almightyxenon: Can we stop using the "but we were a mentor" are character did nothing to teach her about anything all you did was be in the background of cutscenes doing nothing
JustiniZHere: This sounds like Yoshi P does not actually know why people dislike the character and he just thinks he knows why, which is wrong.
cabl7787: "the wol was a mentor"
Ok... What exactly did the wol teach her then?
starryiee: "The story pacing was slow because we had to introduce Tural and all it's races"
Bro, we go to a new place with new cultures EVERY expansion. The writing was just bad.
warllockmasterasd9142: There are three issues with Wuk Lamat as a character.

-She does not change from chapter one of story to the last chapter.
She becomes more knowledgeable about the nation she wish to rule, but she herself does not mature at all.
She literally only becomes the Dawnservant by being the only one to reach the city.
There is zero mention on how and why she is worthy now, unlike before.

-Unearned power creep.
She just gets stronger and stronger and in record time, by the end of the story.
She's literally shown more power than the WoL saving them.

-overexposure eating up 95% of the story.
Even if Wuk lamat was considered a good character by the community she's just there way too much.
this leaves way too little screen time for anyone else, including the villains.
to proper flourish.

and this can be directly tracked by just how many voice lines Wuk lamat has compared to any other character.
ariastarsong2381: If I was a mentor I never felt like one, my neck did hurt a lot from all the nodding I did. If there was no agenda, it kind of strange how this story fits into a lot of western TV and movies these days.
chrisanderson7820: TBH most of what Yoshi-P is saying in that interview is gibberish, either that or he is completely oblivious as to why people dislike Wuk Lamat and the story around her. This is NOT a Western thing, the JPN forum's complaints are pretty much identical, it's culturally agnostic in its awfulness. It's not a mentorship story, we do no mentoring, we are just a luggage carrier.
stryder-shorts: I feel like my two main problems, with at least the first half, was A) The story felt too safe, there really never felt like there was any possibility of Wuk Lamat Losing the competition. B) There weren't really enough moments of us being a mentor to Wuk Lamat, either giving her advice or giving her combat training
annica5415: If my WoL is not the main character, why do I have to pay the subscription? :O
cushionysleet90: I dont care about not being the mc but i care about actually DOING things. I couldve just not been there and nothing wouldve changed
Valis-Vyndir: This is just Yoshi p doing PR, dawntrail msq clearly shows every dev was butting heads in its development, i fully expect yoshi p pulling back and going back to the drawing board and looking back at shadowbringers/ heavensward success and who wrote it.
juraihoshi: In 10 years, DT is the first expansion where I skipped through dialogue and cutscenes because I was bored and annoyed by it and just wanted to get to dungeon and trial content. Let's hope Yoshi P and Square Enix don't think FFXIV is too big to fail. This is the first expansion where I've actually considered moving to find another game and actually trying some out now. It's always a bad sign when a longtime fan starts looking for a new "home".
ReaperTheRogue: I said it before I'll say it again, the hate for Wuk Lamat is universal and not locked to just one language group, so it has little to nothing do with the English VA is trans.
TierHarribel: I'm the main character wherever I go
sorry / not sorry
LameMule: Honestly I didn't mind not being the main character. I like being a side piece in a bigger narrative. I got so tired of Warcraft shouting CHAMPION everywhere I went that playing a character that blends in is just a nice change of pace. I just didn't want to be a side piece to the same obnoxious character the entirety of the story. She should have stayed back in the capital after the first half the game and then we could have been a side piece to Erenville's and Krile's story.
qamarqammar7629: If I didn't want to be the MC in the narrative, I'd go play WoW where I get to watch cutscenes of my faction leaders having Character Arcs and doing Heroic Things. See how well that worked out for them when people realized they had a choice.
Hilipinapixili: If anything, her inferiority complex is one of the things keeping her from being dangerously close to a Mary Sue IMO. It gives her a weakness she has to overcome and a character progression to look forward to (this potential being badly managed by the writing is a different story). Personally I found her unexplainable lack of knowledge about the people and country she says she loves so much to be much more frustrating.

