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

[BakoolJaJa]

I was like this til half way through, then I thought I would be set free and im known as a WL sympathizer but after the last 2 areas and the amount of decision making, bossing about, screen time and just literal WL overload I want her as our next trial, seriously SE, let us kill her or at least humiliate her, I was so heart broken for erenville and krile after area 5...

It's just... i dont want to see anymore of her.

This was better character development than anything seen in Dawntrail.

(Just a friendly rib, no offense meant.)

[KurenXIV]

I didn’t move any goalpost or handwave anything, I was just expanding on a side point. People did call wind Waker trash even after it came out because they weren’t able to look past the art style. There wasn’t this magical come to Jesus moment where everyone did a 180 on the game the day it came out. It took years for that negative sentiment to dissipate to where WW is now considered a Zelda classic

You're drawing a false parallel. Reviewers and gamers alike who played Wind Waker lauded the game. It had incredibly high review scores and those who played it generally said favorably things about the game.

Sure, those who were turned off by the art style didn't want to even play the game so they could call it whatever they want (trash or otherwise); and yes over time people who may have skipped the original launch have gone back and enjoyed the game for what it is; but that's not what is happening here.

You don't have people saying "Yuck! Look at these elements of Dawntrail! I don't want to play it!", you have people who bought the game, played through it and did not care for it.

It's not as though years from now the people who didn't enjoy it will look back and say "boy I sure was wrong about DT, it had a really great story line at launch".

[Tsumdere]

I'm about halfway through the story and not really seeing the extreme hate people are having for the character. If I really wanted to be picky i'd say it would've been nice to actually have some training scenes with WoL and Wuk (ff7 flashback gym squats etc :P)

I went into DT really liking Wuk Lamat. I could see her being an interesting side character. I defended her character in discussions with friends.

I left the MSQ wishing she get the fxxk away from me and never show her face again.

[SwadTheFrog]

So, I completed the final trial today, and I had the most unique experience I have ever had in this game. The cutscene had everyone - complete randoms i've never met, mind - groaning at the VAing and what was happening. At the end of the trial, only one person left. The rest of us 7 just stood there in genuine shock for ten minutes, trying to process what just happened and discussing how terrible it was. I have never seen practically an entire group of total randoms sticking around after a trial with no loot PURELY to try to verbalize just how much they disliked what they saw.

If that doesn't speak volumes of just how terribly Wuk was handled, nothing does. If you know, you know.

[LunaAldegar]

I finally finished MSQ last night, and oh boy... I can't believe how bad the whole story is in this expansion. This is the first time it has taken me a while to even get through the story, while usually I get hooked from the start, yet here I spent the whole early access just going back to my island sanctuary after getting through a bit of the story and seeing how bad it was even when it just started. The majority of the expansion is just Wuk this, Wuk that, speak to Wuk Lamat yet again. There's plenty of different things that could've been good if they were expanded and had more time spent on, yet it's all resolved in the span of a few minutes, and then we are immediately back to Wuk Lamat and her nonsense.

We should've spent more time with Krile and Erenville. I'm glad they finally got something for themselves in the last area, but I wish they had more time than they did. Especially Erenville, he got the worst out of all. Just put before the fact that his mom is in fact actually long dead, forced to just erase her here and now after entertaining her last shenanigans while being treated distantly and dismissively by everyone around him, including said mother? I honestly have no words to describe my disappointment, and the last trial was so infuriating to top it off. I had so much fun finally getting to do something without Wuk Lamat, especially considering the majority of people did the trial for the first time too, so we had to figure out stuff as we went, dying a few times, and then our efforts just got wuk'd because suddenly she appears and finishes the fight? Not even going to talk about the horrendous English voice acting in that entire scene.

Way too much of the story has been spent on Wuk Lamat and too little on other characters. We should've been done with her when she got through the rite of succession. The writing as a whole is strange compared to what we've had before, with the pacing being all over the place and revolving purely around a single character that seems to not offer much other than endless preaching about friendship, peace, and happiness. It got old very fast and overstayed its welcome. I'm honestly surprised I even managed to get through this whole thing without just straight up skipping cutscenes like some ended up doing.

[Vyrerus]

I guess none of this bothered me because this is the way every FFXI expansion was written. So it felt more like a throwback than anything.

How to tell me you never read or played the FFXI stories without telling me you never read or played the FFXI stories (or maybe weren't paying attention at all because of no voice acting).

Each story in FFXI is written in a way that makes the adventurer very important, without pedestaling them. At least in each of their beginnings. By the end of each and every storyline in FFXI, the adventurer's heroism is acknowledged, and in about half of the storylines, they are pedestaled as a big damn hero.

