Dissecting the Disaster That is the Main Story Quest of Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail Part 1
The Rite of Succession was Dull, Derivative and Tedious
Needless to say from the title, I did not enjoy the story of Dawntrail. It’s derivative, non-sensical, horribly paced and extremely badly written. Notably, this does not apply to the battle content thus far which is fantastic and a great bounce back from some very mediocre battle instances from Endwalker. Below I’ll be breaking down why the Dawntrail MSQ struggles so much and how Final Fantasy XIV can break out of its sudden story tailspin since the beginning of Endwalker’s patch content.
Spoilers ahoy all over the place for all Final Fantasy XIV MSQ content and general Final Fantasy tropes seen throughout the series. Specific spoilers (will be marked in sections to avoid if necessary) for Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy IX.
Surface Level… What went wrong?
The first half of the expansion containing a Rite of Succession competition for the throne of Tural called the Dawnservant was boring with a long and unfulfilling quest to assist the main character of this expansion Wuk Lamat obtain the throne.
The villains with one notable exception were badly written and one note cartoonish villains. On its own that isn’t a problem except this game has done so much better with previous villains that the standards are much higher.
Main character Wuk Lamat is on screen way too much to the detriment of other characters throughout the narrative.
The last two zones where the story picks up do a great disservice to previous source material from Final Fantasy IX where it is based on. The entire point of Final Fantasy IX’s story (in my opinion the best story in the series) is missed on multiple levels and even where it hits, it does so in an uneven way because of terrible pacing.
Some of the twists and turns are written in an illogical way where there way clear potential but the writing and pacing lets it down so the payoff to those twists is either rushed or unearned.
Going Deeper Part 1 - Why the Rite of Succession Didn’t Work
The Rite of Succession seems like it should be a relatively easy thing to write. A biological child, two adopted children and a champion of battle who earned his way into the competition via his strength and to give the competition an air of legitimacy beyond just the outgoing Dawnservant’s children is on the surface a strong cast. Allowing each to have a group of retainers to use or get help from allows for the rest of the cast to fit into the story. So what the heck happened?
At this point Final Fantasy XIV’s rigid story structure that we have seen in every expansion starting with Heavensward in 2015 and continuing through Stormblood, Shadowbringers and Endwalker lets the game down by forcing certain things into certain spots and starting the myriad pacing problems.
Every expansion has had an early split in the story where there are two sections in different areas that can be completed in either order. In theory, this is fine as FFXIV is a MMORPG and must take server needs into account. Practically, it means that the narrative can get jumbled or can become derivative unless in the hands of a strong writer. In the case of Dawntrail, derivative was the way it went. Even that can be overlooked except there was a notable lack of battle content in these first two areas and both areas were packed with exposition and longwinded writing with little voice acting meaning a significant amount of reading what amounts to boring dialogue in a sometimes difficult to process visual novel format (had this been a book, it would have been four very boring chapters and most likely would have just put the book down never to return).
At the split I went to Urqopacha first and then to Kozamau’uka second. I wish I had gone the other way as the Kozamau’uka story was much more compelling to sell the early part of the story. In it we see Wuk Lamat and the party (including the Warrior of Light, aka the player character, being mentioned by me for the first time in this nearly 700 words into this) solve a problem about crops not growing for some reason. Seeing how the party accomplishes the task in comparison to the other throne contenders was interesting and drew a sharp contrast about the methods and reasoning behind all the contenders.
In Urqopacha, we get an absolutely ridiculous story about having to tame a wild alpaca. Each of the other throne contenders does so in easy fashion or off screen. Wuk Lamat on the other hand has an irrational fear of Alpaca’s and has to obtain an item to help her by obtaining a high end mezcal for a local trader. Except we start with a flimsy small item and must work with an aspiring local trader to negotiate through a variety of items to eventually get something of value to trade for the mezcal. Reminder that Wuk Lamat is part of the royal family and is traveling with the player character, a person who has saved the world multiple times over and also has amassed a small fortune of money over the course of the player’s adventures throughout the game to this point. It’s just filler for filler’s sake and a terrible idea that defies logic.
From here we get to the first dungeon. In the previous two expansions, the first dungeon has had an overwhelming affect on the story, picking up from similarly slow starts (but notably more engaging than Dawntrail). In Shadowbringers, we saw a woman who we had seen transformed into a Sin Eater now fighting against us as we have to kill her and we get the first major story advancement after that via killing the first of six Lightwardens that were causing eternal light to show over that world. In Endwalker, we are on a rescue mission to help find a scientist who has been kidnapped and held along with many others of her race in a special tower built to drain their life force. In Dawntrail, we get an alternate route to avoid storm damage that has blocked our path to the next destination. Except we run through the dungeon after our boat is damaged, go in a big circle in the dungeon and then continue up river on the boat as while we were in the dungeon our remaining party members who didn’t join the fight have fixed our problem. In other words a pointless dungeon with no significance whatsoever that existed just because we needed a dungeon in that spot.
The pattern described above is then repeated for two more regions. We go to a region. We talk to the local people. We resolve the problem while dealing with a story twist. Maybe we’ll do a dungeon or a trial (after the first one those have more story significance). The villains will get in the way and be dispatched. And we’ll complete our goal. Mostly without combat and with a metric ton of dry, boring reading. But we’ll cover the villains of this story and their various shortcomings in Part 2 on Monday.