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

[Aurumis]

Stormblood didn't see anywhere close to the backlash Dawntrail is facing. Ironically, even though a fair number were critical of the Ala Mhigan side of the story, Doma was near universally beloved from day one. In fact, it's the praise for Doma and all her work prior which drew more and more attention to Ishikawa and likely contributed to her taking the reigns for Shadowbringers.

Dawntrail, by comparison, has no arc that isn't heavily divisive. I'd argue some are looking back on their criticism of Lyse because for all her flaws even she didn't dominate the narrative remotely to the same extent Wuk Lamat does nor was our character sidelined to prop up her story. Going further, Stormblood managed to give character to Lyse, Hien, Yugiri, Gosetsu, Yotsuyu and even Zenos which is a feat in and of itself. All while still giving the WoL moments too. How many did Dawntrail have? Wuk Lamat and... Koana, her brother. Everyone and I mean, everyone was put on the backburner because Dawntrail is the Wuk Lamat show.

At least Koana was good.

Koana... and Erenville and his mother are good characters too.

[Alleluia]

Except she lacks the intelligence of Alphinaud and doesn't fail like Alphinaud despite having the same flaws and being dumber. Alphinaud actually did something, not just running around preaching peace and happiness. He had his fall and redemption. Wuk had no such fall. She doesn't fail at anything in a way that leaves a lasting effect, everything just goes her way. Kidnapped and had a stone stolen1? No biggy, I'll just crush the guy I could barely touch with all my might despite no training and nothing changing. Barrier none of the other Scions can get through? I'll just crush it. She just succeeds because the writers want her to rather than the story convincing use she earned it. It is a horribly written character.

Alphinaud didn't fail in ARR. And once the patches started, he kept getting worse, with no indication of comeuppance incoming till later. It wasn't even clear at the time that his character flaws were intended as flaws by the writers till the patch story started to show the cracks forming beneath his feet. *Everyone* hated him to varying degrees up to that point, and maybe after for a while til he proved himself.

And yet, look at our boy now.

Wuk Lamat's character has good bones. And half the annoyance at her is the spotlight stealing and unearned moments, which has mostly nothing to do with her characterization and everything to do with narrative structure choices. They can turn it around, as long as someone realizes they need to. I have hope, yet.

[Aurumis]

Pretty much this, in a year or two people will stop obsessing and only the truly unhinged will continue to go on about this.

Just because people won't focus in what they don't like for years doesn't mean it becomes good suddenly. So you should stop smoking.

[ThorneDynasty]

Alphinaud didn't fail in ARR. And once the patches started, he kept getting worse, with no indication of comeuppance incoming till later. It wasn't even clear at the time that his character flaws were intended as flaws by the writers till the patch story started to show the cracks forming beneath his feet. *Everyone* hated him to varying degrees up to that point, and maybe after for a while til he proved himself.

And yet, look at our boy now.

Wuk Lamat's character has good bones. And half the annoyance at her is the spotlight stealing, which has mostly nothing to do with her characterization and everything to do with narrative structure choices. They can turn it around, as long as someone realizes they need to. I have hope, yet.

Alphinaud literally calls us a dumb brute to our face in 2.0.

He 100% had intended flaws.

[Alleluia]

Alphinaud literally calls us a dumb brute to our face in 2.0.

He 100% had intended flaws.

Thought that was a patch moment? In 2.0 itself, he was just annoying, but not in a way that made you sure it was going to go anywhere and get addressed. In the patches, when he gets more arrogant, but the other characters are also showing awareness of it during and in between quests, then you know its going somewhere and its a clear set of flaws that are being addressed.

[Shibi]

They can turn it around, as long as someone realizes they need to. I have hope, yet.

Whomever the voice actor was, they need to rip her voice out, and replace her with a decent actor from the region.

Redacting this writing team would also help. I want my gobbies going back to proper gobbiespeak.

[Amh_Wilzuun]

Wind Waker was never really called trash. It had a lukewarm reception before people could play it and then the biggest criticism was that it was actually short with artificial long sailing. I was there when it came out.
Also people were confused because the tech demo before that was something else entirely.

