Wuk Lamat

[Shistar]

There's even a shot in the cutscene where Sphene is ordering coffee or something, and Wuk Lamat is literally off to the side, staring into the distance blank-faced like she's in Offline mode.

She is waiting her turn on the communal hrothgal brain cell, please hold.

Holy moly the echo chamber you live in is crazy. I've played The Interphos over 100 times in PF and most I would see people react with is "WUK LAMAT COMES IN WITH THE STEEL CHAIR" or say "SPEEEN". Either your entire group of friends and FC desperately need to touch grass if you're reacting like this over a cool video game cutscene or you're making this shit up for some reason and idk which is weirder.

I mean, it was definitely jarring to see her showing up to begin with, and even more jarring that only she did..? Did G'raha and Krile just get deleted off the duty or something? Did they accidentally cast Return and ended up back at Limsa?

I find it hard to believe that the kid (the "king" of Tural or whatever. The turtle) is the smartest person in the room. And the child catgirl in the raid quests? With the advanced understanding of the disease we just learned existed? Give me a break.

Gulool Ja, I'll buy it. I think the kid prodigy trope can be pulled off with him because we were showed very early on that he knows how to use electrope from living in those ruins and getting by. It also doesn't feel as terrible when the King's authority falls on him because he supposedly knows how this stuff works - at least on a practical level - and he has Oblivion to back him up. I would personally want Sphene to come with us for the next arc, but being realistic she'll most likely be Queen along with Gulool. Neyuni felt very random tbh, but I guess they desperately needed a character to Wuk Lamat us into the conclusion instead of letting us put two and two together on our own.

[XtremePrime]

I had a generally neutral opinion on Wuk Lamat till the very last trial of the expansion, that's when I lost it and the opinion tilted heavily into dislike.
I can't accept her out of the party members that were there like G'raha and Y'sthola which are way smarter and more magically inclined, of all of them to be Wuk Lamat that breaks the barrier of reality, resulting in her coming into our fight last minute to take final hit.

Overshadowing us in a moment where Sphene herself isolated us as the "biggest potential threat to her plan" (making it our moment of the expansion) is both cruel and inexcusable.

Imagine if they did that with Lyse? You're fighting Shinryu in Stormblood and just before the end of the fight, Lyse comes in with a flying kick and goes like "Yeah WoL, I did it!"

[Auro_Seldaris]

snipped nonsense about Wuk Lamat

I had a generally neutral opinion on Wuk Lamat till the very last trial of the expansion, that's when I lost it and the opinion tilted heavily into dislike.
I can't accept her out of the party members that were there like G'raha and Y'sthola which are way smarter and more magically inclined, of all of them to be Wuk Lamat that breaks the barrier of reality, resulting in her coming into our fight last minute to take final hit.

Overshadowing us in a moment where Sphene herself isolated us as the "biggest potential threat to her plan" (making it our moment of the expansion) is both cruel and inexcusable.

Imagine if they did that with Lyse? You're fighting Shinryu in Stormblood and just before the end of the fight, Lyse comes in with a flying kick and goes like "Yeah WoL, I did it!"

Hey, @spookykobold, THIS ^^^^^

is what I'm talking about

Don't act like this is some hive mind and everyone should be a brainless barking seal, clapping for whatever drivel Yoshida serves. YOU are the one who needs to touch grass and consider that not everyone will have the same opinion or feelings. For everyone like you who saw it as a "cool cutscene" , there's someone who's going to think it's the cringiest thing they've ever witnessed.

Because it is.

It's an unearned powerup, after we were specifically called out by Sphene as the only REAL threat to her. It is a ridiculous power upgrade from being a literal scaredy-cat afraid of a talking bird, and not even being able to scratch Bakool Ja Ja, to being able to shatter dimensional rifts and deadlift multi-ton robot arms. It interferes with the single cool moment us peasant Player Characters were allowed by Hiroi and our goodly dev overlords, literally the only time we get to even flex on an antagonist the entire expansion, and do our REAL job of protecting the Source and Shards from danger. As Blade said, "Some mother*****rs are always trying to ice-skate uphill" and it's OUR job as the WoL to put them in their place. And Hiroi just HAS to have his Mary Sue OC furry waifu jump in and kill-steal it, while the buff claims that WE are the one being inspired by HER.

