Quote Originally Posted by Cleretic View Post
I think this takes a clever angle, of instead pivoting us into a different role, that uses our history and presumed strength level without just making us the protagonist. We're taking a mentor role, we're the Auron to Wuk Lamat's Tidus (and please don't try to find a Yuna in that metaphor, it will NOT work). Teaching someone else how to take on the role that they strive to attain, using similar tools to our own. If anything I think we could've served to be de-emphasised more, just because while Wuk Lamat clearly did need our help to get inner strength and confidence, as well as a hefty sword arm that she didn't necessarily have early on, it could've served to have someone else take a role in teaching her political leadership. That's a harder role to fill, though, since all the politicians we know are busy, y'know, being politicians. Alphinaud spends the entire expansion doing basically nothing, his skillset is politics-adjacent, maybe he could've taken that role?
The problem with shifting the silent protagonist into a mentor role is that a mentor... necessarily has a lot of things to say. Unlike Auron who, being voiced, was able to provide a lot of exposition, was a minor celebrity in Spira, and actually had a personality and goals, the Warrior of Light has none of those - other than "seeking adventure" after the cosmic crises of the past couple expansions, they're a blank slate. A silent protagonist is a terrible fit for the mentor role because mentors necessarily need to say a lot; the net effect is that it winds up looking like Wuk Lamat mentors herself for the most part, which leads to the question of "Why am I even here?" Even in the Warrior of Light's bread and butter role of taking down threats too powerful for anyone else to handle (Sphene / Queen Eternal), Wuk Lamat manages to upstage them.

Again, I don't have a problem with Wuk Lamat being the main protagonist (we were the deuteragonist of Stormblood and the ultimate protagonist of both Shadowbringers and Endwalker; the train's gotta let up at some point) but that doesn't mean she needs to be in the spotlight for 85% of the story.

Quote Originally Posted by Cleretic View Post
Genuinely, I would argue that there's really popular FFXIV characters that couldn't handle the sort of spotlight Wuk Lamat does, because that requires a character to be vibrant and multifaceted enough to remain interesting during the entire spotlight. Harchefaunt, Aymeric, Hien, they couldn't remain interesting across that much time. Most of the Scions couldn't manage it. Hell, their prominence in the expansion indirectly sort of shows that Krile and Erenville don't have strong enough personalities to carry an expansion.
I think this is putting the horse before the cart - any flaws in characterization (or a lack of depth) can be remedied through clever writing and giving them more screentime. Krile and Erenville don't fall flat because they're poorly characterized, they're poorly characterized because they're not written all that well and don't get a lot of time to shine thanks to the story focusing so heavily on Wuk Lamat. Erenville guides you across Tural and has some moments in the back half of the story, while Krile is basically just there to provide a plot device to get into the final zone (they both have their moments in Living Memory, but Wuk Lamat has her own things there too). They could have had bigger roles in the story, but weren't written to; saying "they lack personality" because of this is a pretty poor defense, IMO.

I want to say this is just a consequence of Hiroi being unused to the ensemble cast, but I couldn't say for sure. Either way, Wuk Lamat being the focus character at the expense of the rest of the cast just didn't work for me. I don't dislike her or anything, but she held the spotlight in places that really would have been better suited to giving it to other people (mostly in the back half of the story).