Could've done with whittling down Wuk Lamat's involvement after the rite of succession, giving Krile and Erenville's stories more room to breathe, and give us more Otis. As a matter of fact, rework the script so Otis can be robot sheriff in Shaaloni.
No, considering Otis and his desire to protect his queen..... and the play on Steiner.... instead of dying to thunderpuppy that considering prior xpacs, the WoL shouldve been able to solo blindfolded instead simply meets sphene during the fight overcoming his cowardice to see her again....but afterwards follows her and ends up being one of the bosses we fight in the lvl 100 msq dungeon which has the most boring of enemies: computer program versions with electrope coloring of random mobs.... instead: combine the events of the first 2 areas: evacution of sphene/alexendria midst battle with damage and have us fight lindblum soldiers and their weapons; boss: Black Waltz second stage: alexandrian counteroffensive location lindblum; MESO-AI voice overlay and popup text assigning us status of lindblum so we fight alexandrian soldiers with alexandria using either something like flare bombs or atomos or ozma on the city in the background; boss: Summoner of Darkness (with horn) which is mostly an add fight but sequential adds of small versions of the things that are both ff14-voidsent and ff9-summons/bosses third stage: with electrope 'alexandria' has become terra and we city a city scape of ff9's terra in the architecture and we fight against the electrope soldiers varies generations of machines and cyborgs with the final boss being Otis (2 stage/form fight). His dialogue: he acknowledges that he knows sphene is in the wrong but it is his duty to protect her even so. that she is not the sphene he once knew, but an imitation of, and "a broken knight for a broken queen"
I preordered and have just finished the first half of the msq. It’s shockingly bad. I just couldn’t play it. I wanted her father to push her off the balcony.
@@XPhobic76 I pre-ordered as well and at this point Pictomancer is saving that decision. I persevered only for the artifact gear, if I'm being honest. I really wanted some of those sets for my jobs, and they're locked behind MSQ. I can't believe I'm saying this about FFXIV, but I don't think many would fault you for skipping dialogue and cutscenes. If you feel bad later, there are play throughs on RUclips, or NG+ will eventually be added.
The words of Emet Selch echoed in my mind "I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you." The entire time as we shut off the soul machines in Living memory. I mean those people were already dead anyway right?
Interesting perspective and something they could possibly play on in the patches, I viewed it as more of really good puppetry infused with memories and programmed to act like people who are now dead, but who knows where they could take this in the future if they want to expand on it
In the metaphysics of XIV, the soul is "You", even if your memories get rinsed off between your various lives as you go through the cycle. Something can look like, act like, and even think it is You, but only your soul is truly yourself. I believe there's more lore on this specifically from the Allagans and their cloning shenanigans.
Yep. I share the same mindset as you. The moment I know Sphene is an endless and uses the robot soldiers as her vessel, I almost immediately see her as just a rogue AI. As sympathetic as her memory was, she's just a robot that simulates Sphene. I'd shut her down just like how I force shut down my laptop if it hangs or make creepy notifications
I was mostly neutral about her until the final trail when she somehow broke free towards the end of the fight to save the day. If anything, that should have happened afterwards, she could look confused and go "Oh, it's already over?", the WoL smiles and gives a thumbs up, maybe have some dialog options ("It was tough, but I managed.", "Fighting things like this is what I'm best at.", or "Zenos would have been disappointed if something like this could stop me.") and then she and Sphene could have their moment. But no, she has to steal the show, because she's the main character now and the WoL is just an NPC. I hope she's gone for good. I don't want to see her come 7.1.
I thought her character development was pretty good, not perfect, but quite good overall, but fully agree with the final trial, EVEN MORE SO with english voices on... she sounds plain and flat as hell, 0 emotion, nothing, she's even supposed to be struggling as she's pushing back a mech's arm that is 10 times her size, but she speaks as if she's going on a walk on a sunny day, enjoying herself... it's just horrendous. And then I did the trial again in japanese, to compare... it's night and day.
@@shiryushini7321 Yeah, as someone who played all expansion with JP voices it was very clear that Wuk was just a shounen protag with all that entails (cringy shouts, straight to the face messaging, etc.). Not really a bad thing, if you like that, which I do. Nothing wrong with having some simple "Hey, you should try and understand your fellow people instead of just thinking you're always superior/correct/etc." And as a result, when that part of the final trial happened it was less "Urgh, she's here to steal the show" and more "Oh hell yea, she did that thing they do!" and it actually gave me same vibes as the scions praying for us in EW. Less strong, of course, but still in the general ballpark of "Now I'm fired up!"
Lucked out on a work shut down for dawntrail's release and yeah I felt the same thing, I got really apathetic about finishing the MSQ around the third zone unlike last few expansions were I was glued to my screen and played constantly. This MSQ just made me go back and play SMT V:Vengence for NG+ runs when ever Wuk Lamat started to grate on my nerves (and that was often).
Still haven't finished it first time in FF14 I was so of put by the story I decided to level up alt classes to do old role quests and polish off old beast tribes.
I also feel like it wasn't until the invasion that Wuk Lamat ever got real pushback from her beliefs. The people of Mamook just ignored her until Bakool said "She's cool," which I don't really think counts as an actual challenge to her beliefs. They folded in the space of an hour.
Because that's a trait of a Mary Sue, when the rival suddenly heel turns for no other reason other than the story demands that all the characters like the Sue. That's probably why Wuk getting the due ire...because at the end of the day she checks enough boxes to be labeled a Mary sue.
Yeah part of her turning point going from a character that made me want to skip her dialogue to someone I could tolerate was because her beliefs got directly challenged and she was forced to grow and mature as a natural response to the stimuli of the story, it was a genuinely good part imo, especially with her trying to give the medicine to the corpse
She didn't even get pushback from Sphene. As Sphene kept on insisting they were the same. The only problem was is that Sphene could not give up on her plan, and simply coexist. And the only reason the story does this, is simply male Sphene the villain by virtue that her goals are clearly in the wrong no matter what.
@@JMulls My issue with that scene actually felt artificial. As if the writers were trying to cover up her Sue-ness by creating these artificial emotional points. It was rather jarring to me that she showed no mental break when her own father died. Its like the scene came in...she screamed...and then next few quests she was perfectly fine...no mental struggle...no nothing. The thing is Wuk's story had a ton of these fake 'lets show she's not a sue' scenes. The larger issue overall is the writing by committee and because of that any meaningful character development was just squandered.
I mean.. Bakool changes in the course of a single cutscene, and they try to pull an Emet-Selch with him. This expansion just really fails to deliver in so many ways. Nothing has weight. They're trying to shove too much into too short a space.
It feel so insulting to put Aymeric and Wuk Lmao in the same sentence even if its just saying they have the same role. Get my boi away from that lion girl
They also should have omitted Alphinaud and Alisae for a large part, and not used as background furniture ! it hurt me seeing Alphinaud in the back not saying a word. Also Shalyoolal should have been a fun western tural vidra roundup with Estinien the whole time!
It hurt seeing just about everyone just in the background for what? so we had people for dungeons and trials. They kept hyping up that the scions were going to be working against each other. That didnt even really happen.
I don't see why they couldn't have introduced new characters in Tural that were part of Wuk Lamat and Koana's entourage that weren't the scions, so we could have enough people for a duty. Give them characterization, motives, stories of their own, why they follow Koana or WL. Bakool Ja Ja could even join in after Mamook. Ketenramm, too. Especially if they were going to use the scions like furniture, since there was no actual "competition."
I don't even know why they had us bring the scions with us. They served almost no point outside of duties. Even the competition against your fellow scions was such a joke and a letdown.
@@HippeusOmega Giving us some scenes where the Scions sit around a fire eating tacos together would have lent some credence to this being a "vacation". But almost all their dialogue ends up talking about the new characters, either Wuk Lamat or Koana. Even the trailer for the expansion had the Scions enjoying food and drinks, setting an expectation.
I think the "Show, don't tell" theme you mentioned would have also applied well to the repeated theme of diversity and multiculturalism this new land had. My first thought when they talked about their diversity of cultures and races was that the entirety of FFXIV has had this.What is so important about this new place, other than trying to shoehorn modern real life political messages into the game. It felt like Square Enix's Ethics Department at the forefront.
Check out the website they made entirely for Tural and "never-before-seen cultures". I suppose everywhere else on the entire star didn't make the cut for such a website.
Come to think of it ... japanese company going for multiculturalism? That made me think a lot since the beginning of the expansion. No clear answer comes into my mind.
Not a lot of the cutscenes were voiced and there was sooooo many cutscenes this expansion. The ones that were voiced had her grating voice ruining them 😭 Her character probably really worked on paper as a short story, but stretched out over 40+ hours of MSQ felt like watching paint dry
@@JMulls she could have been left in the city hub and we could still have got her story but in more digestible doses. Exploring the island would have also been way more interesting without her acting like a tour guide. We get a Choice of which place to explore and tribe to help first but no option to leave her behind sadly
@@superkawaii792 Im increasingly leaning to the opinion the story would have been far better if the WoL had nothing to do with the competition but rather went to Toral with Estinian and it was a buddy cop exploration style thing
In simplest terms, the problem with Wuk Lamat is that the way she's written actively takes our agency as players in this story away from us. There are moments you mention from the story's first half where our agency is restored - the rite with the Yok Huy in Urqopacha leading up to us fighting Valigarmanda, and our work in Yak T'el when investigating the truth of the Blessed Siblings and facing the shade of GJJ. In every other segment of the first half, as well as the introduction of the new threat of the second half, our agency as the Warrior of Light is actively undermined for the sake of Wuk Lamat and her family getting their dramatic moments. In some of these cases, this isn't unsalvageable. With more clever writing, the introduction that leads to the second half of the Shaaloani story and takes us into Heritage Found could've had all the impact the team wanted it to have. They already have tools built into the lore which would allow that. (I.E. the Echo, which basically only gets to be used by Krile this tike around save for a couple small instances.) Thing is, when you consider the fact the game's basically been built on twelve years of our characters being a major focal point in the MSQ, asking us to take a step back and play the inactive bodyguard for someone else comes with the hard rule that the story revolving around that other person had better be DAMN compelling, otherwise people will feel bored, frustrated, and angry that the agency we had for so much of this game's story is suddenly stripped away from us. Based on some common complaints I see even from quite a few people who like Wuk Lamat and the first half of the story, it's safe to say the writers failed that task.
I remember explaining to someone that it wasn’t about the whole aspect of “You’re passing the torch! It’s you no longer being the WoL! This is Wuk Lamat’s story!” But rather in how- even if you pass the torch, your story goes on. Even if that story is grabbing tacos with your friends or sparring with gramps your fellow ‘old dude.’ We got virtually none of that. Almost every scene with WoL and the Scions with Wuk Lamat involved was the Scions just standing around waiting. There was very little dialogue aside from some nodding along to the plot, and every personal side adventure was cut short by ‘and then this Lamatyi related thing happened.’ You can pass the torch without becoming irrelevant.
@@mythogenesis4788 Yes, this. Exactly this. Since Naruto gets brought up a lot in regards to Wuk Lamat, I'm going to use that as an example here. Naruto wraps up and the torch is passed on to his child, Boruto. But even within the context of Boruto, Naruto doesn't just sit around nodding at his kid or just piddling away at the village. He gets involved in events too, still has his own agency and things he is trying to get done. He isn't going out, having adventures and doing the growth anymore, but he's still a fleshed out individual. Or a more obvious anime example - My Hero Academia. All Might passes the torch to Deku almost right away... but All Might stays involved, has agency, and his own stuff going on. He isn't the main focus or main character anymore, but he is an important one. Hell, even within the context of Final Fantasy XIV we see this happen - many of the old Job Quests had us surpass our teachers but they were still involved and had their own stuff going on that we came back to assist with.
90% of the quests are already classified as "speak to Wuk Lamat". Unironically. Somebody actually counted how many times that phrase alone came up during the MSQ.
I think the point was that even though we talk *to* Wuk Lamat a lot, we don't really talk *with* her. The only moment I can think of is when we found the goldsmith guy at the beach and related to his insecurities.
and I'd like to say, I probably would have felt more for the story, had it been Wuk Lamat that died instead of their father, NO ONE would have seen it coming because they used half the expansion to build up her character, her dying would have been a rgeat loss, and though we the player might have gotten a little annoyed with Wuk because it was then starting to feel overbearing and such, I do feel like her dying would have been better for the story, her brother forced to take on resolve and reason alone, the warrior of light enraged with Wuk's Death after seeing her grow, gods the story would have been so much more interesting if that happened
New drinking game. Every time there's a close up of Wuk Lamot squeezing her fist, take a shot. Guarantee you'll be drunk within 2 hours of starting Yawntrail.
As soon as they introduced her in EW and she invited to come to the competition i wanted to really really say "NO!" but was not allowed. It is a character bragging wanting all the attentions and take all the credits and has absolutely no leadership charisma and she is supposed to be peer to us in level but learned nothing, did she level up using a bot? :D
@@The4thHorsemanIT I mean, she didn't take all the credit. She said she wouldn't have gotten this fair without us, which is true. Lol Didn't see the bragging part. Like sure she was trying to hard to make a 1st impression when meeting us, but bragging? I didn't see that.
Agreed 100%. I couldn't stand her the minute I met her, and as the story I went on, hated her more and more until I started skipping cutscenes. Been playing FFXIV since 2015, and FF games since 1987. Easily my least favorite character in FF history.
Took me two weeks to finish MSQ because I couldn't stand her. I think she's worse than Lyse for me. Hope they never mention her again. Yuck, so poorly written.
We diddnt even get a single player role play instance for the alpaca catching trial. Its pretty much the ONLY time she is by herself the WHOLE expansion, could have had lots of fun with Alpaca hijinx, make it SEEM difficult so we get to appreciate Zaarol Jas strength at getting the gold one, and even fill her character out with things like "Everyone else is putting in so much work to help me..... Better make sure to do my part then!" or...... SOMETHING! The Main Character of the story did something important: The whole reason we WENT there, the trial...... OFF SCREEN! Wtf
it could be cool to experience something like FF7 Rebirth Chocobo hunting. It was annoying in FF7R doing it multiple times, but once in the whole MSQ is enough
it wouldve been better if we got to see how all 4 claimaints dealt with all trials... alpaca: koana came prepared with extra pel and is able to straight buy the saddle bakool just goes out and brute forces it....but due to severe panic they keep dying as he is bringing them back and it is a reoccuring thing we can see as we are doing the trading and bakool and lamat finish at about the same time zoraal's can stay the same also the trial bakool should fail is the tropical-vanu, not moblins. for moblins one only needs to provide a potpack crafter.....there is a whole ton that reveres bakool as a holy figure.... just bring one of the mamook mamool ja; this also means that lamat doesnt need to be extra stupid in following someone off of the very clear road just to get catnabbed; instead it can occur just post final boss in river dungeon as we climb final long ladder. lamat goes first at top bakool grabs her, and knocks the ladder with everyone else still on it down, and by the time we get the ladder up and up top bakool napped the crystal and took off. for vali- instead of bakool doing it to slow us down....think about it if it was just to slow us...that means he thought we would kill it.....and only claimaints who killed vali would be respected by tural so that would be him forfeiting; and if it were to kill us then it would wreck tural leaving naught to rule..... so the only fitting action would be for bakool to be a bit arrogant and try to kill vali...use fire to tunnel hole in ice to its neck and kill it then he could be the only one to overcome ice trial.....but he fails and vali breaks free; thus he is just stupid and not villianous. also give wuk evu some dialogue where he tells us to not worry about the hostility and actions bakool did to him with him saying there is unfornatuley long standing bad blood between the mamool and big cats, and that while the ends dont justfy the means perhaps insted we should be pittying bakool. lay the setup for the mamook arc
The last boss ticked me off so much. She was so… painfully… stu p!d. The last two zones could/should have been a really good horror sci-fi thing, but it fell kinda flat because the villains were brain dead.
