My mining retainers can finally go back to bringing back random gear from old content for me to turn in for GC seals for more ventures to continue the endless cycle.
Bonus: my reaction to finally getting the minion after 12 weeks of disappointment:
I’ve been having a lot of thoughts on DT and decided to compile them into a giant fucking essay and post it on the internet because that’s how we all get our enrichment these days lolol
Overall I have mixed feelings about it. It seems like for everything I liked about it, there are just as many I didn’t.
I want to preface this with the fact that I only did MSQ as of this essay and did no side content or side quests aside from the ones needed for aether currents. Also I played the expansion over like a couple weeks in between masters class assignments so my memory could be fuzzy on some things lol if you know a thing that gives more insight to anything, please share! I make this not to slam the new expansion, but to discuss what I did and did not like about it lol
Also like…these are my opinions lol if you thoroughly enjoyed DT and feel it does not have any flaws then maybe idk skip this post bc I'm about to
think critically about media
And my first opinion is this: if it's a problem that has to be solved in MSQ, then its explanations and solutions also have to be addressed in MSQ. If that is not occurring then the writing has failed to inform the player properly.
Again if you find yourself disagreeing on that then maybe this post isn't for you lol
Everything under the cut because uh…how many pages did I write in word? >_>;;
I feel like it started off really good! I loved coming to a new place, learning all the things about it and such. I loved getting to help Wuk Lamat learn and gain confidence in herself! I loved that Thancred and Urianger were there to be cheeky little shites [affectionate] on the other team guiding their own baby ruler. I loved the trials and how they gave different lessons about the different peoples of Tural and how different problems require different approaches [yes I even liked the trading quest. It was funny]. I think Galool Ja Ja is a mad old genius and it was fun to know him, someone who was essentially like us in that he traveled with a band of friends and united a continent in an effort to bring peace to the land. And I was thrilled when the result of the trial was both Wuk Lamat and Koana becoming equal rulers, because they both have two halves of the right idea: love for people and their culture, and forward thinking for innovation to solve their problems.
Honestly, aside from some minor weirdness in the Mamool Ja section, I was so pleased with everything that I found it very sad I did not enjoy the second half of the expac;;
I’ve read a few posts about it now and so has my gf so the following is an amalgam of thoughts that are my own and bouncing off others. I'm both trying to make sense of what disappoints me narratively about it, and what would have made more sense for both me and my WoL
First I’ll get my small critiques of the first half out of the way:
The first a minor thing, but there were odd moments of passivity where the player didn't get to do much. The one I think of the most is when Wuk Lamat has to wrangle an alpaca. It makes sense she has to do this on her own, but why do we as the player have to sit at the campfire and wait? We could have played as Wuk Lamat to do it like we do when she confronts Bakool Ja Ja. Hell, maybe it might have been a really funny sequence, too! I don't mind taking a backseat as the WoL here, but I do mind taking a back seat as a player. I suppose you can argue it's because we need to have a bonding moment with Erenville, but this scene could still have easily occurred anyways.
Most of what I don't think feels right has to do with the Mamool Ja section. Now, my memory's not perfect here, but my understanding is that they have had to dwell in the lower forested area for a while? At least it sounded like they had an age-old conflict with the Xa'brun, so more than a few generations. In that context it feels...a little oof to have to come in and help them figure out how to grow food down there. Maybe I'm not remembering when the meteors struck? Because if it was recent then this makes sense and is not as weird, but otherwise its a bit awkward;; [to say the least;;]
As for the second half:
I think generally, a thing that would have helped is to keep the threat local. After Endwalker, it feels...maybe unwise to continue to escalate the stakes. I don’t need world-ending threats. I already did that. Or at the very least I need a break from them lol we just finished saving the Star, settling any sort of unrest on one continent would have been a fun little jaunt in comparison. I understand not a lot of people would have enjoyed that or felt this would have been a step back. But I feel that trying to take the shonen route of continuously upping the stakes tends to run the risk of ridiculousness. I mean we just finished defeating the literal embodiment of despair trying to end all life as we know it because supposedly there is only pain and suffering in life anyways. Do you keep trying to figure out more world ending stakes from there? Or do you look for different kinds of stakes? Maybe some wouldn't have felt the latter was "worthy" or "challenging" enough for their WoL, and I'm not against having some other big threats happen. I just need more time and build up from that lol. There's a reason you need your "beach episode".
