FF14 player counts around 21 hours of cutscenes in Dawntrail—making it the second longest expansion next to Endwalker—and I can't for the life of me tell you why

GamesRPGFinal FantasyFinal Fantasy 14FF14 player counts around 21 hours of cutscenes in Dawntrail—making it the second longest expansion next to Endwalker—and I can’t for the life of me tell you whyWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Square Enix)

Alisaie, a headstrong ally in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, looks skeptically while standing in the middle of a beautiful blue forest.

I’ve had time to finish Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail’s main story—which landed to a bit of amixed receptionlate last month.

While I had a good time overall, it’s one of those stories that’s marinated poorly in my head. The more I think about it, the more frustrated I get with its issues—which isn’t surprising. I’m the kind of person who gets more irate the closer to greatness something scrapes. To me, ‘almost fantastic, but overall fine’ feels more criminal than ‘just bad’.

High up on my list of mopes is the MSQ’s pacing. Now, granted, every single FF14 expansion does a bad job of this: Shadowbringers had a literal trolley problem take up hours of screen time, Heavensward starts off very slow, and Endwalker made you listen to a few hours of a climactic, “yeah, we’re doing it!” music while you were helping a bunch of nerds piece a spaceship together.

If you feel similarly, it might surprise you to find that those issues also have some measurable roots. The vibes weren’t justoff,they were downright stretched thin.

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That’s thanks to FF14 story scholarCyberfunk3on Reddit, who has worked in conjunction withjesterxgirlto produce the followingGoogle sheetmeasuring the total cutscene length for every expansion and (almost) every patch quest to date.

Now, granted, this isn’t actually a perfect measurement on its own. Cyberfunk3 has measured their cutscenes using the auto-scroll function (which clicks through non-voiced dialogue at a pace of your choosing) at around +5 speed. The average person will likely read faster than that, or skim over redundant information, which Dawntrail unfortunately has a lot of. Still, it works well for the objective of comparing the expansions to each other.

This isastonishingto me, because when I think of how dense Endwalker’s story is, it becomes just as clear how poorly Dawntrail uses its time—and justifies my lingering feeling that so much of it could’ve been salvaged in the editing room.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Wuk Lamat, one in line to become Dawnservant, grins widely as she rides a parade float through one of FF14: Dawntrail’s earlier zones.

An even more interesting comparison happens when you put Dawntrail next to Stormblood, an expansion with a similarly mixed reception. Compared to Stormblood, Dawntrail has nine and a half hours more cutscenes—almost twice as many.

In a furtherexplanatory thread, Cyberfunk3 also discovers that, despite Dawntrail and Stormblood having roughly the same amount of quests, Dawntrail has about 12 minutes of cutscenes per quest completed. In contrast, Stormblood averages less thansixper turn-in. Meaning, despite having similar problems, Stormblood was overall—if the stats are to be believed—twice as economical with its storytelling than Dawntrail was.

As for why Dawntrail was so long? I really couldn’t tell you. Throughout my playtime, I’d often find myself deeply invested in a plot line or character moment, only to then be dragged back, nails-on-a-chalkboard, to some clunky exposition the next quest over. Characters kept going through information I was already familiar with, giving the same speech I’d already heard three times, and stating the obvious with criminal frequency. Meanwhile, side characters like Alisaie, Alphinaud, Erenville and (most disappointingly) Krile were almost silent until the game’s final act.

Dawntrail likely has a bigger cinematic budget, sure, but I don’t think this is the root cause either. While there were some beautifully-animated moments in the expansion, I actually felt like theoverallquality was lower because of how many of them still relied on the cookie-cutter animations and nods.

On the plus side, Bakool Ja Ja is fun (andeerily thirsted over), and I still think there’s room to save the lingering characters and plot points in future patches—not to mention, everything outside of the MSQ has beensuperb, including side, role, and crafter/gatherer questlines. I’m going to sit on my complete thoughts for a while yet, but I just can’t help but wonder what the Dawntrail I could’ve played would have been like if Square Enix had simply pruned it just that bit more.

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Alisaie, a side character in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, folds her arms with a confident smirk on her face.

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An image of Alphinaud and Alisaie sitting together at a table. Alphinaud, a studious young elezen, takes a sip of his tea while Alisaie sulks into her chair.

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