I already know there will be some crying XD but ima be real if its clear you didnt watch the video i wont bother responding to it ! And if your near to call me phobic through some weird mental gymnastics have at it , I can't imagine living in a world where I'm convinced people can't criticise people of certain orientations / identity etc etc But to everyone else enjoy and entirely objective look at Wuk Lamat !
preach made good points on dawntrail especially about scions , they put them on forefront on trailers yet half of them barely appear in expansion and their charcter growth is barely touched upon , its like some weird fanservice noone asked
I never understood why people will say things like "You just don't like not being the center of attention anymore!". Like, I wasn't the center of attention is Heavensward and it's my second favorite expansion. It's all about Estinien and Ysayle's attempts to finally end the war through their own means, and only at the end do we take center stage to avenge Haurchefant and deal with the Primal that shows up in King Thordan., and the post patch content is about Aymeric finally putting an end to the Dragonsong War through diplomacy, which is also done largely with us in a support role, with us only really ever needing to directly intervene to kill Nidhogg. And after that it's all about the Warriors of Darkness and learning about the reflections, then setting up Stormblood. The difference is that we're still helping throughout all of that, and our presence there does actually feel like it matters. All throughout Dawntrail it feels as though we could have just as easily been on Koana's team and Wuk would've still won in the end. Hell, we could've spent the entire time with Estinien in Texas and probably made little difference to the story. This wasn't a problem of not being in the spotlight, this was a problem of being made to feel as though we're literally just observers in the story. And people will counter that with "Oh, but Azem was just an observer, we're taking on their role" but like, you can tell me that Azem enjoyed having their fingernails ripped off, I'm not gonna be giddy to start partaking in their favorite activity if it's that agonizing.
What the people who make that argument fail to understand is that it's not about being the center of attention, it's about having our agency stripped away from us. Every expansion has moments that pull attention away from the Warrior of Light. All of them. The question is, is our agency also taken from us in those moments? Most of the time, the answer is no. Stormblood was the first time we really saw major instances of our agency being taken and situations being solved by plot conveniences. (See the giant cannon the Garleans were gonna blast us with from their big bridge in Gyr Abania that Estinien just shows up and destroys out of nowhere.) I don't know if Dawntrail necessarily does this more than any other expansion, but it certainly does it in the most egregious manner. There are multiple moments across its story where it makes zero sense whatsoever that the Scions and the Warrior of Light are present, but do absolutely nothing to prevent situations that they could easily have assisted in. It's because of situations like these, as well as instances where Wuk Lamat is given the spotlight over other characters better suited to do what the story insists on having her handle, that build frustration and cause it to feel like she's overstayed her welcome. On paper, her character should and could have worked. In practice, because of how the story was handled and because of the insistence on giving her the majority of the limelight, we end up seeing cracks in her characterization that are exacerbated by the story's poor pacing.
What they mean by that is that our character is hit with the bystander effect. As others said, we weren't the centerpiece of ARR, Heavensward, Stormblood or even Endwalker post-patches so I don't understand where this fallacy came from. Neither do I understand why people keep saying we're taking on a mentor role either, since we're mainly there as part of the Third Promise's entourage and offer little to no advice to the young princess whatsoever; It's particularly sad cause it would have been an interesting role reversal that was *already played out* in the past with The Rising events.
It's even worse than that. Hildibrand's questline on the surface have you also playing second banana to the inspector, yet both his quests and Wuk Lamat's couldn't be more different. They had the recipe right there. Create a cast of colorful characters, make a somewhat believable challenge for the protagonist to overcome, and make your character do their part, even if not in the spotlight. Dawntrail's sin is that they could have replaced the scions and the WoL with a group of Wuk Lamat's sycophants and nothing would have changed. No part of the story acknowledges that you needed to be there. You can't advise her, oppose her or correct her, can't do anything but whatever the hell she says and are chained to her as if the damn game was terrified of taking the spotlight off her for a single second. And that she takes that clearly one sided relationship as a display of friendship was the most infuriating thing.
German Wuk hits different and that's my two cents. I think Wuk overstayed her welcome in the second half, and there should've been more focus on Krile and Erenville, like she can also come along to avenge her dad and stuff, but she should be doing things in the background and probably left us to learn more about the people and what's going on. That's my personal take on it at least.
This! So much This. The German Voice Acting is very good (it is really!) so the "critic" on the english Voice Actor being a Trans Person and so being critical about DT MSQ and Wuk is transphobic falls appart when you have the same points but are playing in german (or japanes or french i guess). But the "bad" voice acting in english is just one more point of critic (because it's not as good as it should be NOT because which person or gender did the Job!!) I really tried to like the MSQ (and i had very nice moments) but it felt very rushed and it has too much Wuk Lamat in it (especially in the second half as you mentioned). But the Voice Acting has nothing to do with that (in german!)
Wuk is an out and out mary sue. She has no flaws, except for A) Those that allow her to be more loved ('She's just TOO friendly.') or B) Those that have zero effect on anything. She's always right, and the game honestly felt like it was pushing for me to romance her multiple times, between Gulool constantly pushing me to stay by her side, to the very camera trying to pull a romance shot.
I played the story with JP acting, and as much as I enjoyed Shimoyamada Ayaka's performance, it doesn't make up for how smothering Wuk Lamat was. I kept having to walk away for breaks because she wouldn't let me breathe for 5 minutes in game. I actually went into this story with optimism for what they could have had in store for her character and the story aa a whole...but now I'm considering a restraining order, and vacationing in Ishgard.
I agree with a lot of this, especially how off the voice sounded in multiple lines. Which makes me wonder, where was the voice director here? They've been using the same studio since HW, so how did we have such a huge drop of quality between last expac and this in voice acting?
I honestly didnt look to much into it, Wanted to try doing more detailed character reviews rather then just the story itself so worked with what i had to work with x I agree though some of the recording itself was off. Yshtola especially
Voice direction can only do so much. And looking at the English VA's past work, such as Unicorn Overlord (Where they voiced a character perfectly fine) which seems to put a time frame of when they became trans aka roughly 2-3 years ago. They got pushed into a female role way waaaay before their voice was ready to handle that. Leading to that amateur voice work where they can put on a voice, but cannot actually act with that voice.
Sometimes the VA sounded ok, but I got so confused with some of the supposedly more emotional line deliveries. Like. The gal is supposed to be mad as heck or ecstatic. And then the VA sounds so...robotic? Monotonous. And god. The dialogue. I was playing through the mamook area quests and one of them required you to gather info from npcs literally standing next to each other. Each of them had 2 sentences to say. And the writers decided I needed to hear a summary of 2 lines from wuk lamat every time I spoke with an npc. Dear Dawntrail writers. Am I 5? Or am I dumb? What the hell is this???
I'm just trying to wrap my head around exactly where WoL's power level is at compared to everyone else now that Zenos and the Ascians are gone? I felt as though most of the 'dangers' were from the perspective of everyone else that hasn't beaten Gods and an avatar of despair. I just feel like after Endwalker nothing should be a threat to us directly as the WoL anymore kinda like a Superman situation where we would have to pull our punches in order to not outright kill everyone we come across unintentionally because the only beings that could contend with us 1v1 are gone now.
I've had this conversation before , the WOL can easily be challenged by anyone , he still needs help in most of his fights relying on others or Azems crystal . The one time we have a pure one on one we basically died (Zenos) . We are certainly more powerful then the average person but we're no god and we aren't 1v1ing everyone ,
@MythSamael I agree that we're certainly not godlike, but we still fought Zenos 1v1... AFTER he'd consumed enough aether to take on a primal form, and withstand every attack that would have wiped the party in the endsinger fight (he just tanks every one of those attacks without flinching and stillprovides us a platform). Clearly we're not as durable as a god, but our power can't be on the same scale as a normal person.
WoL's power level has always been inconsistent. Remember back in Shadowbringers how we were already a Godslayer who had taken on some of the most powerful threats at the time alone including Primal Zenos, then comes old man Ran'jit who solos us and our group?
Also, she's young, we don't know how young, was stated after the fight with Dad. But it was like she had ADHD the first part of the expansion then the 2nd half, i will agree, was emotionless for the VA. Oh and her power creep was nuts! goes from getting her ass handed to her, to kicking BJJ's ass, to then the last trial. I think that's where most people had their immersion broke, mine included. I didn't hate, just had it's lows, had it's highs. Plus, expectations i personally lowered, to not be massively dissapointed.
@@MythSamaelFFXIV It feels like that was originally supposed to be the full story, since the halfway point feels like the actual end to a storyline. They may have felt that it wouldn't keep people's attention and decided to combine it with another expansion idea, giving us an Endwalker situation again.
Wuk Lamat is around 23 years old. Her father said she was 3 years old when she was pushed into the cenote, then roughly 20 years passed since GJJ adopts her. *Not sure if this was needed knowledge or not, but some people claimed she acted the way she does because she's the same age as the twins.
