I've plenty of opinions on the story of Dawntrail in Final Fantasy 14—it's a narrative that I enjoyed, but found more problems with the longer I sat with it. My biggest bugbear by far, however, was how it didn't quite prioritise its characters properly, leaving me feel some were underutilised at their best, and downright cardboard cutouts of their former selves at their worst.
That's not to say that focusing on a new cast is a bad thing, mind, but to keep things brief: I think you've gotta commit either way. Have your Scion buddies take genuine, thoughtful supporting roles if you want—or have them be busy elsewhere, but you've gotta pick one.
During my interview with game director Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) at Gamescom last week, he revealed this issue is a challenge the development team had been grappling with during the development of Dawntrail, and the fan reception has taught them a whole lot about how to work with the game's quite frankly enormous cast going forward.
- 'It's simply impossible to make a difficulty level that's just right for all players': How Final Fantasy 14's lead battle designer has been playing a precarious balancing game for Dawntrail's dungeons and raids
- Not only did FF14's controversial chatter Wuk Lamat rank 1st for words spoken in Dawntrail, 'Wuk Lamat' was the most-used phrase by the characters in 2nd and 3rd place, too
"We wanted to showcase all of the Scions, but we also wanted to showcase new characters, and we wanted to see what would be the response," Yoshi-P explains. "We wanted to see whether people would be like, 'Oh no, we don't want any more Scions, please, just get rid of them'. Or, on the other hand, people might be saying, 'hey, we want our Scions back.' … So we thought that we would need to do this [eventually]. And so in that sense, it was a challenge that we took on."
Keeping in mind that this interview was conducted via a live translator (and as such, doesn't convey the interviewee's sentiment perfectly) I get the sense from Yoshi-P that the Scion's roles in Dawntrail were a band aid the team had to rip off at some point—it just came off with a few split hairs.
"As expected," he continues, "There were some people who were arguing that they wanted to see the Scions more in the spotlight, and there were also others who said that they wanted the scions to take a step down and not be the focus. So in that regard, I felt that we had a lot of lessons which we gained [from Dawntrail]."
As for what those lessons are, Yoshi-P tells me that, more than anything, "people didn't want the scions to be shown in a half-hearted way".
As a FF14 player with a huge investment in its story, it's a relief to hear that. During Dawntrail's opening hours, I kept wondering why Alphinaud and Alisaie—both characters with plenty of relatable experiences to Wuk Lamat's own arc—were mostly silent when given the opportunity to have a heart-to-heart with her.
As far as fixes go, Yoshi-P rattles off a few examples the team has been considering: "For example, a possibility for the next story is that the Warrior of Light goes out on a journey on their own." Alternatively, the team "could forgo having new characters" entirely, instead having "all of the Scions grouped together and working together, moving forward.
"As I mentioned before, showcasing some characters in a half-baked way is definitely not a good thing. So moving forward, we would like to be more dramatic in the way we create the story." The word choice 'dramatic' here could mean a handful of things—again, a quirk of having this translated to me in the moment—but as he goes on to explain, I think you could substitute that word out for 'deliberate'.
Confession time—while I am married to G'raha Tia in several of my fantasies, I do think a scene he has in Dawntrail, wherein he speaks to the player on a gondola ride, is a good example of how I wanted the expansion to use its returning party members. I mentioned this to Yoshi-P, and he noted:
"G'raha is a super popular character, so I myself am very aware of the kind of reaction we could get if we had an expansion where he doesn't make an appearance." Alright, he's got me there.
"But having said that, if a character doesn't appear in one expansion, that doesn't mean they will never appear again. Rather, we are considering doing things in a certain order." Essentially, Yoshi-P sees a future in which FF14 selectively rotates its core characters (including the Scions of the Seventh dawn) based on what the story is concerned with, just in more deliberate and digestible groups:
"So maybe in a given expansion, such and such a character will be the focus, and then in the next expansion, another group of characters will be the focus ... I think the possibility of going down this route is the highest."
