According to some players, Final Fantasy 14is new Dawntrail the expansion has a story problem. It’s boring, the plot points aren’t explained properly, and it’s generally unimportant, or so the reviews say. Of course, what these complaints don’t tell you is that many of the people behind them are also missing large parts of the story. This is not a new problem for Final Fantasy 14but that’s one thing Dawntrail comes back to the fore. some Final Fantasy 14 players have their own problem, and that is an unwillingness to commit to the game’s methodical storytelling in its entirety.
The discourse of how Dawntrailand Final Fantasy 14 overall, tells his story heated thanks to a post to X from a user complaining about story-critical information being placed in silent cutscenes during the last expansion. For non-wars of light, FF14 tells its story in three main ways. The first is voiced cutscenes, which are usually climactic plot moments brought to life by the game’s wonderful cast. Second are the voiceless cutscenes, which use text bubbles at the bottom of the screen for dialogue between characters. Finally, the lowest-stakes dialogue and story details are usually communicated outside of cutscenes via text bubbles when taking quests. As demonstrated by the initial post on social media, many players have created a hierarchy in their heads of how story-critical each type of cutscene is to determine whether or not they can skip it.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the omission of major dialogue can make it difficult to understand the story Square Enix is trying to tell. As an MMO, FF14 narrative threads sometimes play out across an entire expansion or multiple expansions. In case of Dawntrail, The MSQ (or main story quest) consists of 100 individual missions that will take most players approximately 50 hours to complete. Most of the cutscenes throughout will not be voiced, which for a certain type of player means that most of the game is skippable just because it requires reading. This is a fundamentally flawed way to interact with the game, as it assumes that one of its primary ways of communicating with the player is meaningless.
To try and do justice to the argument that voiceless cutscenes are skippable, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of them can feel like massive exposition and lore dumping. I understand that going through such a long story can be tedious, but this attitude ignores the fact that you usually need exposition and table setting in the plot to reach a point where the climax can happen. All the top narrative moments of FF14 seen in extensions like Endwalker, To the skyand Shadowbringers rely on precise character and world-building that takes place in seemingly boring quests filled with must-read dialogue.
Also, Final Fantasy 14 it doesn’t force you to go through as much crap as some people think. MSQ is labeled as such because the developers created a critical story path. If you want to learn about the lore of a new place and the various groups that live and fight in it, that’s what the game’s side quests and Unending Codex are for. But everything done in MSQ is purposefully designed to take you through the emotional highs and lows of the story. Yes, this sometimes involves dialogue that you have to read. It’s already labeled as part of the MSQ, I don’t know what more some players need to know it’s probably important.
This failure to engage with Final Fantasy 14The storytelling on its own terms seems to be rooted in the need to rush through the expansion as quickly as possible, as well as the lack of value placed on anything without voice acting. To do some math, Howlongtobeat.com has an average play time of 50 hours for the main story of Endwalker. A YouTube Compilation of all voiced cutscenes from this expansion is just under 16 hours. This means that you spend roughly one-third of your time in voiced cutscenes, while the other two-thirds are mostly spent actively searching the world. Dungeons, trials, and even boring fetch quests make up a large portion of the remaining two-thirds, meaning that unvoiced cutscenes make up a relatively small percentage of playtime. Credit where it’s due, this is partly because each expansion has increased the amount of voiced cutscenes. Shadowbringersthe expansion immediately before Endwalker, had approximately nine and a half hours of voiced cutscenes. While the revelation that the unvoiced cutscenes are relatively few and far between might make you think it wouldn’t be a big deal to skip them, I’d say it just means they’re not as big of a hindrance to attention spans as some might think . Yes, the voice-over cutscenes might be where the most iconic, action-packed or emotionally resonant moments tend to happen, but like I said, they only work off the weight of all the unspoken dialogue that helps establish the conflicts that play out and how much is bet.
Is not that Final Fantasy 14the storytelling is perfect. I think Endwalker suffers from poor pacing but still manages to pull off its emotional finale. But discussing the unspoken dialogue as something we should be able to skip without any impact on our investment and understanding of the overall story isn’t at the same time as genuine criticism of the game’s narrative. It is a dissatisfaction with the vehicle through which this story is told.
I think Dawntrail is accused of many of the same faults that A kingdom reborn did and there is a reason for it. Both ARR and Dawntrail are the beginnings of bigger stories. It took a decade and four expansions for each story thread to be laid ARR to pay off. Because of this, ARR is an introductory arc that may not seem satisfying on its own, which is why it’s so derided despite being so important. Dawntrail it is now in the same place. It lays the groundwork for the next decade FF14. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, it just means it’s part of an as-yet-unfinished tapestry.
The rushed mentality of so many players that they have to skip over perceived unimportant cutscenes to complete a painstakingly crafted expansion in a weekend is part of a larger problem with a lack of patience in the grand storytelling that the game consistently does. Eorzea is a living, breathing world of players and NPCs that is meant to be the setting for a wondrous adventure. Adventures like this need breathing space, requiring breaks and time not just to get through, but to digest. No wonder scarf food doesn’t agree with players, it’s not meant to be consumed that way. As simple as it sounds, what players need is patience.
I’m sure Dawntrail it has its issues, and I bet the story isn’t perfect (based on early impressions), but the only way you’ll understand that and really engage with it is if you read the fucking text.
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