Yoshi-P tells PC Gamer that he is "not shocked" by mixed DT reception

[Vhana]

If you asked me at the end of Dawntrail:

“Name the character most defined by a complex about their parents and siblings.”

My immediate thoughts go to Bakool Ja Ja or Zoraal Ja, not Wuk Lamat. I’m not saying it’s not there at all for her… it’s just… not what I took away as something they were trying to explore with her character.

[Daralii]

not putting too fine a point on it but....

they copied aspects of WoW to dig 1.0 out of the crater it found itself in after release.
they seem to still be copying tone deaf responses that WoW perfected for years

according to that formula.... 8.0 will be a gut punch to players and there will be no course change until, like WoW (who apparently has now had a good expansion, unfortunately for people like me.. too little too late) they are teetering on losing what little good will they have left and are bleeding out Japanese subs like a main artery was hit, then... maybe they will have a good expansion.

because deep down... they still seem to be following the WoW formula

hang on kiddies... we are not anywhere near rock bottom....yet

If you want to 1:1 compare placement on the timeline, Dawntrail is Battle for Azeroth, so 8.0 is Shadowlands.

[CaptainLagbeard]

If you asked me at the end of Dawntrail:

“Name the character most defined by a complex about their parents and siblings.”

My immediate thoughts go to Bakool Ja Ja or Zoraal Ja, not Wuk Lamat. I’m not saying it’s not there at all for her… it’s just… not what I took away as something they were trying to explore with her character.

Bakool definitely fits that description much better.
Zoraal to be honest, kind of didn't really have much of a personality for most of the MSQ. For the first half, he's just there not doing all that much... Then in the second half he just wants more power and wants to kill everyone... Almost like they took the worst of SB Zenos and EW Zenos and mashed them together to try to recapture his popularity.

[VoidsentStatus]

Bakool definitely fits that description much better.
Zoraal to be honest, kind of didn't really have much of a personality for most of the MSQ. For the first half, he's just there not doing all that much... Then in the second half he just wants more power and wants to kill everyone... Almost like they took the worst of SB Zenos and EW Zenos and mashed them together to try to recapture his popularity.

How to say you skipped Zoraal Ja's dialogue in the beginning without saying you skipped Zoraal Ja's dialogue in the beginning.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

If you asked me at the end of Dawntrail:

“Name the character most defined by a complex about their parents and siblings.”

My immediate thoughts go to Bakool Ja Ja or Zoraal Ja, not Wuk Lamat. I’m not saying it’s not there at all for her… it’s just… not what I took away as something they were trying to explore with her character.

Oh, they definitely did. It's her entire arc. Zoraal Ja is the strong one. Koana is the smart one and she...and she...loves peace! And her arc is realizing that's enough to be the sovereign ruler of an entire nation. Matter of fact, it even makes you more fit than people with the other two virtues. As if Koana didn't also love peace. Her arc is realizing she's absolutely perfect the way she is and YoshiP thinks the problem is she lacks confidence...No, the problem is the premise is wrong. She's not an ideal leader. She's not even a moderately competent leader. She's comic relief. I think Emmanellain is a perfectly entertaining character, but if we were trying to make him the sole ruler of Ishgard, I'd have some questions:
1. Has my character gone insane?
2. Has my character been tempered by Zodiark?
3. Am I attempting to cause the next calamity?

How to say you skipped Zoraal Ja's dialogue in the beginning without saying you skipped Zoraal Ja's dialogue in the beginning.

I don't think she skipped it. From watching a lot of playthroughs I've noticed that a lot of people take Zoraal Ja at face value at the beginning and when you do that, he sounds nonsensical. You want to conquer the world to teach people war is bad? Like the refugees in Garlemald don't know war is bad. Like Ishgard doesn't know war is bad. What even is this?

Usually we'd get an Echo flashback showing all his daddy issues, like a scene of him pouting as his father brought home Option 2 and Option 3...errrr...I mean the Second and Third Promises. He lays it out as he's dying, but Gulool Ja Ja is painted as a good father and you don't get a kid that feels so inadequate they are gonna kill everyone on the planet to show they are better than you if you ever taught them that the way they were was enough. That they didn't need to be "resilient" just being your son was good enough.

[Voidmage]

To be fair, if they fully understood what the problem with Wuk Lamat was, the problem wouldn't have been there in the first place. Maybe because they saw the story through all of it's drafts, they have a different view of her than the playerbase who only saw the final version and they don't realize how the final version comes off. This is me being as generous as I'm humanly capable of.

The more I think about it the more it feels like the whole thing works on paper and as a draft.
It’s on the final video game format that it all falls flat.

Wuk Lamats overexposure is one problem.
The other is that she has no counterpart to interact with or is handled wrong here.
She has no natural dialogue with the WoL while doing all the talking.

