let’s compare and contrast…
Hello everyone I am Jmulls of Jmulls Gaming and welcome to my little corner of the internet!
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In today’s video, I talk about my thoughts and reception to the characters of Zero and Wuk Lamat in Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail !
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i didnt even know people hated zero. i assumed she would have been a fan favourite
I actually love Zero
Why does your WoL look like the Light Heavyweight Champion!?
Just put that alpaca hawk tua on loop…. thats how I feel about Wuk. Zero is bae.
You know, it's kind of ironic that you say "I kind of doubt that she'd be running around with the Warrior of Light" because as Erenville invites you and YOU specifically to travel with him in the future, Wuk Lamat butts in and says "That sounds like fun! If you ever need company, I'll come running." After also saying that she left Koana to tend to both their duties as Dawnservant. She would TOTALLY shirk her responsibilities as Dawnservant to gallivant some more with you. Those final lines before the story ends and the MSQ banner is changed to "To be Continued" is proof of that.
I'm with you on Zero, I like her character and wish her intro had been paced a little better, but I can forgive that for two reasons. One, I felt WAY more involved in Zero's growth and two, I also agree this was a lot of set up so we can get right into something meatier when we're ready for her to come back into the story.
I ALSO agree with you that they set Wuk Lamat up for failure, because she's focused on SO HARD the entire time that all the shaky writing's sins get pushed onto her, specifically. I wonder if they had spread the focus out to more of the other new characters, if it would've gone over better overall, because then there wouldn't be a lightning rod for hate? Dunno.
I'll be honest with you, I don't like either of these characters, even Zero, and it has nothing to do with her being edgy and moody, I am edgy and moody myself, I am a withdrawn introvert who doesn't really "get" people.
It's her writing and how spineless it was. She is supposedly this voidsent who will not help anyone unless she is compensated…but this never has her not doing the right thing. She never lets some serious crime occur because she isn't compensated, we never see her actually be a flawed character, she always feigns like "oh man, but im not compensated" and is like "you know that nice thing you said about me in passing like ten days ago about how nice my hat is? Well ok, I guess that's payment enough for me to save your entire city and also the universe ig".
It's very tell don't show storytelling with her, everything we see about Zero is just dialogue pretending she has an arc, but in reality she starts of as a virtous edgelord and ends up as a virtuous non-edgelord, it's really an aesthetics change.
She isn't the main issue of post patch writing, the post patch writing of EW was atrocious and a major insult to intelligence uncharacteristic of FF (especially coming off such a strong main MSQ patpch like 6.0).
Wuk Lamat is in a similar boat, in that she NEVER suffers reprocussions for her supposed flaws. She is supposedly sheltered and ignorant of her people (somehow…despite it being a peaceful continent that is diverse in cultures, but let's suspend disbelief for a moment) but every suggestion to every problem she proposes ends up being correct. She gets all the trades correctly in Urqo, she conveniently gets the festival right (that the Hanu have…forgotten…despite being their main tradition? I won't beat a dead horse people rag on this with full right).
She is never wrong, she just grows more confident in herself.
The writers are just afraid of making these people flawed in any way. This would be like if Estiniens arc went from being lukewarm to dragons to loving dragons instead of being a bigoted dragon killer who hated their huts and later learned about their plight and changed as a person due to Iceheart.
Even when Wuk DEMONSTRABLY Fails to protect Tuliyoyal, she holds one little speech and…they're all fine with it? Why did the racist giants not attempt a coup when Tuliyoyal was weak? Why did rebel factions not form? Why did everything not go into absolute chaos!?
Because they needed to wrap this story by 7.0..that's why. This patch should have ended with the rite of succession, not alexandria. We should have had like 7.3 be the attack on tuliyoyal, and have 8.0 take us to alexandrias reflection. This is all very rushed and so any nuanced elements that could have improved the story just completely get overloked. It is really sad.
One character has much more development with maybe a tenth of the other's screen time that tells you something
Both are trash-tier mary sues
Since the moment Zero was introduced, the games MSQ felt like some weird kids show.
With Zero we went to infinity and beyond to beat up some Zurg like villain and in Dawntrail we're following Cailou around and get bothered by Two-headed Disney Pete on our way.
Zero wasn't a Mary Sue like Wuk is.
