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

[hydralus]

Wow the level of mental gymnastics your pulling. Bravo, I applaud your ability to ignore reality. You completely disregarded the majority's actual complaints to justify what you believe, completely ignoring the notion that you simply have bad taste. Wuk Lamat is a poorly written character that should never have been a main focus, and the story is just as poorly conceived as her.

Please go outside, touch grass, you clearly need. Or at minimum go take in some actual good stories, with good characters, and good writing so you can realize just how bad DT and Wuk Lamat are.

I will say she's not written that badly. Just that she should be more of a side character and not the most prominent spoken role we've had in the entire game.

[Eyrilona]

I have a feeling like this thread goes through the same loop of arguments every 30 hours or so. The same arguments with no indication of people having read the previous 181 pages. If people are not reading what has already been argued and why those arguments were not convincing the last time they were brought up, then this is not a discussion forum but a serial soapbox.

[BigBoom550]

--snipped--.

Players wanting the character they, themselves, are playing to be the protagonist is not an 'obsession'. In fact, it's quite correct.

There's the idea that the 'Hero' of the story and the 'Protagonist' are one and the same. This is often true, but is not always true. For instance: Assume that the story is about, perhaps, a noble knight sallying forth on his quest to slay a dragon, with the perspective being that of his squire. His squire, while not the one who achieves grand and glorious goals, still contributes their own unique perspective and position to the story.

Man of La Mancha, before you ask.

It was alright for Wuk Lamat to be 'The Hero', at least in a literary/story construction sense. The problem was that they tried to make her the protagonist. They essentially just had the player character standing there contributing little, if anything, but to serve as Wuk Lamat's hand. We were sockpuppeted by her, and that's the problem.

This leads into my next comment: Our story was not done in Endwalker. If it was, we'd be moving on to new characters to play.

The Hydaelyn-Zodiark story is over. The Ascian story is (theoretically) over. The player character's story is not. The trip to Tural should have been part of that, but because of how hard they pushed Wuk Lamat, it doesn't feel like that to players. It feels deeply, deeply unsatisfying.

Part of that is that for us, the stakes were yanked out from under us and then built up again, repeatedly. 6.55 we're told that the then-unnamed Zarool Ja can't win or he'll bring war to the continent. Then we get to Tural and are told 'yeah we can't build ships and don't have airships'.

...Ooookay. Well then what about-

Gulool Ja Ja: "Yeah if nobody's suited for the throne they ain't getting it."

...Oookay, so there go *our* personal stakes in the story. Zarool Ja isn't going to be a threat. He's not getting the throne, because he's not suited for it and ultimately Gulool knows it. I mean, kudos to the big guy for actually thinking it through- two heads are better than one I guess- but it undercuts our investment. Now the only reason you're sticking around is... Wuk Lamat. It forced the story stakes entirely onto her as a character, and basically erased your meaningfulness in the story for a *hefty* portion of it.

Then Alexandria happens. Sweet! This is your wheelhouse and... why is she here? Why is she taking the lead? Why are we just standing here?

Whatever.

Dungeons! Bossfights! Queen Eternal, Interphos is a banger, let's-

"spheeeen."

...Yeah. That's why Wuk was unsatisfying and frustrating to people.

[ThorneDynasty]

snip

The distinction I've seen is protagonist vs. main character: Protagonist is usually the point-of-view character who moves the story, main character is who the story happens to (or it could be the same character doing both). Hero is more of an archetype that could be both or neither.

Think Zidane vs. Vivi and Garnet, for like the first two-thirds of IX. Honestly even Steiner is more of a main character until half way of the story. Zidane doesn't go through much development or personal stakes himself, remaining a pretty static heroic rogue, but from the moment he meets each character, he's immediately pushing them to grow. And when the writer understands how the roles work, there's no "competing" over who the main character is, because they are both/all driving each other forward.

WoL completely fails as a protagonist in DT, because they do so very little to drive the story or other characters. When your protagonist does neither, and they aren't the main character either, well, that's bad writing.


EDIT: Epecially when WoL is also supposed to be the hero archetype - Something that's hard to reconcile with passivity as well.

[BigBoom550]

-Snipped for length-

Exactly. Whatever names or nuance you use, the fact is that the WoL is... barely there. Like, a huge amount of what we 'did' in Dawntrail was not something the Warrior of Light, or even a 'highly skilled warrior' was notably required for, or played that way.

I think part of the reason people like the Zoraal Ja fight but not Valigarmanda (Which I found to be very fun overall, personally) is the buildup to the Zoraal Ja fight is at least there. You've got, outside of Wuk Lamat, an actual emotional buildup and pacing. He feels like a threat. We're *told* Valigarmanda's a threat, that Valigarmanda can kill so many, but we... don't see anything. We don't have a cutscene of Valigarmanda either now or in the past destroying villages, we just hear- over and over- 'Valigarmanda bad!' and then we kill it.

To make the comparison because they're the same sort of creatures: With the Four Lords, we were told that losing yourself to Aramitama is bad, and then we see that with Suzaku and Seiryu. One loses herself and loses track of reality during the fight, acting like we're a long-dead love and clearly delusional. Seiryu surrenders to it voluntarily and becomes audibly more violent and unhinged. Not to a Zenos-level, but clearly off.

...Honestly forgot until I thought about it that Byakko and Genbu were the only two where the plan went right.

