Final Fantasy XIV has been going on long enough that you could plausibly make a whole Avengers cast out of its various leading characters alone. But what makes a character capable of carrying such a particularly idiosyncratic story as FFXIV? Who can’t do it? And who’s the best to ever take on the job?
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Section timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
1:31 – The Warrior of Light (that’s us)
6:58 – Nobody
11:37 – What makes a good protagonist
16:26 – Erenville and Krile (would’ve sucked at the job)
22:04 – Estinien
25:23 – Lyse
30:35 – Wuk Lamat
34:45 – In Practice
42:42 – Outro
Questions, suggestions, angry arguments about how I sold the Warrior of Light short and how Alphinaud’s totally a protagonist (but probably not a good one)? Drop a comment here! You can find me on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/cleretic.bsky.socia!
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Yep, as soon as I saw that rubric I had a feeling I knew who would've been in the top spot.
With that said, this video did help me come to an idea I had a feeling about but did not have the words at the time: some folks that disliked Lamaty'i did so because she seemed like a better protagonist than our character because of those qualities.
So for me, that's a good central quality for a protagonist but a better co protagonist for an MMO story has to be one that can bounce off the limited characterization options we get as players, and I honestly liked the chemistry they have our (shared with the devs/writers) WoL with Lamaty'i. In a kind of way that I think they tried with Lyse before but stumbled a bit.
I'm not sure how a Wol-less Estinien would have gotten to the churning mists let alone get a manacutter. After all we're only allowed to peacefully gain access to Sohm Al after we beat up Ravana who not even Ysale as Shiva is able to do. He also doesn't have the ironworks on speed-dail so getting the manacutter would be slower. Let's not forget the two other primals, two ascians, having to deal with matoya and actually having to do reports. If the dragoon squad quest in the churning mists proves anything the man was writing reports and planting aether readers.
I would say that Lyse is curious about the Doma side due to not wanting to wait around for the reistance to boost their numbers again. Since the Doma strech starts with us wondering if Yugiri and Gosetsu made it back alright. She just might not care about Kugane as she cares about the rest of Othard once Hien brings up the offer to help out with Ala Mhigo if we help him free his own country. The whole I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine deal. A lot of people who don't like her also seem to forget what the conversation she has with Hien while we go and meet Sadu with Gosetsu is about. Where she wants to learn how does he go about leading his people knowing that she is still very lacking in leadership skills. Something both her sister and father had to verying degrees.
Edit lol. I feel Wuk Lamat would probably work better for some if she had been introduced earlier in the 6.0 patches but she's tied to the reveal of female hrothgar. As I feel Zero's arc could have probably wrapped up sooner. Many feel that when we left the 13th moon that the msq felt a bit short.
For me personally, the biggest qualification for a protaginist in XIV is wanting to be there. You can tie this into about half of your list, but really I don't think a character inherently needs an ark, needs to be capable of violence(though they still need to ok it), and I honestly think you can do without a social dynamic as much as it helps. For this reason I honestly think Lyse and Estinien are dreadful protagonists, and I will follow Wuk Lamat on a voyage to the sun, knowing full well it will kill us both. Basically throughout all of Heavansward Estinien exists to grump at the party, until he's put in a Nidhog coma. Functionally in heavansward he doesn't actually do much aside from show Ysayle that Ishgard is willing to try peace under very narrow terms. As much as Hevansward would be the same without us, it would also be the same without him, so long as we had any other knight. Estinien is the best choice for the quest, but he doesn't make the most of his time.
Lyse, for as much as she wants the plot solved, doesn't really feel like she's too interested in solving it. In the early portions it's her being frustrated by the people's lack of fight, which is important for her arc, but rather than getting any follow through, we go east. When we end up out east She is generally impatient and flippant, or struggling with her character arc. We don't really see Lyse in her element until the final push and even then she's not there for Doma castle. If she would have stayed in Ala Mhigo, and we come back to find the fort held down because of her hard work, especially if we left on a better note than the raid on Rhalger's reach, I think reasonable people would have a lot less issues with Lyse as a character. I also think something happened with the localization because a lot of her lines in the far east seem off?
