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

[Raven2014]

You know, thinking about it, does anyone else find it weird that we hear no reference to the Final Days in Tural. Like we get there, and we see no signs that it even happened. Maybe I'm miss remembering, as my brain is desperately trying to make me forget anything to do with this story.

On one hand it really wants to give the writer the benefit of the doubt, rationalizing because Tural didn't really get hit. Remember as serious as it were, we did manage to nib the Final Day sequence in the bud. Only the most severe depressed population - Garlemand which was already nuked, and Tharvanar which was undergoing severed economic depression had an outbreak. The Eozia Alliance countries were riding high in moral due to economic recovery, long term issue resolved and/or just regaining independence didn't really see the effect outside of minority report from small misaligned groups. If you think about it logically, Tural is supposed to be a stable countries where everyone is happy. So it makes sense they didn't see the effect.


So yeah ... I really did try to give the writer the benefit of the doubt ... but than they had to do the Mamook Ja crap. If they've been depressed enough to be killing their own babies for 80 years ... all of my reasoning evaporated, because there is no freaking way their tribe would have survived End Walker. And so I was once again remind of the morbid reality of DT, if I can sum up the approach of the writting in DT with one sencetence:

Always aim for cheap emotional shots at the expense of pace and consistency..

[BigBoom550]

Always aim for cheap emotional shots at the expense of pace and consistency..

This is where I get twitchy with people who say anyone who doesn't like DT is 'media illiterate'.

DT has, moment to moment, decent emotional ideas. The issue is it never actually... does anything to earn them. If we'd seen Bakool Ja Ja struggling with what he's doing in an emotional sense, if we'd seen more desperation, we'd be able to come around to him better. But he had to be a complete villain early on so there's a 'villain' and Zoraal Ja's twist makes 'sense', so he turns into a Captain Planet villain. Erenville's supposed to have a whole lot going on in the last section, but no real time was devoted to setting up his relationship with his mother. I'll be honest, I didn't *realize* Cacihua was his mother for a huge chunk of the story because of the narrative problem that is Wuk Lamat.

Nothing exists outside Wuk Lamat. Nothing. Heavensward had the greater context and wheels of the Dragonsong War moving, Stormblood for all its faults had the stories of Ala Mhigo and Doma, Shadowbringers had the Crystarium and Eulmore. Endwalker's was the weakest, but it made up for that by being the culmination of all the previous stories.

Tural's at peace. Everyone's happy. It's ha-ha smiley happy funtimes. Gulool Ja Ja tells us if nobody's worthy, nobody gets the throne. Our investment is undercut almost *immediately* because we know Zoraal and Bakool are both idiots, and while Koana's an idiot too he's the correctable sort, as Thancred and Urianger did in a surprisingly competent bit of writing for this expansion.

There is no larger-stakes story at play until Alexandria, and by the time that happens they start trying to go into this philosophical bend that had been loosely present earlier in the story, but do it in one of the most clumsy, blunt, and simple ways possible with legacy and remembrance.

But when I say 'loosely' I mean 'Loosely'. They didn't talk about Zoraal's interest in his own legacy, they didn't have characters talking about events from their past- even Wuk talking about things she'd done with her alleged brothers in their youth. That's not there. Gulool Ja Ja's funeral is offscreen. Every emotional beat they try for is either spur-of-the-moment, or detracted from by the fact that Wuk Lamat has to be involved. Constantly.

I really, really hate calling characters Mary Sues but... Wuk *is*. There's no grander plot that exists outside of her. The Alexandrian war was a chance for Wuk to step up as not 'Wuk the aspirant' but 'Wuk the Vow' and she... didn't. She wasn't acting as a head of state, she wasn't reflecting on those decisions, no, it became the story of Wuk and Sphene's conflict, not Tural and Alexandria's.

[Raven2014]

This is where I get twitchy with people who say anyone who doesn't like DT is 'media illiterate'.

DT has, moment to moment, decent emotional ideas. The issue is it never actually... does anything to earn them.

I mentioned it before in another thread, but it kinda highlight the problem with Hiroi as a writer, he is a play writer, not a contemporary writer. You don't watch a stuffs like R&J, King Lear and Hamlet and questioning the "why", but rather you're supposed to be drawn in by the performance, living the emotion from scene to scene. But contemporary narrative need consistency and cohesiveness for a scene to carry impact, otherwise they just fell flat.

Basically, he's someone suitable if you want a short - selfcontained - high impact story. But his skill is ill-suit for a grand epic or a chronicle story.