The answer to how the rest of the universe interacts with Aetherys being split 14 ways, has been staring us in the face for years -- if you approach the planet from the outside, you get a popup asking you to select an instance.
My take is that there are shards are on different wavelength / frequency that is why there can be other stars and planets in the reflections because they also exist at that same wavelength / frequency. However, unlike Aetherys these other planets would be entirely new worlds and not additional reflected realities.
I'm not going to go into a huge thing because I'd be writing an essay but specifically on the 'smile' topic, I really think it would've flown under the radar and/or been accepted if it was used exclusively in the credits. It starts out softly when things are winding down and then builds into the incredibly upbeat parts as the celebration is happening and in general isn't a bad song in it's entirety I think. The problem is that it's thrown at you in a 0-100 max energy way twice and undercuts the finale because of it, along with the train scene not needing the song especially as it's just the same beat as fixing the lift in Shadowbringers. That aspect of letting mis-steps inform blanket reception is an issue I have with a lot of the Dawntrail discussion.
I really think some FF songs have just too many unnecessary vocals. Smile becomes grating to me because it is the greatest offender of word vomit. Did it reaaallly need that many lyrics thrown at that speed?
I agree, Smile wasn't necessary during the montage, especially seeing as it was a montage to build a *weapon* . Tonally it didn't fit. Like, "If we all work together and smile, we're all gonna be OK and everything will be wond--" *kaboom* No problem with it as a credits song though.
I totally agree that the reception would have been so different if it was used exclusively in the credits. Everywhere else it was used, it felt so weird.
I think that overall Smile is a really well constructed song, my only issue is that the vocals aren't mixed well so you can't really understand the lyrics, which I think takes away from a lot of the impact when you don't actually know what the song is saying 😅 I love all the renditions of Smile though, especially the Solution Nine version
Soken made a comment recently on the Blu-ray release of the OST on "Smile". Ishikawa requested Soken make an "ending-like" musical number. Soken said that he has never made a musical Broadway like number before but he gave it a shot anyways. He found musicals a bit jarring to him because they would be speaking dialogue then all of a sudden break out into song, but he was inspired by "The Blues Brothers" and gave it a shot anyways. You can somewhat tell he is a bit new to the musical-like style with the mixing and lyrics. Now he said he enjoyed making the piece as it was something new to him (meaning it was a challenge nad many artists like trying something new), but ultimately I think he doesn't have final say on where it goes which I think is the biggest issue with "Smile."
Here is the thing about Azem's Keystone that they have briefly touched upon but I think is the key (no pun intended) to the future of this saga: The core of the key is a white auracite, this is almost 100% confirmed. Sphene has even stated that the key responded to "strong desire", similarly to how Heart of Sabik and the Ivalice Auracites worked. Based on Pandaemonium lore, we know NOTHING about the origin of the auracites, except that they are related to Ultima the High Seraph, but Athena did not get it from her. Which to me means one thing: there is a potential, Jenova-level threat out there, interdimensional aliens with the power to literally warp reality. And they might be coming.
Totally. I've been thinking about Jenova since Panda. Athena even had the same color scheme in her fight as Safer Sephiroth and I refuse to think that is a coincidence especially since that Sephiroth form is so iconic in FF history
Isn't white auracite specifically just a specific type of manufactured auracite? It's not incredibly special outside its ability to store aether very well and us having chosen to use that property to destroy ascians permanently. What ties white auracite has to other auracite isn't even really known cause they never expanded on them beyond those capabilities. Not disagreeing that the core might be made of auracite, but I'm fairly sure it's either not white auracite or if anyone has brought up that it's tied to white auracite specifically, then they might go into details about what their connection to actual auracite is and talk more about that manufactured stuff, cause as it is now, white auracite isn't very special as far as how the game has handled it.
I think Azem is heavily tied to whatever the hell Ultima is. Azem knew about what was happening in Pandemonium and even knew a shard of themselve was coming to help Elidibus. They had to of created the key BEFORE the sundering meaning they were going to travel dimensions outside of Etheirys.
The funny thing is is there's a short story on the lodestone about Azem that they are some times forgetful and often leaves things behind and that key is one of those things
the long and short of Dawntrail to me is that all the elements are there, but it didn't come together and felt messy. It was fun, there were many fun things, but it just didn't come together cohesive enough
I think Preach's point where if it was Wuk Lamat who knows the more surface things about the cultures, and you find out the dirtier laundry as you dig deeper would've been so much more interesting, because as it was, it all felt so ... shallow? ARR has its flaws but the way it set up its threads was a lot more interesting, because you could tell Eorzea had some deep, systematic problems that were not sustainable, and you spend multiple expansions fixing those or at least getting them closer to fixing them. Tural is so sanitized and harmonious already it's like ... none of their hooks seem very meaty, besides the ones that are clearly leading us to ditching Tural completely.
Besides, all that accomplished is foreshadowing that for Zoraal Ja’s new take on how peace should be treated, he too was going to have a shallow understanding of it because if Wuk Lamat, Koana, and Bakool Ja Ja also had shallow understandings of the issues they stand for, in a land that is otherwise so dedicated to peace only things that peace could not solve still remained other than minor villains, there is no chance Zoraal Ja actually has a cohesive thought process of peace and war.
I adored this podcast, and how much time y'all were able to spend together this episode. And I loved how at some point, the structure naturally dissolved into a spaghetti of tangents and theories. Such a good time.
I know I'm one of the loud comments regarding the idea that they 100% should not have shown Solution 9 in promotional material and I had no idea that Jesse, or any content creator, agreed with me until this roundtable. Just throwing in my two cents. So much of the front half of Dawntrail works so much better when you actually engage with it on its own terms.
Love the conversation. In regards to chat participation I will say I greatly enjoyed the expansion and mostly tuned out of chat specifically because of the negativity around the expansion. I found it more enjoyable to just get the experience of the person playing and not have to worry about seeing ppl argue in chat which definitely reduced my engagement (to the point of also being okay with VoDs instead of live)
Let's all not forget Travanchet is still out there. The last time we saw him was in the Alexander Raid series which is in my opinion a red flag. The most recent lore book also does very slyly mention the OG timeline so I don't think we're entirely done with it either...
This is my husband and my dream for somewhere in the Dawntrail arc. We want to just suddenly be summoned to a meeting and as we sit down at the table the mask of Azem shows up on our face, and we smile. That's what we want so bad. We have huge hopium about it lol. We both enjoyed the story so much and we feel it sets up so much for the following patches.
Luffy doesn't really solve racism, and we've seen huge repercussions a few times he tried, (even though I don't think that's ever his actual goal) but I get it that Jesse probably didn't watch OP. But I mostly agree with everyone's problems. Story could've been great and was great in concept, but execution was really lacking! Scions shouldn't have been included except Krile, because only one of them got a good scene, and it was only one with G'raha. BTW. also interested how I got a completely different read and reaction to Cahcuia. Honestly makes it kinda interesting though. It may not land for everyone. For me, Cahcuia and Namikka scenes hit the hardest in DT by far.
People say Dawntrail was slow, but some parts a felt rushed to me. I think the story of Krile and Erenville losing their parents should have made me cry more than it did, there was potential for more. Also, as you said Bakool Ja Ja joining our cause went much too quickly and easily. It felt like they were running out of time at some point.
Yeah its weird some parts went super slow while others they sped ran through. Another moment y9u didn't mention was the desert zone we didn't spend much time at all there and that was ine of the ones I was looking forward to
In regards to Aftershow thoughts about Shards! "It is theorized that the worlds actually overlap each other in position, each occupying a separate, displaced layer of reality. The magnitude of this displacement varies, however, and this circular layout best illustrates the relative distances between them." Encyclopedia Eorzea III, Page 13 (beneath diagram).
perhaps they're in a warp bubble and slightly out of phase... (I personally think the sundering set the shards vibrating at different frequencies, like the dc and marvel multiverses, or even the star trek mirror universe)
With how shouneny Dawntrail is I cant help but be reminded of a side quest in HW for the chocobo hunters/breeders in where you are asked to tell a group of poachers to stop littering only for you to slaughter 70% of them and traumatize the survivors
I feel that good shonen/YA still has cheap character drama because the focus is instead on the thought experiments/real world metaphors the work is trying to explore. For a shonen example, the guy with the red hair has a silly argument with the guy with the blue hair, before they make up and team up. The real question is whether ice or fire magic will triumph within the established rules of that universe, and what their combined power of steam will achieve beyond the lore accurate censorship of fanart. DawnTrail has the cheap character drama, but fails to use this to adequately examine/explore the moral dilemmas presented within a poorly constructed frame of in-universe rules, leaving the player to bring their own depth to the tale. Zoraal Ja holding Gulool Ja hostage against Wuk Lamat is (on paper) a brother holding his son hostage against a sister/aunt, but that depth was missing from the story because we saw so little of them in those roles. You have to bring your own complexity/darkness/trauma/headcannon to the extent that I felt like I was personally doing too much to make the story work.
I liked Dawntrail's base story overall but I can definitely understand the polarizing discussion around it. For me personally, I maintain that it could've worked in the same fashion if they had spent more time developing the 2nd half much like Stormblood. The first half of Dawntrail's story is slow and feels like an Anime arc like One Piece. The problem is we have to spend so much time developing Wuk Lamat as the Main character of the story, that few others get any time including the Warrior of Light (Which I was fine with for the most part, Although I did hope that we would eventually get a bigger role by the end of it but we just kinda feel like the clean up crew, very much like how I felt playing WoW during BFA and Shadowlands, where we kinda just chilled in the background and then beat the main boss while the NPCs did all the talking to each other). I feel like they should have either ended her storyline at the mid way when she becomes the Dawnservant with Koana, OR they should have waited until the end to crown them as Dawnservants as they beat Zoraal'ja and Sphene etc. I say this because I think most people really enjoyed the 2nd half a lot more than the 1st but we were not given a lot of time with the characters. In most polling be it international or in Japan, Fans picked Erenville as their favourite character. IMO the focus should have shifted over to his side of the story along with Zoraal'Ja, Sphene, Cahciua, Krile, Otis and the Alexandria story. This would also give a much needed break from Wuk Lamat, too much of anything isn't good for you. The Scions for most part were just kinda misplaced, they were there because they needed to be because of the Duty Support system that allows you to complete dungeons with NPCs. So many of them felt out of place in scenes because they were not afforded enough screentime to feel meaningful in the story. This could've been solved again by splitting the time with certain characters to two halves of the story. I think they had all the pieces there, it was just not arranged or paced as well as it could've been, I still enjoyed it and saw it as a launchpad for the next 10 years of story and expansions, So I was okay with a lot of things that were happening. The most exciting parts of 7.0 are definitely the drops of lore throughout the story like the Milala history and of course the Azem tie-ins with the Artifact and Sphene...Also the FF9 references. I think the biggest flaws were the writing and characters, I wish we got more time with Krile and her parents, Erenville and Cahciua, Sphene and Otis, and Zoraal'ja was really disappointing as a villain when it comes to his motivations. I think they know what they are doing though and the future looks bright, however I worry that they tend to listen a little too much to the criticisms and attempt to fix things in post, essentially catering to voices instead of taking a chance and moving forward with what they have built. The content cycle has felt a little slower than usual as well but for the most part, everything aside from the story has also been pretty enjoyable so far, other than a few class balancing issues and a reliance on this old system of progression.