That was a very well put together analysis and feedback on Wuk Lamat! C: I can't really complain about anything here, because the feedback is pretty on point. Perhaps there are a view points I would have added here and there, but then it potentially would have gone a bit too far into an overall review instead of a Wuk Lamat specific one. The ugly section is understandable too, for a first time appearance it wasn't so bad, but I agree that compared to other performances it did lack depth for certain scenarios. Especially if you compare it to some of the VA performances we received for other major characters.
Yeah honestly nothing says it more then her scene during interphos where she dives in , just noi emmotion there its very blank but thank you for the kind comment !
all i wanted was more character building for WOL like the whole azem thing or how about albert was piece of your soul or how krile said you deserve love and build more stronger bond with your friends but they push all that aside instead building good materials they already have, but now we get what a mary sue with no brains who stuck to like a bad habit I want WOL development
The real problem with the voice acting is voice direction. There's a director telling the voice actor how they should sound, emote, what intonations to use, how things are pronounced etc. And I have a feeling they used a different VA studio for the most part this expansion because of all the americans, so probably a voice director with significantly less experience. Also, they should have dug deeper into the various cultures. Understanding and co-existing with other cultures requires a hell of a lot more than just putting on a festival, there's no actual culture clash until the very end, with Alexandria. That should've been present the whole way through.
@@MythSamaelFFXIV Also, Thancred and Urianger should've been a dungeon boss, at least a solo duty. Should also have been a solo duty where we spar with Wuk Lamat. Feels like there were some big missed oppurtunities
@@chstens I wanted to drop kick Thancred... Understand that I write this in a loving way, as two old friends that have been through a lot together, and proud of how he has grown as a person... I wanted to kick his teeth in the moment we threw hands
The whole "get to know the culture and reasons" thing got really old at the end of the msq. The whole last zone approach versus the need for expedience to stop the queen was really jarring. Also didn't understand the whole "Screw your final fight, I want to join in too!" thing they had Wuk Lamat do. I think it would have been better if the final boss was dealing massive damage and Wuk Lamat was tanking it for us, but instead she shows up and tries to steal the spotlight. Didn't mind the voice acting so much since the VA could pronounce the terms and names unlike my english speaking only butt.
What bothered me about the last zone is it was... kind of the opposite of what I would ever want to do. Oh, I'm here to pull the plug on your City. Quick, tell me all your dreams and aspirations. Frankly I'd want to know as little as possible to get it done. Oh, you're reunited with your Fiance? LOL not for long. Exceptions of course are a courtesy to Erenville and Krile. But the other two areas/detours...? We're on a timer. Hell, the timer aspect already makes the Erenville and Krile stuff an exaggerated luxury/risk. Edit: Also I feel those two are done dirty. They have something exceptionally fucked up to them and Erenville is piecing it together alone an entire zone before the last and Krile's like "Sorry for wasting your time on me" during the Wuk Lamat show. Sheesh. Though I will say that part isn't too unrealistic, as both of them are introverts and Wuk is very much an extravert, but it comes down to agency again. In theory Erenville and especially Krile who's been a peer since Heavensward should matter more to you. The importance of Wuk at that point should have been diminished since you helped her accomplish her goal, and at that point stopping Sphene was a mutual interest shared by all present rather than some sort of deciding factor like Dawnservant was.
Its actually easy to understand what they where thinking when they injected WuK Lamat into the last fight. Ppl liked when Gaia showed up in the Shiva-fight in eden and ppl where also absolutly hyped when Zenos showed up to the metion-fight.. so.. they combined those two situations, thinking it would lead to an even better reception... it did not.. on the contrary.. it spoiled those earlier two examples. similar they wrote themself in a corner with the air-blockade of Tuliyollal ( same with the cannon is SB tbh ) so they had to use a mc-guffin that wasn't built up (within the expansion ) to save the day. in the hopes that the "rule of cool" will be enough to carry it.
Fair enough. I agree with good and bad and don't really think the ugly part was all that bad. I mean ffs Y'shtola sounded like they had her record her lines in an airport bathroom. And there were many Thancred lines which also sounded off from his character. But Wuk Lamat's VA I felt was fine.
I felt the same during Endwalker and the early part of Dawntrail till i realised the monotone was definatly not an intended character trait. Its passable but its just no energy, If you do a side by side of her introduction in Endwalker to her diving into the interphos its the same tone, There is just no range and it just sucked me out of it
@@MythSamaelFFXIV To me I never enjoy the comparing and contrasting of performances. Of course I'm very much influenced by what I see first. For example; I grew up with Dragonball with its english voice cast. I absolutely cannot stand the Japanese voice cast for Dragonball. So to me if I was really focusing in on it maybe I'd notice but I've also seen the performances of the other voice casts and did not find a difference in the quality personally. BUT all in all 2/3 things to agree on so one thing is not that big of an issue for me but I understand and appreciate it meaning a lot to you. I hope that's not too dismissive of your critique it's a valid critique I suppose I lack the ear for it in my own subjective experience. I will concede to that. Anyways good video as always :) 💙
I’m sorry but the voice acting is wrong because it’s trying to be something different in the first place. Like actors trying an accent they aren’t supposed to have. The voice actor doesn’t have the range to start with to allow the emotions to shine. To help with this the FX team could have given Wuk Lamat a bit more emotions in the game and scenes to help with this. The PCs in Limsa utilize emotes and emotions better than the dev team gave Wuk Lamat. The scary thing is, the dev team knew this was going to be an issue before release. The amount of quality control Yoshi does… no way he and his team didn’t know..
I didn't hate her voice itself. The problems you mentioned were present in a number of the performances and I'm leaning toward placing most of the blame on the director that oversaw the recording. Someone in that room with the full context of the dialogue should damn well have done some retakes with direction on where to put emphasis. I'm not saying it was entirely off the VA's shoulders, but the overall performances of a lot of the characters that would have been recorded in North America (the Latino and American accented cast) were off. The American ones sounded like I was playing Fallout 3 again. I didn't feel that she developed at all over the story. She learned about periodically but her approach to problems, people, and situations never changed. She had a very immature and stupid ideological approach that made her seem like an idiot in any serious situation with the most glaring in the last 2 zones of the expansion. I went from generally annoyed to actual dislike and stayed there. The root of the problem was the terrible MSQ writing. The pacing, characterizations, dialogue, and depth of the writing were very poor quality compared to the previous expansions and the entire thing had a seriously juvenile tone like a young adult novel. These weren't problems with Wuk Lamat, they were problems with the writing overall. I really hope they can course correct going forward but with development cycles being what they are, I doubt we'll see any real feedback related pivots until 7.3 or 7.4.
Ngl 70% of the entire game is written about her, but I still finished the expansion feeling she never once justified her presence lol. Only the back 30% of the game actually feels like final Fantasy 14 again. The majority of it was just as absolute slog to play through from both a content perspective (in terms of questing; the dungeons and VERY FEW duties we did get were fine) and a story perspective. She's just very simplistic and predictable in an unsatisfying and disappointing way, and I feel like 14 has had 10 years to figure out how to make characters feel organic and interesting. Because she's so cyclical, she feels more like she's hijacking the story rather than being a part of it. And her awful actress's performance made it all the worse. Sena did a good job in unicorn overlord as Gloucester, but here she's genuinely awful. I hope Wuk gets the stormblood treatment and is kept as much out of the story as possible. Playing through her journey was miserable for me, truly. Good video though. I like your frantic energy. Its very refreshing lol
There was just too much Wuk Lamat. I agree with Preach, the character was doomed by overuse. They didn't give you any chance of wanting her around because they shoved her down your throat. Add in the flat delivery of lines that should have been emotionally poignant and you have a recipe for disaster.
Thank you! The most frustrating part of DT criticism is people trying to turn ot into a trans issue when that is irrelevant. You post onjective criticism and some nasty people take it either as a green light to be transphobic or others try to dismiss fair criticism calling you a bigot because you didn't like the VA's performance. Ash Ketchum is voiced by a woman, that has never alrered my view on Ash pr if I liked the Pokemon anime growing up. This is no different. To me, I strongly disliked the voice acting, not just of Wuk Lamat, she just got the harshest criticism because she has so much dialogue compared to all the other characters but Erenville's mom and the "Americans" immediately stick out as examples of equally bad English performances. I don't know if it was bad direction(although some scenes are self explanatory through the dialogue so that is hard to blame on anyone but the actors), a consequence of the bad writing in a lot of DT or just bad casting sonce a lot pf them honestly came off like amateur VAs which should not be a thing in a game as massive as FF14, but it was awful to me. Wuk Lamat needed to absolutely nail every line because she was already guaranteed to be disliked because of how much screentime she had and it was a huge miss in a lot of the biggest moments in the expansion IMO.
