Can we talk about Soreel Ja?(Spoilers)

This guy was something I was looking forward to: An advisor to Gulool Ja Ja now going on a journey with Zoraal Ja to make him the ruler of Tuliyollal as The First Promise. He's always there when Zoraal Ja's around mostly, and the way he acts and speaks makes me want to think he could have committed a Jafar after we had made Wuk the next Dawnservant.

However, he got relegated to Death territory because apparently the writers wanted Zoraal Ja to be the big bad(War vs. Peace) instead of considering a different angle to use where Soreel Ja didn't die. What were his aspirations for the Golden City? What did he want to do? Like, if he pulled a Jafar and became King instead of Zoraal Ja while the First Promise led his armies, it would've turned out far different aside from the war he started. Heck, we even had SOME foreshadowing only for it to get scrapped for Soreel Ja's death.

I'm curious what the people on the forums would think on this topic since they had a focus thrown on Wuk this entire expansion - and how different it would be if Soreel Ja were still alive. Was his death even meaningful to the story in telling us anything about Zoraal Ja at that point?

Honestly, I was half expecting for Soreel Ja to be the backstabbing asshole and seize power for himself. He always had a shady air around himself, after all. So yeah, personally, I would have preferred for Soreel Ja to become the BBEG.

Imagine this, Soreel Ja attacks Zoraal Ja and leaves him to die. Zoraal Ja gets rescued by the players party, and ends up becoming closer to his siblings in the process. Then, all three children of Gulool Ja Ja go protect Tulliyolal against the Alexandrian invasion.

It's pretty clear at this point he just existed to give actual dialogue with Zoraal Ja whilst he stands there brooding without saying anything.

He fell off a bridge and we never saw a body. We've had people show up alive and well from worse odds.

Fifty-fifty chance he's still alive and he'll be the villain for the next couple of patches.

Yeah, this was a really strange character and it really looks like he was the victim of rewrites or something. Up until his death the game really made it look like he was the more villainous of the duo, with Zoraal Ja being not that bad of a guy seeing as he did help fight Valigarmanda. We even have him saying how he has his own plans for the Golden City. But then he just gets killed off and his story just completely ends out of nowhere. Was he really just nothing more than a red herring to subvert our expectations?

I don't think his story would've been interesting enough to care about his death. He was going to backstab someone but got backstabbed first, ho hum.

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Originally Posted by undull1

It's pretty clear at this point he just existed to give actual dialogue with Zoraal Ja whilst he stands there brooding without saying anything.

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That could simply be because he's wanting to have Zoraal Ja do all the work - he's not necessarily a helpful person, but I almost was expecting him to be manipulative with the throne of Dawnservant in mind. Besides, he doesn't help in any way during the Valigarmanda issue compared to Zoraal Ja.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

the way he acts and speaks makes me want to think he could have committed a Jafar after we had made Wuk the next Dawnservant.

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Sareel Ja was 100% scheming to be Jafar; he just underestimated the sultan and got backstabbed (literally and figuratively) before he got to do the backstabbing himself.

I don't think it's necessarily a sign of a changed or abandoned plot thread – he just exists to be a red herring in the first half of the plot. Of course the scheming palace official with blatant ulterior motives is going to reveal himself as the true villain of the piece in the second act, right? Right? Wrong.

(It's also rather ironic that when the major characters were introduced and described for the first time in the pre-launch live letter, discussions were pegging Zoraal Ja as "the noble one who was probably going to get killed off for shock value halfway through".)

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

That could simply be because he's wanting to have Zoraal Ja do all the work - he's not necessarily a helpful person, but I almost was expecting him to be manipulative with the throne of Dawnservant in mind. Besides, he doesn't help in any way during the Valigarmanda issue compared to Zoraal Ja.

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He was annoyed that Zoraal Ja wanted to stop and help to deal with Valigarmanda instead of pressing on and gaining an advantage.

If you read between the lines it's quite likely that he influenced Bakool Ja Ja into releasing Valigarmanda in the first place, and on top of that I would speculate that perhaps he knows our reputation and that releasing a dangerous legendary beast in our path is just going to slow us down for a few hours and not actually going to leave said beast to decimate the countryside.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I don't think it's necessarily a sign of a changed or abandoned plot thread – he just exists to be a red herring in the first half of the plot. Of course the scheming palace official with blatant ulterior motives is going to reveal himself as the true villain of the piece in the second act, right? Right? Wrong.

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Rian Johnson eat your heart out

Honestly he could have been a literal puppet controlled by Zoraal Ja and it’d be the same, except maybe people would think the 1st promise is off his rocker talking to/through a puppet.

Whether he was a red herring or victim of rewrites I think he was wasted a bit. Most of his screen time was building up that he’s got some plan and maybe he’s influencing Zoraal Ja in some way.

