Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is a great story with a ton of potential, but it's told so poorly it nearly ruins the whole thing

GamesRPGFinal FantasyFinal Fantasy 14Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is a great story with a ton of potential, but it’s told so poorly it nearly ruins the whole thingWhen 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)

Koana, a main character in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, stares thoughtfully at a book in his hands.

The more time I’ve sat with my thoughts on Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail’s story, the more it’s bothered me. Before I roll up some sleeves and tell you why, though, some housekeeping: I’mgoing tospoil the entire thingin this analysis, naturally.

In case you’ve never played Final Fantasy 14, though, and are just here to watch the fireworks of itscurrent mixed receptionfrom afar, you might be wondering why a middling story is such a problem in an MMORPG.

In a sense, you’re right to wonder. Despite my general dissatisfaction, I’m still having a blast in Dawntrail. I’ve been levelling my crafters and enjoying itsnew dungeons. Thegraphics updatehas allowed Square Enix’s Creative Studio 3 to go ham on some breathtaking environments making Tural a lovely place to spend time, and the new Arcadion raids have been an absolute riot.

FF14’s story, however, is still vitally important. It’s the game’s biggest selling point, its largest strength, and the first reason most recommend it to their friends. At its core, FF14 is a grab-bag of well-written, excellently translated RPGs stacked atop each other with an MMO to enjoy once you’re done with your 300+ hour long journey.

Natsuko Ishikawa, the lead writer responsible for Shadowbringers and Endwalker (two expansions highly-lauded for their stories) is now in a more distant, supervisory role—and boy did I feel her absence. While Dawntrail has its moments, I couldn’t help but feel it lacked a lot of the thoughtful, character-driven, and introspective writing from her I’d grown accustomed to.

However, I don’t think it’s right to call Dawntrail’s storybad.Actually, I think the opposite—I think it’s a great story on paper: the actual thorn stuck in my side is how it’s told.

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(Image credit: Square Enix)

The king of Tural in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail rests, imposingly, upon his throne.

Anyone new to creating anything—painting, writing, composing music, and so on—very quickly comes to the realisation that actually making the dang thing is the hardest part.

Storytellingis always going to be more important than the story itself. It’s my belief that you can take the most cookie-cutter, milquetoast concept and spin it into something great. Meanwhile a good idea can be bungled catastrophically. It’s why I don’t put much stock in “originality” when it comes to games—I don’t care how unique your idea is, I care about how well you pull it off.

So when I say that Dawntrail has a great plot, characters, and world, I don’t mean to say that the player gets to experience all of these things—some, but far less than they should have. Instead, I want to give the game’s new writers credit where it’s due. Credit that, for the most part, lies in the scaffolding they put together (and unfortunately, often stops there).

Dawntrail’s concepts are all really, really interesting. Stop me if any of this actually sounds like a bad idea:

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Several screenshots from Dawntrail, displaying the gorgeous vistas held within - rocky alpine terrain and verdant forests with beautiful waterfalls.

It’s not exactly the summer vacation we were promised in Endwalker, but laying it all out like that, I’m not sure I’m looking at a bad story at all. There’s a ton of meat on the bone, and the tragedy of Dawntrail is that this all should’veworked. Alas, you’re reading this because, in a lot of areas, I feel it fell short.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Bakool Ja Ja, a twin-headed Blessed Sibling from Final Fantasy 14, regards the camera with twin sets of mischievous smirks.

The first culprit is also the easiest to hash out: Dawntrail’s rarely makes use of the material it’s been given, and often fails to deliver it in a compelling way.

Final Fantasy 14 has always leaned heavily on exposition, sure. Characters will often repeat information we’ve already known as a kind of courtesy. It usually does this, though, to help ease the mental load of more complex themes.

In Dawntrail, however, these in-scene recaps target information that’s obvious if you were paying even the slightest bit of attention. When details are re-delivered, it’s often immediately after the dang thing happened—and in the dryest, least character-building way possible.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Zoraal Ja kneels before a shade of his father in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail.