There shouldn't be a character front and center through a whole expansion that isn't the WoL and/or the Scions (or even just one of the Scions) imo. In here not only did they put a new character front and center taking all the spotlight, but it also wasn't a that good of a character that was worth doing that for. She wasn't the only thing that ruined Dawntrail MSQ for me, but was definitely one of the main things.
Zero is fine, but I couldn't bring myself to care about her. You said it yourself, the pacing wasn't on point. The void has a lot of potential for plot points and lore, but the patch msq was so god damn slow and predictable I started scrolling on my phone during cutscenes without realizing it.
I don't like the argument that some people keep bringing up, about it being good because its setup for future expansion, juste like the warriors of darkness in Heavensward. First off, that arc was way shorter. Also, a story should be judged on its own merits, not in retrospect with follow up stories. A story can be set up for later AND interesting at the same time.
The biggest difference between Zero and Wuk Lamat, IMO, is that Zero's flaws and development feel much more real. Yes, she is edgy, but the story kinda makes fun of her for it. She is awkward and socially inept. She has this strange transactional view of everything. Over time, you understand what happened to the 13th and to her that made her be like this, and she also softens up while she learns from you.
Wuk Lamat, on the other hand, learns nothing. Her demeanor and ideology do not change at all from the beginning to the end of her story. The narrative never mocks her or punishes her for her naivetè. Everything goes her way, and she learns no lessons. She feels very flat.
The fact so many think Wuk is the main char shows how bad people are at recognizing meta narrative. It's called dawntrail the main char is Azem the role our character resolved to take up the second we walked through that portal. Dawn = Azem. Tell me have you ever stopped to think the Azem symbol is a sun orbited by two objects and there's two dawn servants?
I agree but at the end of this video i realized living memory had a sky with weather they didn't have that before ,did our presence with sphene initiate interdemensional fusion fusing the 12th floor of everkeep(living memory) to "The First"?
Zero was a very much "fish out of water" story. She was never fully a Voidsent being and was re-learning what it meant to have hope and be "human" again. We were shown flashbacks to her life before the 13th became the Void, how she was also an errant knight doing what she could to beat down corrupted Memoriate soldiers until ultimately being defeated because she always fought alone. She realizes that she never had to fight alone with her time spent alongside WoL. It also helped that she was already shown to be a very powerful Voidsent, so her holding her own alongside WoL makes sense.
On the other side of the spectrum we had Wuk Lamat, someone with shades of a possible Lyse-like character who we do Pokemon Sun/Moon quests together to become the bestest Hokage ever, find the One Piece and maintain the rule of Narnia. For someone who wanted to be a ruler, she didn't even know her own people's cultures, traditions and whatnot and didn't really have any achievements to her name but hey, she was the first person to ask us for help so I guess we're helping. I'm beginning to think Erenville was doing us a solid by telling us we had a chance to pull out but didn't. XD
It kinda also didn't help that her outlook on a lot of things was unbearably naïve, not helped by nobody in the party, the people around you, heck our WoL doesn't even disparage or give her anything to think about. All that was ever done was just to keep encouraging and enabling her. While sure, that probably would have worked in the beginning since she (I guess) figured things out for herself (I think), she massively overstayed her welcome post becoming Dawnservant.
And I am still not forgiving the fact she butted in the last fight. I'm just like "HOW".
Extra super nitpicky: it's pronounced seh-sil. I know I know…both ways are correct but in the case of FF4, it is seh-sil. It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, just a bit of triva.
Sphene, Alexandria, the dimensional fusion, all that should have been what 7.0 was about, and as we journey through the new world we learn more about the continent and its people, and also could have been the start of her character growth. By the end of 7.0 it's hinted that the succession would be happening and that she'll need your help because she now wants to become dawnservant. 7.1-7.5 should have been the contest, now that the world building was completed.
They REALLY need to replace that "new" writer, it's obvious she can't write anything beyond recycled shounen garbage. She had her chance and she royally screwed it up, just find someone that can actually write this time, please.
Zero being absolutely clueless made a lot of sense considering she spent countless millennia as a voidsent and is only just getting reacquainted with what it means to live as a person. It bears repeating that Wuk Lamat was the crown princess of a multicultural and diverse nation and barely knows anything about the people, in spite of the established fact from her own words that she did interact with these people in the past (like visiting the hanuhanu for their festival but doesn't even know their greeting? Really now) or her very reason to want to be the Dawnservant being very superficial and shallow; You want everyone's happiness? What if what made someone happy was to make others miserable?