But nope Zoraal Ja was apparently always cracked and Sareel Ja was his scheming right hand man because….? Actually, what benefit was he to Zoraal Ja, I guess he did get the azem hourglass macguffin thing and extra keystones from Ketenram, but what else was he good for? I got he was sticking to Zoraal Ja because it helped w/e plans he had but, Zoraal Ja could have probably gotten those two items without him esp. if he’d always end up going down the same plot anyway.

I am the worthy king!

(I called him Sriracha XD)

It's really simple, as a writer Hiroi only knows how to write characters (I'll leave the discussion as to whether he does that poorly) not plot or world building. He builds a character and because he hasn't built a functioning story or world for them to move in they just become a caricatured puppet with no purpose or a very simple purpose like "have a sword stuck in him". Valigarmanda was much the same, they painted the image of the mythical beast, then it just ... vanished.

Actually, I wonder how much of this is influenced by his work in theatre, where every waki (protagonist) has their wakitsure (companion or retainer). In Japanese theatre actions are often heavily narrated rather than played out on stage so Soreel Ja's only purpose might be to act as a narrator, not an actual entity or sub-protagonist in the world. /shrug, who knows, doesn't work in an MMO story. Western plays can also get a lot like this on occasion, there's quite a bit of "exit-stage-left" once a character has spouted their lines and fulfilled their dramatic purpose never to be seen again.

If the story had been better, I'd say they "killed" him off so that he could return in a later patch but given how lackluster the story was, I can't help but feel he's actually dead.

If I was to give the Devs the benefit of the doubt, they could make it so that he's not actually dead, finds a way into Living Memory and locates Sphene's Crown, which somehow grants him some level of authority over Alexandria allowing him to be be an antagonist for some patches before ultimately being stopped. It isn't the most interesting premise but at least we'd get something from him instead of being the most lackluster red herring we've ever gotten.

I honestly thought he was going to turn out to be the big bad and manipulating Zoraal Ja behind the scenes.

A lot of the writing in the expansion feels like even the writers didn't know what was going to happen... Like Sareel they set up to end up backstabbing someone to gain power, but then he just gets backstabbed by VegrilZoraal Ja in his quest for more power.

We would have fought him in the level 99 trial instead of Zoraal Ja. That's the only thing that would be different because Alexandria was always sitting there waiting to be the big bad.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

A lot of the writing in the expansion feels like even the writers didn't know what was going to happen... Like Sareel they set up to end up backstabbing someone to gain power, but then he just gets backstabbed by VegrilZoraal Ja in his quest for more power.

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Why do you think that feels like a mistake and not a deliberate planned twist?

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Why do you think that feels like a mistake and not a deliberate planned twist?

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Because assuming the worst is the forum's favorite pastime.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Why do you think that feels like a mistake and not a deliberate planned twist?

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Because a deliberate planned twist should be fleshed out enough to actually know it's a twist when it happens. If we actually knew Sareel Ja's intentions and weren't all just saying "he seems like he might've been plotting something" then you'd actually know what to expect and that expectation could be subverted.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

Because a deliberate planned twist should be fleshed out enough to actually know it's a twist when it happens. If we actually knew Sareel Ja's intentions and weren't all just saying "he seems like he might've been plotting something" then you'd actually know what to expect and that expectation could be subverted.

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I don't feel like the details of the plan are necessary to see he's Up To No Good and specifically has aspirations regarding the Golden City that he is oh-so-eager to "assist" his lord in reaching – while muttering about how it's "vexing" when Zoraal Ja doesn't take his advice. He's so clearly flagged as the evil advisor who will turn out to be the true villain in a twist that everyone will see a mile off.

So they double-twisted it and instead of having the advisor betray the unwitting and manipulated lord, the lord was onto him all along and strikes first.

It's really not much different to Thordan and Lahabrea back in Heavensward, neither of whom had much of a plan beyond "bring about a primal summoning and use it to further my agenda".

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I don't feel like the details of the plan are necessary to see he's Up To No Good and specifically has aspirations regarding the Golden City that he is oh-so-eager to "assist" his lord in reaching – while muttering about how it's "vexing" when Zoraal Ja doesn't take his advice. He's so clearly flagged as the evil advisor who will turn out to be the true villain in a twist that everyone will see a mile off.

So they double-twisted it and instead of having the advisor betray the unwitting and manipulated lord, the lord was onto him all along and strikes first.

It's really not much different to Thordan and Lahabrea back in Heavensward, neither of whom had much of a plan beyond "bring about a primal summoning and use it to further my agenda".

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They not only double-twisted it, they even made a god damn pretzel out of it by flipping the script AGAIN with Sphene on who the BBEG was. If anything the writers were definitely all over the place when it came to storytelling here. Like, I get the tribes and Wuk's development, but Soreel Ja could've easily been a villain and it would've been fine. Is it blatantly obvious? Perhaps. Is it much better than the War vs. Peace issue and would it have been better to give Zoraal Ja more character development than how shallow he is up until we beat his ass into the ground? Probably.

