Lyse vs. Wuk Lamat

[Sayo_]

Thank you for this post. Lyse is one of my favorite characters in the game. I think a lot of people misremember some things because of how long it's been since many of them played through stormblood. Having recently done a replay of it myself I really appreciated Lyse more on the second time around. If you pick up on the subtext you can tell that she learns quite a bit from Hien.

[Isala]

Her brothers would have made terrible individual leaders. I'm not certain if you were paying attention but Zarool Ja wanted to turn Turral into a conquering Warmachine. In Koanas aspirations for technological innovations of other cultures, he disregards the people he would rule all with myriad of strong cultural traditions.

This tells me everything about why you like Wuk, because YOU were not paying attention.

Koana got the character growth he needed to be a good leader. You know, the whole point of the rite his father set, to help his children grow? He learned that culture was important, and destroying that with technology over everything else would have ruined what made his people who they are.

As for the "qualities" Wuk has? She has none, until she needs them for the story. And then she pulls them out of her ass. She can't even remain a consistent character throughout the story. She spends the entire time wanting to learn about other people, and other cultures, no matter how annoying it is to do that, like the whole cooking rite. And yet, suddenly, when Krile wants to learn about her people, who ARE ALSO NOW WUK'S PEOPLE... Wuk spends the entire time complaining about, in her own words, how much of a "pain in the ass" this is. Wuk has no redeeming traits. At all. Everything Wuk gets, everything Wuk does, is just handed to her. She doesn't earn anything, she doesn't grow, she just keeps falling up and up and up. Wuk loses to her brother in combat? Without any training, or any growth, suddenly, she can defeat him. Wuk gets trapped alongside everyone else on the final trial? Oh, suddenly, here she comes to save us... Except we didn't need saving. Wuk just had to remind us who the MC was this expansion.

I have seen some absolute trash tier characters in stories. I have read some absolute dog water stories. Wuk causes the Dawntrail MSQ to be both. She single-handedly ruined the MSQ. You want proof of this? Go do any of the sidequests. They are better written, with more engaging characters, aren't plagued with the writer's self insert, and are actually enjoyable experiences, as you see people you've helped along the way in further and further zones.

I do not know what this obsession is with "You dislike Wuk because you're haters", but all of you can stuff it.

[Voidmage]

And yet, in HW the antagonists we face were beyond Aymeric and Ishguard - Ascians, Primals (Remember post-Thordan "Who are you?" line from the elf pope?) and Great Wyrm himself.

In ShB its the same. Zenos couldn't care less about Lyse and Ala Mhigo resitance, only we can fight him and Shinryu.

WoL takes center stage as a hero in all expansions but DT where are the sidekick and primary credit goes to Wuk Lamat.

This. We were equally important as those mentioned and in the big climax fights even the center of all.
Ishgard actually thanked us at the end They screamed "Ishgard remembers, WOL" for us not for Aymeric.
I can't remember Aymeric blocking my character in a cutscene.

in Stormblood it was also us who was remembered as the one who won the Azem Steppe battle. We gave the commando to attack the Garleans right after as far as I remember.

[Turtledeluxe]

If you take Wuk out of this expansion, it's still bad. Koana is a totally uninteresting character. Zoraal and Bakool are cliche. Pacing issues are everywhere. Quests are meandering and boring. Characters across the board endlessly repeat themselves like you're stupid. Themes pf parenthood are poorly explored and tell you nothing. Characters are surprised by things they really shouldn't be. I can go on forever.

Claiming Wuk Lamat ruins this expansion makes you objectively a hater. The devs ruined the expansion.

And the rants about it come across as unhinged.

Also Koana would make a terrible leader because he forfeited willingly.

[ZephyrMenodora]

If you take Wuk out of this expansion, it's still bad. Koana is a totally uninteresting character. Zoraal and Bakool are cliche. Pacing issues are everywhere. Quests are meandering and boring. Characters across the board endlessly repeat themselves like you're stupid. Themes pf parenthood are poorly explored and tell you nothing. Characters are surprised by things they really shouldn't be. I can go on forever.

Claiming Wuk Lamat ruins this expansion makes you objectively a hater. The devs ruined the expansion.

And the rants about it come across as unhinged.

Also Koana would make a terrible leader because he forfeited willingly.

It's almost as though a badly written and acted character that we have to interact with most of the MSQ, who has the most dialogue, who we constantly talk about the few times she's not there, can completely ruin someone's experience.