They are least acknowledged within Rise of The Zilart, and that was the first expansion, and its storytelling is mostly done at the very beginning and the very end of its run. The NPC companions can't beat Kamlanaut, Ealdnarche, nor the Ark Angels without the Adventurer. Though there's no real NPC fight integration either.

In Chains of Promathia, Prishe is a super important character and gets a lot of screen time, but CoP revolves around the adventurer and an ensemble cast. The adventurer winds up being the only other person aside from Prishe and Selh'teus who can resist Promathia's psychic influence to rejoin with his being, thereby allowing them to fight him. The adventurer is so important to the plot in CoP, that towards the end, some of the cast gets the idea that if the adventurer is killed, then the problems will resolve after the Lights of the Mothercrystals return with his soul to Al'taieu's crystal.

In Treasures of Aht Urhgan, the Adventurer rises through the mercenary ranks and through their exploits, becames entangled with the empress herself, becoming her personal bodyguard, and being so beloved by her, that she claims them as her, "Eternal Mercenary." The adventurerer also plays double agent for the Middle Lands nations, and performs some small feats of espionage. In the end, they are the one who puts down Alexander, and stops the Grand Vizier's ambition. This is undercut by the comedic genius of the mercenary company leader still treating the adventurer like a simple lacky, though if you pay attention, this is little just tsundere merc leader refusing to acknowledge open affection.

In Wings of the Goddess the Adventurer is revealed to come from a timeline chosen by the Goddess to be the right and proper ending to the Crystal War, whereas in the natural timeline, the Allied Forces lose. The Adventurer, along with Lilisette, are the Wings of the Goddess, and when Lilisette is undone by temporal paradox and Atomos from Lilith's schemes, the adventurer is all that can bring her back and stop Lilith.

In Seekers of Adoulin, the Adventurer has gone to the Sacred City of Adoulin on the wild and untamed and still mostly unexplored continent of Ulbuka, where the general population are forbidden from leaving the city. They become entangled with the Princess of Adoulin, Arciela, and become her right hand man and go-to guy, earning a place at the leadership council between the twelve orders of Adoulin. The spirit of the forest speaks to and through them, and such high trust in this stranger becomes a point of contention in this politically charged expansion. The Adventurer goes on to slay the Naakuals and plumb the depths of The Serpentine Labyrinth of Ra'Kaznar. They rescue Arciela several times, and are tasked with one impossible feat after the next, while Arciela researches crucial lore relating to the special dagger left to her by King August. Together they put an end to Hades, something not even the Founder King was able to do, though he does appear in spirit...

Rhapsodies of Vana'diel is an attempted coiling together of all these disparate storylines, and by the end it is a 14 year love letter from the development team to the veterans of FFXI, to the adventurer. In this expansion the adventurer becomes a god of light temporarily, in order to try and stop The Cloud of Darkness.

Beyond that is The Voracious Resurgence, which attempts to have you come in contact with every side character that Rhapsodies and the other storylines did not/barely did. During the course of this storyline, the Adventurer becomes the only other mortal besides the Gloom Phantom, to be able to wield Prime Weapons, thus allowing them fight and kill Chaos alongside the god Odin.

And back, even in the base original game of FFXI, when it was just The Shadowlord and The Beastmen, the Adventurer rises through the ranks of their chosen nation, eventually teaming up with adventurers from other nations, and together with a mere five other adventurers, they stop The Shadowlord after his brief resurrection, earning them hero status, acknowledged on a national level.

It's not the same at all. It's not even close to being the same.

[Ramiee]

Cannot imagine the damage that these writers will do to XI with the alliance raids. Fickblix had a better story then Wuk.

They're gonna remove every aspect of why people like Shantotto and make her extremely annoying.

[SwadTheFrog]

The most brutal takedown known to man

[Taliriah]

It didn't bother me not to be the main character but I guess some people really didn't like that.

Rewatching a few cutscenes from DT I think I understand why they did this: they wanted to really elevate the production value of the cutscenes and were really reaching the limits of having a silent protagonist, so they made the gamble of creating wuk lamat as a stand in for the player.
Apparently people prefer everyone continuously singing the WoL's praise and the WoL nodding furiously in response. On top of that there's the other huge problem of DT: two stories crammed into one expansion because they didn't anticipate and setup the story in the post msq patchs of the second to last expansion like they usually do.

We'll see how they manage to turn things around in the post patch. There's many dangling threads that could lead to interesting stories.

[ThorneDynasty]

The whole "you just want everyone to suck WoL's dick all the time" has been brought up and dismantled so many times it's getting really tiresome.