Quote Originally Posted by Loggos View Post
Zoraal Ja suffers from the same thing Wuk Lamat suffers: the idea of is character is very good but the execution is so abyssmal
You know, the more I think about it, the more I realize that perhaps the reason I like Zoraal Ja so much is because the rest of the cast was so bland that Zoraal Ja seemed much more interesting in comparison; the idea of Wuk Lamat isn't even interesting in the first place, much less the execution.

Also 100% agreed that it would've been better if he said "what the hell are you doing here" instead.

However I do have to defend his execution a bit, because it's not every day we get a character from Square Enix where you learn so much about his personality from merely a scene of him just staring at someone without saying anything (although it was partially ruined by Krile just explaining it out a few times). The theming of Zoraal Ja was also really tight, and is something I wish the writers tried a bit more of. He killed his father, choked his son, and wanted to kill his siblings. This is a villain whose most shocking deeds in the story wasn't invading another reflection, or harvesting souls, or genocide (though of course he wanted to do that as well), but something much more primal, much more raw: killing his family. I also felt his seething rage growing and growing over the story even if he barely ever shows it. At least on this part I thought the writers did a good job at portraying his increasing anger.

I think part of the problem is that by the time we meet Zoraal Ja, he was already irredeemable. Most of his inner conflicts would've happened before we even met him, while he was still growing up. We really needed to learn about the royal family's history much more, and in a way without any flashbacks it's like we met a villain whose development is already complete and leaves us to piece together what happened before.