It's such a shame that we have another 10yrs saga starting off with a slog of a story.
I'm imagining in the future they will give the option to skip story until DT to start with the new saga for new players and it's SUCH a bad look to have DT as the starting point for new people.
It's the ARR situation but way worse in my opinion, at least for ARR, you can attribute it to being so old and being scrapped together asap for the rerelease of the game. DT story is way worse and it has no excuses.
You'd think they would know the importance of a good first expansion as an introduction for new players but i guess they didn't learn anything from ARR. 🤷♂️
Zero is better than Wuk Lamat, but she is just another bland edge lord with a tragic backstory. She isn't exactly a stellar character like Emet-Selch was so…yeah.
I liked Zero and her story. I just didn't like how they put in patches. Wuk Lamat for is me is meh okay. She has a likeable base character but I feel her story was poorly done. Pacing definitely hurt both more with Wuk Lamat though.
Read somewhere that maybe the reason Urianger didn't get much screentime at all this expac was because the writers couldn't handle his style of speech, and I'm like, that makes sense…
Zero:
– Teaches us about her land (the 13th)
– helps out in combat but never overshadows us
– good VA (nothing special but still good)
– Take tomboy goth gf on a 'fixing her' arc and succeed
– "shall we disrobe as well?"
Wuk lamat:
– has to be babysat and taught about her own nation, after claiming to have known all about it and loved it.
– never succeeds on her own merit and usually stumbles into a solution by dumb luck or getting us to do it for her.
– asspull appearance at the end in which she overshadows not just you but 7 others with no explanation as to how she's suddenly so strong.
– bad VA (and if I'm being honest, a pretty shitty person outside of that too from what I've seen)
Zero was a miles better character than Wuk Lamat – I’m nearly finished with the MSQ and I swear the power of friendship has gotten old with this expansion also I know they said of WoL was going to take a bit of a backseat but honestly why are we even their lol 😂 and I thought this story was going to be all about Krile but she’s been in it for about 5mins!
I know it’s the start of a new arc but the main story has been solid if not spectacular (the dungeons, bosses etc have been designed well though).
I feel like the story would have gone a bit better, if the writers didn't have to wrap up the whole thing at once. Imagine if they took the time to really flesh out krille's story, put the wol and even wuk on the opposite team for a challenge so that you can get a different perspective, and by the light of the crystal let it feel like a competition. All culminating in the dawnservant fight cut scenes, and the introduction of the war and sphene. Yes it breaks the cycle, but i betcha there would be less complaints about the story.
Zero had linear character development which naturally developed and it was surrounding the void, something we interacted with since arr. we had a connection to the content. this felt good, bringing in the 1st also made this contect feel alive.
i must admit, that due to my depression, i did not do the post EW patches till about a month before DT, so the story just flowed well for me
DT felt stale till after the ascension to the throne. only once we had a familiar threat, did the story begin to feel alive.
one thing that DT copied from ShB and failed it its execution, was the early split. with the twins it made sense as each are their own person with their own path.
be it with the hanu hanu or the pelu pelu, wuk lamat made one step forward, we had to go to the other area and she made two steps back, and she was where we started when we went to the third area. her repetitive story made it just feel… poorly writen compared to what we got before.
erenvill was way more important as a quide to the story than wuk lamat was. the only good thing she ever did in my eyes, was sharing with koana. togehter they make a well writen character…
hell i would have loved to see koana and wuklamat together say to zarul ja that their father did not want him to be alone when he passed, so he adopted siblings. THAT would have been the best send off and actually a good reason for even having wuk lamat with us. (her constant "sphene" shouting went on my nerves and the final fight felt worse when she appeared.)
Zero was an infinitely better character than Wuk Lamat. And we are 100% going to get a void expansion. And I'm hoping we bring Unukalhai and Cyella along for the ride.
Personally, I think Wuk Lamat's story would've benefited from the writers leaning on the concept of her being the Third Promise.
What do I mean by this? Let me explain:
Wuk Lamat is the Third Promise, and there are only three of them. You have one guy who isn't a Promise, and yet Wuk Lamat is essentially the least capable of them all—at least on the outside.
What does that make her? An underdog, and we know people love a good underdog story.