Compare that to the Wild West zone.
It’s not just that Wuk Lamat isn‘t there but that Erenville and the female Viera actually interact with us. We have dialogue, see us talking and so on.
As soon as Wuk gets back that is gone. We just stand next to or behind her and do… nothing. Even when she talks to us it feels empty.
That leads to a disconnect with the player and their character and her being everywhere is felt even more.

At least that’s my opinion the longer I think about it.

Comparing it to the rising event it’s crazy how much dialogue we have there and how many choices for our dialogue with the pirates.
They CAN still write but it seems they just couldn‘t let go of Wuk Lamat.

[Xelanar]

I'm willing to bet PC gamer did not phrase their questions correctly. Because Wuk Lamat is not the issue. The issue is story writing in general. It's full of holes, things that don't make sense, lack of meaningful subtext and character reactions to things. Wuk Lamat is only part of the problem, but certainly not the root.

[lolnotacat]

It really feels like he didn't play the MSQ, just read the early story concepts and drafts.
Remember when the community used to boast about having devs that played and knew their own game? What happened?!

I work in gaming and have seen shit like this on both ends of the product. I have two guesses.

1. Things were changed partway through production. Executives, consultants, etc... meddled by saying something (everything?) needed to change and this is what we got. I kind of lean a bit more towards this explanation because there's the backbone for an actual story and clear progress, but it feels like its guts were ripped out and replaced with lots of pointless filler.

Edit: Also, the fact that only the story is dogwater makes me think this is the case. If resources were spread too thin, encounter design, job design, etc... likely would've been garbage as well but those were OK (though PCT was overtuned).

2. Resources weren't available and CBS3 was spread too thin. CBS3 has said they're working on multiple games, and Yoshi-P's attention has been split with the production of XVI. Between him delegating to other people, and resources directed elsewhere, this may have been the best they should push out.

It's also possible it's some combination of the two.

[Teraluna]

I'm willing to bet PC gamer did not phrase their questions correctly. Because Wuk Lamat is not the issue. The issue is story writing in general. It's full of holes, things that don't make sense, lack of meaningful subtext and character reactions to things. Wuk Lamat is only part of the problem, but certainly not the root.

Absolutely. Wuk is just the bullseye on the dartboard that's all.
Plot holes
Zero character building leading to extremely shallow characters
Instant solutions, dancing with a cart, mixing recipes, giving a race some seeds (still leaving them in the gloom by the way, but they seem to instantly forget that)
Woefully constructed story pacing
Shop dummy scions & WoL behaviour
...to name but a few

Yoshi P - the player base would welcome your thoughts and actions on the immediate direction of the game.
That may convince some people to leave, but hopefully it will convince more to stay while you sort things out.

[chizLemons]

I work in gaming and have seen shit like this on both ends of the product. I have two guesses.

1. Things were changed partway through production. Executives, consultants, etc... meddled by saying something (everything?) needed to change and this is what we got. I kind of lean a bit more towards this explanation because there's the backbone for an actual story and clear progress, but it feels like its guts were ripped out and replaced with lots of pointless filler.

Edit: Also, the fact that only the story is dogwater makes me think this is the case. If resources were spread too thin, encounter design, job design, etc... likely would've been garbage as well but those were OK (though PCT was overtuned).

(...)

I also lean towards the first point. There's a lot of things that make me suspect rewrites, and probably some really late ones that for some reason no one was able to fight against or see the problem with them. Mainly, the amount of seemingly important voiceless cutscenes.
I also feel like the marketing material doesn't fit with the final product, like they were aware during production there were changes going on so they decided to "play it safe" and focus on the Warrior of Light - from all of the various marketing campaigns going on for Dawntrail, I think there was only one single Wuk Lamat 3D render posted on twitter once.
...and I can go on with more theorizing that will probably never be confirmed, like how odd the expansion poster looks after playing the story. Sphene looks like she was added later and is very out of place, Bakool Ja Ja isn't even there (while Urianger and Thancred are), and Wuk Lamat isn't the focus at all.

However if that was the only issue, there's a few very concerning things going on.
Why YoshiP sounds so unaware of this difference in this interview, and why did they lose creative power over the story so much to the point of getting to where we are now?

I also don't think that's the whole root of the problem, because the Endwalker patches were badly written as well, with the current writing's signature all over. They don't feel as wrong as Dawntrail, but the same problems are all there. Zero has a lot of the same issues as Wuk Lamat: she has one single problem and one single defining characteristic she repeats over and over until she suddenly learns something and changes without the buildup, the Scions feel flat out of character, there's a lot of things that were solved offscreen while we spent a whole lot of time in meaningless stuff instead, among many other things...but since they were shorter patches, expectations were lower, AND there was a lot of other stuff upsetting people about the game, it wasn't as discussed.