LETS DO THIS!
Bakool Ja Ja
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 on the villains of Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail !
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Dawntrail had the opportunity to lean into the theme of surviving trauma.
WoL from EW and on.
Bakool Job Job as a eugenics survivor.
Zoraal Ja as a neglected golden child.
Koana as an adopted intellect without socialization.
Sphene as a captive ruler surviving with her people (Clive from 16)
Krile as an adopted intellect with socialization and an interesting connected backstory since HW.
Erenville for being overly committed to learning of the world as an escape from his past.
Wuk Lamat is just a reflection of childhood trauma, a vessel for the main writer to write every trope throughout the MSQ.
It would have been a better and more cohesive story that leverages 10 years of conflict into the repercussions of leadership with relatable storytelling interwoven with the WoL experience, but this entire MSQ is a massive failure in execution. This is a lack of vision from the top. Experimenting with narration is a cover for the absence of clear direction and poor management. Speaking of, it’s been over a month since release and zero feedback from Yoshi P regarding the MSQ feedback, vastly different than the previous launches.
oh c'mon.., bakool ja ja is one of the worst written characters in DT. the story of his ppl is sad, sure.. but hes still a dick. he had no signs of a character flip til "bam" now SE wants you to feel bad for him. i didnt feel bad for him.. wait.. i did! that moment when they made him say he liked being thanked, i cringed for him. hes uninteresting.. his ppl are, but hes barely a character.
Zenos did nothing wrong btw
at the very least, gulool ja ja's death should of happened off screen, and when we find his body, we get an echo of what happen, that would of made more since.
Sorry man this is Wuklamats story
No one else gets any meaningful scenes
That tell v. show thing has wrecked many a series. I like Wuk Lamat as a character, but if they were going for something similar to Karlach from BG3, they are missing a few things. Her development should have been slower, certain aspects of her personality enhanced while others remain distant. For instance, in the trial of the Pelupelu, they should have had more cutscenes where it showed her process. It felt like like it took a while and then bam, alpaca and she got over her fear. It should have really showed her trying and failing to cement her character's identity. Agreed about Zoral ja. He should really have had more backstory. Emet's creation as a villain at first in Stormblood and then an antagonist in Shadowbringers happened over time as we were given time to digest what we know about the character and see new information. I feel like the Alexandria parts should have been patches and not given at once. There should have been quests and scenes that seemingly lead up to the reveal of him being a villain. Maybe with Zoral ja trying to rebel against his siblings rule and an attempt to gain a following before he went to Alexandria and became the king of resolve. This could pit Wuk et al against his character and they would have had to fight and put her people down (something that her character would have had to come to terms with and could have been a great moment for growth, as sometimes love and friendship do not change the hearts of all people) and perhaps she could have been forced to banish him. It could have been that the players play through with her as she discovers her brother's motives and it leads up to the Alexandian patch. Maybe, her brother seeing that he could not win, runs away with his pride in tatters and goes to the Cenote after. Maybe scenes where he and his father talk about the expectations placed upon him and how that happened. Maybe a scene or two about him being younger and seeing the way his people reacted to peace and showcasing the greed and stagnant nature that he wanted so much to fight against. Villains have a driving force leading them forward (be it power, money, pleasure, or greed) and Zoral Ja's being just destruction because he wants people to feel grateful for what they have was a little weaker. Bottom line, the story feels rushed and things that should have been more shown ended up told, which bores the reader or player. Elements were there, but I felt like the potency was not.
Sphene is the best Villain in Dawntrail. I just think she needed more time to flesh out. We needed less Wuk and more other characters, like Sphene. She works for me still and I really, really wished she could of been developed just a little more!
Still, I don't consider her to be on the same level with Meteion, Emet or Zenos at all but she has THAT potential to be something pretty great or greater had she been given more time.
Not gonna lie kind of wished we had spent more of the expansion with sphene than wuklamat
Zoraal Ja was a cardboard cutout. He felt like they constantly rewrote his entire motivation multiple times during the story and just never went back and changed what they had already made. Every time he opened his mouth his reasoning, drives, and motivations were different.