The second half of DT also felt extremely jarring. I know the reality of it was there were three main writers working together on the whole thing [far as I know outside looking in], but what it felt like was one person wrote the rite of succession half, and then handed it to a completely different person to write the second half of the story. And while the first half felt really solid, the second half was highly disjointed and uninterested in the WoL or their friends. It felt much too focused on its own ideas to consider them in fact, which is...a choice, for a long form RPG where lots of the player base is pretty invested in them by now. Hell at this point I wonder if someone completely different higher up the chain looked at the first draft and went “too small, make it bigger” and thus the writers had to make sudden changes to an otherwise solid narrative. Something to look into I guess.
Again, I loved the first part, and I think the writing there felt really good! It makes sense for the WoL to be a guiding hand and a mentor to Wuk Lamat, Thancred and Urianger were playing the same roles for Koana. "What is it you want to do?", "What do you think is important?", "I think your ideas are great and I support them", "This is your country and your people, tell me what you need, and I will help you make it happen". It would have been inappropriate for us to step in any more than we did. [although I do think it wooouuuld have been nice for the WoL to come in just to ensure Wuk Lamat and Bakool Ja Ja had a one-on-one bout for realsies. Or! Have a great moment where the WoL makes to do so, and Wuk Lamat be like "No...I have this *glint*", in fact forget my first suggestion, that would have been amazing]
But if we are going to make a world ending event happen, then this is where the WoL needs to take charge again. And I don't mean that Wuk Lamat and Koana and the other major players shouldn't have been involved, this is their home and their Star too. What I mean is that the WoL should have had that moment to take the reins and guide them through it, because this is unfamiliar territory for them, but it is our bread and butter [more on this later]
Related to this I… don’t like the Azem magicial maguffin item that has fallen into our laps;;
Don’t get me wrong, I actually think its brilliant and in fact, fucking hilarious that Krile’s people yeeted themselves out of the source to avoid possible extinction due to a calamity. The idea is great, I just…have problems with its execution. I feel this story point would have been stronger if it was done through their own prowess or technology. The how of it doesn’t even have to matter right now because it was long ago enough that the methods could have been lost to time, or only have the tiniest bit of clues for our local prospective world hopper Y’Shtola to fiddle with. [speaking of that it does create an awkwardness of Krile’s soul being 2-3 steps lighter than everyone else's which presumably Y’Shtola would have noticed, which Krile herself even states early on, but that's another thing for later]
The issue is that making this exodus happen because of an item with Azem’s symbol on it actually creates more questions than answers and not in a good way. We don’t actually know right now how much contact Azem had with Venat post Zodiarc forming, but generally speaking it does not make sense for Azem [or anyone really] to have created a item to world hop between the shards, because the shards did not exist in the time frame that this item would have been made. The only way this item works then is if someone else made it and slapped the Azem symbol on it, just as our Azem crystal was. Otherwise the writing has to walk it back and say it has a different primary function, it can just also be used for reality bridging lol
But I also don’t like the maguffin because I don’t actually want to world hop with ease. We had extraneous contrived ways we were able to access the 1st and the 13th shards, and that’s great! It’s not supposed to be easy! It’s supposed to be a whole thing, because the magic used to create this world state in the first place required the power of a fucking god. And while I don’t think accessing the maguffins power will be done quickly or easily, I don’t want an item to let me do the thing in an identical manner going forward. It feels…like a gimme. [Or rather a “give her”, I am again surprised Y’Shtola hasn’t been all over this yet but it's probably because the writers don’t want to let her more on that later]
Ok now is when I am going to get the most critical because I feel like everything goes literally off the rails the second we're done with helping to fix them lol This is one part Everything to do with Alexandria/unknown shard, one part lack of character writing for WoL/Scions, one part Zoraal Ja's missing back story, and one part wtf with Sphene.