I think my biggest crackpot theory that high jacks onto Jesse's Azemgers plotline is that the way we are introduced into the reveal that one of our Shards is the big bad guy, is that they kill Alphinaud. I imagine seeing some sort of first inter-reflection grand assembly of some sort where the remaining Reflections brings their delegates/their version of the Scions or Warrior of Light to a meeting place. Because of us the Source Scions started all of this, we delegate Alphinaud to be our speaker because that just fits his role so well. Since we already have met every other version of us prior to this grand assembly, our villain shard already knows that they need to prevent this potential giant coalition of the strongest people from actually working together. So the way they actually go through this plan is to have our villain shard have their group use some kinda sniper to shoot Alphinaud dead during his opening speech. Next, in order to prevent us the WoL from intervening at all is that our villain shard found a way to use our Echo to basically stunlock us either by flooding us with Echo flashbacks/just having us feel pain through the Echo. In order to prevent the Scions from doing anything is to utilize two different assassins, one to try and takedown Thancred but failing, and the second one to takedown Y'Shtola. G'raha will probably be stopped by one of our villain shard's group members. The main villain shard will try to kill us but another of our shards will end up sacrificing themselves to send us to safety, probably they will throw us into their Reflection as a last ditch effort. Thancred, Krile, Ryne, and Gaia will probably be saved by Golbez and Zero whisking them into the 13th. Y'Shtola will probably be saved alongside G'raha and Urianger by whoever our dragon allies we brought to the meeting are. Alisaie might be transported alone into another different Reflection with another of our Shard's where she will descend into anti-hero territory as part of her madness and grief from losing her brother she might class change to the new edgy job of that expansion. And of course, Alphinaud is dead on the stage floor. The actual endgame of this plotline could be that our villain shard was corrupted by like Ultima, the High Seraph or another of their kind. Or our villain shard was just bidding their time so that we can fight and weaken Ultima/another of their kind so that they kill steal, merge with that alien entity, and control all reality or whatever. Another cool way we can be saved from our villain shard is that Y'Shtola actually uses the Lifestream spell on us so we can see what it's like. Maybe the way we come back is that we wake up in the depths of the Aetherial Sea, where we fought Hydaelyn, it's been like 8 months, and we simply journey up the Aitiascope to see all of Sharlayan damaged because an inter-reflection war has started due to the events of the grand assembly. But honestly, I think having a major death like Alphinaud's would be the best shake up we will get in this story. It brings back stakes, and reminds us that our favorite characters are not immune from danger.
"Dawntrail is a better ARR" is it tho? How much is it setting up for the future. ARR set up things for several of the later expansions, what is DT setting up that future expansions can build upon? 🤔
I would urge everyone to do the sidequests in Solution Nine and Living Memory. A few of the Solution Nine ones touch on the horror of forgetting someone and there's one in Living Memory that talks a bit about the whole child thing. There aren't as many zone quests in this expansion as there were in the last few, but some of these Dawntrail ones have good lore that I wish had been more addressed in the actual MSQ. Like did you know that the Viera and Hyur in Shaaloani used to be at odds but Galool Ja Ja united them? I didn't until I did a side quest. Why didn't I know that???? Sorry for my mini soap box lol. I loved this round table! It was such a good listen.
"if you process what's going on a lot more", "If you think extra deeply about these small things that are happening", "If you try really hard to find meaning in things that absolutely do not have them..." Yesterday I got an Ice cream cone from the Ice cream story, today I'm a new person.
talking about Wuk Lamat in the final fight, I think it would've also worked a lot better if Raha and Krile had tumbled out of the cracks in dimensional space earlier. Say at the end of the first dimensional shift with the wind Raha shows up and does some big cool stuff to help and then Sphene banishes him again, and then that happens again with Krile after the second shift, Wuk arriving for the last and staying would've had more impact. Plus given all three of them big moments in the final fight.
As it is, it's likely that they got back up in the real world after being kicked out, and helped get Wuk in for the last bit: but I agree it would have been nice to actually *see* it. Even some voiceover lines from them along the lines of "This should work now.." "Yes! We've successfully opened the portal, but it's only big enough for one" "I'll do it. *said with actual feeling* Spheeeene! Listen to me!"
@@bicks4436 Nah, it wouldn't. You could have those lines in voiceover as you're approaching the phase change point, boss-HP-wise. Just like how every other boss gets to like 10% and goes "What? No! You can't be doing this! My plan...!"
I struggle to buy the "We're throwing things at the wall to see what sticks" thing just because some of the issues weren't really a matter of like or dislike, things like giving 90% of all dialogue to a single character, let alone a new one you don't even know if people will like yet, or the dramatic shift in tone to extreme childishness, and not just the MSQ, the role quests fully feel like they could be Hildibrand quests because they're so overly ridiculous and childish. Hildi got a pass because it's in bursts and meant to be jarring compared to the actual game. Things like Smile, the crazy voice acting at parts(not just Wuk), the framing of scenes that make them nonsensical like the throne room murder where we just stand and watch while a massacre is simultaneously happening outside, no consequences for releasing Valigarmanda for Bakool, characters literally telling Wuk she cured racism by being friendly, etc. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt but it's incredibly difficult to believe they genuinely could ever think any of these things had even a slim chance of landing. I hope they get it together on the story front, luckily the gameplay is fun, the job system badly needs work but battle content feels fun. We'll see how it goes.
I'm happy the edginess took a break. Real life is grim enough as it is, Dawntrail was a damn breath of fresh air. And given 7.1 it's already on it's way back towards more darker themes. But I think people need to chill out abit. Dawntrail is easily my favorite expansion, and I played through the entire story ARR - Dawntrail between September to Just about a week ago, and doing that honestly probably made me able to appreciate it more. The post - Endwalker story was also shittalked to bits online, and that was probably my favorite story so far in the game. I honestly don't know what people are on about anymore... I truly don't.
@NoBuddy89 I strongly disagree. I have no issue with an upbeat story, I have an issue when it's presented to feel childish. That's the real issue I have with Dawntrail. Upbeat and mature are not mutually exclusive, so much of it felt like an episode of the Magic Schoolbus. And even the patches, it's not more mature, it's slightly darker but it's still as childish and unrealistic as it was. Things like the Koana cow incident, if they wanted that to be mature, they could have had him jump in to protect an actual villager instead of a cow(that we still get as bounties to kill for hunts from Tuliyollal), and just have the story of people fleeing make him realize that he doesn't have enough info to judge his parents because he doesn't know the circumstances that caused them to leave him, instead of conveniently just having this guy just remember that he knows Koana's entire backstory. The presentation of the story made so much of it stupid, framing like that breaks immersion when we're going in on the back of an arch that handled many of these things much more realistically. I could make a laundry list of plot points that don't make sense as presented or were not reacted to naturally. Bakool releasing Valigarmanda and having zero consequences, how the eugenics and starvation was even a thing when Gulool is one of them and could have fixed it himself, he literally had the authority to make them help with the trial but he doesn't know the problems there? No conflict bringing the Alexandrians to Tuliyollal even though their army massacred people, letting them keep the regulators on even though they know Sphene and who knows what else potentially, can use it to tamper with their minds and souls. Things in the story like the birds somehow not knowing that their very clearly magical festival was magic when it made the plants grow instantly before their eyes. Evil bro just being evil with no explanation or motivation, etc.(I can genuinely continue for like 3 more paragraphs) I don't understand what you find confusing about that. It's very clear why people have issues with the story if you actually listen/read what we're saying without being biased because you enjoyed it.
The thing that bugs me about the lightning sickness is that it’s functionally a lightning version of what happens to sin eater or tempering victims. Their aesthetically balance is off, and NOBODY things to bring in Alisae and Angelo to fix things
Everyone is talking about reflections ,but Im still curious about Mericydia and whats going there. Ive yet to even heard any good reason why we did New World expansion first since we sent Tianat home at the end of Shadowbringers so it would have logical 7.0 imo
I think the developers wanted to hit home on the "new story" angle and what better way to do this than put this on a completely new continent that we really don't hear much about. I think for 8.0 they might go for Mericydia as Tiamat sees that her continent went to complete shite while she was gone or an Ascian plan left untouched after the death of Lahabrea, Emet and Elidibus comes to fruition or goes haywire.
I'm with you, Meracydia has been set up and repeatadly mentioned ever since HW and especially in EW (both in 6.0 and obviously the patches) so to then go to the New World and ignore it was such a strange move. The only explanation I have is that they wanted to give us a breather from Dragons but even then I don't really feel like we can just switch the focus back to Meracydia without new buildup first.
Please god no not Mericydia, let them do a couple expansions of reflection slop to hopefully get rid of the current writing staff. I do not want the people that were involved in Dawntrail to take another awesome place that we have been getting hints about and largely dont know what the hell is going on with and ruining it like they did with the new world.
@@Stone_Stronghold Ishikawa and Oda are the lead story supervisor for Dawntrails MSQ so everything we've gotten has been approved by them. Its not like theres some rogue writer going full disney behind their supervisors back.
I believe Hydaelyn only sundered a volume of space including Etheris and the moon but not the entire universe, and you can imagine the reflections as mostly overlapping the same general space in the universe, just in different dimensions. I believe this means aliens like Midgarsommr and Omega (who arrived after the sundering) are therefore technically unsundered and so not therefore naturally occur on the other reflections until proven otherwise. I could of course be wrong.
Hearing these people talk about where they feel DT dropped the ball makes me feel very...validated after a few of the conversations I've had in this channel's livestream comment trenches xD
So like maybe I just really got the story wrong but the talk about killing reflections versions not affecting the other… but didn’t post EW, golbez the guy we fought had a buddy, the real golbez, who was us… who… died… and we’re not dead…so… Also, the first TONS died but they’re still alive in the source
In the case of Ktile I think Dawntrail while it deliver much on her character I think the set up with the key can open up more on the next patches and expansions.
Everyone with the echo sees the meteor shower, as a small glimpse of the Final Days, at some point and we already know that Zenos had a kind of super-charged echo, so it would make sense for his super-charged echo to show him more of the Final Days, than regular echo people see. That's how I took it. With Bakool Ja Ja I actually don't mind the short-term heel-turn. He had his entire life's purpose ripped away from him, and had to re-evaluate his very existence. If that's no justification for a massive character shift, what is? We already connected the First and Thirteenth in a one-way direction, to break Zeromus' shield in the MSQ. They could build on that and open a two-way connection meant to balance the aether of the two reflections out, thus returning both to normal. And that can either work, or it could go horribly wrong in so many way, down to triggering the First and Thirteenth to rejoin. Hmm... Gosetsu... now that you mention it, he has quite some similarity with Otis. You think they might be from the same ancient soul, even if they are 400ish years apart? If he were to wander into another reflection, maybe he could find a new Yatsu to dote on. ^^
Zenos tells Fandaniel that he's had dreams of the Final Days his entire life, so it happened before he got the Echo. And when Fandaniel learns that Zenos has those memories he says "Could Emet-Selch have found a way...?" Maybe it was that Emet implanted memories of the Final Days in Zenos to see what would happen? And it turned him into this weird apathetic monster until he meets us later on? We know he's fine experimenting on kids after Vauthry
@@Rc3651 Could be... though it makes me wonder if Zenos having memories of the Final Days was the experiment itself, or if that was just the side-effects of whatever the experiment was about. With the Garleans being the only ones we know of, who can't interact with aether, they surely make for unique and interesting research subjects for the Ascians.
I'm just watching on the sidelines, waiting for the writing team to redeem themselves in 7.1-.5 onwards. I feel like feedback and discussion such as this always generates newfound ideas and narratives for the team. 7.3 should be a good gauge.
The short story says that Zenos had to shove a shard into his hand because he didn’t have the echo yet. But was already having the recurring nightmares since… 3? I think is when we start to have long-term vivid memories? I don’t think they’re bringing him back (he has VERY mixed reviews) , but I wouldn’t be surprised if the other shards (like Durante) were used to expand on whatever was going on there. Whatever potential side effects of the rejoining they were attempting to track, maybe? But first- I want to know where we’re going next.
I want to see Y"shtola and Unukalhai mysteriously Vanishing toward patch 7.3/7.4 and the game does not mention Unukalhai is missing but people discover he is. Then in the middle of patch 8.0 MSQ when the WOL is in dire straights, Y'shtola, Unukalhai, Zero and Golbez show up out of nowhere and save the day which sets the tone for the rest of 8.0 where you travel to the void to see that it is no longer a void. Then push the story from there.
Dawntrail had a good overall story idea that was let down by the writers. If you understand Japanese culture you and Wuk were supposed to be a Senpai type relationship where you don't get involved until your junior runs into serious trouble. It just wasn't communicated well, especially to Western audiences. And 14 absolutely can handle hard topics like racism and fundamentalism quite well. Ishgard is a prime example of this. Even to this day the relations between them and the dragons aren't exactly strong. And you had some random dude straight up try and assassinate Aymeric over it. Also, as a sometimes MCH main, the rubber bullets just explain why we can't get a buff. And also why swords do more damage than a literal gun. Also, the Wuk kill steal at the end was the part that pissed me off more than anything else in the entire MSQ. The WoL had been back burnered the entire expansion and we finally have a moment where we can shine and Wuk just comes in at the very end and steals it. I think that's the point where it all hit. She'd done it to Krille, she'd done it to Erenville, even done it to Koana. And now she does it to the player. It felt patronizing as hell. Like, you can't beat her on your own even though the WoL is basically the most powerful being in the entire world and possibly universe at this point.
when Jesse talked about the last boss of the last dungeon. I felt that so much. I thought it was going to be a larger than life robot fight dude. Kinda like the last trial. When I found out he just a puny boss I was so sad.