She absolutely through her writing and acting ruin this expansion for MSQ enjoyers.

Calling people unhinged because the omnipresence of a bad character ruined their enjoyment of this MSQ, is unhinged.

[Isala]

If you take Wuk out of this expansion, it's still bad. Koana is a totally uninteresting character. Zoraal and Bakool are cliche. Pacing issues are everywhere. Quests are meandering and boring. Characters across the board endlessly repeat themselves like you're stupid. Themes pf parenthood are poorly explored and tell you nothing. Characters are surprised by things they really shouldn't be. I can go on forever.

Claiming Wuk Lamat ruins this expansion makes you objectively a hater. The devs ruined the expansion.

And the rants about it come across as unhinged.

Also Koana would make a terrible leader because he forfeited willingly.

You're missing the point. The reason all of those themes are unexplored, is because taking time to focus on any of them would give Wuk Lamat less time in the spotlight. We were having a conversation with her father about his fears as a leader and a dad. She interrupts. Koana is getting interesting character development while she's captured. We free her, and she interrupts. Koana gets a chance to stand on his own, and fight his father's shade... Well, now he has to forfeit, because we can't have him be an obstacle for Wuk Lamat. She's literally a black hole. Anyone that gets close to her gets all of their character development sucked out of them, just so they can be the background character in the story that is Wuk Lamat.

[sharknado]

Someone call the PoLyse so atLyse we can have a Lyse.

[TaleraRistain]

The main difference about Lyse is she never wanted to lead or rule in the first place. She only became a reluctant leader at the beginning of SB because there was no other option. The resistances were fractured and distrust of outsider, the only way to reunite them is using her family name, which is weight second only to the royal family. Unlike Wuk, I don't think Lyse ever think she were ready or deserved it, she did it because it was the only way. That's why as soon as someone more qualified become available she immediately defer. In the end she was the one who advocated to abolish the monarchy system, yield all military matter to Raubahn, and often call herself as a simple messenger for her people. Wuk on the hand is overwhelmed with self-righteousness and suffer from a severe case of main character syndrome.

One of my favorite scenes with Lyse is after the distastrous meeting where Lakshmi got released, she says they're going to go back in there and talk as long as it takes to work things out. She doesn't want to lead and she's still naive, but she has an eagerness to see her people to work together and is willing to be the diplomat that brings them all together to work out their differences.

[Turtledeluxe]

You're missing the point. The reason all of those themes are unexplored, is because taking time to focus on any of them would give Wuk Lamat less time in the spotlight. We were having a conversation with her father about his fears as a leader and a dad. She interrupts. Koana is getting interesting character development while she's captured. We free her, and she interrupts. Koana gets a chance to stand on his own, and fight his father's shade... Well, now he has to forfeit, because we can't have him be an obstacle for Wuk Lamat. She's literally a black hole. Anyone that gets close to her gets all of their character development sucked out of them, just so they can be the background character in the story that is Wuk Lamat.

Oh really? Erenville and his mom's arc is mishandled because Wuk Lamat? Wuk barely has dialogue or input the entire LM map. I almost forgot she was there. Is it Wuk Lamat's fault that Krile's parenthood arc is laughably mishandled to the point of being a little offensive? Wuk Lamat herself has a parenthood story but it also doesn't really say anything and doesn't seem cohesive. It's just emotional for the sake of being emotional. It's Wuk Lamat's fault we get like one conversation with Gulool Ja? How? Wuk Lamat is not preventing other characters from interacting. Zoraal Ja and Koana both have extensive scenes to themselves. There's just not much of an interesting story going on and certainly no one wanted to explore parenthood beyond the absolute superficial.

What you are actually saying is the writers paced the story badly. Wuk Lamat is not forcing anyone to do anything and not forcing the camera around.

[Raven2014]

Characters across the board endlessly repeat themselves like you're stupid.

I remembered Yoshi said he wanted to be able to tell the story faster because 10 years to finish an arc is too long, and we definitely felt that in EW with how abdrupt and fast Zodiac was resolved. It's the samething in DT where it feels the first and second half are 2 separated stories got mashed into one. So it's actually amazing that they managed to make a "compressed" story feel dragged instead of rushed. It's because instead of using their limited time to expand and say new interesting things, the characters prefer to use their screen time to recited the same line for the upteenth time over.