Me and my Wife Honey B Lovely will oblige this request as we do with everyone who strolls into our discord XD but seriously thank you this made me smile !
i actually really liked the parts of the story where it was just us on our own having our own adventure. to me Wuk lamat was insufferable. She is naruto without the struggles. like how have you lived here for your whole life and talking how you do about the people of the land and you are so flabbergasted whenever you talk to a new people "i guess i never knew" how many times over the course of the expac did she say this, or something to that effect? i lost count. and it has nothing to do with the VA i have my own grips about her and now that you said that last part i agree with that part too but her being trans is not part of my gripps about her, and i hate that my valid criticisms about her character are just being of your just transphobic like come on man.
Yup it's a minefield and ideots out there genuinely believe your not allowed to criticise peoples work anymore without u being some form of ist or phobe
i did not like wuk lamat. yes i saw her growth and i like it but after the half way point they should have focus more on krile and erenville. the stuff that happen in the final trial i did not like it one bit. imo lyse is better than wuk lamat. like wuk lamat is just annoying there where some scene where she would not just shut up. and before people start telling me oh i hate wuk lamat Because VA is trans uh no. this has nothing to do with sena bryer. i just hate the character that is all. everything else in dawntrail was 10/10
So, the big thing isn't the VA herself, but the English voice direction. It normally is passable (see Endwalker's highs and lows for it) but for some reason they just kinda phoned it in with the English VAs. I wonder if this was because the story team is not the same as the one in EW and Shadowbringers. Ishikawa has moved from active story to story management, taking the atrocious Oda's spot, but that means we get her only controlling the flow of the story, not the minutia which made her work so memorable and awesome in the good/great parts of Stormblood (all of Othard and the patch content,) all the way through to Endwalker MSQ as she had begun to transition during the Patch content. Combined with Koji's now greater role and not direct hyper connection to only 14 (he is now CBU3's lead localizer for all their works, so he was working on 16 when DT's main oomph was being worked on) this all cascaded into what we received. I honestly don't mind taking a mentor role, and would have appreciated it being leaned into more, because, and this was just how I felt, we weren't even a real mentor. We were a cheerleader, and a poor one at that, and felt more like we were stroking an ego than actually providing teaching or even more than just brute muscle. And even that wouldn't have been bad, if the twist with Koana wasn't just something they had her come up with, while we, as the players, saw it from Zone 2. It felt like we as the WoL turned our own brains off, as well as the twins, which then makes Wuk look even worse. This criticism comes from me absolutely preferring her pre-Heritage Found stage to after that point. After that, I literally came to despise her. She was that derpy kid who interrupts when the adults are talking and trying to get information, and the kid can't stay shut up for a minute to allow the adults to finish. Multiple times she interrupts either intellectual conversations between Sphene and the WoL or Alphinaud and goes "I too dumb, less talk, more do stuff," and the stuff we do is absolutely pointless bullshit. It felt like they were using her for fourth wall silly hahas, when the time for silly hahas was over, and serious time had begun. In short, this is a better Stormblood, with less cultural insensitivity, but less quality writing, in a more cohesive bundle. It is what Stormblood could have been. So I think a 7.5/10 For reference, I put HW at 6/10, ARR at 5/10, SB at 6.5|7/10, Shadowbringers at 8/10, and EW at 8/10
Yeah i didnt look deep into the why cause this was more about Wuk Lamat then the decisions behind her but i do think one other major issue was the fact that succession story line was only half of the expansion, Feels like it should have been the whole thing for more breathing room
I disagree with her growth. She has growth at the 95 quest and the degrade back to same old after that. Entire second half is so bad to the point I hate her at the end of story.
The first half of this expac could have just as easily been patch quest content, a little light contest after defeating the big bad of 7.0. It was all filler 90-97 msq. Wuk Lamat is an awful, 1 dimensional character who had such little growth over the course despite keeping up near 100% uptime on her 'Speak to Wuk Lamat" skill. Hardly surprising since the main scenario writer of DT was mainly responsible for patch and side content prior.
I'm a little confused as to what you mean by atrocities being 'swept under the rug'. I've recently finished the story, and I don't recall her sweeping any away. In fact, I recall her complaining about everything a lot. In fact, one of my complaints was that while they make sure to mention relevant points, they do so again and again. So, I'm drawing a blank on which example you are referring.
@@MythSamaelFFXIV Yeah, I was honestly sick to my stomach when that was revealed. And then they just 'oh, that's terrible! Anyways, let's go to the mid-west now!" and off they go. Never to discuss it again.
@@MythSamaelFFXIV That's the part that really let me down with Wuk Lamat. Here's what's essentially a AI programmed to keep the memories of her people alive as facsimiles on life support through mass genocide for soul energy and yet even after they raided Tulliyollal and killed some of the citizens while she unashamedly stood by and watched, Wuk Lamat still thinks she can empathize and be friends with Sphene at the Interphos? And not only that, but because she had to be the Mary Sue of the expansion, we got cheapened out of any real development of Erenville and Krile who had more at stake with their character growth in relation to their parents being dead but kept alive in Living Memory. She had her arc in the first half where she became the leader of her people and was working toward finding other ways to keep them happy while respecting their cultures. At no point did she intervene in the duel between Gulool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja when it because clear that something was out of sorts after the latter revived himself with the regulator because of "honor", but then has the audacity to feel like she must kill Zoraal Ja to avenge her dead father despite doing nothing to prevent said death, and our character stands there like an idiot because they arrived back to witness everything first-hand when it would have made a lot more sense for the Scions and Wuk Lamat and Koana to have stepped in but were incapacitated, and our character and Erenville to have arrived after the fact and got the exposition through an Echo flashback upon entering the throne room and looking over to Gulool Ja Ja's corpse and seeing the others reeling from the emotional trauma. There's a whole lot of questionable writing and portrayal of said writing this expansion, and it dampens what would have been an overall enjoyable experience when you look back on it in hindsight. I get the feeling that it was a case of trying to one-up the reception to Endwalker's 7.0 storyline even though that was a culmination of a 10 year arc and this was just the grassroots of beginning another 10 year saga.
SPEEEEEEN! LISSUM TU MI. No but seriously, imaging getting more angry over a bird being threatened than finding out that an entire culture on your island has been systematically birthing stillborns in the hope that one of them survives to become a super soldier.
That's why I always prefer to experience the original voice acting as originally intended by the creators of the game. In FFXIV case is the Japanese voice actors.
@@limontree476 Koji has made significant contributions to the CB3 team, resulting in the creation of great songs with English lyrics that still align with the game's lore. However, it's important to note that these contributions alone do not determine whether the game's original intended voice is in English or Japanese. The direction taken is ultimately the decision of the game's director, made on a case-by-case basis. This is also why the original intended voice for FFXVI is in English, not merely because Yoshi P is Japanese, but because of his directorial choices
@@setsuna5919 *"This is also why the original intended voice for FFXVI is in English, not merely because Yoshi P is Japanese, but because of his directorial choices"* -------------------------------- Elaborate?
@@wakkaseta8351 Sorry for my bad english To clarify, Yoshi-P chose the original voice languages for FFXIV and FFXVI based on the creative direction, not just because he's Japanese. For FFXIV, Japanese fit the game’s vision. For FFXVI, he chose English to match the "Game of Thrones" vibe he wanted. The original voice is determined by the creator’s vision, not their nationality.
Tbh another thing that plagues the expansion in parts which is most notabele in Wuk is just, bad voice direction in places, it's just way more noticeable for Wuk because she's the "main character" of the expansion (or at least on the English side, have heard good things about the other languages though!) But also this expansion just feels like they pulled an endwalker where it just looks like it's 2 different ideas for 2 different expansions stitched together like a Frankenstein and the overlap just kinda doesn't work, it feels like they imagined people would get too bored of the whole get 7 stones story an decided to add another "if you don't deal with this the entire world and probably universe is going to die again eventually" . In turn I do feel like, as you mentioned, a lot of bad things are just kinda swept under the rug, like the entire blessed sibling birthing thing where thousands upon thousands of fucking infants died and we're just kinda like "damn that's horrible, anyway", and like I get not holding it against Bakool and all that as he's just a problem of that fucked up system but not even the father or ANY of the other mamool ja really mention something like that has happened after it gets explained. (also them playing some of the happiest fucking lyrics in the credits as we walk past the grave of literal thousands of infants was probably not intentional, but god that makes it so much worse like its just all forgotten)
YES ! that exactly what i was on about, thousands of dead children, The fact that she finds out on multiple occasions that Sphene is responsible for the slaughter of Wuks people and shes still trying to be her super best friend its like wtf
Found you on the TH-cam algorithm, and it is both a bit odd to see such a divisive character like Wuk Lamat. I still believe she is like a rough gem. There is beauty inside, but it is surrounded by spikes and a few stink lines here n there. I still like her, i find it dumb that people froth out the mouth that you can't criticize her. I also don't like how some of her English voice lines are delivered flat sometimes. Great video and keep it up
I couldn't agree more. I loved the mentor-type vibe we took through-out, and I especially enjoyed watching her grow as an individual and a leader. I also wholeheartedly agree with the story just dragging ass through out the middle part, though I will point out this isn't a new issue with DT. I can think of several instances in each expansion that just felt like busy work for the sake of busy work. And while I love the characterization, I really wish they had gotten an actual Meso-American VA to play her for the English cast. I am very happy for and proud of Ms. Bryer, but this role should not have been given to her. I played some of her lines for a Hispanic friend (who doesn't play 14), without context or video, and the first thing she asked me was "What white girl did they talk into pretending to be Latino?" and I think that sums it up. It isn't like Lamaty'i was just some secondary character we talk to one time, where such a shoe horning wouldn't have mattered much. She is the main focus point the entirety of the MSQ. All that having been said, she is still my fuzzy waifu.