1:07:45 This is gonna go hard when it's revealed that Galool Ja was an immaculate conception born from the combination of the Azem Key and the desire of GJ's mom. Kyle will be proven right, AGAIN.
same with Dark Souls/Elden Ring, most people's favourite are either Dark Souls 1 or Bloodbrone, the two darkest (though ER and DS2's shortcomings aren't tied to the vibe of the games)
I honestly don't know where Jesse keeps getting the idea that Luffy from One Piece would be the "power of friendship" analogue for Wuk Lamat 🤣 Luffy many times has the "punching of the bad guy will continue until morale improves" approach to problem solving, speaking to bad guys until they become friends is more a Naruto thing, not so much a Luffy thing!
I will say, while I don't want to be Worf'd the way that Zenos Worf'd us in Stormblood again, I do feel like they should make it clearer that the WoL is STRONG, but very much not a goku-level demigod. Its easy to forget that our most badass moments have caveats. We beat Metion and Zenos in a world where emotions become reality so we can literally use the power of god and anime against them. Zodiark is explicitly in an incomplete state. Pretty much all the other trials and raids canonically have us fighting alongside 7-23 other people. Yes, we're probably ONE OF the strongest guys on the planet... but we're still just a guy. We're still fallible. I'd prefer it if the game was like 'yes you're strong, but you have peers who are on your level' rather than implying our literal character level is an actual power-scale situation rather than an abstraction for game progression purposes.
I feel like the game itself DOES think we're strong but not anything like a demi-god, because it DOES have all those caveats added whenever possible. It's the fanon of way too many players that puts us up on a ridiculous pedestal.
Zenos will be back. Zenos DREAMED of Amaurot as a child, well before he got the resonance/echo. So there is a thread that needs to be established at some point.
I liked Dawntrail but I feel that the writing didn't hit as much as they should have. It felt as though it wasn't written as a video game but a stage play. Even the new sad things are happening music didn't help as for me they were still too light hearted. The instant Sphene said she had already started to curb rebirths I went full on ok so she's just another Meteion and needs to be put down. It felt odd that they used very similar wording so it felt like a retread. I feel that at least with the English VAs a ball dropped somewhere in the direction giving or sound quality. I put it above base 2.0 but below base 4.0
I really hate the “ I wasn’t expecting it to be as good as endwalker” why? Why are you accepting a worse explanation because it’s a new story? We pay a sub we pay for the game why is it wrong to expect a better experience than the last??
One month later, but I need to expound on what I think that person meant. It's not about what the plot is, or the ten years of buildup, or the character development behind Endwalker. It's the basic understanding of pacing and storytelling of Endwalker. Or Shadowbringers. Or even Stormblood at points. It is just not told or structured well. You can LIKE it, but you are finding ways to like it despite it breaking a lot of very basic storytelling rules. Even in this comment section, which has - and no shade - some very apologetic people toward Dawntrail, even they admit that it is "a good story told poorly." Edit because I just thought of this: Even if you look at it the other way, OP still has a point when you remember that Heavensward essentially did the exact same thing Dawntrail attempted to do, even down to severing from ARR's "main" story to introduce a new cast of characters in a new area with its own problems and mostly abandoning the Scions, and was a multi-award winning expansion. Shadowbringers took place on a completely different planet away from the goings-on of your home world, with only scarce references to anything that came before it, and after it released, it led the charge on where the plot was going to go from here, basically using the past story beats from other expansions to fuel its themes as the future primary narrative. Which is what Dawntrail tried to do, isn't it? The more I think about it, the less the "10 years of buildup" response holds any water to me.
@@yhposolihP Oh yeah, I totally agree the level of storytelling was not on the same level as previous expansions. The only thing I meant regarding it not being as good as endwalker is that I don't think it's possible for them to reach that height without the buildup first. I completely agree that this was a step down in storytelling skill, and they need to fix it. I did enjoy the story of Dawntrail, but there were definitely things that bothered me too.
Killing copies of people in other reflections just makes the remaining more powerful like Jet Li's The One. Sounds like something Zenos would do to fight the most powerful you if he could actually kill some version of you.
The story should have been just us not all the scions and the way it makes the enemies a threat is that they do the bad thing when we arnt around and we get the sad moment of like we can solve every problem alone and even though we super op we cant solve all problems. Then have scions come in save the day and have this all be a learning moment for Wuk Lemet.
@Grinding Gear the only interesting thing about the first half. Each of the quest givers for the rites had traveled with Galool Ja Ja during his journey before he was leader. They can be seen in one of the flashbacks that shows him walking with a group. I think that’s why he sent his children to learn from them. I think DT was a safe story. The second half was better.
I’m very curious about 2 things, how far ahead the story has been planned and how much they’re going to change based on the mixed to negative reviews so far. Will they stick to their guns with what they already have planned or panic from the bad reception and try to overly course correct kinda thing.
I just think they can improve in what to focus and present, lore wise there is nothing to change since it all still fits the contexts they created in the other expansions and expand upon it like always, they can just choose what to portray with more or less focus
They might have some ideas for the next 10 years but at the moment they should have already started on the next expansion. Forget which stream it was after DT launch that YoshiP said they have to start planning for their writing boot camp for the next expansion and later plan for the cgi trailer
@@Crownedmoonart Not necessarily. They hadn't set Shadowbringers in stone when they developed 4.4. 4.4 had Varis be vehemently against the Ascian plot, and everything pointed to the next expansion being a journey to Garlemald, where we'd have the Populares + Alphinaud + potentially Varis as inside help. Then in 4.5 all of a sudden Varis is all for the rejoining, completely unexplained, he gets killed "off-screen" in the 5.0 finale, his boss fight gets awkwardly inserted into the Bozja content and we never "really see" him again (Anima I guess) This much of a shift requires a massive rewrite, and I'm pretty sure they went on record to mention how the decision do to Norvrandt came kind of late into the dev cycle
@@vaan_ I can see why you would think that but I took the change as intentional. It would be more entertaining to players when Varis reveals his plan and we would see him as just the same as the ascians since we are to infer that he doesn't have all the information like we do. They build him up to seem somewhat reasonable only to give it a shock reveal that he's really messed up. I mean who wouldn't be if they grow up with ascians as a dad and counselors lol but they always write some sort of surprise or shocking elements in .4 and .5 patches. I don't know when you think 4.5 got developed but that seems too quick to write and develop a patch and an expansion that late. Wiki says shb writing started one month after sb came out which is in May 2017 so Yoshida already knew he wanted shb to be in a reflection. 4.4 came out in september 2018 and the first fanfest to announce shb is just two months after that. I remember during the panel where Ishikawa got that standing ovation she showed concept art for Amaurot and the one that was used to model Amaurot to was inspired by the Spiderman game that came out in september 2018. So shb writing should already be set around that time. The writing also needs to be done earlier so that they can give the loc teams time to translate. The recent fanfest Kate did a loc panel and she said they spend the 3-4 months before patch release translating so the japanese text should already be done before then. Voices don't get recorded patch by patch but in multiple patches at once. I know the Japanese voice actors only come in like once or twice a year to record. I remember G'raha japanese VA was a guest in the 2022 14hr stream and has asked Yoshida when G'raha is going back to msq/voiced and Yoshida told him "soon." G'raha didn't have any speaking lines till the last Myths of the Realm raid one year after that since it came out in 6.5 in October 2023! With how little lines G'raha had he probably also recorded DT lines in the same session. And I don't think 8.0 is going to be any different. They are taking whatever feedback they got in the first one or two months after DT launched and adjust the next story as well as they can. Player feedback does make them change their plans. Yoshida didn't plan to end the Hyldaelyn Zodiark story as soon as they did but he didn't want to lose the hype shb gave them that they decided to end that arc with EW
I dont think MSQ will be about Azem's reflections, but more specifically their legacy, what did Azem and their allies do during the final days? Considering the crystal chalice and portal mcguffin, they had a plan and purpose different from Zodiark and Hydaelyn followers, what is their intent and are they related to Preservation and the Milala section of Living Memory?
Did Azem have allies, they always felt more like a solo character? It is super interesting aspect of the story that Azem didnt support Venat with Hydalyn during Final Days and they were off doing something on their own.
@@Nightly_Winter Considering Hythlhodaeus description in 5.3, Azem would travel the land and help countless folk, they would solve matters of import themsleves without consulting the convocation, to do so they had the help off allies that would heed their call, who' s to say that having defected from the convocation but still having the belief of some people, they tried to do something to save the star/survive the disaster?
Living Memory infuriated me. It feels like such a wasted opportunity. There's a SOMA-esque philosophical question there that they just never bother with. Are they really people without the soul that they've taken for their tech. If they are then are they the same person since they can be modified and set to different parts of their lives etc. On top of that we're doing all these little areas, talking to Wuk's nanny and putting on a play with Otis while we know Sphene is in the background becoming Sphene the reflection destroyer so it just takes away from the urgency of the situation too. It felt like a Dragonball arc and we're just letting the villain power up.
Honestly, I'm not sure about that. I do see WL's point in this arc. It's about how we honour the dead and keep them alive. We normally talk about people remaining alive in our memories after death - "a man's not dead while his name is still spoken." Solution 9 chose to keep the dead alive literally through their holosuite recreation, but the actual memories of them in the living were erased. So we chose to honour them in our memories before shutting down their simulated post-life selves. I agree it did somewhat take away from the urgency of things, but pacing problems are hardly new to the MSQ (see: running around requisitioning a holo-Ascian robe right as we could turn into a lightwarden at any moment, or taking time out during the final days to bring eight randos to a meeting with the Loporrits)
Some things id really like to see: We will likely see how Zoraal Ja and Sphene's rule affected other reflections. I hope we do. A true prison arc, not an exile arc. I wanna see the embodiment of freedom and adventure be faced with a prison industrial complex... with how much they tease about the alaoalo islands. I'd love to see a return of statice and kinda have her be a part of a party. From a mechanical standpoint id love to see her kinda be like one of the pods from nier automata. But from a story perspective she is just an interesting character being something that isnt really supposed to exist but does and i find that interesting. But i really, really, just want new or underrepresented characters. I want to have a crazy party of oddballs. I started playing ff9 and like the hook of the first 30 minutes of the game is that you are a theif group with the goal of kidnapping a princess, in 7 you are a eco terrorist group. I really want a surprising, unexpected group identity going forward. I like how in heavensward you are criminals to the world and id love to see something like that come back. Hell even at the end of dawntrail youre with that one small resistance group. The group of common characters has gotten too bloated
Furthermore, the entire point of the Scions now is that they are in contact, but they are “officially disbanded” and are off doing their own things. However, all are conveniently in Tural, some with better reasons than others, but notably the best reason is Estinien’s because he randomly went there. You would think you could leverage that to justify Scions not popping up for a bit especially for a “smaller adventure”.
Absolute highlights of Dawntrail for me were: - Wuk Evu - The dungeon design - L99 trial. Its music and encounter design redeemed his poor character portrayal prior to it for me - Solution 9. Just everything about it - The graphical update - The music across the board (but f*ck Smile) - Shaaloani was a true breath of fresh air for me, and I LOVE its BGM - Vanguard, what a BANGER - Scenes on the boat ride at the very start, showing the gorgeous lighting effects - M4 Complete _detractors_ for me were: - The Hanu zone. I literally considered skipping MSQ entirely when I was there. From ARR to EW, I talked to every single NPC in between every single MSQ step. On TWO characters. Me wanting to skip MSQ shows critical failing in the writing/pacing - L100 trial. That 'boss' came completely out of left field and I had the fastest disassociation with a media since Tokyo Ghoul season 2. In a vacuum, it's an interesting fight. In context, it made zero sense to me. I noped the hell out of there the second I unlocked it - Bakool Jaja 'redemption arc', because there was zero indication of him deserving any of it prior to that crazy switch - ALL of the tribes/peoples were far too _human._ They got a fancy model and a singular cultural aspect, and that was it. Very missed opportunity, especially if this expansion is supposed to do world-building - M2 needs to be deleted. I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with it if the boss model was based off of Rhyne instead of a femhyur with a midlife crisis. Mechanically the worst encounter in the game for me - The pacing. There needed to be a lot more combat a lot sooner in the MSQ. The 'two halves' were also painfully disjointed - The final zone. It had no place in this expansion, especially following Endwalker. We needed something epic and uplifting, not something causing emotional fatigue (for all the wrong reasons). It explored a fear in me I didn't realize I had and strongly contributed to the burnout I'm now in - Smile - The expansion following up on Endwalker, rather than being a second starting point for newcomers. It did FAR TOO MANY THINGS WRONG for it to be a second step-in point, but the game needs one at this point. Yoshi disagrees, which ironically makes the expansion worse in context of what came before. I was honestly being fair in seeing it standalone as I played through it, but Yoshi forced me to place it in context - The _highly convenient plot device_ - Where's the actual world building? ARR did a FAR better job with that. All I saw was Tural explored, some peoples shown, Alexandria explored, the Milala explored, a HIGHLY CONVENIENT plot tool uncovered. ARR built Eorzea, its peoples, the Garleans, the Ascians, Primals, its history (visually in the zones, think Wanderer's Palace, Sirius tower, shards of Dalamud, Crystal tower, etc.) and so much more. Tural feels very limited in that (bearing in mind that ARR has a LOT more regions in comparison) I've sadly fallen out of love with the game thanks to Dawntrail, because it's the third time in a row it really did my enjoyment dirty. And I HATE that it did...
