One thing about Zoraal Ja that I noticed, was in the introduction scene of him. All the virtues and boons Erenville describes him with, all feed back into Gulool Ja Ja (heading the landsguard, like Gulool Ja Ja used to etc). Almost as if there is very little of his that he can truly call his own. Which makes it somewhat sad that when he does get an achievement that is genuinely disconnected from his dad, something that Zoraal Ja should be able to take pride in (being King of Alexandria), but because he never got over his one hyper fixation he never appreciates it.
I really liked the 2 lizards in the ranged role quest, and the autarch's wife, Milaal Ja. So that would make him... er... running out of fingers to count with.
I think your take echoes what I might just consider the best aspect of Dawntrail: At points, it learned to be much more concise than what came before. You can be just as meaningful with one sentence than you can be with ten. I really encourage people to go back to all of the scenes with Otis and look at how much you actually learned in just a few scenes. The campfire scene with Koana, Thancred and Urianger is where I first truly felt it. I was super impressed with how much we learned about Koana in that scene and how it tied together with Thancred's but also particularly Urianger's arc. Same for anything with Bakool Ja Ja and yes, Zoraal Ja. Living Memory was the best example of this to me. You learn a lot about all of the characters involved, some you just met. You get faced with an interesting moral dilemma while resolving five different character stories. And FF14 always got down to business in key moments, but I really felt it in a lot of scenes in Dawntrail. It felt a lot like how economic older Final Fantasies were. The problem is that I think this comes with its own issues. I think this is where the tonal dissonance complaints for older Final Fantasies come from and I think where the complaints about particularly Bakool Ja Ja's redemption arc and Sphene's character in FF14 come from. Eventhough we learn a lot about them and there are hints to what's up, there isn't as much connective tissue to those reveals. If you have constant walls of text about the detail, you will always have connective tissue and nobody will ever forget it. I went back after everything regarding Bakool Ja Ja was revealed and was surprised how early the hints were there. But after his arc, he essentially also feels like a different character. He is not an uninformed redemption arc because he never reverts to his old ways (which characters are then suddenly okay with within bad redemption arcs), but he is not a graceful one, either. So I think part of the reason why people are so dismissive of Dawntrail is, yes, partially because they did it in two days and barely absorbed anything from it, but also because this concise writing style is mixed with "the usual" lore walls of text and the meaning there is can get lost in it if you don't go into it expecting to absorb every little detail (like I did). Being economic with storytelling is great, but you can just go too economic and if it's not consistent bury the cool stuff. The few lines at the start of Zoraal Ja's trial really stood out to me to the point where I went back to what came before because I also initially had an issue putting together his story. But then I realised, I was... actually intellectually working to think about a story? I wasn't just force-fed a story of a character? And that is a different kind of storytelling that can also be wonderful in its own right. It's easy to dismiss anything as half-baked, but I much prefer to face a story on its own terms. I also see a lot of dismissal about "thinking about the story" and how that either "ruined it more" or "you should think less about it" and I think to me the latter principle is just as dismissive and not fun as some of the more shallow negative dismissal. You're not obligated to be critical of something you love 24/7 (which is its own very annoying fandom group), but "only consuming, not thinking" is also really boring to me. Personally speaking, I think going over it again via other playthroughs or revisits of my own, I grew to appreciate it a lot more in some aspects, but also a little less in others. Don't have much a general unified point here to end on, but I thought this was a great video! I think a lot of TH-cam essays often substitute plot summary for analysis, so you only dedicating a portion of your video to it felt like a breath of fresh air. (Not to mention it was actually relevant considering part of the thesis of the video is that many are confused by Zoraal Ja's story.) Looking forward to any other videos from you (also will be checking out your other videos)!
"I also see a lot of dismissal about "thinking about the story" and how that either "ruined it more" or "you should think less about it" and I think to me the latter principle is just as dismissive and not fun as some of the more shallow negative dismissal. You're not obligated to be critical of something you love 24/7 (which is its own very annoying fandom group), but "only consuming, not thinking" is also really boring to me. Personally speaking, I think going over it again via other playthroughs or revisits of my own, I grew to appreciate it a lot more in some aspects, but also a little less in others." Bro this has been me for years trying to explain to people about Mass Effect 3's endings. Despite the flaw in the initial presentation that doesn't mean they don't have depth and that thinking about that doesn't mean I'm trying to think to deep. I'm just explaining what is factually there and I find it fun.
Zoraal Ja's understanding of War being... incredibly juvenile, if we're being honest, makes a lot more sense when you take his upbringing into considering. He wasn't raised in a society in active warfare on multiple fronts, unlike Zenos - he was raised in an era of peace. He never fought an enemy nation or occupied hostile territory, also unlike Zenos, who was awful on purpose so he had something to do when the rebels eventually rose up. Zoraal Ja fights tural vidraal, which are basically Monster Hunter creatures. He doesn't have a grasp of strategy greater than "flush out the target to him to get to" because that's literally all he's needed to do, and he doesn't even know what logistics or tactical deployment are because the first was handled by the infrastructure that was already established by his father and the latter wasn't necessary for him to just bulldoze through most challenges solo, and I think he KNOWS all of this, or at least realizes it later on but can't bring himself to fix it out of pride. Him saying that Garlemald was "weak" for falling to internal strife was such a blatantly ignorant remark that it shook me from my "the characters are at least always honest with themselves" mindset and I started seeing him less as a FFXIV character and more of an Obsidian RPG character, who is more than willing to lie - especially to themselves - out of pride, misplaced confidence, or fear more than deception. Yes, that's right, I just compared Zoraal Ja to Atris from Knights of the Old Republic 2. They both come off as haughty, incredibly self-assured, and have incredibly *wrong* opinions but will brook no argument. It's just that Atris comes after several, several hours of the game teaching you to never take words from NPCs at face value. FFXIV spends *way more* time doing the exact opposite. So, uh, yeah. All that to say that you've convinced me. Good video.
Comparing Zoraal Ja to a toxic solo Souls player is not a take I expected, but it's a take I can truly get behind. I was in that "I don't get Zoraal Ja" camp in the beginning, and it was only at the end when he was going through his existential crisis and was haunted by the visions that I finally begun to understand what he was all about. While I find him less engaging than our previous villains, I do like this new direction of character writing.
I think something else that probably nagged at Zoraal Ja was even his victory over his father was hollow. Gulol Ja ja was old, even without the 30 years Zoraal lived; the head of Reason was already dead, and as the fight against his shade shows? He's fighting at a fraction of his normal strength. It probably didn't feel like the victory Zoraal wanted, and he only realized that when he was done. But that brings me to an interesting connection that nagged at me for awhile until something hit me a couple of days ago: Why would Zoraal go along with Sphene's plan? The requirements of Living Memory would mean that the entire Source would need to be drained of souls eventually, and that need would grow every time someone with a regulator died; in fact, because of who Sphene is, there'd probably be quite a large segment of the Source stored in Living Memory eventually. The obvious solution is he didn't think that far ahead, but to me the more interesting answer is that Sphene lied. That she lied to him about her ultimate goal and what she needed. It may not have even been intentional, since at that point her two personas were still in conflict, but it would keep in the theme here of the writing not being as straightforward as it once was. I'd even go so far as to say that FFXIV gets more interesting when characters lie.
@@CrystalBearer20 That first part is something he says in the scene with Sphene; I consider it a less important part than the fact he lost round one anyway, so I skipped past it.
I really like his boss form. A two-headed mamool-ja, missing its head of wisdom. It's an extremely strong symbol of who this guy is. All his life he was trying to create a miracle to prove himself, when he'd already been a miracle, and all people actually wanted from him, was to be there. Had he instead of looking inwards, looked outwards, he'd have found family ready to help and support him. I can't help but feel that his adopted brother and sister were meant to provide the wisdom and heart he needed to become the next dawnservant, and this whole race is a backup plan because that failed. This expansion is written a lot more subtle than normal.
Unironically, the thing that made Zoraal Ja click for me was the comic "How to make Xibruq Pibil". It really made me realize Zoraal Ja just sees himself as a failure for not living up to his potential and made me instantly rewatch all his scenes. With the context of expectation and failure I now see myself in him so much.
I could understand him but... 1) there's almost nothing more to his character other than Krile's omnious Echo visions about him resenting his own familly. 2) I guess I emphathized way too much with Wuk Lamat at that point of the story: Girl finally acomplishes her dream, she says a brief goodbye to her adoptive mother and then everything goes to HELL.
@@Gravitysonic0 He's also a very functional villain, they want us to LOATHE him right up until the end, so if you're someone whose character interests are rooted in empathy, he'll frustrate you.
I don’t think it would have been as effective for him. He was not the type of character to let folks in, like Emet Selch decided to do, he is even more closed off than Zenos strangely enough, that man expressed himself in brutal violent ways but he did nonetheless express himself, Zoraal couldn’t even do that much. He had to be brought to the brink of death to lay bare his pains and I think waiting for that was worth keeping his motivations more dubious up until then than outright explaining it. His dark stare at Wuk Lamat and Koana after they won their trial together told me enough. That he had a massive inferiority complex that could not be easily sated and he was not willing to change or express it. sometimes less is more and in his case I believe it worked.
The thing that struck to me the most with how out of touch the man was is that when we first reach Tural, we are told that Tural doesn't have a proper navy, only fishing vessels that cannot cross the ocean like the one in Eorzea do. How did he exactly plan on even reaching the rest of the world to conquer it?
Yeah like, he could of conquered Tural if we weren't there, but the rest of the world? Doubtful. If he actually had what we saw in Arcadion and the ONE boss in Vanguard, then maybe (at the cost of the soul damage), but not those stupid airships.
He tells Koana that he expects him to help rapidly advance Tural's military capabilities. So I assume his expectations were to build an army and navy at that point, using everything his adoptive brother learned in Sharlayan.
@@EinDoseZJ is definitely an idiot when it comes to strategy, considering how horribly he fumbled the invasion by making highly advanced, flight capable soldiers fight cowboys on land and in small packs.
While I am optimistic about how the story will go (like in arr there are clear threads being laid out for possible stories later on) part of me wants to see what would of happened if he got his wish to invade. Because clearly he is a frog in a pond. He thinks he knows everything, and with his mighty legs and leap over any hurdle, only to realize that when he leapt over that stone wall, he’s going to face such a force, one that is already so TIRED of war, so uneasy about losing that peace, that’s he’s severely out matched.
I still think Zoraal ja's writting was pretty weak, understanding him was not hard, it's not a trope we haven't seen before... but the way they chose to write it is what I have a problem with, even so this video gave me a new perspective of things
@@Razash I agree that Bakool Ja Ja The Mystic needed more lines and banter. They gave The Mighty most of the lines between the two of them, but I really expected them both to have banter and important input, especially after their Face Turn.
In my reactions I specifically spitballed the notion of Zoraal Ja in Living Memory, as someone who'd be left completely alone. I feel like that might be one of those things that'd deepen Living Memory at the expense of Zoraal Ja, though, I'm not sure if we need to see Zoraal Ja as a kid in isolation. I'd be more interested in seeing a flashback, just so we can see how much of his history was Gulool being a worse dad than we expect.
I really like Zoraal Ja, the character. He's such a goober in the grand scheme of FFXIV. I think a missed bit about him is that his whole "instilling a love of peace through war" is almost certainly bullshit. The guy has lived in Tural his whole life during an era of unbroken peace; what does he know about the horrors of war? Unless he's 90+ years old and has secretly travelled the world, he's never seen or been in a war. And on that same note, we see a point of comparison between himself and Wuk Lamat: their ignorance. Wuk Lamat starts out the story assured that she knows Tural and her people, only to be stumped and shocked at every turn when her views are shown to be shallow at best. I think it's fair to assume Zoraal Ja also did not know very much about the various cultures --- but something we don't have to assume is his ignorance regarding the rest of the world. The man has no idea what the Garlean Empire was capable of, but called them "a congregation of simpletons." Bro, Zenos would have waffle stomped him so bad. He also assumed he could just flatten Tulliyolal with no resistance and got embarrassed for it. He's been on guard duty, he thinks he's a 5 star general. Difference being, Wuk Lamat opened her mind up and resolved (harhar) to learn more of Tural. Zoraal Ja straight up refused to entertain the idea that he needed to learn anything --- if he couldn't do it himself through force, he wasn't worthy of being The Resilient Son. Innocent Ignorance vs Aggressive Ignorance situation. There are other comparison points between the two, like Wuk Lamat being written off and wanting to prove herself to others vs Zoraal Ja being glazed 24/7 but wanting to prove himself to himself, Wuk Lamat being a Warrior (a tank job, meant to protect others) vs Zoraal Ja being a Viper (meant to destroy obstacles in his way), etc.
@@SchrosDinger I love the comparisons of the jobs, and I do feel like there might be something in asking why some characters get the specific styles they do. We have gun jobs of every role, so why is Koana specifically a Machinist? (Aside from 'the times he fights also have a Sage and Gunbreaker')
@@EinDose I interpreted Koana being a machinist specifically because the job's flavor is having a variety of technological/mechanical tools at its disposal
@@EinDose The way I read it, Koana as a Machinist may be in reference to how he tackles problems and people: from a distance and as efficiently as possible. But even as stoic as he acts, at least Koana realized he needed others to fill in for his weaknesses. As for why he isn't a Sage or Gunbreaker, it may have some ties to his drive to bring innovations of the East to Tural --- the firearms of Ishgard being more readily available and easier to use and manufacture than the nouliths or gunblades. But that may be a stretch, to be fair.
Fun fact, Koana doesn't use the typical extra flashy spinning moves that WOL has, his basic rotation is still made up of mostly the low level MCH skills, boots on the ground.
@@kingmisha5161 I think Koana being a Machinist is for no other reason than Sage and Gunbreaker were already occupied in the main cast group (not to mention, having a Gunbreaker Thancred with him). He could've potentially have been a mix (like Graha or Vrtra) if he could join us in more dungeons, but for simplicity he was most likely made into a Machinist.
On Zoraal Ja lacking reason, I feel there is an interesting contrast with Bakool Ja Ja, as when Wuk Lamat was kidnapped when the WOL faced down Bakool Ja Ja, his Mystic head immediately realised that fighting the WOL was a bad idea and when he kidnapped Humnu Rruk, he made sure that the WOl hands were tied while he fought Wuk Lamat. If Zoraal Ja had become Dawnservant, how would he have carried out his invasion if he knew of even some of Eorzea's capacity, as all can agree that it would have been disastrous for Tural, even with Alexandrian technology.
@@TheGoodOne1998 a theoretical Zoraal-led invasion of Eorzea would fail in an instant, because Tural sucks at boats and the first thing they'll hit is Limsa.
It says something about Zoraal Ja's lack of reason when you can seriously make an argument that pre-reform Bakool Ja Ja would have made a smarter and better ruler of Tural that Zoraal Ja.
Zoraal Jas plan never made sense I’ve said this over and over again but how fuck was Tuliyollal lead by him supposed to invade Garlemald that is protected by the Eorzean alliance when his city doesn’t even have boats, lack of mages, and no air support? Then he wants to invade Eorzea how?! He is by far the worst villain in the game so far.
I think some of it may be that Zoraal Ja doesn't have a twist-he's a grouchy jerk when you meet him, he's a grouchy jerk all through the trials, he's a grouchy jerk when he loses, and he's a grouchy jerk when he dies. Bakool Ja Ja, for as hamfisted and half-baked his heel/face turn is, at least ties into the FFXIV tradition of "villain has a sympathetic angle." Zoraal Ja just... doesn't.
@@thegneech Yeah, Zoraal Ja's a very straight shot, you just don't know exactly where he's shooting from for a while. From a storytelling economy perspective that's very welcome, it means he's never fighting for space with Bakool or Sphene who need those explanations more.
Honestly, Zoraal Ja doesn't work imo. At all. And I strongly suspect it is because he was not meant to be the antagonist until late in development. Everything in the first half of the game points to Bakool Ja Ja being the clear secondary antagonist, with Zoraal Ja being the obvious choice for primary; BUT what they do instead is set up Sareel Ja as the true villain. Zoraal Ja is the figurehead, with Sareel Ja manipulating him for his own ends; Sareel Ja even flat out says "I will be the one to reach the Golden City" while Zoraal Ja stays silent. And, through the entire first half, Zoraal Ja shows absolutely no indication of what he will become; almost like he wasn't written to become the villain. His heel turn murder of Sareel Ja came out of nowhere. We never even get to learn what SJ's motivation was, or what he planned to do once he reached the Golden City. None of the rest of what he did made sense either. Why wait 30 years to come back? And specifically, why was his army so godawful weak when they came back? He made it very clear that he DIDN'T KNOW time hadn't passed; that means he was expecting them to have had THIRTY YEARS to build up the nation, bring in tech from the mainland etc. And he KNOWS what kind of tech Sharlayan has from Koana force-feeding it to everyone. It's somewhat reasonable for his army to lose to the unexpected deus ex machina dragons in the capital that come out of literally nowhere and vanish the second the cutscene is over. But he also couldn't get even a single win against the giants, the Mamool Ja, the shitty cowboy militia, or even the giant chickens. It would be like someone prepping for a fight against a modern day army and losing against a single Gulf War era platoon and a bunch of tribal fighters. It makes absolutely no sense, especially since Zoraal Ja would have been in his mid to late 50s. That part also doesn't make sense; with 30 years worth of training and augments he STILL loses to his geriatric, literally half dead father and has to burn a rez to pull off a kill. There's only one way I see his story working, and that is if he went to the Golden City, decided he was satisfied with his life there, and gave up on his conquest dreams; then around the time Gulool Ja was born, something happened to throw him into a midlife crisis and THEN he decided to go all conquest. It would explain at least why his decision making was so poor and why he was so ill prepared when he came back to the Source.
