hot take?
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In today’s video, I talk about reception to Wuk Lamat and if character’s that are disliked, can be saved!
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i want her to be saved so that she can see her kingdom fall in ruin
I never had a problem with wuk lamat I actually like the character but there were a few times where the voice acting could have been better for sure. Especially at the end (speeeeen). Sena bryer however , I feel like she only makes things worse for herself and has soured a good portion of the community’s opinion of her..at this point I wouldn’t be mad at a recast 🤷🏻♂️
I don't agree. She can't be saved unfortunately. It would be one thing if she was simply a bad/annoying character that needed a few changes, but the fact that she's also an all-encompassing narrative black hole means any further attempts to correct her character will require even more undeserved screen time to be wasted on her. It's a net loss to even try. The only thing you can do is drop her from the plot and hope that distance makes the heart grow fonder, but is that really 'saving' her?
Anyway, she can't be improved for me. Kill her or shove her into her work so we don't have to deal with her anymore. The more time she spends outside the palace not actually ruling, the more it seems like Koana should have been the exclusive leader of Tural.
I am going to explode if I see another "Speak with Wuk Lamat" objective
Wuk lamar problem cant be solved
Just get rid of her entirety
She can be, but I think the better question would be, should she be saved? If you don't just shove her into a box that you never open ever again, you have to dedicate more time to her. When you already dedicated 90% of DT to her. So, my question would be, should they dedicate even more time to a character, that failed and will always carry the initial impression that people had of her. Lyse was in a similar boat, but while I think they manged to slavage the character there, she was also way less of an issue than Wuk Lamat is.
Imo, they should dedicate the time that would be needed for fixing her to characters who will come with us as we progress the story. At the end of the day, she'll most likely get left behind in Tural and becomes the NPC that represents that part of the world, like Nanamo, Aymeric, etc. There is not much point in focusing on her in the patch content as well.
I would rather they do not waste resources and time. She can’t be fixed in a patch because that’s too little time. She can’t be in all patches because that cause immense burnout for the player base that already dislike her. She can’t be in the next expansion because people don’t want another msq with her. Square enix should just take the L and move on.
Though to be fair I didn’t like the twins when initially introduced to us but that changed through the story of ARR. issue with Wuk Lamat is that she has not changed throughout dawntrail. We did all the work and she gets all the praise. She is going to need all remaining patches or entire expansion worth of msq to fix her character but I already mentioned that’s a bad idea beucause player burn out. They need to summon Shenron to fix this.
Only way to save the perception of Wuk is to make her disappear completely for a while and when or if she returns hope and pray that whoever wrote Dawnslop isn’t on the MSQ anymore and then hope that the time as Dawnservant is shown to have made her wiser and more mature. So basically what I’m saying is that they’d have to remake her character completely imo.
It would be financially detrimental for them to try and redeem Wuk Lamat at this point. It would be better for everyone if they (and we) just forgot about her and left her in the background and instead, focus on redirecting that time and effort into things that worked. Utilize the feedback the players have given, and put the resources toward the areas and people that have seen success. It would be better to push forward on a new narrative path with better written/more likable characters and "replace the bad tire" so-to-speak.
Wuk Lamat isn't the only thing though. I felt the Scions were equally at fault for the poor experience. They were in the story in form only. None of these characters some of us have spent over 10 years with acted like you would expect them too. All the experiences the twins have gained, that they could have drawn on, were summarily ignored. Performances, like Y'shotla, felt lifeless and phoned in. The voice acting was sub-par overall, if not flat out missing. The problem is, I can't determine who or what is at fault. Was it the voice director? Are the actors tired/bored of their roles? Are these, now iconic, voice actors becoming too expensive for the sustained role of an expansions worth of dialogue?
My concern is, who were the writers delegated to the Dawntrail msq, and how many personnel from Shadowbringers/Endwalker were shifted to other areas? It was publicly stated during the fanfests that promotions went out and teams were reorganized. Clearly, they moved the people responsible for quality characters/writing/depth/nuance to positions they were less impactful. It feels like the best writers were given Arcadion and proved that they could develop fun/quirky/interesting characters with the little build up of a single raid. It makes me wish a bit more fleshed out version of Arcadion was just Dawntrail as a whole story. An entire "Glitzville" vacation for the WoL could have been so enjoyable.
You redeem her by forcing her to fail in a meaningful and real manner. She needs to learn something about leadership other than peace and happiness. The power of friendship doesn't fill the bellies of her starving Nation. Or at least, it shouldn't.
She needs to show real signs of proper leadership and be toned down in her happy go lucky Mary Sue attitude. She needs real flaws and to actually struggle.
Complaints about the VA sounding flat or whatever don't solve the core issue of DT being too much about her and the writing doing an abysmal job of making me want to care about any of it.
Read most of the comments. And people don’t thinks it’s time yet. Keyword yet. Even I am open to th e idea her becoming a tolerable character but it’s too dam soon. We need at least 2 expansions without her.
Can Wuk Lamat's character be saved?
Short answer: No
Long answer: Also no.
I dont hate Wuk Lamat herself. She's the naive princess who needs mentoring before ruling, and that's a fine archetype… but I hate the way the narrative around her never challenged her beliefs, abilities, goals, and never forced her to change or grow, which is the entire point of that kind of character.
