thoughts ahoy: Arsay absolutely loved this, she loves the nixies and thinks they are adorable, she thinks Y'shtola is adorable too!!!! Did not think it was cringe in the slightest!!! I can already imagine Arsay asking Y'shtola to teach her how to summon a Nixie herself only to recieve a bonk on the head.

Shtola: Absolutely not!! You only want to hear me make that ridiculous voice again! Arsay: Okay you got me there... but it was so cuuuuuute ~! "Water, water, froth and foam~!" Shtola: *readying fire of the seventh dawn*

[tritoch]

miscellaneous wol characterization thoughts post-dawntrail

since wolund is supposed to be as close to canon wol as possible i think about this stuff a lot. huge spoilers through the end of 7.0. non-exhaustive list

we're WAY more chilled out now. very consciously avoiding combat or taking up arms until absolutely necessary. in retrospect you could sort of tie that back as far as the endwalker patches so maybe my new canon is now just that wolund lays down his sword after the zenos fight. we're done looking for new fights because we fought our greatest rival at the end of existence in a place made real by our willpower and where we were strengthened by our emotions. the conflagration of our clash scorched even the stars--and now we are kind of burned out!

there's a recurring thing where alisaie keeps saying you should take a break when you've not done any more work than the rest of the team, and there's also the moment where she's like "oof okay. i guess you gotta go into living memory. aight :\" and i think that's fun. as far as scions go this was really her and g'raha's expansion emotionally.

so much of the wol's stuff here is about what you don't do or say. you don't step in during the bakool ja ja fight, either the kidnapping or the wuk lamat fight. during valigarmanda, you very pointedly don't talk about prior experiences fighting primals or even your experience with the auspices, because this is wuk's big moment and you've gotta let her have it. you don't ever draw direct comparisons to emet-selch or other things with wuk lamat when sphene comes up because you're letting her figure things out herself. we've evolved from hot-blooded hero to wizened mentor, and we've gone sharply back to a heavensward-ish number of dialogue options. we're VERY quiet.

the gulool ja ja fight really is the one time you cut loose! and you're explicitly denied the chance to test yourself against him in his prime 1 on 1. there's a subtle undercurrent that basically every single fight in dawntrail is kind of "beneath" the wol in the sense that it doesn't require their exclusive attention in the way that Only You Could Fight Meteion, even if you're clearly the strongest combatant and wuk lamat says they couldn't have beaten zoraal ja without you. no one except gulool ja ja really takes your full measure in this expansion. i think a g'raha-level fighter probably could have helped the wuk lamat team clear everything just fine, and he's definitely supposed to be below you and estinien level even if he's an all-rounder.

that kind of denial of anything truly satisfying on the wol's level...seems very intentional? it's interesting that after the credits you're explicitly like "yeah i'm gonna be outta here soon." shadowbringers you had to resolve the scion's dimension hopping problems, endwalker cuts you off before you can say what's next, but here you're like "yeah this was fun but honestly not that big a deal to me. i like you and i know you think of me as surrogate family after losing your dad and mom and brother but i am in fact gonna bounce." the key is obviously more immediately interesting to the adventurer than anything about tural.

oh my god. oh my god wolund is already a deadbeat dad to a young woman in her 20s. he's gonna ditch wuk lamat too. my god what an asshole. this is so fucking funny.

i think i'm gonna go back and have wolund be a scholar as early as 6.1 and see how that changes things for me. i think i'll find it a lot more satisfying if i'm like "he came to tural because he's done fighting" instead of the "he now loves fighting even more" i'd been carrying through endwalker patches.

[sigmundite]

my thoughts on dawntrail (SPOILERS)

FFXIV twitter has decided the spoiler embargo for DT is mostly over. While I'd like to share my thoughts about the expac there, I figured it was all too much for a tweet thread (and I was right). Decided to post it here because it's a blogging platform and I keep telling myself I want to come back one of these days.

To put it simply: Dawntrail is fine.

I love power of love/friendship storylines so the fact we got a shounen protagonist in Wuk Lamat was something I enjoyed. Shounen stuff tends to be dragged out too long for my tastes so I haven't dabbled in any of those fandoms, so I don't know if people hate modern shounen heroes with as much vitriol. I think I'd have seen it if they did? But the Wuk Lamat hate is a classic case of misogyny with a transphobia multiplier because gamers sure do enjoy stat boosts.

