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

[Daralii]

After yet another quest, that had me "Talk to Wuk Lamat" I jus burst out laughing. Not because it was so funny, but the sheer absurdity of this questline. I don't think it was possible to hate a bunch of pixels this much, but here we are....Glad I am almost done with....whatever this is.

"Speak with Wuk Lamat" is the ride that never ends.

[Sairaag]

Okay somehow hidden blocks don't count towards the character minimum. 20+ years of forum technology existing....for the love of crispy tacos.

I thought that Gulool Ja assumed that Wuk Lamat meant that she intended to kill Otis, who has been more of a father to him than Zoraal Ja, which is why he was scared. When she clarified, then he opened up to her.

The forum's a bit retro like that, yeah... Just had some trouble posting because some token had expired and wouldn't renew.

I rewatched the cutscene to make sure, and it looks like Gulool Ja heard Wuk Lamat talk about killing Zoraal Ja. Despite Zoraal Ja being the way he is, I guess it's terrifying to hear when the kid's still hoping to have his father's love.

Anyway, I just went to "Speak with Wuk Lamat" one last time and that's the 7.0 MSQ done. My last and indeed lasting impression of her is her suffocating need to talk to people no matter what - she even said that near the end too, that she's going to talk to Sphene even if she won't listen. It really didn't help that when she was being removed from the arena and immediately when she came back, her focus was on Sphene not letting her talk. It would be funny if it weren't played so straight. Imagine, she's so clingy she's breaking through the veil between realities so she can get to know and understand her new target for friendship extraction at any cost. That's dark comedy material right there!

[MalakRevan]

I'm not even excited for 7.1 because there is no way they're gonna be able to pivot quickly enough in response to how people feel about Wuk Lamat, 7.1 will just be more of her shenanigans and Tural already has just left a bad taste in my mouth. For the first time in a looooooong time I'm ALMOST just content to let my sub lapse and not come back until who knows when. I've done MSQ and hated most of it, levelled the new job that interested me to max, cleared both extremes, I don't even feel like finishing getting the rest of my favorite jobs to level cap like I used to and I don't do savage. Meanwhile you've got tweets on twitter hitting thousands of likes and retweets with arguments like "oh you're just bad at the game lol the difficulty spike is why you hate dawntrail" or something like "y'all have been the main character in this story for a decade step aside sweetie, we were INVITED to Tural as a guest" or my favorite "IF YOU DIDN'T LIKE MSQ OR WUK YOU HAVE NO MEDIA LITERACY LOL!!!" Just makes it all that easier to step away from the game altogether for some people.

[CG1]

She makes axes sell. It's crazy.

Wuk Lamat-sama, I kneel.

[TheDustyOne]

Maybe I'm a minority but I always found the whole rubber bullet things as hilarious and sad.

We went from seeing Tesleen getting gut like a fish, transformed into a horrendous monster in real time in front of a child to a zone that's supposed to be the wild west with real cowboy, corrupt cops and outlaw ... and thing settle with rubber bullet? Like ... common.

The former is enough to earn a NSFL tag, the latter felt like a bad Disney paradogy.

Another thing I noticed, although relatively minor, was with the FATEs against the bandits. Previous expansions had no qualms just having us slaughter human enemies when their HP is gone, they play the death animation and fade away, but here instead they run away after all their HP is gone. It's relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, but it does come across as oddly inconsistent; this is the same game with Tesleen being skewered, Teledji being sliced in half (albeit off-screen), war, genocide, conquest, but a few bandits slaughtering merchants? Nah they gotta live, never mind that they have no qualms in killing us, but we can only subdue them.

The rubber bullets thing just furthers the whole problem of being tonally inconsistent with the rest of the game. I'm sure for some we'd prefer it if characters could incapacitate wherever possible instead of kill, but Hydaelyn / Eitherys has always been shown to be rather brutal and that such ideals, while admirable, aren't always possible.

Also not gonna lie, I thought the whole "the victor of the duel is proven right" thing was stupid. When Ishgard did it, there was at least the idea that divine providence would be shown through the victor, but here it's just... might makes right with no other justification. Not to mention when Ishgard did that, it wasn't portrayed in a positive light and showed why we wanted to pretty much fight against the powers that be in Ishgard. But in not-Texas, we're okay with it?

