Wow, Wuk Lamat is really single-handedly ruining the DT story...

[ZodaSoda]

Yeah it would.

It's just become such a meme at this point whenever the group does anything, I'm at the level 96 Quests, the story has picked up but whenever it comes to a situation we split up.. I'm muttering under my breathe ''Here it comes, any second, I wonder who I'll get paired with!'' knowing full well it's Wuk Lamat, it's honestly making me extremely annoyed now, just let me be with other members of the group, please. I beg, let me go and pick up flying dinosaur shit again, anything!

I remember when Yoshi P said this would be the Expansion where Krile gets to shine more, apparently not too bright and not with us, Theres a Wuk we just met to be there first.

[fioravictorine]

Please bring back Ishikawa...She leaves for a moment and the MSQ instantly becomes a trainwreck

[Galvuu]

Whether I am failing or not is frankly not up to you to decide. You are clearly biased against my arguments, so failure or success of my arguments should not be yours to decide (in the same way I cannot say whether YOUR arguments are succeeding or failing, I am just responding to them).

Not sure why you think I am dishonest tho.

I still stand by what I said about Krile. Especially if she had zero memories of her parents, why would she even care? What's difficult about breaking the ice with people who are, for all intents and purposes, strangers?

Remember, we are still talking about people who - directly or indirectly - faced off against the biggest threats and found themselves in the most uncomfortable situations ever. This situation should not even remotely faze them, no matter how daunting it would be for a normal, "real world" person.

I think this is exacerbated by her line of work. Krle- and all the scions/students of Baldesion- are important members of international organizations who need to contact with strangers/interchange scholarly knowledge/act as diplomats. It's not like Krle is a shut-in who isn't used to speaking to strangers; the opposite, she's a scholar and diplomat who frequently interacts with high-profile public figures and holds pubic speeches. You see it all the time, like in the Eureka story line. I think this makes it more jarring, because she's an outgoing, well-spoken person with a scholarly and diplomatic line of work.
There's no way she'd have a harder time speaking to her long-lost family than with Zenos, and yet Krle addresses Zenos directly just fine in EW (when the WoL isn't even there to protect him if Zenos gets bored and decides to engage in some friendly bloodshed)...

[Regis_Paran]

I think this is exacerbated by her line of work. Krle- and all the scions/students of Baldesion- are important members of international organizations who need to contact with strangers/interchange scholarly knowledge/act as diplomats. It's not like Krle is a shut-in who isn't used to speaking to strangers; the opposite, she's a scholar and diplomat who frequently interacts with high-profile public figures and holds pubic speeches. You see it all the time, like in the Eureka story line. I think this makes it more jarring, because she's an outgoing, well-spoken person with a scholarly and diplomatic line of work.
There's no way she'd have a harder time speaking to her long-lost family than with Zenos, and yet Krle addresses Zenos directly just fine in EW (when the WoL isn't even there to protect him if Zenos gets bored and decides to engage in some friendly bloodshed)...

I remember in 5.4 (I think it was) when G'raha was stumbling during his convo with a simple merchant, acting like a fool, almost giving the whole plot away. It was the same issue - how on earth someone with such experience as a leader, would behave that way? But apparently back then we "needed" him to be comic relief in that moment. And here we "needed" Krile to have her moment of (unwarranted) weaknes.

All signs or writers ignoring established traits of a character, in favor of presenting them in the scene in a certain way.

[Isala]

Even certain cutscenes are like, Look everyone reacting to something, "Zoom in on Wuk Lamat"

There were so many cutscenes where I realized that if I was anything smaller than a Roe, I wouldn't even be in them. I would be hidden behind all the other NPCs like the background character we have become.

[EusisLandale]

There were so many cutscenes where I realized that if I was anything smaller than a Roe, I wouldn't even be in them. I would be hidden behind all the other NPCs like the background character we have become.

That explains everything honestly. If people never get to see their character, how long will it take them to forget what they looked like before the graphics update?