Also, I find it weird that he compares her to Alphinaud as an example of a character without negative traits from the get go. A TON of people heavily disliked Alphinaud in ARR PRECISELY because he was this overconfident smug brat who acted like he knew better than anyone else. It wasn't until his heel turn after the events of 'The Parting Glass' that he became generally liked.
merlana3479: For me i did not feel like a mentor. I felt like a babysitter. I felt more like a mentor when I did the Gnath quests.
DeeFourCee: Wuk Lamat has the problem where she is used to show us the world but also is unrealistically unknowable about her own homeland
sushioishii8950: There is so much about this on FFXIV forums and there have been whole essays written about this topic. YoshiP isn't reading the forums I am pretty sure based on what he is saying.
ChannelRaznoff: I don't like Naruto as a character. Why would I want to spend time with his equally annoying cat?
kat_cobain: Yoshi-P's takes in a lot of these interviews lately have been...yikes
Rayjaya: As for the "attaching agendas" the English voice casting director straight up said during the north American fanfest that she was going to push diversity inclusion and equity, which for me basically reads forced inclusion which is just going to promote racism/sexism ect.
And that point is just proven by the fact that the very second someone said they didn't like wuk lamat it was made to be about the English voice actor being trans and not legitimate criticism with the story and character
lobete: My only complaint about the character use is that I think the second half of the story should have gone to Koana. I think that we could have gotten so many of the same leader-to-leader story moments with Sphene while also developing his story more, giving him a view of the negatives a heavy-tech society might have brought, etc. Nothing even against Wok Lamat, but we had two vows and what we knew about the zone and enemy seemed to fit the brother more in terms of who should come with us. Plus we could have had a much better redemption cutscene for Bakool Ja Ja, him fighting to defend the city alongside his once enemy, Wok Lamat, back-to-back instead of face-to-face.
treesuschrist1782: My only two big complaints over Wuk in the actual game were:
-shes shoved way to hard in our face. We needed some time at some point in the story away from her. As the saying goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder
-At the very least the English VA's (not just Wuk, but most of them) did not seem to get good directions. Alot of the dialog is very flat or seems to lack proper emotional punch where its needed. This is not the VAs fault per say.
All this said, I will say that ive grown less and less fond of Wuk as a character thanks to some of the abysmal interactions and post on social media by the EN voice actress. Im not here to say individuals working in/on games cant have personal opinions, but when a VA says "if you dont like a song, your actually just racist", it becomes alot harder to look fondly on the character they were a part of.
fordv-e3c: I dnt have issues with a trans voice actor but I find issues with us not being able to say thier voice acting wasn’t great just because they are trans. Her voice acting was flat,period.
deProfundisAdAstra: I didn't really hate Wuk Lamat, she was just exceptionally grating after all of five minutes of being around her in 6.5. I knew from the outset she wouldn't be my favorite character, I just kind of expected Yoshi P and the team to… expect that? Or at least not have her in nearly every scene making everything about herself. It's just… baffling. I'm a diehard G'raha lover and I would hate it if he
seekittycat: WoL: /knows nothing about this country, can only punch things, is mute

Wuk: thank you for teaching me how to be the best leader of my country. I just need to make everyone smile ^_^

Legit expecting her to get ARR bloody banquet anyday now
SvannaHarriot: The Warrior of Light is just Wuk Lamat using a cheat code to summon in a weapon of mass destruction like Exodia to just stomp a mudhole and walk it dry in whoever she is too under-leveled for because she skipped all the side quests and catch up content
greyknight627: Honestly, aside from the ENG VA complaining about criticism, I have seen nobody having an issue with Wuk's voice or her VA (I will say if an actor makes these sort of complaints, I am immediately skeptical). The primary criticism has always been her involvement, lack of real development, and her insane power creep by the end of the expansion. It's ALL narrative-related.

I would like to say that the post EW patches handled this better than DT did with Zero. Zero was clearly a new character who we learned was central to her plot on the 13th. Yet, the narrative did not diminish our role as the WoL in that story. I am not saying the Zero/13th story was great btw, just that they handled a new and central character better in that story than they did with Wuk Lamat in DT.
natebroadus8474: I actually like the idea of the WoL not being the main character, I just wish they hadn't decided to hyperfocus on one character as a replacement.

Imagine if part 1 of Dawntrail was with Wuk Lamat, but after the Rite of Succession we took Koana with us to Solution Nine. That would have been amazing. That would have meant the WoL mentored both the new Head of Reason and Resolve. Plus, Koana seeing Solution Nine made so much sense with him being so progress-minded. He could have seen firsthand just how dark things can get when you over-rely on technology.

