Feedback: Dawntrail MSQ thoughts

[Alenore]

I don't care about the exact mechanics or about how she defeated Bakool JaJa. I'm talking about that she defeated him AND half an army BY HERSELF. With us just standing besides not doing anything. This is not only plot armor, it lets us, the Warrior of light, look incompetent.

"Let me handle it, they're small fry" => we don't intervene. Like, isn't it pretty much what she asked us to do?

And let me get this straight, you don't care why she was able to defeat them, but you care that she defeated them and find it stupid because there's no justification... Because you don't care about it?
There's a topic on this subforum about arguing in good faith, i suggest reading it.

And why didn't Bakool Ja just kill here right there? No one could have proven it was him, his "smart head" should 100% have made that suggestion.
The fact, that she wasn't killed, is plotarmor.

Yeah, why didn't Bakool Ja Ja kill everybody in their sleep at the inn too, including the daughter of the current queen. Because he's not a cold blooded killer and isn't shown as one, anywhere? He doesn't see Wuk Lamat as even a real competition because she's sheltered. He's only thinking about killing us when he loses his temper, and the Mystic head calms him.
The way he's portrayed in game doesn't match what you're saying.

No, I wanted to know WHY he had that goal in the first place.
We didn't get ANY kind of flashback in his childhood, or any interaction with his dad that would have warranted his anger.

He's the miracle child of an almost legendary ruler who united a whold continent, put an end to a century long feud, locked away a mythical beast supposed to be the strongest being on the continent.
He states his goal as wanting to unite the wholeworld under his banner.
Multiple people states the circumstances of his birth and the fact he's the sole blood heir to the throne weighed heavy on him.
He clearly wanted to prove he could match or even beat his father's prowess.

Also, didn't Krile get a bit of inside of his "dark thoughts" in his introduction?
Why didnt she tell WukLamat "hey, your brother has some dark thoughts, maybe you should try to know him better, like you try to know all the people in Tural, which is kinda the point of this whole fucking story"?

You mean tell Wuk Lamat, the girl who told us she had to win the throne becuase that guy in particular couldn't be allowed to be the next king because he means to bring war to the whole world? She knows.
This is literally why we're in Tural lol.

He was underdeveloped on purpose so that WukLamat doesn't have to "know him better" and just kill him, cause its objecitvely the "good" thing to do for her as the Hero. Imagine if Emet-Selch didnt try to talk to us and just did what he planned to do anyways.

This is a bad argument when, in the same patch, we had Bakuul Ja Ja who was set up as a bad guy, and had Wuk Lamat understand his motivation and accept him.
The difference with Zoraal Ja is he had no real good reason except his own ambition, and doesn't mind killing Turali people, his own Alexandrian people, and his dad to prove he's better. Wuk Lamat considers that as a crossing a line, so did Guluul Ja Ja, and even Gulool Ja agrees that his father is bad and has to be stopped. He was shown as a bad king who neglected his subjects and diverted resources for his war effort instead of helping his citizens.

I'd agree up until she was made Queen.
But then she STILL got the majority of the lines. She was still around for Erenvilles and Kriles arc there she absolutely had to get some lines in for some reason.

I truly wonder why Wuk Lamat, who felt a connection with Sphene and feels some kind of responsibility for the population in Solution 9, would want to confront her and try to change her mind before she commits mass murder.
I think you've made clear that you don't like her, and anything she is shown saying or doing won't find any grace to your eyes. Even during the cutscene where Urianger met Moenbryda's father, we had Loporrits and Thancred talking. I don't see you pesting about that stupid mary sue Livingway who somehow has no flaws and perfect knowledge about space travel.

Isn't it weird that most people, me included, liked ShB/EW, but don't like DT because of WukLamat?
Why do you think that is?

I think you overestimate how many people don't like the expansion, even more so because of a single character.

[AureliaF]

I adored the music, fights, and environments in this expansion, so all my appreciation to those individuals and teams. Tural really felt like a massive continent with so many beautiful biomes and cultures. I loved every bit of that.

But yeah, as for the story that brought us around said environments...

