Wuk Lamat is an absolutely atrocious character with one of the worst vocal performances ever recorded (EN), and yet Wuk is not single-handedly ruining DT. Rather, Wuk is a symptom of a rot festering at the very core of this expansion's story.

That rot is simple: the lead writer was unable to conceptualize that there exists a world outside of his own perception. The plot feels stream-of-consciousness, wherein the author believes everything they write is immaculate and needn't be concerned with fitting in with the story or the world in the slightest.

One-pass, no-review, send to prod: a character will be demonstrated to be using a linkshell; the next scene will suggest that they have no means of communication because communications are jammed; and in the same scene another character will use a linkshell with zero issues. "Communications are jammed!" was a cool idea the writer had in one breath, and in the very next breath it was decided that it'd be cool if someone communicated something really mundane via linkshell.

There is nothing that can be salvaged from Dawntrail. It has no characters. It has character concepts, at best. Its plot is a complete mess, because it's trying to create a drama out of empty, vapid silhouettes.

The head writer deserves all of the rancor and more. Every previous expansion has had multitudinous voices, which has often had deleterious effect: Shadowbringers' midgame is clunky and reliant on cheap pratfall-deaths as a replacement for tension; Endwalker's pacing is absolutely all over the place and whoever wrote Garlemald certainly didn't write the Loporrits. And yet here, in Dawntrail, everything sounds like this one, singular writer. Everything is about Wuk Lamat, how cool peace is, and how it's so great and awesome to solve all of your problems just by talking with people. Absolutely. Everything.

It feels like the lead writer became a tyrant with creative control, and decided that this expansion would be his absolute opus!: and well, that's such a comforting thought for anyone struggling. No matter how hard life might get, no matter how hard it might be to see the light of morrow: at least you didn't write Dawntrail.

Square should charge double, triple, or even quadruple the price of a story-skip for this expansion, and it would still be a bargain. Having suffered through it, there is genuinely no reason beyond utter masochism to not spam escape at the advent of every cutscene.