He was very much tell, don't show, and nothing they told made much sense at all. Anyone they could have used to flesh him out acted like they knew nothing about him.
Zenos was BASED asf.
They wanted me to feel bad for Zarul Ja when he was dying and I was like "screw this guy" you don't get to die and talk sorry about your kid you're a deadbeat dad and after 30+ years of training and assimilating to eletrope tech you are still booty cheeks to your father get absolutely rekt!
You can tell the writers did not think him through he should have been stabbing the dad as soon as we walked into the throne roo m that would have made better sense and looked better on our character. Furthermore how did he spawn a kid? did he have a lizard wife? or do the hubbigo people pop kids out asexually?
You mean to tell me after 30+ years as ruler of a people 30+ years is a long time he didn't change at all as a character and he had this hate for his dad why? we never saw the two interact outside of him stabbing his dad up Krile had this echo flash back why didn't we get the flash back? why wasn't it voiced? poor showing for ff14 absolutely poor showing, guess when your budget goes to slightly improving the graphics you excuse the kindergarten level plot.
I have a better plot Zarul ja, so he win's the promise competition by hi,mself lets say he beat Kouna, Thancred and Urianger maybe we say off screen like how the shade of his dad did him ing Yak tel
During the at the results ceremony Golul Ja says Zarul is not ready (which fires the Chekhov's gun from the earlier dialogue) So two head daddy ends up handing it the throne to Kouna who has shown love for his sibling and advancement and etx who also has support of the people. Kouna who made it second place after zarul who did all the tasks perfectly to the letter.
Anyway Kouna shares the throne with Wuk who was 3rd place and this sets Zarul Ja off he talks about how they are not hubigo people how they are not blood and he laves in a rage feeling betrayed by his father, he goes to become king of Alexandria in an after all he did the task right so he should have been the new dawn servant. and he doesn't like people that are not his own so he does not value the alexandrian people show that and it makes sense.
With the taco event it should have went w/o Wuk but if it did as they do in vanilla maybe they team our chara up with Zarul and we see how he hates Wuk at least show us the guy doing something other than the sidekick blowing smoke up his azz.
the first trial should have really set Wuk back and that would have made people playing respect her more but since she was handed the win even after all the stuffs that went on because our chara was with her it just feels so bad.
Btw Wuk won the taco event based off of nepotism btw if you think about it wouldn't be surprised if her dad held the other 3 up so his kid could get that W it really sucks to think about.
My generation (millennials) are so garbage at writing xD
I’d like Zoraal Ja more if they had him be a little more expressive or something because after going through a timeskip he came back talking to his dad like they’ve been fighting years, but they never spoke after he tried to kill the last trial host so it just felt a little odd and it didn’t even lead to anything he just killed him, talked some shit, n left it felt like they murdered a really likable character for the sake of killing him then they shoehorned him a son whom he abandons of course because villains need kids to abandon.
I think the story would’ve worked a little better for the character if he was from Bakool Ja Ja’s home instead of being Gulool Ja Ja’s son then it would’ve been a little more believable that after getting removed from the competition he’d be bitter towards the ruler of Tuliyollal possibly enough to kill him especially after getting power and tech from Sphene, but Zoraal Ja being angry at his father for 30 years because he lost a competition due to his own actions doesn’t seem to fit it would’ve made more sense if he attacked Wuk and/or Koana and Gulool Ja Ja had to step in or if he had been possessed by some sort of evil entity Gulool Ja Ja had fought against in his past, but never truly beaten (this could’ve replaced Valigarmanda just being a frozen “yep that’s gonna be a trial” wall ornament)
I don't like Sphene but also did not like Meteion. Both feel very shallow compared to Zenos in Stormblood and Emet in Shadowbringers. I legitimately think that it would have been a lot more interesting if she was actually truly treated as a rogue AI. It doesn't help that Wuk Lamat just wanted to fix her with talk no jutsu when leaders like Hien and Aymeric have shown us leaders that know when talking is now pointless.
Who could hate Zenos after "I TAKE IT THIS IS YOUR PREY???? BUT WHY DOES IT STILL LIVE? SURELY IT IS NO MATCH FOR YOU"
Zoraal ja = Saurus van Scalesar
I do actually feel like Zoraal Ja isn't as bad as people make him out to be as a villain. Could and should he have had more to do? Absolutely. But, I don't mind having an internally motivated villain for a complete change.