I have multiple characters too and this is also the first expansion where I started skipping big chunks of cutscenes because I knew nothing of value would be lost. There is so much exposition being spouted at the WoL, without even giving them moments to express an opinion or something about them, it's dull dull dull.
Love it so far! For me, overall liked some parts of DT - travelling Tural was my highlight, as I just generally bounce off mixing in too much sci fi. But was invested the whole way regardless. Wanted to touch on the last zone... To be honest, It did not work for me. The reason isn't even that it's the AI thing - I'm definitely one that could be convinced life is mind and reason - but I thought that in terms of story placement, it was very strange. Like, reality is being threatened and we're indulging this thing at risk of everything, instead of just immediately shutting down the quarters. I liked the moments themselves, but I would have liked to see this main story part play out completely differently.
To be fair each zone in the living memory msq goes really fast, you're always at least moving closer to the terminal with brief stops. Having that impression is totally fair though, Cahciua saying "Take in the sights! Talk to everyone!" at the start of each area was a bit misleading. Personally her saying that felt more like the devs talking to the player saying 'See the zone we made before it disapears forever.'
Shards of Azem are prone to heroism, not villainy, so it's likely they would share our inclinations and not be our opponents. But as for delving further into who Azem was and what they were doing prior to the sundering? As long as Wuk Lamat plays zero part in that, I'm all for it. For all that this expansion was supposed to be a vacation, I feel like my character has aged 10 years overnight as a result of babysitting her, and we need to be rid of her. And I don't want us to leave her behind for a bit, but forever. She should become a character we visit about as often as Aymeric in the future, which is to say almost never. Also, we already got a very strong hint that Azem's shard in the Thirteenth was the real Golbez, so there's no mystery there. Honestly, I tend to think the Pandaemonium extra quest is probably just meant to pacify us for how awful Dawntrail was. Either way, even if it's just bait, it's at least good bait. I don't think not moving on from the Scions is about being afraid to try something different. It's more about the bonds that we feel our characters have built with them. Though on the subject of the ancients, they are our past, so it would be fairly impossible to never revisit them imo. They could also do something in the future with Hythlodaeus' parting words of wishing to see us again. Please don't disrespect Beq Lugg guys, they are neither male nor female. All fae are genderless, remember? Btw, they've added hints about the major plot points in the next expansion since A Realm Reborn. You might know that if you returned to Ul'dah after 2.55, one guard pretty much hinted at Nanamo merely being unconscious. During the cutscene of Yda and Papalymo fighting, in Japanese Yda also mentioned Ala Mhigo, further hinting at it coming after Ishgard. Venat as Hydaelyn didn't bring the souls back to the Source for fun and games, but rather because having died on the First, their souls would be rejoining that world's aetherial sea and wouldn't be able to be reunited with their loved ones. She didn't do it for us, but for them. As to Minfilia's role, I have a feeling that Hydaelyn may have told her everything about the Final Days. Even if that were not the case though, I expect Hydaelyn would still have told her enough about the sundering for Minfilia to be able to guide both us and Ardbert. I don't think it's fair to compare Dawntrail to A Realm Reborn. The comparison is deeply unfair to A Realm Reborn because while Dawntrail was supposed to start a new story arc, most of the new characters and settings simply aren't interesting. The story was just bad, poorly paced from start to finish, and Sphene was a far worse character than you could ever claim Lahabrea to have been in his early days. And Wuk Lamat, for a supposed "main character", was clingy, annoying, ignorant and naive to the point of being wholly intolerable. And both Living Memory and Solution Nine felt like such insults to the themes of Endwalker and Shadowbringers about properly dealing with grief and loss. To me, Dawntrail can't be redeemed and I'm simply awaiting the release of patch 7.4 when we'll finally be able to start looking forward to 8.0. Wherever we go next simply can't be as bad as the nonsense we were forced to tolerate in Tural.
I wish you guys had been playing during stormblood because theres info you aren't privy to because of it. Dawntrail is haunted by the sins of stormblood
Where is new big bad? Where is new multi expac story arc? No open questions were left, we solved everything in DT. I'm baffled. Regardless of how good or bad DT was, there is nothing came out of it for long term.
I think they shot themselves in the foot by bringing the scions in like this. If they'd not shown up or just Estinien then they could have used it as a jump in point for new players. We know they've been looking for one but here was the best chance and instead they threw in the half assed fan service.
The more I’ve thought of it and especially now after 7.1 has dropped…I think it’s a worse ARR. ARR made Eorzea interesting even if its story wasn’t amazing. I honestly couldn’t care a bit about Tulliyollal and the story was kind of a dud.
I have an EPIC tinfoil hat theory that Sareel Ja(far) was actually one of the missing sundered ascians, and has decided that now the unsundered are all gone, he/she is gonna become the only unsundered by forcibly re-joining with there remaining soulshards from the other reflections and to do that they needed access to the key. We never saw him die, we didn't even see him truly fall, but said ascian wouldn't be able to use that body any more as it would raise too much suspicion, so he/she then bodyhopped into Ketanram's corpse to stay in close proximity to the unfolding events. (Also how much do you want to bet that Ketenram will volunteer to travel to S9 to help look after and offer guidance to King baby in 7.1) He could then manipulate his way to the 9th to find his shard and re-join and use the existing tech to force open portals to the other shards and pull his other soul shards through to remove there souls (useing a soul regulator) and actually fully re-join. We'll then have a full unsundered ascian that isn't restrained by the 'morality' of the previous unsundered, that can essentially do whatever they want and go wherever they want, and that's when WE'D need to essentially do the Azemgers Azemble. Maybe rejoining with our soul shards either willingly or though killing a 'bad' version of us, (can you imagine if we ourselves had been brought up in the Garlean Empire, we'd have been one of there most powerful fighters, between us and Zenos the world wouldn't have had a chance ^^) to become a fully unsundered too in order to stop them.
Hiya. Jesse's comments about one of Azem's shards being the bad guy will be epic if WE end up being that guy and the final fight is US as the boss vs our NPC friends. The fight doesn't have a conclusion and the MMO sunsets into Square's next big project. The groundwork for this is laid out already. It's upto the devs to use it or leave it as is.
I always figured the lightning sickness is the same as tempering and whatever happened to turn people into sin eaters. Its too much lightning aether and we can fix it with porxies.
I think what I liked about Living Memory the most is that it was the first time I personally felt the whole "carrying the weight of a thousand stars (planets)." Maybe it's because I liked Sphene more than the usual player, but something about the way her story was told made me feel that weight of having to carry the burdens and memory of fallen people.
Personally I'm just tired of Marvel stuff in general, so that whole concept just doesn't seem appealing unless they do it well (doubtful with the way DT was written).
Furthermore, the way that each expansion has a different tone and things focused upon, this could end up feeling like Riverdale, where the weird setting this time is a comic book multiverse.
I think a lot of people missed the point of Living Memory. It was never supposed to be a "moral quandry", players incorrectly applied that expectation on the zone. The very first NPCs you meet ask you to shut the zone down, and another explains they don't care if its shut down or not they're just happy for the special moments they can share while it lasts. The point of the zone is to show the different ways to accept death. Wuk accepts death by valuing memories, cherishing what that person (Namika) meant to her. Kirle accepts death by valuing the past, discovering what she can learn about those people (her parents) and their history. And Erenville accepts death by valuing their legacy (his mothers), and carrying on in their footsteps. Living Memory isn't about trying to overcome death or having to suffer it, it's about accepting it and it's supposed to be cathartic and peaceful. Even for Sphene at the very end, Wuk tells her it's over and we lead her people in her stead. A promise made so that Sphene can accept her own death too.
I don't think people missed what LM was supposed to be, the message is quite clear. However, you can't prevent people from thinking further. The entire zone's impact hinges on you accepting the endless as real people, as if you don't, then the entire experince will feel pointless and will fall flat. If you do, then it is not a large leap to reach the Emet paralels and moral ambiguity. You also have to consider that nothing exists in a vacum. Topics similar to LM were brough up previously in FF14 and in other media, not to mention irl topics, like euthanasia. Since FF14 has a history of tackling some quite heavy subjects, when you give people the chance to discuss something, they will do so and that usually results in an analysis that goes beyond the surface level message, that the writer wantend to convey.
I find myself in okaymage's corner about Living Memory. These "memories" can give us closure, have thoughts, can plan a rebellion, can laugh and cry, so on and so forth. Obviously, we shouldn't sacrifice lives to sustain their existence, but I don't like how blase some players were about turning off Living Memory.
The devs have history of trolling in expansion lead up. I remember them calling the sin eater in the trailer for shb WoL fights as “this is innocence that’s very important to the story” 1. It wasn’t innocence and 2. It was the first boss of the first dungeon. Then the whole anima tease for ew being a dungeon boss only when we all thought…Trail Boss! Gotta be. 😂
The problem with pushing out a lot of story elements and seeing what sticks best with the audience is that, to me, it discourages the writers from being daring. The Scions should have been completely wiped out in Endwalker. Dawntrail being a completely new saga should have started with completely new Scions, but we're never going to have that now.
The answer to how the rest of the universe interacts with Aetherys being split 14 ways, has been staring us in the face for years -- if you approach the planet from the outside, you get a popup asking you to select an instance.
HMMM
I don't think that's how it works but that very much made me laugh
My take is that there are shards are on different wavelength / frequency that is why there can be other stars and planets in the reflections because they also exist at that same wavelength / frequency. However, unlike Aetherys these other planets would be entirely new worlds and not additional reflected realities.
I'm not going to go into a huge thing because I'd be writing an essay but specifically on the 'smile' topic, I really think it would've flown under the radar and/or been accepted if it was used exclusively in the credits. It starts out softly when things are winding down and then builds into the incredibly upbeat parts as the celebration is happening and in general isn't a bad song in it's entirety I think. The problem is that it's thrown at you in a 0-100 max energy way twice and undercuts the finale because of it, along with the train scene not needing the song especially as it's just the same beat as fixing the lift in Shadowbringers.
That aspect of letting mis-steps inform blanket reception is an issue I have with a lot of the Dawntrail discussion.
I really think some FF songs have just too many unnecessary vocals. Smile becomes grating to me because it is the greatest offender of word vomit. Did it reaaallly need that many lyrics thrown at that speed?
I agree, Smile wasn't necessary during the montage, especially seeing as it was a montage to build a *weapon* . Tonally it didn't fit. Like, "If we all work together and smile, we're all gonna be OK and everything will be wond--" *kaboom* No problem with it as a credits song though.
I totally agree that the reception would have been so different if it was used exclusively in the credits. Everywhere else it was used, it felt so weird.
I think that overall Smile is a really well constructed song, my only issue is that the vocals aren't mixed well so you can't really understand the lyrics, which I think takes away from a lot of the impact when you don't actually know what the song is saying 😅 I love all the renditions of Smile though, especially the Solution Nine version
Soken made a comment recently on the Blu-ray release of the OST on "Smile". Ishikawa requested Soken make an "ending-like" musical number. Soken said that he has never made a musical Broadway like number before but he gave it a shot anyways. He found musicals a bit jarring to him because they would be speaking dialogue then all of a sudden break out into song, but he was inspired by "The Blues Brothers" and gave it a shot anyways. You can somewhat tell he is a bit new to the musical-like style with the mixing and lyrics. Now he said he enjoyed making the piece as it was something new to him (meaning it was a challenge nad many artists like trying something new), but ultimately I think he doesn't have final say on where it goes which I think is the biggest issue with "Smile."