[Malthir]

I love all the cope justifications people give for this not being pure trash:

- "We're mentoring Wuk." are we well then we're doing a terrible job because; A: mentors are supposed to have input and teach/coach you on how to do things. B: You're supposed to learn and grow through mentorship, neither of these things occurred.

- "It's a low stakes slow plot, it's building a narrative, it's a fresh start, it's bound to be slower": A: If your idea of low stakes is being pushed into race for leadership of a continent, you're a sociopath. B: It resolves almost every single plot thread it creates and that's being generous calling them plot threads, so it builds functionally nothing. C: It's the recycled plot of previous expansions stretched out and delivered poorly with none of the context involving what made those plotlines work in the first place.

- "We're returning to our roots as an adventurer" A,B and C: We do not adventure, we are dragged along by Wuk on a tour of how awesome I am lol meme, lol oopsie I fell down, aint I so qwerky. We do not adventure, no place do we go to is undiscovered. Even the "golden city" the big draw of adventure, is quite clearly very well known and discovered already. So what are we Adventuring here? We're adventuring by helping Wuk, whom we don't help really, because plot armour mcgee just sails to victory, if we were there or not the story wouldn't have been any different.

- "It's ok to not be the main character" I absolutely agree, we weren't the main character in the HW storyline, or most of the Stb story lines. Basically we were only the main character from SHB on. The rest of the time, we were part of the story, when we acted the story moved, as it should in any video game but we were not always the focus, the focus was always on who's story arc it was, in fact we had very little focus in the plot just all of the agency. What I mean by this is Lady Icehearts story revolves around her, we are the ones doing things and our actions are pushing the plot along but it's about her. This time however we're not even a side character, nor are we pushing the plot along, unless you count run to glowy circle and wait for a cutscene where, Wuk does 90% of the dialogue, all of the action and literally everything else. if you took us and the scions away the story wouldn't have changed. We did nothing but stand aside while Wuk, likely someone Dev's kids character fantasy got slapped into the game to lead the way.

[Zaniel]

You really mean to tell me that so many of the not-Vanu-Vanu didn't know that their float was actually ultra-magical focus that fired actual, literal beams of energy out of it's eyes and caused shining rain? But Alphinaud figured it out IMMEDIATELY?

This bit just about made the veins on my neck pop for real.

[Ryaduera]

I love all the cope justifications people give for this not being pure trash:

- "We're mentoring Wuk." are we well then we're doing a terrible job because; A: mentors are supposed to have input and teach/coach you on how to do things. B: You're supposed to learn and grow through mentorship, neither of these things occurred.

I'd like to add to your points because I think you nailed it. I'll also add that I have a background in creative writing, since this forum seems to like to dismiss peoples opinions based on disagreement, so I'm coming at this story from the angle of what the years have taught me.

Starting at this point, I have to agree. We're not a mentor, we're a pillar of validation for Wuk Lamat. Every time there is an issue or she questions herself, a mentor would have more of a "And what are you going to do about it?" attitude, but instead all we do is reassure her that she's the golden child and meant for what she wants to do. In truth, if we were a mentor we'd have to grind her bones into dust during this travel because she just isn't fit to lead at the beginning of the expansion. She has no leadership experience, no plans for the progression of her society, is not the stronger combatant, is the inferior strategist, and has no plans to address the current problems her society faces. Farmers are shown begging for new land to grow their crops, traders want to have technology advance to make trade flourish. She just wants the country to stay as it is, at peace, but doesn't see that these problems will still undeniably need to be addressed and you cannot let your nation idle as time moves forward, it leads to ruin. At one point we ask her why she wants to lead and she fills in what we meant for her, saying it had nothing to do with her brothers, which was a really good opportunity for expansion on her mental space that was completely missed. I asked her that because what I wanted to say was "As a leader, what will you do for your people" because it honestly seems like, so far (I am not done yet) she will do nothing with her point of leadership. That is VERY dangerous when leading an entire continent with many cultures within it. Why am I validating this? I want to pick her apart until she understands she needs to shape up or step down and support someone more likely to create a prosperous flourishing nation.