Yes, I think they could have done much more to make him work better. I think the key was actually Galool Ja.
Picture this: we enter the city and find a guy who's a spitting image of Zoraal Ja, but something is off. He seems…younger. He's rebellious and lavished as an amazing prince. But he also hates the pressure.
If Zoraal Ja was feeling neglected or some such, it doesn't quite fit that he'd abandon Galool Ja. I'd assume he'd put his son under insane pressure to be better and do better than dear grandpa. I always picture it as an Endeavor/Todoroki situation.
The villains were a joke. Like everything else in DT. I've been bashing the game on my own channel, and lord it's insane how much was wrong with the writing. Nicely done, sir! I appreciate your work.
Not a fan of Zenos. I find him extremely boring. I thought him being the finally boss of Endwalker was the one sour note because I just didn't care about him at all. I liked Amon a lot though. I started off hating him as a wanna-be Kefka, but EW really did add some layers to his character and made him a solid villain.
I wanted to love Sphene, but I felt like her heel turn was done poorly. It also didn't help that The Wuk of Lamat was supposed to be her foil, which meant she shared screen time with the worst character in FF history. (I hate Naruto. Making her essentially Naruto doomed her in my eyes.)
I think the Bakool Ja Ja thing is mostly pushed by internet weirdos who get off on trying to get reactions out of people who are normal and wouldn't be into two-headed lizard fetish art. Maybe there's other reasons, but this is the FFXIV community, so weird fetish crap is fairly common for whatever reason. On a serious note, his face turn was done even more poorly than Sphene's heel turn. It could have been done better, but it was just so by the numbers and rushed. I actually called it right after he got beat by the MC of DT.
There was another one wasn't there? Hmmm, I seem to remember there being another guy around, but for some reason, just drawing a blank. Guess I'll finish the video and be surprised if there was a third one…..
I think like most things with the story in this expansion, there were interesting ideas for the villains but the execution was just not great. Whether it be Zoraal Ja or Sphene.
Bakool Ja Ja did feel like a cartoon villain. You'd think that if he was being crushed by guilt and desperation, then he'd be more of a brooding kind of character – like Zoraal Ja. I don't understand where he draws his bully-like demeanor from.
The horror about the Mamool Ja eugenics program didn't really click with me until I walked into Skydeep Cenote. When I saw the waters FULL of jars containing dead babies, I realized that this whole thing had been going on for centuries. Countless parents were compelled to try again and again to create two-headed offspring, only to be struck with the sorrow of losing their child – or more accurately, children. There must have been a lot of forced or arranged marriages between Hoobigo and Boonewa as well, or at least a great societal pressure to do so – I wish SE had delved a little more deeply into that aspect.
Honestly, it's a bit weird that Gulool Ja Ja didn't do anything about the situation. He sat on the Dawn Throne for 80 years, and nobody had the idea of introducing new crop plants to the region. I understand that Mamook couldn't come up with a solution, but Gulool Ja Ja had plenty of smart friends to consult about it – like his adoptive son Koana who did come up with the solution during MSQ.
Sphene is nothing like Emet. not only is she a vacuum of charisma, but Emet was right. at surface level what he wanted to do seemed wrong really the end result was a good thing bringing back complete beings that exist in a higher plane of consciousness. Sphene is killing people to keep her mortal imperfect population happy doing reckless shit and throwing souls away. There is absolutely nothing compelling about that.
I feel like Sphene’s entire motivation is undercut by her refusal to actually talk about her problems to find a solution that doesn’t involve killing every reflection.
She avoids talking about it for as long as possible until she starts saying “what wouldn’t you do to save your people?” and running away without discussing it. And at the end she gets the key-mcguffin, says her line again, then runs home and locks the door to avoid discussing the problem (twice – after Zoraal Ja dies and after we enter Living Memory).
And that could work if there really was no other option, but I’ve seen quite a few people discuss alternatives that could have been done. My personal suggestion is just putting the endless in a vr world that wouldn’t require souls/life energy to power every endless.
