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

[Zakuyia]

Yeah i dont even know wtf is going on in 7.1 i skip the cutscenes now when wuk talks my god wuks english voice is sounding way more manly vs jap version. Dear square if wuk is suppose to be a man just let wuk be a guy.

[GartredZW]

I created a forums account just to add my complaints. I've been playing this since Heavensward, but for the first time I've fallen asleep during cutscenes more than once. Even Moenbryda had more character development than this insufferable mary sue. People say Stormblood was bad, but my god Llama Tea makes this expansion unbearable. I'll happily play through Stormblood again if it will get this character off our backs. How does the character writing fall from Emet Selch to this abomination?

I'd happily play through stormblood just in general. And A realm reborn. I had a lot of fun in them. Not Dawntrail though. When misshapen chair makes his story recap I'll just watch that for alts, and mash skip every dialogue.
I'm not even sure he'll make one for Dawntrail though. the one for the Endwalker patches basically said everything he was worried about for Dawntrail, and every one of his fears happened about ten times as hard.

[DeadlyAlbatross]

Moenbryda was a strange and quirky character whose purpose was most unclear....
but her death at the very least achieved something by adding some tragic salt to the story that arguably didn't even need that.

Emet is great in ShB and extremely flanderized in EW, as are actually each and every one of the ancient Etheyrians.
EW played all emotion and no to little logic and honestly it did a decent job of it, even in retrospect. Because emotions do matter.

But when you analyze Emet's character more closely, it stops working entirely if you do not believe the fellow capable of fighting his own tempering, even as he was unable to overcome it.

The point here is probably that there is something to be analyzed and inferred about Emet and the other Amaurotines.
The characters of DT are just... childish, even if the overall arch works on paper. You can basically analyze Galool Ja Ja - or rather you could have, had he not revealed righ about everything about himself, and even that was a chop-job that seemed to have been born in a harsher setting.

Catboy lusting after the lioness - check.
Hardened warrior with inscrutable ambition who wants more war - check. A bit of a suikoden villain, if you ask me, but hey, we've had worse.
An unsuccessful eugenics-derived biological weapon who was mis-educated because he was raised by morons - check.
A murderous AI who could not ignore its prime directive because reasons - check.
A pacifist who, against all odds, did not pick up a weapon, much less grow a spine - check.
A dead milf who runs on prior imperatives and hates her own existence - check.
A supporting character who was kinda hoping for a dramatic plot reveal and instead got no real answers except that she was dropped in a parallel universe and her parents left her for no real reason at all - check. And she doesn't even get to understand how to feel about it.



But ironically if you send out a twenty-something boysterous brazilian axe-swinging girl who wanted to enter politics for all the wrong reasons and lead her through the events of DT instead of, you know, actual instruction in personal growth, it's going to play out exactly as it did play out. And people of the land won't actually care as long as taxes don't rise and bridges get maintained and maybe there's going to be some free metzcal tomorrow.

[Lizvette]

sweet alphinaud and alisaie, why is this thread still active

[ValusArmaros]

sweet alphinaud and alisaie, why is this thread still active

Why is Wuk Lamat still in the game when she ruined it?

[ReynTime]

Moenbryda's death served more than just attempt at hitting emotional players in the feels. And I say this because if you played after 3.0 was out she barely gets that much screentime for that level of attachment.

Her death still worked because it interrupted the player's sense that everything was going to be smooth sailing against the Ascians and that none of them would ever dare to directly attack us in our HQ. We're in the middle of preparing a plan we HOPE will work to eliminate ONE ascian for good, and then this Nabriales guy shows up and kills the person doing most of the work with us right in our would be safe base of operations. It showed us this antagonist force wasn't just dark edgy looking guys going teehee and letting us do whatever we felt like.

Some XIV fans are always saying the ascians were just generic bads before Shadowbringers, but the ARR patches showed otherwise. They were better written as serious threat than everyone since the emo bird.

[Mortex]

Yeah i dont even know wtf is going on in 7.1 i skip the cutscenes now when wuk talks my god wuks english voice is sounding way more manly vs jap version. Dear square if wuk is suppose to be a man just let wuk be a guy.

The Japanese voice actress did voice a decent amount of tomboyish female character so it does work for Japanese wuk voice wise in my eyes. No clue why they didn’t do this for English and be done with that. Makes you wonder if it was a friendship/diversity hire, because the voice isn’t just working at all for wuk and it’s even worse with scenes were emotions are needed at all. Doesn’t change the character to anything interesting but maybe would made a number of people like here a bit more I assume.

[ReynTime]

The Japanese voice actress did voice a decent amount of tomboyish female character so it does work for Japanese wuk voice wise in my eyes. No clue why they didn’t do this for English and be done with that. Makes you wonder if it was a friendship/diversity hire, because the voice isn’t just working at all for wuk and it’s even worse with scenes were emotions are needed at all. Doesn’t change the character to anything interesting but maybe would made a number of people like here a bit more I assume.

It 100% was just Kate wanting to give the role to a friend. Sena herself even admitted she couldn't scream much because "it makes her sound like a man". She wasn't fit for the role. She still isn't. But Kate wanted it and so it shall be.

[lolnotacat]

Sena herself even admitted she couldn't scream much because "it makes her sound like a man".

Sure Sena, it's totally the screaming.

[DeadlyAlbatross]

Emo bird?

I have to ask.

Because Garuda and Suzaku both fit the description, and possibly that Valigarmanda thing too (which was a humongous letdown, if I'm being perfectly honest).
Which one is it?

Also, yes, Scions being very much a kindergarten led by a schoolteacher is a very apt criticism and that point was the one I liked about the last two chapters of ARR (5 and 6).
But apart from Minfillia being a very, very toothless leader and a strategic incompetent (or so she seems in retrospect) the Scions worked.

Minfillia's indecision, however, has let Alphinaud take the scene and screw things up to such an extreme degree we had to to spend two whole expansions restoring a seblance of status quo.

Oh well.
I'm rambling again.

So back to the question, which bird?


UPD: 30 seconds after writing this I have found this to be Meteion. And honestly I made no connection.
And honestly yeah, EW works on emotions alone and little to no logic, and honestly it's a decent approach to wrapping up the whole thing, because an unstable construct is a very, very solid doomsday device.
It's the hatred her maker had for his own kind's callousness that feels underexplored somehow, and undervalued.

But if you look at it not from the PoV of a myth arc but of a story, actually delving into the depths of the final days, actually seeing what led to them, is a logical way to find roots in a world where you sort of kill the only two people who actually have a clue to what's happened prior to your investigation.
It's actually a more entertaining way of revealing the plot than just Hydaelin plot-dumping it, which would've made more sense.

Though now I think of it, I'd have probably used the Echo, which would've been vastly strengthened post-ShB for obvious reasons. Of course, this is retrospective - no idea what I'd actually have done in the writers' stead.