bad writing: the unkowing wuk lamat

[Asari5]

the writing is bad. it all starts with wuk lamat not knowing anything.

her never leaving tuliyollal? but then she crosses the ocean and travels to another continent to get help who barely does anything anyway?
she is full of energy and curiousity... why would someone like that stay in the city? her anxiety is clearly not big enough for that.
she is proud of tural, proud of the peace the different cultures have with each other. proud of her father who traveled tural... why wouldnt she learn anything... and then suddenly it becomes important when its about becoming queen? makes her look as if she never really cared about those people in that amazing country full of culture.


but there is more to that.

the father, proud king of tural, traveled the land to unify the people to bring peace to them and also learning their cultures.
he obviously sees that as very important. we can see that even more in how the trials are constructed. the cultures of the people are of utmost importance.
the head of wisdom was a wise and forseeing man.
and also a caring father? more or less?
but he only ever teaches his children about the cultures through those trials? where is his duty in teaching the next ruler?
a daughter who knows nothing at all, and two sons who reject culture completely / looking down on it? amazing education great and wise king and father gulool ja ja.

i guess i am now one of those people in the internet who thinks he can do it better than the learned professionals.

a better solution:

would it have been so bad if wuk lamat at least knows some things? like let her know about the hanuhanu, the pelupelu and the moblins.
this would make her look more competent / better prepared. as if she actually cares even before the trials.

i know she is used as the unkowing person so we, the player, get explainings to all that different stuff. but thete are like four other people in the group who have never went to tural, who know nothing... people who could also ask questions.
this would make wuk lamat look less stupid and less annoying. it would allow for mor variety and also give more presence to the other people (including the wol).... wuk would still be the main character.
she could even teach us a bit about those cultures and than she would be the question asker for he yok huy and the mammol ja.


what do you think? is my criticism appropriate or do you think it makes sense for her to not know anything / never learnd anything about 'her' country

[Zaniel]

I don't think you'd find too much disagreement with this, its a very weird character design.

[MoofiaBossVal]

she is full of energy and curiousity... why would someone like that stay in the city?

Tural is said early on in the story to be extremely mountainous, difficult to traverse terrain with no paved roads. Having gone overnight backpacking through the wilderness a lot including hiking through dense forests, mountains, deserts, etc, it is difficult. Ofcourse an energetic girl is going to prefer the comforts of a coastal city and her family palace to the rigors of walking along on uneven terrain and her feet hurting and rocks getting into her shoes and getting cut up by rocks and branches and getting dirty and smelly and her hips and back hurting from carrying a pack, all just to visit places with less amenities than her home and where she is a stranger who doesn't know people.

Actually what's a stretch in the first place that she even got on an Atlantic voyage in the first place, given that is at least one month of being in a cramped cabin or on a small deck staring out across empty plains of water while eating rations. I've been on wooden tall ships and hiking is preferable to a month of that, though perhaps Wuk Lamat did not realize what she was signing up for when she thought about taking a ship to Sharlayan. Or, atlantic voyages in FF14 are not a month long like in real life and Limsan ships use wind magic or something to go really really fast and it's a week long trip at max, or the FF14 world is smaller scale than our Earth.

a daughter who knows nothing at all

No expectation that she is to be a leader, so she can be spoiled and do whatever.

two sons who reject culture completely

A one off comment from Koana about how modern technology can free people up from some really hard backbreaking work ≠ "rejecting culture". People adopted modern conveniences for a reason.

We only get the vague implication that Gulool Ja Ja was a lackluster father. Going by Zoraal Ja's comments, his father seems to have been neglectful/personally uninvolved in the spiritual wellbeing of his flesh and blood son's life. Maybe they sat around a table and ate dinner together, but Gulool Ja Ja might not have sat Zoraal Ja down and had heart to heart talks with him. But the story never really elaborates upon this.

amazing education great and wise king and father gulool ja ja.

Yeah. The impression I get is that he conquered the land and then settled down and became complacent while living it up in Tuliyollal, maybe going on fun adventures with his old pals, and was never really focused on his children, and then by the time he realized he was getting really old and maybe should pay better attention to his kids, they had already grown up and it was too late to change them (namely Zoraal Ja).

I do not think Wuk Lamat not knowing everything about Tural is particularly damning. A king can have advisors who can elucidate him on such information as it becomes relevant, though Wuk Lamat not even knowing/remembering very basic facts is alarming. The biggest issue with her as a claimant is that she repeatedly comes across as foolish and incompetent. Even Bakool Ja Ja seemed at least capable in planning out how to get the keystones, delegating tasks, reconnoitering the other competitors, etc.

[Barachim]

The energetic warrior pincess, who barely gets out of the house and gets surprised by the most mundane things, like seeing a punutiy, didn't make a lick of sense to me. The way she reacts to everything, it's like she grew up as a NEET and also never touched a book before or had people tell her of the outside world.

