Wuk Lamat

[Auro_Seldaris]

I don't mind the character but I agree she's way too prominent in the quests. Every time we visit a new area, we're always paired with her and never with Krile or Erenvile. Our only respite is in Shaaloani. Plus, her intervention in the last trial was clearly not required/desired.

I can imagine people not liking the character much, be quite pissed by the end of Dawntrail.

Concerning the Warrior of Light, it's kinda hard to always focus on a "empty" character with no voice. We need people around us to talk and interact in our stead.

This is why I always volunteered to run Interphos with people from my Friends groups and FC who were clearing it for the first time. I wanted to see their reactions to Wuk crossing the line and being totally obnoxious in the final trial. It was wonderful salt mining. Literally every single one, to the very last, were shocked, frustrated, and angry by her interrupting. Even people that liked her prior to that felt it was a line that shouldn't have been crossed. And I think mostly everyone can agree with that. It's one of the very few moments in DT that even Wuk fans can believe was a bridge too far. (Not to mention that annoying and insulting "buff" that states she's the one inspiring YOU. You know, the person who defeated the personification of entropy and despair. GTFO with that idiocy.)

Shadowbringers and Endwalker - ESPECIALLY Shadowbringers - found clever ways to give the WoL more personality that didn't involve voice acting. There were many instances of dialogue in ShB/EW where I gave my character a voiceover during the "Silent mouth flaps", just saying what I felt was her appropriate response at the time, and remarkably the NPC's reactions were almost always in line with what I imagined my character saying. So it can be done, just not by this writing team, they don't have the nuance or chops for it.

In another sense, this is why Alphinaud and Alisaie exist. They serve as sort of a proxy speaker for the WoL. That's why they have the most dialogue in the game. Or, well... the second-most amount of dialogue, I suppose, a certain cat notwithstanding.

As for Wuk herself, pairing us with her screamed PLEASE LIKE MY OC DONUT STEEL FURRY WAIFU! She came off less like a cool new friend and more like the "DMPC" that a particularly overbearing Dungeon Master shoehorns into the plot to railroad the PCs or keep them on the "right moral track". An obnoxious self-insert, in other words. We needed a break from her. That's why I enjoyed the Shaaloani segment, Wuk wasn't around and overwhelming everything and everyone else. You can't miss someone if they're always around.

I will also chime in and agree with a couple of other forum posters and say that I think the original plan for 7.2 and 7.3 was to have Wuk bond with Real Sphene just like she bonded with Endless Sphene. It struck me as extremely odd and out-of-character for her to have basically zero interest in getting to know the Real Sphene. After all the backlash against her far too prominent role, I believe they pulled the handbrake on the Wuk train and rewrote the plot to have Sphene and the WoL become friends instead, while Wuk took literally every opportunity to go somewhere else and do anything else than interact with Sphene, which is completely out-of-character for her if. "Oh, so the real Sphene wasn't dead. Neat. Well, bye. I'll be over here, talking to random people in the background." There's even a shot in the cutscene where Sphene is ordering coffee or something, and Wuk Lamat is literally off to the side, staring into the distance blank-faced like she's in Offline mode.

I think they realized they took their creator's pet character a bit too far and, like a middle-schooler creating a new Sonic the Hedgehog character, became totally irritating in how hard they tried to convince people their "edgy Sonic OC" was the BEST THING EVERRRRRRRR and YOU JUST DON'T GET WHY THEY'RE SO AWESOME! I mean, Yoshida almost literally said that in inerviews. Thankfully, they seem to have backed off and decided the best course of action is for her to fade into the background once her role was essentially finished, to the point of potentially cutting it short. We'll never know for sure, but the strange change in her behavior toward Sphene in 7.2 has me believing that's the case.

Disappointed by this. The WoL is almost a non-entity and struggles to serve as a main character within the narrative. I hope feedback like this thread does not discourage the devs from centering their story on other NPCs in future.

You are the only person who thinks this.