Trans person here. You have a good point, and you didn't said anything transphobic. One thing is criticize the work of the person and other thing just criticize it because the person is trans. If you don't like her voice, it's completely fine! But if your argument is "Just because is trans" it's a whole other thing 👁️
@@MythSamaelFFXIV Yeah, it's valid to feel that way, there's a lot of people that actually speak just because of the hate and transphobia so is very easy to be on defensive when someone talk about this topic, but you did it great ✨
Cool, came bc of thumbnail but taking your word that the thumbnail is just bait and the video is a proper review that I'll probably personally disagree with, Bc i liked the character beyond any/all reason and I dont want to ruin my enjoyment of the only expansion I like by delving too deep into it. Have the totally useless comment, hope it boosts engagement and i hope you have a good day.
i mean rhetoric and action dissonance is pretty common for political leaders. That said the read I got was more unity focused then justice. Her whole reason for putting her hat in the ring is that she doesn't want things to change. Voice Acting. You can normally tell pretty easy which are just transphobia and which are taste, yours are clearly taste. Personally i thought her Voicer Acting was fine, it wasnt great but it was fine. The issue it has is shes pushing too much accent thats not natural and its bleaching the rest of her performance. For me her tone mostly lines up with her animations. Which is "Goof ball little sister"
I honestly feel that the story was just poor. The writer is apparently the one who wrote the stinker that was Storm Blood and is pretty much known to write black hole sues.
@@MythSamaelFFXIV I wish we would have the whole Trial thing in 7.0 and then 7.1 - 7.3 where just Alexandria (which had soooo much lost potential!) and then 7.4 and 7.5 would lead to the next Expansion. I just hated that the last Zone was so cool with so much easter eggs to FF9 (my beloved FF9 ♥) and we just make it grey and empty in like 20 Minutes MSQ :(. Lost potential!
ill admit the thumbnail did scare me for a moment, but this was a good speedy review of wuk lamat's character. while i disagree on some points, i can appreciate the effort taken to keep things subjective and within your realm of opinion and belief without attempting to suggest that your critique is fact and anyone who disagrees is cringe on a more... dangerous note. i can respect the feeling of having to preemptively defend against comments of transphobia, especially with regards to wuk lamat and the incredibly divisive nature of criticism surrounding her (with regards to people very obviously saying they don't like her because Sena Bryer is trans, even if they pretend that's not the reason). i would hope that the people that stumble onto this video are capable of comprehending that none of your comments about the voice work are some thinly veiled transphobia. as a trans person however, i can explain why some people might jump to that conclusion initially, even if after a few minutes of thought they are able to understand that said conclusion was not necessary. many people have very loudly spoken out about disliking wuk lamat's character for her VA being trans, and so often there's an anxiety when discussing and listening to criticism of her character, since so many people will try to play ignorant about their transphobia even when it's so obvious to anyone with a brain. a wide margin of trans people will definitely experience this nervousness and apprehension when going into topics such as these, as while we are completely capable of comprehending critique of a trans person's work, there are so many more instances of blatant bigotry thinly disguised as criticism, which is why some of us can get antsy about it. THAT SAID, i do not see this video as transphobic in any way. you have very obviously been able to separate the actor from the character, aside from where they do connect in the vocal performance, and it's clear that your criticisms are not fueled by internal bigotry or other beliefs about the VA that are cascading onto Wuk Lamat (even when you do throw in some intentionally sketchy jokes). all this is just an explanation that, ideally, you wouldn't need to cite sources for why you're not transphobic in criticizing a trans woman's vocal performance, but the effort is appreciated nonetheless. TL:DR, people generally don't think that Wuk Lamat and Sena Bryer are immune to critique because of their gender identity, but rather we are so used to seeing very obviously bigotry-fueled "criticism" that we can instinctively go on the defensive when engaging in this kind of conversation because (unfortunately) we can't be certain out the gate that what someone is going to say is either legitimately unbiased opinions or blatant transphobia. and also the reason i leave this comment is so that hopefully someone else might understand why trans people (and minority groups in general) can act like this - we don't believe trans people are immune to criticism, we've just seen so much of it that's very clearly based in hate. all in all, good vid! there was a full 3 seconds where i thought i was the trans cat you found in canada somehow, even though i know that's not possible.
Thank you for the feedback and you articulated it well. Yes I wanted to do a review but new because of Wuk's voice actor it was a minefield. However I did have trans in my test audience and my intention was to mention it early and not again. The joke about the " Im not phobic, I have a trans friend " was actually a suggestion by them to meme on the common anecdote
I don't understand why people were thinking their WoL was going to be the center of attention when it was known for months that we were going to be assisting her through some sort of trials.
Honestly, I can see why some people would walk away with the impression that her VA was kind of flat. I really didn't notice because despite her outward appearance, Wuk struck me as a very sheltered person from her very first appearance. Yeah, the trope they use with her in every zone gets a bit tiresome, but real sheltered people like her truly do act like that if they're not outright horrible people. When I heard about the orientation of her VA, I genuinely didn't care because it has nothing to do with the character or what the VA was trying to accomplish overall. The people that did have an issue with it are probably more sheltered than this particular fictional character. Which is saying something. 😁 Side note: thanks for covering this with minimal spoilers. You did an excellent job getting your point across without ruining anything. Keep up the good work. 🫡
thanks for the kind words and yeah i really wanted to cover this and more characters but whenever u run into social issue stuff its like, yeah difficult
I already know there will be some crying XD but ima be real if its clear you didnt watch the video i wont bother responding to it ! And if your near to call me phobic through some weird mental gymnastics have at it , I can't imagine living in a world where I'm convinced people can't criticise people of certain orientations / identity etc etc
But to everyone else enjoy and entirely objective look at Wuk Lamat !
We absolutely never mentor her once. We stand off to the side and nod. We are glorified babysitters.
especially when we cooked for her and hold her hand D:
preach made good points on dawntrail especially about scions , they put them on forefront on trailers yet half of them barely appear in expansion and their charcter growth is barely touched upon , its like some weird fanservice noone asked
I'm assuming alot of it will make sense with the post msq
It really does feel like someone got to write a fan-fic and we all had to play it. Wuk is literally perfect. Peak mary sue.
I never understood why people will say things like "You just don't like not being the center of attention anymore!".
Like, I wasn't the center of attention is Heavensward and it's my second favorite expansion. It's all about Estinien and Ysayle's attempts to finally end the war through their own means, and only at the end do we take center stage to avenge Haurchefant and deal with the Primal that shows up in King Thordan., and the post patch content is about Aymeric finally putting an end to the Dragonsong War through diplomacy, which is also done largely with us in a support role, with us only really ever needing to directly intervene to kill Nidhogg. And after that it's all about the Warriors of Darkness and learning about the reflections, then setting up Stormblood.
The difference is that we're still helping throughout all of that, and our presence there does actually feel like it matters. All throughout Dawntrail it feels as though we could have just as easily been on Koana's team and Wuk would've still won in the end. Hell, we could've spent the entire time with Estinien in Texas and probably made little difference to the story. This wasn't a problem of not being in the spotlight, this was a problem of being made to feel as though we're literally just observers in the story. And people will counter that with "Oh, but Azem was just an observer, we're taking on their role" but like, you can tell me that Azem enjoyed having their fingernails ripped off, I'm not gonna be giddy to start partaking in their favorite activity if it's that agonizing.
I genuinly enjoyed the story for what it was . I have little complaints about its core and enjoyed the look in role we were given
What the people who make that argument fail to understand is that it's not about being the center of attention, it's about having our agency stripped away from us.
