Dawntrail
Smudge and I recently got through the latest Final Fantasy XIV expansion. Once again SquareEnix has done a good job. Considering that this is the start of a brand-new storyline, it can’t have the weight of something had a decade for them to build up to. But, they managed to surprise me again.
(I’m staying light on spoilers here, but there are spoilers ahead, more so as I go on.)
The general setup is a classic.
Gulool Ja Ja united Tural decades ago, and has ruled it well as Dawnservant. He has one son, and two adopted children. Getting old, he is holding contest between the three of them and a fourth claimant to see who will inherit. We have signed up with the third promise, Wuk Lamat to aid her in the contest:
So, this is really her story, and we largely take the role of silent mentor. And the best thing is that this really is given a chance to play out, as we watch her figure out exactly what she wants, and we do get to nudge her a couple times. Meanwhile, we have two rivals who are on the villain track, and one who is friendly. All three are there to provide competing viewpoints, and ones that are not necessarily wrong. At the same time, our two villains contrast each other; while having similarly destructive agendas, they go in different directions, and end up in extremely different places.
The general format given is to follow Gulool Ja Ja’s journey eighty years ago. So, while Wuk Lamat is trying to step out of her father’s shadow, she is literally following in her father’s footsteps. The number of places where this story has the right idea and themes are legion. Sadly, because of the game format, it has trouble really showing itself.
There’s a few problems here. One, these points aren’t really stated strongly enough to come through initially, and there’s no real circling back to dwell on any of it. Still, it’s there. Second, Wuk is never called upon to really defend the convictions she gains through the journey. Learning more about the various cultures inside of Tural is always a straight path to the proper solution, and she never has to judge one against another, or come up with a compromise against conflicting drives.
Given that we have an all-new continent to explore, and this is a pretty big subject, I figured the contest would take up the entire expansion. Instead, we get the third straight switcheroo pulled on us, when we arrive at the gate of the Golden City, and Wuk’s journey is done, just about halfway through.
Another big surprise is that having found the entrance, we turn around and leave, with no apparent way to open the gate.
The second half of course picks up that gun laying not-so-innocently on the mantelpiece. It’s basically a full-on sequel to the first half, and is much darker and violent in tone. This is largely, but not completely driven by Zoraal Ja, our villain from the first half who went ever deeper into classic nihilist FF villain territory, and continues this arc for the rest of the story.
Problem number two is again a contrast to Zoraal Ja; Queen Sphene obviously has something more going on, but she’s reasonable, supportive, and definitely wants to build up, rather than tear down. The tragedy behind all this drives the story to its end, which is itself a contrast to the final zone of Endwalker. There we start in an alien environment, where even the zone music is pure distortion, and slowly find our bearings, people to talk to, and the music follows our journey of discovery.
Here, everything is bright and perfect, with a sad, but beautiful, zone theme. And as we go, the illusion is slowly torn away, and the place becomes lifeless, without even a zone theme at all (at least until after the main story is over).
Endwalker was about depression. Dawntrail is about grief and that moment where you make your way without your parents. And the entire second half of the story does a very good job with that subject. Three different major characters have to deal with this grief and loss. The first half is well constructed with echoes of other parts, but this half gets all the attention because this where all the emotional impact is, and that is handled just as well as it was in Endwalker.
Is Dawntrail‘s story as good as Endwalker‘s? No. Endwalker was the culmination of a story that was a decade in the telling. It would be impossible for this to have the same weight. It’s a new start, and presumably the foundation for the next few expansions. It seems like this is not going to directly lead to more, but there are dangling
On a technical end, there’s even more to be happy with. First off the new zones really do take advantage of the improved graphics engine.
Second off, the new expansion was making me extremely nervous.
The first dungeon of Shadowbringers, Holminster Switch, is a fun dungeon to run, with interesting bosses, that I could handle. Tower of Zot, in Endwalker, was noticeably tougher, not nearly as fun (I find the sequence leading to the final boss a real slog), and I’ve never understood all of the final fight. I’ve been feeling the base ability level of FF XIV go up over the expansions, and I’ve been having a rougher and rougher time trying to keep up.
Thankfully, Ihuykatumu felt more like Holminster Switch, and I didn’t really have any big problems with it. (Well, figuring out how to pronounce the names has been a lot tougher this time.) Overall, I did well with the dungeons, right up to the last one. The first boss was really tough, and I had a lot of problems keeping up with it. I’m not sure if I couldn’t see some of it, or if I was just too mentally overloaded to be able to see it.
At any rate, the pure physical ability needed seems to have largely reset to something a bit more reasonable. That said, the initial wing of the raid series is giving me a headache trying to keep up with, and I have finally had to turn down spell effects to see what was going on. But, I did come out of them in a good mood.
What’s next? I don’t know, but I hope our little fussy bunbun will be along for the ride.
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