I'd also like to toss Alphinaud in as the main character of the ARR patches, as well as basically the head side character giving him the most protaginisty slice of any portion where we don't have one. Basically until he sits down with Matoya he's not a very good fighter, his social dynamic for all of ARR and the first half of hevansward is insufferable, and even after he's got like three memes, he doesn't get a character arc until heavansward, and he's been at the protagonist wheel for much longer than that. Even still there's a reason why a lot of people say ARR picks up in the patches or after the waking sands raid. He plays a large role in why folks love hevansward. He is a wonderful protagonist, despite the fact that many people myself included wanted him dead, and even now give him the side eye when he steps out of line. Alphinaud wants to be there, and is always doing what he can to make sure the plot happens. He really only steps back when there is a Lyse or Wuk there who are better suited for the role, and I think that deserves some praise.
personally, I loved Dawntrail, everything the haters say is because she's a woman, and voiced in English by a Trans Woman. If I had a complaint with DT, it's I've been playing FFXIV since 2015, and I need a break from one game all the time.
Which is why I play other games and MMOs.
Constantly throughout this video, I was thinking about Ardbert. Because he, exactly like Wuk Lamat, shows up in the final fight against the Big Bad of his expansion, to fight him (through you). With a big ax of light personifying Shonen Resolve and Shonen Power of Friendship. With his central conflict/arc/trait of choosing to make that step forward stubbornly to stand with friends and fight to save his world and defy the fear that his strength, determination, and reliance on trusting others to share that burden will not be enough to actually save the world but the light damn it again.
He's also the exploration and curiosity/roots about Norvrandt where he has the roots to what it was 100 years ago but is unfamiliar about what it is now, and because he was curious about it as an adventurer he still wants proactively to explore it – and help those in it but can't so he enlists the WoL's help/follows them around. That's why he's the narrator. As a ghost his passivity exists a a mark against him but could have been lessened. The Exarch's role as the one to drag the WoL to the First to fix it could have with only a little adjustment could have been Ardbert returning to grab up to try his plan again (the revisited version enlisting Minfilia-as-Word-of-Mother, not Elidibus's manipulation).
His character arc of shame for accidentally damning the world when he wanted to save it and the abandonment from his party does a lot of heavy lifting in ShB and more than the Azem reveal is the externalized interiority for the WoL as his status as 'failed counterpart predecessor'. His story is what the WoL has already accomplished and we're trying to avoid the second half of his fate/story.
And it's why the ShB patch is centered on Ardbert (but it's actually Elidibus as Arbert circa HW as we met him)
It never occurred to me that i might want to hear other people's reading of religion in HW
Yeah the big problem with the WoL is the fact that even unlike most other silent protags, they need to be so malleable that everyone can see themselves in them, which to say is a nigh impossible task is to say the sky is blue-
The WoL lacks agency or heavy personal stakes in most arcs simply due to the fact that different people will see their WoL as responding to different things…well, differently. What people fail to realise is that Shadowbringers 2 will be a long way away because how you want the minutia to play out is very different to someone else.
The only reason I don't hold my Shadowbringers experience as a 10/10 (subjectively) is because I felt like it didn't properly follow through on the how they portrayed being "The Warrior of Darkness" as you having to push into some more morally murky boundaries (and the fact your appearance doesn't change when you start absorbing too much light but that's besides the point). Though obviously, there's gonna be people who would've disliked or even hated that approach being forced onto their WoL who they see as say, a completely unwavering bastion of lawful good. Sadly just the by-product of being an MMORPG basically prevents the WoL from being able to completely carry the story unless the developers decide to force the WoL to do things that people will inevitably hate.
Also yes Wuk Lagoat is indeed the best of them (and ngl each of these videos is making me think I should have Dawntrail as my favourite expansion she's just so damn cool-)
Personally, I always preferred the ensemble approach. Since WoL can't carry a story on their own, they serve best as a linchpin that binds multiple stories, like a main character of an episodic series (i.e Doctor Who). This is pretty much how the entire game series operates as a whole, but I also think individual expansions benefit from this approach. It makes WoL feel like a main character without them taking a protagonist's role.
Which is to say, instead of having a new Wuk Lamat for the next expansion, why not have multiple Wuk Lamats? Characters with as much care and thought given as our favourite Hrothgal, but shared across multiple characters. This approach wouldn't have the benefit of EW's per-established backlog, but as content filled expansion stories have gotten, it's fairly doable. I'd say that's what HW attempted, for besides Estinien, Ysayle, and Alphinaud, Ayemric was also prominent enough to be a protagonist, especially in the patch content. And if you discount WoL as the protagonist of ShB, the protagonist seat is mostly shared between Ardbert, Thancred, Ryne, Exarch, and even Emet to a degree.
