giving some scattered impressions about dawntrail's full story here past the break
They're certainly not lacking for narrative ambition with this one, though cohesiveness is maybe at its lowest here.
Wuk Lamat is a problem. Not in the sense that she's ostensibly the main character instead of you, that's something I'm fine with (I mentally gag whenever the characters do their routine worshiping of me). It's that her arc is 95% complete by the halfway mark and the writers struggle to find ways to tie her into the buckwild pivot back into heavy spiritualistic sci-fi themes in the last third of the story.
Speaking of that. It's understandable that they might have a hard time fitting the incredibly high-concept ideas of Alexandria at any point of XIV's story, so maybe the thinking was that it wouldn't be too overwhelming while you're in a low-stakes bottle episode for the past 3 zones. But it's hard to overstate how much of a leap it is to go from "coming of age story in a low-tech setting about learning from what your ancestors left behind" to "turbo future computer world where everyone skipped forward 30 years and the royalty are obsessed with conquering death at any cost".
Both distinct halves of the story are good on their own, but they each only have just half of the story to fit everything in. This leads to problems like the three other Promises being underdeveloped characters, Sphene not getting a ton of build-up as an eleventh-hour antagonist, and just getting a lot of whiplash in the level of stakes here. Going from "taco making contest" to "the most filler-y cowboy story about a corrupt sheriff" to "soul-harvesting genocide by a robot army" all in the span of about 8 hours are hard narrative beats to weave together even at the best of times.
So, kinda the same problem Endwalker had with noticeably disparate halves, though at least this time it isn't bearing the weight of trying to meaningfully cap off a decade-long story arc.
I was actually enjoying just cruising through the slower hours of that first half. I played relatively slowly, taking in each of the neat little cultural backstories of the regions. I really did not want to just mega-binge the whole thing like I've seen other people doing and I'm glad I took my time somewhat with it. But then you get to Heritage Found and it's a lot harder to maintain that easygoing pace of play when suddenly the stakes are ramped back up to near Endwalker levels.
(it was a little funny when Zarool Ja sends in the troops for the second time to get absolutely demolished by the cast calling in a quick favor, guess they didn't want that narrative tension to keep hanging around)
Once you have adjusted to that sudden shift in the story, you get to see the writers go totally bonkers with the new setting. Solution 9 was already a full-on shift into some downright vrchat-level hangout world vibes, but then afterwards you get to Living Memory, easily the most emotionally evocative environment the game has ever had.
A year of HRT might have made a difference here, but the whole idea of Living Memory pulled on my heartstrings far more than Ultima Thule. Maybe because there was never a real sense in the latter that the characters were actually going to die and so you're mostly just a tourist to a cosmic graveyard. Whereas Living Memory is effectively one long string of having to literally and metaphorically pull the plug on characters who are important to the main cast but each recognize the importance of letting go rather than clinging to perpetual existence at the expense of others. Having players turn the lights out district-by-district on one of the most beautiful environments in all of MMOs is a serious commitment to narrative fulfillment and I applaud the choice.
As for the gameplay, though…
I really, really wish that the story of these expansions was just a handful of hour-long cutscenes that you can sit and watch, then take the wheel for the dungeons and trials. Those are where the game absolutely shines with some of the most polished encounter design of any MMO out there, those are an absolute treat to play.
The main story and world quests are fucking dire though. This has always been a problem for the game, but I think the supreme disappointment of FFXVI was realizing that this is their actual design intention and not just the consequences of engine restrictions. I think WoW and GW2 lean towards the other extreme of just fight, fight, fight with thin narrative justification for any of it, but those are games I go to for actually playing them. At this point, XIV is more of an elaborate visual novel dollhouse simulator where you get to dress up your little man before they go on stage.
This is slightly more tolerable thanks to now being able to be a big lion woman inside of a video game. But I would seriously welcome an overhaul of the questing design towards more hands-on play, rather than the most monotonous tasks imaginable sandwiched between story scenes that could use some serious trimming down. There are several moments of DT's story where the narrative pacing screeches to a halt because you have to stop and talk to numerous NPCs in a large zone, twice even in one egregiously irksome instance where the story desperately needed to move along.
XIV continues to be a game of stark peaks and valleys. In some ways I respect it for continuing to be this way in an industry where major game releases are increasingly terrified of losing your attention for even a minute. These days though, I'm finding my ability to stomach this level of tedium is reaching a breaking point. I really hope this dev team starts to interrogate the design template they've been following for the past 5-6 years.