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

[VerdeLuck]

Wuk is the story and wuk is weak. Too many eggs in the same basket there. She would have been a stronger character if she wasn't
a) a moron
b) somehow completely unfamiliar with the cultures of the realm she's candidate to become queen of - lyse only got a pass because she'd been effectively exiled from ala mhigo
c) omnipresent. Less really would have been more here, give the character time to breathe and the player some space.
d) uncritically naïve. Naivety is fine when done right, but coupled with point a., comes across as grating, and with point c., nigh impossible to avoid.
e) somehow immune to character progression. the two headed lizard had some development, why and how did a character with the whole storyline revolving around her and 4 times the lines manage to dodge it?

Even Zenos had better manners than her, yes he punched his way into the twitter dimension, but he didn't interfere with the fight - just facilitated it. It also really doesn't help that the story has spent 10 levels emphasising how weak (in terms of combat prowess this time) she is in general and especially when compared to the player. This just rang as a hollow attempt at fanservice with someone's donut steel oc.

D really is important, even after Sphene says many many times that she will genocide the source to save Alexandria, Wuk keeps beating her head agaisnt the wall over and over and over trying to convince her, to the point of stopping us mid-trial to try to reason with Sphene again.
Like come ON, Wuk went through the same stuff we did (since she was firmly welded to our hip the entire expansion), she should KNOW that Sphene cannot be reasoned with and it's either her or the source, so just kill her and save everyone.
This is beyond the naivete of even dense anime protagonists, this is almost intentionally obtuse to reality.

[Karkarov]

D really is important, even after Sphene says many many times that she will genocide the source to save Alexandria, Wuk keeps beating her head over and over and over trying to convince her, to the point of stopping us mid-trial to try to reason with Sphene again.
Like come ON, Wuk went through the same stuff we did (since she was firmly welded to our hip the entire expansion), she should KNOW that Sphene cannot be reasoned with and it's either her or the source, so just kill her and save everyone.
This is beyond the naivete of even dense anime protagonists, this is almost intentionally obtuse to reality.

Warrior of Light gets a chance to call BS on it after the trial, one of the dialog options legitimately dismisses defeating her and her agency and just call out the elephant in the room. Sphene is not a person, she is just a computer program with forced initiatives that is dressed up to look like a person. "Sphene" 100% had no choice in how she acted and never had a soul or free will to begin with. Wuk Lamat is too stupid, naive, and stuck in her self absorbed head cannon to stop and ever realize that though.

[ThorneDynasty]

D really is important, even after Sphene says many many times that she will genocide the source to save Alexandria, Wuk keeps beating her head agaisnt the wall over and over and over trying to convince her, to the point of stopping us mid-trial to try to reason with Sphene again.
Like come ON, Wuk went through the same stuff we did (since she was firmly welded to our hip the entire expansion), she should KNOW that Sphene cannot be reasoned with and it's either her or the source, so just kill her and save everyone.
This is beyond the naivete of even dense anime protagonists, this is almost intentionally obtuse to reality.

Also because we already have Alphinaud who owns his "naive" idealism perfectly. He does the exact same, but he's not an idiot. He doesn't almost always try to find common ground because he has deluded expectations, but because he genuinely believes it's the right thing for him to do regardless of the odds. He goes into so many situations fully understanding it's a futile effort to reason with half the people we end up fighting, but also that he'd quickly become a worse version of himself if he just launched WoL at the problem without even trying.

Which also plays into the relationship they wrote between WoL and Alphinaud, him first just seeing us as exactly that kind of blunt object. He's not written to be that character who steals the moment when he tells WoL to hang back to do his own thing, but someone who steps in exactly because he respects WoL too much to just use them as a tool of violence.

They used the characters to prop up each other and succeeded, while DT tries to do so at the other's expense and fails.

[Verathel]

Also because we already have Alphinaud who owns his "naive" idealism perfectly. He does the exact same, but he's not an idiot. He doesn't almost always try to find common ground because he has deluded expectations, but because he genuinely believes it's the right thing for him to do regardless of the odds. He goes into so many situations fully understanding it's a futile effort to reason with half the people we end up fighting, but also that he'd quickly become a worse version of himself if he just launched WoL at the problem without even trying.

Which also plays into the relationship they wrote between WoL and Alphinaud, him first just seeing us as exactly that kind of blunt object. He's not written to be that character who steals the moment when he tells WoL to hang back to do his own thing, but someone who steps in exactly because he respects WoL too much to just use them as a tool of violence.

They used the characters to prop up each other and succeeded, while DT tries to do so at the other's expense and fails.

Also 100 percent this and a good reason why so far I consider ARR to be superior.

Taking founding the Braves for example, Alphinaud was naive, self righteous and wholly believing in the cause. He even did his own due diligence but severely underestimated the political game and power of the Syndicate and obviously paid for it. Sometimes it was shallow but there was intrigue, there was reason, there was depth to the story...You could see his naivety but at least respect his heart was in the right place.

We even got warned about the issues from outside sources...There is nothing to that extent with Dawntrail I see so far. It's why Wuk Lamat falls so flat for me. Sometimes her writing gets better but they never quite get to that point where I find good for long.

[AlexisLestrange]

The part in which you are comparing is the post-msq from the patches of ARR to the main-line story of DT, which aren't even fair comparisons because we haven't even had the patches for DT come out yet. Let it cook. Oy vey...

Zoraal Ja was probably one of the best characters symbolically and so many people aren't even batting an eye. It's absolutely wild.