I don't understand the confusion about Zoraal Ja. His motivations were always very clear to me: he has daddy issues and wants to surpass his father in every way because that's the heavy expectation placed on him. He's the first-born, he's the 'rightful heir', he's the actual child that felt unwanted compared to his adopted siblings. To me, this was shown very clearly in the story from the very beginning to the very end when we interact with his own unwanted son. He wants war because war and conquest is what he believes is his father's legacy and what he must do as well. This is his path to his own version of peace for his people, no matter how flawed that path may be. I don't like Zoraal Ja, I think he's stupid and I disagree with what he stands for in the story, but he just always felt very clearly defined to me. I think your constant comparisons to Dark Souls is right though in terms of storytelling. DS tells its story a lot by showing rather than telling, and maybe FFXIV players aren't used to interpreting things that way.
@@spencer6736 Yeah, I think the confusion straight-up comes from not being used to a less direct and more fallible method of learning information. I think Zoraal's a bit more Armored Core or Sekiro than Dark Souls per se in terms of character plan, but he's definitely in that range of more indirect storytelling, and we've never had stuff like that before to such a degree.
I agree he is stupid but that is by design imo. he lives in peace and does not understand the weight of his words. he's been constantly told he can achieve great things, but the only thing that naturally comes to him is battle. It's a pretty natural conclusion for him to draw that his purpose and the way he will carve out his path is through violence. are his ideals stupid? hell yeah. but I dont think thats the point, he is stupid because nobody understood him enough to tell him there was more to life than surpassing his father and meeting expectations. In the whole story he has no real meaningful bonds other than his father(I dont count koana/wuk in this because they are pretty explicitly not friends) and imo this is the true tragedy of zoraal ja, that he lived his whole life unseen by a single person in his life for who he is. It doesnt make his ideas less dumb or his actions any less acceptable but he feels so much more human than Emet or thordan or Zenos. Its cool to see a dude just make mistakes without some grand plan or god powers, just a human that was overwhelmed by his own weakness
The funny thing about "Ds shows a lot of it's story by showing rather then telling" is a very common critisim of DT (one that I also have) is they REALLY love to tell. To the point where ZJ feels out of place even in his own story. It's like whoever who wrote him was almost entirely seperate from the rest of the writing team.
My problem with Zoraal Ja is that he was very tell don't show and whatever telling they did was either third person from people that clearly didn't understand him or directly from him in sparse exposition that stated a different motivation every time he opened his mouth. In Urqopacha it was "These people have peace so I am going to teach them to want peace by showing them that war sucks when I try to conquer the world". That would have been a brief and somewhat hilarious failure and we all knew it so it had no weight. It was also amusing that he was too young to know what war was like either. In Koza'mauka he went on more about "taking by force" with no real indication that even he really knew what that meant. Nor were we given any indication as to why this one person was completely opposite in motivation to anyone else on the continent. Then before the Valigarmanda fight he wanted to see the creature that his father fought. Then after the fight was the first time we ever even heard any reference to "proving the miracle". We never got a definition of what that phrase actually would have meant to him or anyone else. Then he gets sad because he can't cook (a feeling I actually do identify with) so he does something completely against his already thin character and tries a tactic that would have fit better with Bakool Ja Ja. If you don't get your way, attack the person that can immediately disqualify you. Basically, he gave up and threw a tantrum. Then he enters the portal and comes out 30 years later talking about how he's glad he gets to kill his father himself. We never got any indication of any animosity between the two. We didn't even get any sense of friction. Something that could have easily been communicated by his siblings. At the end of his trial he's spouting stuff about how his father "spurned him". That's never shown and the character of his father indicates otherwise. He then talks about how his son (who was born from no female mamool ja in the bubble so I am guessing clone) would receive that which he earned by the sweat of his brow. He didn't earn a thing, he took. He stole and tried to steal more. Also, lizards don't sweat. This turned into a book but his characterization was paper thin and changed with the wind. He didn't make a bit of sense to me. I can get if a character is an idiot, or evil, or driven by something external to the central plot but he just didn't come off as complete. He felt like they cut a large amount of characterization from the script and then proceeded as if they had left it in.
As a response, you did miss some things. Urqopacha was specifically brought up in MSQ because of the Pelupelu. It is noted that Koana is highly favored by their younger generation because he offers technological advances that would magnify their ability to trade and get rich. It's mentioned that the younger generations in general do not understand the real cost of the wars that happened before the first Dawnservant came to the throne, and are all too eager to consider the ideas of abandoning tradition and pursuing conquest. Zoraal Ja Ja wasn't just commenting about the Pelupelu, he was talking about the fact that so many people were completely okay with the idea of war because they thought it'd make their lives better. His platform of a worldwide conquest wasn't just him, it's blatantly stated that he does have a smaller, but devoted faction of supporters who very much think war is the way to go about things. The lore supports this, as we see many Mamool Ja travel east to Eorzea to get money and refine their combative skills. "Proving the miracle" already got defined for us earlier in MSQ, at the outright start. They told us that two-headed Mamool Ja cannot have children, that it was an outright miracle that Zoraal Ja was born. "Resilient Son", his title, is in reference to that. It's not hard to understand that's what he was angsting over, desperately trying to prove his worth to himself. He already made it clear midway through MSQ that he didn't give a shit about the entire competition. He fully was okay with stealing the victory out from everyone else, and wasn't aware that Gulool Ja Ja knew that none of his children were quite ready for the throne and had no intention of surrendering it if he deemed the winner unworthy. He intended to steal the final tablet piece, but when the shade of his father's prime appeared, it quite clearly broke him when it became apparent he truly wasn't worthy. That's what magnified his obsession with the power of the Golden City, and led to what happens in Alexandria after. When Zoraal Ja is talking about being "spurned" by his father, it's not that the two necessarily had a bad relationship. It's that he saw himself as the only realistic heir to the throne. He's the blood son, the promised son, the prodigal heir to the throne who defied biology itself to be borne to a two-headed Mamool Ja. He saw it as being spurned when anyone else was even allowed to pursue the throne at all, and is why he hates his siblings so much. This is brought up in MSQ a couple times. His entire motivation is about surpassing his father, when in reality he was unworthy of him in every way. Even with Alexandrian armor and weaponry, he was completely outmatched by his elderly father (who was already technically half-dead) and straight-up died like a rube in their duel. He had to cheat just to win. I think his idea of conquering the world comes out of a desire to surpass his father, as well. "Oh, my dad "conquered" Tural under one banner? Then I'll do it better and conquer the entire world instead!" I won't disagree that his writing was frail at many points and they needed to give him more time, but I would argue that they showed his motivations and failings pretty clearly. They just didn't outright state all of it, which is hard to see because the rest of 7.0 made such a mistake of telling and not showing. Zoraal Ja's absolutely a petty, selfish jerk who squandered all of his blessings and learned all the wrong lessons from his life experiences...and two civilizations paid the price for it.
@@Can_O_Crayola I agree. His story was shown not told (which makes for much better storytelling), which confuses me how OP thought he was the tell not show character of this expansion.
@@patrickbrannick247 Kind of a hollow question if you don't explain what about their comment you're taking issue with. The video presented their take, and Frost presented theirs in return. What're you getting at, exactly?
I like this video. And yes i agree, im glad that his character is this way. I explored my emotions in a different way this time. But i felt sad too, at the end of his life. He acted with immense selfishness, never thinking of things he did not need to. Not speaking much to others of his plans or thoughts, so he believed it useless for them to hear. Tural wanting to avoid being this type of person.... his symbol, one of war and might, that his father cleansed from the land for 80 years.... a sad tale but im glad there is room for such a character in this story. Part of why i love this game so much. ❤
Honestly let them hate if they want to I've been called easily entertained for daring to like DT quite a few times and I still can't figure out why exactly I should see that as a problem lol
I get people don't like Dawntrail, but geez louise, people come out of the woodwork whenever anyone dares to say anything remotely positive about the story.
If anything, for my opinion Zoraal Ja is a very good character. He is that character undergoing a breakdown and it makes him evil, and he is the strongman out of the Dawnservant claimants so he is naïve in terms of war. And in terms of who Wuk Lamat handles, he is the best second to last person because he could have been saved but he is unreasonable by his boss fight, but also Zoraal Ja would fight first and never try secret stuff. He is Wuk Lamat’s opposite, and that makes it clear Wuk Lamat can take on Sphene, as a person who seems nice but is very much only for her people (unlike Wuk Lamat who really is for all her people and more). He could not have played a better role and he could not have been written better.
Happy to see a positive video about Dawntrial for a change. Heard all the negativity before I got there myself, so I went into dawntrial with low expectations. But I ended up genuinely loving it.
I mean his "I'll make them tired of war by dragging us all in to war and then there will be no more war" is still incomprehensible to me, logic-wise. But I did understand that was what he was saying. It just had "Hey man I heard you like war, so I put some war in your war so you can war" vibes and the logic is just hard to compute. Cus he seems cool calm and collected otherwise. (We're told he's got some rage abyss undertones by krile, but we don't really see it till the invasion.) And smart. And that logic just isn't. That was my major hangup with his character.
The way I saw it? It's partly an excuse. He sees peace as an end goal 'cause his dad was beloved for his peaceful reign. But he himself craves conflict. He wants to be battle tested and prove himself superior by his greatest strength: might. That's why he cooks up all this bs about bringing war to teach the value of peace. In truth, he only desires to dominate and become a beloved leader by way of might. If peace comes after, then it would be all the better. If not, then he just gets to fight more.
omg i love him so so much ;__; i pray we get more of his background in future patches. all we have is little puzzle pieces and the drastic difference between his tural and his S9 model making me think what's going on in his mind. (i don't mean the lvl99 form though). i think many players are angry about him bc we didn't even have any echo from his past - which i totally get bc there HAS to be something. personally i think it was lame that krile had her "there's darkness in him" part but we didn't react to him at all...
He died being told he was wrong, such a tragedy. He thought he was cast aside after losing the rite of succession and sadly believed that his father left him nothing. I don't even have a hypothesis about what Gulool Ja Ja would have done for him or given him if his son had come home in peace despite failing the rite.
Personally I think a big issue I have with the rite itself (aside from it's just....not told very well and the actual rites were extremely boring) is Gulool Ja Ja's lack of involvement. I think Zoraal ja would've been a lot more compelling if we got to see at evrey turn his dad try to bring back from his path, but he just didn't listen because it would break his entire world view down.
Your video came up on my feed and i realized you said a lot of things i unconsciously figured out. One of the things i feel like ffxiv does is try and show directly opposing forces, and i have wondered if the inclusion of two (three?) opposing forces against wuk lamat was too much for some players. Each character shows a different kind of opposition to Wuk Lamat's as someone else said here, innocent ignorance, and i really liked that.
I didn't fit it here because it's more of a Wuk Lamat point, but I think Zoraal Ja's specific kind of opposition to her is so brick-simple that it's honestly brilliant: 'liking peace is all well and good, but how do you handle someone just declaring war because he can'. Part of me thinks it's maybe TOO simple, and perhaps Zoraal Ja's narrative purpose is so blatant that people missed the rest of him!
The fight with Galool Ja Ja was unplanned. Zoraal Ja was surprised he was still alive. His goal was take the souls of the people in Tural, but he changed his Plan afterwards when he learned his father still lived. He switched back to his old self of needing to prove his existence, which is why he issued the challenge to Wuk Lamat.
@@EinDosewhen he first gets to the throne room he says something like "I would have thought you died ages ago old man, I was sad the opportunity had passed me by to kill you myself. Today really is my lucky day." Which was super offputing because in-game it had been like 2 days and the whole alexandrian time skip hadn't been presented yet.
I think he was planning on fighting whoever he found in the throne room. It just happened to be Galool Ja Ja, rather than Wuk Lamat as he expected. I don't think he knows even about Koana being the Vow of Reason, either.
To me, what makes Zoraal Ja such a difficult character to grasp is his lack of depth. It really feels like they said "we need a character that loves war to be the baddie; this guy loves war... because people have it too good and they take it for granted? Yeah that'll work" and then didn't actually give him a narrative reason to have that opinion. At the verrrry end (literally on his deathbed) the big reveal was he was Like This because he Had Something To Prove, despite holding tremendous power in the city (being head of the admittedly limited army), and then king of alexandria, and was loved and respected by both his people and his family. It gave the impression they ran out of time to find a good reason he felt this way and just put any old reason on there. This amidst a plethora of other very one dimensional characters and unengaging narrative, it just felt like he was one of many incomplete aspects of the msq. It felt like his character wasn't nailed down until the very end and by then it was too late to go back to rewrite some of his earlier scenes to get even an inkling of his imposter syndrome & instability other than to put in other characters essentially saying "he gives me the heebiejeebies." Any depth he may have had as a character was not shown to us in any way until his act of desperation where he steals the keystones (which there's no obvious reason he does because he WAS disqualifed and he wouldn't have known the city of gold was a vault to another world with a Tron army) and the surprise key to open the door (which also, how did they know) was genetically linked to him and his father (and is also imho the only reason his son exists - so they can pass the key down). It's not even just a lack of words not being said, there's just not really any indicators because he's got so little screen time and what he does have he just keeps saying that war will teach people how good peace is instead of anything new or nuanced. Idk he just felt like a puzzle piece jammed into a spot he didn't fit and the confusing bit about him is his motivation makes no sense given everything else we know about his backstory and his actions. The cognitive dissonance he exibits is rarely found in well written characters. What I think would have been better would have been to swap him & bakool ja since bakool ja had a Reason (even if it was mid, it fit narratively) and was after roughly the same thing, but without having been spoiled and pamped (just the cream of the crop of the starving forest) and could have reasonably wanted revenge on tuliyolal for having it So Good while they suffered in the dark. And then they wouldn't have had to force his redemption arc in (which also doesn't fit).
I think you nailed it. He doesn't talk much, and the FFXIV playerbase (if not the FF player base as a whole) is REALLY heavily trained to take cues and context entirely from a character's mouth. This expansion has SO much context hidden behind character's actions and words, not just for Zoraal Ja but for everyone in the new and old cast. I've seen so many hot takes about character's being too quiet or not making sense when in reality what they mean is they didn't have the thoughts/feelings of that character laid out on a platter for them and they didn't stop to *think* about how they were acting or why. Really feels like a good chunk of the people who are screaming that this is the worst expansion are also the ones who speedrun everything and take things at face value.
I do respect your right to a different opinion, but to me a lot of this comes off as apologism for what I would call bad writing. You make a fair point about how often characters in XIV monologue out their intentions and reasons for their outlooks, but to me Zooral Ja is a very two-dimensional bad guy who wants power for the sake of it, only occasionally using "teaching the people" or "being a strong leader" as an excuse, though that goes right out the window when he butchers the Tuliyolans(?), then again when he repeats that in Solution 9. He undercuts the only things that really lend him any character beyond "me good fighter, me want surpass dad, me prove to everyone me better by being stronkest leader." I find that he's just plain poorly written, personally, and that this whole line of reasoning in the video gives him waaaaay more credit than his character as presented deserves. All the same though, as with any writing, there's no 'wrong' interpretation, so I appreciate the food for thought and general discussion.
@@FishSkeleton- Honestly, I don't disagree that Zoraal Ja is two-dimensional, but I do disagree that that's a bad thing. I think Zoraal Ja is as complicated as he should be--which is to say, not very, in large part because he needs to yield his time to more complex characters. He's not exactly my favorite character, but I like a character that's made to fill a specific role and does it well, and Zoraal Ja does it well. You don't want the B plot to devour the A, after all.
It's basically Zenos all over again. But this time people literally dont get his character, or feel there is nothing to it. As a Zenos enjoyer I also liked Zoraal Ja, sometimes I feel less is more and imho he portrayed that silent character trope quite well. But I also was confused by the end of the story about his ambitions and only found out through comments what he was "supposed" to portray. I get that he stood in the shadows of his father, but my impressions ended there. I found it to be quite subtle and reminded me a bit how Fromsoftware tells the story in their games. Which I highly adore, but it was confusing to see that in 14. But I agree, they probably wanted a villain first and foremost that you absolutely despise, and they managed to do that.. Oh boy.
