I’ve had time to complete Ultimate Fantasy 14: Dawntrail’s foremost story—which landed to a little bit of a combined reception late final month.
Earlier than I’ve a great moan about it, although, I feel our current Ultimate Fantasy 14: Dawntrail overview (written by contributor Daniella Lucas) is not fallacious in its evaluation by any means. Issues completely decide up in its latter half, there’s rather a lot to love, and I’d be mendacity if I stated I wasn’t emotionally invested in Wuk Lamat’s journey. However that is perhaps why it is bothered me a lot.
Whereas I had fun total, it is a kind of tales that is marinated poorly in my head. The extra I give it some thought, the extra pissed off I get with its points—which is not stunning. I am the sort of one who will get extra irate the nearer to greatness one thing scrapes. To me, ‘nearly incredible, however total wonderful’ feels extra prison than ‘simply dangerous’.
Excessive up on my listing of mopes is the MSQ’s pacing. Now, granted, each single FF14 growth does a foul job of this: Shadowbringers had a literal trolley downside take up hours of display screen time, Heavensward begins off very gradual, and Endwalker made you pay attention to some hours of a climactic, “yeah, we’re doing it!” music when you have been serving to a bunch of nerds piece a spaceship collectively.
Prior to now, although, that pacing’s been mitigated by robust character improvement, stunning dialogue, and a reasonably good use of time spent with side-conversations and self-contained plots.
Alas, the beat-by-beat storytelling of Dawntrail was simply plain weaker than regular—the entire items have been there for one thing incredible, and there have been some very excessive factors, however they only did not come collectively to type a correct entire for me. As such, that pacing downside, normally dismissible, was an enormous a part of the buzzkill.
In case you really feel equally, it’d shock you to seek out that these points even have some measurable roots. The vibes weren’t simply off, they have been downright stretched skinny.
That is because of FF14 story scholar Cyberfunk3 on Reddit, who has labored along side jesterxgirl to supply the next Google sheet measuring the entire cutscene size for each growth and (nearly) each patch quest to this point.
Now, granted, this is not really an ideal measurement by itself. Cyberfunk3 has measured their cutscenes utilizing the auto-scroll operate (which clicks by way of non-voiced dialogue at a tempo of your selecting) at round +5 velocity. The common individual will possible learn quicker than that, or skim over redundant info, which Dawntrail sadly has numerous. Nonetheless, it really works effectively for the target of evaluating the expansions to one another.
Cyberfunk3 has discovered that Dawntrail has a hefty 21 hours of cutscenes complete by this metric. It is solely overwhelmed out by the sport’s final growth, which served because the finale to round 10 years of storytelling—Endwalker was fully rammed with important plot factors and tear-jerking payoffs (and likewise bunnies, however I felt they have been a pleasant breather from the remainder of that story’s grim tone).
That is astonishing to me, as a result of after I consider how dense Endwalker’s story is, it turns into simply as clear how poorly Dawntrail makes use of its time—and justifies my lingering feeling that a lot of it might’ve been salvaged within the modifying room.
An much more attention-grabbing comparability occurs while you put Dawntrail subsequent to Stormblood, an growth with a equally combined reception. In comparison with Stormblood, Dawntrail has 9 and a half hours extra cutscenes—nearly twice as many.
In an extra explanatory thread, Cyberfunk3 additionally discovers that, regardless of Dawntrail and Stormblood having roughly the identical quantity of quests, Dawntrail has about 12 minutes of cutscenes per quest accomplished. In distinction, Stormblood averages lower than six per turn-in. That means, regardless of having related issues, Stormblood was total—if the stats are to be believed—twice as economical with its storytelling than Dawntrail was.
As for why Dawntrail was so lengthy? I actually could not inform you. All through my playtime, I would usually discover myself deeply invested in a plot line or character second, solely to then be dragged again, nails-on-a-chalkboard, to some clunky exposition the following quest over. Characters stored going by way of info I used to be already conversant in, giving the identical speech I would already heard 3 times, and stating the plain with prison frequency. In the meantime, facet characters like Alisaie, Alphinaud, Erenville and (most disappointingly) Krile have been nearly silent till the sport’s remaining act.
Dawntrail possible has a much bigger cinematic finances, certain, however I do not suppose that is the foundation trigger both. Whereas there have been some beautifully-animated moments within the growth, I really felt like the general high quality was decrease due to what number of of them nonetheless relied on the cookie-cutter animations and nods.
On the plus facet, Bakool Ja Ja is enjoyable (and eerily thirsted over), and I nonetheless suppose there’s room to avoid wasting the lingering characters and plot factors in future patches—to not point out, every part outdoors of the MSQ has been very good, together with facet, function, and crafter/gatherer questlines. I will sit on my full ideas for some time but, however I simply can’t assist however marvel what the Dawntrail I might’ve performed would have been like if Sq. Enix had merely pruned it simply that bit extra.