Good Morning Folks! I took a bit of a break this week as I worked my way through the Dawntrail expansion Main Story Quest. I decided to just pause my blog posts until I had finished because I did not really want to discuss this expansion piecemeal. First I feel like we need to talk about the journey leading up until this point. Endwalker was released in December 2021 and represented the culmination of a ten-year journey the Warrior of Light has made since the bungled launch of the game in 2010 and relaunch in 2013. It felt like the awkwardly named “Creative Business Unit III” stuck the landing and apart from a few sour notes… gave us the finale to this series that we all wanted and deserved. Zenos can still fuck the hell off, but that is a rant for another day.
The challenge with Dawntrail is that honestly, I was uncertain I would be playing it. I had thought I was ready to say goodbye to this franchise as it had given me everything that I had wanted. Dawntrail is a new beginning and ultimately will be looked upon to set the pace for the next ten years, and I was uncertain how well anyone could do with the challenge of a clean slate. Last night I finished the Main Story quest and completed all of the expert dungeons, and I have to say it feels like Yoshi P and crew managed to pull off a miracle. Dawntrail is a deeply weird expansion, but it is no less compelling than anything we have gotten to this point and should blaze a trail for the new role that the Warrior of Light plays in the coming years.
The first ten years of Final Fantasy XIV were unequivocally the hero’s journey of the Warrior of Light. It was our tale being told as we begin humbly and arise to the stature of being one of the most powerful beings on our star. Dawntrail is not our story. If Dawntrail were Highlander we would be Ramirez, not Connor MacLeod. If Dawntrail were Star Wars we would be Obi-Wan Kenobi, not Luke Skywalker. We’ve had our tale and are now helping out others as they build their own legacy. This is potentially going to rub some players the wrong way, but it felt so perfectly crafted to me playing through it. Much of this game centers around Wuk Lamat a young uncertain Warrior who has set forth to prove herself because she has to for the good of her people. We are her mentor and as a result, we are not actually the person driving most of the story.
The sights that we see and the battles that we tackle are no less spectacular than anything we have experienced to date. We are very much the elder statesman, lending our gravitas to the cause of others and it feels fitting. We are not about to languish in retirement… we are an adventurer after all first and foremost. We will see the world and help those who we can along the way, and occasionally it will mean teaching someone else how to stand on their own two feet and be confident in the face of certain destruction. Because of this, it feels like we are playing an even more important role in the fate of our star than being the sole savior figure who can accomplish great things. The challenge I think is that Dawntrail is as meaningful as it is… only because I experienced the last ten years worth of content and felt like I successfully completed my own hero’s journey.
Do I think Dawntrail was perfect? Absolutely not. It feels like they listened to the wrong people and made a good deal of content that large swaths of the player base are going to struggle to get through. I figure there will be rounds of nerfs to bring things back in line with the rest of the content in the game, which should help those who struggle. Do I think Dawntrail is a good first step out into a new journey… absolutely. I am curious where we go from here and what becomes of our fledgling group of “not-Scions”. There are some aspects I probably would have seen play out differently. I would say the first half of Dawntrail is perfect… no notes are needed. The second half of Dawntrail lingers a bit too much for my taste and becomes more visual novel than MMORPG. I am still not entirely certain what I think about the final “zone” of the game… but hopefully subsequent patch content will color my feelings.
Dawntrail succeeded massively in being this love letter to Central and South America and I am here for it. I am happy to see Final Fantasy XIV branch out into brand-new themes, and I am very interested to see what other new areas of Eorzea we discover in the coming expansions. I am also largely happy with our role in the new scheme of things, as a helper rather than the de facto leader. Hopefully, in the coming weeks, some patches will sand off the rough bits around the edges and Dawntrail will set itself up as one of the better expansions. I think right now in my current mindset I would rank the content like this:
- Shadowbringer – This is still the best expansion
- Endwalker – A great Expansion but benefits from wrapping up the entire journey.
- Dawntrail – A promising new beginning.
- A Realm Reborn – Especially in its current state I feel like it is amazing.
- Heavensward – Good but I don’t like Ishgard.
- Stormblood – Largely solid but has some deeply disappointing notes.
So while I don’t consider Dawntrail the best thing ever, I feel like it is on solid footing given that there are none of the expansions that I would consider “bad”. I’ve tried to keep things spoiler-free as best I could other than talking about some general themes. If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines of Final Fantasy XIV you owe it to yourself to play through ALL of the story… and don’t be a cutscene skipper. You can skip them if you like, but you are only robbing yourself of the best RPG experience of the last several decades. I still feel firmly that taken as a whole, few games can hold up to the story that is told within Final Fantasy XIV, and Dawntrail is no exception to that lineage.
Anyways! I would love to hear your own thoughts as you finish your journey. I know I am out ahead of the curve a bit here, so feel free to return later or ping me over any number of ways folks can contact me. Please however keep things spoiler-free for the moment. Everyone deserves to experience FFXIV without the experience being tarnished.
