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

[Aerstzwyn]

Orange cat bad

But nah, seriously. She would've been fine if she took a backseat after the coronation. Let the Scions do Scions stuff, defend your city, maybe show up with reinforcements at some point but let the Scions and especially the WoL do the thing they are here for. Your screen time is used up, you did what you needed to do, now sit down.

[Dogempire]

Orange cat bad

But nah, seriously. She would've been fine if she took a backseat after the coronation. Let the Scions do Scions stuff, defend your city, maybe show up with reinforcements at some point but let the Scions and especially the WoL do the thing they are here for. Your screen time is used up, you did what you needed to do, now sit down.

She needs an actual character arc, I can see they at least attempted it when she had trouble with boats, had a false bravado, and was pretty naive in the beginning, but her biggest issue is both the fact that she never overcomes any actual, tangible problems, and that she shows no interest in us besides "Hey buddy, thanks for helping me out" and the game makes us follow her around.

For the first issue, she needs to face actual, tangible consequences from her flaws, maybe she's overly trusting and THAT'S why she gets kidnapped because of her overly-trusting nature and desire to get along with everyone, so she has to learn to balance that out. Hell, make Sphene's betrayal actually hurt her, make it so that because of Wuk Lamat being too lax with Sphene and letting her do what she wants because Wuk REALLY wants to be friends with her, that Sphene actually gets a chance to start harvesting souls from Tuliyollal, making it so that she fails to protect her people as Dawnservant.

Also make it so that even when she becomes Dawnservant, she's initially pretty bad at it, and because of that, she begins to doubt herself and if she has the ability to live up to her father, and then let's compound that with her being in awe of just how important and accomplished the people she's hired are, that these people are helping someone like her, wasting their time and energy on a silly succession trial when there are probably far more important people out there who deserve the help more.

Let's make her failures cause her slowly begin doubt herself and her philosophy, she should be awfully quiet in the final zone and rather zoned out because Sphene's betrayal was a breaking point for her, and she's questioning if every person is really worth saving, and if it's really worth trying to trust and understand people when they could very well just betray her. Let her speak with Alphinaud and have him tell her about the Crystal Braves, about the incident that nearly got the scions killed and also caused Shinryuu.

Wuk Lamat seems awfully thrilled to learn about the history and culture of the people inhabiting her nation, but it's weird because she's just so darn disinterested in learning about events that dictated the fates of literal worlds and nations, and even existence when it comes to us and the Scions.

Just, ugh, SE had a decent concept but they woefully underutilized it by making the character perfect from the get-go and pushing everyone else down to prop up the perfect character. I doubt SE meant to give Wuk Lamat a flat character arc, but that's what they did.

[Souljacker]

She needs an actual character arc, I can see they at least attempted it when she had trouble with boats, had a false bravado, and was pretty naive in the beginning, but her biggest issue is both the fact that she never overcomes any actual, tangible problems, and that she shows no interest in us besides "Hey buddy, thanks for helping me out" and the game makes us follow her around.
...

It's baby's first fiction. That's really the only explanation - so much is derivative that it reads like someone in high school writing their first papers. Hasn't quite developed a personal style just yet, no original ideas.

Folks like that can cut their teeth on writing side quests, not the main scenario. Lady who wrote Shadowbringers needs to take the reins back and maybe mentor some of the new folks a little more.

[Dogempire]

It's baby's first fiction. That's really the only explanation - so much is derivative that it reads like someone in high school writing their first papers. Hasn't quite developed a personal style just yet, no original ideas.

Folks like that can cut their teeth on writing side quests, not the main scenario. Lady who wrote Shadowbringers needs to take the reins back and maybe mentor some of the new folks a little more.

This is usually also something that you have editors for, to have someone outside of the writer looking at the story with a critical eye, pointing out the flaws and suggesting things to fix them.

A character arc is literally the most basic thing a writer can do, and while you kind of have one in the first half, it just plain falls flat because it's missing the elements needed to actually make it compelling