Wuk Sucks

[FlowerMilk]

I hate to tell you, and I'm not even sure where you got this idea from, but Wuk is supposed to be endearing from the very beginning. You're SUPPOSED to like her, but think that she's not ready for leadership yet. You hating her from the beginning is just you. imo, the writing/cutscenes make that very clear.

That said, whether or not you feel it works or not is the real question, and obviously it doesn't for you.

That's the thing, I didn't hate her from the beginning, I was completely indifferent to her and had an open mind, and I genuinely did try to like her. But she just isn't likeable, and she's always there, and she doesn't develop into a likeable character. I was waiting for her to fail at some point like Alphinaud and then for me to do a switcheroo on my opinion of her, but it never came. She literally never fails at anything she does, everything she suggests is always 100% perfect outcome regardless of how out of pocket it sounds.

[Malthir]

I just spent like 30 hours with her. If you are super generous and remove 10 hours for dungeons/wandering around - that's two full seasons of Game of Thrones. If you cannot develop a character in 20 hours, you're an awful awful writer.

For comparison, Emet, Yotsuyu, and Fordola were given around the same amount of time. Koana was given half of that.

Also look at the lines, someone did a count and she's had more dialogue than any character in any expac, and still no growth or any for a decent personality.

[Rawr18]

I like Wuk Lamat.

[DaveFishnomer]

By far one of the worst characters in xiv history, she has nothing going for her, she is useless, weak, stupid, clumsy and naive, but every other character just keep telling her how great she is so she never grows or overcomes any of her issues, just boring to be around.

[BabaM]

She's OK to me, but she truly reminded me of OG Naruto and that felt weird. You know, the really optimistic, quirky, cringe, fun character that speaks loudly and adores food. Was waiting for her to shout dattebayo bro.

That being said she's OK. I came across more unbearable characters (looking at you, Asahi).

That's because Asahi is the bad guy. He's supposed to be unlikable. He wasn't the protagonist. Unlike Alphinaud who was unlike in ARR, Wuk Lamat never had any moments where she was torn down and built herself back up.

[Higashikata]

Look I still like the game a lot especially how they improved my monk, dungeons, trials, graphics ect. However this became basically Krile vs Wuk Lamat and Krile lost to being important. The devs basically lied to us on saying she would be the focus hell she should have been the one narrating the story. Wuk Lamat should have stayed behind as the dawnservent simple as that. Also dial down the cutesy shit when we are cutting the life support of an entire civilization.

Yeah this was pretty egregious. Almost screams "rewrite" with how Krile's importance was just handwaved away as her parents just wanting to see her again

[KurenXIV]

I just spent like 30 hours with her. If you are super generous and remove 10 hours for dungeons/wandering around - that's two full seasons of Game of Thrones. If you cannot develop a character in 20 hours, you're an awful awful writer.

For comparison, Emet, Yotsuyu, and Fordola were given around the same amount of time. Koana was given half of that.

Louder for the people in the back. I regret that I only have one like to give for this comment.

The amount of people that I've heard say "Well AcTuAlLY it's stupid to expect the first part of a story to be good because we don't have years of build up to make the story good" and it's like...the MSQ is the length of most standard games. If you can't write a compelling story in that time or develop characters in that time it's exactly as you said; you're an awful writer.

[SuRge991]

I've played FFXIV for a while now and this is the only time I was ever compelled to sort out my forum account and make a post.

Yeah. Wuk Lamat sucks. Not because she was bad from the offing but because the writers just failed to live up to the potential this character had. We could've had a fun arc where she went from "Lyse" to "Commander Hext"- a naive, sheltered warrior-noblewoman to a suzerain that has surveyed her realm and gotten to know her people.

Oh and the fact that her existence basically sidelined Krile and Erenville. I really hope that the writers don't force her along with us in the patch content or I will lose it.

[Dogempire]

She's OK to me, but she truly reminded me of OG Naruto and that felt weird. You know, the really optimistic, quirky, cringe, fun character that speaks loudly and adores food. Was waiting for her to shout dattebayo bro.

That being said she's OK. I came across more unbearable characters (looking at you, Asahi).

The biggest difference between Wuk Lamat and characters like OG Naruto and other sorts of "golden retriever" type characters (that are actually well-written) is that they have their own struggles that serve to ground them, Naruto is the way he is because he seeks attention and approval from *someone*, because he's all alone and shunned by the village. In that sense, the way he is is justified.

I absolutely adore the "golden retriever" character archetype and it's lowkey one of my favorites to the point I really liked Wuk Lamat at the beginning and thought she would become one of my favorite characters, but there's just no substance to the way she acts, no compelling and underlying reason for her positivity and optimism aside from "Well daddy likes peace so I like it too."

People who are overly nice and extremely positive/energetic/silly usually have some underlying trauma that makes them act the way they are, Wuk Lamat has no such trauma, no issues of abandonment by her real father, hell she doesn't even seem to be curious who her real father is. She never saw the horrors of war and that's why she came to value peace, she doesn't have an irrational fear of having the people around her hurt which is why she so stubbornly clings to the idea of peace, she's just a talking piece for a very generic morality of "Gais, fighting is bad and let's all work together"

Hell, they don't even go the route of making it so that Wuk Lamat lacks the power to maintain the peace that her father created, maybe they could have explored that the only reason Gulool Ja Ja was able to create peace was because behind the scenes there were overwhelming acts of violence to reign the citizens in that maybe have been lost to generations, maybe they could have put a twist on her father and made her suffer some sort of breakdown because the person she believed raised her wasn't the ideal she believed him to be.

Just ahhh, traumatize the characters, SE. If you're going to create a character that's too good for this world then you need to mess them up mentally by making them experience the horrors of the world or have things that they don't deserve to have happen to them end up messing them up mentally.

It makes for compelling writing and it makes us want to cheer for the character even more and see them succeed, if we actually watched Wuk Lamat struggle to come to terms with *something* before finally getting the resolve she needed at the end of the last trial because she doesn't want to let her friend fight alone and actually wants to confront her problems, then it would actually work, or at least not be so crappy

[Heh]

Seethe buddy, seethe. Let it all out.