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

[Underscore]

Just switch your voices to JP.

[DarkCobalt]

I just finished the MSQ (thanks July 4th holiday, I get to stay home!). Even towards the end, when the plot is no longer even about her, she's constantly omnipresent, constantly giving her take, constantly following us around. We get about 1 quest to breathe before we immediately tag with her again. When the group splits up, it's always Wuk Lamat being paired with us while the other characters get split off to do their own thing. The rare sections where it's just us and Erenville were a breath of fresh air, well I shouldn't say fresh since Erenville is a bit depressing to be around but the change of pace was nice by comparison. It's really baffling how much they want her to be around us. At least with the Scions in Shadowbringers and Endwalker, they rotated who was tagging with us, and it made their presence a lot more bearable.

[Eyrilona]

Just switch your voices to JP.

It isn't the voice acting. The JP, German and French audiences are also many shades of angry over this game, and they are putting a lot of the problem on how Wuk Lamat is too much the obnoxious center of the expansion. Riling against how the character is voiced at this point may just be pavlovian response because it is the sound you hear every time she dominates the cutscenes. You'd learn to hate any voice that way -- if they had written a popular established Scion like Alisaie to be pushed this aggressively into the main PoV role and made her a character we just couldn't seem to get a break away from to play our own game for even a little, then I think we'd have started hating the sound of her voice, too.

[Xylira]

It occurred to me, one of the (many) reasons why the character comes off as so annoying is that they constantly interject into discussions with other NPCs, stating the obvious and not actually adding anything of value. In any other expansion, it would typically be the WoL silently reacting with an emote, or the occasional dialogue option, or one of the Scions occasionally adding something insightful. But in Dawntrail it's Wuk Lamat constantly and unceasingly stating the obvious whenever she's around. I can't count the number of times where I would be hastily clicking past her dialogue specifically, and it only got worse the longer the story dragged on, and I honestly haven't missed anything important to the story from doing so.

[lolnotacat]

It occurred to me, one of the (many) reasons why the character comes off as so annoying is that they constantly interject into discussions with other NPCs, stating the obvious and not actually adding anything of value. In any other expansion, it would typically be the WoL silently reacting with an emote, or the occasional dialogue option, or one of the Scions occasionally adding something insightful. But in Dawntrail it's Wuk Lamat constantly and unceasingly stating the obvious whenever she's around. I can't count the number of times where I would be hastily clicking past her dialogue specifically, and it only got worse the longer the story dragged on, and I honestly haven't missed anything important to the story from doing so.

The writers are worried you might forget about peace, happiness, diversity, tacos, and sea sickness if it's not injected into every conversation.

[Eyrilona]

The writers are worried you might forget about peace, happiness, diversity, tacos, and sea sickness if it's not injected into every conversation.

If tacos are underserved, then that is entirely due to the game itself. G'raha eating a taco was one of the highlights of the trailer, and I still can't believe where it was that we finally got to see that.

[midnitdragoon]

It's not that Wuk Lamat is bad... I think the overall reasoning behind the expansion feels off. I just finished the Hanu portion of MSQ.... As well as it's side quests. The game really made it a point that we should be respectful of diversity, culture, and blah blah blah blame a npc for the actions of the past which was not the case. I feel slight woke tendancies, this feels unnecessary so far. Hopefully things get better as MSQ goes on.

[ReynTime]

Wow, there really is no such thing as pleasing people. Endwalker was a great end to the tale of the Warrior of Light, now we're back to being some adventurer and you know what. I LIKE Wuk Lamat, she's actually refreshing from the CONSTANT downers we've had the last couple of runs.

Refreshing take?
She's only the fifth or so naive idealist character in the main scenario. The difference is the other characters had to change their approaches to solve problems because the far more grounded writing of the the past expansions wasn't afraid to provide grave consequences for their naivety. Dawntrail bends realism to be a wholly idealistic story where Wuk Lamat doesn't need to change just for sake of repeating the "we can achieve anything if we work together for peace and happiness of all" message over and over, which isn't even new to XIV either. That's a theme that has existed since 2.0. Dawntrail is simply a lot more childish about the delivery of it and lacks subtext.

[HyoMinPark]

Just switch your voices to JP.

It isn’t just terrible English voice acting that is causing people to be critical of Wuk Lamat. I play with Japanese audio and still found her to be an insufferable black hole of a character that reduced any and every more interesting character around her to virtually nothing because she ALWAYS had to be there. Even when the WoL is the center of an expansion (e.g., Shadowbringers) we don’t turn other interesting characters around us into set extras. And even when the WoL is the “sidekick” in another’s story (e.g., Stormblood), we aren’t made to feel irrelevant and as if our role in the story could have been fulfilled by Generic NPC #47262939.

I don’t know if the English VA is just inexperienced, if the VA direction for English was just bad, or if it was the forced foreign accent (because I don’t believe the VA has an accent IRL— but correct me if I’m wrong; I don’t know anything about the English VA); but the comparisons I have heard between English and Japanese are like night and day. Even my friends that prefer the English VA over the Japanese one contemplated switching over; but it really doesn’t make her a more likable or interesting character.

[Eyrilona]

It's not that Wuk Lamat is bad... I think the overall reasoning behind the expansion feels off. I just finished the Hanu portion of MSQ.... As well as it's side quests. The game really made it a point that we should be respectful of diversity, culture, and blah blah blah blame a npc for the actions of the past which was not the case. I feel slight woke tendancies, this feels unnecessary so far. Hopefully things get better as MSQ goes on.

Now if you said the game has Wuk tendencies, I would have to agree with you.

But once you realize that the Hanu scenario plays straight from the 'primitive tribal people need smart white man to come tell them something stupidly obvious' trope, you'll start to notice that actual respect for other cultures and diversity and all that is quite far from this expansion.