There first two points I feel are kind of intertwined, as almost everything weird about this shard mostly comes around to "why where the WoL/Scions suddenly mute on everything they are seeing". It's pretty clear that this shard was being led to a calamity by ascian activity. We just have a lack of ascians to verify this at the moment. The results are easy to see by our surroundings and the state of the world. The things that stick out to me the most are the Levin Sickness, and of course the...soul munching :'>
The Levin sickness is described as an imbalance of lightning aether, so much so that the person afflicted is in a torpid state most of the time in severe cases. But an imbalance of an aether element in a person is how tempering is described, so...why do we not bring up the fact that we know how to cure that? Even if they wanted to write in a reason for it to not work the same, the fact that Alisae is right there and has that ability, and doesn't say anything is extremely out of character for her. It's like they forgot how desperately she tried to find this cure in the first place [its a big part of her character development in fact].
But the elephant in the room has to be the use of souls as both fuel to keep people alive and a currency. I think the idea was to build in the rest of the story, where you first had to learn about a culture and understand it before making judgments but uh...I'm sorry but eating the souls of the dead is a really hard sell out the gate. Even if we hadn't been to the aetherial sea to like, witness all that, this is a hard sell. But the thing is we actually have like, been there. We saw that souls travel to a place where-after they are reborn later. And maybe I didn't understand this right, but the implication then is that those souls used for life force don't get to be reborn. I guess this point is slightly less abhorrent if the Alexandrians don't know this, and this could be the case maybe? It's never brought up. We also never bring it up! Why don't we tell people that we've seen what happens when people die?! I mean maybe they wouldn't have believed us [understandable], but it’s weird that we don't say it!
The idea of using the souls of the dead is I think, the most workable if the culture is of a mind of: when you’re dead you’re dead and nothing special happens afterwards. No afterlife, nothing, the body decays the aether disperses, that’s it. Perhaps this is clearer in the sidequests?? But if that’s truly how they view death, then it should have been touched on in MSQ. I would say this is what the function of Living Memory is but…it doesn’t seem to be a place the Alexandrians are widely aware of, nor is the concept of an Endless at this point. So their continued mantra about their dead always being remembered, while they are currently forgetting about them all the time, rings a bit hollow. They can only remember them after the fact of living the rest of their life to the point of death IF they become an endless. Which maybe the point was always to make all the Alexandrians endless [fuck;;;] but I think if it was written that the populous knew they’d go to an unending heaven place where all their memories and loved one were waiting for them, it might have made a lot more sense.
After looking at this post/reddit thread though, it seems that the main culprit for this sticking point is possibly that the EN translations were unclear on this issue??? And that some of the souls do pass on to the aetherial sea, just that many of them keep being recycled into the system? If so this does make the cast's reactions to the whole thing slightly less weird, but goddamn they should have stated this more clearly then. Because my presumption otherwise is that they are essentially erasing souls from existence or that they just never get the opportunity to be reborn in order to preserve the currently living, both of which elicit a wholly different reaction vs they'll get there eventually just not right now and possibly not for several hundred years. Which like, is still halting gears in a natural cycle, but it isn't breaking the machine outright by yanking the pieces out. Still a little fucky though? To be honest? For those souls that by chance keep getting shuffled about instead of getting reborn.
Actually another thing I am just remembering too is we never really address the whole like…deeply unethical methods Alexandrian scientists used to get to this level of precision in separating soul from memory and the effects of using the separated souls. We encounter it for a brief moment as we move through the facility to fight Zoraal Ja and it’s kind of hand waved in this moment. Which I get time is of the essence here but then yeah it wasn't discussed. Maybe it will be in the lead up to the next expansion? But that will not be for a while. And I don't like that.
Zoraal Ja is another strange point in here.
I remember reading a great analysis about the beginning of the Rite of Succession, how each of the siblings are extremely reflective of their birth order. And for Zoraal Ja, this idea of him being an expansionist falls in line with this well. Most things he has going for him are because he's his father’s son, to surpass his father is to move out of his shadow and become something more. For this he needs to either outdo his father or find different ways to outshine him. So, gaining new territories and new victories [since he’s the most martial of the bunch and doesn’t want to use his cunning for other things?] falls in line with this. And honestly...if that’s all he did I feel like the story would have been more solid for it.
