Over ten years and four expansions Square Enix explored the story of two warring gods, Hydaelyn and Zodiark, and the fractured worlds created through that, coming to a climactic finish in Endwalker. How do you follow up a decade of storytelling that’s garnered tens of millions of fans in the process?
Final Fantasy 14’s answer is to do something drastically different with its newest expansion, Dawntrail, adopting a much lighter, more adventurous tone, tremendous visual changes, and introduces a new cast of characters. It’s still a Final Fantasy game through and through, but fascinatingly it feels like Dawntrail has drawn inspiration from another seminal, perpetually never-ending series: One Piece.
When Dawntrail was first announced director Naoki Yoshida described it as a “Summer Vacation” for the Warrior of Light, that is to say, your player character. And it spawned a running joke within the community that this was going to be the “beach arc” — a light-hearted “break” that takes the characters away from the main drama for a couple of episodes like you see in many anime. But it turns out those comparisons may not have been completely off-base as the further you dig into Dawntrail’s layers the more it starts to feel like a shonen anime like Dragon Ball, Naruto, and most importantly for our comparison, One Piece.
No other anime has captured the feeling of adventure quite like One Piece, and Eichiro Oda’s pirate epic has already been inspiring others for well over a decade. With that in mind, it feels like a natural line to draw for Dawntrail, an expansion that wants to move past the large world-hopping story of the last decade, and create something more grounded.
Dawntrail, at its core, is a story about its ensemble cast rather than you the player. In fact, your Warrior of Light isn’t even the protagonist in the latest expansion. That honor goes to a newcomer named Wuk Lamat who serves as the Luffy of this story. And the two share more than a few commonalities.
Wuk Lamat is a young starry-eyed hero who wants to make the world a better place and achieve her dream of becoming the ruler of the country of Tural, Dawntrail’s new setting. She’s inherently inexperienced and naive, but has a heart of gold, and most of Dawntrail’s story is about her learning to become a leader, while gathering a party of diverse allies in that process.
Dawntrail couldn’t just do the same thing again, it had to be drastically different[.] Both Wuk Lamat and Luffy have that happy-go-lucky attitude that makes them initially seem aloof, but the deeper layer underneath shows they’re willing to do absolutely anything for their friends. It’s fascinating to see Wuk Lamat’s growth mimic Luffy’s, transforming from an unpredictable wild card to a genuinely charismatic and compelling captain.
There are plenty of other parallels you can draw between the Scions and the Straw Hat crew, right down to the player filling the same role as Roronoa Zoro; the world-renowned legendary warrior who acts as a best friend and sidekick. But beyond just drawing those parallels, Dawntrail ensures that its peppy shonen story still feels deliberately Final Fantasy-esque.
While Dawntrail’s entire narrative structure is nearly exactly the same as those first few arcs in One Piece — travel to new lands, learn the local culture, and inevitably solve their problems, all while on the hunt for a legendary treasure — but the connective tissue is the themes at the heart of Dawnrail, which speak to what the game has done for years but on a larger scale.
This story of Dawntrail is all about Wuk Lamat finding her voice and transforming into a leader, using the help of a crew made up of wildly different people, who all experience their own growth. But at its the core it’s about relationships, and diving into the complexities of how people interact with each other, and more largely how cultures integrate together.
That One Piece style of setup and storytelling is used to great effect in Dawntrail to deliver narrative punches. So much of this expansion is spent meticulously building up big personalities and delivering crucial character development, in service of a larger message about the nature of grief, acceptance, what it means to be happy, and how all of those ideas and emotions can exist at once. Like in One Piece, these themes are all filtered through a central character, with Wuk Lamat acting as a kind of compass through the narrative threads. Because the player Warrior of Light is taking on the role of a sidekick this time, we get to see these new elements of the game’s world through a unique perspective.
One Piece has often done this same thing, using the veil of slapstick comedy or over-the-top characters to deliver truly remarkable, heartfelt storytelling. Dawntrail does that through familiarity, building on a world, characters, and lore that players have come to know and love across a decade. In that sense, Dawntrail is both a fresh start for the MMO and a continuation, using familiar elements to tell a story with a much different tone and style.
But beyond just drawing those parallels, Dawntrail ensures that its peppy shonen story still feels deliberately Final Fantasy-esque. It’s a bold change that likely isn’t going to resonate with every player, especially those who were enthralled by the Hydaelyn and Zodiark narrative of previous expansions. But if Final Fantasy 14 wants to continue to break new ground, it also feels necessary. Dawntrail couldn’t just do the same thing again, it had to be drastically different, it had to pull its inspirations from somewhere new, and One Piece was a prime choice for both the setting and narrative themes.
There’s a reason One Piece has cultivated such a massive fan following and continued running for over two decades. The way the franchise set itself up is impeccable, centering a complex cast of characters that have room to grow and change across a dozen different arcs.
As Final Fantasy 14 moves past its last decade, that feels like the intent here. It wants to set up a core cast of characters and concepts that can be kept running, and luckily it already has most of those left over from the previous narrative arc. Dawntrail is proof that a lot of thought has been put into laying a foundation for the game to continue along as a serialized story, and having a lot in common with One Piece should already be considered a good sign.
Hayes Madsen is a freelance writer for IGN.