Every expansion has moments that pull attention away from the Warrior of Light. All of them. The question is, is our agency also taken from us in those moments? Most of the time, the answer is no. Stormblood was the first time we really saw major instances of our agency being taken and situations being solved by plot conveniences. (See the giant cannon the Garleans were gonna blast us with from their big bridge in Gyr Abania that Estinien just shows up and destroys out of nowhere.) I don't know if Dawntrail necessarily does this more than any other expansion, but it certainly does it in the most egregious manner. There are multiple moments across its story where it makes zero sense whatsoever that the Scions and the Warrior of Light are present, but do absolutely nothing to prevent situations that they could easily have assisted in. It's because of situations like these, as well as instances where Wuk Lamat is given the spotlight over other characters better suited to do what the story insists on having her handle, that build frustration and cause it to feel like she's overstayed her welcome.
On paper, her character should and could have worked. In practice, because of how the story was handled and because of the insistence on giving her the majority of the limelight, we end up seeing cracks in her characterization that are exacerbated by the story's poor pacing.
What they mean by that is that our character is hit with the bystander effect. As others said, we weren't the centerpiece of ARR, Heavensward, Stormblood or even Endwalker post-patches so I don't understand where this fallacy came from. Neither do I understand why people keep saying we're taking on a mentor role either, since we're mainly there as part of the Third Promise's entourage and offer little to no advice to the young princess whatsoever; It's particularly sad cause it would have been an interesting role reversal that was *already played out* in the past with The Rising events.
You're very much the center of Heavensward really quickly though.
It's even worse than that. Hildibrand's questline on the surface have you also playing second banana to the inspector, yet both his quests and Wuk Lamat's couldn't be more different. They had the recipe right there. Create a cast of colorful characters, make a somewhat believable challenge for the protagonist to overcome, and make your character do their part, even if not in the spotlight.
Dawntrail's sin is that they could have replaced the scions and the WoL with a group of Wuk Lamat's sycophants and nothing would have changed. No part of the story acknowledges that you needed to be there. You can't advise her, oppose her or correct her, can't do anything but whatever the hell she says and are chained to her as if the damn game was terrified of taking the spotlight off her for a single second. And that she takes that clearly one sided relationship as a display of friendship was the most infuriating thing.
German Wuk hits different and that's my two cents.
I think Wuk overstayed her welcome in the second half, and there should've been more focus on Krile and Erenville, like she can also come along to avenge her dad and stuff, but she should be doing things in the background and probably left us to learn more about the people and what's going on. That's my personal take on it at least.
Haha I agree whole heartedly
This! So much This. The German Voice Acting is very good (it is really!) so the "critic" on the english Voice Actor being a Trans Person and so being critical about DT MSQ and Wuk is transphobic falls appart when you have the same points but are playing in german (or japanes or french i guess). But the "bad" voice acting in english is just one more point of critic (because it's not as good as it should be NOT because which person or gender did the Job!!)
I really tried to like the MSQ (and i had very nice moments) but it felt very rushed and it has too much Wuk Lamat in it (especially in the second half as you mentioned). But the Voice Acting has nothing to do with that (in german!)
@@bobomb7504 ZORAAAAAAL JAAAAAAA!!!!!! I could literally hear the vocal cords going 110% in that cutscene in that clip of german wuk lamat lol
Wuk is an out and out mary sue. She has no flaws, except for A) Those that allow her to be more loved ('She's just TOO friendly.') or B) Those that have zero effect on anything. She's always right, and the game honestly felt like it was pushing for me to romance her multiple times, between Gulool constantly pushing me to stay by her side, to the very camera trying to pull a romance shot.
I didn't see it like that though now u mention it , it was certainly make a brilliant creepy pasta if that was the intention / direction
Doesn't every expansion try to pseudo ship you with one or two particular characters? Just look at Haurchefant and Lyse.
I played the story with JP acting, and as much as I enjoyed Shimoyamada Ayaka's performance, it doesn't make up for how smothering Wuk Lamat was. I kept having to walk away for breaks because she wouldn't let me breathe for 5 minutes in game.
I actually went into this story with optimism for what they could have had in store for her character and the story aa a whole...but now I'm considering a restraining order, and vacationing in Ishgard.
In order to see this reply you must complete the following :-
Go Speak with Wuk Lamat
@@MythSamaelFFXIVMy lawyers would charge me extra for that so I guess I'm good 😅
Here's to a good few months as we wait for the Alliance raids.
I agree with a lot of this, especially how off the voice sounded in multiple lines. Which makes me wonder, where was the voice director here? They've been using the same studio since HW, so how did we have such a huge drop of quality between last expac and this in voice acting?
I honestly didnt look to much into it, Wanted to try doing more detailed character reviews rather then just the story itself so worked with what i had to work with x I agree though some of the recording itself was off. Yshtola especially
Because it's not the same studio this expac lol
Voice direction can only do so much. And looking at the English VA's past work, such as Unicorn Overlord (Where they voiced a character perfectly fine) which seems to put a time frame of when they became trans aka roughly 2-3 years ago. They got pushed into a female role way waaaay before their voice was ready to handle that. Leading to that amateur voice work where they can put on a voice, but cannot actually act with that voice.
Sometimes the VA sounded ok, but I got so confused with some of the supposedly more emotional line deliveries. Like. The gal is supposed to be mad as heck or ecstatic. And then the VA sounds so...robotic? Monotonous. And god. The dialogue. I was playing through the mamook area quests and one of them required you to gather info from npcs literally standing next to each other. Each of them had 2 sentences to say. And the writers decided I needed to hear a summary of 2 lines from wuk lamat every time I spoke with an npc. Dear Dawntrail writers. Am I 5? Or am I dumb? What the hell is this???
Wuk Lamat: spheeeeene, 1/10 VA.
Yeah basically everyone I know noticed it straight away !
The german voice acting of wuk was fantastic, which is rare, usually english is superior. But this expansion I liked the german more.
I'm just trying to wrap my head around exactly where WoL's power level is at compared to everyone else now that Zenos and the Ascians are gone? I felt as though most of the 'dangers' were from the perspective of everyone else that hasn't beaten Gods and an avatar of despair. I just feel like after Endwalker nothing should be a threat to us directly as the WoL anymore kinda like a Superman situation where we would have to pull our punches in order to not outright kill everyone we come across unintentionally because the only beings that could contend with us 1v1 are gone now.
I've had this conversation before , the WOL can easily be challenged by anyone , he still needs help in most of his fights relying on others or Azems crystal . The one time we have a pure one on one we basically died (Zenos) . We are certainly more powerful then the average person but we're no god and we aren't 1v1ing everyone ,
@MythSamael I agree that we're certainly not godlike, but we still fought Zenos 1v1... AFTER he'd consumed enough aether to take on a primal form, and withstand every attack that would have wiped the party in the endsinger fight (he just tanks every one of those attacks without flinching and stillprovides us a platform).
Clearly we're not as durable as a god, but our power can't be on the same scale as a normal person.
@@MythSamaelFFXIV But then you have to say that you think Bakool or Zoraal (pre lv 99) are considered on par with Zenos.
WoL's power level has always been inconsistent. Remember back in Shadowbringers how we were already a Godslayer who had taken on some of the most powerful threats at the time alone including Primal Zenos, then comes old man Ran'jit who solos us and our group?
@@MythSamaelFFXIV yeah and renember that a faar weaker version of said Zenos took on a hole army by himself and won???
Also, she's young, we don't know how young, was stated after the fight with Dad. But it was like she had ADHD the first part of the expansion then the 2nd half, i will agree, was emotionless for the VA. Oh and her power creep was nuts! goes from getting her ass handed to her, to kicking BJJ's ass, to then the last trial. I think that's where most people had their immersion broke, mine included. I didn't hate, just had it's lows, had it's highs. Plus, expectations i personally lowered, to not be massively dissapointed.
Yeah honestly I think the succession story should of taken up the entire leveling msq to give it more room to breathe
@@MythSamaelFFXIV It feels like that was originally supposed to be the full story, since the halfway point feels like the actual end to a storyline. They may have felt that it wouldn't keep people's attention and decided to combine it with another expansion idea, giving us an Endwalker situation again.
Wuk Lamat is around 23 years old. Her father said she was 3 years old when she was pushed into the cenote, then roughly 20 years passed since GJJ adopts her.
*Not sure if this was needed knowledge or not, but some people claimed she acted the way she does because she's the same age as the twins.
@@CombativeMedic would you not agree that 23 is still young?
That was a very well put together analysis and feedback on Wuk Lamat! C:
I can't really complain about anything here, because the feedback is pretty on point. Perhaps there are a view points I would have added here and there, but then it potentially would have gone a bit too far into an overall review instead of a Wuk Lamat specific one. The ugly section is understandable too, for a first time appearance it wasn't so bad, but I agree that compared to other performances it did lack depth for certain scenarios. Especially if you compare it to some of the VA performances we received for other major characters.