But from the beginning also, he keeps mentioning this need for him to make the people know how terrible war is? To know what suffering is so that they will beg for his rule?? Where does this idea come from??? As far as we know the boy grew up in peacetime, so there's not much to suggest he's had hardship aside from the pressure of being a miracle baby. At first I thought maybe something had happened to his still not mentioned mother during Endwalker, when anyone succumbing to despair could have become a monstrosity. [an entire tangent and a half for another day btw, no one…mentions the Star going out of whack a short while ago??] But this is never referenced...soooo...where does this motivation come from? Honestly at one point I theorized that maybe he'd actually been a wish-baby by Galool Ja Ja at the golden city but he'd been born with the soul of someone else from the golden city who'd gone through immense suffering in a war and this was why he was…like that. It just...seems an incredibly far reach for him to think this way. The only thing I can think of at this point is that he's pissed off about it being peace time so he has to find ways to cause conflict just so he can prove himself better than his father? But if that's the way it wasn't very clear.
Finally...Sphene.
There's a lot wrong here I feel, but it's not really to do with the concept of the character, rather all the writing around her. It is interesting to have an AI with a benevolent ruler’s personality that was made to help ensure the love and safety of a kingdom. A terrible idea really, but an interesting one to play with in fiction lol the program has been around for I think 1000 years so it makes sense for this figure to feel eternal and well loved…if you're…into monarchies, I guess. But AI Sphene from the beginning is sus as fuck. In hindsight this is because it can only do what it's directive and the limiter of the personality programing can agree on, but as a person meeting another person, there is little reason for us to trust her. It gets presented as sort of a red herring at first, is she or isn't she a good person? It tries to convince us to assist in its directive by running us through a similar process as in the first half of the game. We learn about Alexandria and its people, and you know they're fine, except for...everything that happened because of the cataclysm, and the definitely normal but only been happening for the last 1000 years soul eating. It is a culture that fears death in the most extreme way possible, but they're chill.
And at this point it’s clear that AI Sphene is to be a foil of Wuk Lamat. Which makes sense given how much they both want to ensure their people’s happiness. The problem mostly arises the second we understand that Sphene is not a person. So...why do we keep treating her as such afterwards? I can understand if Wuk Lamat is not familiar with a lot of tech, that’s not her forte, but it is for some of us in the group. Who are also...just ignoring that bit?? Like if we needed to stop and explain to her what a program is like we did the reflections and such, why didn't we? I know she might not have got it fully, but again, weird that we all just carried on like the program was something that could be reasoned with. Especially if it’s at the point where massacre of anyone not in its kingdom was perfectly acceptable for it. And just...even if Sphene was real, she is no longer a good person at this point. People who love their country and their people, but are completely fine with killing others to ensure their own survival exist in this world. We know those are not good people. We have named them before, it’s just genocide masquerading as nationalism. Which is why it’s baffling and frankly infuriating that the characters are written to carry on like the program is a good person continuously after this point.
A lot of people have been making the comparison to Emet Selch and Amourot and it’s a fair and good one to make, they mirror each other well. I think the reason Emet works and Sphene doesn’t comes right back around to the writing. We as the WoL have a history with the Ascians, we know what they are up to long before Emet arrives, and when he does, we are rightfully suspicious of his intentions. Also, he is an asshole, and we are allowed to be an asshole back to him, because he deserves it lol. After knowing him and arguing back and forth for probably a few weeks’ time, we kill him. We do it because he will kill us otherwise, as he does not value or see us as people, and he is only redeemed long after this fact. The reason people like Emet is partly in this and partly because his narrative is one of tragedy: the man he was would have hated the man he became, and our once friend in a past life became our enemy. Also he’s…a real person, but I digress.
To me the reason Sphene the program doesn’t work is because we have for some reason, decided to make Wuk Lamat the main decision maker throughout the second half. This isn’t a criticism of Wuk Lamat, she is going through the narrative according to her character. Our beautiful baby ruler is hopeful, and at the onset, presuming to broker a peace as an ambassador of her people. She is operating in the mode of “learn first, ask after”, because it’s worked for her before. And she so wants to believe in the good in people, and we love her for that!