These roundtables are so damn fun. Can't wait for the next one!
Here is the thing about Azem's Keystone that they have briefly touched upon but I think is the key (no pun intended) to the future of this saga: The core of the key is a white auracite, this is almost 100% confirmed. Sphene has even stated that the key responded to "strong desire", similarly to how Heart of Sabik and the Ivalice Auracites worked. Based on Pandaemonium lore, we know NOTHING about the origin of the auracites, except that they are related to Ultima the High Seraph, but Athena did not get it from her. Which to me means one thing: there is a potential, Jenova-level threat out there, interdimensional aliens with the power to literally warp reality. And they might be coming.
I'm into it!
Totally. I've been thinking about Jenova since Panda. Athena even had the same color scheme in her fight as Safer Sephiroth and I refuse to think that is a coincidence especially since that Sephiroth form is so iconic in FF history
Isn't white auracite specifically just a specific type of manufactured auracite? It's not incredibly special outside its ability to store aether very well and us having chosen to use that property to destroy ascians permanently. What ties white auracite has to other auracite isn't even really known cause they never expanded on them beyond those capabilities.
Not disagreeing that the core might be made of auracite, but I'm fairly sure it's either not white auracite or if anyone has brought up that it's tied to white auracite specifically, then they might go into details about what their connection to actual auracite is and talk more about that manufactured stuff, cause as it is now, white auracite isn't very special as far as how the game has handled it.
I think Azem is heavily tied to whatever the hell Ultima is. Azem knew about what was happening in Pandemonium and even knew a shard of themselve was coming to help Elidibus. They had to of created the key BEFORE the sundering meaning they were going to travel dimensions outside of Etheirys.
The funny thing is is there's a short story on the lodestone about Azem that they are some times forgetful and often leaves things behind and that key is one of those things
the long and short of Dawntrail to me is that all the elements are there, but it didn't come together and felt messy. It was fun, there were many fun things, but it just didn't come together cohesive enough
Pretty much, they had all the basic ideas to make a fine expansion. The execution was just lacking unfortunately.
I think Preach's point where if it was Wuk Lamat who knows the more surface things about the cultures, and you find out the dirtier laundry as you dig deeper would've been so much more interesting, because as it was, it all felt so ... shallow? ARR has its flaws but the way it set up its threads was a lot more interesting, because you could tell Eorzea had some deep, systematic problems that were not sustainable, and you spend multiple expansions fixing those or at least getting them closer to fixing them. Tural is so sanitized and harmonious already it's like ... none of their hooks seem very meaty, besides the ones that are clearly leading us to ditching Tural completely.
Besides, all that accomplished is foreshadowing that for Zoraal Ja’s new take on how peace should be treated, he too was going to have a shallow understanding of it because if Wuk Lamat, Koana, and Bakool Ja Ja also had shallow understandings of the issues they stand for, in a land that is otherwise so dedicated to peace only things that peace could not solve still remained other than minor villains, there is no chance Zoraal Ja actually has a cohesive thought process of peace and war.
I adored this podcast, and how much time y'all were able to spend together this episode. And I loved how at some point, the structure naturally dissolved into a spaghetti of tangents and theories. Such a good time.
I know I'm one of the loud comments regarding the idea that they 100% should not have shown Solution 9 in promotional material and I had no idea that Jesse, or any content creator, agreed with me until this roundtable. Just throwing in my two cents. So much of the front half of Dawntrail works so much better when you actually engage with it on its own terms.
Love the conversation. In regards to chat participation I will say I greatly enjoyed the expansion and mostly tuned out of chat specifically because of the negativity around the expansion. I found it more enjoyable to just get the experience of the person playing and not have to worry about seeing ppl argue in chat which definitely reduced my engagement (to the point of also being okay with VoDs instead of live)
Yeah it's so annoying seeing chat trying to police peoples opinions on certain scenes!
Let's all not forget Travanchet is still out there. The last time we saw him was in the Alexander Raid series which is in my opinion a red flag. The most recent lore book also does very slyly mention the OG timeline so I don't think we're entirely done with it either...
This is my husband and my dream for somewhere in the Dawntrail arc. We want to just suddenly be summoned to a meeting and as we sit down at the table the mask of Azem shows up on our face, and we smile. That's what we want so bad. We have huge hopium about it lol.
We both enjoyed the story so much and we feel it sets up so much for the following patches.
Luffy doesn't really solve racism, and we've seen huge repercussions a few times he tried, (even though I don't think that's ever his actual goal) but I get it that Jesse probably didn't watch OP. But I mostly agree with everyone's problems. Story could've been great and was great in concept, but execution was really lacking! Scions shouldn't have been included except Krile, because only one of them got a good scene, and it was only one with G'raha. BTW. also interested how I got a completely different read and reaction to Cahcuia. Honestly makes it kinda interesting though. It may not land for everyone. For me, Cahcuia and Namikka scenes hit the hardest in DT by far.
Thanks for the panel!! Loved the takes❤️🧡💙💛
I love the ideas thrown around in this podcast. Definitely looking forward to the next one.
People say Dawntrail was slow, but some parts a felt rushed to me. I think the story of Krile and Erenville losing their parents should have made me cry more than it did, there was potential for more. Also, as you said Bakool Ja Ja joining our cause went much too quickly and easily. It felt like they were running out of time at some point.
Yeah its weird some parts went super slow while others they sped ran through. Another moment y9u didn't mention was the desert zone we didn't spend much time at all there and that was ine of the ones I was looking forward to
In regards to Aftershow thoughts about Shards!
"It is theorized that the worlds actually overlap each other in position, each occupying a separate, displaced layer of reality. The magnitude of this displacement varies, however, and this circular layout best illustrates the relative distances between them." Encyclopedia Eorzea III, Page 13 (beneath diagram).
perhaps they're in a warp bubble and slightly out of phase...
(I personally think the sundering set the shards vibrating at different frequencies, like the dc and marvel multiverses, or even the star trek mirror universe)
With how shouneny Dawntrail is I cant help but be reminded of a side quest in HW for the chocobo hunters/breeders in where you are asked to tell a group of poachers to stop littering only for you to slaughter 70% of them and traumatize the survivors
I feel that good shonen/YA still has cheap character drama because the focus is instead on the thought experiments/real world metaphors the work is trying to explore.
For a shonen example, the guy with the red hair has a silly argument with the guy with the blue hair, before they make up and team up. The real question is whether ice or fire magic will triumph within the established rules of that universe, and what their combined power of steam will achieve beyond the lore accurate censorship of fanart.
DawnTrail has the cheap character drama, but fails to use this to adequately examine/explore the moral dilemmas presented within a poorly constructed frame of in-universe rules, leaving the player to bring their own depth to the tale.
Zoraal Ja holding Gulool Ja hostage against Wuk Lamat is (on paper) a brother holding his son hostage against a sister/aunt, but that depth was missing from the story because we saw so little of them in those roles.
You have to bring your own complexity/darkness/trauma/headcannon to the extent that I felt like I was personally doing too much to make the story work.
So many of my favorite people on the same screen. 🎉
I liked Dawntrail's base story overall but I can definitely understand the polarizing discussion around it.
For me personally, I maintain that it could've worked in the same fashion if they had spent more time developing the 2nd half much like Stormblood.
The first half of Dawntrail's story is slow and feels like an Anime arc like One Piece. The problem is we have to spend so much time developing Wuk Lamat
as the Main character of the story, that few others get any time including the Warrior of Light (Which I was fine with for the most part, Although I did hope that we would
eventually get a bigger role by the end of it but we just kinda feel like the clean up crew, very much like how I felt playing WoW during BFA and Shadowlands, where we kinda just
chilled in the background and then beat the main boss while the NPCs did all the talking to each other). I feel like they should have either ended her storyline at the mid way when
she becomes the Dawnservant with Koana, OR they should have waited until the end to crown them as Dawnservants as they beat Zoraal'ja and Sphene etc.
I say this because I think most people really enjoyed the 2nd half a lot more than the 1st but we were not given a lot of time with the characters. In most polling be it international
or in Japan, Fans picked Erenville as their favourite character. IMO the focus should have shifted over to his side of the story along with Zoraal'Ja, Sphene, Cahciua, Krile, Otis and the Alexandria story. This would also give a much needed break from Wuk Lamat, too much of anything isn't good for you.
The Scions for most part were just kinda misplaced, they were there because they needed to be because of the Duty Support system that allows you to complete dungeons with NPCs.
So many of them felt out of place in scenes because they were not afforded enough screentime to feel meaningful in the story. This could've been solved again by splitting the time with certain characters to two halves of the story.
I think they had all the pieces there, it was just not arranged or paced as well as it could've been, I still enjoyed it and saw it as a launchpad for the next 10 years of story and expansions,
So I was okay with a lot of things that were happening. The most exciting parts of 7.0 are definitely the drops of lore throughout the story like the Milala history and of course the Azem tie-ins with the Artifact and Sphene...Also the FF9 references. I think the biggest flaws were the writing and characters, I wish we got more time with Krile and her parents, Erenville and Cahciua, Sphene and Otis, and Zoraal'ja was really disappointing as a villain when it comes to his motivations.
I think they know what they are doing though and the future looks bright, however I worry that they tend to listen a little too much to the criticisms and attempt to fix things in post,
essentially catering to voices instead of taking a chance and moving forward with what they have built. The content cycle has felt a little slower than usual as well but for the most part, everything aside from the story has also been pretty enjoyable so far, other than a few class balancing issues and a reliance on this old system of progression.
This was so much fun to watch. They all need to get through all of the FF games and then do this again and just discuss them all.
I think my biggest crackpot theory that high jacks onto Jesse's Azemgers plotline is that the way we are introduced into the reveal that one of our Shards is the big bad guy, is that they kill Alphinaud. I imagine seeing some sort of first inter-reflection grand assembly of some sort where the remaining Reflections brings their delegates/their version of the Scions or Warrior of Light to a meeting place. Because of us the Source Scions started all of this, we delegate Alphinaud to be our speaker because that just fits his role so well. Since we already have met every other version of us prior to this grand assembly, our villain shard already knows that they need to prevent this potential giant coalition of the strongest people from actually working together.
So the way they actually go through this plan is to have our villain shard have their group use some kinda sniper to shoot Alphinaud dead during his opening speech. Next, in order to prevent us the WoL from intervening at all is that our villain shard found a way to use our Echo to basically stunlock us either by flooding us with Echo flashbacks/just having us feel pain through the Echo. In order to prevent the Scions from doing anything is to utilize two different assassins, one to try and takedown Thancred but failing, and the second one to takedown Y'Shtola. G'raha will probably be stopped by one of our villain shard's group members.
The main villain shard will try to kill us but another of our shards will end up sacrificing themselves to send us to safety, probably they will throw us into their Reflection as a last ditch effort. Thancred, Krile, Ryne, and Gaia will probably be saved by Golbez and Zero whisking them into the 13th. Y'Shtola will probably be saved alongside G'raha and Urianger by whoever our dragon allies we brought to the meeting are. Alisaie might be transported alone into another different Reflection with another of our Shard's where she will descend into anti-hero territory as part of her madness and grief from losing her brother she might class change to the new edgy job of that expansion. And of course, Alphinaud is dead on the stage floor.
The actual endgame of this plotline could be that our villain shard was corrupted by like Ultima, the High Seraph or another of their kind. Or our villain shard was just bidding their time so that we can fight and weaken Ultima/another of their kind so that they kill steal, merge with that alien entity, and control all reality or whatever.
Another cool way we can be saved from our villain shard is that Y'Shtola actually uses the Lifestream spell on us so we can see what it's like. Maybe the way we come back is that we wake up in the depths of the Aetherial Sea, where we fought Hydaelyn, it's been like 8 months, and we simply journey up the Aitiascope to see all of Sharlayan damaged because an inter-reflection war has started due to the events of the grand assembly.
But honestly, I think having a major death like Alphinaud's would be the best shake up we will get in this story. It brings back stakes, and reminds us that our favorite characters are not immune from danger.
