(7.0 Zone 4+ Spoilers) It feels like the story got reworked

[Atmaweapon510]

I get the nagging feeling throughout the entirety of the post-Dawnservant arc got severely reworked because the test audience reacted poorly to having a patricidal character having any sort of redeeming qualities. Yes this is regarding Zoraal Ja.

Let's take a look at some story beats:


The 4th zone: Shaaloani

The entirety of the 4th zone is cheesy filler nonsense. However imagine if Zoraal Ja was supposed to be a companion throughout this part and we started getting a deeper look into his character? Suddenly the story in that zone starts to connect with the story overall. The ending is a complete validation of Zoraal Ja's beliefs, justice isn't claimed through peace, it's claimed by power. First, the social power held by the sheriff is broken, leaving an opening for the "plucky underdog" to claim victory through martial power. Zoraal Ja could even be disturbed that he's empathizing with the corrupt sheriff as someone who didn't live up to the expectations that people expected of them and got ridiculed as a result.


5th zone: Heritage found

Wuk Lamat's character arc is flat, she doesn't develop at all and her beliefs never conflict with her current desires. Imagine if that reluctance to kill her brother showed at some point before Zoraal Ja dies instead of afterwards? Suddenly Sphene's offering of a peace talk actually becomes a point of conflict instead of something glossed over as a sign of Wuk Lamat's sudden growth into a perfect head of resolve. This is the point in the story where Wuk Lamat needs to come to grips with the fact that her duties as the head of resolve might contradict her inner desires.

Gulool Ja makes no sense in general with a flat villain Zoraal Ja. With a more sympathetic Zoraal Ja, suddenly everything falls into the place.

-Gulool Ja loving his papa makes no sense when he got abandoned as an infant, and makes significantly more sense if his papa is too busy to properly raise him.

-Otis being in a robotic Mamool Ja body doesn't make sense given that there aren't any Mamool Ja in Alexandria. If Otis was assigned to be Gulool Ja's guardian and given a Mamool Ja like robot body to better connect with him, his appearance starts to make sense.

-Zoraal Ja's feelings in general and what he leaves Gulool Ja at the end make no sense if he abandoned his son and left him to die as an infant. If he was trying to do right by his son only to repeat his father's mistakes, that would be a good character arc.


Basically to understand how it might have gotten reworked to this point, we just need to look at Zoraal Ja and Gulool Ja's attitudes towards their fathers. Zoraal Ja is patricidal while Gulool Ja still loves his father despite actual abandonment. It seems like there was a cultural issue at play and the overall portrayals of these characters were changed to fit audience sensibilities, leading to a completely disjointed second half of Dawntrail

[Brightamethyst]

I get the impression that the writers wanted to do more but were hamstrung by the EW patch schedule.

The Zero/Void story took up all five EW patches, so unlike every other expansion, DT didn't have the x.4/5 patches to do all the preliminary story setup. The writers had to waste a good chunk of the leveling MSQ doing super basic introductory things that in any other expansion would have been beforehand. That lead to an overly drawn out first arc, and a hurried final one.

[Iscah]

-Otis being in a robotic Mamool Ja body doesn't make sense given that there aren't any Mamool Ja in Alexandria. If Otis was assigned to be Gulool Ja's guardian and given a Mamool Ja like robot body to better connect with him, his appearance starts to make sense.

I'm not certain but I think Otis was using a Sahagin base model rather than Mamool Ja, and you fight more of the same kind of robot in the last section of the Alexandria dungeon, so their older robots are just like that for some reason. (Come to think of it, the more humanoid robots could have come about specifically because they needed to be Sphene's potential hosts.)

But yeah, I did expect them to make some kind of plot point of his sort-of-Mamool-Ja-ness, and they just never even remarked on it.

[Cleretic]

I'm not certain but I think Otis was using a Sahagin base model rather than Mamool Ja,

I think the Sahagin and Hoobigo might have the same base skeleton and animations? I admit I never thought about it.

And as to the OP, while I think it's perfectly fine to imagine a version of Dawntrail that plays more to your tastes, I'd caution against deciding that it already existed and was somehow lost. We actually don't know much about Dawntrail's development history yet (and going by history we may never), but just deciding that it must be a compromised vision, instead of accepting that maybe the writers have different tastes and ideas to you, isn't gonna treat you well.

Personally, I think that the resolution of 'we're gonna have to kill this guy, Steven WoL' actually makes perfect sense, because it's Wuk Lamat's view on peace, and Zoraal Ja's view on war, both being put to the test; Zoraal Ja learns the hard way that superior force doesn't always win, while Wuk Lamat learns that just saying that you love peace doesn't mean you get to have it. (Zoraal Ja is way worse at learning his lesson.)

[Kesey]

Reworked is probably the wrong word. Your post reads like we're examining the msq in a creative writing workshop and you have suggestions to make the plot more concise and play better to the themes.