Leaving Wuk Lamat aside for now, I have to stress, I do not at all mind being more in the role of an attache on an initially political/diplomatic mission. It's set up early that we're not front and center here, and that's totally fine. That does not mean that all possibility of warm and fun character moments with... OTHER characters than Wuk Lamat should be essentially erased (exaggerating a bit, but it doesn't feel like it during the story flow).

The Scions, the characters we met in Tuliyollal, Koana, Dad Dawnservant, Erenville, Bakool Ja Ja, and I know I'm forgetting many, these are old and new friends that we had SO few warm moments/lines with. All the dialogue, all the interaction, was just overfocused on Wuk Lamat. We're there to support her bid, yes. But not to the exclusion of all else. The Scions especially, we've been with them for ten years... this is the time to enjoy lots of fun payoff moments of our close friendships. If they're in the expansion, why are they 90% ignoring that the WoL is even there? There was so much potential for good dialogue and connections "in the background" of Wuk Lamat's whole shenanigans that would've made dealing with her more palatable overall. (I don't hate Wuk Lamat at all, I just think she got way, WAY too much of the dialogue for a character that I feel mid about at best.)

I felt that Erenville and Krile had MUCH more interesting stories going on, and yet, not only did they get stuffed into the final act, most of it was just exposition dumped on us in the final moments of the final map. I SO wished that we could have started unravelling threads of Erenville and Krile's respective stories muuuuch much sooner (we get a little of that with Erenville, granted, during that initial section after crossing to Xak Tural). Bakool Ja Ja's "redemption arc" was so rushed and underdeveloped as to make me roll my eyes at its believability. There was some amazing foundation laid for it at his home, but it didn't get nearly the time it deserved.

tl;dr: I don't care about being the center of attention; I care about having deeper interactions with all the characters in an expansion, especially if those characters have majorly important personal investment to the events of the expansion.

[honest_psycho]

I don't see you pesting about that stupid mary sue Livingway who somehow has no flaws and perfect knowledge about space travel.

What in the absolute fuck are you talking about?
What does this un-important support character have to do with Wuk Lamat, who got an entire Expansion dedicated to her?

The issue is not her Personality (which I kinda liked in the EW post content), or her philosophies.
The issue is the fact that the other characters dont get the screentime they deserved, and that WE, the player, get comepletely sidelined. (Read my other comments)

And then you try to build up a strawman of me being a "fan" of some side-character that nobody even cares about?

You also tried to avoid answering the question of "Why is Wuk Lamat so disliked?" (see the Steam reviews if you think shes's popular).
I dont wanna hear why you LIKE her.
I want to her YOUR theory about why other people don't.

[Alenore]

Gosh I knew i shouldn't have included that part. You completely dodged the rest though.

You also tried to avoid answering the question of "Why is Wuk Lamat so disliked?" (see the Steam reviews if you think shes's popular).
I dont wanna hear why you LIKE her.

Apologies, I thought that was a rhetorical question. However my answer still stands, most peopleactually don't care about her and enjoy Dawntrail well enough. For the sake of the argument, I'll answer.

But first, I have to correct something: I don't "like" her, I'm absolutely neutral about her. She's a character I've been following, just like I've been following Ysayle, Estinien and Alphinaud in HW, or Lyse, Gosetsu, Yugiri and Hien in SB. I don't have special ties to her, she's nothing special juste like most of the characters I've mentioned before (bar Alphinaud and Estinien) don't move me a bit.
Why is that? Because she's new. Dawntrail is the start of a new story in unfamiliar land, and new characters are introduced. First and foremost, we get Wuk Lamat. I've described her as growing up, naive, etc... and these are not traits that make me like characters.

You can wonder why I've come at you then? Because while I don't care about her, the reasons you give for disliking her are simply wrong. Just go back to my previous post for a rebutal of your characterization of the character.

But one Wuk Lamat does not Dawntrail make.

The story stands even without her if a random Mamool Ja with 0 lines of dialogue was the one in race to become Dawnservant.
Wuk Lamat is no more annoying than Alphinaud was before he had time to grow, or Ryne, or Zero, or a cast of other FF characters who also, from time to time, take the spotlight and have a lot of dialogue as well.
She's really just a way to drive the story forward, and I can abstract what I think about her and see the bigger picture and the underlying ideas, which I don't feel suffers because of her presence in it.