They tried to do a "but what if you want peace and love, but too much" with Sphene, but that fell so god damn flat to me. The question never was "what if too much peace?", the question was "how peace?" – and the games answer was "don't worry about it. Thousand years of lizard eugenics? Just ask them to not 🙂 pork roast yummy 🙂 hit stuff with axe good :)"
What i want to see is Wuk Lamat's vague, naive notions of "peace and love uwu" completely and totally fail her, and force her to, i dunno, think for once. Have an actual nuanced motive. SOMETHING.
Is she worth saving? She can totally be ditched like Lyse was on Stormblood, and no one has missed her enough to even make an appearance during the role quests… So Wuk Lamat can be forever busy governing Tural and we can just use Azem's key to get away and never look back
I liked wuk lamat at first however throughout the expansion i became incredibly tired of seeing her hog the spotlight from other characters.
i would much rather move onto a different arc with wuk lamat showing up once in a blue moon like the side characters from previous expansions.
Overall dawntrail felt like pokemon sword and sheild with the ammount of literary handholding.
Story aside i really enjoyed the trials and dungeons this expansion.
The problem is Wuk Lamat is one dimensional. She had character growth in the Main Story, but it was very small. Her Journey only gave her confidence and Resolve. Nothing challenged the way she thought about things.
Giving Wuk Lamat more character growth, means ficing even MORE sceeen time for her, and people are just tired of her. She just needs to dissappear for a while.
I don't like her goofy/dumb personality or the exposition shoved down our throats by her. Someone with a dumb personality is NOT fit to be a ruler, especially not over Tural. The other characters stories got BENCHED for Wuk Lamat cutscenes! This character is frustrating, I hate seeing Wuk Lamat, every cutscene that Wuk had minimal involvement in was exceptionally more tolerable to watch. The only redemption for this character would be if she FINALLY faced some consequences for her dumb, naive personality. Perhaps an attempt at a coup in Tural, where she loses her throne. I do not respect this character, She is yet another Lyse and I think she needs to be wheeled into the "Stage prop" closet behind the scenes and given the Yugiri treatment.
I think giving Wuk more screen time is a great way to make people leave the game.
Not helped by the English VA saying the things she's been saying in social media.
Writing, direction, voice acting….all bad all around.
No, can't be saved. Not without a very very heavy cost.
Let her go. I'm hard pressed to think of a more annoying character
no, she's been tainted by Sweet Baby Inc, burn and salt the ashes
I think an issues is that any more screentime devoted to Wulk Lamat is more screentime taken from characters I'd like to see. She already gobbled up all of Krile and Erenville's story in DT, why should she get a second helping?
Unless the devs plan on rewriting everything including the introduction(6.55), I dont see how.
That bad taste will always be there, it was a fail from the start.
It's one thing if people hate a character because they are meant to be hated. It's another totally different story when a character written AS IF she was supposed to be beloved gets completely panned across the board by a majority of the playerbase. There's no saving this, even killing her won't repair the damage she's done.
Looks like im in the minority, though my opinion is probably a bit biased because I am indifferent towards Wuk Lamat, but I DO agree with the majority that she was over-utilized in this expansion. She can be saved, it will just take time and a masterfully executed scenario that makes sense for her to be there. It has to be something that makes the fan base almost unanimously agree that 'while I may not like Wuk Lamat, it is fitting that she is here.' It will definitely be hard, but with the correct timing and execution she can definitely get into peoples good graces. It would also help if the VA improved the vocal performance a bit. Her best scenes IMO were the dearth of her father, and the situation where she was trying to feed a potion to a corpse. Her casual/fun time scenes are fine, but some of the harder hitting scenes (particularly the glaring one during the final trial) needed a bit more time in the oven. She still has potential imo, but things need to change if she is to become a respected character. If someone as insufferable as Alphinaud in ARR can become a fan favorite, she can too. It will just take a herculean amount of work.
It's hard because there exists no foil to Wuk Lamat right now that existed for other characters that were in similar shoes. Lets us ARR for example. The WoL beat the Garleans at the end of ARR, pre-patches, but there still existed problems to fix. Sultana Nanahmo was all into giving power back to the people but her foil was the Monetarists of Uldah. Her gullibility to the nature of her rivals is what lead to the "death" of the Scions and a near collapse of political power in Uldah.
There is no counter political power in Tuliyollal. There is no one there naturally to have opposing views to Wuk unless some butt pull shadowing figure leading Tuliyollal existed the entire time like some illuminati BS. Or if the Scions opening the teleporting portal leads to some invading force from another Reflection….again…. The writers wrote themselves into a corner to ever make DT main city an interesting location at all. It's a beautiful city but painfully boring in its current state since there is almost nothing to fix. It's like a better looking Gridania. I don't know why they did it but, DT is a near complete story with almost no cliffhangers worth taking interest in.
Let's use HW as an example. At the end of HW Estinien gets possessed and the cast is left wondering what this means for the war. Not only that but the religious foundation of Ishgard had been shaken as well, if not broken. This left the community to ponder what ifs for months and what the future state of Ishgard would be. For DT there is nothing worth thinking about for Tuliyollal since everything is fixed there, even foreign connections with the outside world was solved on the main story. There are no troubles for Tuliyollal to face outside making painfully stupid decisions by the cast. From which would anger the community if this happens.