But to add to the workshopping, I think the fight with Valigarmanda should have played differently. I think if Bakool Ja Ja had released Valigarmanda at the direction of Zoraal Ja instead of doing it as a bully. And then if he stepped up to fight Valigarmanda in Zoraal Ja's place as redemption, it would have made his Yak'Tel arc way more sympathetic (keep the fight with Wuk Lamat, just justify it with Zoraal Ja telling him to take Wuk Lamat's keystones). Then it would have helped isolate Zoraal Ja better to fit the second half of the story.

[Carin-Eri]

-Gulool Ja loving his papa makes no sense when he got abandoned as an infant, and makes significantly more sense if his papa is too busy to properly raise him.
l

Apologies, but am going to focus on this particular point here as it's one that bothers me.

As you say, it makes no sense that he would care for a father who disowned him and we know absolutely nothing about his mother. I mean, we can make assumptions but they really should've given him more of a backstory.

[Denishia]

Counterpoint: A young child can have emotional responses that feel irrational to you, especially towards family. And Gulool Ja's wish for his father to not die was not framed as him loving Zoraal Ja, but that he (thinks) he has no connections besides his caretaker Otis and this other blue-scaled Hoobigo that everyone says has a singular connection to him. And as long as Zoraal Ja lived, Gulool Ja could have that fantasy that one day he could have a connection with his father, or at least get closures and answers. I thought that element of the story was incredibly realistic.

[Atmaweapon510]

Honestly a lot of my speculation is WoW faction war era writing trauma, where a lot of story content got cut/reworked to fit new narratives to try to make the story more palatable to players, coupled with the Persona series making me keenly aware that there are different social dynamics regarding family in Japan (having illegitimate children apparently destroys your reputation there.) Aside from that though, Zoraal Ja just doesn't click as a villain. The first half sets him up as this guy whose actions don't really reflect what he says; He spares Bakool Ja Ja, he clears the road for people, and he helps against Valigarmanda. The worst he ever does to you is something that Thancred does in the previous dungeon on purpose. He basically has to develop himself from being a non-entity to the main antagonistic force over the course of 1 and a half zones. Not to mention the one-two punch that completely shattered my suspension of disbelief being the Ketenramm situation:

-Ketenramm is ambushed and clearly slashed (by Zoraal Ja.)
-Zoraal Ja proceeds to kill his advisor and does an evil laugh in complete contrast to how he behaved before this point. (OK, this is a mask off situation and he's going to revel in his villainy from this point onwards.)
-Ketenramm is alive in the next scene you see him and is literally no worse for wear. He also has absolutely no story relevance for the rest of the plot so he may as well have died. (I got too distracted by the fact that he was still alive to really take in Gulool Ja Ja's death)
-Zoraal Ja is back to being his stoic self with his rage boiling over at points. No consistency with his evil laugh, he never does that again.

The inconsistency feels as bad as the Warriors of Darkness where they're clearly reveling in the harm they cause before they pull out their sob story, only that the visual storytelling is trying to make us feel sympathy for them after that fact. You could speculate that they're trying to act out a different persona to disassociate themselves from what they're doing but that's still just speculation.

[Cleretic]

Aside from that though, Zoraal Ja just doesn't click as a villain. The first half sets him up as this guy whose actions don't really reflect what he says; He spares Bakool Ja Ja, he clears the road for people, and he helps against Valigarmanda. The worst he ever does to you is something that Thancred does in the previous dungeon on purpose. He basically has to develop himself from being a non-entity to the main antagonistic force over the course of 1 and a half zones. Not to mention the one-two punch that completely shattered my suspension of disbelief being the Ketenramm situation:

-Ketenramm is ambushed and clearly slashed (by Zoraal Ja.)
-Zoraal Ja proceeds to kill his advisor and does an evil laugh in complete contrast to how he behaved before this point. (OK, this is a mask off situation and he's going to revel in his villainy from this point onwards.)
-Ketenramm is alive in the next scene you see him and is literally no worse for wear. He also has absolutely no story relevance for the rest of the plot so he may as well have died. (I got too distracted by the fact that he was still alive to really take in Gulool Ja Ja's death)
-Zoraal Ja is back to being his stoic self with his rage boiling over at points. No consistency with his evil laugh, he never does that again.

I had a whole thing here about how I think Zoraal Ja's journey is actually super consistent once you factor in the Feat of Brotherhood (I've got it saved as a just-in-case), but I actually don't think your problem is with him.

I think you seem to have a habit of latching onto a single detail, and what you think that means, to the point where you can't move past it. You thought Ketenramm getting attacked meant Ketenramm was dead (fair enough, I did too), and then got too stuck on that to move past it. You imagined Zoraal Ja having an evil laugh when killing Sareel Ja (that's another thing; he didn't, I'm not sure where you got that idea) and decided that meant he was maniacally evil now, as opposed to just accepting that he might be the same person as before, but with new tools.

It's not that Zoraal Ja is badly written; it's that you jumped to conclusions about him, and then couldn't pull back fast enough to see what actually happened. Zoraal Ja's actually a surprisingly consistent character when you really break him down, even if Gulool Ja leaves a few unanswered questions.