Without Wuk Lamat, we'd breach the same subject with Bakuul Ja Ja who is misguided, has a terrible father really, but feels like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders because his race feels like they have to create Blessed Siblings. you'll get what you want of that story, for instance that even in a seemingly united society, some people are feeling left out and want to change the status quo even at the cost of their people.

We'd see Zoraal Ja the same way if you pay attention, a misguided son who feels the weight of his father's crown and think he has to prove himself by surpassing his father, and that the ends justify the means.
Or just a big bad with 0 motivation but to be evil if you don't read between the lines.

The same issues would be thrown at us in Alexandria, the same clash of culture about souls and their view on death.

So in the end, Dawntrail wouldn't be really better or worse with or without Wuk Lamat, just like if you removed a character from the previous main cast, you could build around. The story is good, the character is a way to drive it.


Now to answer why I think people dislike her...

I want to her YOUR theory about why other people don't.

Firstly, a lot of people joined during Endwalker or at the end of ShB, so when we were riding on already 6-8 years of story and build up. A bunch of them also either skipped the beginning of the game altogether or skipped cutscenes due to ARR poor reputation.
For a lot of them, this is the first time they experience writers trying to build up something for a new story, and a "summer vacation" expansion obviously feels slooooooow as hell. "Speak to Wuk Lamat" is the "Pray return to the Waking Sands" of the expansion.

Secondly, her english voice actor really doesn't help the character. I know it's more of a voice direction issue, but the fact remains that some scenes are weird. The last fight comes to mind. It doesn't help give a good characterization of the character if she's lifting a giant robotic hand without a hint of strain in her voice. I suspect you had this scene that in a corner of your mind when you said she was a Mary Sue.

Which brings me to: I suspect a large part of the playerbase only follow the MSQ and never either read the secondary quests or speak with NPCs outside of objectives. They're missing on a lot of informations, context, what NPC think about the situations (notably Krile).
But if every quest forced you to speak to every NPC around to see what they thought, people would just quit. The obvious drawback is that people who don't do that are missing on a lot.

Then, there's the (somewhat understandable) feeling she takes a more prominent role in the story compared to the WoL in EW and ShB. I'm not sure I really agree or understand this argument but I've seen it multiple times. This is a MMORPG and the main character will almost always be pointed toward the next big bad to kill, be they lightwardens, primals, ascians or Tural vidraal. I don't feel like my character had less agency in DT than EW or ShB.
So I guess what people mean is "We don't feel like we matter as much as before, it could by anyone else", and while kinda understandable in Endwalker (we go to the First and Elpis on our own), it has never been the case before. We matter when we're slaying gods.

Lastly, and that's more about why people dislike Dawntrail *because* of Wuk Lamat, is that people tend to throw everything to the garbage because they dislike a small part. In this case, Wuk Lamat. For Helldivers 2, Sony accounts. And so on. I daresay most of the reviews (good or bad) were made before people finished MSQ, which the Steam graph would tend to confirm since positive reviews rise way more than negative as time pass and people experience more of the story.



I'll finish with Steam having more positive reviews than negatives, and scrolling through negative review, a lot don't even mention her. So while assuredly divisive, saying that most people hate her is simply wrong. Especially when multiple positive reviews mention how they came to like Wuk Lamat despite being wary at first.
A few comment just from the first page of positive reviews prove people also like her :

the level of vitriol for the main character in ignorance of any other aspects of the story and development of the character over the course of the story lead me to believe a lot of the negativity is not in good faith
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The Vacation and Mentor Role we take on is such a nice palette cleanser!
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Wuk Lamat is the best!
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In my instance, I disliked Wuk Lamat when she first appeared and was overall on the fence. As Dawntrail progresses, Wuk Lamat grew on me overtime as did other new characters.
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Wuk Lamat

[honest_psycho]

- Then, there's the (somewhat understandable) feeling she takes a more prominent role in the story compared to the WoL in EW and ShB.

- ...people tend to throw everything to the garbage because they dislike a small part.

My brother in Hydelin, she is the BIGGEST part of the Story. What are you talking about???