Take the scene I just mentioned, for example: Actually seeing Zoraal Ja reject his retainer’s aid, fight a magical recreation of his father, fail, then lash out at the elector would’ve been a great moment of characterisation. Instead, we arrive moments after it’s happened and are told all about the scene we missed. Twice. As such, an otherwise smart choice to characterise one of the story’s main villains fails to leave an impression.

I had similar whiplash when, after her newly-inherited city comes under siege and she loses her father, our mandatory best bud Wuk Lamat has an understandable breakdown. It’s a scene that comes really close to being excellent—right up until we say exactly one thing to her, she feels better, and the plot moves along without really dwelling on her heartache.

Oh right, Wuk Lamat. I ought to talk about her.

The Lion Queen

(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.

I won’t dwell on my exact arguments for why I think she’s fine or we’ll be here all day—instead, I think she represents Dawntrail’s third, and biggest problem: It has no idea how to use its cast of characters.

She represents Dawntrail’s third, and biggest problem: It has no idea how to use its cast of characters.

(Image credit: Square Enix / ffxiv.consolegameswiki)

And then there’s Krile. She’s meant to be the driving force behind a huge mystery in Dawntrail’s story. Instead, she finds her answers off-screen, tells us about it after the fact, and then quite literally says “enough about me.” On the contrary Krile—we really haven’t had enoughofyou.

The Scions, your long-standing adventuring troupe, also might as well not have come along for the ride. We’re told that Alphinaud and Alisaie have grown close to Wuk Lamat, but we barely ever see them have actual conversations with her. Thancred and Urianger’s opposition to us—siding with another claimant for the throne—comes to a head when Thancred, uh, drops some rocks in front of us in a dungeon, which is quite literally it. Y’shtola is also there. She throws a spell at a MacGuffin when a villain runs off with it. Good job, Y’shtola.

The only time I felt like a side character was given any sort of deliberate attention was a (genuinely beautiful) gondola ride with G’raha Tia in the story’s final zone. It’s a heartfelt, impactful moment that makes this glaring issue with Dawntrail’s character usage all the more obvious—a brief window into a tale that remembered the history of its cast and crew.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

G’raha Tia sits, contented, on a boat in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail.

It’s a problem that exists in spite of the room the story had to actually use these characters, too. Dawntrail has, pound for pound, almost as manyraw cutscene hours as Endwalker does—which makes it far longer than the expansions that preceded Endwalker, too. Expansions that only occasionally had trouble juggling multiple character arcs.

In other words, if Dawntrail was a play, Wuk Lamat would spend all three acts stood in the middle of the stage, Erenville would get to poke his head in occasionally, Krile would be shouting her muffled lines from behind the curtains before getting a quick musical number in the final ten minutes, and the rest of the characters would be cardboard cutouts in a storage unit down the street.

I do like it. Honest.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

A viper in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail looking utterly perplexed, hood down, while stood on a beautiful sunrise overlooking a crystal blue sea.

Reading all that, you might be surprised to find out that yes—I did still enjoy Dawntrail’s story. My annoyance lies more in what could have been, rather than what is. It had moments that I thoroughly liked, characters I was genuinely invested in, and occasional flashes of excellence that really hit home. Here’s some positives to balance out my grumbling, in no particular order:

If you loved Dawntrail, I don’t think you’re wrong. Yet the more I think about its story, the more I realise that I enjoyed it in spite of how it was told.

Yet the more I think about its story, the more I realise that I enjoyed it inspiteof how it was told—and the more frustrated I feel knowing that, in an alternate timeline with a stronger edit and a writing team capable of playing to its cast’s strengths, FF14’s next 10 years of narrative would have taken off at a run rather than tripping over its own laces.

I think Square Enix’s decision to give new writing talent a swing at the MSQ is an inherent good. After all, Natsuko Ishikawa was given a similar opportunity with Shadowbringers, and it worked out spectacularly. But the following two years of story patches will be a test to see if Final Fantasy 14 can once more grow from the harsh feedback of its player base, just as it did over a decade ago withA Realm Reborn.

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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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The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

A great idea only gets you so far#

The Lion Queen#

I do like it. Honest.#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

A great idea only gets you so far

The Lion Queen

I do like it. Honest.