The Zenos comparison is interesting but not one I felt entirely confident pinning down at this early stage. But I feel like Zenos is what Zoraal Ja 'done normally' is like, how FFXIV usually designs that sort of character, and Zoraal Ja's sort of deliberately going against the obvious angles. It's similar to how I look at Bakool Ja Ja, Bakool's also a character FFXIV does a lot of but in a very different delivery.
I don't really agree, since Zenos was driven very clearly by his desire to find entertainment in a world that bored him, even if that meant destroying the entire planet to achieve that end. With Zoraal Ja, I really can't tell you what he even wanted out of life other than to be seen as superior to his dad(s). To me he's just a superiority and/ or Napoleon complex ratcheted up to maximum, but played in a very bland way, which I find surprising. It should be pretty easy to write a character like that to at least be entertaining, with a burning, passionate hatred simmering about them in every scene, but instead I was just bored with him throughout the whole expansion.
I was really excited for this topic. This was a really great break down. Zoral Ja was one of my favorites this expansion for his sheer presence, and as that façade crumbled he only got better to me.
Zoraal Ja is not hard to understand, he is just... stupid? Tural has absolute no Navy, the invasion into Eorzea will fail asap because Limsa will absolute dominate the sea inbetween, airships wont work across such a long distance. He lacked foresight, he lacked reason, he lacked identity. He was born into his father's shadow, never able to step out of it to be worthy of his title as the Wonder Child, even when his existence alone justified the title, yet he did not much to be different. The fact he is suppose to be a reference to Kuja, Zoraal Ja lacks groundwork and connection, he demanded Koana to support him when he becomes the Dawnservant, even when its clear Koana would not use his knowledge for war. This disconnect is interesting to see, he is just as naiv as Wuk Lamat was at the start but did not even think of adapting and growing unlike hgis siblings.
@@YuubiTimberwolf I've said that Fandaniel was the best thing to happen to Emet, because him fucking up the whole Zodiark plan means that all its weird holes never get the chance to show. Zoraal Ja's in a similar spit, he's lucky he discovered airships before he got any power.
This is a different perspective that I think makes more sense. But I sorta saw Zoraal Ja as a reflection of Xenos. They're very similar to me. They would rather act first over talk things out - but what was different was while Xenos wanted to grow in personal strength over taking responsibility for his country, Zoraal Ja wanted to actually rule his country and go on major conquest. He was also a reflection because he certainly talked much less than Xenos 😂
I'm trying to nail down my own thoughts on Zoraal Ja, so I only caught the third section so far, but I'm stoked you touched on something I think is important about Dawntrail -- it tells some of its stories in a way that differs from how XIV usually does, and not everyone has adapted their reading process to meet it. Which is fine (and maybe inevitable with long-running media), but I think that is understandably causing some people to struggle, well, understanding some of its characters and themes.
I love Zoraal Ja because he's a laconic guy, which is needed to have that personality variety, especially with Wuk Lamat's extreme extrovert and the WoL's single real canon trait being a willingness to entertain, listen to whatever random quest, and help others. And of course in an expansion preoccupied with learning about others and having productive dialogue to solve problems, there has to be a character that sucks at outreach, at sharing pov, who stonewalls. Who in his death spells out clear as day to the audience that he's lost, he doesn't know what to do or who he is. That's far more realistic than a villain who has their shit together. His problem is internal and caused by the expectations being more nebulous than Bakool Ja Ja's despite close similarities and that they are self-inflicted rather than just for the sake of his family/society. And audiences have lower tolerance and patience for motives about the self. His path is unclear and he only has one tool in the arsenal. Eldest daughter, former gifted kid, yeah he's easy to understand. But people weren't expecting that archetype and for him to be something else? Oh well. He is probably my favorite XIV villain. Not a lot of competition there. Hermes/Fandaniel is second. Also I love that the Resilient Son is referring to the virtue but also to the name of the palace itself, Vollok Shoonsa.
show, don't tell. in this case, he's quiet, yes, but his eyes do not speak either. there are also misses here where they could have used the power of the echo to help us understand this son's anguish, and they either chose not to, or simply didn't think to.
As always, most amazing insight and perspective, do you think that Zoraal Ja received a Zenos treatment in writing, where only at his last moment speaks his mind for the first time ? Zenos stayed in the story for so long but we never got to truly understand him and the circumstances that made him who he is today, was he always like this as his story told in the book they released, or the way he was raised made him this way? Did emet selch do something to him when he was a kid? In this video you shown that Zoraal Ja was written in a way that doesn’t give too much information because as the story mentioned at one point that he only talks when he is talked to, was Zenos always the same too? Honestly I can’t help but remember the first time we saw Zenos in stormblood when he was meeting with his legion members, he was quite “animated” and shown many emotions and reactions and never again we got to see Zenos in such light.
@@maxmax-pi7kw I think he does, with the crucial difference that when Zenos has his final lines in Stormblood, he's correct. (In Endwalker it's more nebulous but he is intended to have a point.) When Zoraal Ja gets his final lines, he's wrong and called out for it.
Hopefully we get to learn more about Zoraal Ja in the post patch content. Maybe learn about the man as his son learns about him. Find out why he felt he could never confide in his loving family.
Ok I went through and watched this video and I have a few things to say. First thing is at 14:57 you claim Emet Selch is an abject lair but we know in SHB why he isn’t. He is having a hard time with the legacy of the ancients and doesn’t feel that the current people are worthy of being the “shepherds of the star” and doesn’t really want to give up on restoring the ancients. He does see potential in the WoL as they have destroyed all of schemes from before. He does opt to give the WoL a test to try and get try and get him to join his side or take on the ancients legacy and have the new generation take control of their own fates and the star. I think that’s an oversimplification or a misunderstanding on your part. He is shady at the start but his background is given to us so we understand him. It’s a big deal that is shown that the WoL is a shard of Azem one of Hades’ friends from the past. It makes a lot of sense actually. Characters being wrong isn’t really new either the story I’m ARR never makes Lahabrea right, he was just crazy and evil. I think we have different ideas what makes a story good. Zaarol ja just kinda comes off as flat to me. His siblings are always supportive and so is his dad. We never understand why he hates them so much. His dad is never shown pushing him down the wrong path or holding him to a high standard, at most we are shown that bakool ja ja is mean to him for having one head, but bakool ja ja is mean to everyone. His character feels underdeveloped, it’s fine that he is wrong. I just want to understand why he is wrong, other than him just being called out a couple times. Gulool ja kinda came out of nowhere and feels out of place but that’s a different topic. It just doesn’t feel right, I understand zaarol ja’s character but it doesn’t make me like it. Being shown/told less does not make better writing.
@@Nyx-Arc The only person who says Emet-Selch doesn't lie is Emet-Selch, and Emet recently spent eighty years ruling an empire under a false name, pretenses and goals. What I meant there is that Emet should logically be lying as naturally as he breathes, but because the game's storytelling struggles with a liar, he just... doesn't. Lahabrea's a funky one, because it's not that he STARTED wrong, it's that the canon changed from under him. But even then, he was never called outright wrong, the intent was more 'the truth heavily twisted by millennia of horrible circumstance'.
What i liked about Zoraal Ja wasnt that he was just wrong. He was continually wrong. He at any point could have chosen to take a second and re-evaluate and it genuinely may have changed his fate. We often get villians with big or justifiable machinations. Yotsuyus hatred for or own people after being sold to a brothel, Emet trying to revive his seemingly much more impressive people at the cost of ourselves. Each may have been wrong but you could at least feel a nugget of empathy in the why or how they got to the way they were. Zoraal Ja on the other hand was just the tradgedy of him never considering he could be wrong and the way he dealt with the challenges showed that. He did all of them easily but in ways thay basically disrespected the point of the test. And this is the short sightedness that ultimately cost him when he couldnt get over his own hang ups.
You know everything you said is certainly a possible and valid interpretation of him. I however Just think he was underdeveloped and rushed as a character much like the entirety of the second half of the DT story and this just high grade copium.
I mean, his story line was pretty straight forward, what happens when a child suffers under the weight of their father's shadow and is unable to either find his own place or overtake his father's achievements. And honestly between him and Wuk Lamat who knows so little about anything plus Koana just simply not caring about anything beside pure efficiency, I really question how these kids didn't have teachers/lecturers to go over a lot of this and give them a more well rounded view of their nation, he could still struggle with it, but it feels they all were just ignored and left to figure life out for themselves. I get the Dawnservant not having time to teach his kids himself, but as someone who understood the importance of the different peoples and their culture making up his nation, he really failed horribly in preparing his kids and none of the 4 claimants were worthy of the throne IMO. And its not like they were poor dirt farmers in the middle of no-where, they had all the resources they could have wanted to get his kids some private teachers which was pretty common for nobles/rulers all nationalities in history. And as a villain I never saw him as a threat, we just killed gods, his little tyranny was laughable in comparison even after he consumed all those souls. Throw in that when we get there, they don't even have a navy so any attempt to invade the mainland would have them completely outclassed before fighting on land even happened. Honestly, I blame the Dawnservant himself for his failures as a parent for all the conflict in this expansion.
I found out my understanding of Zoraal Ja to be that he’s a dude who is also stoic. They don’t tend to share emotions and sometimes they hardly speak. He was just steadfast in what he wanted to do. However because we also hardly see what he did to make him think this way prior to us even arriving it merely makes me question this. What the hell did was he a witness to? What made him mentally change to go “yes we are going to war and conquer the world to end war cause war is hell.” Like WHAT?! Hell of a leap in logic and even Thancred calls this out as him being overconfident. Dudes got big plans but he hardly has the resource for it. Not even with Alexandria because the dude couldn’t even conquer his own home turf. We should have had echo flashback for what he had to go through and witness instead of Krile hearing his dark desires. I genuinely think his whole deal could have been much better explained than that. It’d clear the air for lots of people. Couple of fun facts. Funny how you bring up JoJos. His JP VA is Daisuke Ono. Once I figured that out? I cobbled together a DIO outfit asap. He’s also one of the few fights I see people struggle a lot on. My first attempt was me joining mid fight and I didn’t even see the intro cutscene until my friend eventually got to it and I joined them. Shout outs to the 14 dev team for making his a genuinely hard fight and actually one of my favorites. Bit of a tangent but of the villains I’ve seen people thirst for in this game? His is actually the one that makes me question what’s going on with some people but I kinda get it. With Emet-Selch? Yeah his Solus body is a bit of a looker and the dark brooder is always a fan favorite. Hermes? Somewhat similar idea except the dude REALLY needs a hug and therapy. I also get emo vibes from him. Zenos? Kinda has the whole Yandere vibe going where he wants you and only you and genuinely is thirsty for one more fight. Helps that he’s genuinely handsome tall blond. Even this own expansion gets one with Bakool Ja Ja where he’s a case of daddy issues and just really needing some confirmation that his existence isn’t meaningless all the while he’s built like a brick house. Not even the two heads is a turn off (looking at you Bakool Ja Ja Babygirl). Zoraal Ja? I can’t in good faith agree with cause he’s actually a terrible person but I see some of the angles these people play off on. Dark endings where he wins and the WoL is with them. Reminds me of the idea of what we would look like as a Lightwarden and how dark some of those interpretations got. But really? Him? I genuinely feel as if we can do better here.
@@LightbladeRiulo 'You can do better is always a bugbear for villainshippers, but honestly, I do think Zoraal Ja's offering a better package than most. 'At least he's not racist' is a LOW bar, but he does still clear it, and he seems like he's a generally capable guy with problems that he could have worked on in the right context. 'I can fix him' is a bad outlook, but Zoraal Ja's WAY more fixable than our average.
I think people don’t understand why we got him as a character/villain After getting so many characters with deeper points to their character, even Zenos got more to him over time, I think players are still just confused that we have such a straight forwards character
My main problem was that, with how much misdirection was involved in his character development, it needed to build toward something. We're slowly playing this story over the course of a RL week or more, and that gives the audience a lot of time to ruminate on what his "true" motivations could be. His motivations for leading Tural to war are immediately deflated by Alphinaud, but he's adamant in persisting; what could possibly make his belief in this philosophy so unflappable? Oh, later around the Feat of Pots I believe, he reveals that he doesn't give a damn about the land or goods procured through invasion; what could he possibly be after? He makes a pact with Sphene through the closed gate; why would he steal the key and backstab his father for this power, what is its purpose? Wow, he's been in a 30yr time skip; how has he grown and evolved? He's challenging Wuk Lamat to travel to his throne and defeat him there; is this some sort of weird twist where he actually wants Wuk Lamat to grow by striking him down, to make Tural hate war by becoming that very war? He had an heir somehow (I normally don't obsess over NPC parents, but like, there is not implied to be any Mamool Ja anywhere in Alexandria, so the biology of his birth at least raises some eyebrows), yet he openly scorns the son; was his son really just a dalliance or is there something more tragic going on? He's absorbing all of these souls to pervert the natural order and become an abomination of power; if he strikes down the WoL, what would he do next? And then in his dying speech (and bizarrely, in extremely insightful character deconstruction in optional dialogue by the Wandering Minstrel, after the credits), we discover definitively that it was all bullshit. Global war? He didn't care about it, it was only a means to one-up his father, and he was not married to any particular method of getting there. The bargain with Sphene and all subsequent violence? Just a salty gamer who lost a match and wants "to run it back" like you laid out. Thirty years in an alternate dimension? Zero change or evolution, he's still obsessed like that neighbor who won't shut up about their high school glory days. The distant son? He was ashamed about having nothing to offer them, which A) why would a laser-focused character like Zarool Ja produce an heir if he didn't think himself capable of leaving anything for him, and B) with his dying breath, he bequeaths his son with an embarrassing and pathetic legacy of... lemme check my notes... sole authority to reign over a futuristic city that outstrips even the Allagans, and an army of mass-produced soldier bots who don't feel fear or pain??? The lv99 trial was solely just to prove that the Rite of Succession was bullshit and he shoulda won? We played 40 hours of story and build-up, just to be told that dude was insecure for 30+ years? That's it? I'm not saying that we needed to continue FFXIV's trend of making every villain tragic and layered, but there's such a lack of complexity and nuance compared to his predecessors or even his contemporaries, Bakool Ja Ja and Sphene. If all the unreliable narrators and misdirections are striped away, he's rather flat, deliberately so. And I don't feel like "we shook things up by making flatter villains" is a healthy direction for the game.
I got a strong feeling Dawntrial will eventually get its flowers once tensions settle. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in the MSQ and surprisingly really subtle way the the characters grow. Esp Lumati’y
I kinda came to view Zoraal Ja as Bad Tidus and Gulool Ja Ja as a Better Jecht. So Zoraal Ja is Shuyin with Tidus daddy issues and Kuja's disillusionment. Kuja also died pretty wrong. Wuk Lamat was like a Yuna with Zidane's optimism. WoL and the Scions take on guardian roles and set off on a pilgrimage Bakool Ja Ja is mostly a Saturday morning anime villain, but also like if Seymour Guado stopped being an asshole. Similar cultural pressures to perform and Mamook looks so much like Macalania Woods it's hardly subtle. But everything seems to ultimately revolve around Gulool Ja Ja. Everything is just in his image. WL and Koana admire him, Zoraal resents him. Both parties find a way to emulate his style of rule. So while everyone is mad WoL is bumped from the protagonist slot and think Wuk Lamat usurped the role, Gulool Ja Ja was the main character the whole time. We retrace his steps, learn his lessons and his legacy is reflected in all Promises, even if Zoraal Ja and Sphene go a different way with that idea. That sort of subversion reminds me of FFXII and MGS3 where some we never really play is the center of the story.
That's a good comparison, I like it; it's almost nesting You Are Not The Protagonist, because not only is Wuk Lamat the lead rather than us, for a lot of the first half of Dawntrail Wuk Lamat's ALSO not the protagonist, we're learning how awesome Gulool Ja Ja is.
I love the emphasis on him lacking any reason through the form he takes in his final fight against the WoL. People's main criticism of him was that his decisions were so foolish that it became unbelievable. To me, it's obvious that he's supposed to depict a very harmful mindset that many people (especially men living in toxic masculinity) struggle with their whole lives - inferiority complex. It can completely warp one's sense of identity and perception of everything around them, and I think people underestimate just how influential it is. He refuses every possible avenue of connection, and it only feeds internal struggle until it spirals out of control. I loved that he was so quiet the whole way through! His silence reinforced just how disconnected he was from everyone. His final moments where he reveals that he refused to parent his son only reinforces what was always there - inferiority complex and a lack of self identity. To Zoraal Ja, independence was everything - and that was the one thing his father couldn't give him (indeed, he felt like his father actively worked against that just by existing). So when Zoraal Ja says "I had nothing material to give my son, just as my father couldn't for me", he's saying "I couldn't give him identity" as though that was the only thing of value he could offer... So sad. He was pathetic to the very end. That's why I don't get why people don't understand him. He's a very real depiction of how many people act in real life.