I think I might leave the group if I get it in a roulette ever. It's really sad, we went from Hades in 5.0 to Endsinger in 6.0 to what we got in 7.0 such an anticlimactic ending, it had the emotional weight of a feather.
@@shinkicker404 sphene was fine, Zoraal was not; Sphene is an AI that is using the memories of other people to construct the persona of deceased sphene All endless are AI, run on the artificial brain of the MESO terminals, with the actual memories of the deceased and scrubbed souls of random people; more akin to replicants or synths Sphene is the least 'human' since the real sphene died before her memories could be fully and properly preserved, thus the AI relies heavily on the memories of others who knew her, like Otis. Sphene in a roundabout way states this to the group, even the not sharpest tool in the shed WoL understands, and has a dialogue option of pointing out this machine nature of sphene. Her programmed directive is to preserve alexandrias people as highest priority. She thusly cannot chose an option against it regardless of any potentially 'faked' feelings. So within the bounds and contraints of her programming she asks us if we have another solution, and the response of the group is silence. Thus she by core directives as an AI must carry on with the plan she does not like. There is no other choice and emotions are irrelevant. This is why lamat's emotional appeal attempts are SOOO PAINFUL to watch.
I think I maybe would have enjoyed the slow burn way more if I didn't know solution 9 was a thing because I was just waiting for them to pull a massive plot twist the entire time
@@JMulls 100% agree. This time around I tried to avoid as many spoilers as possible but trying to avoid ppl posting screenshots of Solution 9 for months is literally impossible. It's rlly disappointing that they keep showing super late game stuff because it will always set expectations for when they may appear in the story and also takes away from the surprise when it actually shows up in the story.
HW being focused on Aymeric fit beautifully well. He struggled, he suffered, but most importantly he worked with WoL, not take away spotlight from us. The scions did not need to babysit Aymeric. He learned hard lessons that WukLamat never did.
we also were not forced to spend as much time of the msq with with aymeric as lamat....during HW we actually travel with local estinien far more than aymeric aymeric was also in a position of authority and influence prior to WoL arrival. unlike trust fund baby lamat. in that regard aymeric is more similar to zoraal or koana in terms of position... think if koana was in zoraal's position as head of landsgaurd before going on the boat the WoL can respond in dialogue with not wanting to get involved in politics and we are told we can decline after we check it out; after the 4 claimants meet and we witness; the buy-in is to not let someone with zoraal or bakool disposition win.... meaning we can support lamat OR KOANA or improve and correct the dispositions of zoraal and/or bakool
It got bad enough that yoshi P hismelf told people to back off. The devs are pretty good at listening, but with how much of the complaints could be seen as… well… misogyny and potential transphobia, it’s either likely he’ll listen or likely he wont
Wuk Lamat would be better if her voice was better... I'm going to try playing MSQ on German or Japanese to see if it is any better. But the English version was like running your nails across a chalkboard... :x
I switched to Japanese on someones recommendation and there is a noticeable improvement, even some of the scions sounded a bit off in English for this expac, like Thancred for example. That being said the writing issues still persist obviously, but better voice acting does make it more bearable.
I liked the second half, but Sphene drove me up the wall by the end. It could have been a really good sci-fi horror, but Sphene came across as incredibly short sighted and stu p!d. The deal/thing with Zooral Jar… ugh… it’s annoying because I initially liked her. Agree on Wuk, she was too prevalent, oppressive even. We needed time away from her. She was channeling Naruto way too hard. Also the cutscene in the final trial… ugh.
That the endless in the Living Memory just accept what is their practical death is such a missed opportunity. I'd like to see what they can do with such interesting topic. We are practically agreeing with Hades.
I wouldn't say we are agreeing with Hades, because Emet was trying to do something similar to Sphene, doom everyone else to save his own people. Though I agree, maybe having a few NPC's that don't want us to shut off the terminals and end their happiness could have made the last zone even better even though i personally thoroughly enjoyed it
my biggest criticism of Dawntrial was Sphene, particularly at the end. I liked her enough at the start, grew more fond of her, and then towards the end of the last zone she just totally fell flat for me. She literally doesnt even react to a single (heartbreaking) action you made in the entire zone. The entire reason for fighting was gone while she was *checks notes* "calculating," but she fights you anyway. DIsagree about Wuk tho. Loved Wuk Lamat.
It just annoyed me constantly that Sphene refused to consider any alternative besides mass soul harvesting. I’ve even seen people pointing out how there were countless alternatives ranging from giving the endless omicron shells to just put their memories in a virtual space/reality. There wasn’t even any major rush as it’s stated by one of the endless that they could be in storage for a few hundred years waiting to be recreated. Which sounds to me like memories can be safely stored indefinitely until the energy is available.
Im so disappointed that THIS was the result of the 2 largest and most successful expansions in mmo history before it. A C tier character with a B tier story. Id mention other characters, but wuk dominated 91% of the text in the damn expansion, so they dont really have an impact.
One of the "show don't tell" problem I had was the relationship between Wuk Lamat and Namikka. How am I supposed to feel anything about the ending with them when all I got was some screenshot flashes of young Wuk Lamat?
When the trailer had her say three lines and ALL THREE were a variation of "I am Wuk Lamat and i want to be Dawn Servant!!", i knew she'd be a garbage character. She's a worse Naruto voiced by someone who clearly was not prepared for such a huge main role.
One lil disagreement I have here 7:21 Is I think having a vidraal beat us would've made the story even worse, because not only has Wuk been an overwhelming focus but it would just hurt the powerscaling more. I'm not inclined to believe a Vidraal would be anywhere near as strong let alone stronger than for example Eulogia, the Endsinger, even Zenos. They shouldn't be presenting things that can beat us this early in the new 10 year cycle of storytelling. Stakes can be raised without enemies that are simply stronger than us.
The only real threat to the WoL in this expansion should have been the automated Armies of Alexandria, the raw numbers involved would have made it a battle where the consequences of the battle would have been high
@@MasterLittica You are correct, which genuinely annoys me that not only did we just... let Zoraal walk away after killing Gulool but agreed to let Wuk handle him alone that one time. Like what? No? This is a threat to more than your home. I think the writers were too into Wuk being the main character, they forgot about how the WoL would and should have reacted.
hate "powerscaling." the WoL isn't an unstoppable god. He isn't simply immune to damage like Superman. Just because a level 90 vendor in Tuliyollal can solo Ifrit EX doesn't make them actually that powerful. Likewise, every major super god threat required 7 more of us (or 23) to defeat, working in unison. The only thing we really solo'd was Zenos, and not as a primal but as the man; and even then required we spend nearly every breath in our bodies. The tural vidraal are likened to the auspices of the Four Lords trials; beings we also couln't solo. Why couldn't there by some out there that at least posed SOME measure of danger to us; even if not totally life threatening. You can even do interesting things with tural vidraal like panthers that have natural camouflage or venomous beasts with incredibly lethal venom. You could do so much with this concept and still put the WoL in danger.
@@kynesovos8580 indeed it seems they forgot; everyone forgot other than the writing of shalooni.... where erenville specificially and directly asks us to not do what we can easily do and murder all the bad guys because our now (unfortunate) connection to the new ruler and the political and beauracratic BS that could follow; in shalooni erenville remembered that the WoL has one of the highest kill counts of sentient lifeforms in direct combat and is not afraid to lay hands lets also give credit to the line of one of bakool's underlings when in tropical-vanu villige he was about to start a full fight against team lamat, and the underling was like: dont do that, not because of the overgrown housecat but because of that one (WoL) so disappointed we never had a dialogue option were we could admit to killing a 'blessed sibling' and it was just another day for us (wanderer's palace hard) in order to temper bakool's inflated ego instead it is only mentioned by a mamool ja in passing that someone across the salt killed [name] blessed sibling and we just have a reaction but dont speak up
Oohhhh be careful, don't you know that you're not allowed to hate this character for some reason? That you're not allowed to have any criticism no matter how legitimate.
Yeah the pro-Dawntrail players are definitely going into damage control mode right now, there has been a lot of misinformation about the portion of the fanbase that has been critical of this expansion spread around by them.
"with friendship and community" Wuk Lamat excused a genocidal maniac who forced thousands of still-born pregnancies on his own people because they didn't have crops. This would go down in history as one of the worst mistakes in ff14 history, for she did not know the villain Zareel Ja would become. You would think the Third Promise wise enough to kill that kind of monster - but her judgement failed her.
Also how the crop situation is managed. If they are unable to grow even potatoes nothing can grown there without fertilizer, which begs the question, "How the F is there even any vegetation then?" If there's that then the soil must be rich enough to support growth. Lack of sunlight? Potatoes grow with a small amount of sunlight, mushrooms grow without any at all, and there are plenty of root vegetables that also grow with a low amount of sunlight. If nothing they've tried has worked the solution would be to install mirrors that direct the sunlight down to the fields so things could grow. I remember her suggesting they should try and plant rice. and I was floored. Rice is one of the most resource-intensive food plants there is! It was so patently clear that the section was written by people who had no idea how farming works and think they do.
@@pegeta I do not see that at all. That seems like a theory with not a lot of basis to it. No offense. I see Wuk Lamat being forgotten the second 8.0 drops.
I spent the whole time trying to figure out why I was there. As I have said before, there is no way her father would have raised her to be this uninvolved and ignorant of her people. She should have had Erenville bring us to her, but given us some free (non-Wuk Lamat) time here and there as she did her progression stuff. (As it was she even came to my suite when I had a mandatory nap break.) We should have been with Krile and Erenville, getting more development of their stories, which both suffered from how they were handled. At least in Stormblood, I had my bromance with Hein and the power couple Sadu & Magnai to distract me from Lyse being omnipresent. I mostly missed the Scions (even the ones that were shown but not really there) and feeling a bit needed. Now apparently anyone can beat really tough bosses, so I can go back to adventuring and solo travel.
After finishing the DT MSQ, I went back to face Golbez on the Dais in Extreme and declared: "I'll take all the punishment you have at me several times over. I'd rather have that pain rather than have to bear Wuk Lmao in my company ever again." Whoever wrote all the WoL praise-responses to anything referring to Wuk Lamat should be sacked.
as a legacy player, wuk is the first character that made me want to quit the game for good. i'd rather play 1.0 all over again than spend another moment with her....
@@JustinStrife considering FFXI, with a much smaller player base, was squares number one money maker until only recently, I'm sure the loss of a few subs isn't a big deal. Purple unsub daily for less. New players join. Most people in the communities I stick around in are big fans of Lamatyii, your view of her isn't as all encompassing as you seem to think.
She is a one dimensional character, is ok to have them Zenos was one, but the real problem with her is that she show up and cant stop talking in almost every cutscene! It was literally "Wuk Lamat the Game' It was driving me mad..
Dawntrail - in my opinion - suffers from one main failing : story structure being ill chosen and the cracks of that being visible in all aspects of the story as it unfolds. The first half is set up to be the lowest of low stakes, while simultaneously confronting some absolutely gut-wrenching aspects that get brushed away because 'too dark, this is the Nickelodeon expansion'. What do I mean ? The Pelupelu, HanuHanu, Potsworn/Moglins and giants are essentially zero conflict stories. You're sightseeing and solving issues with the power of friendship and the most minimal thinking. The last zone suddenly makes you confront the legacy of a hundred-year-long civil war that got resolved with banana leaves. And when I say 'resolved', that is a stretch as half the population in that zone was told they can just stay in their unlivable forest, perpetuating the cycle of horror going on there. A better structure - in my view - would be to make the rising tensions of that third zone the core of the first half, making the imperfect solution of Galool Ja Ja into a more lasting, solid thing by not having the leader of Tural being the result of those horrors, unable to be fully trusted either party in that forest because of long-standing cultural sores. The story can then visit all the other zones and get them to cooperate in their own unique way to resolve the tension, instead of 'white saviouring' the poor forest lizards with plants and seeds from foreign places. As if these local cultures were all too stupid to figure out the most basic things about the ecology they lived in for thousands of years. (Same with the HanuHanu 'forgetting' what their festival was about in a world with LITERAL, ACTUAL magic, ffs...) The story could then use the tensions of this growing war-like sentiment and maybe some localised tragedy to give some credence to "blue lizard bad guy who's name I already forgot because I couldn't care less" believing that to renounce war they must feel it's sting so deeply as to never crave for it again instead of now it being based on nothing more than some loose comments here and there. A far more believable descent into darkness for that character, not the wishy-washy slide between this and meeting dad's approval then not having a place in the world, then not knowing what his legacy was, then SOMEHOW having a child with not a word about the mother, etc... I could ramble on for quite a bit, but I hope this gets the sentiment across. It's not just one character being over-used. A good story could survive that. It's that the main vehicle for the story they wanted to tell doesn't account for the gravitas of the topics they broach and treat is like Saturday afternoon cartoon hour, while also wanting soul-sucking Rogue AI's.
I've literally skipped every cutscene that wasn't voiced by Bakool JaJa. Bakool is the only interesting character this entire Expansion. Krile and Eren got shafted and Sphene is just dollar-store Emet Selch
had she not been such huge center throughout the ENTIRE story, I would have been fine, but she feels like a character u can only appreciate in mild doses 😭
I leveled a Viper this week just to start the new MSQ. There were a couple of nights where I just logged off because of all of the reading and cutscenes. I felt like eventhough its a new start, it's not interesting at all and even getting to the new city seems like a slow crawl. I think my character is still on the boat ride. And Wuk Lamat, I just don't like her so far. Nothing about her is interesting and her english voice acing feels weird for some reason. Like they couldn't settle on what accent she has. Maybe this weekend i'll play it more, but I feel like if I do, i'm going to need some alcohol to get through this one.
@@amecoeur Yea I feel like the next morning I will wake up with a hangover feeling like I drunk texted an ex. Like "ohh god, I can't believe I went through that last night"
responses like these are disappointing. i hope you can find the spirit of Azem in there somewhere and enjoy the journey. i liked Wuk Lamat's voice work. She delieverd a lot of line perfectly (imo)
@@redcloud16 disappointing in what way? We have different viewpoints. It doesn't make you or me right/wrong. It means we received it differently. Everyone in life isn't going to like what you like. So don't get disappointed in it. It is a game/novel. Everyone is entitled to their opinion
@@remus2565 because something that brought me such joy and emotion is hated by so many, for reasons I feel it didn't deserve. I'm allowed to feel disappointed just as people are allowed to drag it.
