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

[BigBoom550]

--snipped--.

Players wanting the character they, themselves, are playing to be the protagonist is not an 'obsession'. In fact, it's quite correct.

There's the idea that the 'Hero' of the story and the 'Protagonist' are one and the same. This is often true, but is not always true. For instance: Assume that the story is about, perhaps, a noble knight sallying forth on his quest to slay a dragon, with the perspective being that of his squire. His squire, while not the one who achieves grand and glorious goals, still contributes their own unique perspective and position to the story.

Man of La Mancha, before you ask.

It was alright for Wuk Lamat to be 'The Hero', at least in a literary/story construction sense. The problem was that they tried to make her the protagonist. They essentially just had the player character standing there contributing little, if anything, but to serve as Wuk Lamat's hand. We were sockpuppeted by her, and that's the problem.

This leads into my next comment: Our story was not done in Endwalker. If it was, we'd be moving on to new characters to play.

The Hydaelyn-Zodiark story is over. The Ascian story is (theoretically) over. The player character's story is not. The trip to Tural should have been part of that, but because of how hard they pushed Wuk Lamat, it doesn't feel like that to players. It feels deeply, deeply unsatisfying.

Part of that is that for us, the stakes were yanked out from under us and then built up again, repeatedly. 6.55 we're told that the then-unnamed Zarool Ja can't win or he'll bring war to the continent. Then we get to Tural and are told 'yeah we can't build ships and don't have airships'.

...Ooookay. Well then what about-

Gulool Ja Ja: "Yeah if nobody's suited for the throne they ain't getting it."

...Oookay, so there go *our* personal stakes in the story. Zarool Ja isn't going to be a threat. He's not getting the throne, because he's not suited for it and ultimately Gulool knows it. I mean, kudos to the big guy for actually thinking it through- two heads are better than one I guess- but it undercuts our investment. Now the only reason you're sticking around is... Wuk Lamat. It forced the story stakes entirely onto her as a character, and basically erased your meaningfulness in the story for a *hefty* portion of it.

Then Alexandria happens. Sweet! This is your wheelhouse and... why is she here? Why is she taking the lead? Why are we just standing here?

Whatever.

Dungeons! Bossfights! Queen Eternal, Interphos is a banger, let's-

"spheeeen."

...Yeah. That's why Wuk was unsatisfying and frustrating to people.

[hydralus]

Wow the level of mental gymnastics your pulling. Bravo, I applaud your ability to ignore reality. You completely disregarded the majority's actual complaints to justify what you believe, completely ignoring the notion that you simply have bad taste. Wuk Lamat is a poorly written character that should never have been a main focus, and the story is just as poorly conceived as her.

Please go outside, touch grass, you clearly need. Or at minimum go take in some actual good stories, with good characters, and good writing so you can realize just how bad DT and Wuk Lamat are.

I will say she's not written that badly. Just that she should be more of a side character and not the most prominent spoken role we've had in the entire game.

[Dyslogic]

Only the English version of Wuk Lamat is kinda meh. I liked the JP version a lot. Not as much as maybe someone like Graha or Yshtola but good enough. The one complain I do have is that our involvement was a bit too little throughout.

[ThorneDynasty]

snip

The distinction I've seen is protagonist vs. main character: Protagonist is usually the point-of-view character who moves the story, main character is who the story happens to (or it could be the same character doing both). Hero is more of an archetype that could be both or neither.

Think Zidane vs. Vivi and Garnet, for like the first two-thirds of IX. Honestly even Steiner is more of a main character until half way of the story. Zidane doesn't go through much development or personal stakes himself, remaining a pretty static heroic rogue, but from the moment he meets each character, he's immediately pushing them to grow. And when the writer understands how the roles work, there's no "competing" over who the main character is, because they are both/all driving each other forward.

WoL completely fails as a protagonist in DT, because they do so very little to drive the story or other characters. When your protagonist does neither, and they aren't the main character either, well, that's bad writing.


EDIT: Epecially when WoL is also supposed to be the hero archetype - Something that's hard to reconcile with passivity as well.

[BigBoom550]

-Snipped for length-

Exactly. Whatever names or nuance you use, the fact is that the WoL is... barely there. Like, a huge amount of what we 'did' in Dawntrail was not something the Warrior of Light, or even a 'highly skilled warrior' was notably required for, or played that way.

I think part of the reason people like the Zoraal Ja fight but not Valigarmanda (Which I found to be very fun overall, personally) is the buildup to the Zoraal Ja fight is at least there. You've got, outside of Wuk Lamat, an actual emotional buildup and pacing. He feels like a threat. We're *told* Valigarmanda's a threat, that Valigarmanda can kill so many, but we... don't see anything. We don't have a cutscene of Valigarmanda either now or in the past destroying villages, we just hear- over and over- 'Valigarmanda bad!' and then we kill it.

