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

[OgruMogru]

To add insult to injury, in one of the aether current quests they do collectively play ignorant/antagonistic to teach the new guy a lesson about respect, tradition, etc. It's like both quests were written by entirely different people.

I felt like I was going insane when I went back and did this quest. Either written by a different person, copied homework, or it was originally part of the MSQ and would have given some context to why the Hanuhanu are playing dumb but then got carved into sidequest content. Actually all of those aethercurrent questlines in all areas do a better job of world building and story telling than the msq -_-

[MoiraTerrwell]

I felt like I was going insane when I went back and did this quest. Either written by a different person, copied homework, or it was originally part of the MSQ and would have given some context to why the Hanuhanu are playing dumb but then got carved into sidequest content. Actually all of those aethercurrent questlines in all areas do a better job of world building and story telling than the msq -_-

The quest chains were better than the MSQ by a lot.

[TaleraRistain]

Don't know which country you're from, but I'm pretty sure you don't know the origin and meaning of every festivities in your culture, except maybe if you're from the USA, or another country which have only 300yo traditions at best

Nice dig at the US there. Just because we're a younger country doesn't mean we don't hold our traditions in high esteem. I'm from the Midwest and when we have "festivals" for things here, part of what is explained during it is how the tradition started and why we do it. So it's definitely something I find odd even though you think that's impossible because our traditions are "only 300yo" or so.

[Raven2014]

Don't know which country you're from, but I'm pretty sure you don't know the origin and meaning of every festivities in your culture, except maybe if you're from the USA, or another country which have only 300yo traditions at best... and even then, you still probably don't know most of what happened during the events you're celebrating. It's also pretty hard to believe your political leader/your top scientists aren't aware of some issues in your country you don't know about, because you knowing would not help in any way, and would only thin the trust you have in them.

Uh I don't know where you're from, but I'm pretty sure I know the meaning and original of all the festival where I grew up. It's not hard because for one, they're hold every year and for two, every festival would have speakers talk about its history. Now sure, if there is a small/obscured festival from a far away corner than I probably don't know about it ... but the main national wide or locally to where I live? Yeah I would know them. This is like saying an American don't know what July 4th is, or someone from the middle east don't understand what Ramadan for. In fact, seeing how Reek is pretty much integrated into every facet of their culture, this festival is literally their life blood make it even more unbelievable.

That's exactly why it feels hamfist. We know what the intend of the story, but they chose a very ... unbeilevable way to delivery it. This is not the only instance this happening either. The Mamook Ja story has this exact same problem. They presented a very seriously problem, yet the solution was laughably simple to the point of inconsistent. Like other had noted it feels like not the same person writing the quest. The original problems is on a scale you expected for an MSQ, but the resolution feels like it's meant for a random side quest.

[DeadlyAlbatross]

I have just finished playing and honestly I have to agree that everything bad - or so much of it, at least - is centered around Wuk Lamat, while everything good - or at least much of it - is centered around Krile.

People have mentioned Sphene being Emet-selch-light, and I agree and understand where they are coming from, except Emet was far more tragic and alive and charismatic.

Sphene is Daneel Olivaw in microcosm, at best, and a rehash of ShB antagonist at worst.

Having said that, I do think that Lamat aside, things have been mishandled to an extreme degree with Erenville and his mother. And there are other very childish elements in a story that's supposed to be pretty adult, but the only people who behave like adults are Thancred and Urianger and they sorta melt into the scenery after a single decent encounter.

This is one of those times I sorta wish I took the twins with me and forgot WL ever existed.

But sure, it's easy to find fault with WL, because WL is mishandled in pretty much the same manner.

I'm not sure even that it's the writers and not the producers who should be called out about this, honestly - this isn't a case of a failed message, this is a case of consistent dramatic underdelivery and couldn't have happened (probably) if a single writer was at fault.

[CuteBucket]

To add insult to injury, in one of the aether current quests they do collectively play ignorant/antagonistic to teach the new guy a lesson about respect, tradition, etc. It's like both quests were written by entirely different people.

This was something I kept encountering too: Side quests that actually did a far better job at showing the culture than anything in the MSQ, sometimes to the point of going against what you see in the MSQ. But because they're only sidequests, they can't actually change anything or lead to anything substantial. I was clearing out the side quests at the same time as doing the MSQ, and it was this weird whiplash of going from sidequests that were actually trying to be interesting and informative but couldn't do a lot and then going back to the MSQ where everyone was a clueless idiot again. Logically I always knew that the side quests were written by other writers than the MSQ, but this was the first time where it was such a jarring narrative jump to go between them.