Overall, I liked Dawntrail. It introduced a lot of concepts that I enjoyed, and the relic having Azem's symbol on it has been living in my head rent free since I finished the MSQ. I just think they needed to back off on the Wuk Lamat a little. They didn't give anyone a chance to miss her, she was just always there whether you wanted her to be or not.
archmagemc3561: It sounds like Squex got direction from sweet baby inc on how to write DT, and yoshi P is deflecting due to corporate pressure.
AnnaBananya: So many people I know are already completely checked out after this absolute stinker of a story. My friends list and FC list is looking extremely thin these days.
sushioishii8950: They kind of masked the fact they made such an awful choice for the English VA. It isn't the VA's fault they were hired. The question I'd want answered is why did Square pick this VA for this role when they clearly were not a strong VA.
WaltRBuck: The character Wuk Lamat has just turned me off to the game. I could careless about the real life people giving her voice. For all the 'growth' she goes through, she feels flat. I've decided to take a nice long break instead. We'll see if something else comes along that makes it feel worth pushing through. Wuk Lamat, however, is far from the only thing that I didn't like about Dawntrail. Just, one of the key parts.
glitch1411: For me. I understand this is divided. Some like her, some do not.

1. No one should EVER attack the voice actor for any reason. They did their job and had no responsibility for the story. I think it is sad they were attacked for anything.

2. Important as well. I wish people would STOP using the word mentor. At no time are we a mentor to her. We are at best a servant or weapon, but never a mentor. A handful of nods, a couple of canned lines that change nothing does not make a mentor. Just like when Golbez lost to us... Stood up and threw the dragon in the hole. We could have not been there and it would have been the same outcome.

I LOVE the dev team and their passion. But I also believe that FF16 was the reason we got this expansion. Making 2 games of this caliber at the same time is impossible to have them both the same incredible quality. I have played FF16. And it is awesome. I also know my sub to 14 likely bank rolled it. God knows the other titles at SE did not.

I will continue to support this game because I believe the dev team should have the chance to do better. But I get sad seeing excuses instead of "we could have done better". This is my opinion. I am not right or wrong. It is how I feel and what I see.

As a side note. I also found the gamer play and combat top notch. It was the story that made me really disappointed. I get new world, new people. But the pacing and story were not FF14 quality. No way.
asyme9717: I'm really not sure he understood why she was so unpopular.

There's just way too much of her. She's everywhere. She's in everything. You can't escape her. She has almost more voice lines than the entire rest of the cast put together.

If you introduced a character who was down on their luck but struggling and succeeded? Sure. But introducing a character who sucked all the oxygen out of the room was disastrous. I play a hrothgal and... by the end, I never wanted to see Wuk again.
TheDarkThunder: 8.0 Hoary Boulder and the B team focus!
dullahandan4067: Never defend someone until you look up what they themselves are saying which has prompted the hate against them.
pedromoreira6218: Imma be honest i think by the end kf this expantion everyone will look back on it as the "lets not talk about that" expantion also the attacks towards the VA maybe she should think twice before attacking others first or when she decides to say "Smile is Black Gospel and if you don't like it your racist"
When you step into the arena dont expect your opponent to just stand there and take every blow you throw at em without retaliation
A new story arc start is not an excuse for a shit story and bad writing
Cneq: I'm kind of glad other people feel the same way about dawntrail.

I started playing it on release but at that time and up until now I've been having a lot of negative things happen in my life and even fleeing my home country and being in limbo across the world and I assumed my inability to enjoy dawntrail as much as I did with shadowbringers and endwalker was just because of my situation and me being depressed and bitter.

I'm glad the way I felt about dawntrail being a slog and overall just not as good as what came before a valid feeling.
zeehero7280: I thought yoshi P was smarter than that nobody was making personal attacks on the actors, only pointing out they should have done more takes til they got it right, or weren't ready.

