#oneaday Day 52: To Be Forgotten is Worse Than Death

I finished Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail this evening. Or its main scenario, anyway; I haven’t gone into any endgame stuff such as the Arcadion raid series or level-cap dungeons as yet, but it’s late and that’s stuff best saved for another day.

I’m going to write something big about Final Fantasy XIV on MoeGamer at some point in the next few days, incorporating my thoughts about Dawntrail and the game as a whole as it exists in 2024, but for now I thought I’d share some immediate impressions.

On the whole, I liked Dawntrail. I particularly enjoyed how it felt like a proper “sequel” to the Final Fantasy XIV story that was told between A Realm Reborn and Endwalker rather than just a continuation of the story. This was always the stated intention, but it would have been easy for them to try and weave in stuff that had come before like the Ascians. They actually do weave in some of that past stuff in the latter hours of the story, but in a way that you would in a sequel, rather than a straight “next episode”.

Dawntrail’s main scenario felt quite long, which is probably a mixed blessing for some people. I went back and forth a bit on it as I played — there were days when I didn’t fancy playing it, so I turned to something else then came back fresh a few days later — but on the whole, I think its overall length and structure works effectively. Since it’s a “sequel”, it’s fitting that it is quite considerable in length — and even has a structure quite akin to PS1-era Final Fantasy games, with a notable tonal shift halfway through that absolutely would have been a “Please Insert Disc 2” moment in the Good Old Days.

One thing I think I’ve touched on in previous entries is how I feel Dawntrail’s narrative is curiously timely, given the overall state of our own world. And this feeling didn’t go away as I progressed into the latter hours of the story — but for different reasons. Without getting into spoilers, the first half of Dawntrail is about achieving mutual understanding and cooperation with people from disparate backgrounds and belief systems, while the latter half concerns what happens when it’s not quite possible to achieve that mutual understanding, based on the enormous gulf in culture (and technology) between the two parties.

It also touches on matters such as the energy and environmental crises we’re facing down — particularly if the techbros in Silicon Valley insist on jamming AI everywhere it isn’t wanted — as well as matters of life after death in an age of technological innovation. It’s no coincidence that the latter half of the game is heavily inspired by Final Fantasy IX, one of whose characters’ iconic taglines was “to be forgotten is worse than death”. I’m actually kind of surprised no-one actually said that line at any point in Dawntrail, because heaven knows several characters had multiple prime opportunities to do so. Perhaps they thought it might have been just a touch too on-the-nose.

I’m actually a little annoyed that the patch notes and promotional material for Dawntrail spoiled a significant feature of the game’s overall setting and tone, because I feel that reveal would have been far more effective had it simply come up without anyone knowing about it beforehand. (I won’t mention anything further about it for the sake of those who have deliberately avoided all promotional material for precisely this reason.) And there wasn’t really even a good reason for them to spoil it, either, aside from, presumably, the expectation from the fanbase that everything is laid out for them well before release. And I guess if Square Enix didn’t spoil it, the dataminers would have done so anyway.

Anyway, on the whole, Dawntrail was A Good. I enjoyed that it was possible to play the entire main scenario, including 4-player dungeons and 8-player trials, with NPC sidekicks rather than having to rely on other players, though it’s a bit of a shame that the final boss is a multiplayer-only affair. This resulted in me spending a good 50% of said boss fight lying on the floor while the two surviving tanks finished it off because the healers were also both dead. Not quite the climactic conclusion I had hoped for, but at least I got a good look at the mechanics without having to actually do them.

So yeah. Good job, Yoshi-P and company. You did another great thing.

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#oneaday Day 41: Dawntrail Ponderings

I’m probably going to do a “big” writeup on Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail when I’ve actually beaten the main story, but I thought I’d post some musings this evening.

For the unfamiliar, Dawntrail is the fifth expansion to Final Fantasy XIV after Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers and Endwalker. It was in an interesting position before it started, because Endwalker, as the name suggests, brought the story of Final Fantasy XIV, as it had existed right from the abandoned version 1.0, to a very definitive conclusion.

Without getting too much into specifics for the sake of spoilers, I’ll say that they handled it in probably the best way they could have done: treat the new storyline as basically a complete fresh start. You cross the ocean to be far away from the landmass and surrounding islands the base game and previous five expansions (mostly) took place on, and come to learn about a territory we, as players, have previously not really heard much about.

One of the interesting things about Dawntrail is the timing of its release. I don’t know how much of it was deliberate, but given that the first half of the game is very much about overcoming prejudice and standing together for the good of everyone, it feels… timely, given the various things that are happening around the world right now. It feels like it’s going “this is how things could be if people would just stop being dicks to each other”, and it’s honestly nice.