Nice putting lyse and Wuk in the thumbnail for rage bait ,a genius move ngl.
Seriously, just stick a little sprout on Wuk Lamat's head, and we're DONE. Because that is exactly what she is, and that's why she's a proper protagonist. And we're the vet players helping her out. Dang, now I need to go play that MSQ again with the Little Ladies' Day crown on my head! 😛
A heavy counterpoint to most of the points you bring up, none of the characters, aside from Wuk, are lone protagonists and the game very intentionally shows that in the case of Estinien and Lyse, when Estinien kills Nidhogg, his protagonist arc is effectively done for HW and the protagonist arc shifts over to Alphinaud and the WoL from then on.
StormBlood has 3 major villains to it, Yostuyu, Fordola, and Zenos, and each one is for one of the main protagonists of the story, Yostuyu for Hien, Fordola for Lyse, and Zenos for the WoL, when their respective villain is beaten, that's when they fall out of the main narrative as a protag in the case of Hien and Lyse, because they've successfully defeated their respective villains, they don't have the connection that the WoL has to Zenos.
Wuk is the first time they gave the full expansion villain a connection to the main protag force of a non WoL (Not factoring Zero)
Wuk happening immediately after Zero also didn't help because Zero is also just a better written character, no fault to the VA of Wuk, she's doing great, but she also is very much trying to make a rather terribly written narrative from an objective stand point work. Bakool JaJa has the most aggressive and unnatural 180 in personality out of nowhere, the first half of the story drags itself out a looooot. And Zoraal being mostly silent until his boss also makes for a bad villain to really interact with when he hardly does much in cutscenes. This all, of course, negatively affects Wuk in game too as those negative effects of other characters are also going to start effecting everyone else to screw up their characters and personalities too. Zoraal ja being the way he is makes someone like Galool JaJa look like a bad parent for example because of how shoddily he's written, and eventually by extension would end up making people see Koana and Wuk as bad siblings not trying to help ease those fears Zoraal Ja clearly has throughout DT. DT is mostly at fault for bad writing, as half the characters don't even sound like themselves, and makes some characters seem more like exposition dumps than actual characters
Im not good with these types of things but for the shadowbringers part, wouldn't emet selch entrusting azems crystal to the warior of light count as something modivated by the connection between them and azem?
Meow
Skipped to the Wuk Lamat section because we had a feeling and wanted to see. "Best protag the game's ever had' and like we lost all interest in this video with an objectively wrong opinion. She's a marry sue and she's terribly written. She also suffers from having 'way the fuck' too many lines compared to everyone else. She got knocked face down in the dirt by being SPAT ON. Absolutely someone we want as a leader.
Alright, finished the video now and i have thoughts.
To me it kind of feels like this entire video hinges on the presumption that a singe, solid protagonist is something that is a requirement for story. In my eyes the warior of light has always, despite being a "silent/blank-slate character", been a big driving force in the story. Sure the metaphorical tree would fall eventually but it happens faster when you turn up with a chainsaw.
That part where you point out lyse not having a connection to doma, i would not that thats an issue when there's a whole character who is the "main character" of the doma parts, Hien.
While i do think that dawntrail is up there as one of the best (even though comparing the expansions doesn't really ait right with me since none of them would be anything without the others), i do think wuk lamat is a very good character and all that. I do think that the whole protagonist rating system feels pretty unfair, of course no other character fits the criteria wuk lamat does when there arguably hasn't been a main character like her before. To me at least it felt like you defined what made her good and then used that as judgment for previous characters. Of course estinien isn't a main character when he wasn't writen like one. The characters are made to fit into proverbial holes and there wasn't a protagonist shaped hole to fill. There's not much that was preventing them from making for example estinien into a main character if they wanted to. That is to say that if a protagonist like wuk was needed earlier, there would be one.
Just because wuk lamat is good in a unique way doesn't make previous characters worse for being good in a different way. Those awards didn't come from nothing.
I apologize if this makes absolutely no sense, im not good at writing but i wanted to have some things said.