The terrible voice acting would have been forgiveable if the writing wasn't terrible.
keanu7318: Wonder if Yoshi P is gonna acknowledge how the voice actor of Wuk Lamat said if you don't like the main theme song of dawntrail its because your racist towards black people. If anyone needs or wants context to what I'm talking about Xeno has a video covering it titled "Xeno Reacts to Wuk Lamat Drama FFXIV".
BrambleBear: It wasn't that Wuk Lamat had a negative starting point, she has no real character flaws. She's already strong, but lacks self confidence, gets sea sick, and is naive and those aren't meaningful flaws she over comes through growth, she simply does with bad pacing. She overcomes everything too easily, and when it comes to segments of gameplay for the player vs highlighting Wuk we got scenes like the train, or the final trial where we were omitted or simply left out other characters. We got a a cutscene for the train battle rather than making is playable for the WoL, and that sequence would have made an immensely fun solo duty. Krile really lost out this expac. This has nothing to do with the VA, it's a design process that went through the entire development of the game to reach this point, VA's don't get the script until after everything is finalized. The writing was a poorly paced start to a new story, but thankfully not as bad as ARR.
massimilianoguerrieri2858: Honestly, I closed my subscription, I didn't expect such a low quality story.
You save the world and then you become the bag carrier of an insecure kitten, not to mention the scion's that practically don't exist....
CombativeMedic: People were critical of the EN voice direction, but I didn't see anyone engaging with Bryer until the latter complained about DT's criticism, and overall acted hostile to the community by making bad faith takes (ie "you're racist if you dislike Smile because it's black gospel" etc.).

Bryer as a voice actor is very unprofessional, and I believe that sort of behavior deserves to be criticized. People are already upset about the story, don't add oil to those flames by dividing people.
deameo6525: really super weird hearing all these interviews and yoshi saying these things about wuk. like are we playing the same game youre talking about this msq was mediocre.
sushioishii8950: "No personal attacks", again with this even from YoshiP.. but no reciepts. Seems like this trend has infected FFXIV.
LunarValkyria: This expansion seems like it was written by the WoW writing team. That is how bad it felt.
Before people get on me for being a WoW hater. I think WoW does a lot of things well. Writing a story that you take part in and is enjoyable is not one of them.
WarGiver: I think the biggest contributor to her character is the fact that they over did her hiding her insecurity in the pre-DT MSQ, it came off as an over confident braggart, and not a sheltered and inexperienced little sister who is out trying to prove herself. Its subtle, but I think the fact she was introduced before launch left us with the first impression longer and it stuck. Had the quest line that led into DT occurred at launch instead of months before reception would have been completely different.
robertmcanany6397: This is gonna be a long one.

First off I wanna say that all the crap that happened with the VA for Wuk Lamat is...just ridiculous. Were they the best? Absolutely not. Does this mean they need to catch hell for it? Absolutely not. Attacking someone for not reading aloud to your liking is just stupid and the people who did this should be ashamed of themselves. Now let's move on the the legitimate criticism of Dawntrail.

Above all else, the story pacing for DT was god awful. I mean it was BAD. There was so much pointless filler added in to the first half of the 7.0 story that the whole "accomplish the feats" stuff could have been completed in a third of the time it actually took and the story progression would have lost nothing. As for the idea of the WoL being brought in as a "mentor," well, this has issues too. We didn't actually DO any mentoring; we followed along. We weren't a mentor, we were back-up. Now, that said, it does make a kind of sense for us not to have been the star of this particular show; the WoL is a being capable of flattening universe threatening enemies and in DT we were doing a contest of succession. Making us the key to this would have been akin to using a canon to kill a mosquito. Mega overkill. So I get that much of the plan, but that leaves us with another problem.
In the article, Yoshida mentions Wuk Lamat's "character progression." What progression? There was none. Unfortunately, this does actually fall into the "for modern audiences" category in that it was a story of Wuk Lamat finding out she was the bestest and strongest all along. That's not progression, that's realization...and it's stupid. Yoshida also mentions Alphinaud's story. THAT was progression. He started out as an arrogant little twit, got his butt kicked, realized
Rayjaya: My BIGGEST issue with wuk lamet is that it is established that she is bad at fighting, and by simply believing in herself she has become more powerful the space and time.
Meaning every single character that didn't make it was because they didn't believe in themselves enough thus rendering their sacrifice little more then personal failure and the lost of those characters empty and pointless
SamusKnight2K: I haven't even gotten that far into the story, but interesting to know that we aren't the leading character. My only issue so far is the sheer amounts of padding they do every expansion. Run around doing menial tasks just to progress the story a little. Even in some far-off land the WoL turns into the WoE, or Warrior of Errands.
numenos3218: Wol was wuk lamat’s personal cheerleader this entire expansion

Sep 10 2024

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