Again, without spoiling things, this is just half of Dawntrail, however. I would forgive anyone for thinking that the first half of Dawntrail is a bit “slow” in comparison to previous Final Fantasy XIV expansions, but that’s entirely deliberate. Since the overall story is basically something of a “reboot” — or perhaps it’s more accurate to call it a “sequel” — it makes sense that there needs to be plenty of work done to establish the new setting and its important characters. Sure, plenty of old favourites crop up, because it wouldn’t be Final Fantasy XIV without them, but you spend a lot of your time with the new cast.

Stick with that relatively “peaceful” first half, though, and things get Very Real beyond that halfway point. If you were concerned that Dawntrail wouldn’t conclude with some sort of earth-shattering cataclysm for the Warrior of Light to avert in cooperation with her trusty companions, then rest assured that cataclysmic happenings are very much in evidence, and they hit all the harder for how long you spent getting to know everyone in the first half.

Again, this feels timely. After the game goes “this is how things could be”, it then goes “and this is also how things could be”, working on the assumption that something goes horribly wrong somewhere. The message of mutual cooperation and overcoming prejudice is still very much in evidence, but it takes on something of a new meaning in the context of the game’s second half.

That’s all I’ll say for the moment, because I’m a relatively short way into that second half, and I feel I stopped this evening just before what is going to be a fairly critical moment. (It is late and the cat is bugging me to go to bed.) It’s definitely living up to the standards of its illustrious predecessors, though, and I’m glad about that. I’ve spent so much time in Final Fantasy XIV now, it’s like a long-running TV show; I want to keep following these characters, learning about the world they inhabit and see them overcome all sorts of challenges. And there are clearly plenty more challenges ahead.

#oneaday Day 36: In My Thoughts

I dreamed about our dearly departed cat Meg last night and into this morning, which caused me to wake up feeling rather maudlin. My general mental wellbeing didn’t really improve for most of the day, but I did manage to distract myself with some gaming, so that’s something.

I’ve just come off a Dawntrail session, and I’m making good progress with that, but I’ve also been flitting around between a couple of other things today.

First of these is Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story?, which is a lightweight management sim sort of game in which you run a spy agency, train up spies and send them out on missions. It’s quite fun and silly, though I haven’t felt any real “challenge” from it as yet. I don’t know how long it is but I suspect I’m quite early on in it so far; I wonder how it will up the challenge factor, and if it will do so by something more interesting than “require bigger numbers”.

I started playing this because I’ve been having a bit of a hankering for that kind of game of late, and it’s one of those genres that it doesn’t feel like we have that many good modern examples of. Management sims were all the rage in the late ’90s and early ’00s, but it feels like they were one of those genres that got a bit left behind in the move to 3D. Modern 3D examples do exist — the Two Point games, which are successors to Bullfrog’s Theme titles, are a good example — but it’s kind of telling that stuff like Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story? is still presented in isometric quasi-3D artwork rather than polygons.

I don’t know if I’ll stick with it so far, as there are a number of other “sim”-type games I’m interested in having a fiddle with — after watching Game Grumps play Gas Station Simulator I actually quite fancy a go at that, for one — but what I’ve played so far does seem fun, and despite the relative lack of challenge in what I’ve played, manages to remain free of being patronising in a mobile game style.

The other thing I gave a shot for a bit earlier is Spiderweb Software’s Avadon: The Black Fortress. I’ve been meaning to try a Spiderweb game for some time, but never got around to it and never quite new which one was best to start with. So I just picked one and gave it a go for a bit.

For the unfamiliar, Spiderweb Software make traditional CRPGs in the western style; that means they unfold rather like old Infinity Engine D&D games, or perhaps later Ultima titles. Avadon actually sounds like it might be a bit of a departure in that it’s less “freeform” in its structure — thus far it’s been quite heavily “mission-based”, and you have relatively limited options to build your characters — but it sounds as if it’s well-regarded, and many folks seem to think that the streamlined (not necessarily simplified) mechanics allow its story to shine a bit more. And it’s certainly got some nicely written text in it.

Again, don’t know if I’ll stick with it, but I’m glad I’ve broken the seal and started giving it a go. I like what I see so far — although it seems the game is light on music, which is a shame, as I do like a stirring orchestral accompaniment for my western-style CRPGs.