Tl;dr, she’s a paperclip machine willing to destroy everything just to make more paperclips (or souls/endless/whatever). Which makes it hard to take her seriously as a sympathetic villain or even as a discount Emet-Selch (who did actually discuss his problem with the WoL/scions).
I'd hoped to get to this video earlier today but I have been busy with lots of writing. Upside, I wrote a whole chapter for my latest book in a single sitting, haven't done that in a while. Downside, I'm coming to this a little late. But, here we go anyway!
Zoraal Ja. Your point on them only ever telling us about the things he did, never showing us, stings all the more because of the point you bring up about Krile and the Echo. Every time they had Krile react to his dark feelings, my immediate thought was always, why can't we see it too? Did the writers just forget that we also have the Echo? Why have her tell us these things instead of letting us see it and react to it with her? I'm going to say this again even though it's beating a pancake-flat dead horse at this point, (seriously between your videos and the massive article I wrote about the MSQ on Substack, I've made this point more times than I can remember,) but not allowing the Echo to work with our character here is yet another example of wasted potential and clumsy writing.
I liked Bakool Ja Ja in the second half because his character actually seemed like the type that would have made a great redemption story. I hated how he was handled in the first, definitely agree that they should have foreshadowed it more. They really did a disservice to Bakool Ja Ja and Zoraal Ja. Bakool Ja Ja was shown off as the comically evil rival which really left feeling lacking by Y'ak Tel. Zoraal Ja, there was practically no sign of him, just Krile's word, when we also have the Echo, just had me thinking, "Okay? Zoraal Ja is a the next opponent, whatever I guess."
One of the biggest sins of DT is that there's too much "tell, don't show", instead of the other way around. Doesn't help that we're stuck with a focus character in Wuk (and let's be real, she really ain't good, even from just a narrative perspective), she's got more asspull moments than we've had in 10 years IMO.
My issue with DT villains was, like most of the MSQ, no realistic consequences or reactions. Bakool did not work for me at all because it made no sense for the Mamool to still be in that situation and still sacrificing babies when the current Dawn Servant is also 2 headed and has been there, and has enough authority to make it a trial location. Then all the evil crimes he did, not only should he have been disqualified from the trial, but he literally released a monster that, if it had the time to absorb the aether it needed, could have killed an insane amount of people, so I felt nothing to see him cry talking about "I don't want anymore death" because it was such a heel turn and went directly against his actions right before we got there. And then the redemption where suddenly we're supposed to view him as heroic because he saved someone during the assault when he's an attempted murderer and a literal terrorist by that point.
Running down the other villains, it's more of that, Sphene doesn't really make sense with the authority thing based on what she's shown doing and what she tries to do afterward. And she and all the endless are effectively the same as the shades of Amaurot in ShB, they aren't people, they aren't alive, they're recreations based on memories of dead people so that whole thing didn't land because I didn't feel bad or conflicted for shutting them down, and the "bond" with Wuk was way too sudden to hold weight, they knew each other for like 2 days.
Zoraal the honor thing was stupid, he had no motivation or reason given to be so evil, who did he even bang to have a kid? He felt paper thin, like a cartoon villain to me, just an evil brute because someone has to be a warmonger option in the peace story.
DT did not hit for me at all.
I could respect Sphene more as a villain if she'd gone completely apesh*t mad in the last trial, after we erased what's dearest to her, instead of trying to cuddle up to Wuk Lamat.
Dawntrail's first half was about Wuk Lamat and her brothers learning the skills they'd need to be good rulers, and then the second arc the ones who did go up against the one who did not. And they pay it off. We see them using the skills they learned to take on their failed third sibbling. It's a little more subtle than usual though.
Sphene… her crown lighting up feels very much like the detector at the end of crystal tower picking up "It's wrong. It's all wrong"
Zoraal Ja literally bisected the shade of his son during the normal trial. He made his choice to be completely evil and throw away all his humanity. Then you kill him and he's like… "I wasnt always a good father… but here's the kingdom I built for you." What? Lol. And now it's fucking CANON. FOREVER. Doesnt matter how good the next writers are. They have to work with this xD