(Warning: Spoilers ahead for Final Fantasy XIV’s Dawntrail main storyline content.)
So Dawntrail might be the fastest turnaround I’ve ever had on an expansion, and after a night of resting on it, I’ve come to a primary conclusion: I want to have a word with the voice acting director.
Let me be clear so there’s no misunderstanding: The voice acting director, not the actors themselves. I’ve noticed this being a frequent issue in previous expansions and now where it comes across that the ‘objective’ for the actors to meet is to sound as clear and concise as possible for the audience. This is a fine goal, but their direction gives them few chances to communicate the emotions or weight of what’s happening. The most egregious examples I can think of are near the end when Sphene sheds tears, but at best, it sounds like she’s mildly perturbed that she’s about to raise apocalyptic aether-sucking hell unto the world(s), or when Wuk Lamat is bearing down a massive physical weight, but at best, she’s speaking at a higher volume, or when Koana is tense and it just sounds like he has a slight tummyache. There are exceptions like Erenville being allowed to flex more emotional weight (though it could’ve gone even further), but I can think of more negative instances of the actors not being given free rein to act versus positive ones.
Once more, to be clear, this gripe is with the voice acting director. As I now notice this, not just for Dawntrail but across the game in general, it must be a purposeful choice instead of incidental. It sets an unfortunate and unfair bias against the actors as well which sucks.
The voice acting direction aside, a concern I had going into Dawntrail ended up being unfounded, as I think a few of us were wondering, ‘Just how are they going to top Endwalker?’. The answer was that they didn’t — But that’s absolutely fine. When I say ‘top’, I mean hitting the same extravagant extents that the story goes through, the involvement of the cast/world, etc — Endwalker was a grand opera culminating years of angles up to this point, and I don’t think any expansion or later content will ever come close to passing that bar, and they don’t have to.
Endwalker was a victory lap to coincide with the tenth anniversary, like the season finale to a TV show that wraps things up to allow leading into the next season of new stories. Dawntrail is our ‘season two premiere’, if you will, and I’m all here for a story that has us going on academic vacation/a contest to help with a throne bid, leading to repelling a new doomsday scenario.
I found the earlier instances more difficult content-wise than the later ones. Worqor Lar Dor trounced me sideways, while Everkeep and The Interphos felt way more approachable; I got called a troll for struggling in Skydeep Cenote, whereas Origenics was pretty straightforward. I haven’t touched the endgame instances when writing this so I might change my tune quickly, but it felt like the difficulty was frontloaded instead of backloaded; your mileage may likely vary.
I’d have a whole other article for this topic alone, but in general, my time going through the instances with others has been dreadful which indirectly hampered my enjoyment. No, ignoring party chat isn’t possible in case the stars align and someone shares mechanic info, so getting ridiculed on end for not having a trial memorized from front to back instantly was a bit shit. The elites and influencers seem to have already covered Dawntrail’s instances in their sleep, leading to an unrealistic expectation for those queued up with people going through the expansion for the first time.
I do wish more time was given to Tural’s ‘native’ areas; by that I mean it felt like everything was building up to reaching Solution Nine and techno-land, whereas I think such locations would’ve been cooler for post-game reveal. Wuk Lamat’s journey involving her learning about the land is the same learning we’re doing as well, so each zone effectively being a lesson to learn before we scoot along could’ve had a bit more time to cook.
The expansions’ theme of the importance and preservation of memories could’ve gone further than occasional dialogue references to past events or momentary flashbacks to still images of what occurred in past expansions. Granted, I can’t think of a constructive way to do that without making it play out like a trite ‘best of’ montage.
Other than the not-spaghetti western part of the story in Shaaloani which didn’t interest me much, I’m pleased with Dawntrail at the end of the day. I’d place it third behind my ranking of Shadowbringers and Endwalker, but I can’t imagine that’s much of a surprise to anyone. I haven’t played Pictomancer or Viper nearly enough to dedicate any time about it here; other than that good grief, Pictomancer is quite good at sucking up enmity — One laser and bam — a whole line of enemies went from green to orange on the target list. A good expansion, a good time and plenty to do (when I’m not catching up on old stuff, either).
Just let the voice actors cook. Let them cook! … Oh, and let’s have more scenes with Lyse. I miss Best Punch Girl.