To make the comparison because they're the same sort of creatures: With the Four Lords, we were told that losing yourself to Aramitama is bad, and then we see that with Suzaku and Seiryu. One loses herself and loses track of reality during the fight, acting like we're a long-dead love and clearly delusional. Seiryu surrenders to it voluntarily and becomes audibly more violent and unhinged. Not to a Zenos-level, but clearly off.

...Honestly forgot until I thought about it that Byakko and Genbu were the only two where the plan went right.

We see Valigarmanda in an ice block, we're told Valigarmanda's bad, we run around and follow a... pointy hand... and then we stab it in the face and it dies. It wasn't a Primal that took someone with the Echo to 'safely' combat, it wasn't an Auspice audibly in the throes of Aramatama intoxication, it was just... a big, angry lizard. It felt like a dungeon boss.

Zoraal Ja, meanwhile, felt like a threat. We saw him kill Gulool Ja Ja, who was a solo instance fight. We saw the devastation Alexandrian tech wrought. By the time we fight him, he's a known, powerful, and capable threat- one now drinking himself mad with power.

It's also why the last moment with Wuk is so frustrating. It felt like a return to form, with the boss acknowledging us for the whole darned reason we were sought out- our strength- only for Wuk to magically surpass that as well. Insult to injury was that we didn't get Blessing of Light, or Released Dynamis or some other buff that exists outside of Wonk LeMatt. No, we get Wuk Lamat's buff! Because she can do that now y'know. Because she's the Dawnservant.

I haven't gone back into Queen Eternal. I'm not willing to sit through that cutscene again. It sounds way better in other languages but the damage is done.

[gumas]

The focus of wuk lamat instead of us or even the scion remind me of wow story structure and its why i cant enjoy wow at all.

In wow, you are not the main character in the story, you just simply a guy who later hail as the champion by major npc, but every cutscene happen, combat scene, dialogue scene, etc, you never be the prominent one, npc do the talk for you, in combat scene they are the one who deliver the killing blow, you just stood there... Doing nothing.

This dt expansion made me feel that way, it feel like iam just on someone errand. Yes i was "hired" to become wuk lamat guard or something like that, but realistic speaking we should be the leader of the group or at least on even standing level with wuk lamat in term of role and "screentime" but instead all we got is wuk lamat and the scion do all the talk and scene while we on the sideline just standing and do smile expression (like seriously you should noticed it by now how many times these happen, the scene where wuk lamat talk then cut to us slowly smiling or nodding expression) like we seriously just there for moral support and nothing else

[Raven2014]

I think part of the reason people like the Zoraal Ja fight but not Valigarmanda (Which I found to be very fun overall, personally) is the buildup to the Zoraal Ja fight is at least there. You've got, outside of Wuk Lamat, an actual emotional buildup and pacing. He feels like a threat. We're *told* Valigarmanda's a threat, that Valigarmanda can kill so many, but we... don't see anything. We don't have a cutscene of Valigarmanda either now or in the past destroying villages, we just hear- over and over- 'Valigarmanda bad!' and then we kill it.

I feel like SB was the last expansion they put the trials under some proper effort, it's been pretty a lazy farce ever since. Back in ARR every primal has a long prepration phase where you see the logistic of the fight being worked out. But nowaday most trial fight feels like random encounter whack-a-mole. Something pop up, we whack it down at the moment of notice.

If they don't plan to put in a proper prep I hope they would tune down the narrative to match. The fight are cool but the presentations doesn't really match the scale.

[FlowerMilk]

I stared in silence a moment upon opening this. How can a game that generates this much money not deserve a bigger budget for the writing team? Someone writing a couple side quests with that resume should never have been handed the MSQ for a multi-million dollar product.

The CEO of Square Enix invested a bunch of money into NFTs and lost the company $140 million.

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indus...ppedand-where/

I would not be surprised if that's why this expansion just seems a lot more poor quality and lower budget in general.

[fioravictorine]

They also invested in so many projects and mobile games that all failed. FFXIV and 7 remakes are basically the only thing that is keeping the company afloat - and from the looks of it, they never reinvest much of those profits back into the game (mocap cutscenes and voice acting remain minimal and even less than before etc)

[Zaniel]

Gulool Ja Ja: "Yeah if nobody's suited for the throne they ain't getting it."

...Oookay, so there go *our* personal stakes in the story. Zarool Ja isn't going to be a threat. He's not getting the throne, because he's not suited for it and ultimately Gulool knows it. I mean, kudos to the big guy for actually thinking it through- two heads are better than one I guess- but it undercuts our investment. .

This quick chat after the fight was probably the ONLY part of the succession storyline that made sense. It should have just been done at the very start, GJJ recognizes us as a power (in fact maybe even has intel on us) then says "Yeah basically all my kids are horribly unsuited in one way or another, including Wuk Lamat, she's kind but also a hapless idiot. As a god warrior saviour who happens to be here on holiday could I ask you to just keep an eye on things and make sure she doesn't burn herself grabbing hot objects, maybe at the end of this one of them will grow up, if not well them's the breaks".