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

[BigBoom550]

I for one am glad they represented my American heritage well with violent regime change and a bananatrope republic.

[Astronis]

This has been a huuuuge issue of mine as well and I can't believe it got past sensitivity consultants. When I got to the reeds part I knew I was in for a rough ride. Why on earth would the Hanu forget their own culture, and why would Wuk Lamat know how to solve it in 10 minutes? I also found the entire Mamook section so hilariously out of touch - the writers earnestly selling the idea that these people would need to be told by outsiders, "Have you tried planting seeds about it instead of doing a eugenics project that kills 99% of your offspring?"

It's extremely realistic for people to forget why their culture does certain things and holds certain traditions. It happens constantly, in fact, people are always trying to break down cultural traditions they don't like without putting any thought into why those traditions exist in the first place. So that part made total sense to me. It's why the idea of Chesterton's Fence exists--if you encounter a fence somewhere that seems nonsensical, don't just tear it down, find out why it was put up in the first place. There could be an extremely good reason for it to be there. However, with the Hanuhanu, their Chesterton's Fence literally shot magic plant-growing lasers. I'd think someone would have noted when the light show stopped growing their plants.

The bit with Mamook moved way too fast for my tastes, though I could understand a highly insular society which thinks its soil is cursed wouldn't think to send anyone out to find crops that could grow in Macalania Woods. That's a bigger shift in thinking and undertaking than it looks to us in a world that is extremely connected with the Internet at our fingertips. Sometimes it really does take an outsider with a wildly different experience of the world to look at a problem sideways to solve it.

So...they were decent ideas, but I'm not sure they were executed with any particular finesse.

It's not a vibe, it's literally it under no uncertain term. She installed a new king after killing the previous king and queen, and tell people the child king is under her "protection".

That's straight up the protectorate playbook. France did this to a lot of countries in the 15th-18th century, and mine was one of them.

I am glad the story hinted that the Alexandrians didn't all seem cool with that. Because holy cow, way to just take over an entire country without finding out how the people would feel about it first. Gulool Ja is the rightful king, but girl, you need to tread lightly being all "and now I'm his guardian "

[jameseoakes]

I am glad the story hinted that the Alexandrians didn't all seem cool with that. Because holy cow, way to just take over an entire country without finding out how the people would feel about it first. Gulool Ja is the rightful king, but girl, you need to tread lightly being all "and now I'm his guardian "

We did outright murder there previous monarch and then force the child of one of them as the king of a society that really doesn't seem to need a monarch anymore. It just seems a really messed up in a game that seem to fetishies tradition to a rediculous level to then have us when we encounter a culture we find unacceptable to be to force a puppet on them.

[ArcSolaris]

While not the worse ever but I will admit Wuk Lamat started working on my nerves near the end. Her English Voice actor didn't really help because it felt like they were doing a theater play. While it wasn't the worst as I say, she did start feeling very 'Stagey". I get it, they wanted to create a character with Joy and hope but good lord there were times I wanted to just hold them down and tell them all about the bad stuff in life. Point is she gets a bit too perky at times.

[Astronis]

We did outright murder there previous monarch and then force the child of one of them as the king of a society that really doesn't seem to need a monarch anymore. It just seems a really messed up in a game that seem to fetishies tradition to a rediculous level to then have us when we encounter a culture we find unacceptable to be to force a puppet on them.

I suspect/hope Wuk Lamat is going to get kicked in the teeth over it in the patch content. She's naïve enough coming into co-ruling her own country, and then just decided to add an entire second one to her plate because "family!". Like...yes, Gulool Ja is her nephew, he's the rightful king, he's way too young for it, and Alexandria can't exactly go from monarchy to nothing in five minutes, so it tracks as far as necessity goes, but Wuk Lamat isn't even remotely canny enough to navigate that political situation. I hope they do something interesting with it, in any case. They dangled a ton of plot hooks all over the place to pick up on, and that's one of them.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

It's worse than that actually. The problem she's tasked with solving is famine. She notices the frogs and Hanu Hanu are sad, likely from starvation and she decides to throw a party to cheer them up. At the time she's decided to take this course, no one believes the party will solve the problem. They just agree to do it because she's in charge and that's what she wants to do. And fortunately for her, the party just happens to solve the problem, something several people already knew but sat there going hungry without taking action. I still think Wuk Evu was waiting for all those birds to drop dead so he could eat them. Only explanation.

The Mamool Ja have fought for three centuries to claim higher ground and were finally making leeway after Blessed Siblings were born. Galool Ja Ja stops their fighting by suggesting a foreign invader may one day come and take everything from both groups, but he doesn't solve their reason for fighting, they desperately wanted out of their forest. And he should be their leader at this point in time, so I have to wonder why he wasn't fighting with them. Even so, one feast later and the Mamool Ja agree to sit for another 80 years in conditions they fought three centuries to get out of. Maybe they thought they were too weak with their young moving to the city and no two-headed Mamool Ja to lead them, but given how easy the solution was it's messed up he left his own people to suffer for 80 years.

Even for Gulool Ja, has anyone even asked that poor child if they even wanted to rule?