And Dawntrail. I won’t say too much about this for the sake of spoilers in case anyone reading this is planning to play it, but the thing that struck me while playing this evening is that this is a story the world really needs right now. There’s lots of tolerance and understanding and learning about different cultures, and it just feels like such a marked, likely deliberate contrast to the intolerance and general shittiness around in the world at the moment. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes next, as I’ve reached a particularly significant moment in the narrative.

Anyway, it’s nearly 2am and my cat Patti is bugging me to go to bed, so I should probably do that. Here’s hoping for a restful night’s sleep.

I miss you, Meg.

#oneaday Day 21: Catching Up

Yes, I missed yesterday. I could have predicted that was going to happen, what with it being a Friday, and with Final Fantasy XIV’s new expansion Dawntrail launching into its “early access” period for those who preordered. So I’m catching up now, and another post for “today” later and we’ll be all square.

I could just not bother, because no-one but me cares how well I stick to the whole #oneaday thing, but it’s the principle of the thing. Last time around when I did this, I handled “missed” days like this and I don’t feel like it compromised the integrity of my run of daily blogging, so my own self-imposed rules still stand. So there.

Anyway. Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail seems good so far. I haven’t gotten into the new storyline as yet, because I thought for a change I’d dive into one of the two new jobs included: Pictomancer. For those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy XIV, new jobs introduced with an expansion tend to start ten levels lower than you need to be to start the new storyline, giving you ten levels to get to know your new job by playing dungeons and boss fights you’ve (presumably) already done on other jobs.

I’m actually quite grateful for having to go through this bit of levelling, because it gave me the opportunity to catch up on some sidequests I’d somehow missed on my run through Endwalker. I’ve played all the previous Final Fantasy XIV storylines by thoroughly progressing through all the available sidequests as they came up, but several groups of them apparently unlocked after I’d already passed by their respective areas. I’d held off completing them because it felt wasteful to do them and not get any experience points for them, and none of my other jobs were high enough level to take them on. So they’ve been used to get Pictomancer up to scratch.

Pictomancer seems like quite an interesting job. It’s a ranged magical DPS, which means you stand back from enemies and pelt them with “stuff”. The unique selling point of Pictomancer over something like Black Mage is that there are several sets of abilities you can use to pelt enemies with stuff. Firstly, there’s a sequence of chromatic/elemental spells that function as basic single-target or area-effect attacks, and these also show off the interface’s new ability to automatically switch icons in your hotbar rather than you having to map everything individually.

Secondly, Pictomancer unlocks access to three “Canvases” as it levels. One is for painting creatures, one is for painting weapons and the third is for painting landscapes. “Painting” is a fairly lengthy spell if cast in combat, but it’s instant outside of combat, so you can sort of “pre-load” yourself ahead of time if you’re thinking ahead.

The creature paintings can be unleashed as attack spells, and also contribute to a larger combined spell which can be cast once you’ve set off the previous creature paintings. For example, first you’ll paint a moogle’s pom, then set that off as a spell, then paint a pair of wings, and set that off as a spell. This then allows you to immediately set off a spell in which you fling a completed moogle at your enemies. As Pictomancer levels, it looks as if it gains the ability to paint more different creature parts, which trigger in sequence, so weaving that into your attacks is clearly going to be a key part of its strategy.

The weapon painting, meanwhile, can be set off in combat to trigger a status effect known as “Hammer Time”. While under the effect of Hammer Time, you can trigger a three-hit combo using a big hammer. This always hits a critical and direct hit, which means it does significantly more damage than most other abilities; the trade-off is that there’s quite a long cooldown before you can use it again, though higher level Pictomancers can store a couple of “charges” before having to wait.

The landscape painting, finally, initially acts as a simple damage buff, but at higher levels also makes an area on the floor which, while you stand in it, causes your spells to cast more quickly. This is very helpful for the chromatic/elemental spells, particularly if you use the Subtractive Palette ability to change them into more powerful but slower versions.

If this all sounds a bit complicated, I thought it would be overwhelming at first, but upon starting the new job you have a nice little instanced mini-quest to get to grips with things, and just experimenting with the job in various dungeons and boss fights means things soon become second nature. I’m sure someone is theorycrafting all the fun out of it as we speak, but for now, I’m enjoying just playing it how it “feels” right.

Right, that’s enough for yesterday. Time for dinner. Back later!

#oneaday Day 17: Abort, Retry, Fail?

Last night I once again spectacularly failed to get a good night’s sleep. I had trouble getting off to sleep in the first place, then my cat decided to be sick twice in the night — thankfully not on the bedsheets this time, but she managed to coat a significant portion of the bedroom floor in cat vomit. She’s fine, by the way; she just has a bit of a weak stomach and a tendency to wolf her food down. And once again I am grateful that most of our house has laminate floor rather than carpet.