She makes axes sell. It's crazy.

Good lord not even the Levequests are safe.

[Zaniel]

You bring up a good point. They were trying to be "respectful" of cultures, but then they sanitize something that was a part of early American culture? Yes, duels didn't historically happen all the time like in the movies, but they did happen. Hell one of our founding fathers was killed in a duel with the vice president. And one of our presidents, Andrew Jackson was a notorious duelist.

If they didn't want to have the duel end in death, there are ways around it. Historically, many duels were about honor. Both participants would just shoot into the ground because they had no intention to harm each other. Also before the invention of rifling, a lot of duels just ended with both participants missing each other, shrugging their shoulders because honor was satisfied, and goin home.

Whatever "cultural sensitivities" CBU3 was adhering to seems to be directed towards a group of people who wouldn't care that they got American culture wrong.

The rubber bullet thing was the first time in game where I thought "Wait, are they having some westerners write for them now?!?" because its such a weird western culture warrior way to sanitize American wild west gun culture. Japanese writers usually have no problems with portraying a violent gun culture, indeed its the usual meme in Japanese media when presenting "americans".

[fioravictorine]

Yeah...rubber bullets, childish dialogue, escaping bandits etc. Wuk Lamat is basically an idealistic child in an adult body. Are they really thinking by alienating their adult audience, they will get 5-10 year olds to pay for new expansions and a monthly sub lol?

On the other hand I just finished Genshin's summer side story, and for a story literally about origami animals, toy soldiers and a lego dragon - it is way more mature, interesting and has more emotional beats than the entirety of Yawntrail

[lolnotacat]

The rubber bullet thing was the first time in game where I thought "Wait, are they having some westerners write for them now?!?" because its such a weird western culture warrior way to sanitize American wild west gun culture. Japanese writers usually have no problems with portraying a violent gun culture, indeed its the usual meme in Japanese media when presenting "americans".

I feel like Hiroi doesn't remember shit about the lore despite having worked on the game for years. Or maybe he just doesn't wanna acknowledge anything he didn't previously write? I mean, we had a gun duel not that long ago. It had some pretty good animations and someone getting shot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBZu1UBpH2c

[Raven2014]

Another thing I noticed, although relatively minor, was with the FATEs against the bandits. Previous expansions had no qualms just having us slaughter human enemies when their HP is gone, they play the death animation and fade away, but here instead they run away after all their HP is gone. It's relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, but it does come across as oddly inconsistent; this is the same game with Tesleen being skewered, Teledji being sliced in half (albeit off-screen), war, genocide, conquest, but a few bandits slaughtering merchants? Nah they gotta live, never mind that they have no qualms in killing us, but we can only subdue them.
.

And also immediately right after is the token "why do people become bandit? Maybe if their lives were better they won't become bandit?" mention.

And when you get to Mehwahhetsoan, there is another token "industrial development is bad for environment and wild life" mention.


Like ... it's weird. Don't get me wrong, FF14 being preachy is nothing news. Sometime even Alphinauh annoyed me of how preachy he is way before DT, and the whole peace and friendship isn't really a Wuk Lamat exclusive. But the thing is in the past, the virtual signalling when it happens, it felt substantial, with intend and purpose, and with effort to make it part of the story. Like the whole Ultima Thule zone felt like a sermon to me, but it was written into a full story. With DT though ... like you said they're just minor detail, token mention that makes me go "huh? Why do that or say that here?". It's like ticking checkboxes, or they're there so they can take an out of context snapshot and put it in a report later to make some ... underwriter happy.


One one hand, they're just minor that doesn't really affect anything important right now. Collectively though, together with the transition to a new writing team and a new era for the game ... it does make me a bit concern if this is the new direction they gonna take the narrative from now on?

[Kes13a]

I can live with not being the main focus of the story, thats completely fine.

as long as no one expects me to save the world again. I will point them in the direction of Wuk Lamat and tell them to bugger off.

we have fought gods, we have saved the star a time or two, traveled to the end of the universe to fight an immortal emo bird girl... but we need Wuk to save us from a rogue AI?

maybe Graha can fanboy on the Wukie and leave me alone.