I actually would of rather had Wuk meet some one like zenos, some one unabashedly evil just for evils sake. Because by the end, I still felt that Wuk would be an unfit ruler, the way they tried to teach the lesson of peace and friendship was hollow to me and childish. I feel Wuk never actually had a hard choice to make in her story, she did not really grow after a certain point, she just stayed the 'peace and love' person throughout it all. As for character development? I only really saw her getting over her dislike of Alpacas and getting a bit more confident in herself, that is what I saw personally, maybe you saw something different. But to me, a leader needs to make difficult choices, maybe force Wuk into a position where she has to choose who lives and who dies amongst her people, throw her hard choices that leaders have to make. Because how she is currently, I still see a very Naive character who would be taken advantage of greatly in any political sphere.
"Because how she is currently, I still see a very Naive character who would be taken advantage of greatly in any political sphere." I can just see it... we're gonna come back in 5 years and the Pelupelus are gonna be running the place. All they need to do is send one delegation to the Dawnthrone and talk Wuk into doing whatever they want, she has like no resistance whatsoever to their sales pitches.
I kinda had a feeling when the story patches were all about a Emo girl leaning how to emote that they would make something really cliche but they went too overboard.
I always found Sphene as a character very contradicting. She loved her people to the point that she was willing to start a war via mass genocide in order to keep her people alive, which would realistically cause more harm for her own people in the long run
Sphene was a naive Queen. While her heart was in the right place. Her actions did not align with her message. Really, outside of the whole genocide thing. She came off as somewhat real. Cause there are moments in history that good people do terrible things for good reasons. Still, does not make them immune of their actions and the consequences that follow. Really, with the genocide thing added...yeah. Well, we need the "big bad person of the week" come in to destroy the world. She fell flat. All because she was naive. Even if she was made up of memories. Never once asking the question, "Is there a better way?" She just accepted the need to use souls and draining the Aether from other reflections. Though, I wonder, being that Sphene's world is a reflection. A shard that broke off from The Source, the home of our WoL. This shard is attuned towards Lightning and gone awry. I question if Sphene's ultimate plan would work. As the Mother Crystal is within The Source and attempt to absorb the Aether from the world. It wouldn't really work or rather would work but be too great. Cause The Source is the plane of all elements. Balance between all of them. An endless war that each element tries to dominate but never able to get the upper hand. It would be basically another Calamity as the reflection would unintentional cause a Rejoining. Eh....I am overthinking things. Trying to give the writing staff too much credit. Highly doubt most of them even remembered or knew of these plot points. After all, we don't even know the number for the reflection. Just know it was overwhelmed with Lightning. Much like the First was overwhelmed by Light, mostly. And the 13th was overwhelmed by Darkness. So between 1 and 13. This reflection would be between there. Likely next to the Reflection that was overwhelmed by Ice. A bit of a plot hole there. Opinion.
Nope the Sphene we encounter was neither naive nor true love for her people, that one is long since dead: Sphene is an AI that is using the memories of other people to construct the persona of deceased sphene All endless are AI, run on the artificial brain of the MESO terminals, with the actual memories of the deceased and scrubbed souls of random people; more akin to replicants or synths Sphene is the least 'human' since the real sphene died before her memories could be fully and properly preserved, thus the AI relies heavily on the memories of others who knew her, like Otis. Sphene in a roundabout way states this to the group, even the not sharpest tool in the shed WoL understands, and has a dialogue option of pointing out this machine nature of sphene. Her programmed directive is to preserve alexandrias people as highest priority. She thusly cannot chose an option against it regardless of any potentially 'faked' feelings. So within the bounds and contraints of her programming she asks us if we have another solution, and the response of the group is silence. Thus she by core directives as an AI must carry on with the plan she does not like. There is no other choice and emotions are irrelevant. This is why lamat's emotional appeal attempts are SOOO PAINFUL to watch.
I think Wuk Lamat also suffered from the English voice actor. The voice actor I hope gets replaced. They should have hired a Hispanic voice actor who would have been a lot better. In fact, I turned my voice to Japanese so that I don't have to hear the English voice actor's voice. This also drags the story down. I was very disappointed overall with it. I would give the story a 3 out of 10. But the Dungeons and graphics get a 9 /10 out of 10.
One major problem I have with Dawntrail is the passive role of the WoL; we haven't been this passive since ARR or beginning Heavensward. We don't do anything. When your viewpoint character has to sit there being a doofus in order for plot to happen, go back to your computer and revise your script. But for the most part, the whole thing was passable, until the end of the final trial.
The gripe I have isn't how much screentime Wuk had. I could care less that she took center stage. My problem is that in all that time, I didn't feel her character developing AT ALL. I felt more compassion for Lyna in Shadowbringers and she was a side character with like 17 voice lines.
Wuk Evu and Honey B. Lovely should have more spotlight than this insufferable stupid face cat. At first, I thought well the story is good but when I re-read and watch my friend playthrough the MSQ, it hits me like "why the hell I like this story?". Some part of the stories don't make any sense, like, why suddenly everyone forgive Bakool Ja Ja after he melt the ice and release Valigarmanda? Why the hell no one help or intervene the fight between Gulool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja? (Don't spit the hornor blah blah with me, it ends right after the emo lizard get up by the soul collector or something like that) And Wuk Lamut... she's not even a likeable to me. I don't have any issue with her voice (the voice is bad as I predicted) but this one-dimensional character keeps annoy me in every seconds on the cutscenes. She did't have her development at all. She continues shouting for her people and their happiness. I F@##@KING GET YOUR DAMN GOAL AND MOTIVATION BUT FOR F#$$K SAKE, JUST SHUT UP ABOUT THEM. At this point, I don't expect any thing from the MSQ or unless Ishikawa-san returns as a story writer not supervisor. Please take the notes, Yoshi-p and dear devs.😊
I won't lie. I was so totally uninterested in the MQS. I never felt so uninvolved. While there were some good points. There were just too many bad points. And if I hear Wuk yell "SPHENE" one more time. I am going to hack her head off. Ugh. The "Resilient Son" turning into a literal manchild...uhm lizardchild. Unable to accept anything. Heck not even his own son! Dawntrail is one of those stories that is WORSE than Bloodstorm. And I LIKE Bloodstorm, compared to other people. And I find that scary. Also, why is the main city of Tuliyollal has JAZZ music playing for its theme? Why? It is conflicting as hell. Off-topic. Yeah, Bloodstom may have had a bit of jarring events and some characters people did not like or liked. Yet there was reason for your character, WoL, to be there. You had a reason to be there. Dawntrail, you may have been invited, but in truth, you kind of just followed aimlessly. No, real reason being there. That includes many of the other NPCs. They kind of were just there. All because of the Trust System. God forbid if they took some effort and actually came up with new NPCs, but that would overload them. I know it. Now I have no real opinion of the current Post-Story content. I haven't really delve into it. I kind of stopped after leveling WAR and PLD to 100, finished the MQS as PLD. Then, moved on to level my other jobs. The lands of Dawntrail are not terrible. Just hope they find away to revive Endless world. As much as that would kind of ruin the whole sacrifice and such. Still, kind of killed a whole world. No, I am serious. You destroyed a whole world. You become the very monster that you spend YEARS fighting against. No real justification. Other than one "Queen" going crazy. The pure naivety of it all. I have my whole theory of this little part and the "Reflections" we have seen, been to, and saved(?). That is a whole other topic and I am getting further off topic. Summing up. Dawntrail is a meh. Wuk Lamat, while could be likable. Sadly, she isn't. She is that Anime Protagonist that is ignorant, naive, and lacks any education (being she has clearly stated hating Tests and seemed to failed a lot of them). Yet, everything goes right for her. Even when they go wrong. She has no real loss. Sure her adoptive father died, but he wasn't really a "Good Man". And her real father, we actually meet, is hiding from her. Her adoptive brother, he is actually a good catboy. While the lizardchild...I mean Resilient Son is dead. She actually suffered no real physical trauma, no true mental break, nothing. Doesn't even know what real struggle is. WoL knows. Our Character knows. WE KNOW. She got off easy. She got the "Perfect Ending". Even if a lot of people died.................perfect ending. To me. Seems rushed and she was shoehorned in during the second half.
say you didn't pay attention without saying you didn't pay attention, the wol is in tulliyolal because emet selch recommended finding the golden city near the end of endwalker
I disagree with having more one on one time with Wuk Lamat. I wanted less time with her because she was involved in almost every part of our travels. Beyond that, her martial prowess arc was absurd. What's even worse, her defeating Bakool Ja Ja AND his goons comes after her learning to rely on others and admit her weaknesses. Not only was this moment not earned, but it lends to the feeling that it was forced to just elevate her. In turn, It's bad writing that takes you out of the story, which for an FF game is a killer.
I Know right, you in no way feel like like the veteren adventurer who has been embroiled in everything from political plots to assassination attemts for literally years, no you feel like the rookie green adventurer you are around Lv 15 during ARR being taken by surprise around every corner
The last thing I need is my WOL having more one-on-one time with Wuk Lamat. I couldn't wait to get away from her and would cringe whenever I was stuck babysitting her again. No, I don't want to explore with you. Just let me do my own thing ffs.
what they need to do that we know they wont, is have four trials per expansion so that the first trial isnt a big set-up big bad that dies way too early. Zodiark is the most heinous example.
Wuk, the only time I found her or her story remotely tolerable was when she was not talking (unfortunately, she always manged to spoil those glorious moments).
I just finished the first trial. My issue with the story right now is it doesn’t follow you and Wuk Lamat is the centerpiece. I wish it had better world building as this was supposed to be a new saga or whatever they said. But it seems they’re going to just build off the last line Emet Selch said rather than a new saga. Just some more story arcs as expansions without anything to tie the expansions together. Idk, we’ll see. I’m enjoying the hell outta viper rn.
Till the end of right of succession i think story was nice and Wuk Lamat was fine i really liked her, problem is that her story continue. I don't agree that if her first half of msq wuk lamat got better story she would be better in 2nd half. It was just too much of her and there were not a place for us as hero to have a little story or any other character.
Currently I'm on the last dungeon. So far I think I was able to tune Wuk Lamat to the background and treat her as, like you said, shounen protag. I don't take her seriously until the invasion, and after that I resorted to "ok then just do what you want to do, I'm here for the sights" whenever she says she wants to know the people because of leadership stuffs. And of course the jump in her power/resolve feels unjustified. Seeing some comments here regarding Wuk Lamat's direction in the trial tho, I think my positive opinion will lessen. We'll see. Regarding our diminished role, I found that being in the mindset that we are Azem, who likes to travel the world and help the people however small, really helps. Fetch something? Talk to someone? "Great, I'll help you, I'm the counselor to the people." But I also agree it should've been more of an active mentor role, like a learning facilitator, and not just like a chaperone/helper.
Overall, I don't mind Wuk Lamat's character arc it just feels rushed and like you said I would have like to see the WoL train Wuk Lamat once or twice. For example, if it was once have us train her a couple of quests before she fought bakool in a training montage.
My thoughts on Wuk Lamat mostly come down to the skill of her VA and the director. Sena Bryar lacks the experience or vocal range to emote properly while holding her accent. To me, many of her more emotional scenes fell flat because her emotional reaction was subdued to maintain the accent. I could understand if they were subdued to present her belief that she needs to be stoic. That would be a good message that being stoic hampers your QoL as your emotions get suppressed. Compare this to Lily Cooper who in "Respectless" in Hazbin Hotel, ruclips.net/video/bOarXIWBtWk/видео.html manages to emote while singing and maintaining her accent. Lily Cooper is from the USA and was born and raised there. In that song, she manages to signal more emotional depth than Wuk Lamat does in the entire MSQ while sounding British and conveying the accent flawlessly while singing, which is one of the most difficult things to do in acting.
I disgree, there were several points where I said aloud to myself "damn she delivered that line *perfectly!*." The scene on the pier after the attack when she talks about failing her promise to her people, for example.
@@redcloud16 "Several scenes" is the issue. The VA for Koana knocks it out of the park in every scene he's in as he maintains both his accent and emotes. For Sena Bryar to be good at it she should be able to do both in EVERY scene she voices or at least nearly every scene I'm sure Sena Bryar was selected for her ability to act in her own voice and when they slammed an accent on her she stumbled since she in some scenes, especially when Wuk Lamat has subdued emotions had to make a choice between emoting those and maintaining the accent, her choice was a compromise and it can be heard. As opposed to what people think portraying subdued emotions is many times more difficult than portraying loud emotions when acting. It's easy to portray anger loudly, it's difficult to portray subdued anger.
@@nielsjensen4185 except I think she did fantastic at those smaller nuanced voice lines as well. Rewatching people playing the msq on twitch has only solidified that opinion for me.
I want to expand on your points and reiterate in my own way. It’s sad because Wuk Lamat is actually a wonderful character! She had so much potential to be as loved as Haurchefant, Alisaie, or Feo Ul, but the way the story forced the plot to revolve around her- WoL could be replaced with a lamp and make very little difference. I had really hoped that WoL would be taking a role similar to the older Scions as more of a mentor and guide, but it felt more like we were just kind of along for the ride as babysitters. Have us call Wuk Lamat out to her face for her naive nature and teach her through our experiences. Our experience is whittled down to us commenting to our comrades “hey remember when-?” And Wuk Lamat fooliws with, “NOPE! Back to my story!” There was very little tension. Tension was important for great stories like HW and ShB. You have happy moments, but still have this undercurrent of, “Okay, but there are active threats at play here.” Zoraal Ja was that threat, but he really didn’t feel threatening because his motives and desires felt so surface level. There was a lot of very childish aspects to the rite of succession in which the challenges felt very “Oh, good! You read a book or played a game! Gold star!” And there’s not much wrong with that if you do it right. Have Wuk Lamat involve us the way you would a royal advisor asking advice and following our examples rather than say “Hold my beer and pray for me.”
Many good points here. Interesting point about wishing there was more one on one time between WoL and Wuk Lamat, though. In theory I agree, because yeah, we really were just basically a glorified escort for her to sound off at, and we could have had more of a mentorship role in teaching her and training her. On the other hand, we have *lots* of one on one time with her because almost every single time the party splits up, they tell you to go with Wuk Lamat. Its just the wrong kind of one on one time. Also on the subject of the taco test, I think the idea was a good one, they just partnered her with the wrong person. Instead of Koana, who did nothing but gush over how great Wuk is, she should have been paired up with Zoraal Ja, which would have made for tense moments as he challenged her ideals, and offered more insight into his motivations as a character. Like I said in your other video, I do think Wuk Lamat is to blame for a lot of the bad pacing and story issues, though, and they could have been improved upon by simply taking some of the attention away from Wuk and giving it to someone else like Krile, Erenville, Zoraal Ja or Sphene. She was an ok character, but definitely not good enough to have so much focus put on her. First half of the expansion, fine, that's Wuk's story. Second half, though, she should have taken a back seat.
also taco test is the worst test: for all other tests it was possible for all 4 claimants to succeed but only the taco test hosted by tropical big cats limited winners... a test that was highly dependent on being able to match the tastes of tropical-big cats when the contests are: 2 cats and 2 reptiles....... THE most racist trial and test (also the test made by lamat's bio dad) ..... even openly racist leader of mamook, bakool's father made an honest and fair test.
Yeah the translations of posts from the FF14 Japanese forums have been absolutely hilarious. Hopefully this means square will take this criticism and course correct like they did with stormblood.