But she’s now up against something entirely different and the WoL and Scions are bafflingly mute on it. We didn’t become Wuk Lamat’s mentor to teach her to be the next WoL to carry our mantel, we did it to help her carry her fathers. Like Thancred and Urianger for Koana, our service to Wuk Lamat ended the moment she became the Vow of Resolve. So what needed to happen at this point is for Wuk Lamat and the WoL/Scions operating on equal terms as allies, rather than continuing to defer to her. Like our relationships to Hien and Rauhban, and so on, we defer to them when it comes to the citizenry and decision making on a nation level, but when it comes to world-ending shit they leave it to us. And honestly one of the first things we should have done is be like “Wuk Lamat you have known that girl for 5 hours and she’s outright stated she will kill literally everyone in the universe just so save like 500,000 of her own. I don’t think this one can be saved. Believe me I’ve seen it before. Also that’s not a girl it’s a robot”
Because the reality this is a perfect storm, and the only wrench in it is that WoL/Scions are present. Here's where I wax poetic as an “old”. The conversation between the characters of the Spene program and Wuk Lamat, is actually perfect and reflective of a lot of issues we're dealing with today. “Sphene” is someone who cares deeply about her own, she is a kind person who visits terminal kids and brings them flowers….and this same person is perfectly willing to sacrifice anyone outside her circle for her own. She does not care about other people actually, just the ones important to her. But she does it with this with a cute twirl and a smile, so it’s disarming. If you ask her directly she won't say she'll throw others under the bus for her owns sake, but she will still do it. This kind of person exists and is incredibly dangerous, especially to those who are not familiar with it, like Wuk Lamat.
When you have never encountered this sort of person, you struggle to see how these two conflicting views can work together. It’s actually fucking brilliant writing in that sense, because the fact that “Sphene” is a program with conflicting goals creates a perfectly logical way for this to work! The program has its main objective-the continued survival of its people aka Alexandrian citizens. It has its limiter, the memory data of Sphene, who was a kind person that desired peace and unity. This is why “Sphene” acts kindly and loving to her own people, but is equally ruthless when it comes to anyone outside this sphere. It’s “necessary” for their survival, and it “cannot” be changed, because “Sphene” literally cannot fathom other solutions. Real people who are like “Sphene” are able to do this too, they compartmentalize so that the narrative works in their own mind, and they cannot change this mindset unless challenged by outside pressures. Wuk Lamat’s struggle to logic out that the Sphene program is still a good person despite this echos a lot of real life people trying to figure it out.
And if it was just Wuk Lamat vs “Sphene” this would work. But the WoL and the Scions are there too, and they have seen it before. They watched it time and time again through their conflict with the Garleans and the Ascians. So the fact that no one speaks up about this repeating pattern unfolding is…bad. The writing wants so badly to put this point across that it has to pretend these other characters have suddenly gone brainless to do it. Any if not all of them should have spoken up to help Wuk Lamat in this moment, not just as a newfound ruler, but as her friends. So again the player is made to take a back seat while watching events unfold, only this time it's about 1,000 times more frustrating than waiting for Wuk Lamat to wrestle an alpaca. I’m glad in the end Wuk Lamat understood the problem was not solvable with peace, but I feel dissatisfied with my part in it because I should have been able to say something before we got to this point.
Where I feel DT is its strongest is in its writing about family, as well as its themes about death and grief. The writing around the Dawnservant and his children, their relationships with each other, the writing around Erenville and his mother, and even the brief segment with Krile and her parents, are all really good!
The bond between Koana and Wuk Lamat I feel is without question, it's the easiest to understand. Between the fact that they’re adopted alongside Zoraal Ja, Wuk lamat’s relationship with Nakkia, and their earnest attempts to connect with Galool Ja, there is a lot of love in that family to have beyond blood and it's great to see!
But the writing shines so, so well between Erenville and Cacuia too. It was incredibly relatable to watch them struggle with their differences and similarities. Evernville’s growing frustrations while Cacuia continues to not just be work focused, but just go along her merry way in general while they BOTH decide ultimately not to address their issues until the very end- that is a very real and relatable familial experience for a lot of people [myself included lol]. Even Krile’s little awkward moment with her parents that she’s never met before is so on point I want to die of secondhand awkward. Bonus points of G’Raha being the one to fix it, because he’s like family to her and knows just what to do!