Like I couldn't connect to any of the characters this time around(even the damn Scions and Sphene) because of the fact we always had a cat center stage. The cat should've been left at home and we should've taken Koana instead honestly because wasn't he the guy who was focused on Technology which would've made his perspective on Solution Nine different?

But the archbishop and Lahabrea both had agendas. Agendas that we as a player knew or had a very good idea about. With Sareel Ja we do not get anything like that. We know he has/had plans but we never learned or received hints at what his plan was. We only know that it seems to have partially be seperated from Zoral Ja's goals as he wanted to use the Golden City for something else. But that is the overall issue of the Dawntrail writing. We, as a player, do not receive a lot of crucial information or background to a number of characters and because of that we do not really care for them. Imagine playing Shadowbringer and not having the "Meanwhile in Garlemalde" moments. Or Endwalker and not getting Zenos and Fandaniels interactions.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

However, he got relegated to Death territory because apparently the writers wanted Zoraal Ja to be the big bad(War vs. Peace) instead of considering a different angle to use where Soreel Ja didn't die. What were his aspirations for the Golden City? What did he want to do? Like, if he pulled a Jafar and became King instead of Zoraal Ja while the First Promise led his armies, it would've turned out far different aside from the war he started. Heck, we even had SOME foreshadowing only for it to get scrapped for Soreel Ja's death.

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It almost feels like the writers mixed up Zoraal Ja and Bakool Ja Ja at some point in the plot.

I honestly thought this guy was going to be the main antagonist. I feel Zoraal Ja was just poorly written because we are only told that he should be not allowed to rule, but outside a bit of dialogue I was never given that impression. Honestly, I felt like he didn't even want to be Dawnservant and the whole reason he was participating was because it was expected of him. I felt like Soreel Ja was the one that wanted Zoraal Ja to be Dawnservant because he had a lot more to gain and would reveal some grand scheme he had in mind upon reaching the Golden City.

Yeah, it might be predictable, but it would of been better than what we got. Dawntrail's story has a lot of poorly written parts to it, and Zoraal Ja's and Soreel Ja's character arcs are some of the biggest issues I had with it. People may like dunking on Wuk Lamat, but at least she had motivation driving her forward the entire way with trying to continue on her father's peaceful legacy. She also realizes she has many faults, hence why she asks Koana to help her lead. Zoraal Ja was like "I want to unite the world through fear!" but we never see him act in such a manner until he disappears for 30 years from his perspective and returns with an army.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Why do you think that feels like a mistake and not a deliberate planned twist?

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Mostly because Zoraal barely had a personality up until that point... Like his entire character was that he wanted to have the least successful invasion ever of all time just to show how bad war is to people.

The only purpose of Sareel Ja was just to be a "Red Herring" antagonist for Zoraal Ja. Sareel was pretty much just a completely standard and obvious scheming royal advisor who just wanted whatever was behind the gate all to himself and wanted to use Zoraal Ja to do all the work before no doubt probably just stabbing him in the back eventually. After all, Gulool Ja Ja made him write the letter to Galuf to begin with. Galuf and Gulool go and explore the place and they come back with a strange artifact that is to be kept in the vault and a living baby? Of course Sareel would want to know what was behind the gate himself and possibly seize whatever power made such a thing possible, especially if he is told by Gulool Ja Ja's most trusted circle that beyond the gate laid a power that could change the course of history. Of course, Zoraal Ja struck him down after Sareel Ja handed him the artifact to open the gate on a silver platter because it was insanely obvious what Sareel Ja's plan was the whole time and at that point his duty was done.

Sure, MAYBE Sareel Ja can come back in the patch cycle because it'll be revealed that Zoraal Ja also slashed him in the back with a rubber sword just like he did Ketenramm and he was just knocked out and survived the fall, but ultimately Sareel Ja was just a disposable plot device, so his "plan" that was hinted all through his time onscreen was most likely a whole lot of nothing.

I think Soreel Ja AND Zoraal Ja were completely wasted characters, to be honest. Hell, Soreel Ja was apparently the scribe that wrote the message to Krile's grandfather, and that was an interesting little tidbit they did nothing with. Of course, doing something with it would have meant involving Krile's story more, and we couldn't have that with Wuk Lamat around.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

He fell off a bridge and we never saw a body. We've had people show up alive and well from worse odds.

Fifty-fifty chance he's still alive and he'll be the villain for the next couple of patches.

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It was at this point I began to wonder if he was Pashtarot or whatever the Ascian-adjacent for this shard was.

ngl, whatever Zoraal Ja doing in Sol9 was more in line with Soreel Ja's personality than Zoraal Ja himself