I wonder if Dawntrail in the public view will get the Cyberpunk treatment, where everyone spends a year or two bashing it, then it becomes a hidden gem once its better understood. Maybe FF14 should get a Netflix anime to soften opinions... Well, then again, the FF14 community holds a grudge and are very feelings based.
@@ZechsMerquise73 the thing there is 2077 opened as just an objectively bad game. I feel like it might be facing an FFXIII future, where over time people realize they were being unkind.
@@EinDose True I feel like atleast a big portion of the criticism is "blinded"/directed at Wuk, but overtime it will eventually become clearer. Just like Stormblood, and will essencially be "its own thing" so to speak.
@@EinDose nah, that was all people playing it on PS4 complaining and bandwagon. I played it at launch on PC and nothing really changed between when people started liking it and launch, except the netflix anime. It's still nowhere near as good as the anime. The weak parts are still there, the lack of things to do is still there, it just got a PR boost.
I never understand, how he even solved the trial by the birds. It was to solve the plant problem. Double head lizard and cat boy used science to solve it (ok, double head stole the same stuff). Or fury cat girl used a ritual for that. What did our blue lizard for the trial? Did the companion solved it for him? Or had he a other trial? Because, the problem was solved before/after he was there (he never showed up at that part).
Pretty sure he either looked real angry at the Reeds or made the Aether move over there by slaying Wildlife. It wouldn't make much less sense than how he got that supposedly ultra rare Alpaca in record time
@@hasseo195 I'd love to learn how he handled it (and how Bakool handled the alpaca, actually), but if I had to guess it might have been a 'fertilize with blood' approach, in spirit if not practice.
Right now I really just have one question: What the frick was up with his hanger on. That guy clearly had ulterior motives but we never learn anything about him other than he latched on like a leech and then was killed. Either they shouldn't have had him have ulterior motives or they should have had someone say why he was there.
Oh, Sareel Ja just wanted the power that came form helping the (presumed) next Dawnservant. It was clear in his death scene, he was negotiating some form of power share right up until the end--but didn't realize Zoraal Ja was never going to share it.
All this minus the star trek (trek puts me to sleep so I never watch it) is a fantastic way to explain my second fav antagonist 14 has. Both my fav baddies are lizards that are just angry, toxic, monsters. I still get Zabi family vibes from Zoraal Ja. I do wish Koana had a chance to call out his brother too. Koana's lack in the end is one of my problems but it is a minor one.
A thing I have noticed with Dawntrail's story is that it hits the player both with the sutblty of a hammer and a scalple at the same time. Which I would argue lends itself to even more confusion about the story. On one hand, you have Wuk Lamat, who broadcasts her thoughts like a billboard in Times Square, to the point where its almost Dora the Explorer levels of obvious where she's going. But on the other hand you have people like Zoraal Ja and Erenville; who are more quiet character wise. Who's conflicts are, as you put for Zoraal Ja, more subtle and require one to pay a little more attention to what the story is actually saying. Another misconception I see a lot is that Erenivlle didn't "react enough" in Living Memory reguarding the upcoming dissipation of what is left of his mother. I, frankly, think this is bullshit. Erenville was very much reacting to that reality for the entire zone. Much like Zoraal Ja, Erenville's conflict in Living Memory was internal, with the MSQ itself only bringing attention to it at the last second. However with a base understanding on how Erenville's character is, and especially if you tried to speak to Erenville throughout Living Memory (which is usually just met with an ellipsis), Erenville was internally stewing over the thought of seeing his mom die for basically the entire time we were in the zone, which as someone who tackles greif very similar to him irl, really struck me. I say this is to the story's detriment. I think Zoraal Ja and Erenville are really cool, but clearly a lot of people missed what I saw in them, that is clearly there for them. When you have Wuk Lamat after Wokor Zormor being like "If Koana is reason, and Zoraal Ja is resolve, what did I inherit from my father, the champion of peace?" (basically, the subtlety of being ran over by a fucking train), but in the same story have an introverted person silently grieving his mother, or a misguided man of action suffering in silence (both require a more nuanced attention to catch). It will definately lead to confusion and division for the reader.
Honestly, I think the character would have worked better for everyone if it was a bit less "Show; Don't tell" while still keeping that same core. His appearance is almost jarring to players who for the last 10 years relied on solely context, so I think him going in the direction of a transition to a little more visual storytelling in the structure of FFXIV's MSQ would help the player's appreciation of him, and pave the way for more characters like him, that need more than just reading lines of dialogue, or one single detail showing what you need to expect in a cutscene.
@@TorManiak How far is too far in taking that, though? Like, how clearly do you have to say 'Zoraal Ja's full of shit all the time' that nobody's confused, and does that just turn into undermining any showing-not-telling you do?
@@EinDose I don't really know since I'm no writer/storyteller, but it's not really the "calling out on his shit" aspect I imagined would really put him on the map here. I think his own frustrations being propped up a notch in is motion language would already give off that impression if done correctly. After all, anyone who's full of shit would know they are themselves, and will try to deny it. As such, I imagined something like every sound stopping briefly as his head snaps to whoever calls him out, staring them wordlessly for a few seconds with an irritated expression, before going back to normal and continuing as if nothing weird happened. This would happen in every Feat he appears in, after the Valigarmanda fight especially where the frequency of it happening goes up and gets more intense(and also outside of cutscenes if possible, as quest-specific NPC interactions). This is just an idea though, and as I said earlier, I'm not a writer/storyteller(nor an animator), so I don't know if that would actually work. But basically, his body language should be more expressive to make up the fact that he's quiet and doesn't express verbally his own thoughts and feelings like the other characters in the game(IMO). It will put more load into the animation work, but he's a character that is solely defined by his own actions, so putting more importance on his gestures is what I think will help that, especially since it will help shape other characters that, like him, "show, don't tell", perhaps more, perhaps less.
@@gamejawa I wouldn't know, the last Star Wars I saw was Episode 2 and ever since then I've been running on sheer cultural osmosis from nerd friend groups.
I've heard a lot of what was said and it does make a bit more sense? And I wouldn't say the game betrayed me with this character in the "teaching people how to read the story" aspect, and that this is clearly a new way they want to explore a character like this. My problem is, to equivocate this argument into gameplay terms, this is throwing a casual reader into an Extreme Trial situation, flanked by underleveled chaff on either side of the progression. He's hard to understand for the reasons you state: He doesn't communicate his intentions that well, his motivations aren't relatable to a lot of people, and everyone else in the game tells him he's wrong to his face and he refuses to listen. I think what makes Zoraal Ja harder to understand, for me, is that he is the *only* character in Dawntrail not following the typical formula. And I don't mean "we need multiple nonverbal characters" or anything. But we need characters that don't monologue their intentions plainly as others have. We need more of that variety in character writing in order to enable some kind of mental elasticity to better comprehend when something doesn't fit the otherwise rigid mold that Zoraal Ja has broken. We could have had Koana take on similar traits, where he believes himself to be right with his innovations, refuses to communicate, then something blows up in his face and he then has to ask for help from Wuk Lamat. Or we could have had more distrust from Bakool Ja Ja during Mamook without having his mother immediately smooth everything over so that we'd have to sit down and talk with him and earn his trust the hard way. We could have had Sphene be far more socially distant from Wuk Lamat and not be so earnest to earn their trust; still have that alliance of convenience, but just have it be more strained. All of this would have shown that A.) Zoraal Ja isn't such a massive outlier, and B.) It would demonstrate to the player that diplomacy is a hell of a lot harder to accomplish than what the game currently makes it out to be. All of that said, I greatly respect the pains you took in this video to explain things. I still struggle with appreciating Zoraal Ja for what his character is, but this video did make that easier to digest.
Honestly i think Zoral Jas invasion would have failed ultimately. Aside from the elephant in the room, which is the WoL gets involved, theres a few things i think he'd overlook. 1. He'd fail to realize the countries of the east are united, and are a massive force to be reckoned with. 2. Garlemald may be weakened, but they can still fight, maybe they cant solo, but they could still be a gamechanger. 3.Vtra,Tiamat and Hraesvlgr exist,and im pretty sure 2 of them owe us a favor iirc. Hes a good stategist, in that he prepares for what he knows he can expect, it's the unexpected that gets him.
He's afraid. More than anything he struck me as a man of skill, who's skill is useless. Regardless what he intended to do with the invasion, he's obviously not going to win, and I don't think he's lying when he says he wants to do it. I think he believes that at some point they'll be forced to consider the dangers of the possible war when showed it in real time. It will also give him even the briefest moments of being able to actually do something "useful" to his people. He's a soldier, seemingly a very good one. But he isn't good for anything else. He knew that. He saw that. I do not believe he is wrong. The fear of never being anything, to anyone, or not being good enough I feel covers his character fairly well. The moment with his son when he says something to the effect of "I have nothing of value to give you." hit me like a truck. Your comparison to a souls character might be an excellent example un-ironically. He went hollow long before we met him, and he has no one to blame but himself, he let the fear rule him.
@@WanOlDan I think it's all down to family dynamics, but a fairly typical dynamic I've seen raised is that expectations are high for the eldest, and lower for the younger ones, if only because of being tempered by reality.
"Is he just stupid?" -- Cider Spider's take on him at the end of his trial. I do think Dawntrail is a test for media literacy that the FF14 fanbase has failed, because as you pointed out, people want to be told rather than shown how things work. There's a large difference between not liking something and not getting something. People not getting why Wuk Lamat went with us to Alexandria instead of Koana is a great example, because people dislike her so much and wanted to move on so much they didn't get the actual reason (the reason: because she's the thematic foil for Sphene). Zoraal Ja is similar, once you put all the pieces together. He is a dumbass, but for a reason. Really, he's more a foil for Bakoul Ja Ja. He both feels massively entitled yet has an inferiority complex due to his heritage as the true-born heir of Galoul Ja Ja, the miracle child. His entire reason for being is to live up to and surpass his father, to be the next Dawnservant. This is basically Bakoul Ja Ja, massive responsibility put on him by his people/legacy which creates his character, along with the failure to live up to his expectations and the depression that came with it. Difference is, Bakoul Ja Ja found friends and became redeemed. Zaroul Ja didn't, failed, and broke mentally. There's a reason Zoraal Ja implements Tural's Head of Reason/Resolve politics into Alexandria, because of how much he's driven by being his father's son. There's a reason he could wipe out Tural, as per his deal with Sphene, but instead only chooses to kill Galoul Ja Ja and leave Wuk Lamat/Koana, the people who stole his inheritance, to suffer and fail. This likely is the reason he had a kid in a story I'm hoping is picked up in the patches. Its the reason he turned into a two-headed (forget the Lizard people's official name) during the trial, like his father. And ultimately, its the reason that, even though he wanted nothing to with Galoul Ja (because as he stated, he felt he couldn't be a father when his father failed him), that on his death, he left Galoul Ja his birthright inheritance that Galoul Ja did not want/desire, because Zaraal Ja never got that from his father, and he's giving that to his kid. He is just dumb because he didn't pick up on the lesson hammered home throughout the expansion. Dawntrail has issues, but there is a ton of depth to the story that I think people quite frankly don't even try to engage because its not spelled out for them. And when I point out this in other comments, people say I'm on copium trying to rationalize the game as good, rather than trying to analyze what the game gives us.
“Dukat is just a Nazi.” Not a complicated character!? Dude, lol. I can’t, sorry-you lost me. Dukat is on another level, and the writers put on a villain-writing clinic with him. They managed to make him nuanced and even morally gray on occasion, but he always slid back toward evil. I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed by a character refusing redemption so many times. Comparing him to Zoraal Ja in terms of simplicity is…certainly a take. Zoraal Ja actually is just very simple.
@@Josco83 The writers of Deep Space Nine outright described Dukat as a Nazi in multiple interviews, and several moments in the story as having direct analogues to events in Nazi Germany's history. He's an exceptionally well-written Nazi, but they didn't flinch from what he was.
Zoraal Ja and Gul Dukat don't belong in the same sentence unless the rest of that sentence is "are both villains, and the latter is the one with good characterization."
"Toxic soulsborne player" Lol, people who say shit like that are unironically the toxic players. You've spent two years telling souls vets how they should play the game and they haven't budge an inch. Like they have some sort of reason for doing the things they do, and I can tell you right now it's not some sense of elitism. It's engagement. Never in my many years of being a part of the souls community did we ever say "You didn't really beat the game" we said "You cheesed the fight". To a new player that sounds like the same thing, but it isn't. A while ago, I was have a conversation about one specific boss in Elden Ring and how I thought the boss was really well done. I made a good paragraph describing how the bosses move set compliments itself and how it uniquely creates a sense of difficulty to overcome that makes the fight more dynamic. To which that person responded "I don't like the fight because all I have to do is cast comet azure and it dies in one hit." That's the stuff we call cheese, when you do something that prevents you from having to engage with the bosses unique moveset. We play the game on hard mode because we get to see how tightly designed the boss fights are and it's engaging to fight. We've already played the game on easy mode before, we know we can one shot a boss with comet azure.
@@EinDose Ah sorry for the misunderstanding, "you" in that sentence was directed at all the elden ring new comers who have kept repeating the same things for the past two years since elden rings release. Not necessarily you specifically.
my problem with zoral jaa is that he has no reason to exist, no reason to love war so much and no reason to be so devoid of reason and common sense other than just antagonise that lame cat woman, wich is a terrible aspiration for a villain, considering that wuk lamat had no victories under his name, no acomplishments and no known quality other than being adopted. say whathever you want about gulol jaja but he definitely was a terrible father wich the story clearly states that he wasnt, raising that cat wich cant see past his ass ideas, without seen how it will affect the ppl around it is just stupid and so far the smart ass the history depicts, raising that mess of a cat wich cant even speak his mind and saying "u have resolve" is incredible and zoral ja, the miracle, his firstborn who was raised by a benevolent and loving father wich acomplished peace in a continent that raged with war for centuries is a plain psicopath who wanted to kill his brothers FROM THE FIRST MOMENT U MET HIM! and probe himself with his own strenght until he didnt just because. wuk lamat should just praise every god she knows when she found a braindamaged adventurer who cant act on his/her own will
The thing I got stuck on was how exactly Zoraal Ja planned on carrying out his expansionary war when one of the first things DT established was that Tural didn’t have ships capable of crossing the sea. I like to think The Alliance would nip the problem in the bud if a noticeable number of shipwrights with the necessary expertise to build a war fleet suddenly went missing due to fat contracts luring them West/getting kidnapped. A point made even more moot by the fact that cyberpunk technology is no match for even the weakest dragon of the first brood.
One thing about Zoraal Ja that I noticed, was in the introduction scene of him. All the virtues and boons Erenville describes him with, all feed back into Gulool Ja Ja (heading the landsguard, like Gulool Ja Ja used to etc). Almost as if there is very little of his that he can truly call his own. Which makes it somewhat sad that when he does get an achievement that is genuinely disconnected from his dad, something that Zoraal Ja should be able to take pride in (being King of Alexandria), but because he never got over his one hyper fixation he never appreciates it.
@@Moggleification I never thought about that, yeah. He never quite leaves the shadow.
“Everyone’s third favorite lizard” 😂 a line he absolutely deserves
Oh, actually he’s fourth. Don’t forget about baby Galool Ja. He’s precious.
@@amichau oh of course, how silly of me.
Fifth for me. I have a deep respect for Xeerol Ja and her earnestness to help people with the power of juice.
I really liked the 2 lizards in the ranged role quest, and the autarch's wife, Milaal Ja. So that would make him... er... running out of fingers to count with.
I think your take echoes what I might just consider the best aspect of Dawntrail:
At points, it learned to be much more concise than what came before. You can be just as meaningful with one sentence than you can be with ten.
I really encourage people to go back to all of the scenes with Otis and look at how much you actually learned in just a few scenes.
The campfire scene with Koana, Thancred and Urianger is where I first truly felt it. I was super impressed with how much we learned about Koana in that scene and how it tied together with Thancred's but also particularly Urianger's arc.
Same for anything with Bakool Ja Ja and yes, Zoraal Ja.
Living Memory was the best example of this to me. You learn a lot about all of the characters involved, some you just met. You get faced with an interesting moral dilemma while resolving five different character stories.
And FF14 always got down to business in key moments, but I really felt it in a lot of scenes in Dawntrail. It felt a lot like how economic older Final Fantasies were.
The problem is that I think this comes with its own issues. I think this is where the tonal dissonance complaints for older Final Fantasies come from and I think where the complaints about particularly Bakool Ja Ja's redemption arc and Sphene's character in FF14 come from.
Eventhough we learn a lot about them and there are hints to what's up, there isn't as much connective tissue to those reveals.
If you have constant walls of text about the detail, you will always have connective tissue and nobody will ever forget it.
I went back after everything regarding Bakool Ja Ja was revealed and was surprised how early the hints were there. But after his arc, he essentially also feels like a different character.
He is not an uninformed redemption arc because he never reverts to his old ways (which characters are then suddenly okay with within bad redemption arcs), but he is not a graceful one, either.