There are limits to growing up sheltered.

[fioravictorine]

I guess they wanted a 'sheltered princess' story for her, it might've work if she is actually still a child - but as she is, Wuk is just an immature adult who is a nepobaby (and we, the hired babysitter/cheerleader of said nepobaby)

Granted Alphi is a nepobaby too but at least he got his comeuppance with the Crystal Braves arc. Wuk just wins everything with sheer power of will and shouting 'Peas Peas' over and over which is so stupid

[Dovaah]

I've had this conversation with some friends for the past few days.

The 3 promises have barely anything going for them and their character development is next to non existant (Wuk Lamat is still saying the same things over and over till the very end of the MSQ, same for Zoraal Ja with his dumb idea of bringing war to people that live in peace so they would cry out for peace (???) and Koana is almost a plank. He's all about progress and technology but has nothing to show for it beside: technology would solve this problem (without mentioning that after he becomes head of Wisdom, he barely does anything that isn't saying yes to Wuk Lamat)

They don't have any depth and are very surface level so when their ideas clash, it feels empty and flat.

It might have been a better idea to switch their personalities around a bit ? As in, Wuk Lamat could have been an overconfident brat like Zoraal Ja and she could get some humble pie along the way that would have made her realise that being a Dawnservant requires qualities that she's lacking.
Zoraal Ja could have been a more caring individual but his jealousy of not being the de facto next ruler of Tural should have grown more and more throughout the trials. (The only hint of this present in the MSQ being a single line thrown by Krile and then its never mentioned again)
As for Koana, I don't know, there is so little about him I just can't think of anything. (Him caring about his sister is not enough)

Almost forgot to mention: Why is no one giving a damn about Zoraal Ja ? He just disappears and no one, even his father says a thing about him or ask where he could be.

For a group that goes on and on about being a family, they sure don't act like one at all !

[Regis_Paran]

Almost forgot to mention: Why is no one giving a damn about Zoraal Ja ? He just disappears and no one, even his father says a thing about him or ask where he could be.

For a group that goes on and on about being a family, they sure don't act like one at all !

Becaue the only one actually important is Wuk Lamat. It's being reinforced every step of the MSQ. Everyone else is just a wallpaper for her.

[Barachim]

I'm currently listening to Preach talk about Dawntrail and the team really stretched the levels of believability with Wuk's lack of knowledge of other peoples' culture. Like the hanuhanu greeting. She went to a hanuhanu festival as a child before. Hanuhanu also live in Tuliyollal. We're really supposed to believe that Wuk Lamat does not know the hanuhanu greeting? Or does she have a hairball for brains and forgets about the most simple things? So not only is she supposedly sheltered, but she's got the memory of a goldfish too.

https://youtu.be/kwVbUaoUkHg?t=20395

[Ruris]

https://youtu.be/kwVbUaoUkHg?t=20395

Preach is an air of freshness. I like, and agree, that he states: "Going forward, I would like to see a return to maturity" this is a very significant regret I feel myself. I experienced Heavensward and Shadowbringers and my reward, or vacation, for these was an incredibly juvenile steam train of a plot that you could not jump from. Even if you forget for a minute how much Wuk Lamat and her insane amount of dialogue suffocated you, you remember that there was never any point for the twins to be with you from the get go. Their physical presence felt like a disrespect to the player as they were simply shoe horned in, for a reason I'm still not sure of. Estinen was treated properly as a character that didn't need to be there. You meet him, you get a nod and he leaves. Graha and Yshtola also treated better and entering on a more appropriate cue.

I make this criticism as someone who has not finished the MSQ and I can speak for what I did like, which is Solution 9 is pretty damn cool. Really damn cool. Entering and being given a tour of the place breathed energy into me, because by that point I was pretty tired of everything Dawntrail. Solution 9 is the one place where I feel that Square Enix is good at evoking certain emotions in players. But then, Wuk Lamat insisted on being our partner for the tour and I remembered all the exhaustion I felt and proceeded to auto pilot myself, in order to physically pilot, my WoL around. When Wuk Lamat isn't fun to you, she is an energy drain of a character at a level never experienced before.

There are things I do like in Dawntrail but I do not like Wuk Lamat. Her childish ideals, quirky character traits that aren't edearing, excessive centre of attention and dialogue stains the most I can enjoy the MSQ and that will never change.

[Turtledeluxe]

This is a well known issue with the writing and, imo, Sphene is a great example of how much better the storytelling is when someone seems knowledgeable of the place they've lived their whole life.

It seems like a novice video game writer error to ask the audience to believe Wuk is as ignorant as she is. She also inconsistently acts surprised by things that she already introduced us to, most memorable for me the dirigibles.

It was a mistake for the writer to assume Wuk needed to be as ignorant as the player, basically.