No one needs to ask him. He explicitly states he doesn't want to rule and she tells him to hold onto the power because with it comes control of the Alexandrian army and that isn't something he should put down lightly. And it's a good tactical move given we're on our way to kill their queen. But it's kinda ridiculous the utter halo the put on her as we're overthrowing these people and installing a child as their leader in order to maintain control of their military forces. And Alexandria does have it's own government. A government that might declare war on Tural if it had control over it's own army. Good thing we didn't give it to them and now we're gonna force them to change using the regulators which so far has been shown to be distasteful, but not harmful (if not using feral souls), in the expansion they lectured me 40 hours about respecting cultures different from your own. I guess they meant only respect cultural differences if you don't find them unnatural and disrespectful to your beliefs.

[ZXN]

...Her English Voice actor didn't really help because it felt like they were doing a theater play. While it wasn't the worst as I say, she did start feeling very 'Stagey". I get it, they wanted to create a character with Joy and hope but good lord there were times I wanted to just hold them down and tell them all about the bad stuff in life. Point is she gets a bit too perky at times.

About that: Daichi Hiroi, the Lead Writer for Dawntrail, use to run his own theater company before he joined Square. If I recall correctly, during the 8th 14-hour broadcast, Famitsu interviewed several devs, including Hiroi, during the broadcast. Some of the summarized highlights posted on reddit involving Hiroi specifically were...

- Hiroi comments on the differences he has found between writing for theater (where he worked with his own company he founded before joining the FF14 team in 2014), and for video games. He feels that theatrical scripts are often written in such a way that they push the creator’s individual ego to the forefront. When it comes to this game, there’s already this umbrella of FF14, underneath which there’s an existing playerbase with their own expectations, so the starting point is very different.

and this as well

- Hiroi comments on what he’d like to focus on as the lead story writer moving forward. He says the flow of the emotions of the characters, their sadness and joy, and how this touches the player. Also, how the player’s emotions change by the characters. This is the kind of thing he has done in his theatrical career previously, and it’s a point he’s particularly focusing on here on out. He adds that “I’m writing while saying ‘I’m so sorry’ to the characters” (laughs).

I won't pretend to know how/if things changed drastically in the development process of Dawntrail from that interview until now, but if Dawntrail feels like "A Theater Play", then based on that interview during the 14-hour broadcast, and assuming nothing drastic changed Hiroi's mindset during the timeframe of that interview to what we got, then that was most likely the intention all along.

[jameseoakes]

I suspect/hope Wuk Lamat is going to get kicked in the teeth over it in the patch content. She's naïve enough coming into co-ruling her own country, and then just decided to add an entire second one to her plate because "family!". Like...yes, Gulool Ja is her nephew, he's the rightful king, he's way too young for it, and Alexandria can't exactly go from monarchy to nothing in five minutes, so it tracks as far as necessity goes, but Wuk Lamat isn't even remotely canny enough to navigate that political situation. I hope they do something interesting with it, in any case. They dangled a ton of plot hooks all over the place to pick up on, and that's one of them.

The problem with Gulool Ja is that he doesn't really seem to fill an actual purpose for Alexandria, like Zoraal didn't seem to have any role outside of violence and he can't replace Sphene so he seems odd as a king as there's not need for Alexandria to have a monarchy at this ponit it has a funcational civil service that does all the day to day work anyway

[LisseyCrowe]

The Mamool Ja have fought for three centuries to claim higher ground and were finally making leeway after Blessed Siblings were born. Galool Ja Ja stops their fighting by suggesting a foreign invader may one day come and take everything from both groups, but he doesn't solve their reason for fighting, they desperately wanted out of their forest. And he should be their leader at this point in time, so I have to wonder why he wasn't fighting with them. Even so, one feast later and the Mamool Ja agree to sit for another 80 years in conditions they fought three centuries to get out of. Maybe they thought they were too weak with their young moving to the city and no two-headed Mamool Ja to lead them, but given how easy the solution was it's messed up he left his own people to suffer for 80 years.

Well, no, actually they ... could get out of their forest, plenty have. I admit, I had checked out from the MSQ way before that trial, and it's been a month but the Mamool Ja are allowed to get out, they're allowed to travel, to move, etc. Rather it's a strong, small xenophobic core that can't decide between "this is our home, we stay" and "we're superior, we need to go out there and dominate the other races". But luckily Wuk came around and taught them how to grow more fruits and now everything's ... fine? Oh wait, we beat the ass of a two-headed ghost so their delusions of grandeur have disappeared as well.

Yeah this totally makes sense. Could you imagine if we could save racism with a couple WWE matches?

[Astronis]

The problem with Gulool Ja is that he doesn't really seem to fill an actual purpose for Alexandria, like Zoraal didn't seem to have any role outside of violence and he can't replace Sphene so he seems odd as a king as there's not need for Alexandria to have a monarchy at this ponit it has a funcational civil service that does all the day to day work anyway

Yeah, it's not terribly clear what Gulool Ja has control of outside the military (that we tore to bits), but at a guess, it would be something like root access to the Alexandrian computer system that no one else in Alexandria holds. It's definitely something that someone qualified needs access to--no matter how well-functioning things seem to be at the moment, someone needs the power to make important decisions or authorize repairs, and it looks like right now, that's Gulool Ja.