Yeah honestly nothing says it more then her scene during interphos where she dives in , just noi emmotion there its very blank but thank you for the kind comment !
all i wanted was more character building for WOL like the whole azem thing or how about albert was piece of your soul or how krile said you deserve love and build more stronger bond with your friends but they push all that aside instead building good materials they already have, but now we get what a mary sue with no brains who stuck to like a bad habit I want WOL development
The real problem with the voice acting is voice direction. There's a director telling the voice actor how they should sound, emote, what intonations to use, how things are pronounced etc. And I have a feeling they used a different VA studio for the most part this expansion because of all the americans, so probably a voice director with significantly less experience. Also, they should have dug deeper into the various cultures. Understanding and co-existing with other cultures requires a hell of a lot more than just putting on a festival, there's no actual culture clash until the very end, with Alexandria. That should've been present the whole way through.
Yeah i can see that aswell, It was certainly a weird miss
@@MythSamaelFFXIV Also, Thancred and Urianger should've been a dungeon boss, at least a solo duty. Should also have been a solo duty where we spar with Wuk Lamat. Feels like there were some big missed oppurtunities
@@chstens I wanted to drop kick Thancred... Understand that I write this in a loving way, as two old friends that have been through a lot together, and proud of how he has grown as a person... I wanted to kick his teeth in the moment we threw hands
Some lalafell always trying to ice skate uphill.
I have no idea how to interpret this XD
@@MythSamaelFFXIV you said blood for the blood God. Made me think of my favorite Blade quote.
@@zombieent8796 OH i cant believe i missed that . Dammit puddle of shame for me
@@MythSamaelFFXIV I noticed it because it wasn't blood lily
The whole "get to know the culture and reasons" thing got really old at the end of the msq. The whole last zone approach versus the need for expedience to stop the queen was really jarring. Also didn't understand the whole "Screw your final fight, I want to join in too!" thing they had Wuk Lamat do. I think it would have been better if the final boss was dealing massive damage and Wuk Lamat was tanking it for us, but instead she shows up and tries to steal the spotlight.
Didn't mind the voice acting so much since the VA could pronounce the terms and names unlike my english speaking only butt.
Yeah it felt very formulaic and I still think the whole right of succession should of encompassed the whole storyb
What bothered me about the last zone is it was... kind of the opposite of what I would ever want to do. Oh, I'm here to pull the plug on your City. Quick, tell me all your dreams and aspirations. Frankly I'd want to know as little as possible to get it done. Oh, you're reunited with your Fiance? LOL not for long. Exceptions of course are a courtesy to Erenville and Krile. But the other two areas/detours...? We're on a timer. Hell, the timer aspect already makes the Erenville and Krile stuff an exaggerated luxury/risk.
Edit: Also I feel those two are done dirty. They have something exceptionally fucked up to them and Erenville is piecing it together alone an entire zone before the last and Krile's like "Sorry for wasting your time on me" during the Wuk Lamat show. Sheesh. Though I will say that part isn't too unrealistic, as both of them are introverts and Wuk is very much an extravert, but it comes down to agency again. In theory Erenville and especially Krile who's been a peer since Heavensward should matter more to you. The importance of Wuk at that point should have been diminished since you helped her accomplish her goal, and at that point stopping Sphene was a mutual interest shared by all present rather than some sort of deciding factor like Dawnservant was.
Its actually easy to understand what they where thinking when they injected WuK Lamat into the last fight. Ppl liked when Gaia showed up in the Shiva-fight in eden and ppl where also absolutly hyped when Zenos showed up to the metion-fight.. so.. they combined those two situations, thinking it would lead to an even better reception... it did not.. on the contrary.. it spoiled those earlier two examples.
similar they wrote themself in a corner with the air-blockade of Tuliyollal ( same with the cannon is SB tbh ) so they had to use a mc-guffin that wasn't built up (within the expansion ) to save the day. in the hopes that the "rule of cool" will be enough to carry it.
Fair enough. I agree with good and bad and don't really think the ugly part was all that bad.
I mean ffs Y'shtola sounded like they had her record her lines in an airport bathroom.
And there were many Thancred lines which also sounded off from his character.
But Wuk Lamat's VA I felt was fine.
I felt the same during Endwalker and the early part of Dawntrail till i realised the monotone was definatly not an intended character trait. Its passable but its just no energy, If you do a side by side of her introduction in Endwalker to her diving into the interphos its the same tone, There is just no range and it just sucked me out of it
@@MythSamaelFFXIV To me I never enjoy the comparing and contrasting of performances. Of course I'm very much influenced by what I see first. For example; I grew up with Dragonball with its english voice cast. I absolutely cannot stand the Japanese voice cast for Dragonball.
So to me if I was really focusing in on it maybe I'd notice but I've also seen the performances of the other voice casts and did not find a difference in the quality personally.
BUT all in all 2/3 things to agree on so one thing is not that big of an issue for me but I understand and appreciate it meaning a lot to you. I hope that's not too dismissive of your critique it's a valid critique I suppose I lack the ear for it in my own subjective experience. I will concede to that.
Anyways good video as always :) 💙
Not dismissive at all x I never expect eveyrone to agree with me on everything and you articulated your points well to !
most was ok......expect the ending trial that just made my ears bleed
I’m sorry but the voice acting is wrong because it’s trying to be something different in the first place. Like actors trying an accent they aren’t supposed to have. The voice actor doesn’t have the range to start with to allow the emotions to shine. To help with this the FX team could have given Wuk Lamat a bit more emotions in the game and scenes to help with this. The PCs in Limsa utilize emotes and emotions better than the dev team gave Wuk Lamat. The scary thing is, the dev team knew this was going to be an issue before release. The amount of quality control Yoshi does… no way he and his team didn’t know..
Hire Americans to pretend to be latino with exception of like Koana maybe?
I didn't hate her voice itself. The problems you mentioned were present in a number of the performances and I'm leaning toward placing most of the blame on the director that oversaw the recording. Someone in that room with the full context of the dialogue should damn well have done some retakes with direction on where to put emphasis. I'm not saying it was entirely off the VA's shoulders, but the overall performances of a lot of the characters that would have been recorded in North America (the Latino and American accented cast) were off. The American ones sounded like I was playing Fallout 3 again.
I didn't feel that she developed at all over the story. She learned about periodically but her approach to problems, people, and situations never changed. She had a very immature and stupid ideological approach that made her seem like an idiot in any serious situation with the most glaring in the last 2 zones of the expansion. I went from generally annoyed to actual dislike and stayed there.
The root of the problem was the terrible MSQ writing. The pacing, characterizations, dialogue, and depth of the writing were very poor quality compared to the previous expansions and the entire thing had a seriously juvenile tone like a young adult novel. These weren't problems with Wuk Lamat, they were problems with the writing overall. I really hope they can course correct going forward but with development cycles being what they are, I doubt we'll see any real feedback related pivots until 7.3 or 7.4.
Ngl 70% of the entire game is written about her, but I still finished the expansion feeling she never once justified her presence lol. Only the back 30% of the game actually feels like final Fantasy 14 again. The majority of it was just as absolute slog to play through from both a content perspective (in terms of questing; the dungeons and VERY FEW duties we did get were fine) and a story perspective. She's just very simplistic and predictable in an unsatisfying and disappointing way, and I feel like 14 has had 10 years to figure out how to make characters feel organic and interesting. Because she's so cyclical, she feels more like she's hijacking the story rather than being a part of it. And her awful actress's performance made it all the worse. Sena did a good job in unicorn overlord as Gloucester, but here she's genuinely awful. I hope Wuk gets the stormblood treatment and is kept as much out of the story as possible. Playing through her journey was miserable for me, truly.
Good video though. I like your frantic energy. Its very refreshing lol
haha aww thank you ! I super appreciate that
There was just too much Wuk Lamat. I agree with Preach, the character was doomed by overuse. They didn't give you any chance of wanting her around because they shoved her down your throat. Add in the flat delivery of lines that should have been emotionally poignant and you have a recipe for disaster.
Thank you! The most frustrating part of DT criticism is people trying to turn ot into a trans issue when that is irrelevant. You post onjective criticism and some nasty people take it either as a green light to be transphobic or others try to dismiss fair criticism calling you a bigot because you didn't like the VA's performance.
Ash Ketchum is voiced by a woman, that has never alrered my view on Ash pr if I liked the Pokemon anime growing up. This is no different. To me, I strongly disliked the voice acting, not just of Wuk Lamat, she just got the harshest criticism because she has so much dialogue compared to all the other characters but Erenville's mom and the "Americans" immediately stick out as examples of equally bad English performances. I don't know if it was bad direction(although some scenes are self explanatory through the dialogue so that is hard to blame on anyone but the actors), a consequence of the bad writing in a lot of DT or just bad casting sonce a lot pf them honestly came off like amateur VAs which should not be a thing in a game as massive as FF14, but it was awful to me. Wuk Lamat needed to absolutely nail every line because she was already guaranteed to be disliked because of how much screentime she had and it was a huge miss in a lot of the biggest moments in the expansion IMO.
