Key Takeaways
- Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail’s ending theme song Smile is a controversial piece of music, mostly down to its multiple uses in the story.
- In the Dawntrail OST Blu-ray, composer Masayoshi Soken claims that the song was ordered by the scenario team to be in the style of a musical.
- Unfortunately, Soken isn’t a fan of musicals, but stresses that he wasn’t “forced to make” the song.
Final Fantasy 14’s Dawntrail expansion has quite a few problems (it’s not the lowest rated expansion for no reason). A slow story, the abundance of Wuk Lamat, and our Warriors of Light taking more of a mentor role this time around left many with mixed feelings over the expansion, and there were more than a few moments in which Dawntrail’s tone was all over the place.
One such moment is the Highschool Musical-esque sequence that sees the Scions and friends building a train, with the express purpose of using this train as a battering ram to break into an otherwise impenetrable fortress. That’s pretty standard Final Fantasy 14 stuff, but what made the scene so bizarre was the use of the song Smile during the building, a high-tempo, cheerful piece of music that sounds like it was ripped out of a modern Disney movie.
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Smile is used a few times during Dawntrail, as the song has managed to attain meme status due to how silly it can be, and how different it is to the rest of lead composer Masayoshi Soken’s work – he’s a man of many genres, but Smile was considered pretty bizarre even for him. Now that Dawntrail has been and gone, and we’re eagerly awaiting the release of Patch 7.1, Soken has used the release of Dawntrail’s soundtrack to talk a little more about the song, and its making.
Reddit user Y0LOME0W shared Soken’s comments from the Dawntrail OST Blu-ray, which reveal that Smile was ordered by Nacchan Ishikawa on the scenario team, with the intention of the song being an ending theme in the style of a musical. Unfortunately for Soken, he doesn’t like musicals all that much.
“Specifically, she requested an ending theme in the style of a musical, and … well … I hate to say it, but musicals aren’t really my thing. Whenever the characters drop what they’re doing to burst into song, it just throws me off. Like, why are we singing now?!”
Soken later clarifies that even though that statement sounds like he was “forced to make this song”, he actually wasn’t, and that his love for the movie Blues Brothers made him feel confident he could still pull it off. It’s a fairly decent song too, and nowhere near as bad as many Final Fantasy 14 fans like to make it seem, but it’s just used in completely bizarre places. Let’s hope it doesn’t play in Patch 7.1, or we’ll never hear the end of it.
Dawntrail is the fifth full expansion for Square Enix’s MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, and marks the start of an all-new story arc. It takes the Warrior of Light across the ocean to the continent of Tural, adds the new Viper and Pictomancer jobs, and a host more dungeons, raids, and more.