"Dawntrail is a better ARR" is it tho? How much is it setting up for the future. ARR set up things for several of the later expansions, what is DT setting up that future expansions can build upon? 🤔
this is my most fun pod cast that talking about DT for me. i enjoy you guys so much!!
this savedd me from almost 4h of pf enrages boredom thanke
I would urge everyone to do the sidequests in Solution Nine and Living Memory. A few of the Solution Nine ones touch on the horror of forgetting someone and there's one in Living Memory that talks a bit about the whole child thing. There aren't as many zone quests in this expansion as there were in the last few, but some of these Dawntrail ones have good lore that I wish had been more addressed in the actual MSQ.
Like did you know that the Viera and Hyur in Shaaloani used to be at odds but Galool Ja Ja united them? I didn't until I did a side quest. Why didn't I know that????
Sorry for my mini soap box lol. I loved this round table! It was such a good listen.
"if you process what's going on a lot more", "If you think extra deeply about these small things that are happening", "If you try really hard to find meaning in things that absolutely do not have them..."
Yesterday I got an Ice cream cone from the Ice cream story, today I'm a new person.
talking about Wuk Lamat in the final fight, I think it would've also worked a lot better if Raha and Krile had tumbled out of the cracks in dimensional space earlier. Say at the end of the first dimensional shift with the wind Raha shows up and does some big cool stuff to help and then Sphene banishes him again, and then that happens again with Krile after the second shift, Wuk arriving for the last and staying would've had more impact. Plus given all three of them big moments in the final fight.
As it is, it's likely that they got back up in the real world after being kicked out, and helped get Wuk in for the last bit: but I agree it would have been nice to actually *see* it. Even some voiceover lines from them along the lines of "This should work now.." "Yes! We've successfully opened the portal, but it's only big enough for one" "I'll do it. *said with actual feeling* Spheeeene! Listen to me!"
That would add another 30s to my roulette with the already too long cutscene, no thanks
@@bicks4436 Nah, it wouldn't. You could have those lines in voiceover as you're approaching the phase change point, boss-HP-wise. Just like how every other boss gets to like 10% and goes "What? No! You can't be doing this! My plan...!"
I struggle to buy the "We're throwing things at the wall to see what sticks" thing just because some of the issues weren't really a matter of like or dislike, things like giving 90% of all dialogue to a single character, let alone a new one you don't even know if people will like yet, or the dramatic shift in tone to extreme childishness, and not just the MSQ, the role quests fully feel like they could be Hildibrand quests because they're so overly ridiculous and childish. Hildi got a pass because it's in bursts and meant to be jarring compared to the actual game. Things like Smile, the crazy voice acting at parts(not just Wuk), the framing of scenes that make them nonsensical like the throne room murder where we just stand and watch while a massacre is simultaneously happening outside, no consequences for releasing Valigarmanda for Bakool, characters literally telling Wuk she cured racism by being friendly, etc.
I want to give them the benefit of the doubt but it's incredibly difficult to believe they genuinely could ever think any of these things had even a slim chance of landing.
I hope they get it together on the story front, luckily the gameplay is fun, the job system badly needs work but battle content feels fun. We'll see how it goes.
I'm happy the edginess took a break. Real life is grim enough as it is, Dawntrail was a damn breath of fresh air. And given 7.1 it's already on it's way back towards more darker themes.
But I think people need to chill out abit. Dawntrail is easily my favorite expansion, and I played through the entire story ARR - Dawntrail between September to Just about a week ago, and doing that honestly probably made me able to appreciate it more. The post - Endwalker story was also shittalked to bits online, and that was probably my favorite story so far in the game.
I honestly don't know what people are on about anymore... I truly don't.
@NoBuddy89 I strongly disagree. I have no issue with an upbeat story, I have an issue when it's presented to feel childish. That's the real issue I have with Dawntrail. Upbeat and mature are not mutually exclusive, so much of it felt like an episode of the Magic Schoolbus. And even the patches, it's not more mature, it's slightly darker but it's still as childish and unrealistic as it was. Things like the Koana cow incident, if they wanted that to be mature, they could have had him jump in to protect an actual villager instead of a cow(that we still get as bounties to kill for hunts from Tuliyollal), and just have the story of people fleeing make him realize that he doesn't have enough info to judge his parents because he doesn't know the circumstances that caused them to leave him, instead of conveniently just having this guy just remember that he knows Koana's entire backstory.
The presentation of the story made so much of it stupid, framing like that breaks immersion when we're going in on the back of an arch that handled many of these things much more realistically. I could make a laundry list of plot points that don't make sense as presented or were not reacted to naturally.
Bakool releasing Valigarmanda and having zero consequences, how the eugenics and starvation was even a thing when Gulool is one of them and could have fixed it himself, he literally had the authority to make them help with the trial but he doesn't know the problems there? No conflict bringing the Alexandrians to Tuliyollal even though their army massacred people, letting them keep the regulators on even though they know Sphene and who knows what else potentially, can use it to tamper with their minds and souls. Things in the story like the birds somehow not knowing that their very clearly magical festival was magic when it made the plants grow instantly before their eyes. Evil bro just being evil with no explanation or motivation, etc.(I can genuinely continue for like 3 more paragraphs)
I don't understand what you find confusing about that. It's very clear why people have issues with the story if you actually listen/read what we're saying without being biased because you enjoyed it.
The thing that bugs me about the lightning sickness is that it’s functionally a lightning version of what happens to sin eater or tempering victims. Their aesthetically balance is off, and NOBODY things to bring in Alisae and Angelo to fix things
Everyone is talking about reflections ,but Im still curious about Mericydia and whats going there. Ive yet to even heard any good reason why we did New World expansion first since we sent Tianat home at the end of Shadowbringers so it would have logical 7.0 imo
I think the developers wanted to hit home on the "new story" angle and what better way to do this than put this on a completely new continent that we really don't hear much about. I think for 8.0 they might go for Mericydia as Tiamat sees that her continent went to complete shite while she was gone or an Ascian plan left untouched after the death of Lahabrea, Emet and Elidibus comes to fruition or goes haywire.
@@Blahblah-oo7lk yeah, although I truly feel like 8.0 should take us home and we should get Garlemald expansion.
I'm with you, Meracydia has been set up and repeatadly mentioned ever since HW and especially in EW (both in 6.0 and obviously the patches) so to then go to the New World and ignore it was such a strange move. The only explanation I have is that they wanted to give us a breather from Dragons but even then I don't really feel like we can just switch the focus back to Meracydia without new buildup first.
Please god no not Mericydia, let them do a couple expansions of reflection slop to hopefully get rid of the current writing staff. I do not want the people that were involved in Dawntrail to take another awesome place that we have been getting hints about and largely dont know what the hell is going on with and ruining it like they did with the new world.
@@Stone_Stronghold Ishikawa and Oda are the lead story supervisor for Dawntrails MSQ so everything we've gotten has been approved by them. Its not like theres some rogue writer going full disney behind their supervisors back.
I believe Hydaelyn only sundered a volume of space including Etheris and the moon but not the entire universe, and you can imagine the reflections as mostly overlapping the same general space in the universe, just in different dimensions. I believe this means aliens like Midgarsommr and Omega (who arrived after the sundering) are therefore technically unsundered and so not therefore naturally occur on the other reflections until proven otherwise. I could of course be wrong.
Hearing these people talk about where they feel DT dropped the ball makes me feel very...validated after a few of the conversations I've had in this channel's livestream comment trenches xD
51:32 i love fantasmic. I went to see it after binging the Nightwish song.
The more I hear about "the Azemgers" the more I like it
this was the best ever, laughed so much
These folks are great examples on how to criticize and point out flaws while staying upbeat and engaging.
Subbing to okaymage. She's a free thinker and that's awesome. Glad i found her through this
So like maybe I just really got the story wrong but the talk about killing reflections versions not affecting the other… but didn’t post EW, golbez the guy we fought had a buddy, the real golbez, who was us… who… died… and we’re not dead…so…
Also, the first TONS died but they’re still alive in the source
In the case of Ktile I think Dawntrail while it deliver much on her character I think the set up with the key can open up more on the next patches and expansions.
I think the conclusion of the 10 year arc is we go from multiple shards to a single solar system where you can take a space ship to the other planets.
Everyone with the echo sees the meteor shower, as a small glimpse of the Final Days, at some point and we already know that Zenos had a kind of super-charged echo, so it would make sense for his super-charged echo to show him more of the Final Days, than regular echo people see. That's how I took it.
With Bakool Ja Ja I actually don't mind the short-term heel-turn. He had his entire life's purpose ripped away from him, and had to re-evaluate his very existence. If that's no justification for a massive character shift, what is?
We already connected the First and Thirteenth in a one-way direction, to break Zeromus' shield in the MSQ. They could build on that and open a two-way connection meant to balance the aether of the two reflections out, thus returning both to normal. And that can either work, or it could go horribly wrong in so many way, down to triggering the First and Thirteenth to rejoin.
Hmm... Gosetsu... now that you mention it, he has quite some similarity with Otis. You think they might be from the same ancient soul, even if they are 400ish years apart? If he were to wander into another reflection, maybe he could find a new Yatsu to dote on. ^^
Zenos tells Fandaniel that he's had dreams of the Final Days his entire life, so it happened before he got the Echo. And when Fandaniel learns that Zenos has those memories he says "Could Emet-Selch have found a way...?" Maybe it was that Emet implanted memories of the Final Days in Zenos to see what would happen? And it turned him into this weird apathetic monster until he meets us later on? We know he's fine experimenting on kids after Vauthry
@@Rc3651 Could be... though it makes me wonder if Zenos having memories of the Final Days was the experiment itself, or if that was just the side-effects of whatever the experiment was about.
With the Garleans being the only ones we know of, who can't interact with aether, they surely make for unique and interesting research subjects for the Ascians.
I'm just watching on the sidelines, waiting for the writing team to redeem themselves in 7.1-.5 onwards. I feel like feedback and discussion such as this always generates newfound ideas and narratives for the team. 7.3 should be a good gauge.
The short story says that Zenos had to shove a shard into his hand because he didn’t have the echo yet. But was already having the recurring nightmares since… 3? I think is when we start to have long-term vivid memories?
I don’t think they’re bringing him back (he has VERY mixed reviews) , but I wouldn’t be surprised if the other shards (like Durante) were used to expand on whatever was going on there. Whatever potential side effects of the rejoining they were attempting to track, maybe?
But first- I want to know where we’re going next.
I want to see Y"shtola and Unukalhai mysteriously Vanishing toward patch 7.3/7.4 and the game does not mention Unukalhai is missing but people discover he is. Then in the middle of patch 8.0 MSQ when the WOL is in dire straights, Y'shtola, Unukalhai, Zero and Golbez show up out of nowhere and save the day which sets the tone for the rest of 8.0 where you travel to the void to see that it is no longer a void. Then push the story from there.
Anytime I hear Smile in solution 9 I think of Jesse singing “gonna build a big old bomb” 😂
Dawntrail had a good overall story idea that was let down by the writers. If you understand Japanese culture you and Wuk were supposed to be a Senpai type relationship where you don't get involved until your junior runs into serious trouble. It just wasn't communicated well, especially to Western audiences. And 14 absolutely can handle hard topics like racism and fundamentalism quite well. Ishgard is a prime example of this. Even to this day the relations between them and the dragons aren't exactly strong. And you had some random dude straight up try and assassinate Aymeric over it. Also, as a sometimes MCH main, the rubber bullets just explain why we can't get a buff. And also why swords do more damage than a literal gun.
Also, the Wuk kill steal at the end was the part that pissed me off more than anything else in the entire MSQ. The WoL had been back burnered the entire expansion and we finally have a moment where we can shine and Wuk just comes in at the very end and steals it. I think that's the point where it all hit. She'd done it to Krille, she'd done it to Erenville, even done it to Koana. And now she does it to the player. It felt patronizing as hell. Like, you can't beat her on your own even though the WoL is basically the most powerful being in the entire world and possibly universe at this point.
Fun fact the city of Amaurot is named for one of the cities in Thomas Moore's Utopia as well as similar character names.
My head cannon is our warrior of light is doing a “Can I destroy all the threats here? Yes. Should I though?
There were so many “dora the explorer” moments….58:10
when Jesse talked about the last boss of the last dungeon. I felt that so much. I thought it was going to be a larger than life robot fight dude. Kinda like the last trial. When I found out he just a puny boss I was so sad.