Still, this unfortunately meant that getting out of bed at 7am to go for a swim felt out of the question. My body just refused to get up, and I didn’t think pushing myself on that little sleep would do me any favours, so I slept in a bit longer. I’m having an early night tonight, though, so hopefully tomorrow will come after an uninterrupted sleep. I can hope, anyway.

Aside from that, today was one of those mostly uneventful days where not a lot of note happened. So, what to talk about?

Later this week sees the launch of the Early Access period for Final Fantasy XIV’s new expansion Dawntrail. I’m looking forward to playing this, but I’m also a bit sad that my relationship with Final Fantasy XIV has changed so much since my initial enthusiasm for it. Back when it launched (and indeed before that, when I was playing in open beta) it was a delight to play alongside some people who eventually became close friends, but for various reasons — including my wife and I moving to a European server instead of the North American one we were playing on — I drifted away for quite some time, and it’s been difficult to get back into the same groove I once had.

Part of the reason for this is that I am very conscious that when I was “in the groove” with Final Fantasy XIV, I played it almost to the exclusion of everything else. While that was rewarding in its own way, it was also a little frustrating; I found it difficult to strike that perfect balance between enjoying Final Fantasy XIV often enough to keep the fires of friendship kindled with the people I liked to play alongside, and saying firmly to myself “no, tonight you are doing something else“.

Previously, I’ve attempted to set aside time for Final Fantasy XIV by saying a particular night of the week is “Final Fantasy XIV night” — in fact, I chronicled one such experiment of this sort here. That didn’t really work for me, though, because I’d often find that by the time I got to the evening in question, I didn’t really fancy playing Final Fantasy XIV, so instead ended up doing something else anyway.

Social anxiety has also entered the picture a fair bit. In line with what I talked about yesterday, whereas I was once a pretty confident Final Fantasy XIV player, I no longer feel that way. I feel uneasy about approaching strangers, talking to new people or asking for help. There are a few reasons for this.

Firstly is the fact that the community changed a bit over the course of the original A Realm Reborn run and onwards into Heavensward. We started to get the typical western players’ “efficiency at all cost” mindset taking hold, with people arguing that “the best way to play” was to spend half your time looking at spreadsheets and the other half exploiting the game structure to your own benefit. Not cheating as such, but definitely deliberately making the game less fun in the name of being more “efficient”. I got frustrated with that, and not being into playing that way put me very much in a minority — a minority that I certainly felt wasn’t listened to.

Secondly is just my own overall sense of unease with online interactions these days, which I talked about yesterday. While I once felt entirely comfortable “being myself” while playing Final Fantasy XIV, now I feel a lot more “guarded” and hesitant to initiate interactions. This is almost entirely a “me” problem rather than anything else, and it is something I can probably work on, but it’s a big part of why the game isn’t as fun as it used to be for me.

There are a few things I want to do in an attempt to recapture the past magic, but hopefully without the game taking over my life. In fact, I’ve already taken one major step; I’ve returned to the original server and Free Company (group of players) that I previously played with. I haven’t seen my past friends around as much as I’d like, nor have I had much chance to interact with them, but that’s something I can work on — particularly as I’ve always remained in that Free Company’s Discord server, even when I moved to the European game servers.

What I need to do is regain that confidence I once had. I need to get some practice in at playing and interacting with others — and really, there’s no other way to do that than to just jump back in and do it. So with Dawntrail, I’m going to try and be involved with things a bit more. Ahead of Early Access, I’m attempting to level another type of job (White Mage, a healer) on top of Samurai, the DPS job that took me through Stormblood, Shadowbringers and Endwalker. That way, I can have a bit more flexibility when it comes to group activities.

I have played as a tank in the past — for non-MMO aficionados, the “tank” is the de facto “leader” of a party who stands at the front and lets the monsters hit them while the other party members heal them and stab the monster in the back — but I haven’t quite got my confidence back up to that level. Tank anxiety is a very real thing, because in that quasi-leadership role, you control a lot of things — including if the party as a whole survives encounters.

There are a lot of things I need to work on if I want to recapture the same magic I once felt from this game. And I do want to try and feel some of that again; some of my favourite gaming moments and happiest times with friends were spent particularly throughout A Realm Reborn. I guess it remains to be seen if Dawntrail will feel the same way — or if I will end up playing through the main storyline (which I’m going to do regardless) and then setting the game aside.

We shall see!