Im watching this while i blast through the 2nd half of this crap i knew to set my expectations low but holy hell this is like post arr im gonna go insane
Sphyne and wuk both were terribly written. I prefered many side characters man. Even normal ass npcs were better in side quest. Also our character never sparred with wuk at all, so she learned nothing. At least we sparred with lyse. Lastly i actually liked Bakool ja ja's character, i went from actually hating him, to really liking his character, and ecen when i hated him i still enjoyed his character.
One moment i liked is when the yok huey actually challenged her belief. And she resolved it only partially by sticking to her guns. It felt like a genuine resolution. While the resolution after the Gulool ja ja boss fight felt a bit forced. Them saying F U were not good but we allow it once shows problems arent imediately resolved butbridges can be built. I think her ideals should have been changed more often. She was never shown to have to adjust her way of thinking till the end. I think her arc should be reverse to koana. She was tradition good, he was new thing good. But the blessed siblings tradition should made her think...maybe not all are good. And its weird all were very sad about whats needed for blessed siblings. But there should have been at least some to say: Fu its good and we need it or else you push us around or they are a gift or whatever. But it was just...other stuff than bananas? Yeah f blessed siblings.
2:34 Have you seen/experienced NA PF? haha jokes aside, fair evaluation! Loved to hear your persepctive on it all! :D I won't write an essay about all the things I did dislike about the MSQ, but one thing that I did NOT care for at all was all of the FFIX stuff :( I know I'm def way alone in this cause so many people seem to just gush over FFIX but I never cared for the game itself and to see it just plastered almost everywhere was a bit "meh" for me. As for Wuk Lamat, there just wasn't enough time to cook her properly in terms of the pacing & writing, and at points the VA did not deliver lines as passionately/fitting as it should have been for the given scene. The BIG Stand out is the final trial, that made my soul "unalive" hearing such a dispassionate performance, so that doesn't help with the hate the character is receiving. I do agree however she will end up being the new Ser Aymeric
LOL, you have a very fair point with PF 🤣 Yeah i get why people don't like the final boss moment with Wuk Lamat, to me I'm kind of numb to it because they've done it last few expacs so when it happened I mainly went "wait she's here... oh well back to dps'ing" and just kind of ignored her. Personally I love FF9 so I didn't mind it but I can def understand if you didn't care for the game how it could be a bit grating as well, they possibly leaned on the FF9 stuff a bit TOO hard sometimes, though I wouldn't personally complain cause I love FF9 lol
Another part that I think contributed to it is the direction the English VA took it. It feels like, as many people have stated, that she "shouts in lowercase." I understand that the VA has gotten a LOT of hateful attention since then, and I do NOT condone that whatsoever. Hating someone simply for having a sub-par performance is rediculous, toxic, and unconstructive at best. Worse so for who they are as a person. However, as an aspiring writer, one who has become more sensitive and acknowledging of the importance of creative decisions, I cannot simply ignore my personal take; That the VA was not the correct one to voice Wuk. That Enix could have chosen someone better suited for the role. That isn't me being hateful, that is me using what we have witnessed, and arriving at a conclusion that, from what I've heard, at least half of the community has come to. Wuk isn't the only one in DT that had a less-than-satifactory performance, but she is the most prevalent.
After seeing so many great leaders of nations in FFXIV, Wuk Lamat feels too immature and off the cuff for me to want to see her succeed as Dawnservant, and she doesn’t really grow.
I may be one of the few that didn't dislike Wuk Lamat, but I do feel she was overused. I feel that Krile was let down in the story as far as her role and significance. During the msq I had a theory that Krile was also a WoL. All the pieces are there. She's from another reflection, has the same power as us, and having no combat experience, was able to keep up the squad that traveled the end of creation. I think that's what should've happened
all i wanted was more character building for WOL like the whole azem thing or how about albert was piece of your soul or how krile said you deserve love and build more stronger bond with your friends but they push all that aside instead building good materials they already have, but now we get what a mary sue with no brains who stuck to like a bad habit I want WOL development
I play with Japanese/subtitles and her voice wasn't as bad as the EN version from what i've heard of it briefly. The Japanese version has more emotion to her voice even during the parts of the story that were very slow & plodding. Before the reveal happens her character was OK, wasn't as invested with her compared to other 'travelling' companions in past expansions like Ysale or Crystal Exarch. I'd say she was very much like Lyse in Stormblood, didn't really care as much but as subsequent patches are released i'd say Lyse was a decent character by the end of it. It remains to be seen if Wuk Lamat will have the same character arch when more patches are out. For now she was OK. I was more invested in Bakool Ja Ja than her early in the story. His redemption arch was probably one of the better parts of Dawn Trail.
her English va is excellent, there were several times i said aloud "she delivered that line perfectly!" I liked Wuk Lamat, but I also really liked Lyse (rare, i know).
I hear her for the first time talking, and how she delivers those lines in english... it feels so... lustless xD so... boring? xD Idk I'm playing in german and she has a wide array of emotions in her voice etc.
I actually didn't hate Wuk Lamat, but they used her WAY too much. Only a world-class vocal performance could have made Wuk Lamat universally likeable. She was so in your face, if you didn't like her it probably felt like you were having her shoved down your throat. They really needed to integrate the Scions more. Instead of putting it all on the shoulders of a fairly new VA (3 credits besides FFXIV, iirc), they needed to put more on the veteran VA to carry the expansion. This would have been an amazing opportunity to show Alphi talking to Wuk Lamat about how he used to be a spoiled brat, and how traveling with the WoL changed him for the better. Instead of just relegating her to cheerleader, they should have had Alisaie reminisce about her time in the First, or even just her memories of Louisoix to show that a leader sometimes has to put their own life on the line (wouldn't that have made the scene with Gulool Ja Ja hit even harder...). So many missed opportunities. I know they wanted a fresh start, but this almost felt like they could have done the whole thing without the Scions, at all. At times, it felt like they were only there to fill a Trust spot.
I hope you're right in that she turns into Aymeric where we don't see her again. I liked her, I liked having here there. But by the end where we were fighting Sphene, I wanted her to just go away. Sphene wants to soul suck EVERYONE on Etheirys. Please stop trying to preach understanding and peace, love and happiness to the murder machine. We spent the entire expac following Wuk Lamat around and being treated with a 10 foot pole cause people realized we were 100% not someone to mess with. By the final fight, that really should have been the WOLs fight to do their own Azem thing. Having Wuk Lamat show up to help really, REALLY killed the vibe because I didn't feel she EARNED the right to join us in that battlefield. Are you telling me she's randomly as strong as us? Stronger than the Scion's who've fought with us for 5 expacs? She could have joined AFTER the fight to do her "Let's get along" talk. But the entire 2nd half, I loved the concept and idea, but I really disliked the fact we brought Wuk Lamat. "I don't understand ANY of this." Ok then, go back and defend Tuliyollal then.
I wish we could stop being guidance counselors for lost young folks. Zero and Wuk'Lamat back to back? Share the light with them? Sure. Have them overcome their issues? Sure. This expansion is us grabbing her tail and having her lead us from place to place and beating the shit out of what's in her way so that she can then [enter objective here] The NPCs barely reference is, too. A few 'salt" and 'You got carried' comments and remove those and we don't exist. We're her muscle, basically.
She's the only part of this expansion that I disliked. I really really disliked. She wanted to be the main character, but that's me sorry, I just want you to go away now Wuk, we helped you out, you got what you wanted, it's time now to sit on your throne and do your thing, stop following me.
Now see THIS is a meaningful discussion, in a way that the early bombardment of "bleah it sucks, the writing's terrible, yadda yadda" we were getting, was not. I'm as friendly to Dawntrail (and Wuk Lamat) as they get, but even I can agree that her story is kinda undercooked (and Bakool Ja Ja's even more so-people don't go from sadistic bastige to laughing himbo just because one person said something nice to them once). If anything, I feel like the writers were overcorrecting from the doom and gloom of Endwalker-in their efforts to make things light and punchy, they veered too far into "Let's have fun with tropes!" But at the end of the day, for me at least? Still more fun than Heavensward or Stormblood. So I'll take it. :)
@@redcloud16 Some of it was aesthetics... a frozen theocracy with "[stand-in deity] would not let the righteous die, therefore if you die from being thrown into this spiked pit you must have been guilty" as their standard operating procedure, in which pipe organ music plays loudly from every corner even out in the wilderness, is kinda my idea of hell. XD I was pretty much rooting for the dragons since day one and, I mean, peace is better I guess, but if Ishgard had been wiped out, nothing of value would be lost. And some of it was artifacts of game design... it was when they introduced flying to the game, so a lot of the zones are these vaaaaast empty spaces, or 3D labyrinths of flying islands where it feels like every quest is "go from this extreme corner of the map, to that extreme corner of the map." I was invested in the story of the Scions, which mostly got shoved aside (since they were largely MIA) in favor of political machinations of a nation I wanted nothing to do with.
So all of that lies at the feet of the game director. He decided how this story would be told, and Yoshi bears the blame. But yeah, they oughtta rerelease the whole thing, only done well. Wuk Lamat must not be queen.
I didn't dislike her as a character at all and I felt like her VA did fine for the job presented. The problems are with the absolutely bottom tier writing, pacing, and character development. The problems with the voice acting are the fault of the voice director. The VA has plenty of other roles that you can find out there and the range is very good. A voice actor just reads what they're handed and in the pitch, tone, and emphasis they are instructed to. The writing in this expansion felt like it was targeted at an 11 - 14 year old young adult audience. One expansion after a guy that couldn't accept that his empire had ended and was incapable of moving forward shot himself in the head. Now, we het "I'm going to be the dawnservant and protect my people's happiness, dattebayo!!" Then in the end the reality of the situation was directly opposite of her absolutely immature beliefs and the writers actually forced things to make her right. I miss Ishikawa.
Good to hear about the voicing probably just being a voice direction issue, I can get over bad VO anyways and yeah the bigger issues are by far, what you said, the pacing and development.
Completely agree, there are many reasons to dislike her character and so many choose to to put fire on her VA instead who has nothing to do with the writing. These people are absolutely not worth listening to.
while there is a sub-section that are targeting Wuk based on her VA's gender identity. A larger majority is just flat out stating that the VA was far too amateurish, montone and overall lacked the vocal range to bring the character to life. The worst part is those who are defending Wuk are using the VA's gender identity as the preverbal shield, labeling any real criticism of the VA and VA direction as Transphobia. it cuts both ways. Its a poor argument to say its one sided when there's two sides using the Spear and Shield approach using the talent in the middle. I'm in the camp that it should have been more Latin American VA's to breathe that life into the characters. I think only the Galuu Ja Ja VA is of Hispanic heritage.
Eh I always roleplayed it as my Warrior of Light taking on the role of viper to teach Wuk Lamat how to tank as he has been a Paladin his whole career. She did get carried through the Tritoch fight, and well, she only finished off the final boss because we weakened it for her.
I bought the early access and is only half way through the story. This expansion is so boring im having to play different games to keep me up. The story is too predictable and poorly writen. It didnt help that Wuk Lamat keeps talking, wanting to preserve peace like her father... and then the moment in the sunset she repeated it again acting like its some big revelation. i wanted to flip my table. Nah duh you just told me that from the beginning, nothing changed! All the scion were pointless and didnt need to be there on the first half. Krile got shafted. There didnt feel like a real competition against Thancred and Urg. Everything else is great just not the story.
Well, technically they are New World Foods. In turn, Americans Cuisine. Being that North, Central, and South Americans are pretty much on the same slab of rock. Also, Tacos are Mexican. Just treated vastly different to the TexMex style that is seen more publicly.
My favorite thing about Wuk Lamat is that shes making people retroactively appreciate Lyse.
Perphaps we treated Lyse too harshly
tbf i liked lyse even when i was first doing 4.0 but yeah she has her own issues imo
@@fatherfenway8199 complete exaggeration.
Lyse is worse
True I did not disklike Alyse but dam now I like and miss Lyse😂
Could've done with whittling down Wuk Lamat's involvement after the rite of succession, giving Krile and Erenville's stories more room to breathe, and give us more Otis. As a matter of fact, rework the script so Otis can be robot sheriff in Shaaloni.
No, considering Otis and his desire to protect his queen..... and the play on Steiner....
instead of dying to thunderpuppy that considering prior xpacs, the WoL shouldve been able to solo blindfolded
instead simply meets sphene during the fight overcoming his cowardice to see her again....but afterwards follows her
and ends up being one of the bosses we fight in the lvl 100 msq dungeon
which has the most boring of enemies: computer program versions with electrope coloring of random mobs....
instead:
combine the events of the first 2 areas: evacution of sphene/alexendria midst battle with damage and have us fight lindblum soldiers and their weapons; boss: Black Waltz
second stage: alexandrian counteroffensive location lindblum; MESO-AI voice overlay and popup text assigning us status of lindblum so we fight alexandrian soldiers with alexandria using either something like flare bombs or atomos or ozma on the city in the background; boss: Summoner of Darkness (with horn) which is mostly an add fight but sequential adds of small versions of the things that are both ff14-voidsent and ff9-summons/bosses
third stage: with electrope 'alexandria' has become terra and we city a city scape of ff9's terra in the architecture and we fight against the electrope soldiers varies generations of machines and cyborgs with the final boss being Otis (2 stage/form fight). His dialogue: he acknowledges that he knows sphene is in the wrong but it is his duty to protect her even so. that she is not the sphene he once knew, but an imitation of, and "a broken knight for a broken queen"
To say she made me feel smothered feels like an understatement; I had to take multiple breaks from the MSQ because of her.
I preordered and have just finished the first half of the msq. It’s shockingly bad. I just couldn’t play it. I wanted her father to push her off the balcony.
@@XPhobic76I WANTED TO PUSH HER OFF THE BALCONY!
@@XPhobic76 I pre-ordered as well and at this point Pictomancer is saving that decision. I persevered only for the artifact gear, if I'm being honest. I really wanted some of those sets for my jobs, and they're locked behind MSQ. I can't believe I'm saying this about FFXIV, but I don't think many would fault you for skipping dialogue and cutscenes. If you feel bad later, there are play throughs on RUclips, or NG+ will eventually be added.
Yeah getting through the msq is rough. I tried to like wuk I really did.
the only time i felt smothered was when she asked us to consider staying in Tural. but she backed off quickly and never mentioned it again.
The words of Emet Selch echoed in my mind "I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you."
The entire time as we shut off the soul machines in Living memory. I mean those people were already dead anyway right?
And they just accepted their death without any contest. Such a missed opportunity.
Interesting perspective and something they could possibly play on in the patches, I viewed it as more of really good puppetry infused with memories and programmed to act like people who are now dead, but who knows where they could take this in the future if they want to expand on it
In the metaphysics of XIV, the soul is "You", even if your memories get rinsed off between your various lives as you go through the cycle. Something can look like, act like, and even think it is You, but only your soul is truly yourself. I believe there's more lore on this specifically from the Allagans and their cloning shenanigans.
Yep. I share the same mindset as you. The moment I know Sphene is an endless and uses the robot soldiers as her vessel, I almost immediately see her as just a rogue AI. As sympathetic as her memory was, she's just a robot that simulates Sphene. I'd shut her down just like how I force shut down my laptop if it hangs or make creepy notifications
@@tjongdavid1921 It's even more than that, the people behind her failed to emulate Sphene, they emulate and empasize the parts of her they wanted
I was mostly neutral about her until the final trail when she somehow broke free towards the end of the fight to save the day. If anything, that should have happened afterwards, she could look confused and go "Oh, it's already over?", the WoL smiles and gives a thumbs up, maybe have some dialog options ("It was tough, but I managed.", "Fighting things like this is what I'm best at.", or "Zenos would have been disappointed if something like this could stop me.") and then she and Sphene could have their moment.
But no, she has to steal the show, because she's the main character now and the WoL is just an NPC.
I hope she's gone for good. I don't want to see her come 7.1.
Her obsession with Sphene was so weird.
She broke free due to us weakening Sphene enough during the fight. Still dumb though and she should've not been in the fight at all.
@@Anuca That's what you call a poorly written excuse to justify her barging into the fight and making it all about her.
I thought her character development was pretty good, not perfect, but quite good overall, but fully agree with the final trial, EVEN MORE SO with english voices on... she sounds plain and flat as hell, 0 emotion, nothing, she's even supposed to be struggling as she's pushing back a mech's arm that is 10 times her size, but she speaks as if she's going on a walk on a sunny day, enjoying herself... it's just horrendous.
And then I did the trial again in japanese, to compare... it's night and day.
@@shiryushini7321 Yeah, as someone who played all expansion with JP voices it was very clear that Wuk was just a shounen protag with all that entails (cringy shouts, straight to the face messaging, etc.). Not really a bad thing, if you like that, which I do. Nothing wrong with having some simple "Hey, you should try and understand your fellow people instead of just thinking you're always superior/correct/etc."
And as a result, when that part of the final trial happened it was less "Urgh, she's here to steal the show" and more "Oh hell yea, she did that thing they do!" and it actually gave me same vibes as the scions praying for us in EW. Less strong, of course, but still in the general ballpark of "Now I'm fired up!"
When your main character makes the player want to take breaks from the game and do something else, there's something wrong.
felt the opposite, ruined my sleep schedule cuz i couldlnt put it down like a good book
Lucked out on a work shut down for dawntrail's release and yeah I felt the same thing, I got really apathetic about finishing the MSQ around the third zone unlike last few expansions were I was glued to my screen and played constantly.
This MSQ just made me go back and play SMT V:Vengence for NG+ runs when ever Wuk Lamat started to grate on my nerves (and that was often).
This is me... I let my sub run out. Didn't even finish MSQ cause I stopped once I got to Solution 9.
Still haven't finished it first time in FF14 I was so of put by the story I decided to level up alt classes to do old role quests and polish off old beast tribes.
I had this expac for like a month now and i am barely at the bird people trial. I really just cant get into this where i am hooked.
I also feel like it wasn't until the invasion that Wuk Lamat ever got real pushback from her beliefs. The people of Mamook just ignored her until Bakool said "She's cool," which I don't really think counts as an actual challenge to her beliefs. They folded in the space of an hour.
Because that's a trait of a Mary Sue, when the rival suddenly heel turns for no other reason other than the story demands that all the characters like the Sue.
That's probably why Wuk getting the due ire...because at the end of the day she checks enough boxes to be labeled a Mary sue.
Yeah part of her turning point going from a character that made me want to skip her dialogue to someone I could tolerate was because her beliefs got directly challenged and she was forced to grow and mature as a natural response to the stimuli of the story, it was a genuinely good part imo, especially with her trying to give the medicine to the corpse
She didn't even get pushback from Sphene. As Sphene kept on insisting they were the same. The only problem was is that Sphene could not give up on her plan, and simply coexist. And the only reason the story does this, is simply male Sphene the villain by virtue that her goals are clearly in the wrong no matter what.
@@JMulls My issue with that scene actually felt artificial. As if the writers were trying to cover up her Sue-ness by creating these artificial emotional points. It was rather jarring to me that she showed no mental break when her own father died. Its like the scene came in...she screamed...and then next few quests she was perfectly fine...no mental struggle...no nothing.
The thing is Wuk's story had a ton of these fake 'lets show she's not a sue' scenes. The larger issue overall is the writing by committee and because of that any meaningful character development was just squandered.
I mean.. Bakool changes in the course of a single cutscene, and they try to pull an Emet-Selch with him.
This expansion just really fails to deliver in so many ways. Nothing has weight. They're trying to shove too much into too short a space.
It feel so insulting to put Aymeric and Wuk Lmao in the same sentence even if its just saying they have the same role. Get my boi away from that lion girl
They also should have omitted Alphinaud and Alisae for a large part, and not used as background furniture ! it hurt me seeing Alphinaud in the back not saying a word. Also Shalyoolal should have been a fun western tural vidra roundup with Estinien the whole time!
It hurt seeing just about everyone just in the background for what? so we had people for dungeons and trials. They kept hyping up that the scions were going to be working against each other. That didnt even really happen.
Estinien 100% should have been with us and Erenville throughout Shaaloni imo, would have been so much more fun with him in the mix
I don't see why they couldn't have introduced new characters in Tural that were part of Wuk Lamat and Koana's entourage that weren't the scions, so we could have enough people for a duty. Give them characterization, motives, stories of their own, why they follow Koana or WL. Bakool Ja Ja could even join in after Mamook. Ketenramm, too.
Especially if they were going to use the scions like furniture, since there was no actual "competition."
I don't even know why they had us bring the scions with us. They served almost no point outside of duties. Even the competition against your fellow scions was such a joke and a letdown.
@@HippeusOmega Giving us some scenes where the Scions sit around a fire eating tacos together would have lent some credence to this being a "vacation". But almost all their dialogue ends up talking about the new characters, either Wuk Lamat or Koana. Even the trailer for the expansion had the Scions enjoying food and drinks, setting an expectation.
I think the "Show, don't tell" theme you mentioned would have also applied well to the repeated theme of diversity and multiculturalism this new land had. My first thought when they talked about their diversity of cultures and races was that the entirety of FFXIV has had this.What is so important about this new place, other than trying to shoehorn modern real life political messages into the game. It felt like Square Enix's Ethics Department at the forefront.
Check out the website they made entirely for Tural and "never-before-seen cultures". I suppose everywhere else on the entire star didn't make the cut for such a website.
Come to think of it ... japanese company going for multiculturalism? That made me think a lot since the beginning of the expansion. No clear answer comes into my mind.
Not a lot of the cutscenes were voiced and there was sooooo many cutscenes this expansion. The ones that were voiced had her grating voice ruining them 😭
Her character probably really worked on paper as a short story, but stretched out over 40+ hours of MSQ felt like watching paint dry
Yeah in the form it's in, if it was like half the length I think it would have been fine imo
@@JMulls she could have been left in the city hub and we could still have got her story but in more digestible doses. Exploring the island would have also been way more interesting without her acting like a tour guide. We get a Choice of which place to explore and tribe to help first but no option to leave her behind sadly
She sounds pretty good in japanese
@@superkawaii792 Im increasingly leaning to the opinion the story would have been far better if the WoL had nothing to do with the competition but rather went to Toral with Estinian and it was a buddy cop exploration style thing
i thought she delivered so many lines perfectly. totally disagree that is "grating." how disrespectful.
In simplest terms, the problem with Wuk Lamat is that the way she's written actively takes our agency as players in this story away from us. There are moments you mention from the story's first half where our agency is restored - the rite with the Yok Huy in Urqopacha leading up to us fighting Valigarmanda, and our work in Yak T'el when investigating the truth of the Blessed Siblings and facing the shade of GJJ. In every other segment of the first half, as well as the introduction of the new threat of the second half, our agency as the Warrior of Light is actively undermined for the sake of Wuk Lamat and her family getting their dramatic moments.
In some of these cases, this isn't unsalvageable. With more clever writing, the introduction that leads to the second half of the Shaaloani story and takes us into Heritage Found could've had all the impact the team wanted it to have. They already have tools built into the lore which would allow that. (I.E. the Echo, which basically only gets to be used by Krile this tike around save for a couple small instances.) Thing is, when you consider the fact the game's basically been built on twelve years of our characters being a major focal point in the MSQ, asking us to take a step back and play the inactive bodyguard for someone else comes with the hard rule that the story revolving around that other person had better be DAMN compelling, otherwise people will feel bored, frustrated, and angry that the agency we had for so much of this game's story is suddenly stripped away from us. Based on some common complaints I see even from quite a few people who like Wuk Lamat and the first half of the story, it's safe to say the writers failed that task.
I remember explaining to someone that it wasn’t about the whole aspect of “You’re passing the torch! It’s you no longer being the WoL! This is Wuk Lamat’s story!” But rather in how- even if you pass the torch, your story goes on. Even if that story is grabbing tacos with your friends or sparring with gramps your fellow ‘old dude.’ We got virtually none of that. Almost every scene with WoL and the Scions with Wuk Lamat involved was the Scions just standing around waiting. There was very little dialogue aside from some nodding along to the plot, and every personal side adventure was cut short by ‘and then this Lamatyi related thing happened.’ You can pass the torch without becoming irrelevant.
@@mythogenesis4788 Yes, this. Exactly this.
Since Naruto gets brought up a lot in regards to Wuk Lamat, I'm going to use that as an example here. Naruto wraps up and the torch is passed on to his child, Boruto. But even within the context of Boruto, Naruto doesn't just sit around nodding at his kid or just piddling away at the village. He gets involved in events too, still has his own agency and things he is trying to get done. He isn't going out, having adventures and doing the growth anymore, but he's still a fleshed out individual.
Or a more obvious anime example - My Hero Academia. All Might passes the torch to Deku almost right away... but All Might stays involved, has agency, and his own stuff going on. He isn't the main focus or main character anymore, but he is an important one.
Hell, even within the context of Final Fantasy XIV we see this happen - many of the old Job Quests had us surpass our teachers but they were still involved and had their own stuff going on that we came back to assist with.
“More 1 on one time with Wuk Lamat” - NO THANK YOU
I can't imagine anything more miserable in DT
90% of the quests are already classified as "speak to Wuk Lamat". Unironically. Somebody actually counted how many times that phrase alone came up during the MSQ.
I think the point was that even though we talk *to* Wuk Lamat a lot, we don't really talk *with* her. The only moment I can think of is when we found the goldsmith guy at the beach and related to his insecurities.
@@kou7191Wuk Lamat talks at us. Yes WoL is a silent character, but that dosen’t mean you can’t have a conversation with someone.
@@kou7191 I just don’t ever want to hear from Wuk again. I’ve had enough Wuk for one lifetime.
and I'd like to say, I probably would have felt more for the story, had it been Wuk Lamat that died instead of their father, NO ONE would have seen it coming because they used half the expansion to build up her character, her dying would have been a rgeat loss, and though we the player might have gotten a little annoyed with Wuk because it was then starting to feel overbearing and such, I do feel like her dying would have been better for the story, her brother forced to take on resolve and reason alone, the warrior of light enraged with Wuk's Death after seeing her grow, gods the story would have been so much more interesting if that happened
New drinking game.
Every time there's a close up of Wuk Lamot squeezing her fist, take a shot.
Guarantee you'll be drunk within 2 hours of starting Yawntrail.
Lyse moment
@participationtrophy2093 tried this now im looking for a liver donar
@@acid4413 thoughts and prayers, friend. :(
You trying to kill us? XD
Take a shot every time the quest updates to "talk to Wuk Lamat"
Hated her the very INSTANT she was introduced. Never got better.
For me, it was the opposite. Thought she was fine at first but wanted up to her later on.
As soon as they introduced her in EW and she invited to come to the competition i wanted to really really say "NO!" but was not allowed. It is a character bragging wanting all the attentions and take all the credits and has absolutely no leadership charisma and she is supposed to be peer to us in level but learned nothing, did she level up using a bot? :D
@@The4thHorsemanIT I mean, she didn't take all the credit. She said she wouldn't have gotten this fair without us, which is true. Lol
Didn't see the bragging part. Like sure she was trying to hard to make a 1st impression when meeting us, but bragging? I didn't see that.
loved her the instant she was introduced and she only got better.
Agreed 100%. I couldn't stand her the minute I met her, and as the story I went on, hated her more and more until I started skipping cutscenes. Been playing FFXIV since 2015, and FF games since 1987. Easily my least favorite character in FF history.
Took me two weeks to finish MSQ because I couldn't stand her. I think she's worse than Lyse for me. Hope they never mention her again. Yuck, so poorly written.
I no-lifed the MSQ cuz i couldnt put it down. But I also liked Lyse, so. Cant wait for more of her.
We diddnt even get a single player role play instance for the alpaca catching trial. Its pretty much the ONLY time she is by herself the WHOLE expansion, could have had lots of fun with Alpaca hijinx, make it SEEM difficult so we get to appreciate Zaarol Jas strength at getting the gold one, and even fill her character out with things like "Everyone else is putting in so much work to help me..... Better make sure to do my part then!" or...... SOMETHING!
The Main Character of the story did something important: The whole reason we WENT there, the trial...... OFF SCREEN! Wtf
it could be cool to experience something like FF7 Rebirth Chocobo hunting. It was annoying in FF7R doing it multiple times, but once in the whole MSQ is enough
it wouldve been better if we got to see how all 4 claimaints dealt with all trials... alpaca:
koana came prepared with extra pel and is able to straight buy the saddle
bakool just goes out and brute forces it....but due to severe panic they keep dying as he is bringing them back and it is a reoccuring thing we can see as we are doing the trading
and bakool and lamat finish at about the same time
zoraal's can stay the same
also the trial bakool should fail is the tropical-vanu, not moblins. for moblins one only needs to provide a potpack crafter.....there is a whole ton that reveres bakool as a holy figure.... just bring one of the mamook mamool ja; this also means that lamat doesnt need to be extra stupid in following someone off of the very clear road just to get catnabbed; instead it can occur just post final boss in river dungeon as we climb final long ladder. lamat goes first at top bakool grabs her, and knocks the ladder with everyone else still on it down, and by the time we get the ladder up and up top bakool napped the crystal and took off.
for vali- instead of bakool doing it to slow us down....think about it if it was just to slow us...that means he thought we would kill it.....and only claimaints who killed vali would be respected by tural so that would be him forfeiting; and if it were to kill us then it would wreck tural leaving naught to rule..... so the only fitting action would be for bakool to be a bit arrogant and try to kill vali...use fire to tunnel hole in ice to its neck and kill it then he could be the only one to overcome ice trial.....but he fails and vali breaks free; thus he is just stupid and not villianous. also give wuk evu some dialogue where he tells us to not worry about the hostility and actions bakool did to him with him saying there is unfornatuley long standing bad blood between the mamool and big cats, and that while the ends dont justfy the means perhaps insted we should be pittying bakool. lay the setup for the mamook arc
The final battle of the msq was between two one dimensional characters.
The last boss ticked me off so much. She was so… painfully… stu p!d. The last two zones could/should have been a really good horror sci-fi thing, but it fell kinda flat because the villains were brain dead.
The last zone was a massive let down. The zone before it should have been the last zone
I think I might leave the group if I get it in a roulette ever. It's really sad, we went from Hades in 5.0 to Endsinger in 6.0 to what we got in 7.0 such an anticlimactic ending, it had the emotional weight of a feather.
@@shinkicker404 sphene was fine, Zoraal was not; Sphene is an AI that is using the memories of other people to construct the persona of deceased sphene
All endless are AI, run on the artificial brain of the MESO terminals, with the actual memories of the deceased and scrubbed souls of random people; more akin to replicants or synths
Sphene is the least 'human' since the real sphene died before her memories could be fully and properly preserved, thus the AI relies heavily on the memories of others who knew her, like Otis.
Sphene in a roundabout way states this to the group, even the not sharpest tool in the shed WoL understands, and has a dialogue option of pointing out this machine nature of sphene. Her programmed directive is to preserve alexandrias people as highest priority. She thusly cannot chose an option against it regardless of any potentially 'faked' feelings.
So within the bounds and contraints of her programming she asks us if we have another solution, and the response of the group is silence. Thus she by core directives as an AI must carry on with the plan she does not like. There is no other choice and emotions are irrelevant.
This is why lamat's emotional appeal attempts are SOOO PAINFUL to watch.
It just felt like the first 4 zones were filler and anything unexpected that was slightly interesting was crammed into Zone 5 and 6.
I think I maybe would have enjoyed the slow burn way more if I didn't know solution 9 was a thing because I was just waiting for them to pull a massive plot twist the entire time
@@JMulls 100% agree. This time around I tried to avoid as many spoilers as possible but trying to avoid ppl posting screenshots of Solution 9 for months is literally impossible. It's rlly disappointing that they keep showing super late game stuff because it will always set expectations for when they may appear in the story and also takes away from the surprise when it actually shows up in the story.
The final zone was trash.They better do something with it in the post game
did not feel like that at all. :( throughly enjoyed this expansion from beginning to end.
Hopefully Wuk Lamat does fulfill the "Americ" role. Perhaps the backlash against her character will push SE to make that the case.
Aymeric wasn't the main character of msq like Wuk Lamat is. He was noisy sidekick. And that was still ok.
@@lynxlynx8125He wasn't even noisy
HW being focused on Aymeric fit beautifully well. He struggled, he suffered, but most importantly he worked with WoL, not take away spotlight from us. The scions did not need to babysit Aymeric. He learned hard lessons that WukLamat never did.
we also were not forced to spend as much time of the msq with with aymeric as lamat....during HW we actually travel with local estinien far more than aymeric
aymeric was also in a position of authority and influence prior to WoL arrival. unlike trust fund baby lamat. in that regard aymeric is more similar to zoraal or koana in terms of position... think if koana was in zoraal's position as head of landsgaurd
before going on the boat the WoL can respond in dialogue with not wanting to get involved in politics and we are told we can decline after we check it out; after the 4 claimants meet and we witness; the buy-in is to not let someone with zoraal or bakool disposition win.... meaning we can support lamat OR KOANA or improve and correct the dispositions of zoraal and/or bakool
It got bad enough that yoshi P hismelf told people to back off.
The devs are pretty good at listening, but with how much of the complaints could be seen as… well… misogyny and potential transphobia, it’s either likely he’ll listen or likely he wont
Wuk Lamat would be better if her voice was better... I'm going to try playing MSQ on German or Japanese to see if it is any better. But the English version was like running your nails across a chalkboard... :x
I switched to Japanese on someones recommendation and there is a noticeable improvement, even some of the scions sounded a bit off in English for this expac, like Thancred for example.
That being said the writing issues still persist obviously, but better voice acting does make it more bearable.
You're going to want to finish the.Msq in japanese trust me
@@pegeta I'll definitely give that a try. :D
@@s.silverman9864 Ohhh I didn't know that! Maybe I should just stick with the Japanese version for the rest of the expansion lol
The voice is better in japanese but it doesn't fix the storytelling issues.
I liked the second half, but Sphene drove me up the wall by the end. It could have been a really good sci-fi horror, but Sphene came across as incredibly short sighted and stu p!d. The deal/thing with Zooral Jar… ugh… it’s annoying because I initially liked her.
Agree on Wuk, she was too prevalent, oppressive even. We needed time away from her. She was channeling Naruto way too hard. Also the cutscene in the final trial… ugh.
That the endless in the Living Memory just accept what is their practical death is such a missed opportunity. I'd like to see what they can do with such interesting topic. We are practically agreeing with Hades.
I wouldn't say we are agreeing with Hades, because Emet was trying to do something similar to Sphene, doom everyone else to save his own people. Though I agree, maybe having a few NPC's that don't want us to shut off the terminals and end their happiness could have made the last zone even better even though i personally thoroughly enjoyed it
my biggest criticism of Dawntrial was Sphene, particularly at the end. I liked her enough at the start, grew more fond of her, and then towards the end of the last zone she just totally fell flat for me. She literally doesnt even react to a single (heartbreaking) action you made in the entire zone. The entire reason for fighting was gone while she was *checks notes* "calculating," but she fights you anyway.
DIsagree about Wuk tho. Loved Wuk Lamat.
It just annoyed me constantly that Sphene refused to consider any alternative besides mass soul harvesting.
I’ve even seen people pointing out how there were countless alternatives ranging from giving the endless omicron shells to just put their memories in a virtual space/reality.
There wasn’t even any major rush as it’s stated by one of the endless that they could be in storage for a few hundred years waiting to be recreated. Which sounds to me like memories can be safely stored indefinitely until the energy is available.
Im so disappointed that THIS was the result of the 2 largest and most successful expansions in mmo history before it.
A C tier character with a B tier story.
Id mention other characters, but wuk dominated 91% of the text in the damn expansion, so they dont really have an impact.
One of the "show don't tell" problem I had was the relationship between Wuk Lamat and Namikka. How am I supposed to feel anything about the ending with them when all I got was some screenshot flashes of young Wuk Lamat?
Or the horrible, horrible line delivery from Wuk Lamat during that scene killing the drama.
When the trailer had her say three lines and ALL THREE were a variation of "I am Wuk Lamat and i want to be Dawn Servant!!", i knew she'd be a garbage character.
She's a worse Naruto voiced by someone who clearly was not prepared for such a huge main role.
totally disagree, though a lot of her voice lines were delivered PERFECTLY and enjoyed her character
@@redcloud16 nice trolling attempt.
@@redcloud16 Ew, did you finish DT at 0% volume or something?
One lil disagreement I have here 7:21 Is I think having a vidraal beat us would've made the story even worse, because not only has Wuk been an overwhelming focus but it would just hurt the powerscaling more. I'm not inclined to believe a Vidraal would be anywhere near as strong let alone stronger than for example Eulogia, the Endsinger, even Zenos. They shouldn't be presenting things that can beat us this early in the new 10 year cycle of storytelling. Stakes can be raised without enemies that are simply stronger than us.
The only real threat to the WoL in this expansion should have been the automated Armies of Alexandria, the raw numbers involved would have made it a battle where the consequences of the battle would have been high
@@MasterLittica You are correct, which genuinely annoys me that not only did we just... let Zoraal walk away after killing Gulool but agreed to let Wuk handle him alone that one time. Like what? No? This is a threat to more than your home. I think the writers were too into Wuk being the main character, they forgot about how the WoL would and should have reacted.
hate "powerscaling." the WoL isn't an unstoppable god. He isn't simply immune to damage like Superman. Just because a level 90 vendor in Tuliyollal can solo Ifrit EX doesn't make them actually that powerful. Likewise, every major super god threat required 7 more of us (or 23) to defeat, working in unison. The only thing we really solo'd was Zenos, and not as a primal but as the man; and even then required we spend nearly every breath in our bodies. The tural vidraal are likened to the auspices of the Four Lords trials; beings we also couln't solo. Why couldn't there by some out there that at least posed SOME measure of danger to us; even if not totally life threatening. You can even do interesting things with tural vidraal like panthers that have natural camouflage or venomous beasts with incredibly lethal venom. You could do so much with this concept and still put the WoL in danger.
@@kynesovos8580 indeed it seems they forgot; everyone forgot other than the writing of shalooni.... where erenville specificially and directly asks us to not do what we can easily do and murder all the bad guys because our now (unfortunate) connection to the new ruler and the political and beauracratic BS that could follow;
in shalooni erenville remembered that the WoL has one of the highest kill counts of sentient lifeforms in direct combat and is not afraid to lay hands
lets also give credit to the line of one of bakool's underlings when in tropical-vanu villige he was about to start a full fight against team lamat, and the underling was like: dont do that, not because of the overgrown housecat but because of that one (WoL)
so disappointed we never had a dialogue option were we could admit to killing a 'blessed sibling' and it was just another day for us (wanderer's palace hard)
in order to temper bakool's inflated ego
instead it is only mentioned by a mamool ja in passing that someone across the salt killed [name] blessed sibling and we just have a reaction but dont speak up
Her entire story is every Option A in the MSQ.
Oohhhh be careful, don't you know that you're not allowed to hate this character for some reason? That you're not allowed to have any criticism no matter how legitimate.
i mean as far as I've seen the only thing going on is the rampant hate so not sure what youre going on about
Yeah the pro-Dawntrail players are definitely going into damage control mode right now, there has been a lot of misinformation about the portion of the fanbase that has been critical of this expansion spread around by them.
Wuk is the worst character ever created in the entire FF franchise
"with friendship and community" Wuk Lamat excused a genocidal maniac who forced thousands of still-born pregnancies on his own people because they didn't have crops. This would go down in history as one of the worst mistakes in ff14 history, for she did not know the villain Zareel Ja would become. You would think the Third Promise wise enough to kill that kind of monster - but her judgement failed her.
That could be incredibly interesting if they go that route imo
From the looks of it, they are setting up for a big war between multiple nations. And she's going to owe us a favor and come in and help.
Also how the crop situation is managed. If they are unable to grow even potatoes nothing can grown there without fertilizer, which begs the question, "How the F is there even any vegetation then?"
If there's that then the soil must be rich enough to support growth. Lack of sunlight? Potatoes grow with a small amount of sunlight, mushrooms grow without any at all, and there are plenty of root vegetables that also grow with a low amount of sunlight.
If nothing they've tried has worked the solution would be to install mirrors that direct the sunlight down to the fields so things could grow. I remember her suggesting they should try and plant rice. and I was floored. Rice is one of the most resource-intensive food plants there is! It was so patently clear that the section was written by people who had no idea how farming works and think they do.
@@pegeta I do not see that at all. That seems like a theory with not a lot of basis to it. No offense. I see Wuk Lamat being forgotten the second 8.0 drops.
popotoes can't grow where potatoes can
I spent the whole time trying to figure out why I was there. As I have said before, there is no way her father would have raised her to be this uninvolved and ignorant of her people. She should have had Erenville bring us to her, but given us some free (non-Wuk Lamat) time here and there as she did her progression stuff. (As it was she even came to my suite when I had a mandatory nap break.) We should have been with Krile and Erenville, getting more development of their stories, which both suffered from how they were handled.
At least in Stormblood, I had my bromance with Hein and the power couple Sadu & Magnai to distract me from Lyse being omnipresent. I mostly missed the Scions (even the ones that were shown but not really there) and feeling a bit needed. Now apparently anyone can beat really tough bosses, so I can go back to adventuring and solo travel.
After finishing the DT MSQ, I went back to face Golbez on the Dais in Extreme and declared: "I'll take all the punishment you have at me several times over. I'd rather have that pain rather than have to bear Wuk Lmao in my company ever again."
Whoever wrote all the WoL praise-responses to anything referring to Wuk Lamat should be sacked.
as a legacy player, wuk is the first character that made me want to quit the game for good. i'd rather play 1.0 all over again than spend another moment with her....
She's literally the main character for the base story for the expansion.
Agreed, she almost ruined DT for me single handedly.
as a legacy player I loved Wuk Lamat so, hope we get many more moments with her
@@redcloud16 Square is going to lose a lot of subscribers if she keeps being forced down our throats.
@@JustinStrife considering FFXI, with a much smaller player base, was squares number one money maker until only recently, I'm sure the loss of a few subs isn't a big deal. Purple unsub daily for less. New players join. Most people in the communities I stick around in are big fans of Lamatyii, your view of her isn't as all encompassing as you seem to think.
She is a one dimensional character, is ok to have them Zenos was one, but the real problem with her is that she show up and cant stop talking in almost every cutscene! It was literally "Wuk Lamat the Game' It was driving me mad..
Dawntrail - in my opinion - suffers from one main failing : story structure being ill chosen and the cracks of that being visible in all aspects of the story as it unfolds.
The first half is set up to be the lowest of low stakes, while simultaneously confronting some absolutely gut-wrenching aspects that get brushed away because 'too dark, this is the Nickelodeon expansion'. What do I mean ?
The Pelupelu, HanuHanu, Potsworn/Moglins and giants are essentially zero conflict stories. You're sightseeing and solving issues with the power of friendship and the most minimal thinking. The last zone suddenly makes you confront the legacy of a hundred-year-long civil war that got resolved with banana leaves. And when I say 'resolved', that is a stretch as half the population in that zone was told they can just stay in their unlivable forest, perpetuating the cycle of horror going on there.
A better structure - in my view - would be to make the rising tensions of that third zone the core of the first half, making the imperfect solution of Galool Ja Ja into a more lasting, solid thing by not having the leader of Tural being the result of those horrors, unable to be fully trusted either party in that forest because of long-standing cultural sores.
The story can then visit all the other zones and get them to cooperate in their own unique way to resolve the tension, instead of 'white saviouring' the poor forest lizards with plants and seeds from foreign places. As if these local cultures were all too stupid to figure out the most basic things about the ecology they lived in for thousands of years. (Same with the HanuHanu 'forgetting' what their festival was about in a world with LITERAL, ACTUAL magic, ffs...)
The story could then use the tensions of this growing war-like sentiment and maybe some localised tragedy to give some credence to "blue lizard bad guy who's name I already forgot because I couldn't care less" believing that to renounce war they must feel it's sting so deeply as to never crave for it again instead of now it being based on nothing more than some loose comments here and there. A far more believable descent into darkness for that character, not the wishy-washy slide between this and meeting dad's approval then not having a place in the world, then not knowing what his legacy was, then SOMEHOW having a child with not a word about the mother, etc...
I could ramble on for quite a bit, but I hope this gets the sentiment across. It's not just one character being over-used. A good story could survive that. It's that the main vehicle for the story they wanted to tell doesn't account for the gravitas of the topics they broach and treat is like Saturday afternoon cartoon hour, while also wanting soul-sucking Rogue AI's.
Ive never skipped so many cutscenes in an expansion before... and I kept saying at the screen please give me koana instead fuuuuuuu
I've literally skipped every cutscene that wasn't voiced by Bakool JaJa. Bakool is the only interesting character this entire Expansion. Krile and Eren got shafted and Sphene is just dollar-store Emet Selch
had she not been such huge center throughout the ENTIRE story, I would have been fine, but she feels like a character u can only appreciate in mild doses 😭
I was much more upset about the writers torturing Erenville with the eventual loss of his mother for cheap emotional filler in the last zone.
They did Erenville and Krile dirty by pushing their spotlight to the back of the MSQ.
I leveled a Viper this week just to start the new MSQ.