It’s weakest point here is in regards to Zoraal Ja and Galool Ja Ja sadly, but I think this is more to do with the fact that there just seems to be a missing piece of Zoraal Ja’s story in general?? There’s a suggestion of tension between the two, as Galool Ja Ja says something to the effect that he is the source of Zoraal Ja’s anger, but it's not explained beyond this.
And while the writing around the soul usage and the memory uploading is a bit clunky [to say the least], the idea of the Endless and Living Memory itself is also quite good. It's a wish fulfillment fantasy really, not just in the idea of avoiding death, but in avoiding what death takes from us. The goals left undone and the things left unsaid. Wouldn't it be nice if death wasn't the end and we could do all the things we wanted and speak the words we needed when we didn't get the chance before? It would be nice…but it can't be that way. It's not how things are meant to be, and to do otherwise is to lose value in living life while you have it. There's a bittersweetness to the whole concept, and as someone who's lost older relatives to stroke and Alzheimer’s and had to comfort my brother at their wake reminding him that this is why we must value the time we have with those still with us…let's just say the Nakkia part hit home.
I know this already so long, but here’s some other random shit I thought about while writing this but doesn't fit in the overall story discussion well before I close out:
The Scions themselves feel…almost like they are here because someone thought we’d be mad if they weren’t. And don’t get me wrong I’m glad they are here, but it feels like a bit of a stretch for some. Alphie, Alisae and Krile make perfect sense, they have reasonable motivations for coming along. In the case of Urianger and Thancred I’m mostly just mad we never actually got to fight lmao. Estinien…well I guess he is a wandering hobo just short of being an adventurer himself [affectionate]. And then by the time G’Raha and Y’Shtola arrive its like “oh finally! Are they going to like…actually get to do stuff though at this point?” and the answer is…kinda. They get to be the answers people. Again it mostly comes around to the second half being…ehhh??? The fact that we had to write out a reason to keep several of them out of the golden city was a little telling. Not like Alisae was being allowed to do anything as it was =7=; [I know I keep looking at her expectantly specifically but it's because she tends to be the most outspoken when things are nonsensical lol]
Who the fuck was Galool Ja's mom? Where IS Zoraal Ja's mom?? Hell we also meet Wuk Lamat's birth father but where is her birth mother??? I know she's got Nakkiah, that’s not the point! She just doesn’t exist! Koana's the only one that has an explanation on why his are missing. WHAT IS THIS DISNEY BULLSHIT, anyways-
Maybe a minor note but also the Echo was used...hardly at all? This isn't as much a hard criticism as just puzzlement. I know as a narrative tool, something like the Echo is a thing to be used sparingly. Usually they use it to "show don't tell" a thing we need to know but were not witness to [or as a flashback], and it makes sense that for really learning about new cultures that we wouldn't really want this right now. But I remember thinking "wow, been a while since we did this" when it finally happened. And it stuck me that like, this usually would have happened at least once or twice before this point. I'm surprised we never had it to gain insight to Zoraal Ja like Krile seemed to, or honestly, the second after Bakool Ja Ja fled after defeat from Wuk Lamat would have been a prime moment. And yet it did not happen. It almost feels like the writers either forgot about the Echo for a while, or simply deliberately avoided it to the point of its absence feeling unusual. Both are...hmm.
I’m sure I will think of other things later but this is already horrendously long so maybe it’s best to leave it at this and tack on other points later. In the end I mostly ruminate on all of this because previous expansions were more satisfying or more tightly written. Some of them had their issues, HW had some pacing problems with the Ul'Dah stuff and Stormblood had some awkwardness in pacing throughout, but on the whole I found these expansions fun and satisfying anyways. I don't ask that the game be doing a 10/10 all the time. It just can't lol but I do want the plot to make to at least make sense in its own rules and by the characters in it. If the characters in your story suddenly have to behave differently for your message to work, then changes need to be made to your story. Whether this means changing things about your plot, or creating situations to keep certain elements from disrupting it. And it seems that they went with the latter, but in the most ham-fisted ways possible sadly. Hopefully things will straighten out when the story picks up for the eventual continuation of the story.