I love you. Instant sub. Inject your voice and writing in my veins now thanks.
Man what you say at 6:30 is 1000% exactly what I felt but hadn’t put into words this nicely.
Me and my Wife Honey B Lovely will oblige this request as we do with everyone who strolls into our discord XD but seriously thank you this made me smile !
i actually really liked the parts of the story where it was just us on our own having our own adventure. to me Wuk lamat was insufferable. She is naruto without the struggles. like how have you lived here for your whole life and talking how you do about the people of the land and you are so flabbergasted whenever you talk to a new people "i guess i never knew" how many times over the course of the expac did she say this, or something to that effect? i lost count. and it has nothing to do with the VA i have my own grips about her and now that you said that last part i agree with that part too but her being trans is not part of my gripps about her, and i hate that my valid criticisms about her character are just being of your just transphobic like come on man.
Yup it's a minefield and ideots out there genuinely believe your not allowed to criticise peoples work anymore without u being some form of ist or phobe
i did not like wuk lamat. yes i saw her growth and i like it but after the half way point they should have focus more on krile and erenville. the stuff that happen in the final trial i did not like it one bit. imo lyse is better than wuk lamat. like wuk lamat is just annoying there where some scene where she would not just shut up. and before people start telling me oh i hate wuk lamat Because VA is trans uh no. this has nothing to do with sena bryer. i just hate the character that is all. everything else in dawntrail was 10/10
I get that completely honestly x
Japanese Wuk Lamat sounds like a male protagonist from some generic shonen. Use German or French dubs instead.
So, the big thing isn't the VA herself, but the English voice direction. It normally is passable (see Endwalker's highs and lows for it) but for some reason they just kinda phoned it in with the English VAs. I wonder if this was because the story team is not the same as the one in EW and Shadowbringers. Ishikawa has moved from active story to story management, taking the atrocious Oda's spot, but that means we get her only controlling the flow of the story, not the minutia which made her work so memorable and awesome in the good/great parts of Stormblood (all of Othard and the patch content,) all the way through to Endwalker MSQ as she had begun to transition during the Patch content. Combined with Koji's now greater role and not direct hyper connection to only 14 (he is now CBU3's lead localizer for all their works, so he was working on 16 when DT's main oomph was being worked on) this all cascaded into what we received.
I honestly don't mind taking a mentor role, and would have appreciated it being leaned into more, because, and this was just how I felt, we weren't even a real mentor. We were a cheerleader, and a poor one at that, and felt more like we were stroking an ego than actually providing teaching or even more than just brute muscle. And even that wouldn't have been bad, if the twist with Koana wasn't just something they had her come up with, while we, as the players, saw it from Zone 2. It felt like we as the WoL turned our own brains off, as well as the twins, which then makes Wuk look even worse. This criticism comes from me absolutely preferring her pre-Heritage Found stage to after that point. After that, I literally came to despise her. She was that derpy kid who interrupts when the adults are talking and trying to get information, and the kid can't stay shut up for a minute to allow the adults to finish. Multiple times she interrupts either intellectual conversations between Sphene and the WoL or Alphinaud and goes "I too dumb, less talk, more do stuff," and the stuff we do is absolutely pointless bullshit. It felt like they were using her for fourth wall silly hahas, when the time for silly hahas was over, and serious time had begun.
In short, this is a better Stormblood, with less cultural insensitivity, but less quality writing, in a more cohesive bundle. It is what Stormblood could have been. So I think a 7.5/10 For reference, I put HW at 6/10, ARR at 5/10, SB at 6.5|7/10, Shadowbringers at 8/10, and EW at 8/10
Yeah i didnt look deep into the why cause this was more about Wuk Lamat then the decisions behind her but i do think one other major issue was the fact that succession story line was only half of the expansion, Feels like it should have been the whole thing for more breathing room
I disagree with her growth. She has growth at the 95 quest and the degrade back to same old after that. Entire second half is so bad to the point I hate her at the end of story.
thats fair not everyone can share the same opinion x
The first half of this expac could have just as easily been patch quest content, a little light contest after defeating the big bad of 7.0. It was all filler 90-97 msq. Wuk Lamat is an awful, 1 dimensional character who had such little growth over the course despite keeping up near 100% uptime on her 'Speak to Wuk Lamat" skill. Hardly surprising since the main scenario writer of DT was mainly responsible for patch and side content prior.
I'm a little confused as to what you mean by atrocities being 'swept under the rug'.
I've recently finished the story, and I don't recall her sweeping any away. In fact, I recall her complaining about everything a lot.
In fact, one of my complaints was that while they make sure to mention relevant points, they do so again and again.
So, I'm drawing a blank on which example you are referring.
She gets angrier and takes a bigger stand at bakool ja ha threatening the vanuvanu then she does when she finds out how blessed ones came to be
@@MythSamaelFFXIV Yeah, I was honestly sick to my stomach when that was revealed. And then they just 'oh, that's terrible! Anyways, let's go to the mid-west now!" and off they go. Never to discuss it again.
Also the fact shes still trying to be Sphenes friend after multiple massacres
@@MythSamaelFFXIV That's the part that really let me down with Wuk Lamat. Here's what's essentially a AI programmed to keep the memories of her people alive as facsimiles on life support through mass genocide for soul energy and yet even after they raided Tulliyollal and killed some of the citizens while she unashamedly stood by and watched, Wuk Lamat still thinks she can empathize and be friends with Sphene at the Interphos? And not only that, but because she had to be the Mary Sue of the expansion, we got cheapened out of any real development of Erenville and Krile who had more at stake with their character growth in relation to their parents being dead but kept alive in Living Memory.
She had her arc in the first half where she became the leader of her people and was working toward finding other ways to keep them happy while respecting their cultures. At no point did she intervene in the duel between Gulool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja when it because clear that something was out of sorts after the latter revived himself with the regulator because of "honor", but then has the audacity to feel like she must kill Zoraal Ja to avenge her dead father despite doing nothing to prevent said death, and our character stands there like an idiot because they arrived back to witness everything first-hand when it would have made a lot more sense for the Scions and Wuk Lamat and Koana to have stepped in but were incapacitated, and our character and Erenville to have arrived after the fact and got the exposition through an Echo flashback upon entering the throne room and looking over to Gulool Ja Ja's corpse and seeing the others reeling from the emotional trauma.
There's a whole lot of questionable writing and portrayal of said writing this expansion, and it dampens what would have been an overall enjoyable experience when you look back on it in hindsight. I get the feeling that it was a case of trying to one-up the reception to Endwalker's 7.0 storyline even though that was a culmination of a 10 year arc and this was just the grassroots of beginning another 10 year saga.
SPEEEEEEN! LISSUM TU MI.
No but seriously, imaging getting more angry over a bird being threatened than finding out that an entire culture on your island has been systematically birthing stillborns in the hope that one of them survives to become a super soldier.
Fucking love your videos man! ♥
Thank you !
That's why I always prefer to experience the original voice acting as originally intended by the creators of the game. In FFXIV case is the Japanese voice actors.
I do enjoy original VA but being dyslexic its much more of a chore to enjoy because reading.
"originally intended by the creators of the game" I guess Koji Fox being part of the team from the beginning doesn't count, huh?
@@limontree476 Koji has made significant contributions to the CB3 team, resulting in the creation of great songs with English lyrics that still align with the game's lore. However, it's important to note that these contributions alone do not determine whether the game's original intended voice is in English or Japanese. The direction taken is ultimately the decision of the game's director, made on a case-by-case basis. This is also why the original intended voice for FFXVI is in English, not merely because Yoshi P is Japanese, but because of his directorial choices
@@setsuna5919
*"This is also why the original intended voice for FFXVI is in English, not merely because Yoshi P is Japanese, but because of his directorial choices"*
--------------------------------
Elaborate?
@@wakkaseta8351 Sorry for my bad english
To clarify, Yoshi-P chose the original voice languages for FFXIV and FFXVI based on the creative direction, not just because he's Japanese. For FFXIV, Japanese fit the game’s vision. For FFXVI, he chose English to match the "Game of Thrones" vibe he wanted. The original voice is determined by the creator’s vision, not their nationality.
The VA in general has a lot of ups and downs all over the game, Extras often sound like the Janitor came in for a few quick takes
Tbh another thing that plagues the expansion in parts which is most notabele in Wuk is just, bad voice direction in places, it's just way more noticeable for Wuk because she's the "main character" of the expansion (or at least on the English side, have heard good things about the other languages though!)
But also this expansion just feels like they pulled an endwalker where it just looks like it's 2 different ideas for 2 different expansions stitched together like a Frankenstein and the overlap just kinda doesn't work, it feels like they imagined people would get too bored of the whole get 7 stones story an decided to add another "if you don't deal with this the entire world and probably universe is going to die again eventually" .