Every single reason XremePrime gave is precisely why people who dislike it consider it the biggest "jump the shark" moment in the game, and this is coming from someone who was neutral on her for the entire experience. It was the moment that absolutely ruined the story for me. It took me out of the moment so hard that I just stood there motionless and died. I sleepwalked through the rest of the fight and have mentally checked out of FFXIV's world now, perhaps permanently.

But I guess some people can just have their brain hacked by "WOW HYPE MUSIC PLAYING AND ACTION HAPPENING!"

I mean, when you have multiple people in this very thread and many others, telling you the same thing, I think it's a little disingenuous to claim that people are "in an echo chamber" or "making shit up". I don't know XtremePrime. Or All_Nonsense. I don't know Jeeqbit, I don't even agree with half of anything Jeeqbit writes, but we're all together on this one. It's an immersion-shattering moment that destroys any sense of worldbuilding or logic.

[Sunhwapark]

I can't accept her out of the party members that were there like G'raha and Y'sthola which are way smarter and more magically inclined, of all of them to be Wuk Lamat that breaks the barrier of reality, resulting in her coming into our fight last minute to take final hit.

That moment and also the gospel train bomb montage had me laughing for days at the absurd events written into the story.

[Exmo]

Imagine if they did that with Lyse? You're fighting Shinryu in Stormblood and just before the end of the fight, Lyse comes in with a flying kick and goes like "Yeah WoL, I did it!"

Ardbert, Emet Selch and Zenos have all shown up at the eleventh hour against a final boss to give the player an essential assist. Nobody complains about them, though. People get angry when you point this out.

[All_Nonsense]

I would personally want Sphene to come with us for the next arc, but being realistic she'll most likely be Queen along with Gulool.

The only satisfactory ending for this "expansion story" for me would be if we put Sphene, the turtle kid, and Wuk Lamat in that underground castle and blew it up, burying them and this terrible story for eternity. I'll even accept Zenos coming back to assist us with it (someone said in this thread that no one has ever complained about Zenos. I think they must've been highly inebriated when they wrote it so I'll give them a pass)

[Auro_Seldaris]

(someone said in this thread that no one has ever complained about Zenos. I think they must've been highly inebriated when they wrote it so I'll give them a pass)

As someone who actually liked Zenos...

Then someone in this thread clearly wasn't around for when Stormblood was live, because all anyone did was talk about how annyoing Lyse was and what a boring uninteresting character Zenos was.

And they also must not have been around for when Endwalker was live, becuase all anyone did was complain about how annoyingly nihilistic Hermes A. Fandaniel was, and how they hated that Zenos was back and were glad at his apparent final death.

[RedLolly]

My theory; Wuk Lamat is meant to represent us raising up the next generation of heroes to protect the Source. Her genuine love of people, sincerity, willingness to throw hands when needed is a great start, and she's introduced as only participating as a claimant for the throne because she wants to block her warmonger brother and not for personal gain. She's an excellent candidate for our legacy.

Since Legacy is the core theme of DT, it's set up as a great stepping stone between the last story arc as we step into the new one.

But then DT utterly fumbled the bag with Wuk Lamat by having too many events just work out in her and our favor because they had barely any time to show her actually grow. She's in almost every scene but feels stagnant, and because we don't get to be in her POV much, it feels like we have far more telling and not showing of her accomplishments. We don't witness the labors and our crew does so much of it.

We're supposed to feel proud to see her handling Alexandria as well as she did, but instead it feels like she cheated. Did she really earn this? She did, technically, but it still feels bad as the WoL.

I think the best comparison is Alphinaud's arc in ARR. He's an arrogant and high-handed little asshat in ARR, but got humbled hard and was able to grow into the beloved companion he became. He was given all the time he needed as a character and was allowed to mess up and become better.

Also, the desperate need to build up Wuk Lamat gave no time to Krile and Erenville until the very end of DT.

She's being retired now as she's also a world leader character. But there are plenty of reasons she's like a black hole of criticism for DT's story.

[AlucaDragonheart]

I hated how Y'shtola called Wuk on the linkshell to tell me something, when Y'shtola, who has known my character for a while and has been through many hardships and adventures with them, didn't decide to call ME directly instead.

[RedLolly]

I actually forgot how many times in pre-Dawntrail interviews building up the expansion that the devs mentioned how lovely and great Wuk Lamat is. It must've been shocking to see that she wasn't just received poorly, many exclusively blame the character for destroying DT's narrative.

Especially when it worked for Zero. Some fans didn't jive with her but the plot there was interesting and she wasn't smothering everything. (I do prefer Zero on every way)