Ah yes, Wukkie D. Lumpy with her power of friendship
1:07:45 This is gonna go hard when it's revealed that Galool Ja was an immaculate conception born from the combination of the Azem Key and the desire of GJ's mom. Kyle will be proven right, AGAIN.
3:24:42
To be fair, most dragon age fans put origins as their number 1, which WAS grimdark
same with Dark Souls/Elden Ring, most people's favourite are either Dark Souls 1 or Bloodbrone, the two darkest (though ER and DS2's shortcomings aren't tied to the vibe of the games)
Enjoyed this a lot! XD
Wondering if you'll invite EndyD20 to the round table someday too?
I honestly don't know where Jesse keeps getting the idea that Luffy from One Piece would be the "power of friendship" analogue for Wuk Lamat 🤣 Luffy many times has the "punching of the bad guy will continue until morale improves" approach to problem solving, speaking to bad guys until they become friends is more a Naruto thing, not so much a Luffy thing!
I will say, while I don't want to be Worf'd the way that Zenos Worf'd us in Stormblood again, I do feel like they should make it clearer that the WoL is STRONG, but very much not a goku-level demigod. Its easy to forget that our most badass moments have caveats. We beat Metion and Zenos in a world where emotions become reality so we can literally use the power of god and anime against them. Zodiark is explicitly in an incomplete state. Pretty much all the other trials and raids canonically have us fighting alongside 7-23 other people.
Yes, we're probably ONE OF the strongest guys on the planet... but we're still just a guy. We're still fallible. I'd prefer it if the game was like 'yes you're strong, but you have peers who are on your level' rather than implying our literal character level is an actual power-scale situation rather than an abstraction for game progression purposes.
I feel like the game itself DOES think we're strong but not anything like a demi-god, because it DOES have all those caveats added whenever possible. It's the fanon of way too many players that puts us up on a ridiculous pedestal.
Zenos will be back. Zenos DREAMED of Amaurot as a child, well before he got the resonance/echo. So there is a thread that needs to be established at some point.
Nobody mentioned the ocean turning into a waterfall which the bridge spans, under which sleeps an ancient old god. No? Not yet at least. Okay.
Fairly sure thats just the wound where the sundering happened
@@ogrimbothesour2976 Wouldn't the Sundering have happened somewhere around La Noscea? Based on where Amaurot seems to be.
I think "Smile" is a reference to the laughing scene in FFX.
Still head canon that all the WoL journeys are just an extensive interview process for the seat of Azem
I liked Dawntrail but I feel that the writing didn't hit as much as they should have. It felt as though it wasn't written as a video game but a stage play. Even the new sad things are happening music didn't help as for me they were still too light hearted. The instant Sphene said she had already started to curb rebirths I went full on ok so she's just another Meteion and needs to be put down. It felt odd that they used very similar wording so it felt like a retread. I feel that at least with the English VAs a ball dropped somewhere in the direction giving or sound quality. I put it above base 2.0 but below base 4.0
I really hate the “ I wasn’t expecting it to be as good as endwalker” why? Why are you accepting a worse explanation because it’s a new story? We pay a sub we pay for the game why is it wrong to expect a better experience than the last??
Because endwalker was a 10 year build up. It would be impossible to capture that level of story in one expansion.
One month later, but I need to expound on what I think that person meant. It's not about what the plot is, or the ten years of buildup, or the character development behind Endwalker. It's the basic understanding of pacing and storytelling of Endwalker. Or Shadowbringers. Or even Stormblood at points. It is just not told or structured well. You can LIKE it, but you are finding ways to like it despite it breaking a lot of very basic storytelling rules. Even in this comment section, which has - and no shade - some very apologetic people toward Dawntrail, even they admit that it is "a good story told poorly."
Edit because I just thought of this: Even if you look at it the other way, OP still has a point when you remember that Heavensward essentially did the exact same thing Dawntrail attempted to do, even down to severing from ARR's "main" story to introduce a new cast of characters in a new area with its own problems and mostly abandoning the Scions, and was a multi-award winning expansion. Shadowbringers took place on a completely different planet away from the goings-on of your home world, with only scarce references to anything that came before it, and after it released, it led the charge on where the plot was going to go from here, basically using the past story beats from other expansions to fuel its themes as the future primary narrative. Which is what Dawntrail tried to do, isn't it? The more I think about it, the less the "10 years of buildup" response holds any water to me.
@@yhposolihP Oh yeah, I totally agree the level of storytelling was not on the same level as previous expansions. The only thing I meant regarding it not being as good as endwalker is that I don't think it's possible for them to reach that height without the buildup first. I completely agree that this was a step down in storytelling skill, and they need to fix it. I did enjoy the story of Dawntrail, but there were definitely things that bothered me too.
Killing copies of people in other reflections just makes the remaining more powerful like Jet Li's The One. Sounds like something Zenos would do to fight the most powerful you if he could actually kill some version of you.
World of Darkness is the new Endwalker I believe
The story should have been just us not all the scions and the way it makes the enemies a threat is that they do the bad thing when we arnt around and we get the sad moment of like we can solve every problem alone and even though we super op we cant solve all problems. Then have scions come in save the day and have this all be a learning moment for Wuk Lemet.
@Grinding Gear the only interesting thing about the first half. Each of the quest givers for the rites had traveled with Galool Ja Ja during his journey before he was leader. They can be seen in one of the flashbacks that shows him walking with a group. I think that’s why he sent his children to learn from them.
I think DT was a safe story. The second half was better.
I’m very curious about 2 things, how far ahead the story has been planned and how much they’re going to change based on the mixed to negative reviews so far. Will they stick to their guns with what they already have planned or panic from the bad reception and try to overly course correct kinda thing.
I hope overly course correct.
I just think they can improve in what to focus and present, lore wise there is nothing to change since it all still fits the contexts they created in the other expansions and expand upon it like always, they can just choose what to portray with more or less focus
They might have some ideas for the next 10 years but at the moment they should have already started on the next expansion. Forget which stream it was after DT launch that YoshiP said they have to start planning for their writing boot camp for the next expansion and later plan for the cgi trailer
@@Crownedmoonart Not necessarily. They hadn't set Shadowbringers in stone when they developed 4.4. 4.4 had Varis be vehemently against the Ascian plot, and everything pointed to the next expansion being a journey to Garlemald, where we'd have the Populares + Alphinaud + potentially Varis as inside help. Then in 4.5 all of a sudden Varis is all for the rejoining, completely unexplained, he gets killed "off-screen" in the 5.0 finale, his boss fight gets awkwardly inserted into the Bozja content and we never "really see" him again (Anima I guess)
This much of a shift requires a massive rewrite, and I'm pretty sure they went on record to mention how the decision do to Norvrandt came kind of late into the dev cycle
@@vaan_ I can see why you would think that but I took the change as intentional. It would be more entertaining to players when Varis reveals his plan and we would see him as just the same as the ascians since we are to infer that he doesn't have all the information like we do. They build him up to seem somewhat reasonable only to give it a shock reveal that he's really messed up. I mean who wouldn't be if they grow up with ascians as a dad and counselors lol but they always write some sort of surprise or shocking elements in .4 and .5 patches.
I don't know when you think 4.5 got developed but that seems too quick to write and develop a patch and an expansion that late. Wiki says shb writing started one month after sb came out which is in May 2017 so Yoshida already knew he wanted shb to be in a reflection. 4.4 came out in september 2018 and the first fanfest to announce shb is just two months after that. I remember during the panel where Ishikawa got that standing ovation she showed concept art for Amaurot and the one that was used to model Amaurot to was inspired by the Spiderman game that came out in september 2018. So shb writing should already be set around that time. The writing also needs to be done earlier so that they can give the loc teams time to translate. The recent fanfest Kate did a loc panel and she said they spend the 3-4 months before patch release translating so the japanese text should already be done before then. Voices don't get recorded patch by patch but in multiple patches at once. I know the Japanese voice actors only come in like once or twice a year to record. I remember G'raha japanese VA was a guest in the 2022 14hr stream and has asked Yoshida when G'raha is going back to msq/voiced and Yoshida told him "soon." G'raha didn't have any speaking lines till the last Myths of the Realm raid one year after that since it came out in 6.5 in October 2023! With how little lines G'raha had he probably also recorded DT lines in the same session. And I don't think 8.0 is going to be any different. They are taking whatever feedback they got in the first one or two months after DT launched and adjust the next story as well as they can. Player feedback does make them change their plans. Yoshida didn't plan to end the Hyldaelyn Zodiark story as soon as they did but he didn't want to lose the hype shb gave them that they decided to end that arc with EW
I dont think MSQ will be about Azem's reflections, but more specifically their legacy, what did Azem and their allies do during the final days? Considering the crystal chalice and portal mcguffin, they had a plan and purpose different from Zodiark and Hydaelyn followers, what is their intent and are they related to Preservation and the Milala section of Living Memory?
I'm super curious on azem to begin with so all of these points make me even more intrigued
Did Azem have allies, they always felt more like a solo character?
It is super interesting aspect of the story that Azem didnt support Venat with Hydalyn during Final Days and they were off doing something on their own.
@@Nightly_Winter Considering Hythlhodaeus description in 5.3, Azem would travel the land and help countless folk, they would solve matters of import themsleves without consulting the convocation, to do so they had the help off allies that would heed their call, who' s to say that having defected from the convocation but still having the belief of some people, they tried to do something to save the star/survive the disaster?
Living Memory infuriated me. It feels like such a wasted opportunity. There's a SOMA-esque philosophical question there that they just never bother with. Are they really people without the soul that they've taken for their tech. If they are then are they the same person since they can be modified and set to different parts of their lives etc. On top of that we're doing all these little areas, talking to Wuk's nanny and putting on a play with Otis while we know Sphene is in the background becoming Sphene the reflection destroyer so it just takes away from the urgency of the situation too. It felt like a Dragonball arc and we're just letting the villain power up.
Honestly, I'm not sure about that. I do see WL's point in this arc. It's about how we honour the dead and keep them alive. We normally talk about people remaining alive in our memories after death - "a man's not dead while his name is still spoken." Solution 9 chose to keep the dead alive literally through their holosuite recreation, but the actual memories of them in the living were erased. So we chose to honour them in our memories before shutting down their simulated post-life selves. I agree it did somewhat take away from the urgency of things, but pacing problems are hardly new to the MSQ (see: running around requisitioning a holo-Ascian robe right as we could turn into a lightwarden at any moment, or taking time out during the final days to bring eight randos to a meeting with the Loporrits)
Dawntrail wasn't the beginning of a new story. We did nothing. Our character didn't do jack.
Sure, just skip over everyone realizing that we're not to be messed with. Not to mention the fact that we fight all the baddies once again.
@@TheWheels82 holy cope lmao.
Some things id really like to see:
We will likely see how Zoraal Ja and Sphene's rule affected other reflections. I hope we do.
A true prison arc, not an exile arc. I wanna see the embodiment of freedom and adventure be faced with a prison industrial complex... with how much they tease about the alaoalo islands. I'd love to see a return of statice and kinda have her be a part of a party. From a mechanical standpoint id love to see her kinda be like one of the pods from nier automata. But from a story perspective she is just an interesting character being something that isnt really supposed to exist but does and i find that interesting.
But i really, really, just want new or underrepresented characters. I want to have a crazy party of oddballs. I started playing ff9 and like the hook of the first 30 minutes of the game is that you are a theif group with the goal of kidnapping a princess, in 7 you are a eco terrorist group. I really want a surprising, unexpected group identity going forward. I like how in heavensward you are criminals to the world and id love to see something like that come back. Hell even at the end of dawntrail youre with that one small resistance group. The group of common characters has gotten too bloated
Furthermore, the entire point of the Scions now is that they are in contact, but they are “officially disbanded” and are off doing their own things. However, all are conveniently in Tural, some with better reasons than others, but notably the best reason is Estinien’s because he randomly went there. You would think you could leverage that to justify Scions not popping up for a bit especially for a “smaller adventure”.
^my guess why they dont use much FF7 stuff is, that SE might not allow it.