DT is the ARR of whatever the new direction of FFXIV is. It became clear to me during this MSQ that this is a commitment to a new beginning - specifically in the sense of 6.1 as a fresh starting point for new players. I understand and respect their desire to simplify new player onboarding (especially as someone with too many alts) but it's also the center of the pain point I have with 6.x and DT so far.

I'm frustrated with the direction of FFXIV in its current state. The Hydaelyn/Zodiark arc took one main story and built upon it over multiple chapters. I loved that arc and have varying levels of fondness for the characters and places that got us through it. I am the CEO of #FREEAYMERIC and will continue to be a pest about that as long as I play the game*. Aymeric was always a favorite of mine, and I've never forgotten his wish to go on an adventure with WoL someday. I want to take him up on that!

But DT follows SHB's example of planting WoL and the Scions in a brand new setting, far away from Eorzea and all its creature comforts. Norvrandt was still reminiscent of Eorzea, but beyond that focused on characters specific to its region and story. It made more sense then, considering it takes place on a different shard and overlap was damn near impossible. 6.x and DT are still on Etheirys, but are so self-contained that they'd rather avoid referencing old content if they can avoid it. I hated this in 6.x and I still hate it now. There's an entire world full of characters, places, and possibilities left to discover and expand on, but new expansion packs seem to be heading in the direction of dropping all that and focusing on a new set of toys. Tural will probably be done and dusted in 8.0, aside from a bit of side content here and there regardless of the response to it. Hell, SHB is so sacred to the fandom and yet we only went back for a bit of patch story and crafting relic quests during EW's entire run!

This sort of "okay, next" manner of storytelling is only one side of my issue. On the flip side is how eagerly they seem to want to retread certain tropes that worked in past expacs. So many people have commented on this being the fourth final dungeon in a row that shows the end of a society and how that feels so much more hollow now. Running Amaurot for the first time was a masterpiece of storytelling because it made the end of the fucking world more tangible. I hate running that dungeon because to me it feels like a panic attack, but I respect what it does. The Dead Ends was similar but didn't hit the same way (and tbh its payoff is mostly backloaded). Alexandria pulling the same thing stole all of the feeling from it. Like oh okay, we're doing this again.

It's not the only part of DT that retreads old ground. We have yet another scene where everyone comes together to overcome a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, and the only thing I found noteworthy about that is that it had shards of characters who had helped us do the same thing in SHB outside of the dreary context of Norvrandt. Zoraal Ja, one of the main antagonists, is comprised of retreads of other story arcs done better (including one in this very expac!). He's like Zenos Lite - a royal heir with violent intentions made into the perfect weapon of his homeland - but he's missing all of the things that made Zenos interesting and the screen time needed to flesh him out. The circumstances of Zoraal Ja's birth weigh heavily upon him, but Bakool Ja Ja covered that territory in one of the strongest parts of the MSQ. Zoraal Ja is such an afterthought that bringing him into the shared Dawnservant title isn't even considered. WTF.

TL;DR: This all comes down to FFXIV being torn between retreading well-tread story beats that have worked for them in the past while at the same time, willingly discarding almost everything you've come to love over the past several hundred hours of gameplay. They're trying to recreate their past successes by using shiny new pieces in frameworks that have worked for them in the past, and that rings hollow to me. My love for the old pieces overshadows my impressions of the new ones, but the structural similarity is so blatant that comparison is inevitable. As time goes on, the comparisons are less and less in DT's favor for me, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It succeeded in what it set out to do: expand FFXIV.

It's fine, but if FFXIV is a choice between familiar storytelling and familiar story elements, I'd rather they keep developing the friends we've already made along the way.

*Which may not be long, given the lighting issues introduced by the graphical update and the fact that doing certain things in game trigger IRL migraines for me. Still no official acknowledgment of that yet. The graphics update is the biggest step forward in DTm and yet its existence and problematic state make me play the game less. I hate it but efforts to get the devs to notice have been unsuccessful.

If you made it this far, please perceive my catgirl: