Patch 6.55 - Growing Light Part II - Story Discussion

The succession candidates

It's painfully obvious that Wuk Lamat with be divisive because well, she's a female character that isn't the player's own insert, she has a personality, which includes flaws that will be blown out of proportion and the plot line will focus at least partially on her growth, and she's entering in politics competing against male characters, at least one of which is the attractive cat-boy race. And there's a more conventionally attractive female character to be added in too. Doomed.

They are writing some optional ambivalence to supporting Wuk Lamat, and as she is framed now is someone who is using bravado and a Yuffie-esque 'genki' attitude to cover up self-doubt and anxiety. And it would be nice the have the arc be that the martial skill she is trying so desperately to project isn't what Tural's ruler needs. The bait-and-switch won't be that she's evil, but that one of the other candidates is better- and one of the other three is worse than initially seems and probably a puppet for something else. That and Wuk has only the sanitized and simplified version of her adopted father's unification efforts and will be disillusioned by the truth but not halted in her efforts to ensure peace. Koana has more bait-and-switch set-up vibes, tbh. But by the end I think it's more likely to have a coalition governance than one winner.

I will be pleasantly surprised if Mamool John isn't our would-be imperialist candidate, just the traditional and isolationist guy.

MSQ

I suppose it did a good job of establishing Wuk Lamat's character (an earnest young woman with more moxie than experience), but beyond that there wasn't much movement. We learned about the the central conflict and tidbits of information on the other players, as well as the setup for getting everyone over to Tural and the conflict amongst the Scions (Y'shtola and G'raha not withstanding, the latter of whom is even supposedly staying behind in Sharlayan) but... not much else. It is an X.55 patch though, and those tend to have no story whatsoever, so a story-light patch is fine.

... yeah, I'm guessing Wuk Lamat is going to have to learn that her moxie and martial prowess doesn't make a good peacetime ruler, someone like Koana is more suited to the role, and her father's unification of Tural into Tuliyollal (sp?) wasn't as clean as she thinks. Further information notwithstanding.

I have no idea what went on in Hildibrand, because I lost interest in it like halfway through the series and just skipped all the cutscenes. There was some inquisition, and then a fight with Asura, and now I have a gunblade that looks like it came from Solution Nine.

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Originally Posted by Denishia

Wuk Lamat has a refreshing energy. Some of her vibes feel like Yuffie, and while she's an energetic ax-wielding lady jibbing on her more serious childhood friend, she doesn't feel like a direct Moenbryda copy. Or Lyse. Though she does help to fill the personality gap left by them.

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Probably a coincidence, but Wuk Lamat also talks like Yuffie, at least in Japanese. Most of her dialogue is "rough tomboyish" in word choice, but she also uses "atashi" pronouns, which is supposed to be more "feminine"/"girly". Which is how Yuffie speaks in FFVII (at least the original).

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Originally Posted by BabaM

Really not digging the whole reason for going to Tural. We barely know anything about Wuk Lamat, we don't know who the other 3 claimants are, we don't know their policies aside from that one is a warmonger, we don't know Wuk Lamat's policies at all, and we're asked to just fight for a stranger and play kingmaker and give her the throne...why? Is everyone just blinded by furry thirst that no one is questioning the fact that we're going to fighting to put Wuk Lamat, a complete stranger, on the throne of a foreign country we know nothing about? The whole thing feels strange and forced and G'raha telling me I can just slip away if I'm not interested in supporting her at the end doesn't fill me with confidence because FFXIV is not a game where that level of story choice is a thing. We're basically agreeing to help the first person who asked, not the best person for the job. And the fact that politics are involved makes the whole adventure feel a bit grimey to me.

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I'm pretty sure the dialogue is explicit in saying we're going to Tural to see for ourselves what the situation is like. I think that is a very fair and reasonable decision to make.

Also playing as a mid-height FemRoe, Wuk Lamat comes across as, well, short. Not excessively so, but very much a teenage girl who hasn't reached her adult height. The character is probably supposed to be no younger than nineteen, but she has the 'quasi-tomboy princess on a mission underplaying her royalty' that Yuffie did. But I would not be shocked if she introduces herself as the "White Orchid of Tuliyollal" at some point.

The FF X-2 vibes have not dissipated in the slightest, and I will stop myself from relabeling Koana's faction either the Youth League or Catboy-Gippal with great pains.

And I think that we're entering Tural with more hesitancy and willingness to question our proposed actions and alliance than we did helping the Cirina and the Mol win the Nadaam, with Erenville roughly filling in for Gotetsu and Hien in this parallel.

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Originally Posted by Denishia

Also playing as a mid-height FemRoe, Wuk Lamat comes across as, well, short. Not excessively so, but very much a teenage girl who hasn't reached her adult height. The character is probably supposed to be no younger than nineteen, but she has the 'quasi-tomboy princess on a mission underplaying her royalty' that Yuffie did. But I would not be shocked if she introduces herself as the "White Orchid of Tuliyollal" at some point.

The FF X-2 vibes have not dissipated in the slightest, and I will stop myself from relabeling Koana's faction either the Youth League or Catboy-Gippal with great pains.

And I think that we're entering Tural with more hesitancy and willingness to question our proposed actions and alliance than we did helping the Cirina and the Mol win the Nadaam, with Erenville roughly filling in for Gotetsu and Hien in this parallel.

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You should absolutely embrace that labeling convention. Though that would immediately distance me from a new Yevon faction by default.

MSQ thoughts

I love Wuk Lamat. I also fear that she will suffer from the same crap people flung at Minfillia and Lyse. That she's inexperienced and that she doesn't do things a good leader or even one that isn't experienced go and do. When I saw the hand tremble I immediately thought about her being like Lyse while also having the "Point me at the enemy and I'll kill it." mentality that Estinien tends to have. Man Raha is making himself even more lovable. He saw the hand tremble and chose the nice thing and gave Wuk Lamat a confidence boost. It is a bit odd that we just take a giant colobri and have it served up for lunch. I do wonder how expensive that map is that Raha bought. An interesting thing is in the Japanese version Krile mentions Alisaie and Thancred during the "As you all have adapted your methods to suit the circumstances" part of her explanation as to why she chose pictomancy. I feel as though half of the books held information we already knew in game or at least from an EE. Was the Blue Mage book Martyn's words or those of Wastrach? I don't think we need to fear too much about Wuk Lamat as I don't think Erenville would vouche for her if she was shady. I enjoyed that Zero started a trend with her spicy cury eating.

Island Sanctuary

It sort of makes sense that they put that quest in this patch as it wouldn't make any sense for you to get who shows up in it if you hadn't gotten to the relating part in the MSQ. It makes me wonder if you can do it if you got your Island to 20 and saw the previous quest before getting to that point in the MSQ. Or if you would need to wait until you had Jullus tell the twins to go take a break. Is this the 1st time we are told Jullus's ser name? I chose the lets go swimming choice just to see if they even knew how to swim. Only for Jullus to try and calculate how far out and how long should we swim. I'm very glad he was able to drink from that cup without a flashback to the last time he held a similar cup. Also how dare the devs use up so much animation on food or food scenes. /s loved the other mention of Zero. No Devs I still refuse to go with the whole everything happened in a year.

Allied Tribe

I liked it. It was about on par on the last one we got. I love that Acala post race found out his hippo likes the smell of flowers. I somehow wasn't expecting that a Nibirun would transform into Ra La. That they would just summon them. I like that most of those at the Last Stand do mention the race and that there are radio enthusiasts that appear after you're done with the race. Not quite a fan of the trophy. Oh and I'm not sure which cuisine Trna brought back for Maru but whatever it was seems to have been spicy.

Hildibrand

Just give us a dang sports mini game already. Wooo we get Julyan back this time and we even are allowed to use her frying pan. I liked the trail, but felt it was kind of easy. Even easier than the last one we got vs Jim/Greg. I do wonder if we will see the Pupu in random spots like we see Omega and Alpha now. Haven't finished the weapon quest but I started laughing when Godbert fights back with the whole your drinking bill is partly why my wife is kinda pissed at the amount of gil it is taking to make just one od these. Oh and look they're not descendants of indestructible aliens. They just use Dynamis... or maybe not with how readily Julyan was to beat the ever living crap out of Godbert at the mear mention of it.

Tataru

I wasn't expecting to cry at that shot of the Path of the Twelve. Or how and when exactly Tataru first met Minfillia. I guess it's one way to make sense of the Cylva and not Ardbert and friends, friends from the 1.0 trailer.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Unfortunately I think you're right on this point, and I just wish you weren't. (MSQ spoilers go)

I love everything about Wuk Lamat already, that clearly both her heart and skills are in it even if she's a completely inexperienced wimp in reality. It's entirely possible we could see a Lyse-style angle unfold, where she realizes that her style of leadership doesn't actually sync up with what she thought the country needed. Although something else I could see them doing is us learning that she actually is good at the important parts of ruling a nation, she's just woefully underequipped for the actual rite of succession, that demands a completely different skillset. Which is honestly an element of leader-selection in general that I wish more media explored: that 'ability to undertake the leadership role you're going for' usually has nothing to do with the process in which we select a leader.

...but you're also completely right, that the big Discourse Subject of Dawntrail will absolutely be 'Wuk Lamat is a bad leader'. And I'm sure it's also going to be a complete coincidence that those people are always gonna put forward one of the male characters, including the one that explicitly wants to take them to war.

And all of those people are wrong, Wuk Lamat is great. I took a bit to completely warm to her voice acting, I did have that struggle of 'this is a new accent to me and I need to get used to its cadence', but even then I adored her character, and her, Krile and Erenville will make for interesting parts of the 'A-Crew'. Unfortunately, every other choice for the Scions is exceedingly lame; there's nothing new to say about the twins or G'raha as allies (and yes, I know G'raha is staying home, he's still an ally), while getting Urianger in a core party without getting pushed aside by sheer cast size is overdue.

Finally: as someone whose chocobo has been named Tritoch this whole time, I'm happy to see that Valigarmanda will get such a starring role.

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I personally feel like they are going with the very basic trope used a lot in animes/manga/light novel or any type of underdog royal succession story.

Wuk Lamat is the basic underdog that people see as the worst leader because she is consider not "Strong enough to make the right choices" trope most main character status characters start out as then got to work her way up to make people realize she is what they need.

Then there are her three siblings following the basic other trope....

We got the Miqo'te brother who is the smart one of the siblings and probably the type to be all strategy and knowledge acting like with a personality that is consider calm all the time. A large amount of people probably support him because they think they need someone to be calm and always think logically as their king.

The third one we do not know much about yet but I am guessing this one is either the Sibling that is always supportive of Wuk Lamat or the sibling that is the "almost perfect" person type that fits the image of a ideal leader who is always the Good brother or sister the majority of their people support. If this sibling is this type then we can probably expect the Warmonger brother to kill him/her off early in the storyline to remove the the only sibling that can win the succession from Wuk Lamat along with to establish how dangerous the Warmonger brother is and provide more reason not to allow him to become the new king.

Then we have the Warmonger brother who they setup as one of the Antagonist already. The Candidate that plays the classic "I am Strong, only the Strong should rule, and the weak deserve to be conquered by the strong" character trope for any Royal Succession storyline.

Not going to bother adding it to my other post, but I did find it a bit odd that the last Tataru quest makes it feel as though you should be doing it post MSQ as she gets all LoL if you think I won't track your ass down just cause you went to some place new to give out new samples of my wares at the end of it. N I had done it before doing the MSQ and went wait how do you know I'll be going somewhere new hmmm? I am also a little bummed that Estinien doesn't even mention Meracydia as a possible place to go even if we all know that he wouldn't have chosen that as his destination due to the trailer. It will be interesting to see how he and the other two who currently aren't coming end up in Tural. I am glad that he has an adventuring bug. After all he went from sheppard to being a symbol of Ishgard for almost most of his life time and now he is just following his heart. Hopefully this time he will check in with his found family more often than he did between 3.3 and 4.5. I am a bit disappointed in Emet-Selch's journal entry. Sure he gets mentioned in other entries but in his own entry he barely gets anything.

MSQ

I wonder if they'll commit to keeping G'raha and Y'shtola benched for this next expac for a while story-wise. I know they exist in the Dawntrail trailer, but 6.55 seems to set up all of the known players so far, so if G'raha and Yshtola were to be involved, it'd say so in this part. It's definitely an interesting move because it means they can focus on new characters, which so far seems great from the reception that Wuk Lamat is getting from everyone. I'm already excited to see what Koana and the other older sibling set up as the antagonist will be like. And I'd like to think that the 4th Hyur girl in the key art is the 4th claimant/sibling to the throne, since the devs do a good job of not showing their hand too early, if SHB and EW are anything to go by.

Hildibrand

The writers understand very well what characters are popular. I'm extremely happy that Brandihild has a future in the storyline still, and can't wait for them to have more antics. The scene where he and Hildibrand work together was perfect. I'm also happy with how the Relic steps progressed story-wise. Worked very well with the themes of Endwalker.

Allied Tribal Quest

I think this is my personal favorite Allied questline. Wacky Races was not where I was expecting this to go, but it was amazing. And seeing the Nibirun feel frustration at their loss and determination to get better really drives home the lessons learned from Endwalker. It makes me wish we could get a Chocobo Racing version of this though.

Oop, Sanna's reminded me that by the time I'd made my post, I'd slept and evidently forgotten the actual worst part of the patch for me. Which is kind of a good sign, really--if the worst part of a patch is so forgettable that you literally do forget it within the day, it literally just isn't that bad. But it still annoys me.

C'mon, did we have to have that scene of Emet's little sequel hook speech? What is that even doing for anyone aside from going 'hey, remember The Guy?' We didn't need the explicit reminder, an earlier scene in the patch already gave us the dialog option to bring it up, and in my experience people prefer that level of subtlety in their callbacks. Is this just for a possibly-fictional group of players that's so critically Ancient-brained that they'd switch off unless the story wasn't directly linked to one?

I'm not even sure it does much for the Emet-likers; they're mostly there for the complicated emotional and character dynamic, and this is as flatly positive as it gets for him.