Final Fantasy 14's Yoshi-P says 'if the question is whether I was shocked' by the mixed reception to Dawntrail's story, 'the answer is no, not really'

Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail has had some time to simmer in the minds of its fanbase—and while I've had a blast with everything outside of it, the main scenario quest line has left me a little less enthusiastic than usual.

The issues it has, though, are complex ones. Dawntrail's story is one of those pesky mixed bags that gets stuck in my craw. It's full of great ideas with some really fun moments, but its plot beats and dialogue are both executed in ways so messy they nearly spoil the whole exercise. Ultimately, Dawntrail suffers from a bumpy script and an inability to properly prioritise its cast, which is a shame.

I recently went to Gamescom and got to speak with the game's director, Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P), in person. I asked how he felt about the fanbase's response (in slightly more diplomatic terms) and he seemed quite reflective of the story's successes and failings. As is typically the case with these interviews, Yoshi-P's responses were translated on the spot by an interpreter.

«This being a game, it's a form of entertainment, and you'll always see some form of mixed response to entertainment,» Yoshi-P begins, «A second factor is that with Endwalker, we reached a big climax to a long-standing, spanning story. To a certain extent I had already predicted that we would have some sort of mixed response this time.

»So If the question is whether I was shocked in a big way, the answer is no, not really."

It's interesting to hear that Yoshi-P was expecting some kind of conflicted response—and entirely fair, considering the sheer weight of expectation that all-timers like Shadowbringers and Endwalker had placed upon its shoulders. The way Yoshi-P tells it, however, the main bugbear through Dawntrail's development appears to have been pacing.

«The concept was journeying to a new land—we would be going to a new continent where we'd be seeing new cultures, new races, and characters … because of that, both in the development team and also from my side, we had this