In turn I do feel like, as you mentioned, a lot of bad things are just kinda swept under the rug, like the entire blessed sibling birthing thing where thousands upon thousands of fucking infants died and we're just kinda like "damn that's horrible, anyway", and like I get not holding it against Bakool and all that as he's just a problem of that fucked up system but not even the father or ANY of the other mamool ja really mention something like that has happened after it gets explained.
(also them playing some of the happiest fucking lyrics in the credits as we walk past the grave of literal thousands of infants was probably not intentional, but god that makes it so much worse like its just all forgotten)
YES ! that exactly what i was on about, thousands of dead children, The fact that she finds out on multiple occasions that Sphene is responsible for the slaughter of Wuks people and shes still trying to be her super best friend its like wtf
Found you on the TH-cam algorithm, and it is both a bit odd to see such a divisive character like Wuk Lamat. I still believe she is like a rough gem. There is beauty inside, but it is surrounded by spikes and a few stink lines here n there. I still like her, i find it dumb that people froth out the mouth that you can't criticize her.
I also don't like how some of her English voice lines are delivered flat sometimes.
Great video and keep it up
Thank yiou and coudnt agree more, I loved where she ended up in the story just a few negatives here and there
I hated the whiny twinge to her voice acting
Worst addon ever, Shit Lamat must delete out of the game.
I'm not a VA expert but I liked her english VA, wasn't super scrutinizing it for a review tho so *shrug*
hey thats fair, Im not one of those people who thinks everyone should agree ! x
it was her VA's first job doing VA work, it isn't a bad showing for a first time tho
@@Meun Don't think that's right actually. She's in a handful of things right now isn't she?
I couldn't agree more. I loved the mentor-type vibe we took through-out, and I especially enjoyed watching her grow as an individual and a leader. I also wholeheartedly agree with the story just dragging ass through out the middle part, though I will point out this isn't a new issue with DT. I can think of several instances in each expansion that just felt like busy work for the sake of busy work. And while I love the characterization, I really wish they had gotten an actual Meso-American VA to play her for the English cast.
I am very happy for and proud of Ms. Bryer, but this role should not have been given to her. I played some of her lines for a Hispanic friend (who doesn't play 14), without context or video, and the first thing she asked me was "What white girl did they talk into pretending to be Latino?" and I think that sums it up. It isn't like Lamaty'i was just some secondary character we talk to one time, where such a shoe horning wouldn't have mattered much. She is the main focus point the entirety of the MSQ.
All that having been said, she is still my fuzzy waifu.
You can have her, I am happily married to honey B Lovely
@@MythSamaelFFXIV That's fine. I've had enough femme fatales in my life lol
Trans person here. You have a good point, and you didn't said anything transphobic. One thing is criticize the work of the person and other thing just criticize it because the person is trans. If you don't like her voice, it's completely fine! But if your argument is "Just because is trans" it's a whole other thing 👁️
Thank you ! its such a difficult thing to approach sometimes
@@MythSamaelFFXIV Yeah, it's valid to feel that way, there's a lot of people that actually speak just because of the hate and transphobia so is very easy to be on defensive when someone talk about this topic, but you did it great ✨
Cool, came bc of thumbnail but taking your word that the thumbnail is just bait and the video is a proper review that I'll probably personally disagree with, Bc i liked the character beyond any/all reason and I dont want to ruin my enjoyment of the only expansion I like by delving too deep into it.
Have the totally useless comment, hope it boosts engagement and i hope you have a good day.
I will take it ! Thank you
i mean rhetoric and action dissonance is pretty common for political leaders. That said the read I got was more unity focused then justice. Her whole reason for putting her hat in the ring is that she doesn't want things to change.
Voice Acting. You can normally tell pretty easy which are just transphobia and which are taste, yours are clearly taste. Personally i thought her Voicer Acting was fine, it wasnt great but it was fine. The issue it has is shes pushing too much accent thats not natural and its bleaching the rest of her performance. For me her tone mostly lines up with her animations. Which is "Goof ball little sister"
Thank you and yeah it's a minefield but I don't want to just not talk about stuff because it's sensitive to some people who can't critically think x
@@MythSamaelFFXIV as s trans person you did fine
I honestly feel that the story was just poor. The writer is apparently the one who wrote the stinker that was Storm Blood and is pretty much known to write black hole sues.
Yeah I think it does seem like 2 stories crammed into one
@@MythSamaelFFXIV I wish we would have the whole Trial thing in 7.0 and then 7.1 - 7.3 where just Alexandria (which had soooo much lost potential!) and then 7.4 and 7.5 would lead to the next Expansion. I just hated that the last Zone was so cool with so much easter eggs to FF9 (my beloved FF9 ♥) and we just make it grey and empty in like 20 Minutes MSQ :(. Lost potential!
@@bobomb7504 Alexandria and that shard was an expansion by itself alone.
Good points she is still my wife.
Your terms are acceptable, I recently married Honey B Lovely
ill admit the thumbnail did scare me for a moment, but this was a good speedy review of wuk lamat's character. while i disagree on some points, i can appreciate the effort taken to keep things subjective and within your realm of opinion and belief without attempting to suggest that your critique is fact and anyone who disagrees is cringe
on a more... dangerous note. i can respect the feeling of having to preemptively defend against comments of transphobia, especially with regards to wuk lamat and the incredibly divisive nature of criticism surrounding her (with regards to people very obviously saying they don't like her because Sena Bryer is trans, even if they pretend that's not the reason). i would hope that the people that stumble onto this video are capable of comprehending that none of your comments about the voice work are some thinly veiled transphobia. as a trans person however, i can explain why some people might jump to that conclusion initially, even if after a few minutes of thought they are able to understand that said conclusion was not necessary.
many people have very loudly spoken out about disliking wuk lamat's character for her VA being trans, and so often there's an anxiety when discussing and listening to criticism of her character, since so many people will try to play ignorant about their transphobia even when it's so obvious to anyone with a brain. a wide margin of trans people will definitely experience this nervousness and apprehension when going into topics such as these, as while we are completely capable of comprehending critique of a trans person's work, there are so many more instances of blatant bigotry thinly disguised as criticism, which is why some of us can get antsy about it.
THAT SAID, i do not see this video as transphobic in any way. you have very obviously been able to separate the actor from the character, aside from where they do connect in the vocal performance, and it's clear that your criticisms are not fueled by internal bigotry or other beliefs about the VA that are cascading onto Wuk Lamat (even when you do throw in some intentionally sketchy jokes). all this is just an explanation that, ideally, you wouldn't need to cite sources for why you're not transphobic in criticizing a trans woman's vocal performance, but the effort is appreciated nonetheless.
TL:DR, people generally don't think that Wuk Lamat and Sena Bryer are immune to critique because of their gender identity, but rather we are so used to seeing very obviously bigotry-fueled "criticism" that we can instinctively go on the defensive when engaging in this kind of conversation because (unfortunately) we can't be certain out the gate that what someone is going to say is either legitimately unbiased opinions or blatant transphobia. and also the reason i leave this comment is so that hopefully someone else might understand why trans people (and minority groups in general) can act like this - we don't believe trans people are immune to criticism, we've just seen so much of it that's very clearly based in hate.
all in all, good vid! there was a full 3 seconds where i thought i was the trans cat you found in canada somehow, even though i know that's not possible.
Thank you for the feedback and you articulated it well. Yes I wanted to do a review but new because of Wuk's voice actor it was a minefield. However I did have trans in my test audience and my intention was to mention it early and not again. The joke about the " Im not phobic, I have a trans friend " was actually a suggestion by them to meme on the common anecdote
I swear people don’t know what woke means anymore and just throw it in to trigger people 😂
Don't think anyone knows what it means anymore but yeah it's great to slap on a thumbnail
She was a blast of a character I did not mind being a side character for her.
I don't understand why people were thinking their WoL was going to be the center of attention when it was known for months that we were going to be assisting her through some sort of trials.
She has some amazing moments for sure !
Honestly, I can see why some people would walk away with the impression that her VA was kind of flat. I really didn't notice because despite her outward appearance, Wuk struck me as a very sheltered person from her very first appearance. Yeah, the trope they use with her in every zone gets a bit tiresome, but real sheltered people like her truly do act like that if they're not outright horrible people.
When I heard about the orientation of her VA, I genuinely didn't care because it has nothing to do with the character or what the VA was trying to accomplish overall. The people that did have an issue with it are probably more sheltered than this particular fictional character. Which is saying something. 😁
Side note: thanks for covering this with minimal spoilers. You did an excellent job getting your point across without ruining anything. Keep up the good work. 🫡
thanks for the kind words and yeah i really wanted to cover this and more characters but whenever u run into social issue stuff its like, yeah difficult