We see Valigarmanda in an ice block, we're told Valigarmanda's bad, we run around and follow a... pointy hand... and then we stab it in the face and it dies. It wasn't a Primal that took someone with the Echo to 'safely' combat, it wasn't an Auspice audibly in the throes of Aramatama intoxication, it was just... a big, angry lizard. It felt like a dungeon boss.

Zoraal Ja, meanwhile, felt like a threat. We saw him kill Gulool Ja Ja, who was a solo instance fight. We saw the devastation Alexandrian tech wrought. By the time we fight him, he's a known, powerful, and capable threat- one now drinking himself mad with power.

It's also why the last moment with Wuk is so frustrating. It felt like a return to form, with the boss acknowledging us for the whole darned reason we were sought out- our strength- only for Wuk to magically surpass that as well. Insult to injury was that we didn't get Blessing of Light, or Released Dynamis or some other buff that exists outside of Wonk LeMatt. No, we get Wuk Lamat's buff! Because she can do that now y'know. Because she's the Dawnservant.

I haven't gone back into Queen Eternal. I'm not willing to sit through that cutscene again. It sounds way better in other languages but the damage is done.

[Raven2014]

I think part of the reason people like the Zoraal Ja fight but not Valigarmanda (Which I found to be very fun overall, personally) is the buildup to the Zoraal Ja fight is at least there. You've got, outside of Wuk Lamat, an actual emotional buildup and pacing. He feels like a threat. We're *told* Valigarmanda's a threat, that Valigarmanda can kill so many, but we... don't see anything. We don't have a cutscene of Valigarmanda either now or in the past destroying villages, we just hear- over and over- 'Valigarmanda bad!' and then we kill it.

I feel like SB was the last expansion they put the trials under some proper effort, it's been pretty a lazy farce ever since. Back in ARR every primal has a long prepration phase where you see the logistic of the fight being worked out. But nowaday most trial fight feels like random encounter whack-a-mole. Something pop up, we whack it down at the moment of notice.

If they don't plan to put in a proper prep I hope they would tune down the narrative to match. The fight are cool but the presentations doesn't really match the scale.

[Zaniel]

Gulool Ja Ja: "Yeah if nobody's suited for the throne they ain't getting it."

...Oookay, so there go *our* personal stakes in the story. Zarool Ja isn't going to be a threat. He's not getting the throne, because he's not suited for it and ultimately Gulool knows it. I mean, kudos to the big guy for actually thinking it through- two heads are better than one I guess- but it undercuts our investment. .

This quick chat after the fight was probably the ONLY part of the succession storyline that made sense. It should have just been done at the very start, GJJ recognizes us as a power (in fact maybe even has intel on us) then says "Yeah basically all my kids are horribly unsuited in one way or another, including Wuk Lamat, she's kind but also a hapless idiot. As a god warrior saviour who happens to be here on holiday could I ask you to just keep an eye on things and make sure she doesn't burn herself grabbing hot objects, maybe at the end of this one of them will grow up, if not well them's the breaks".

[Isala]

This quick chat after the fight was probably the ONLY part of the succession storyline that made sense. It should have just been done at the very start, GJJ recognizes us as a power (in fact maybe even has intel on us) then says "Yeah basically all my kids are horribly unsuited in one way or another, including Wuk Lamat, she's kind but also a hapless idiot. As a god warrior saviour who happens to be here on holiday could I ask you to just keep an eye on things and make sure she doesn't burn herself grabbing hot objects, maybe at the end of this one of them will grow up, if not well them's the breaks".

Which is also why it was immediately interrupted by the house cat, because the camera hadn't been on her for a few minutes.

[Garolymar]

This quick chat after the fight was probably the ONLY part of the succession storyline that made sense. It should have just been done at the very start, GJJ recognizes us as a power (in fact maybe even has intel on us) then says "Yeah basically all my kids are horribly unsuited in one way or another, including Wuk Lamat, she's kind but also a hapless idiot. As a god warrior saviour who happens to be here on holiday could I ask you to just keep an eye on things and make sure she doesn't burn herself grabbing hot objects, maybe at the end of this one of them will grow up, if not well them's the breaks".

I'd actually be pretty fine if Wuk Lamat was treated like the idiot she is in the beginning and then people eventually warm up to her at the end. People shouldn't be praising her like a toddler from the get go for no reason. In fact my first impression was that they might go down that route when you see everyone just leave the palace grounds before she even comes out to be introduced like the rest of the claimants. That could've been an interesting story line

Instead everyone just instantly likes her. Which makes our purpose kinda pointless. Her preppy talks should've fallen short and made her look like an idiot, she should've been beaten down a little more because she had no actual plans for the throne other than screaming peace at the top of her lungs, at the end of the expansion she should've had a clear goal for where she wanted to take Tural into the future instead of upkeeping the status quo that could fall apart at any moment when face with such a do nothing leader.

If you put Wuk Lamat in any scenario that isn't Dawn Trail she would fail miserably, she gets by because Tural is written by somebody who apparently doesn't understand politics or group tensions and that everyone and anyone will just instantly get along when somebody tells them too.

[EusisLandale]

everyone and anyone will just instantly get along when somebody tells them too.

Let's be honest here, not everyone and anyone gets along just for being told to.

Sometimes they have to be shielded from a bird attack or be fed tacos first.