It makes it even more clear how rushed and unedited this whole expansion's story is.

[Midare]

Don't know which country you're from, but I'm pretty sure you don't know the origin and meaning of every festivities in your culture, except maybe if you're from the USA, or another country which have only 300yo traditions at best... and even then, you still probably don't know most of what happened during the events you're celebrating. It's also pretty hard to believe your political leader/your top scientists aren't aware of some issues in your country you don't know about, because you knowing would not help in any way, and would only thin the trust you have in them.

Same for the Moblins really. It took more than 80 years to go from the first factories to decent work conditions.

That's just a case of "I really must find a reason to dislike that thing", and here's the thing : you don't have to have a reason. Just hate it because you don't like it. It's alright.

Just because you don't know the customs of your country doesn't mean everyone else does and doesn't mean that a fictional people who are already shown to be deeply spiritual don't know them... or at least that they should know them considering their building dedicated to their deity, but conveniently don't know for the sake of the plot.

This is probably the weakest attempt at defending the abysmal writing in DT really.

[Daralii]

It makes it even more clear how rushed and unedited this whole expansion's story is.

The big mystery is if it's unedited or overedited. I could easily see a bunch of people(especially ones that are businessmen first) coming in and significantly altering it for any number of reasons.

[Remiferia]

This might be off topic but I feel that with SE hiding the criticizing of the changes made to DQIII remake has further lowered my confidence in this game getting better...To the point *tinfoil hat* that 8.0 may bring Body Type 1 & 2 and making female races into ugly androgynous blobs, feminizing the male races and lots of gear getting edited to not be "revealing"

And Hrothgar or Viera getting visible head gear? No no! it must go into fixing the "revealing" gear so that twitch cam girls, their simps and tourists wont get upset. (which is funny considering how vulgar those mods can get, a case of "It's okay when *I* do it!" I guess "skimpy" gear is only okay if its client side??)

You've done a very good job quite literally inventing things to get mad about and then proceeding to get mad about them.

Holy fuck, dude.

[DeadlyAlbatross]

I'd rather bet on inconsistent overall production, as the big business decision was probably introducing Wuk Lamat and twisting her to better fit the obnoxious thing we've seen.
The whole trans-audience thing was probably a factor there.

But even so, there are multiple failures so heavy they couldn't have been allowed to happen in a mature writers' cabinet, and I don't think a single person would create this much of a mess.
We have to look at the incongruous scenes, underdeveloped conflicts, Galool Ja Ja being a man-child instead of a reptiloid version of uebermensch...
The rehash of the messages from ShB and the repetitive approach to such messages, lack of any interesting new messages (and the thread that should have been interesting - unifying of multiple cultures with varied degrees of force and guile, reminiscent of Di Zhengshi and Czhenghis Khan, with all of that approach's excesses and victories -- is not examined at all, neither in DT nor in EW's Garlemald)....

[SPOILER] Even Stormblood which I frankly found tedious, incongrous and overall abhorrent, was very, very solid in this regard. Apart from impostor-syndromed Lyse we had collaborationism examined properly, if superficially, we've had a narcissistic woman who'd been pushed into the role and life of a monster and was, to a degree, reformed by the end of her life, the thing about a criminal without memories not being able to properly handle the resentment towards them...

In ShB we've had a whole treatise on the dangers of indolence and hedonism, on people needing their skills to be called upon to actually feel useful and happy. We've had a single man's determination to correct the course of history so strong he actually broke the whole previous lore of the game (and common-sense logic of it all) in half. We've had a certain crippled gunbreaker face a sadistic lifebreaking dilemma of taking an innocent life to be reunited with the one person he loved and lost, and that was almost examined properly. And we've had Ardbert, et al, oh, we've had Ardbert, who single-handedly served as a lynchpin to the whole story and made it work dramatically while being a side character without power to influence events... and that's where we learned what the dead might have felt, had they existed as he did. And good old Emet would simply not have carried it all, were it not for Ardbert and his prior impact on the world.

Of course, both those expansions had their faults and their fair share of crap.
But not nearly on the level of DT. [/spoiler]

I could go on and on. But out of all the things we've seen I can highlight one general feeling -- the tone of DT - indeed, the tone of every single part of DT - is off. Sometimes slightly, sometimes very much so, but always off. So there's now a failed expansion, and we would like to understand what actual conclusions SE have drawn from that.