So I think part of the reason why people are so dismissive of Dawntrail is, yes, partially because they did it in two days and barely absorbed anything from it, but also because this concise writing style is mixed with "the usual" lore walls of text and the meaning there is can get lost in it if you don't go into it expecting to absorb every little detail (like I did). Being economic with storytelling is great, but you can just go too economic and if it's not consistent bury the cool stuff.
The few lines at the start of Zoraal Ja's trial really stood out to me to the point where I went back to what came before because I also initially had an issue putting together his story. But then I realised, I was... actually intellectually working to think about a story? I wasn't just force-fed a story of a character?
And that is a different kind of storytelling that can also be wonderful in its own right.
It's easy to dismiss anything as half-baked, but I much prefer to face a story on its own terms.
I also see a lot of dismissal about "thinking about the story" and how that either "ruined it more" or "you should think less about it" and I think to me the latter principle is just as dismissive and not fun as some of the more shallow negative dismissal.
You're not obligated to be critical of something you love 24/7 (which is its own very annoying fandom group), but "only consuming, not thinking" is also really boring to me.
Personally speaking, I think going over it again via other playthroughs or revisits of my own, I grew to appreciate it a lot more in some aspects, but also a little less in others.
Don't have much a general unified point here to end on, but I thought this was a great video!
I think a lot of TH-cam essays often substitute plot summary for analysis, so you only dedicating a portion of your video to it felt like a breath of fresh air. (Not to mention it was actually relevant considering part of the thesis of the video is that many are confused by Zoraal Ja's story.)
Looking forward to any other videos from you (also will be checking out your other videos)!
"I also see a lot of dismissal about "thinking about the story" and how that either "ruined it more" or "you should think less about it" and I think to me the latter principle is just as dismissive and not fun as some of the more shallow negative dismissal.
You're not obligated to be critical of something you love 24/7 (which is its own very annoying fandom group), but "only consuming, not thinking" is also really boring to me.
Personally speaking, I think going over it again via other playthroughs or revisits of my own, I grew to appreciate it a lot more in some aspects, but also a little less in others."
Bro this has been me for years trying to explain to people about Mass Effect 3's endings. Despite the flaw in the initial presentation that doesn't mean they don't have depth and that thinking about that doesn't mean I'm trying to think to deep. I'm just explaining what is factually there and I find it fun.
Zoraal Ja's understanding of War being... incredibly juvenile, if we're being honest, makes a lot more sense when you take his upbringing into considering. He wasn't raised in a society in active warfare on multiple fronts, unlike Zenos - he was raised in an era of peace. He never fought an enemy nation or occupied hostile territory, also unlike Zenos, who was awful on purpose so he had something to do when the rebels eventually rose up. Zoraal Ja fights tural vidraal, which are basically Monster Hunter creatures. He doesn't have a grasp of strategy greater than "flush out the target to him to get to" because that's literally all he's needed to do, and he doesn't even know what logistics or tactical deployment are because the first was handled by the infrastructure that was already established by his father and the latter wasn't necessary for him to just bulldoze through most challenges solo, and I think he KNOWS all of this, or at least realizes it later on but can't bring himself to fix it out of pride. Him saying that Garlemald was "weak" for falling to internal strife was such a blatantly ignorant remark that it shook me from my "the characters are at least always honest with themselves" mindset and I started seeing him less as a FFXIV character and more of an Obsidian RPG character, who is more than willing to lie - especially to themselves - out of pride, misplaced confidence, or fear more than deception.
Yes, that's right, I just compared Zoraal Ja to Atris from Knights of the Old Republic 2. They both come off as haughty, incredibly self-assured, and have incredibly *wrong* opinions but will brook no argument. It's just that Atris comes after several, several hours of the game teaching you to never take words from NPCs at face value. FFXIV spends *way more* time doing the exact opposite.
So, uh, yeah. All that to say that you've convinced me. Good video.
"dimensional grafting" is a really great description of what happened with the bubble
Comparing Zoraal Ja to a toxic solo Souls player is not a take I expected, but it's a take I can truly get behind.
I was in that "I don't get Zoraal Ja" camp in the beginning, and it was only at the end when he was going through his existential crisis and was haunted by the visions that I finally begun to understand what he was all about. While I find him less engaging than our previous villains, I do like this new direction of character writing.
I think something else that probably nagged at Zoraal Ja was even his victory over his father was hollow. Gulol Ja ja was old, even without the 30 years Zoraal lived; the head of Reason was already dead, and as the fight against his shade shows? He's fighting at a fraction of his normal strength. It probably didn't feel like the victory Zoraal wanted, and he only realized that when he was done.
But that brings me to an interesting connection that nagged at me for awhile until something hit me a couple of days ago: Why would Zoraal go along with Sphene's plan? The requirements of Living Memory would mean that the entire Source would need to be drained of souls eventually, and that need would grow every time someone with a regulator died; in fact, because of who Sphene is, there'd probably be quite a large segment of the Source stored in Living Memory eventually.
The obvious solution is he didn't think that far ahead, but to me the more interesting answer is that Sphene lied. That she lied to him about her ultimate goal and what she needed. It may not have even been intentional, since at that point her two personas were still in conflict, but it would keep in the theme here of the writing not being as straightforward as it once was.
I'd even go so far as to say that FFXIV gets more interesting when characters lie.
@@CrystalBearer20 That first part is something he says in the scene with Sphene; I consider it a less important part than the fact he lost round one anyway, so I skipped past it.
I really like his boss form. A two-headed mamool-ja, missing its head of wisdom. It's an extremely strong symbol of who this guy is. All his life he was trying to create a miracle to prove himself, when he'd already been a miracle, and all people actually wanted from him, was to be there. Had he instead of looking inwards, looked outwards, he'd have found family ready to help and support him. I can't help but feel that his adopted brother and sister were meant to provide the wisdom and heart he needed to become the next dawnservant, and this whole race is a backup plan because that failed. This expansion is written a lot more subtle than normal.
Unironically, the thing that made Zoraal Ja click for me was the comic "How to make Xibruq Pibil". It really made me realize Zoraal Ja just sees himself as a failure for not living up to his potential and made me instantly rewatch all his scenes. With the context of expectation and failure I now see myself in him so much.
I could understand him but...
1) there's almost nothing more to his character other than Krile's omnious Echo visions about him resenting his own familly.
2) I guess I emphathized way too much with Wuk Lamat at that point of the story:
Girl finally acomplishes her dream, she says a brief goodbye to her adoptive mother and then everything goes to HELL.
@@Gravitysonic0 He's also a very functional villain, they want us to LOATHE him right up until the end, so if you're someone whose character interests are rooted in empathy, he'll frustrate you.
With the first point we do have a lot of hints that he's...off, Krile just makes it more obvious.
@@EinDose to me he is just a normal rebellion kid who want to prove his worth by doing opposite deeds then his father😅
I don’t think it would have been as effective for him. He was not the type of character to let folks in, like Emet Selch decided to do, he is even more closed off than Zenos strangely enough, that man expressed himself in brutal violent ways but he did nonetheless express himself, Zoraal couldn’t even do that much. He had to be brought to the brink of death to lay bare his pains and I think waiting for that was worth keeping his motivations more dubious up until then than outright explaining it. His dark stare at Wuk Lamat and Koana after they won their trial together told me enough. That he had a massive inferiority complex that could not be easily sated and he was not willing to change or express it. sometimes less is more and in his case I believe it worked.
The thing that struck to me the most with how out of touch the man was is that when we first reach Tural, we are told that Tural doesn't have a proper navy, only fishing vessels that cannot cross the ocean like the one in Eorzea do.
How did he exactly plan on even reaching the rest of the world to conquer it?
Yeah like, he could of conquered Tural if we weren't there, but the rest of the world?
Doubtful.
If he actually had what we saw in Arcadion and the ONE boss in Vanguard, then maybe (at the cost of the soul damage), but not those stupid airships.
He tells Koana that he expects him to help rapidly advance Tural's military capabilities.
So I assume his expectations were to build an army and navy at that point, using everything his adoptive brother learned in Sharlayan.
@@ursulcx299 I kinda get the feeling Zoraal Ja's not much of a strategist, he probably didn't think this far ahead.
@@EinDoseZJ is definitely an idiot when it comes to strategy, considering how horribly he fumbled the invasion by making highly advanced, flight capable soldiers fight cowboys on land and in small packs.
While I am optimistic about how the story will go (like in arr there are clear threads being laid out for possible stories later on) part of me wants to see what would of happened if he got his wish to invade. Because clearly he is a frog in a pond.
He thinks he knows everything, and with his mighty legs and leap over any hurdle, only to realize that when he leapt over that stone wall, he’s going to face such a force, one that is already so TIRED of war, so uneasy about losing that peace, that’s he’s severely out matched.
I still think Zoraal ja's writting was pretty weak, understanding him was not hard, it's not a trope we haven't seen before... but the way they chose to write it is what I have a problem with, even so this video gave me a new perspective of things
Same, I got him fine but an extra tidbit or two could have helped.
Bakool Ja Ja of course, taking the first and second spot comfortably.
I'm not sure, Bakool ja ja the mystic could've really done with more lines. He's quite the quiet one of the 2.
@@Razashhis line delivery is just so cunty im obsessed
@@Razash I agree that Bakool Ja Ja The Mystic needed more lines and banter. They gave The Mighty most of the lines between the two of them, but I really expected them both to have banter and important input, especially after their Face Turn.
I think they missed out having Zoraal Ja show up in Living Memory.
In my reactions I specifically spitballed the notion of Zoraal Ja in Living Memory, as someone who'd be left completely alone. I feel like that might be one of those things that'd deepen Living Memory at the expense of Zoraal Ja, though, I'm not sure if we need to see Zoraal Ja as a kid in isolation. I'd be more interested in seeing a flashback, just so we can see how much of his history was Gulool being a worse dad than we expect.
True, would've been very reminiscent of seeing Amon in the Lifestream, and the final resolution we got with that character
I really like Zoraal Ja, the character. He's such a goober in the grand scheme of FFXIV.
I think a missed bit about him is that his whole "instilling a love of peace through war" is almost certainly bullshit. The guy has lived in Tural his whole life during an era of unbroken peace; what does he know about the horrors of war? Unless he's 90+ years old and has secretly travelled the world, he's never seen or been in a war.
And on that same note, we see a point of comparison between himself and Wuk Lamat: their ignorance. Wuk Lamat starts out the story assured that she knows Tural and her people, only to be stumped and shocked at every turn when her views are shown to be shallow at best. I think it's fair to assume Zoraal Ja also did not know very much about the various cultures --- but something we don't have to assume is his ignorance regarding the rest of the world. The man has no idea what the Garlean Empire was capable of, but called them "a congregation of simpletons." Bro, Zenos would have waffle stomped him so bad. He also assumed he could just flatten Tulliyolal with no resistance and got embarrassed for it. He's been on guard duty, he thinks he's a 5 star general.
Difference being, Wuk Lamat opened her mind up and resolved (harhar) to learn more of Tural. Zoraal Ja straight up refused to entertain the idea that he needed to learn anything --- if he couldn't do it himself through force, he wasn't worthy of being The Resilient Son.
Innocent Ignorance vs Aggressive Ignorance situation. There are other comparison points between the two, like Wuk Lamat being written off and wanting to prove herself to others vs Zoraal Ja being glazed 24/7 but wanting to prove himself to himself, Wuk Lamat being a Warrior (a tank job, meant to protect others) vs Zoraal Ja being a Viper (meant to destroy obstacles in his way), etc.
@@SchrosDinger I love the comparisons of the jobs, and I do feel like there might be something in asking why some characters get the specific styles they do. We have gun jobs of every role, so why is Koana specifically a Machinist? (Aside from 'the times he fights also have a Sage and Gunbreaker')
@@EinDose I interpreted Koana being a machinist specifically because the job's flavor is having a variety of technological/mechanical tools at its disposal
@@EinDose The way I read it, Koana as a Machinist may be in reference to how he tackles problems and people: from a distance and as efficiently as possible. But even as stoic as he acts, at least Koana realized he needed others to fill in for his weaknesses.
As for why he isn't a Sage or Gunbreaker, it may have some ties to his drive to bring innovations of the East to Tural --- the firearms of Ishgard being more readily available and easier to use and manufacture than the nouliths or gunblades. But that may be a stretch, to be fair.
Fun fact, Koana doesn't use the typical extra flashy spinning moves that WOL has, his basic rotation is still made up of mostly the low level MCH skills, boots on the ground.
@@kingmisha5161 I think Koana being a Machinist is for no other reason than Sage and Gunbreaker were already occupied in the main cast group (not to mention, having a Gunbreaker Thancred with him).
He could've potentially have been a mix (like Graha or Vrtra) if he could join us in more dungeons, but for simplicity he was most likely made into a Machinist.
On Zoraal Ja lacking reason, I feel there is an interesting contrast with Bakool Ja Ja, as when Wuk Lamat was kidnapped when the WOL faced down Bakool Ja Ja, his Mystic head immediately realised that fighting the WOL was a bad idea and when he kidnapped Humnu Rruk, he made sure that the WOl hands were tied while he fought Wuk Lamat. If Zoraal Ja had become Dawnservant, how would he have carried out his invasion if he knew of even some of Eorzea's capacity, as all can agree that it would have been disastrous for Tural, even with Alexandrian technology.
@@TheGoodOne1998 a theoretical Zoraal-led invasion of Eorzea would fail in an instant, because Tural sucks at boats and the first thing they'll hit is Limsa.
It says something about Zoraal Ja's lack of reason when you can seriously make an argument that pre-reform Bakool Ja Ja would have made a smarter and better ruler of Tural that Zoraal Ja.
Zoraal Jas plan never made sense I’ve said this over and over again but how fuck was Tuliyollal lead by him supposed to invade Garlemald that is protected by the Eorzean alliance when his city doesn’t even have boats, lack of mages, and no air support? Then he wants to invade Eorzea how?! He is by far the worst villain in the game so far.
@@EinDose It'd either be Limsa or Sharlayan...And both are kinda bad picks tbh
I think some of it may be that Zoraal Ja doesn't have a twist-he's a grouchy jerk when you meet him, he's a grouchy jerk all through the trials, he's a grouchy jerk when he loses, and he's a grouchy jerk when he dies. Bakool Ja Ja, for as hamfisted and half-baked his heel/face turn is, at least ties into the FFXIV tradition of "villain has a sympathetic angle." Zoraal Ja just... doesn't.
@@thegneech Yeah, Zoraal Ja's a very straight shot, you just don't know exactly where he's shooting from for a while. From a storytelling economy perspective that's very welcome, it means he's never fighting for space with Bakool or Sphene who need those explanations more.
Absolutely. I appreciate they took this route with him tbh. In his case, a sudden 'redemption' or change of heart would have felt unwarranted.
Honestly, Zoraal Ja doesn't work imo. At all.
And I strongly suspect it is because he was not meant to be the antagonist until late in development.
Everything in the first half of the game points to Bakool Ja Ja being the clear secondary antagonist, with Zoraal Ja being the obvious choice for primary; BUT what they do instead is set up Sareel Ja as the true villain. Zoraal Ja is the figurehead, with Sareel Ja manipulating him for his own ends; Sareel Ja even flat out says "I will be the one to reach the Golden City" while Zoraal Ja stays silent. And, through the entire first half, Zoraal Ja shows absolutely no indication of what he will become; almost like he wasn't written to become the villain.
His heel turn murder of Sareel Ja came out of nowhere. We never even get to learn what SJ's motivation was, or what he planned to do once he reached the Golden City.
None of the rest of what he did made sense either. Why wait 30 years to come back?
And specifically, why was his army so godawful weak when they came back? He made it very clear that he DIDN'T KNOW time hadn't passed; that means he was expecting them to have had THIRTY YEARS to build up the nation, bring in tech from the mainland etc. And he KNOWS what kind of tech Sharlayan has from Koana force-feeding it to everyone.
It's somewhat reasonable for his army to lose to the unexpected deus ex machina dragons in the capital that come out of literally nowhere and vanish the second the cutscene is over. But he also couldn't get even a single win against the giants, the Mamool Ja, the shitty cowboy militia, or even the giant chickens.
It would be like someone prepping for a fight against a modern day army and losing against a single Gulf War era platoon and a bunch of tribal fighters. It makes absolutely no sense, especially since Zoraal Ja would have been in his mid to late 50s.
That part also doesn't make sense; with 30 years worth of training and augments he STILL loses to his geriatric, literally half dead father and has to burn a rez to pull off a kill.
There's only one way I see his story working, and that is if he went to the Golden City, decided he was satisfied with his life there, and gave up on his conquest dreams; then around the time Gulool Ja was born, something happened to throw him into a midlife crisis and THEN he decided to go all conquest. It would explain at least why his decision making was so poor and why he was so ill prepared when he came back to the Source.