There were a couple of nights where I just logged off because of all of the reading and cutscenes. I felt like eventhough its a new start, it's not interesting at all and even getting to the new city seems like a slow crawl. I think my character is still on the boat ride. And Wuk Lamat, I just don't like her so far. Nothing about her is interesting and her english voice acing feels weird for some reason. Like they couldn't settle on what accent she has.
Maybe this weekend i'll play it more, but I feel like if I do, i'm going to need some alcohol to get through this one.
Remember to drink in moderation. Brace yourself, the Wuktrail is coming.
@@amecoeur Yea I feel like the next morning I will wake up with a hangover feeling like I drunk texted an ex. Like "ohh god, I can't believe I went through that last night"
responses like these are disappointing. i hope you can find the spirit of Azem in there somewhere and enjoy the journey. i liked Wuk Lamat's voice work. She delieverd a lot of line perfectly (imo)
@@redcloud16 disappointing in what way? We have different viewpoints. It doesn't make you or me right/wrong. It means we received it differently.
Everyone in life isn't going to like what you like. So don't get disappointed in it. It is a game/novel. Everyone is entitled to their opinion
@@remus2565 because something that brought me such joy and emotion is hated by so many, for reasons I feel it didn't deserve. I'm allowed to feel disappointed just as people are allowed to drag it.
I actually would of rather had Wuk meet some one like zenos, some one unabashedly evil just for evils sake. Because by the end, I still felt that Wuk would be an unfit ruler, the way they tried to teach the lesson of peace and friendship was hollow to me and childish. I feel Wuk never actually had a hard choice to make in her story, she did not really grow after a certain point, she just stayed the 'peace and love' person throughout it all. As for character development? I only really saw her getting over her dislike of Alpacas and getting a bit more confident in herself, that is what I saw personally, maybe you saw something different. But to me, a leader needs to make difficult choices, maybe force Wuk into a position where she has to choose who lives and who dies amongst her people, throw her hard choices that leaders have to make. Because how she is currently, I still see a very Naive character who would be taken advantage of greatly in any political sphere.
"Because how she is currently, I still see a very Naive character who would be taken advantage of greatly in any political sphere." I can just see it... we're gonna come back in 5 years and the Pelupelus are gonna be running the place. All they need to do is send one delegation to the Dawnthrone and talk Wuk into doing whatever they want, she has like no resistance whatsoever to their sales pitches.
I kinda had a feeling when the story patches were all about a Emo girl leaning how to emote that they would make something really cliche but they went too overboard.
I always found Sphene as a character very contradicting. She loved her people to the point that she was willing to start a war via mass genocide in order to keep her people alive, which would realistically cause more harm for her own people in the long run
Sphene was a naive Queen. While her heart was in the right place. Her actions did not align with her message. Really, outside of the whole genocide thing. She came off as somewhat real. Cause there are moments in history that good people do terrible things for good reasons. Still, does not make them immune of their actions and the consequences that follow. Really, with the genocide thing added...yeah. Well, we need the "big bad person of the week" come in to destroy the world. She fell flat. All because she was naive. Even if she was made up of memories. Never once asking the question, "Is there a better way?" She just accepted the need to use souls and draining the Aether from other reflections.
Though, I wonder, being that Sphene's world is a reflection. A shard that broke off from The Source, the home of our WoL. This shard is attuned towards Lightning and gone awry. I question if Sphene's ultimate plan would work. As the Mother Crystal is within The Source and attempt to absorb the Aether from the world. It wouldn't really work or rather would work but be too great. Cause The Source is the plane of all elements. Balance between all of them. An endless war that each element tries to dominate but never able to get the upper hand. It would be basically another Calamity as the reflection would unintentional cause a Rejoining.
Eh....I am overthinking things. Trying to give the writing staff too much credit. Highly doubt most of them even remembered or knew of these plot points. After all, we don't even know the number for the reflection. Just know it was overwhelmed with Lightning. Much like the First was overwhelmed by Light, mostly. And the 13th was overwhelmed by Darkness. So between 1 and 13. This reflection would be between there. Likely next to the Reflection that was overwhelmed by Ice. A bit of a plot hole there. Opinion.
Nope the Sphene we encounter was neither naive nor true love for her people, that one is long since dead:
Sphene is an AI that is using the memories of other people to construct the persona of deceased sphene
All endless are AI, run on the artificial brain of the MESO terminals, with the actual memories of the deceased and scrubbed souls of random people; more akin to replicants or synths
Sphene is the least 'human' since the real sphene died before her memories could be fully and properly preserved, thus the AI relies heavily on the memories of others who knew her, like Otis.
Sphene in a roundabout way states this to the group, even the not sharpest tool in the shed WoL understands, and has a dialogue option of pointing out this machine nature of sphene. Her programmed directive is to preserve alexandrias people as highest priority. She thusly cannot chose an option against it regardless of any potentially 'faked' feelings.
So within the bounds and contraints of her programming she asks us if we have another solution, and the response of the group is silence. Thus she by core directives as an AI must carry on with the plan she does not like. There is no other choice and emotions are irrelevant.
This is why lamat's emotional appeal attempts are SOOO PAINFUL to watch.
I think Wuk Lamat also suffered from the English voice actor. The voice actor I hope gets replaced. They should have hired a Hispanic voice actor who would have been a lot better. In fact, I turned my voice to Japanese so that I don't have to hear the English voice actor's voice. This also drags the story down. I was very disappointed overall with it. I would give the story a 3 out of 10. But the Dungeons and graphics get a 9 /10 out of 10.
One major problem I have with Dawntrail is the passive role of the WoL; we haven't been this passive since ARR or beginning Heavensward. We don't do anything. When your viewpoint character has to sit there being a doofus in order for plot to happen, go back to your computer and revise your script. But for the most part, the whole thing was passable, until the end of the final trial.
The gripe I have isn't how much screentime Wuk had. I could care less that she took center stage. My problem is that in all that time, I didn't feel her character developing AT ALL.
I felt more compassion for Lyna in Shadowbringers and she was a side character with like 17 voice lines.
The only real objective criticism i have is the absolute lack luster attempt of her english voice actor.
disagree, i thought she delivered many lines perfectly.
Wuk Evu and Honey B. Lovely should have more spotlight than this insufferable stupid face cat. At first, I thought well the story is good but when I re-read and watch my friend playthrough the MSQ, it hits me like "why the hell I like this story?".
Some part of the stories don't make any sense, like, why suddenly everyone forgive Bakool Ja Ja after he melt the ice and release Valigarmanda? Why the hell no one help or intervene the fight between Gulool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja? (Don't spit the hornor blah blah with me, it ends right after the emo lizard get up by the soul collector or something like that)
And Wuk Lamut... she's not even a likeable to me. I don't have any issue with her voice (the voice is bad as I predicted) but this one-dimensional character keeps annoy me in every seconds on the cutscenes. She did't have her development at all. She continues shouting for her people and their happiness. I F@##@KING GET YOUR DAMN GOAL AND MOTIVATION BUT FOR F#$$K SAKE, JUST SHUT UP ABOUT THEM.
At this point, I don't expect any thing from the MSQ or unless Ishikawa-san returns as a story writer not supervisor. Please take the notes, Yoshi-p and dear devs.😊
I won't lie. I was so totally uninterested in the MQS. I never felt so uninvolved. While there were some good points. There were just too many bad points. And if I hear Wuk yell "SPHENE" one more time. I am going to hack her head off. Ugh. The "Resilient Son" turning into a literal manchild...uhm lizardchild. Unable to accept anything. Heck not even his own son! Dawntrail is one of those stories that is WORSE than Bloodstorm. And I LIKE Bloodstorm, compared to other people. And I find that scary.
Also, why is the main city of Tuliyollal has JAZZ music playing for its theme? Why? It is conflicting as hell. Off-topic.
Yeah, Bloodstom may have had a bit of jarring events and some characters people did not like or liked. Yet there was reason for your character, WoL, to be there. You had a reason to be there. Dawntrail, you may have been invited, but in truth, you kind of just followed aimlessly. No, real reason being there. That includes many of the other NPCs. They kind of were just there. All because of the Trust System. God forbid if they took some effort and actually came up with new NPCs, but that would overload them. I know it.
Now I have no real opinion of the current Post-Story content. I haven't really delve into it. I kind of stopped after leveling WAR and PLD to 100, finished the MQS as PLD. Then, moved on to level my other jobs. The lands of Dawntrail are not terrible. Just hope they find away to revive Endless world. As much as that would kind of ruin the whole sacrifice and such. Still, kind of killed a whole world. No, I am serious. You destroyed a whole world. You become the very monster that you spend YEARS fighting against. No real justification. Other than one "Queen" going crazy. The pure naivety of it all.
I have my whole theory of this little part and the "Reflections" we have seen, been to, and saved(?). That is a whole other topic and I am getting further off topic.
Summing up. Dawntrail is a meh. Wuk Lamat, while could be likable. Sadly, she isn't. She is that Anime Protagonist that is ignorant, naive, and lacks any education (being she has clearly stated hating Tests and seemed to failed a lot of them). Yet, everything goes right for her. Even when they go wrong. She has no real loss. Sure her adoptive father died, but he wasn't really a "Good Man". And her real father, we actually meet, is hiding from her. Her adoptive brother, he is actually a good catboy. While the lizardchild...I mean Resilient Son is dead. She actually suffered no real physical trauma, no true mental break, nothing. Doesn't even know what real struggle is. WoL knows. Our Character knows. WE KNOW. She got off easy. She got the "Perfect Ending". Even if a lot of people died.................perfect ending. To me. Seems rushed and she was shoehorned in during the second half.
say you didn't pay attention without saying you didn't pay attention, the wol is in tulliyolal because emet selch recommended finding the golden city near the end of endwalker
I disagree with having more one on one time with Wuk Lamat. I wanted less time with her because she was involved in almost every part of our travels. Beyond that, her martial prowess arc was absurd. What's even worse, her defeating Bakool Ja Ja AND his goons comes after her learning to rely on others and admit her weaknesses. Not only was this moment not earned, but it lends to the feeling that it was forced to just elevate her. In turn, It's bad writing that takes you out of the story, which for an FF game is a killer.
I dont like how there were so many times that stuff could have been prevented and the warrior of light justbstands there and does nothing.
I Know right, you in no way feel like like the veteren adventurer who has been embroiled in everything from political plots to assassination attemts for literally years, no you feel like the rookie green adventurer you are around Lv 15 during ARR being taken by surprise around every corner
The last thing I need is my WOL having more one-on-one time with Wuk Lamat. I couldn't wait to get away from her and would cringe whenever I was stuck babysitting her again. No, I don't want to explore with you. Just let me do my own thing ffs.
Wuk Lamat the Primal of Friendship
My biggest issue is Wuk does not actually change.
what they need to do that we know they wont, is have four trials per expansion so that the first trial isnt a big set-up big bad that dies way too early. Zodiark is the most heinous example.
This was just messed up from the ground up. This expansion should have been about Krile and retracing the footsteps of Galuf imo
Wuk, the only time I found her or her story remotely tolerable was when she was not talking (unfortunately, she always manged to spoil those glorious moments).
I just finished the first trial. My issue with the story right now is it doesn’t follow you and Wuk Lamat is the centerpiece. I wish it had better world building as this was supposed to be a new saga or whatever they said. But it seems they’re going to just build off the last line Emet Selch said rather than a new saga. Just some more story arcs as expansions without anything to tie the expansions together. Idk, we’ll see. I’m enjoying the hell outta viper rn.
More one on one time with Wuk Lumat? Dude no..... 😅
look i get it 🤣
@@JMulls Wuk Lamat? You mean WOOKIE MAN?
Till the end of right of succession i think story was nice and Wuk Lamat was fine i really liked her, problem is that her story continue. I don't agree that if her first half of msq wuk lamat got better story she would be better in 2nd half. It was just too much of her and there were not a place for us as hero to have a little story or any other character.
After the right of succession Wuks involvement in the main plot should have been dialed back to about the same as her brothers
Currently I'm on the last dungeon.
So far I think I was able to tune Wuk Lamat to the background and treat her as, like you said, shounen protag. I don't take her seriously until the invasion, and after that I resorted to "ok then just do what you want to do, I'm here for the sights" whenever she says she wants to know the people because of leadership stuffs. And of course the jump in her power/resolve feels unjustified.
Seeing some comments here regarding Wuk Lamat's direction in the trial tho, I think my positive opinion will lessen. We'll see.
Regarding our diminished role, I found that being in the mindset that we are Azem, who likes to travel the world and help the people however small, really helps.
Fetch something? Talk to someone? "Great, I'll help you, I'm the counselor to the people."
But I also agree it should've been more of an active mentor role, like a learning facilitator, and not just like a chaperone/helper.
Overall, I don't mind Wuk Lamat's character arc it just feels rushed and like you said I would have like to see the WoL train Wuk Lamat once or twice. For example, if it was once have us train her a couple of quests before she fought bakool in a training montage.
My thoughts on Wuk Lamat mostly come down to the skill of her VA and the director.
Sena Bryar lacks the experience or vocal range to emote properly while holding her accent. To me, many of her more emotional scenes fell flat because her emotional reaction was subdued to maintain the accent. I could understand if they were subdued to present her belief that she needs to be stoic. That would be a good message that being stoic hampers your QoL as your emotions get suppressed.
Compare this to Lily Cooper who in "Respectless" in Hazbin Hotel, ruclips.net/video/bOarXIWBtWk/видео.html manages to emote while singing and maintaining her accent. Lily Cooper is from the USA and was born and raised there. In that song, she manages to signal more emotional depth than Wuk Lamat does in the entire MSQ while sounding British and conveying the accent flawlessly while singing, which is one of the most difficult things to do in acting.
I disgree, there were several points where I said aloud to myself "damn she delivered that line *perfectly!*." The scene on the pier after the attack when she talks about failing her promise to her people, for example.
@@redcloud16 "Several scenes" is the issue. The VA for Koana knocks it out of the park in every scene he's in as he maintains both his accent and emotes.
For Sena Bryar to be good at it she should be able to do both in EVERY scene she voices or at least nearly every scene
I'm sure Sena Bryar was selected for her ability to act in her own voice and when they slammed an accent on her she stumbled since she in some scenes, especially when Wuk Lamat has subdued emotions had to make a choice between emoting those and maintaining the accent, her choice was a compromise and it can be heard.
As opposed to what people think portraying subdued emotions is many times more difficult than portraying loud emotions when acting. It's easy to portray anger loudly, it's difficult to portray subdued anger.
@@nielsjensen4185 except I think she did fantastic at those smaller nuanced voice lines as well. Rewatching people playing the msq on twitch has only solidified that opinion for me.
Wuk made me want to take a break and try new games
She makes me want to unsub, and I have a medium house and medium fc.
I want to expand on your points and reiterate in my own way.
It’s sad because Wuk Lamat is actually a wonderful character! She had so much potential to be as loved as Haurchefant, Alisaie, or Feo Ul, but the way the story forced the plot to revolve around her- WoL could be replaced with a lamp and make very little difference.
I had really hoped that WoL would be taking a role similar to the older Scions as more of a mentor and guide, but it felt more like we were just kind of along for the ride as babysitters. Have us call Wuk Lamat out to her face for her naive nature and teach her through our experiences. Our experience is whittled down to us commenting to our comrades “hey remember when-?” And Wuk Lamat fooliws with, “NOPE! Back to my story!”
