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

[Carin-Eri]

In absolute seriousness though it’s a legitimate tragedy to see the result of this decline from the end of Endwalker. To see a lot of people drift away from the title if not completely lose faith in it after Dawntrail failed to live up to what was promised to await us. It’s one thing to hate something in its totality and in sincerity, but it’s another thing to watch yourself and others fall out of love with something that you’ve treasured and cherished close to your heart, and that is what Dawntrail unfortunately was for FFXIV. And Dawntrail IS Wuk Lamat.

That's a good point in retrospect, because I don't think that any of the pre-launch promotional material gave the impression that Wuk Lamat would take centre-stage through the entirety of the expansion.
Heck, it's pretty telling that most of the Scion-scenes from those first "Open Sky" cinematics actually occurred in the finale cutscenes of 7.0!

[SongOfTheWind]

That's a good point in retrospect, because I don't think that any of the pre-launch promotional material gave the impression that Wuk Lamat would take centre-stage through the entirety of the expansion.
Heck, it's pretty telling that most of the Scion-scenes from those first "Open Sky" cinematics actually occurred in the finale cutscenes of 7.0!

She also did not get to be on that promo building. G’raha did, along with WoL and Erenville

[sylphlands]

That's a good point in retrospect, because I don't think that any of the pre-launch promotional material gave the impression that Wuk Lamat would take centre-stage through the entirety of the expansion.
Heck, it's pretty telling that most of the Scion-scenes from those first "Open Sky" cinematics actually occurred in the finale cutscenes of 7.0!

This is what makes me think some MASSIVE rewrites happened very late into production. I don't think she was originally planned to be nearly as centralized as she ended up being. I'd do anything to find out what happened in that writers' room that led to this being the final product, because if my hunch is correct, it was ugly.

[ZXN]

That's a good point in retrospect, because I don't think that any of the pre-launch promotional material gave the impression that Wuk Lamat would take centre-stage through the entirety of the expansion.
Heck, it's pretty telling that most of the Scion-scenes from those first "Open Sky" cinematics actually occurred in the finale cutscenes of 7.0!

She also did not get to be on that promo building. G’raha did, along with WoL and Erenville

This is what makes me think some MASSIVE rewrites happened very late into production. I don't think she was originally planned to be nearly as centralized as she ended up being. I'd do anything to find out what happened in that writers' room that led to this being the final product, because if my hunch is correct, it was ugly.

If we go based on just the promo building stuff, the WoL and Erenville being there make sense. G'raha though does not make ANY sense. If anything, people would assume the three on the promo building would be WoL/Erenville/Krile, given how much Krile was hyped up in the fanfest keynotes as well as pushed near the end of the Endwalker to really be preparing herself to finally fight alongside everyone properly and was going to have a big part to play in the story [and of course we all saw how shit that turned out to be]. The other assumption would obviously be WoL/Erenville/Wuk Lamat given Dawntrail is just Wuk Lamat's expansion and she was introduced at the end of Endwalker and is our ticket to Tural for a new adventure. Yes you could say that "G'raha is just there to build people's interest in Dawntrail" to which I say that's cool and all: but putting Y'shtola, who is essentially the "face" of FF14, would've drawn in even more if they just wanted to put a face up that more people recognized to "build interest."

But they instead ultimately chose G'raha, even though he only appears during the second half of the expansion.

Of course it's all speculation in the end, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was actually a huge re-write of some sort sometime during development.