I don't understand the confusion about Zoraal Ja. His motivations were always very clear to me: he has daddy issues and wants to surpass his father in every way because that's the heavy expectation placed on him. He's the first-born, he's the 'rightful heir', he's the actual child that felt unwanted compared to his adopted siblings. To me, this was shown very clearly in the story from the very beginning to the very end when we interact with his own unwanted son. He wants war because war and conquest is what he believes is his father's legacy and what he must do as well. This is his path to his own version of peace for his people, no matter how flawed that path may be. I don't like Zoraal Ja, I think he's stupid and I disagree with what he stands for in the story, but he just always felt very clearly defined to me.
I think your constant comparisons to Dark Souls is right though in terms of storytelling. DS tells its story a lot by showing rather than telling, and maybe FFXIV players aren't used to interpreting things that way.
@@spencer6736 Yeah, I think the confusion straight-up comes from not being used to a less direct and more fallible method of learning information. I think Zoraal's a bit more Armored Core or Sekiro than Dark Souls per se in terms of character plan, but he's definitely in that range of more indirect storytelling, and we've never had stuff like that before to such a degree.
I agree he is stupid but that is by design imo. he lives in peace and does not understand the weight of his words. he's been constantly told he can achieve great things, but the only thing that naturally comes to him is battle. It's a pretty natural conclusion for him to draw that his purpose and the way he will carve out his path is through violence. are his ideals stupid? hell yeah. but I dont think thats the point, he is stupid because nobody understood him enough to tell him there was more to life than surpassing his father and meeting expectations. In the whole story he has no real meaningful bonds other than his father(I dont count koana/wuk in this because they are pretty explicitly not friends) and imo this is the true tragedy of zoraal ja, that he lived his whole life unseen by a single person in his life for who he is. It doesnt make his ideas less dumb or his actions any less acceptable but he feels so much more human than Emet or thordan or Zenos. Its cool to see a dude just make mistakes without some grand plan or god powers, just a human that was overwhelmed by his own weakness
The funny thing about "Ds shows a lot of it's story by showing rather then telling" is a very common critisim of DT (one that I also have) is they REALLY love to tell. To the point where ZJ feels out of place even in his own story. It's like whoever who wrote him was almost entirely seperate from the rest of the writing team.
My problem with Zoraal Ja is that he was very tell don't show and whatever telling they did was either third person from people that clearly didn't understand him or directly from him in sparse exposition that stated a different motivation every time he opened his mouth. In Urqopacha it was "These people have peace so I am going to teach them to want peace by showing them that war sucks when I try to conquer the world". That would have been a brief and somewhat hilarious failure and we all knew it so it had no weight. It was also amusing that he was too young to know what war was like either.
In Koza'mauka he went on more about "taking by force" with no real indication that even he really knew what that meant. Nor were we given any indication as to why this one person was completely opposite in motivation to anyone else on the continent.
Then before the Valigarmanda fight he wanted to see the creature that his father fought. Then after the fight was the first time we ever even heard any reference to "proving the miracle". We never got a definition of what that phrase actually would have meant to him or anyone else.
Then he gets sad because he can't cook (a feeling I actually do identify with) so he does something completely against his already thin character and tries a tactic that would have fit better with Bakool Ja Ja. If you don't get your way, attack the person that can immediately disqualify you. Basically, he gave up and threw a tantrum.
Then he enters the portal and comes out 30 years later talking about how he's glad he gets to kill his father himself. We never got any indication of any animosity between the two. We didn't even get any sense of friction. Something that could have easily been communicated by his siblings.
At the end of his trial he's spouting stuff about how his father "spurned him". That's never shown and the character of his father indicates otherwise. He then talks about how his son (who was born from no female mamool ja in the bubble so I am guessing clone) would receive that which he earned by the sweat of his brow.
He didn't earn a thing, he took. He stole and tried to steal more. Also, lizards don't sweat.
This turned into a book but his characterization was paper thin and changed with the wind. He didn't make a bit of sense to me. I can get if a character is an idiot, or evil, or driven by something external to the central plot but he just didn't come off as complete. He felt like they cut a large amount of characterization from the script and then proceeded as if they had left it in.
I ask this as politely as possible, but did you get a chance to watch the video you're commenting on?
@@patrickbrannick247 Yes?
As a response, you did miss some things. Urqopacha was specifically brought up in MSQ because of the Pelupelu. It is noted that Koana is highly favored by their younger generation because he offers technological advances that would magnify their ability to trade and get rich. It's mentioned that the younger generations in general do not understand the real cost of the wars that happened before the first Dawnservant came to the throne, and are all too eager to consider the ideas of abandoning tradition and pursuing conquest. Zoraal Ja Ja wasn't just commenting about the Pelupelu, he was talking about the fact that so many people were completely okay with the idea of war because they thought it'd make their lives better. His platform of a worldwide conquest wasn't just him, it's blatantly stated that he does have a smaller, but devoted faction of supporters who very much think war is the way to go about things. The lore supports this, as we see many Mamool Ja travel east to Eorzea to get money and refine their combative skills.
"Proving the miracle" already got defined for us earlier in MSQ, at the outright start. They told us that two-headed Mamool Ja cannot have children, that it was an outright miracle that Zoraal Ja was born. "Resilient Son", his title, is in reference to that. It's not hard to understand that's what he was angsting over, desperately trying to prove his worth to himself.
He already made it clear midway through MSQ that he didn't give a shit about the entire competition. He fully was okay with stealing the victory out from everyone else, and wasn't aware that Gulool Ja Ja knew that none of his children were quite ready for the throne and had no intention of surrendering it if he deemed the winner unworthy. He intended to steal the final tablet piece, but when the shade of his father's prime appeared, it quite clearly broke him when it became apparent he truly wasn't worthy. That's what magnified his obsession with the power of the Golden City, and led to what happens in Alexandria after.
When Zoraal Ja is talking about being "spurned" by his father, it's not that the two necessarily had a bad relationship. It's that he saw himself as the only realistic heir to the throne. He's the blood son, the promised son, the prodigal heir to the throne who defied biology itself to be borne to a two-headed Mamool Ja. He saw it as being spurned when anyone else was even allowed to pursue the throne at all, and is why he hates his siblings so much. This is brought up in MSQ a couple times. His entire motivation is about surpassing his father, when in reality he was unworthy of him in every way. Even with Alexandrian armor and weaponry, he was completely outmatched by his elderly father (who was already technically half-dead) and straight-up died like a rube in their duel. He had to cheat just to win.
I think his idea of conquering the world comes out of a desire to surpass his father, as well. "Oh, my dad "conquered" Tural under one banner? Then I'll do it better and conquer the entire world instead!"
I won't disagree that his writing was frail at many points and they needed to give him more time, but I would argue that they showed his motivations and failings pretty clearly. They just didn't outright state all of it, which is hard to see because the rest of 7.0 made such a mistake of telling and not showing. Zoraal Ja's absolutely a petty, selfish jerk who squandered all of his blessings and learned all the wrong lessons from his life experiences...and two civilizations paid the price for it.
@@Can_O_Crayola I agree. His story was shown not told (which makes for much better storytelling), which confuses me how OP thought he was the tell not show character of this expansion.
@@patrickbrannick247 Kind of a hollow question if you don't explain what about their comment you're taking issue with. The video presented their take, and Frost presented theirs in return. What're you getting at, exactly?
Yeah most of the people complaining must have obviously played the game just like Zoraal Ja tried to complete the Trials.
Come to think of it, Zoraal Ja's main lament after Valigarmanda IS that he wasn't the protagonist of that one.
I like this video. And yes i agree, im glad that his character is this way. I explored my emotions in a different way this time. But i felt sad too, at the end of his life. He acted with immense selfishness, never thinking of things he did not need to. Not speaking much to others of his plans or thoughts, so he believed it useless for them to hear. Tural wanting to avoid being this type of person.... his symbol, one of war and might, that his father cleansed from the land for 80 years.... a sad tale but im glad there is room for such a character in this story. Part of why i love this game so much. ❤
bit wierd finding positive opinions on DT despite my youtube feed really wanting to recommend me why DT is the worst thing ever
@@neobahumuth6 I do what I can, and what I can is 'praise the best expansion'!
Honestly let them hate if they want to I've been called easily entertained for daring to like DT quite a few times and I still can't figure out why exactly I should see that as a problem lol
(Meanwhile me liking dawntrail more then heavansward....)
@@scorpiowarrior7841 well it's because truthfully HW has alot of problems that ppl gloss over
@neobahumuth6 yeah, like I'm pretty sure HW has more filler then even dawntrail....looking at you churning mists
I get people don't like Dawntrail, but geez louise, people come out of the woodwork whenever anyone dares to say anything remotely positive about the story.
If anything, for my opinion Zoraal Ja is a very good character. He is that character undergoing a breakdown and it makes him evil, and he is the strongman out of the Dawnservant claimants so he is naïve in terms of war. And in terms of who Wuk Lamat handles, he is the best second to last person because he could have been saved but he is unreasonable by his boss fight, but also Zoraal Ja would fight first and never try secret stuff. He is Wuk Lamat’s opposite, and that makes it clear Wuk Lamat can take on Sphene, as a person who seems nice but is very much only for her people (unlike Wuk Lamat who really is for all her people and more). He could not have played a better role and he could not have been written better.
For the record, I do like Wuk Lamat as well. After peering beyond the hate, I realized her arc is solid.
Happy to see a positive video about Dawntrial for a change. Heard all the negativity before I got there myself, so I went into dawntrial with low expectations. But I ended up genuinely loving it.
I mean his "I'll make them tired of war by dragging us all in to war and then there will be no more war" is still incomprehensible to me, logic-wise. But I did understand that was what he was saying. It just had "Hey man I heard you like war, so I put some war in your war so you can war" vibes and the logic is just hard to compute. Cus he seems cool calm and collected otherwise. (We're told he's got some rage abyss undertones by krile, but we don't really see it till the invasion.) And smart. And that logic just isn't. That was my major hangup with his character.
The way I saw it? It's partly an excuse. He sees peace as an end goal 'cause his dad was beloved for his peaceful reign. But he himself craves conflict. He wants to be battle tested and prove himself superior by his greatest strength: might. That's why he cooks up all this bs about bringing war to teach the value of peace. In truth, he only desires to dominate and become a beloved leader by way of might. If peace comes after, then it would be all the better. If not, then he just gets to fight more.
omg i love him so so much ;__; i pray we get more of his background in future patches. all we have is little puzzle pieces and the drastic difference between his tural and his S9 model making me think what's going on in his mind. (i don't mean the lvl99 form though).
i think many players are angry about him bc we didn't even have any echo from his past - which i totally get bc there HAS to be something. personally i think it was lame that krile had her "there's darkness in him" part but we didn't react to him at all...
He died being told he was wrong, such a tragedy. He thought he was cast aside after losing the rite of succession and sadly believed that his father left him nothing.
I don't even have a hypothesis about what Gulool Ja Ja would have done for him or given him if his son had come home in peace despite failing the rite.
Personally I think a big issue I have with the rite itself (aside from it's just....not told very well and the actual rites were extremely boring) is Gulool Ja Ja's lack of involvement. I think Zoraal ja would've been a lot more compelling if we got to see at evrey turn his dad try to bring back from his path, but he just didn't listen because it would break his entire world view down.
Your video came up on my feed and i realized you said a lot of things i unconsciously figured out. One of the things i feel like ffxiv does is try and show directly opposing forces, and i have wondered if the inclusion of two (three?) opposing forces against wuk lamat was too much for some players. Each character shows a different kind of opposition to Wuk Lamat's as someone else said here, innocent ignorance, and i really liked that.
I didn't fit it here because it's more of a Wuk Lamat point, but I think Zoraal Ja's specific kind of opposition to her is so brick-simple that it's honestly brilliant: 'liking peace is all well and good, but how do you handle someone just declaring war because he can'.
Part of me thinks it's maybe TOO simple, and perhaps Zoraal Ja's narrative purpose is so blatant that people missed the rest of him!
The fight with Galool Ja Ja was unplanned. Zoraal Ja was surprised he was still alive. His goal was take the souls of the people in Tural, but he changed his Plan afterwards when he learned his father still lived. He switched back to his old self of needing to prove his existence, which is why he issued the challenge to Wuk Lamat.
@@SuperRamos619 If that's true he's even dumber, because at least the runback is a plan that can SUCCEED.
@@EinDosewhen he first gets to the throne room he says something like "I would have thought you died ages ago old man, I was sad the opportunity had passed me by to kill you myself. Today really is my lucky day." Which was super offputing because in-game it had been like 2 days and the whole alexandrian time skip hadn't been presented yet.
@@jackalakkinI mean its not really off-putting, its foreshadowing. We already know that other shards experience time different from shadowbringers
I think he was planning on fighting whoever he found in the throne room. It just happened to be Galool Ja Ja, rather than Wuk Lamat as he expected. I don't think he knows even about Koana being the Vow of Reason, either.
To me, what makes Zoraal Ja such a difficult character to grasp is his lack of depth. It really feels like they said "we need a character that loves war to be the baddie; this guy loves war... because people have it too good and they take it for granted? Yeah that'll work" and then didn't actually give him a narrative reason to have that opinion.
At the verrrry end (literally on his deathbed) the big reveal was he was Like This because he Had Something To Prove, despite holding tremendous power in the city (being head of the admittedly limited army), and then king of alexandria, and was loved and respected by both his people and his family. It gave the impression they ran out of time to find a good reason he felt this way and just put any old reason on there. This amidst a plethora of other very one dimensional characters and unengaging narrative, it just felt like he was one of many incomplete aspects of the msq. It felt like his character wasn't nailed down until the very end and by then it was too late to go back to rewrite some of his earlier scenes to get even an inkling of his imposter syndrome & instability other than to put in other characters essentially saying "he gives me the heebiejeebies."
Any depth he may have had as a character was not shown to us in any way until his act of desperation where he steals the keystones (which there's no obvious reason he does because he WAS disqualifed and he wouldn't have known the city of gold was a vault to another world with a Tron army) and the surprise key to open the door (which also, how did they know) was genetically linked to him and his father (and is also imho the only reason his son exists - so they can pass the key down). It's not even just a lack of words not being said, there's just not really any indicators because he's got so little screen time and what he does have he just keeps saying that war will teach people how good peace is instead of anything new or nuanced.
Idk he just felt like a puzzle piece jammed into a spot he didn't fit and the confusing bit about him is his motivation makes no sense given everything else we know about his backstory and his actions. The cognitive dissonance he exibits is rarely found in well written characters.
What I think would have been better would have been to swap him & bakool ja since bakool ja had a Reason (even if it was mid, it fit narratively) and was after roughly the same thing, but without having been spoiled and pamped (just the cream of the crop of the starving forest) and could have reasonably wanted revenge on tuliyolal for having it So Good while they suffered in the dark. And then they wouldn't have had to force his redemption arc in (which also doesn't fit).
I think you nailed it. He doesn't talk much, and the FFXIV playerbase (if not the FF player base as a whole) is REALLY heavily trained to take cues and context entirely from a character's mouth. This expansion has SO much context hidden behind character's actions and words, not just for Zoraal Ja but for everyone in the new and old cast. I've seen so many hot takes about character's being too quiet or not making sense when in reality what they mean is they didn't have the thoughts/feelings of that character laid out on a platter for them and they didn't stop to *think* about how they were acting or why. Really feels like a good chunk of the people who are screaming that this is the worst expansion are also the ones who speedrun everything and take things at face value.
I do respect your right to a different opinion, but to me a lot of this comes off as apologism for what I would call bad writing. You make a fair point about how often characters in XIV monologue out their intentions and reasons for their outlooks, but to me Zooral Ja is a very two-dimensional bad guy who wants power for the sake of it, only occasionally using "teaching the people" or "being a strong leader" as an excuse, though that goes right out the window when he butchers the Tuliyolans(?), then again when he repeats that in Solution 9. He undercuts the only things that really lend him any character beyond "me good fighter, me want surpass dad, me prove to everyone me better by being stronkest leader." I find that he's just plain poorly written, personally, and that this whole line of reasoning in the video gives him waaaaay more credit than his character as presented deserves. All the same though, as with any writing, there's no 'wrong' interpretation, so I appreciate the food for thought and general discussion.
@@FishSkeleton- Honestly, I don't disagree that Zoraal Ja is two-dimensional, but I do disagree that that's a bad thing. I think Zoraal Ja is as complicated as he should be--which is to say, not very, in large part because he needs to yield his time to more complex characters. He's not exactly my favorite character, but I like a character that's made to fill a specific role and does it well, and Zoraal Ja does it well. You don't want the B plot to devour the A, after all.
Holy shit, TH-cam recommendations actually recommending something good for once. Subscribed!
It's basically Zenos all over again. But this time people literally dont get his character, or feel there is nothing to it. As a Zenos enjoyer I also liked Zoraal Ja, sometimes I feel less is more and imho he portrayed that silent character trope quite well. But I also was confused by the end of the story about his ambitions and only found out through comments what he was "supposed" to portray. I get that he stood in the shadows of his father, but my impressions ended there. I found it to be quite subtle and reminded me a bit how Fromsoftware tells the story in their games. Which I highly adore, but it was confusing to see that in 14. But I agree, they probably wanted a villain first and foremost that you absolutely despise, and they managed to do that.. Oh boy.