I’m sorry to hear about your FC member, guys. Life is so short. Faye has a star in the sky over Rak’Tika
Absolute highlights of Dawntrail for me were:
- Wuk Evu
- The dungeon design
- L99 trial. Its music and encounter design redeemed his poor character portrayal prior to it for me
- Solution 9. Just everything about it
- The graphical update
- The music across the board (but f*ck Smile)
- Shaaloani was a true breath of fresh air for me, and I LOVE its BGM
- Vanguard, what a BANGER
- Scenes on the boat ride at the very start, showing the gorgeous lighting effects
- M4
Complete _detractors_ for me were:
- The Hanu zone. I literally considered skipping MSQ entirely when I was there. From ARR to EW, I talked to every single NPC in between every single MSQ step. On TWO characters. Me wanting to skip MSQ shows critical failing in the writing/pacing
- L100 trial. That 'boss' came completely out of left field and I had the fastest disassociation with a media since Tokyo Ghoul season 2. In a vacuum, it's an interesting fight. In context, it made zero sense to me. I noped the hell out of there the second I unlocked it
- Bakool Jaja 'redemption arc', because there was zero indication of him deserving any of it prior to that crazy switch
- ALL of the tribes/peoples were far too _human._ They got a fancy model and a singular cultural aspect, and that was it. Very missed opportunity, especially if this expansion is supposed to do world-building
- M2 needs to be deleted. I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with it if the boss model was based off of Rhyne instead of a femhyur with a midlife crisis. Mechanically the worst encounter in the game for me
- The pacing. There needed to be a lot more combat a lot sooner in the MSQ. The 'two halves' were also painfully disjointed
- The final zone. It had no place in this expansion, especially following Endwalker. We needed something epic and uplifting, not something causing emotional fatigue (for all the wrong reasons). It explored a fear in me I didn't realize I had and strongly contributed to the burnout I'm now in
- Smile
- The expansion following up on Endwalker, rather than being a second starting point for newcomers. It did FAR TOO MANY THINGS WRONG for it to be a second step-in point, but the game needs one at this point. Yoshi disagrees, which ironically makes the expansion worse in context of what came before. I was honestly being fair in seeing it standalone as I played through it, but Yoshi forced me to place it in context
- The _highly convenient plot device_
- Where's the actual world building? ARR did a FAR better job with that. All I saw was Tural explored, some peoples shown, Alexandria explored, the Milala explored, a HIGHLY CONVENIENT plot tool uncovered. ARR built Eorzea, its peoples, the Garleans, the Ascians, Primals, its history (visually in the zones, think Wanderer's Palace, Sirius tower, shards of Dalamud, Crystal tower, etc.) and so much more. Tural feels very limited in that (bearing in mind that ARR has a LOT more regions in comparison)
I've sadly fallen out of love with the game thanks to Dawntrail, because it's the third time in a row it really did my enjoyment dirty. And I HATE that it did...
I have multiple characters too and this is also the first expansion where I started skipping big chunks of cutscenes because I knew nothing of value would be lost. There is so much exposition being spouted at the WoL, without even giving them moments to express an opinion or something about them, it's dull dull dull.
Who is the old lady in Azem Steppe Jesse is talking about?
Temulun?
They had to show off Solution 9 because before that moment everyone had a lukewarm reaction to this new expansion.
Love it so far! For me, overall liked some parts of DT - travelling Tural was my highlight, as I just generally bounce off mixing in too much sci fi. But was invested the whole way regardless. Wanted to touch on the last zone...
To be honest, It did not work for me. The reason isn't even that it's the AI thing - I'm definitely one that could be convinced life is mind and reason - but I thought that in terms of story placement, it was very strange. Like, reality is being threatened and we're indulging this thing at risk of everything, instead of just immediately shutting down the quarters. I liked the moments themselves, but I would have liked to see this main story part play out completely differently.
To be fair each zone in the living memory msq goes really fast, you're always at least moving closer to the terminal with brief stops.
Having that impression is totally fair though, Cahciua saying "Take in the sights! Talk to everyone!" at the start of each area was a bit misleading. Personally her saying that felt more like the devs talking to the player saying 'See the zone we made before it disapears forever.'
Shards of Azem are prone to heroism, not villainy, so it's likely they would share our inclinations and not be our opponents. But as for delving further into who Azem was and what they were doing prior to the sundering? As long as Wuk Lamat plays zero part in that, I'm all for it. For all that this expansion was supposed to be a vacation, I feel like my character has aged 10 years overnight as a result of babysitting her, and we need to be rid of her. And I don't want us to leave her behind for a bit, but forever. She should become a character we visit about as often as Aymeric in the future, which is to say almost never. Also, we already got a very strong hint that Azem's shard in the Thirteenth was the real Golbez, so there's no mystery there.
Honestly, I tend to think the Pandaemonium extra quest is probably just meant to pacify us for how awful Dawntrail was. Either way, even if it's just bait, it's at least good bait. I don't think not moving on from the Scions is about being afraid to try something different. It's more about the bonds that we feel our characters have built with them. Though on the subject of the ancients, they are our past, so it would be fairly impossible to never revisit them imo. They could also do something in the future with Hythlodaeus' parting words of wishing to see us again.
Please don't disrespect Beq Lugg guys, they are neither male nor female. All fae are genderless, remember? Btw, they've added hints about the major plot points in the next expansion since A Realm Reborn. You might know that if you returned to Ul'dah after 2.55, one guard pretty much hinted at Nanamo merely being unconscious. During the cutscene of Yda and Papalymo fighting, in Japanese Yda also mentioned Ala Mhigo, further hinting at it coming after Ishgard.
Venat as Hydaelyn didn't bring the souls back to the Source for fun and games, but rather because having died on the First, their souls would be rejoining that world's aetherial sea and wouldn't be able to be reunited with their loved ones. She didn't do it for us, but for them. As to Minfilia's role, I have a feeling that Hydaelyn may have told her everything about the Final Days. Even if that were not the case though, I expect Hydaelyn would still have told her enough about the sundering for Minfilia to be able to guide both us and Ardbert.
I don't think it's fair to compare Dawntrail to A Realm Reborn. The comparison is deeply unfair to A Realm Reborn because while Dawntrail was supposed to start a new story arc, most of the new characters and settings simply aren't interesting. The story was just bad, poorly paced from start to finish, and Sphene was a far worse character than you could ever claim Lahabrea to have been in his early days. And Wuk Lamat, for a supposed "main character", was clingy, annoying, ignorant and naive to the point of being wholly intolerable. And both Living Memory and Solution Nine felt like such insults to the themes of Endwalker and Shadowbringers about properly dealing with grief and loss. To me, Dawntrail can't be redeemed and I'm simply awaiting the release of patch 7.4 when we'll finally be able to start looking forward to 8.0. Wherever we go next simply can't be as bad as the nonsense we were forced to tolerate in Tural.
I wish you guys had been playing during stormblood because theres info you aren't privy to because of it. Dawntrail is haunted by the sins of stormblood
Where is new big bad? Where is new multi expac story arc? No open questions were left, we solved everything in DT. I'm baffled. Regardless of how good or bad DT was, there is nothing came out of it for long term.
Aerith stamping on flowers and killing sephiroth 😂😂😂😂😂
I think they shot themselves in the foot by bringing the scions in like this.
If they'd not shown up or just Estinien then they could have used it as a jump in point for new players. We know they've been looking for one but here was the best chance and instead they threw in the half assed fan service.
What happened to the Preach reaction video?
ua-cam.com/users/liverg9qV166SnA
The more I’ve thought of it and especially now after 7.1 has dropped…I think it’s a worse ARR. ARR made Eorzea interesting even if its story wasn’t amazing. I honestly couldn’t care a bit about Tulliyollal and the story was kind of a dud.
I have an EPIC tinfoil hat theory that Sareel Ja(far) was actually one of the missing sundered ascians, and has decided that now the unsundered are all gone, he/she is gonna become the only unsundered by forcibly re-joining with there remaining soulshards from the other reflections and to do that they needed access to the key.
We never saw him die, we didn't even see him truly fall, but said ascian wouldn't be able to use that body any more as it would raise too much suspicion, so he/she then bodyhopped into Ketanram's corpse to stay in close proximity to the unfolding events. (Also how much do you want to bet that Ketenram will volunteer to travel to S9 to help look after and offer guidance to King baby in 7.1)
He could then manipulate his way to the 9th to find his shard and re-join and use the existing tech to force open portals to the other shards and pull his other soul shards through to remove there souls (useing a soul regulator) and actually fully re-join.
We'll then have a full unsundered ascian that isn't restrained by the 'morality' of the previous unsundered, that can essentially do whatever they want and go wherever they want, and that's when WE'D need to essentially do the Azemgers Azemble.
Maybe rejoining with our soul shards either willingly or though killing a 'bad' version of us, (can you imagine if we ourselves had been brought up in the Garlean Empire, we'd have been one of there most powerful fighters, between us and Zenos the world wouldn't have had a chance ^^) to become a fully unsundered too in order to stop them.
This is some good cooking, I dig it!
Hiya. Jesse's comments about one of Azem's shards being the bad guy will be epic if WE end up being that guy and the final fight is US as the boss vs our NPC friends. The fight doesn't have a conclusion and the MMO sunsets into Square's next big project. The groundwork for this is laid out already. It's upto the devs to use it or leave it as is.
They were always going to show Solution nine. They never show the final zone, and for a very specific reason, they didn’t show Elpis in Endwalker.
I always figured the lightning sickness is the same as tempering and whatever happened to turn people into sin eaters. Its too much lightning aether and we can fix it with porxies.
I think what I liked about Living Memory the most is that it was the first time I personally felt the whole "carrying the weight of a thousand stars (planets)." Maybe it's because I liked Sphene more than the usual player, but something about the way her story was told made me feel that weight of having to carry the burdens and memory of fallen people.
ff14 needs more 7 and 10 and 10-2 thats all
The more I hear about “the Azemgers” the more I dislike it
Personally I'm just tired of Marvel stuff in general, so that whole concept just doesn't seem appealing unless they do it well (doubtful with the way DT was written).
Furthermore, the way that each expansion has a different tone and things focused upon, this could end up feeling like Riverdale, where the weird setting this time is a comic book multiverse.
I think a lot of people missed the point of Living Memory. It was never supposed to be a "moral quandry", players incorrectly applied that expectation on the zone. The very first NPCs you meet ask you to shut the zone down, and another explains they don't care if its shut down or not they're just happy for the special moments they can share while it lasts.
The point of the zone is to show the different ways to accept death. Wuk accepts death by valuing memories, cherishing what that person (Namika) meant to her. Kirle accepts death by valuing the past, discovering what she can learn about those people (her parents) and their history. And Erenville accepts death by valuing their legacy (his mothers), and carrying on in their footsteps.
Living Memory isn't about trying to overcome death or having to suffer it, it's about accepting it and it's supposed to be cathartic and peaceful. Even for Sphene at the very end, Wuk tells her it's over and we lead her people in her stead. A promise made so that Sphene can accept her own death too.
I don't think people missed what LM was supposed to be, the message is quite clear. However, you can't prevent people from thinking further. The entire zone's impact hinges on you accepting the endless as real people, as if you don't, then the entire experince will feel pointless and will fall flat. If you do, then it is not a large leap to reach the Emet paralels and moral ambiguity.
You also have to consider that nothing exists in a vacum. Topics similar to LM were brough up previously in FF14 and in other media, not to mention irl topics, like euthanasia. Since FF14 has a history of tackling some quite heavy subjects, when you give people the chance to discuss something, they will do so and that usually results in an analysis that goes beyond the surface level message, that the writer wantend to convey.
Wrathion didn't KS,he opened the way to n'zoth.We killed him using heart of azeroth.
I find myself in okaymage's corner about Living Memory. These "memories" can give us closure, have thoughts, can plan a rebellion, can laugh and cry, so on and so forth. Obviously, we shouldn't sacrifice lives to sustain their existence, but I don't like how blase some players were about turning off Living Memory.
The devs have history of trolling in expansion lead up. I remember them calling the sin eater in the trailer for shb WoL fights as “this is innocence that’s very important to the story” 1. It wasn’t innocence and 2. It was the first boss of the first dungeon. Then the whole anima tease for ew being a dungeon boss only when we all thought…Trail Boss! Gotta be. 😂
The problem with pushing out a lot of story elements and seeing what sticks best with the audience is that, to me, it discourages the writers from being daring. The Scions should have been completely wiped out in Endwalker. Dawntrail being a completely new saga should have started with completely new Scions, but we're never going to have that now.
Pacing is always going to be a problem until it is not an mmo anymore.
Wont lie when i got into the time dilation thing i stopped playing. So damn boring. Need to finish it but its so lame
There goes preach again arguing for a white savior narrative