Overall i agree that wuk is good but i don't think everything before you got to her was as agreeable
They're all inferior to Master Matoya, regardless.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with your conclusion, but as someone who never had a problem with Wuk Lamat, I am ABSOLUTELY here for you pissing off Wuk Lamat haters
I admit I was one of those who really hated Wuk Lamat at first, but I have turned the corner on her and by this point I have exactly one problem with her: we never get any time away from her. Any time the crew splits up, we are always paired with Wuk Lamat. It makes sense, we're effectively her mentor and heavy, but she suffers a lot from what I call John Cena syndrome; she's all over the place and we never get any sort of real separation from her. Or to put it another way, we can't miss you if you don't go away. What would have been so bad about getting some solo time with Krile instead of Wuk, maybe to set up some wacky scenario (in the early game)? Erenville gets off a little easier since we get the entire first half of Shaaloani with him.
Wook lamat. Club girl Extraordinaire
HOW dare you make me watch a video secretly about a character I have no issues with whatsoever (Seriously, what does the actress playing the catlady have to do with anything?). In my opinion Wuk had a decent story, but it needed some work in execution. Either they needed to shrink the rites portion of the story, or sprinkle more about the golden city into the margins of DT's first half. I'm not one to say the rites weren't important for DT and Wuk, it's just that a bit more variety would've been appreciated.
You may be right. Wuk Lamat was the perfect lead for DT as she checks all the boxes, however, the writing was so uncharacteristic of them that SE ended up making us feel that she’s being shoved down our throats constantly. Questionable plot choices doomed WL for this expansion. The scions shouldn’t have been in the majority of DT. The time spent with them could have been spent building up her character and fleshing out her motivations. Instead, it felt like WL was stealing time from the scions, who we already have bonds with.
Don’t agree- haven’t liked any of the protagonists, especially when they steal our place when we’re the chosen one. This is a chosen one narrative- and the Amaurotians, Azem, and anything to do with them is more interesting.
That’s my opinion.
Honestly, the thing that bugged me about lyse is that her arc appeared to be about wanting to fight for revolution while not understanding her people, but nothing she did got her closer to understanding her people. Fordola would have been a great foil for her, but the game never drew enough attention to that. I said from the beginning that wuk Lamat did lyse’s arc better, but wuk lamat’s script sounding like an episode of Dora the explora made her grating, and made me crave the involvement of any other characters. She isn’t an irredeemable character, just needed a bit more mature of a script.
Honestly; the “Koana has brains, zoraal ja has strength” scene would have been much better if not perfect if instead of going back to platitudes about peace, wuk phrased it that she inherited her father’s heart, his love for the people and the cultures that make them unique.
Koana’s flaw was that he saw progress as the ultimate “good” in of itself, disregarding the emotional needs of the people that get fulfilled by ceremony and religion. Zoraal ja would be a leader who could defend tural’s people from any threat, but didn’t care for the people’s well being, creating a powerful and stable, but oppressive state.
Wuk lamat listened to her people, understood their culture and their struggles, and does her best to bring solutions while celebrating what makes the people of tural unique, and understands that it’s the union of different cultures that gives their nation its identity. Someone who sees what tural and its people can become naturally and wants to foster that growth is a far better leader than someone who forces their vision upon the nation. Have the American idea of being a cultural melting pot be the culmination of the American expansion.
Tbh, that could still work, as a culture made up of the union of cultures is probably the only nation on etherys that could seamlessly integrate the Alexandrians into their society. But it would take some script edits to make it go in that direction
Unsolicited bozja opinion from me again (guess who finally related to the story and prefer them over the scions)
In Bozja, sometimes I doubt our wol was the protagonist. We just witnessed the revolution as a hired blade and maybe save people in that moment. It is Bajsaljen’s story arguably, and we’re like the fourth main character after Marsak and Misija
And I love it
I've always appreciated that you seem to be the only one on youtube who understands why wuk's story works. I love her as a character and wouldn't have done her any differently. Honestly though there's one thing that I think you missed – we do see Wukkie being a competent fighter before she bests bakool and bakooler ja ja. The only thing is that we see it in Endwalker, when we hunt the big bird. She holds her own alongside us there.
Thank you for saying Wuk Lamat being in the second half of the story was her walking the walk. That was exactly what i was thinking when i was doing the MSQ. Lamat'yi as a ruler was put to the test essentially, Pople say her ideology isn't challenged but that was the point of alexandria. I also don't think switching to Koana would be a good idea, like i get where they're coming from buuut the perspective switch may be jarring and idk if his relationship to sphene would jit as hard as Lamaty'i's.
I think her story would actually be half baked if we switched to Koana.
Keep it up sister!
The moment you outlined the categories to make up a good FF14 protag, I was like "Aw fuck yeah, this is looking like the Vow of Resolve SWEEP". That said, I am surprised there wasn't a full Alphinaud slot. He always felt like a pretty forefront character.