The Zenos comparison is interesting but not one I felt entirely confident pinning down at this early stage. But I feel like Zenos is what Zoraal Ja 'done normally' is like, how FFXIV usually designs that sort of character, and Zoraal Ja's sort of deliberately going against the obvious angles.
It's similar to how I look at Bakool Ja Ja, Bakool's also a character FFXIV does a lot of but in a very different delivery.
I don't really agree, since Zenos was driven very clearly by his desire to find entertainment in a world that bored him, even if that meant destroying the entire planet to achieve that end. With Zoraal Ja, I really can't tell you what he even wanted out of life other than to be seen as superior to his dad(s). To me he's just a superiority and/ or Napoleon complex ratcheted up to maximum, but played in a very bland way, which I find surprising. It should be pretty easy to write a character like that to at least be entertaining, with a burning, passionate hatred simmering about them in every scene, but instead I was just bored with him throughout the whole expansion.
That a good point. Never thought thought of him that way, but we do like him more as a villain now knowing that.
I was really excited for this topic. This was a really great break down. Zoral Ja was one of my favorites this expansion for his sheer presence, and as that façade crumbled he only got better to me.
Zoraal Ja is not hard to understand, he is just... stupid?
Tural has absolute no Navy, the invasion into Eorzea will fail asap because Limsa will absolute dominate the sea inbetween, airships wont work across such a long distance.
He lacked foresight, he lacked reason, he lacked identity.
He was born into his father's shadow, never able to step out of it to be worthy of his title as the Wonder Child, even when his existence alone justified the title, yet he did not much to be different.
The fact he is suppose to be a reference to Kuja, Zoraal Ja lacks groundwork and connection, he demanded Koana to support him when he becomes the Dawnservant, even when its clear Koana would not use his knowledge for war.
This disconnect is interesting to see, he is just as naiv as Wuk Lamat was at the start but did not even think of adapting and growing unlike hgis siblings.
@@YuubiTimberwolf I've said that Fandaniel was the best thing to happen to Emet, because him fucking up the whole Zodiark plan means that all its weird holes never get the chance to show. Zoraal Ja's in a similar spit, he's lucky he discovered airships before he got any power.
This is a different perspective that I think makes more sense. But I sorta saw Zoraal Ja as a reflection of Xenos. They're very similar to me. They would rather act first over talk things out - but what was different was while Xenos wanted to grow in personal strength over taking responsibility for his country, Zoraal Ja wanted to actually rule his country and go on major conquest.
He was also a reflection because he certainly talked much less than Xenos 😂
I'm trying to nail down my own thoughts on Zoraal Ja, so I only caught the third section so far, but I'm stoked you touched on something I think is important about Dawntrail -- it tells some of its stories in a way that differs from how XIV usually does, and not everyone has adapted their reading process to meet it. Which is fine (and maybe inevitable with long-running media), but I think that is understandably causing some people to struggle, well, understanding some of its characters and themes.
I love Zoraal Ja because he's a laconic guy, which is needed to have that personality variety, especially with Wuk Lamat's extreme extrovert and the WoL's single real canon trait being a willingness to entertain, listen to whatever random quest, and help others. And of course in an expansion preoccupied with learning about others and having productive dialogue to solve problems, there has to be a character that sucks at outreach, at sharing pov, who stonewalls. Who in his death spells out clear as day to the audience that he's lost, he doesn't know what to do or who he is. That's far more realistic than a villain who has their shit together.
His problem is internal and caused by the expectations being more nebulous than Bakool Ja Ja's despite close similarities and that they are self-inflicted rather than just for the sake of his family/society. And audiences have lower tolerance and patience for motives about the self. His path is unclear and he only has one tool in the arsenal.
Eldest daughter, former gifted kid, yeah he's easy to understand. But people weren't expecting that archetype and for him to be something else?
Oh well. He is probably my favorite XIV villain. Not a lot of competition there. Hermes/Fandaniel is second.
Also I love that the Resilient Son is referring to the virtue but also to the name of the palace itself, Vollok Shoonsa.
As a gifted kid/firstborn sibling: Yes.
show, don't tell. in this case, he's quiet, yes, but his eyes do not speak either. there are also misses here where they could have used the power of the echo to help us understand this son's anguish, and they either chose not to, or simply didn't think to.
As always, most amazing insight and perspective, do you think that Zoraal Ja received a Zenos treatment in writing, where only at his last moment speaks his mind for the first time ? Zenos stayed in the story for so long but we never got to truly understand him and the circumstances that made him who he is today, was he always like this as his story told in the book they released, or the way he was raised made him this way? Did emet selch do something to him when he was a kid? In this video you shown that Zoraal Ja was written in a way that doesn’t give too much information because as the story mentioned at one point that he only talks when he is talked to, was Zenos always the same too? Honestly I can’t help but remember the first time we saw Zenos in stormblood when he was meeting with his legion members, he was quite “animated” and shown many emotions and reactions and never again we got to see Zenos in such light.
@@maxmax-pi7kw I think he does, with the crucial difference that when Zenos has his final lines in Stormblood, he's correct. (In Endwalker it's more nebulous but he is intended to have a point.) When Zoraal Ja gets his final lines, he's wrong and called out for it.
ff14 have to, for once, interpret a characters actions *through their actions* and it melts their minds.
Hopefully we get to learn more about Zoraal Ja in the post patch content. Maybe learn about the man as his son learns about him. Find out why he felt he could never confide in his loving family.
Ok I went through and watched this video and I have a few things to say. First thing is at 14:57 you claim Emet Selch is an abject lair but we know in SHB why he isn’t. He is having a hard time with the legacy of the ancients and doesn’t feel that the current people are worthy of being the “shepherds of the star” and doesn’t really want to give up on restoring the ancients. He does see potential in the WoL as they have destroyed all of schemes from before. He does opt to give the WoL a test to try and get try and get him to join his side or take on the ancients legacy and have the new generation take control of their own fates and the star. I think that’s an oversimplification or a misunderstanding on your part. He is shady at the start but his background is given to us so we understand him. It’s a big deal that is shown that the WoL is a shard of Azem one of Hades’ friends from the past. It makes a lot of sense actually. Characters being wrong isn’t really new either the story I’m ARR never makes Lahabrea right, he was just crazy and evil.
I think we have different ideas what makes a story good. Zaarol ja just kinda comes off as flat to me. His siblings are always supportive and so is his dad. We never understand why he hates them so much. His dad is never shown pushing him down the wrong path or holding him to a high standard, at most we are shown that bakool ja ja is mean to him for having one head, but bakool ja ja is mean to everyone. His character feels underdeveloped, it’s fine that he is wrong. I just want to understand why he is wrong, other than him just being called out a couple times. Gulool ja kinda came out of nowhere and feels out of place but that’s a different topic. It just doesn’t feel right, I understand zaarol ja’s character but it doesn’t make me like it. Being shown/told less does not make better writing.
@@Nyx-Arc The only person who says Emet-Selch doesn't lie is Emet-Selch, and Emet recently spent eighty years ruling an empire under a false name, pretenses and goals. What I meant there is that Emet should logically be lying as naturally as he breathes, but because the game's storytelling struggles with a liar, he just... doesn't.
Lahabrea's a funky one, because it's not that he STARTED wrong, it's that the canon changed from under him. But even then, he was never called outright wrong, the intent was more 'the truth heavily twisted by millennia of horrible circumstance'.
Zoraal Ja is well made character, for he was in common with our heros and WoL, but lone and lost. A dark version of WoL.
What i liked about Zoraal Ja wasnt that he was just wrong. He was continually wrong. He at any point could have chosen to take a second and re-evaluate and it genuinely may have changed his fate. We often get villians with big or justifiable machinations. Yotsuyus hatred for or own people after being sold to a brothel, Emet trying to revive his seemingly much more impressive people at the cost of ourselves. Each may have been wrong but you could at least feel a nugget of empathy in the why or how they got to the way they were. Zoraal Ja on the other hand was just the tradgedy of him never considering he could be wrong and the way he dealt with the challenges showed that. He did all of them easily but in ways thay basically disrespected the point of the test. And this is the short sightedness that ultimately cost him when he couldnt get over his own hang ups.
He's never even accidentally right, it's almost impressive.
Even Zenos was moreso like "yeah I burned your home down now fight me!" than trying to make a grand statement
Insta like and subscribe. Great to see a genuinely excited person and fan of this expansions story
You know everything you said is certainly a possible and valid interpretation of him. I however Just think he was underdeveloped and rushed as a character much like the entirety of the second half of the DT story and this just high grade copium.
I mean, his story line was pretty straight forward, what happens when a child suffers under the weight of their father's shadow and is unable to either find his own place or overtake his father's achievements. And honestly between him and Wuk Lamat who knows so little about anything plus Koana just simply not caring about anything beside pure efficiency, I really question how these kids didn't have teachers/lecturers to go over a lot of this and give them a more well rounded view of their nation, he could still struggle with it, but it feels they all were just ignored and left to figure life out for themselves. I get the Dawnservant not having time to teach his kids himself, but as someone who understood the importance of the different peoples and their culture making up his nation, he really failed horribly in preparing his kids and none of the 4 claimants were worthy of the throne IMO. And its not like they were poor dirt farmers in the middle of no-where, they had all the resources they could have wanted to get his kids some private teachers which was pretty common for nobles/rulers all nationalities in history. And as a villain I never saw him as a threat, we just killed gods, his little tyranny was laughable in comparison even after he consumed all those souls. Throw in that when we get there, they don't even have a navy so any attempt to invade the mainland would have them completely outclassed before fighting on land even happened. Honestly, I blame the Dawnservant himself for his failures as a parent for all the conflict in this expansion.
@@Deram1Axres there's a lot to ask about how good Gulool was at parenting, and I feel like it's hard to tell.
I found out my understanding of Zoraal Ja to be that he’s a dude who is also stoic. They don’t tend to share emotions and sometimes they hardly speak. He was just steadfast in what he wanted to do. However because we also hardly see what he did to make him think this way prior to us even arriving it merely makes me question this. What the hell did was he a witness to? What made him mentally change to go “yes we are going to war and conquer the world to end war cause war is hell.” Like WHAT?! Hell of a leap in logic and even Thancred calls this out as him being overconfident. Dudes got big plans but he hardly has the resource for it. Not even with Alexandria because the dude couldn’t even conquer his own home turf. We should have had echo flashback for what he had to go through and witness instead of Krile hearing his dark desires. I genuinely think his whole deal could have been much better explained than that. It’d clear the air for lots of people.
Couple of fun facts. Funny how you bring up JoJos. His JP VA is Daisuke Ono. Once I figured that out? I cobbled together a DIO outfit asap.
He’s also one of the few fights I see people struggle a lot on. My first attempt was me joining mid fight and I didn’t even see the intro cutscene until my friend eventually got to it and I joined them. Shout outs to the 14 dev team for making his a genuinely hard fight and actually one of my favorites.
Bit of a tangent but of the villains I’ve seen people thirst for in this game? His is actually the one that makes me question what’s going on with some people but I kinda get it.
With Emet-Selch? Yeah his Solus body is a bit of a looker and the dark brooder is always a fan favorite.
Hermes? Somewhat similar idea except the dude REALLY needs a hug and therapy. I also get emo vibes from him.
Zenos? Kinda has the whole Yandere vibe going where he wants you and only you and genuinely is thirsty for one more fight. Helps that he’s genuinely handsome tall blond.
Even this own expansion gets one with Bakool Ja Ja where he’s a case of daddy issues and just really needing some confirmation that his existence isn’t meaningless all the while he’s built like a brick house. Not even the two heads is a turn off (looking at you Bakool Ja Ja Babygirl).
Zoraal Ja? I can’t in good faith agree with cause he’s actually a terrible person but I see some of the angles these people play off on. Dark endings where he wins and the WoL is with them. Reminds me of the idea of what we would look like as a Lightwarden and how dark some of those interpretations got. But really? Him? I genuinely feel as if we can do better here.
@@LightbladeRiulo 'You can do better is always a bugbear for villainshippers, but honestly, I do think Zoraal Ja's offering a better package than most. 'At least he's not racist' is a LOW bar, but he does still clear it, and he seems like he's a generally capable guy with problems that he could have worked on in the right context. 'I can fix him' is a bad outlook, but Zoraal Ja's WAY more fixable than our average.
*FIRST favorite lizard thank you very MUCH.
Zoraal Ja did nothing wrong.
I appreciate the sentiment of the message, but Zoraal Ja did explicitly do at least a couple things wrong
I think people don’t understand why we got him as a character/villain
After getting so many characters with deeper points to their character, even Zenos got more to him over time, I think players are still just confused that we have such a straight forwards character
My main problem was that, with how much misdirection was involved in his character development, it needed to build toward something.
We're slowly playing this story over the course of a RL week or more, and that gives the audience a lot of time to ruminate on what his "true" motivations could be. His motivations for leading Tural to war are immediately deflated by Alphinaud, but he's adamant in persisting; what could possibly make his belief in this philosophy so unflappable? Oh, later around the Feat of Pots I believe, he reveals that he doesn't give a damn about the land or goods procured through invasion; what could he possibly be after? He makes a pact with Sphene through the closed gate; why would he steal the key and backstab his father for this power, what is its purpose? Wow, he's been in a 30yr time skip; how has he grown and evolved? He's challenging Wuk Lamat to travel to his throne and defeat him there; is this some sort of weird twist where he actually wants Wuk Lamat to grow by striking him down, to make Tural hate war by becoming that very war? He had an heir somehow (I normally don't obsess over NPC parents, but like, there is not implied to be any Mamool Ja anywhere in Alexandria, so the biology of his birth at least raises some eyebrows), yet he openly scorns the son; was his son really just a dalliance or is there something more tragic going on? He's absorbing all of these souls to pervert the natural order and become an abomination of power; if he strikes down the WoL, what would he do next?
And then in his dying speech (and bizarrely, in extremely insightful character deconstruction in optional dialogue by the Wandering Minstrel, after the credits), we discover definitively that it was all bullshit. Global war? He didn't care about it, it was only a means to one-up his father, and he was not married to any particular method of getting there. The bargain with Sphene and all subsequent violence? Just a salty gamer who lost a match and wants "to run it back" like you laid out. Thirty years in an alternate dimension? Zero change or evolution, he's still obsessed like that neighbor who won't shut up about their high school glory days. The distant son? He was ashamed about having nothing to offer them, which A) why would a laser-focused character like Zarool Ja produce an heir if he didn't think himself capable of leaving anything for him, and B) with his dying breath, he bequeaths his son with an embarrassing and pathetic legacy of... lemme check my notes... sole authority to reign over a futuristic city that outstrips even the Allagans, and an army of mass-produced soldier bots who don't feel fear or pain??? The lv99 trial was solely just to prove that the Rite of Succession was bullshit and he shoulda won? We played 40 hours of story and build-up, just to be told that dude was insecure for 30+ years? That's it?
I'm not saying that we needed to continue FFXIV's trend of making every villain tragic and layered, but there's such a lack of complexity and nuance compared to his predecessors or even his contemporaries, Bakool Ja Ja and Sphene. If all the unreliable narrators and misdirections are striped away, he's rather flat, deliberately so. And I don't feel like "we shook things up by making flatter villains" is a healthy direction for the game.
I got a strong feeling Dawntrial will eventually get its flowers once tensions settle. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in the MSQ and surprisingly really subtle way the the characters grow. Esp Lumati’y
I kinda came to view Zoraal Ja as Bad Tidus and Gulool Ja Ja as a Better Jecht. So Zoraal Ja is Shuyin with Tidus daddy issues and Kuja's disillusionment. Kuja also died pretty wrong.
Wuk Lamat was like a Yuna with Zidane's optimism. WoL and the Scions take on guardian roles and set off on a pilgrimage
Bakool Ja Ja is mostly a Saturday morning anime villain, but also like if Seymour Guado stopped being an asshole. Similar cultural pressures to perform and Mamook looks so much like Macalania Woods it's hardly subtle.
But everything seems to ultimately revolve around Gulool Ja Ja. Everything is just in his image. WL and Koana admire him, Zoraal resents him. Both parties find a way to emulate his style of rule.
So while everyone is mad WoL is bumped from the protagonist slot and think Wuk Lamat usurped the role, Gulool Ja Ja was the main character the whole time.
We retrace his steps, learn his lessons and his legacy is reflected in all Promises, even if Zoraal Ja and Sphene go a different way with that idea.
That sort of subversion reminds me of FFXII and MGS3 where some we never really play is the center of the story.
That's a good comparison, I like it; it's almost nesting You Are Not The Protagonist, because not only is Wuk Lamat the lead rather than us, for a lot of the first half of Dawntrail Wuk Lamat's ALSO not the protagonist, we're learning how awesome Gulool Ja Ja is.