There was very little tension. Tension was important for great stories like HW and ShB. You have happy moments, but still have this undercurrent of, “Okay, but there are active threats at play here.” Zoraal Ja was that threat, but he really didn’t feel threatening because his motives and desires felt so surface level.
There was a lot of very childish aspects to the rite of succession in which the challenges felt very “Oh, good! You read a book or played a game! Gold star!” And there’s not much wrong with that if you do it right. Have Wuk Lamat involve us the way you would a royal advisor asking advice and following our examples rather than say “Hold my beer and pray for me.”
Wuk and DT's writing in general was bad enough that it caused me to unsub for good.
Wuk Lamat gave me the strenght to wield the skip button .
Many good points here. Interesting point about wishing there was more one on one time between WoL and Wuk Lamat, though. In theory I agree, because yeah, we really were just basically a glorified escort for her to sound off at, and we could have had more of a mentorship role in teaching her and training her. On the other hand, we have *lots* of one on one time with her because almost every single time the party splits up, they tell you to go with Wuk Lamat. Its just the wrong kind of one on one time. Also on the subject of the taco test, I think the idea was a good one, they just partnered her with the wrong person. Instead of Koana, who did nothing but gush over how great Wuk is, she should have been paired up with Zoraal Ja, which would have made for tense moments as he challenged her ideals, and offered more insight into his motivations as a character.
Like I said in your other video, I do think Wuk Lamat is to blame for a lot of the bad pacing and story issues, though, and they could have been improved upon by simply taking some of the attention away from Wuk and giving it to someone else like Krile, Erenville, Zoraal Ja or Sphene. She was an ok character, but definitely not good enough to have so much focus put on her. First half of the expansion, fine, that's Wuk's story. Second half, though, she should have taken a back seat.
also taco test is the worst test: for all other tests it was possible for all 4 claimants to succeed
but only the taco test hosted by tropical big cats limited winners... a test that was highly dependent on being able to match the tastes of tropical-big cats when the contests are: 2 cats and 2 reptiles....... THE most racist trial and test (also the test made by lamat's bio dad) ..... even openly racist leader of mamook, bakool's father made an honest and fair test.
Japanese players also hate it too
i didnt know you spoke for the entire Japanese player base
Yeah the translations of posts from the FF14 Japanese forums have been absolutely hilarious. Hopefully this means square will take this criticism and course correct like they did with stormblood.
Im watching this while i blast through the 2nd half of this crap i knew to set my expectations low but holy hell this is like post arr im gonna go insane
I think you underestimate the DEI agenda that is probably coming down the pike. Hope I'm wrong, but I'm expecting this.
Shut up With u no sense
Sphyne and wuk both were terribly written. I prefered many side characters man. Even normal ass npcs were better in side quest. Also our character never sparred with wuk at all, so she learned nothing. At least we sparred with lyse. Lastly i actually liked Bakool ja ja's character, i went from actually hating him, to really liking his character, and ecen when i hated him i still enjoyed his character.
One moment i liked is when the yok huey actually challenged her belief.
And she resolved it only partially by sticking to her guns.
It felt like a genuine resolution.
While the resolution after the Gulool ja ja boss fight felt a bit forced.
Them saying F U were not good but we allow it once shows problems arent imediately resolved butbridges can be built.
I think her ideals should have been changed more often.
She was never shown to have to adjust her way of thinking till the end.
I think her arc should be reverse to koana.
She was tradition good, he was new thing good.
But the blessed siblings tradition should made her think...maybe not all are good. And its weird all were very sad about whats needed for blessed siblings.
But there should have been at least some to say:
Fu its good and we need it or else you push us around or they are a gift or whatever. But it was just...other stuff than bananas? Yeah f blessed siblings.
2:34 Have you seen/experienced NA PF? haha jokes aside, fair evaluation! Loved to hear your persepctive on it all! :D I won't write an essay about all the things I did dislike about the MSQ, but one thing that I did NOT care for at all was all of the FFIX stuff :( I know I'm def way alone in this cause so many people seem to just gush over FFIX but I never cared for the game itself and to see it just plastered almost everywhere was a bit "meh" for me. As for Wuk Lamat, there just wasn't enough time to cook her properly in terms of the pacing & writing, and at points the VA did not deliver lines as passionately/fitting as it should have been for the given scene. The BIG Stand out is the final trial, that made my soul "unalive" hearing such a dispassionate performance, so that doesn't help with the hate the character is receiving. I do agree however she will end up being the new Ser Aymeric
LOL, you have a very fair point with PF 🤣
Yeah i get why people don't like the final boss moment with Wuk Lamat, to me I'm kind of numb to it because they've done it last few expacs so when it happened I mainly went "wait she's here... oh well back to dps'ing" and just kind of ignored her.
Personally I love FF9 so I didn't mind it but I can def understand if you didn't care for the game how it could be a bit grating as well, they possibly leaned on the FF9 stuff a bit TOO hard sometimes, though I wouldn't personally complain cause I love FF9 lol
@@JMulls fair and fair
Another part that I think contributed to it is the direction the English VA took it. It feels like, as many people have stated, that she "shouts in lowercase."
I understand that the VA has gotten a LOT of hateful attention since then, and I do NOT condone that whatsoever. Hating someone simply for having a sub-par performance is rediculous, toxic, and unconstructive at best. Worse so for who they are as a person. However, as an aspiring writer, one who has become more sensitive and acknowledging of the importance of creative decisions, I cannot simply ignore my personal take; That the VA was not the correct one to voice Wuk. That Enix could have chosen someone better suited for the role. That isn't me being hateful, that is me using what we have witnessed, and arriving at a conclusion that, from what I've heard, at least half of the community has come to.
Wuk isn't the only one in DT that had a less-than-satifactory performance, but she is the most prevalent.
After seeing so many great leaders of nations in FFXIV, Wuk Lamat feels too immature and off the cuff for me to want to see her succeed as Dawnservant, and she doesn’t really grow.
🍷🧐
She made me come to appreciate the Japanese voice acting
I may be one of the few that didn't dislike Wuk Lamat, but I do feel she was overused. I feel that Krile was let down in the story as far as her role and significance. During the msq I had a theory that Krile was also a WoL. All the pieces are there. She's from another reflection, has the same power as us, and having no combat experience, was able to keep up the squad that traveled the end of creation. I think that's what should've happened
all i wanted was more character building for WOL like the whole azem thing or how about albert was piece of your soul or how krile said you deserve love and build more stronger bond with your friends but they push all that aside instead building good materials they already have, but now we get what a mary sue with no brains who stuck to like a bad habit I want WOL development
I play with Japanese/subtitles and her voice wasn't as bad as the EN version from what i've heard of it briefly. The Japanese version has more emotion to her voice even during the parts of the story that were very slow & plodding. Before the reveal happens her character was OK, wasn't as invested with her compared to other 'travelling' companions in past expansions like Ysale or Crystal Exarch. I'd say she was very much like Lyse in Stormblood, didn't really care as much but as subsequent patches are released i'd say Lyse was a decent character by the end of it. It remains to be seen if Wuk Lamat will have the same character arch when more patches are out. For now she was OK.
I was more invested in Bakool Ja Ja than her early in the story. His redemption arch was probably one of the better parts of Dawn Trail.
her English va is excellent, there were several times i said aloud "she delivered that line perfectly!"
I liked Wuk Lamat, but I also really liked Lyse (rare, i know).
Dude are you ok? You're going into every comment section defending wuk lamat like your life depends on it.@redcloud16
I hear her for the first time talking, and how she delivers those lines in english... it feels so... lustless xD so... boring? xD Idk I'm playing in german and she has a wide array of emotions in her voice etc.
the first Half of Dawntrail is just the first Half of FF10
I actually didn't hate Wuk Lamat, but they used her WAY too much. Only a world-class vocal performance could have made Wuk Lamat universally likeable. She was so in your face, if you didn't like her it probably felt like you were having her shoved down your throat.
They really needed to integrate the Scions more. Instead of putting it all on the shoulders of a fairly new VA (3 credits besides FFXIV, iirc), they needed to put more on the veteran VA to carry the expansion.
This would have been an amazing opportunity to show Alphi talking to Wuk Lamat about how he used to be a spoiled brat, and how traveling with the WoL changed him for the better.
Instead of just relegating her to cheerleader, they should have had Alisaie reminisce about her time in the First, or even just her memories of Louisoix to show that a leader sometimes has to put their own life on the line (wouldn't that have made the scene with Gulool Ja Ja hit even harder...).
So many missed opportunities. I know they wanted a fresh start, but this almost felt like they could have done the whole thing without the Scions, at all. At times, it felt like they were only there to fill a Trust spot.
Amongst all the Wuk Lamat hate going on, this is the fairest and best take I've seen so far.
I hope you're right in that she turns into Aymeric where we don't see her again. I liked her, I liked having here there. But by the end where we were fighting Sphene, I wanted her to just go away. Sphene wants to soul suck EVERYONE on Etheirys. Please stop trying to preach understanding and peace, love and happiness to the murder machine.
We spent the entire expac following Wuk Lamat around and being treated with a 10 foot pole cause people realized we were 100% not someone to mess with.
By the final fight, that really should have been the WOLs fight to do their own Azem thing. Having Wuk Lamat show up to help really, REALLY killed the vibe because I didn't feel she EARNED the right to join us in that battlefield. Are you telling me she's randomly as strong as us? Stronger than the Scion's who've fought with us for 5 expacs?
She could have joined AFTER the fight to do her "Let's get along" talk.
But the entire 2nd half, I loved the concept and idea, but I really disliked the fact we brought Wuk Lamat. "I don't understand ANY of this." Ok then, go back and defend Tuliyollal then.
I wish we could stop being guidance counselors for lost young folks. Zero and Wuk'Lamat back to back? Share the light with them? Sure. Have them overcome their issues? Sure.
This expansion is us grabbing her tail and having her lead us from place to place and beating the shit out of what's in her way so that she can then [enter objective here]
The NPCs barely reference is, too. A few 'salt" and 'You got carried' comments and remove those and we don't exist. We're her muscle, basically.
She's the only part of this expansion that I disliked. I really really disliked. She wanted to be the main character, but that's me sorry, I just want you to go away now Wuk, we helped you out, you got what you wanted, it's time now to sit on your throne and do your thing, stop following me.
That's harsh
Deserved
Now see THIS is a meaningful discussion, in a way that the early bombardment of "bleah it sucks, the writing's terrible, yadda yadda" we were getting, was not. I'm as friendly to Dawntrail (and Wuk Lamat) as they get, but even I can agree that her story is kinda undercooked (and Bakool Ja Ja's even more so-people don't go from sadistic bastige to laughing himbo just because one person said something nice to them once). If anything, I feel like the writers were overcorrecting from the doom and gloom of Endwalker-in their efforts to make things light and punchy, they veered too far into "Let's have fun with tropes!" But at the end of the day, for me at least? Still more fun than Heavensward or Stormblood. So I'll take it. :)
You didn't enjoy Heavensward?
@@redcloud16 I really didn't, honestly. My least favorite part of the game. Fortunately, I stuck through for better things. :)
@@thegneech what didn't you like about it, out of curiosity
@@redcloud16 Some of it was aesthetics... a frozen theocracy with "[stand-in deity] would not let the righteous die, therefore if you die from being thrown into this spiked pit you must have been guilty" as their standard operating procedure, in which pipe organ music plays loudly from every corner even out in the wilderness, is kinda my idea of hell. XD I was pretty much rooting for the dragons since day one and, I mean, peace is better I guess, but if Ishgard had been wiped out, nothing of value would be lost. And some of it was artifacts of game design... it was when they introduced flying to the game, so a lot of the zones are these vaaaaast empty spaces, or 3D labyrinths of flying islands where it feels like every quest is "go from this extreme corner of the map, to that extreme corner of the map." I was invested in the story of the Scions, which mostly got shoved aside (since they were largely MIA) in favor of political machinations of a nation I wanted nothing to do with.
Lammy is mid. We need more Lyse, Y'shtola, and Hilda.
So all of that lies at the feet of the game director. He decided how this story would be told, and Yoshi bears the blame.
But yeah, they oughtta rerelease the whole thing, only done well. Wuk Lamat must not be queen.
I WILL BECOME PIRATE KING
I didn't dislike her as a character at all and I felt like her VA did fine for the job presented. The problems are with the absolutely bottom tier writing, pacing, and character development. The problems with the voice acting are the fault of the voice director. The VA has plenty of other roles that you can find out there and the range is very good. A voice actor just reads what they're handed and in the pitch, tone, and emphasis they are instructed to.
The writing in this expansion felt like it was targeted at an 11 - 14 year old young adult audience. One expansion after a guy that couldn't accept that his empire had ended and was incapable of moving forward shot himself in the head. Now, we het "I'm going to be the dawnservant and protect my people's happiness, dattebayo!!"
Then in the end the reality of the situation was directly opposite of her absolutely immature beliefs and the writers actually forced things to make her right. I miss Ishikawa.
Good to hear about the voicing probably just being a voice direction issue, I can get over bad VO anyways and yeah the bigger issues are by far, what you said, the pacing and development.
Agree overall. Sadly the reason a lot of people don’t like her is nothing to do with the character.
Yeah the transphobia going around is def crappy putting it very mildly
Completely agree, there are many reasons to dislike her character and so many choose to to put fire on her VA instead who has nothing to do with the writing. These people are absolutely not worth listening to.
while there is a sub-section that are targeting Wuk based on her VA's gender identity.
A larger majority is just flat out stating that the VA was far too amateurish, montone and overall lacked the vocal range to bring the character to life. The worst part is those who are defending Wuk are using the VA's gender identity as the preverbal shield, labeling any real criticism of the VA and VA direction as Transphobia. it cuts both ways. Its a poor argument to say its one sided when there's two sides using the Spear and Shield approach using the talent in the middle.
I'm in the camp that it should have been more Latin American VA's to breathe that life into the characters. I think only the Galuu Ja Ja VA is of Hispanic heritage.
Eh I always roleplayed it as my Warrior of Light taking on the role of viper to teach Wuk Lamat how to tank as he has been a Paladin his whole career. She did get carried through the Tritoch fight, and well, she only finished off the final boss because we weakened it for her.
2:52 u nailed i thought the same exact thing XD
I bought the early access and is only half way through the story. This expansion is so boring im having to play different games to keep me up. The story is too predictable and poorly writen. It didnt help that Wuk Lamat keeps talking, wanting to preserve peace like her father... and then the moment in the sunset she repeated it again acting like its some big revelation. i wanted to flip my table. Nah duh you just told me that from the beginning, nothing changed! All the scion were pointless and didnt need to be there on the first half. Krile got shafted. There didnt feel like a real competition against Thancred and Urg. Everything else is great just not the story.
Speak with Wuk Lamat
jarjar.
KEK lamat
tacos aren't mesoamerican, they're texmex. not even fully mexican. Burritos too. And tacos al pastor are cajun, also an american cuisine.
Well, technically they are New World Foods. In turn, Americans Cuisine. Being that North, Central, and South Americans are pretty much on the same slab of rock. Also, Tacos are Mexican. Just treated vastly different to the TexMex style that is seen more publicly.