Just because initial impressions don't matter to you doesn't make them unimportant.
They are the most important thing for developers because it doesn't matter how a game sells over 2 years but in the first few weeks to month.
Also a lukewarm initial reception is bad pr.

Wind Waker was called trash, this is revisionist history lol

[Alleluia]

Whomever the voice actor was, they need to rip her voice out, and replace her with a decent actor from the region.

Redacting this writing team would also help. I want my gobbies going back to proper gobbiespeak.

I thought his accent and voice acting was fine enough, so I don't really agree. I'm not attached though, so if they replaced him with someone who *was* better, I wouldn't be opposed. But Wuk's voice wasn't her problem, imo.

Gulool's accent made me turn on UI to see speech bubble in voiced scenes, when normally I can hide it. lol I dunno if you'd consider being hard to understand to be a good thing or a bad thing, though?

Also, I don't disagree abotu the localization team making... interesting choices they probably shouldn't have. Like the "it should be in a museum" optional dungeon quest had us talking to a giant at one point and the sentence "They looked after me when I came here previously to conduct fieldwork, and are an extraordinarily erudite individual, well-versed in ancient legends." was said. I can only assume this was either some attempt to inject gender ideology into the english version of the game and make one of the giants non-binary, even though they've clearly mentioned the giants as being male and female in the msq and other side quests; or an overlooked grammatical error since a plural they can't be a singular individual, unless we're talking weird cases like Bakool and Gulool, and even then the confusion is still social.

At least the moblins were sticking to their own conventions of gobbiespeak, not just being translated however the localization team felt like at the time. Though they did miss one instance of "lowlander" and called us "highlander" or "uplander" (I forget which) in one of the chat bubbles that I noticed, so even then it wasn't perfect.

[KurenXIV]

Wind Waker was called trash, this is revisionist history lol

No, it's not. People were AVERSE to trying Wind Waker because of the art style. Those who did play Wind Waker had valid complaints but the game was far from called trash.

The feedback Nintendo took from this was appropriate (even if the art style was really great in the end) and that was people didn't really want super cartoony art style for The Legend of Zelda series (at least not the main games).

To draw a parallel, I have friends who weren't interested in DT because of the way the expansion was pitched to us (through live letters and trailers). That's similar to what you saw with Wind Waker and those who didn't like the art style.

To say people playing DT, going through the story and expressing how it was not enjoyable is the same is a false equivalency. That's not an "initial impression".

It's the same as people saying "it's a new start to the story! You can't expect it to be good!"; the run time of the MSQ is longer than most seasons of TV shows and longer than movies by many hours.

How much hand waving is needed to try and get rid of valid criticism?

I didn't enjoy the first half of the story, I didn't like the middle part of the story and I really didn't like the ending. Is that an initial impression or do we need to keep moving the goal post for what/when we can consider feedback valid?

[AlexisLestrange]

The worst part about the second half of the story is that it completely undid all of the progress she made in the first half. We were helping her become the Dawnservant because she's a good leader for her people, and in the second half she comes with us to fight Zoraal Ja/Sphene and her people didn't even need her, her brother Koana handled everything just fine on his own, even making strategic alliances to protect the people and stuff. Why did we even help her become the leader of her country if she is not even needed then???

The way I think Wuk Lamat was written in the second half, and hear me out, is in the theme of two parts to everything. Thinking and acting, or reason and resolve.

This next bit will contain some spoilers from lv96 MSQ onwards.

Wuk Lamat crosses over into Heritage Found with the WoL but without Koana. She didn't have her reason with her so she was all shoot first and ask questions later, saying things without much rhyme or reason. Similarly, we experience this with Zoraal Ja. The moment he was greedy for power, which goes with a lot of backstory and resentment with his upbringing and sibling rivalry, is when he declared he was no longer thinking logically, slaying his right-hand man Sareel Ja. Exhibit B? When you see his altered form in the 2nd trial, you can see he becomes a Blessed Mamool Ja without his second head because he had slain his reason. He's not clear of mind, hence he speaks out of turn when he says to Gulool Ja you are asking a man who is lost for the way.

There are probably more links, but these are the ones I could think of from the top of my head.