I love the emphasis on him lacking any reason through the form he takes in his final fight against the WoL. People's main criticism of him was that his decisions were so foolish that it became unbelievable.
To me, it's obvious that he's supposed to depict a very harmful mindset that many people (especially men living in toxic masculinity) struggle with their whole lives - inferiority complex. It can completely warp one's sense of identity and perception of everything around them, and I think people underestimate just how influential it is. He refuses every possible avenue of connection, and it only feeds internal struggle until it spirals out of control. I loved that he was so quiet the whole way through! His silence reinforced just how disconnected he was from everyone.
His final moments where he reveals that he refused to parent his son only reinforces what was always there - inferiority complex and a lack of self identity. To Zoraal Ja, independence was everything - and that was the one thing his father couldn't give him (indeed, he felt like his father actively worked against that just by existing). So when Zoraal Ja says "I had nothing material to give my son, just as my father couldn't for me", he's saying "I couldn't give him identity" as though that was the only thing of value he could offer... So sad. He was pathetic to the very end.
That's why I don't get why people don't understand him. He's a very real depiction of how many people act in real life.
Lizard Ranking:
Gulool Ja Ja > Bakool Ja Ja > Gulool Ja the Second > Zoraal Ja
I wonder if Dawntrail in the public view will get the Cyberpunk treatment, where everyone spends a year or two bashing it, then it becomes a hidden gem once its better understood. Maybe FF14 should get a Netflix anime to soften opinions... Well, then again, the FF14 community holds a grudge and are very feelings based.
@@ZechsMerquise73 the thing there is 2077 opened as just an objectively bad game. I feel like it might be facing an FFXIII future, where over time people realize they were being unkind.
@@EinDose True I feel like atleast a big portion of the criticism is "blinded"/directed at Wuk, but overtime it will eventually become clearer. Just like Stormblood, and will essencially be "its own thing" so to speak.
@@Lyu-Phyi still don't like lyse as leader tho i go😑 everytime i play through it but i dont feel that way about WL...
@@EinDose nah, that was all people playing it on PS4 complaining and bandwagon. I played it at launch on PC and nothing really changed between when people started liking it and launch, except the netflix anime. It's still nowhere near as good as the anime. The weak parts are still there, the lack of things to do is still there, it just got a PR boost.
I never understand, how he even solved the trial by the birds.
It was to solve the plant problem.
Double head lizard and cat boy used science to solve it (ok, double head stole the same stuff). Or fury cat girl used a ritual for that.
What did our blue lizard for the trial? Did the companion solved it for him? Or had he a other trial? Because, the problem was solved before/after he was there (he never showed up at that part).
Pretty sure he either looked real angry at the Reeds or made the Aether move over there by slaying Wildlife. It wouldn't make much less sense than how he got that supposedly ultra rare Alpaca in record time
@@hasseo195 I'd love to learn how he handled it (and how Bakool handled the alpaca, actually), but if I had to guess it might have been a 'fertilize with blood' approach, in spirit if not practice.
Right now I really just have one question: What the frick was up with his hanger on. That guy clearly had ulterior motives but we never learn anything about him other than he latched on like a leech and then was killed. Either they shouldn't have had him have ulterior motives or they should have had someone say why he was there.
Oh, Sareel Ja just wanted the power that came form helping the (presumed) next Dawnservant. It was clear in his death scene, he was negotiating some form of power share right up until the end--but didn't realize Zoraal Ja was never going to share it.
All this minus the star trek (trek puts me to sleep so I never watch it) is a fantastic way to explain my second fav antagonist 14 has. Both my fav baddies are lizards that are just angry, toxic, monsters.
I still get Zabi family vibes from Zoraal Ja. I do wish Koana had a chance to call out his brother too. Koana's lack in the end is one of my problems but it is a minor one.
@@ProfessM The Zabis are a real solid comparison. He's like if Dozle went bad.
@@EinDose I said that and none in my FC got what I meant so thank you!
A thing I have noticed with Dawntrail's story is that it hits the player both with the sutblty of a hammer and a scalple at the same time. Which I would argue lends itself to even more confusion about the story. On one hand, you have Wuk Lamat, who broadcasts her thoughts like a billboard in Times Square, to the point where its almost Dora the Explorer levels of obvious where she's going. But on the other hand you have people like Zoraal Ja and Erenville; who are more quiet character wise. Who's conflicts are, as you put for Zoraal Ja, more subtle and require one to pay a little more attention to what the story is actually saying.
Another misconception I see a lot is that Erenivlle didn't "react enough" in Living Memory reguarding the upcoming dissipation of what is left of his mother. I, frankly, think this is bullshit. Erenville was very much reacting to that reality for the entire zone. Much like Zoraal Ja, Erenville's conflict in Living Memory was internal, with the MSQ itself only bringing attention to it at the last second. However with a base understanding on how Erenville's character is, and especially if you tried to speak to Erenville throughout Living Memory (which is usually just met with an ellipsis), Erenville was internally stewing over the thought of seeing his mom die for basically the entire time we were in the zone, which as someone who tackles greif very similar to him irl, really struck me.
I say this is to the story's detriment. I think Zoraal Ja and Erenville are really cool, but clearly a lot of people missed what I saw in them, that is clearly there for them. When you have Wuk Lamat after Wokor Zormor being like "If Koana is reason, and Zoraal Ja is resolve, what did I inherit from my father, the champion of peace?" (basically, the subtlety of being ran over by a fucking train), but in the same story have an introverted person silently grieving his mother, or a misguided man of action suffering in silence (both require a more nuanced attention to catch). It will definately lead to confusion and division for the reader.
Honestly, I think the character would have worked better for everyone if it was a bit less "Show; Don't tell" while still keeping that same core. His appearance is almost jarring to players who for the last 10 years relied on solely context, so I think him going in the direction of a transition to a little more visual storytelling in the structure of FFXIV's MSQ would help the player's appreciation of him, and pave the way for more characters like him, that need more than just reading lines of dialogue, or one single detail showing what you need to expect in a cutscene.
@@TorManiak How far is too far in taking that, though? Like, how clearly do you have to say 'Zoraal Ja's full of shit all the time' that nobody's confused, and does that just turn into undermining any showing-not-telling you do?
@@EinDose I don't really know since I'm no writer/storyteller, but it's not really the "calling out on his shit" aspect I imagined would really put him on the map here.
I think his own frustrations being propped up a notch in is motion language would already give off that impression if done correctly. After all, anyone who's full of shit would know they are themselves, and will try to deny it. As such, I imagined something like every sound stopping briefly as his head snaps to whoever calls him out, staring them wordlessly for a few seconds with an irritated expression, before going back to normal and continuing as if nothing weird happened. This would happen in every Feat he appears in, after the Valigarmanda fight especially where the frequency of it happening goes up and gets more intense(and also outside of cutscenes if possible, as quest-specific NPC interactions).
This is just an idea though, and as I said earlier, I'm not a writer/storyteller(nor an animator), so I don't know if that would actually work. But basically, his body language should be more expressive to make up the fact that he's quiet and doesn't express verbally his own thoughts and feelings like the other characters in the game(IMO).
It will put more load into the animation work, but he's a character that is solely defined by his own actions, so putting more importance on his gestures is what I think will help that, especially since it will help shape other characters that, like him, "show, don't tell", perhaps more, perhaps less.
Zoraal Ja is Kylo Ren with cohesive writing.
@@gamejawa I wouldn't know, the last Star Wars I saw was Episode 2 and ever since then I've been running on sheer cultural osmosis from nerd friend groups.
I've heard a lot of what was said and it does make a bit more sense? And I wouldn't say the game betrayed me with this character in the "teaching people how to read the story" aspect, and that this is clearly a new way they want to explore a character like this.
My problem is, to equivocate this argument into gameplay terms, this is throwing a casual reader into an Extreme Trial situation, flanked by underleveled chaff on either side of the progression.
He's hard to understand for the reasons you state: He doesn't communicate his intentions that well, his motivations aren't relatable to a lot of people, and everyone else in the game tells him he's wrong to his face and he refuses to listen. I think what makes Zoraal Ja harder to understand, for me, is that he is the *only* character in Dawntrail not following the typical formula. And I don't mean "we need multiple nonverbal characters" or anything. But we need characters that don't monologue their intentions plainly as others have. We need more of that variety in character writing in order to enable some kind of mental elasticity to better comprehend when something doesn't fit the otherwise rigid mold that Zoraal Ja has broken.
We could have had Koana take on similar traits, where he believes himself to be right with his innovations, refuses to communicate, then something blows up in his face and he then has to ask for help from Wuk Lamat. Or we could have had more distrust from Bakool Ja Ja during Mamook without having his mother immediately smooth everything over so that we'd have to sit down and talk with him and earn his trust the hard way. We could have had Sphene be far more socially distant from Wuk Lamat and not be so earnest to earn their trust; still have that alliance of convenience, but just have it be more strained. All of this would have shown that A.) Zoraal Ja isn't such a massive outlier, and B.) It would demonstrate to the player that diplomacy is a hell of a lot harder to accomplish than what the game currently makes it out to be.
All of that said, I greatly respect the pains you took in this video to explain things. I still struggle with appreciating Zoraal Ja for what his character is, but this video did make that easier to digest.
he’s just Vergil to me, and i like that lol
I like your sword in your room ❤
Honestly i think Zoral Jas invasion would have failed ultimately.
Aside from the elephant in the room, which is the WoL gets involved, theres a few things i think he'd overlook.
1. He'd fail to realize the countries of the east are united, and are a massive force to be reckoned with.
2. Garlemald may be weakened, but they can still fight, maybe they cant solo, but they could still be a gamechanger.
3.Vtra,Tiamat and Hraesvlgr exist,and im pretty sure 2 of them owe us a favor iirc.
Hes a good stategist, in that he prepares for what he knows he can expect, it's the unexpected that gets him.
"Why is this Lizard so mad?"
Zoraal Ja for was a good villain, while he didnt say much there was plenty feom.his action and subtext
He's afraid. More than anything he struck me as a man of skill, who's skill is useless. Regardless what he intended to do with the invasion, he's obviously not going to win, and I don't think he's lying when he says he wants to do it. I think he believes that at some point they'll be forced to consider the dangers of the possible war when showed it in real time. It will also give him even the briefest moments of being able to actually do something "useful" to his people. He's a soldier, seemingly a very good one. But he isn't good for anything else. He knew that. He saw that. I do not believe he is wrong.
The fear of never being anything, to anyone, or not being good enough I feel covers his character fairly well. The moment with his son when he says something to the effect of "I have nothing of value to give you." hit me like a truck. Your comparison to a souls character might be an excellent example un-ironically. He went hollow long before we met him, and he has no one to blame but himself, he let the fear rule him.
12:26
Excuse me? The OLDEST kid in the family? I don't think so. the oldest are almost always the most abused. Try the middle child.
@@WanOlDan I think it's all down to family dynamics, but a fairly typical dynamic I've seen raised is that expectations are high for the eldest, and lower for the younger ones, if only because of being tempered by reality.
@@EinDosein my family oldest is the trial n error one lol guess my parents were never ready to be parents so they had to learn on the way
"Is he just stupid?" -- Cider Spider's take on him at the end of his trial.
I do think Dawntrail is a test for media literacy that the FF14 fanbase has failed, because as you pointed out, people want to be told rather than shown how things work. There's a large difference between not liking something and not getting something. People not getting why Wuk Lamat went with us to Alexandria instead of Koana is a great example, because people dislike her so much and wanted to move on so much they didn't get the actual reason (the reason: because she's the thematic foil for Sphene).
Zoraal Ja is similar, once you put all the pieces together. He is a dumbass, but for a reason. Really, he's more a foil for Bakoul Ja Ja. He both feels massively entitled yet has an inferiority complex due to his heritage as the true-born heir of Galoul Ja Ja, the miracle child. His entire reason for being is to live up to and surpass his father, to be the next Dawnservant. This is basically Bakoul Ja Ja, massive responsibility put on him by his people/legacy which creates his character, along with the failure to live up to his expectations and the depression that came with it. Difference is, Bakoul Ja Ja found friends and became redeemed. Zaroul Ja didn't, failed, and broke mentally.
There's a reason Zoraal Ja implements Tural's Head of Reason/Resolve politics into Alexandria, because of how much he's driven by being his father's son. There's a reason he could wipe out Tural, as per his deal with Sphene, but instead only chooses to kill Galoul Ja Ja and leave Wuk Lamat/Koana, the people who stole his inheritance, to suffer and fail. This likely is the reason he had a kid in a story I'm hoping is picked up in the patches. Its the reason he turned into a two-headed (forget the Lizard people's official name) during the trial, like his father. And ultimately, its the reason that, even though he wanted nothing to with Galoul Ja (because as he stated, he felt he couldn't be a father when his father failed him), that on his death, he left Galoul Ja his birthright inheritance that Galoul Ja did not want/desire, because Zaraal Ja never got that from his father, and he's giving that to his kid. He is just dumb because he didn't pick up on the lesson hammered home throughout the expansion.
Dawntrail has issues, but there is a ton of depth to the story that I think people quite frankly don't even try to engage because its not spelled out for them. And when I point out this in other comments, people say I'm on copium trying to rationalize the game as good, rather than trying to analyze what the game gives us.
“Dukat is just a Nazi.” Not a complicated character!? Dude, lol. I can’t, sorry-you lost me. Dukat is on another level, and the writers put on a villain-writing clinic with him. They managed to make him nuanced and even morally gray on occasion, but he always slid back toward evil.
I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed by a character refusing redemption so many times. Comparing him to Zoraal Ja in terms of simplicity is…certainly a take. Zoraal Ja actually is just very simple.
@@Josco83 The writers of Deep Space Nine outright described Dukat as a Nazi in multiple interviews, and several moments in the story as having direct analogues to events in Nazi Germany's history. He's an exceptionally well-written Nazi, but they didn't flinch from what he was.
@@EinDose The operative word here is “just.” He is not by any means a simple character, contrary to what is stated in the video.
Zoraal Ja and Gul Dukat don't belong in the same sentence unless the rest of that sentence is "are both villains, and the latter is the one with good characterization."
"Toxic soulsborne player"
Lol, people who say shit like that are unironically the toxic players. You've spent two years telling souls vets how they should play the game and they haven't budge an inch.
Like they have some sort of reason for doing the things they do, and I can tell you right now it's not some sense of elitism. It's engagement.
Never in my many years of being a part of the souls community did we ever say "You didn't really beat the game" we said "You cheesed the fight". To a new player that sounds like the same thing, but it isn't.
A while ago, I was have a conversation about one specific boss in Elden Ring and how I thought the boss was really well done. I made a good paragraph describing how the bosses move set compliments itself and how it uniquely creates a sense of difficulty to overcome that makes the fight more dynamic. To which that person responded "I don't like the fight because all I have to do is cast comet azure and it dies in one hit."
That's the stuff we call cheese, when you do something that prevents you from having to engage with the bosses unique moveset. We play the game on hard mode because we get to see how tightly designed the boss fights are and it's engaging to fight. We've already played the game on easy mode before, we know we can one shot a boss with comet azure.
@@OreallyR17 ...I've spent two years barely mentioning Soulsbornes, I'm not sure where you got that one.
@@EinDose Ah sorry for the misunderstanding, "you" in that sentence was directed at all the elden ring new comers who have kept repeating the same things for the past two years since elden rings release. Not necessarily you specifically.
bad character that gets screen time and does nothing. i hate that why put him on the screen if hes not going to do or say anything.
Figures.
my problem with zoral jaa is that he has no reason to exist, no reason to love war so much and no reason to be so devoid of reason and common sense other than just antagonise that lame cat woman, wich is a terrible aspiration for a villain, considering that wuk lamat had no victories under his name, no acomplishments and no known quality other than being adopted. say whathever you want about gulol jaja but he definitely was a terrible father wich the story clearly states that he wasnt, raising that cat wich cant see past his ass ideas, without seen how it will affect the ppl around it is just stupid and so far the smart ass the history depicts, raising that mess of a cat wich cant even speak his mind and saying "u have resolve" is incredible and zoral ja, the miracle, his firstborn who was raised by a benevolent and loving father wich acomplished peace in a continent that raged with war for centuries is a plain psicopath who wanted to kill his brothers FROM THE FIRST MOMENT U MET HIM! and probe himself with his own strenght until he didnt just because.
wuk lamat should just praise every god she knows when she found a braindamaged adventurer who cant act on his/her own will
"don't recommend this channel"
The thing I got stuck on was how exactly Zoraal Ja planned on carrying out his expansionary war when one of the first things DT established was that Tural didn’t have ships capable of crossing the sea. I like to think The Alliance would nip the problem in the bud if a noticeable number of shipwrights with the necessary expertise to build a war fleet suddenly went missing due to fat contracts luring them West/getting kidnapped. A point made even more moot by the fact that cyberpunk technology is no match for even the weakest dragon of the first brood.