Leaning into that concept would have made it so that Wuk Lamat is more than most people give her credit for. She's not nearly as intelligent as Koana because he had the advantage of education. She's not nearly as well-versed in military tactics as Zoraal Ja, or as physically or magically strong as Bakool Ja Ja—who was physically bred through eugenics to surpass normal people.
But what Wuk Lamat has is her being an underdog. She's driven by insecurity because she's the one that people don't bet on to win. We find over the course of the journey that she's attentive, she listens, she notices and remembers details most others don't care to, and that she's been working herself to the bone to try and match her siblings, but she just lacks the confidence that they have because nobody's ever given her the chance to prove those capabilities.
In addition to all that, just like she's more than she seems, she can also identify people who look like they're being underestimated by their culture/society, never given a chance to do something great even if they're able to.
So, she gives them that chance to shine.
The course of her journey then becomes elevating those underdogs because she sees their worth, and because being looked down on is a lived experience for her. By the end of each Feat, she not only proves her own worth but the worth of those underdogs who actually had the means of helping her overcome the Feats. It could even be part of the political platform that we sorely needed her to have as the Dawnservant: to make sure that all people in all their cultures are given a fair chance to do their part, just as she was allowed to.
She's living proof that someone who is underestimated at every turn could rise to do something great or historic. It plays into what they wanted Wuk Lamat to be: the caring, understanding and compassionate leader.
At the same time, though, you had a very good point about her 'training arc'. It should have been shown as something of a necessity for her because she inevitably—and repeatedly—comes up against Bakool Ja Ja who's just physically more powerful. A training arc with the Warrior of Light could have trained her into being something of a David to Bakool Ja Ja's Goliath, since the Warrior of Light is used to fighting and overcoming threats more than twice their size.
The solo duty against Bakool Ja Ja would have probably been made more engaging by making the entirety of it using his own strength against him. Making him fall prey to his own skills, having most of his abilities be huge, HP-busting but entirely avoidable AoEs and Wuk Lamat is just wailing on him from his blindspots, etc. by being the smarter, more cautious fighter. And to better explain how she manages to defeat even Bakool Ja Ja's mooks? It's friendly fire. She leads his goons into his line of attack, and Bakool Ja Ja takes care of them for her—breaking their morale since intervening further means more casualties for them.
In that way, Wuk Lamat is still able to maintain her being a compassionate and caring person, but allow her to be elevated by the Warrior of Light from her underdog status, just like she elevated those underdogs from the cultures she would have helped as well
Wuk Lamat was just annoying af.
The thing about Wuk is that she isn't the sole Dawnservent. SE could easily do what they did in the latter half of the MSQ and just leave Koana behind to tend to Tuliyollal while she swans off with the WoL (..yay). I don't think SE is done foisting them upon us. Ofc course, some won't mind that, but personally I'm exhausted dealing with them. Hoping it'll get better of course but we'll see.
I think the fact that Zero's story was spread out over such along period of IRL time made it easier to accept their character development. Wuk Lamat feels bad at times because she's so rushed. They wanted to capture that same character progression that Zero went through in a single expansion, but digesting that expansion as we all do (as quickly as possible, usually) makes it feel really bad by comparison.
So yeah, I basically agree with you. It's the same kind of story, but we didn't have IRL timing to space it out and make it feel more natural for Wuk Lamat. It's a lot easier to buy that a character has grown when you have to wait literal months for the next part of their story. I suspect that playing the 6.X patches back to back will feel similarly rushed to newer players since they won't have to wait in between.
Honestly, this might be a bit of an answer as to why some expac patches feel weird in retrospect. Maybe the Crystal Braves arc would have felt less weird to me if I had been forced to wait for patches to get story updates.
Genuinely good analysis! +1 sub
ETA: Finishing the video now, you're saying basically same thing lmao. I should have just kept watching. (:
11:25 There is one thing from 6.55 worth talking about. They seemed to imply that Wuk had some kind of hesitation issue when fighting, which was summarily dropped. Which, to be honest, is a common problem for Wuk Lamat where she has a weakness for a bit that gets summarily dropped.
Regarding Zero and Lamat: I like Zero more, but the complete leaving off of the post-Job quest questline from Shadowbringer which tied heavily into the First seemed like a massive misstep to me. But then, like you said, the whole storyline with Zero could still be developed further and that problem could be fixed.