- "It's a low stakes slow plot, it's building a narrative, it's a fresh start, it's bound to be slower": A: If your idea of low stakes is being pushed into race for leadership of a continent, you're a sociopath. B: It resolves almost every single plot thread it creates and that's being generous calling them plot threads, so it builds functionally nothing. C: It's the recycled plot of previous expansions stretched out and delivered poorly with none of the context involving what made those plotlines work in the first place.

I am so glad you pointed out your first point. People keep acting like its a low stakes plot, but should I remind everyone here that Garlemald was also a single nation at one point? And how dangerous they were? Granted the Ascians have been put in the past and their role shouldn't be ignored, but this is an ongoing RPG, let's be honest with ourselves, one nation can find a magical McGuffin at any time and become the next Garlemald, and it would be easy to write in with pre-established lore. It's "lower" stakes than The End of Days, but just because it's a lower stake doesn't mean it's trivial.

- "We're returning to our roots as an adventurer" A,B and C: We do not adventure, we are dragged along by Wuk on a tour of how awesome I am lol meme, lol oopsie I fell down, aint I so qwerky. We do not adventure, no place do we go to is undiscovered. Even the "golden city" the big draw of adventure, is quite clearly very well known and discovered already. So what are we Adventuring here? We're adventuring by helping Wuk, whom we don't help really, because plot armour mcgee just sails to victory, if we were there or not the story wouldn't have been any different.

Can you imagine how much better the story would be if Gulool Jaja knew of the City of Gold but didn't say anything and just said to follow in his footsteps? He was the only one that knew it was real at the point of its reveal and then just blurts it out to the room. Erenville changed attitudes about it, but because it was just considered straight up fact it became less of a lurking myth and more of a "When we get there" which is something that directly rips the adventure out of the story. It's fine if he knew it was real, that can actually enhance it, like having different successors find different places, but only the one that finds the city of gold truly followed in his footsteps. Once you close that end of the story, it cannot be reopened and takes away most of the intrigue about what Gulool Jaja actually went through. There is no depth and no layering to this storytelling as well as the outright removal of the potential for adventure.

Even the end of the first dungeon, a story point you want to be very compelling is immediately cheapened because the boat was immediately fixed at the end. Imagine how much better it would have been if the boat had not been fixed? Instead it felt like the story needed a reason to put us in a dungeon after a few hours so they fabricated one and THEN decided where to put it. If we didn't go through the dungeon, the boat would have gotten there just as fast. Nothing we did mattered. Nothing was discovered, no lesson was learned. There was no substance to it at all. Even the boat being damaged and needing repairs happened in the dungeon instead of in story.

- "It's ok to not be the main character" I absolutely agree, we weren't the main character in the HW storyline, or most of the Stb story lines. Basically we were only the main character from SHB on. The rest of the time, we were part of the story, when we acted the story moved, as it should in any video game but we were not always the focus, the focus was always on who's story arc it was, in fact we had very little focus in the plot just all of the agency. What I mean by this is Lady Icehearts story revolves around her, we are the ones doing things and our actions are pushing the plot along but it's about her. This time however we're not even a side character, nor are we pushing the plot along, unless you count run to glowy circle and wait for a cutscene where, Wuk does 90% of the dialogue, all of the action and literally everything else. if you took us and the scions away the story wouldn't have changed. We did nothing but stand aside while Wuk, likely someone Dev's kids character fantasy got slapped into the game to lead the way.

It's things like this that make Wuk read out like a bad fanfic character written by someone who wanted to make a self insert Mary Sue but tried just a little too hard to hide it. Her sea sickness and hate of alpaca's should be charming, but with the rest of how she is portrayed, it ends up feeling forced and overall annoying, especially how often it's referenced.

[Malthir]

You managed to articulate what I was trying to say in a much better way. Thanks