I was bored for most of Dawntrail, but despite that I don't really hate Wuk Lamat. I just think she was over-used and didn't have a very clear development arc (like was the problem her fighting like in 6.55? Was it her various fears of things that seemed to get dropped at random? Was it her short-lived ignorance? Some of it gets developed but a lot of it is just left aside. This makes her seem like she's being changed not by events but because the plot requires it.) Using her less would have lessened much of this problem. She could have been the anchor character for maybe one or two zones and the rest could have been Krile, Erenville, and maybe Koana to bring some variety. Even one or two of the other Scions would have been very helpful.
i like zero and detest wuk lamat
Zero to me what i liked was the entire learn her everything again becuse its been…who knows how long since she did any of it and how alien it is to her
Wuk is just a furry naruto that has a stronger talk no jutsu and i cant get that picture out of my head since i also dont really like naruto himself
I did all of the endwalker patch story in one sitting and loved zero thought she was great wuk I liked for a bit then hit 95 was happy to see her go … But she came back then I loved the story in Alexandria with her just being that one friend who no one really likes but won't leave them at the end queen gets rid of her finally I was free then poof she's back and at this point I hated her became that person that you hear is going to thanksgiving that makes you decide to stay home and eat cereal alone just so you don't have to see there stupid face I have a feeling the patch quests will be wuk going to the void playing that annoying song saying friendship and poof void fixed
Zero isn't thrown in your face for 95% of the msq and isn't the main focus for every single scene she's in. Also she isn't a big whiny naive womanchild with Naruto's mindset.
I still can understand why people don't like Zero but she's objectively not as obnoxious as Wuk.
Zero was cool but the Thirteenth needed its own expansion just like the First, in my opinion. Going back there and resolving the problems within a patch (without even bringing back Gaia on top of it) makes the whole thing feel like a speed bump on the way to DT.
i enjoyed zero's story arc more than wut lamat
i would love to see zero a lot more
Wait. Some people don't like zero?
Zero is polarizing?
why must we pit two queens against eachother?
especially when they're both hated for the same boring ass reason?
I liked Zero. It honestly felt like we were actually kind of mentoring Zero throughout the expansion patches.
It felt like this was what they wanted to do with Wuk and DT, but it just fell flat. I don't think Wuk is a bad character, but just a victim of bad execution.
I just had the random realization that it would have been so much better if only Wuk Lamat was there to witness her father's death, regret not stepping in, then when we get 1v1'd with Sphene her breaking in to help would hold weight.
The criticism of Zero; specifically the speed of Post-EW will get smaller over time. As it exclusive to people who did that story prior to patch 6.55.
Though honestly not fair to criticize Wuk Lamat to Zero. Post-EW has the Scions playing an active role. Golbez and the Four Fiends makes things more interesting by the power of nostalgia.
I thought I was okay with Wuk Lamat but when I consider she could be returning for 10 years, I am filled with dread.
The fact that we're comparing one of the best side characters to the absolute worst is embarrassing and is reflective of ignoring your channel from here on out
Zero was a side character that becomes a main character of her own story. We found a way into the void, to search for the long lost sister dragon. She was an anomaly within the Void that could be reasoned with, who over thousands of years after the shard became void lost all emotions and desires except to feed. Which we help restore over time and she doesn't lose that awkwardness of needing to trade in either and such. Wuk Lamat was just boring, she acted like a side character with the dumbass goofs of uwu I get seasick, uwu I'm not good enough uwu. Like real 80's mascot character energy which is gross. How the Rite of Succession resolved should have caused a massive civil war, MOST OF THE POPULACE wanted the first or second promise to win, where are these people? You don't just switch your views and opinions on the fly like that, they should be pissed that the First got disqualified. And the Sphene stuff was just a mess of contradictions and really puts problems on the story if you have a device that can revive you and mess with your memories. And after all of that, what the fuck is Wuk Lamat even going to do as a Dawn Servant? Just be a seat warmer? Do literally nothing be hold the status quo? Like why was there not a scene where they bring citizens seeking guidance and resolutions to their problems? Nah House Cat just wants a big seat to nap in.
One major difference between the two is that Zero failed, even though she tried her best. Her convictions were shattered, her world lost. Where as Wuk Lamat's beliefs aren't ever actually put to the test, until the very end. And even there, everything just 'falls into place'. Or we're told to 'just wait, and someone will find a solution'. Which takes away a lot of credential fom her supposed character growth.