Hildebrand.
End of list.
I don't know if I agree with your take on HW or Estinian as I read it more as a Balkan war with blood feuds. The power of storytelling, perspective, and the ever prevalent themes of "sight" influencing two factions to do horrible things to one another. If Estinian was simply "the racist cop", we wouldn't have the post-patch storyline of peasants left in sheer awe and anger at Ayermic's reforms as it takes away their "story" – the reason for their family members dying in a "just" war against a "demonic" enemy is now robbed from them wholesale. They have to live with aristocrats making allies of dragons, their mortal enemies, the things that took their fathers and mothers and sons and daughters. At least, this is the perspective we are offered when the "Earnest Maid" drugged our WoL and attempted to rally the rabble at the conference against peace-talks. Ysayle also proves the power of narratives change overtime as she is deconstructed and then reconstructed by Hraesvelgr. To hammer the major themes of perception, we must remember that Hraesvelgr isn't innocent as well in this war of decimation. He found a loophole in his oath to his late wife by giving Nidhogg his pound of flesh to carry out vengeance for their sister. It was by his eye that he granted Nidhogg the strength to carry out the blood feud. So while it was the Ishgardian ancestors who caused the initial conflict from a place of greed and power, it morphed into something far worse, with no obvious end in sight before our WoL intervened.
HW has always held a special place in my heart for depicting the real consequences of the stories and war. The ones we tell ourselves to justify our actions. Though I will agree that had Estinian been left to his own devices… HW would've resembled more of a grimdark ending than the positive and uplifting ending of religious & societal reform from a theocracy to what is essentially a civic administration. Which is why the trio is necessary for HW's story to properly conclude.
Honestly i really disagree with you about Krile. Dawntrail was a massive letdown in terms of how it treated krile character and honestly almost every other character. Like yes, maybe krile couldn't have been the literal protagonist of the entire story, but that usually isn't actually necessary for these expansions. In stormblood we have multiple protags, in endwalker we have multiple, in heavensward we have arguably multiple, though estinien is clearly the main main focus. Dawntrail is actually an outlier in having almost no other major characters than wuk lamat, with everyone else having a much smaller role. Even shadowbringers has a more varied character spread than dawntrail.
You say krile lacks roots, which is sort of true which is why she could've been a secondary protagonist of a story, along with the other protagonist, sort of like ysayle and estininen, or hien and lyse. Instead she gets religated to a complete side character. The story could've even fitted it so much better if they had just let the search and discovery of the golden city be actually important and not waste it on rehashing the same shadowbringers/endwalker/6.x story again.
Also i don't really get what you say about estinien. Like maybe for his story it wouldn't have needed us there… but for the story it absolutely did. The entire story would've been massively different if at least alphinaud wasn't there.
Yda i guess i kinda agree with you about yda not fitting the story as a protagonist very well, but i'm still forever sad that they retconned yda out of existence and deleted the best ARR scion. All other scions, maybe except yshtola get characters who are maturations of their previous characters but still feel like them. Yda just gets deleted completely and 4 expansions later.. the game has no other characters like that at all. Closest are maybe alisaie but not really, and wuk lamat but all of the features done worse.
I have never been more disapointed in an expansion as i was with dawntrail. Wuk lamat could've been a strong story, but it gets completely squandered because the game is completely unwilling to let any other character than wuk lamat be part of it. The first part works reasonably well, though i still wish the writing was better. But the second part is… just bad. And the thing that irks me the most about it is that the entire story is based on the idea that not only wuk lamat, but all other characters too have to be stupid for it all to happen. Half of the thing literally only happen because no one thinks at all, and the thinking that happens goes on almost entirely off screen. Character arcs that seem like they should've been big things are hidden away and multiple whole characters have massive twists *Off screen*. The WOL isn't only not a protagonist in this story, they're not even a character. They do nothing, this truly is a story where you could've replaced the WOL with a powerful gun and nothing would've changed at all. There's literally no reason for us to be here. The part of the second arc that is actually good is living memory, and thats largely because of things other than wuk lamat, and we finally get to actually focus on someone else than her.
"people thought Shadowbringers was the start of a bold new era, and have to learn the game can't always be that" be what? having the WOL be a character, and actually matter in the story they are in? having character relationships that focus on complex topics? A world with a fitting theme where people act in ways that feel impactful and in character? Yeah i guess we will have to learn that stories can't always be written well.
Wuk lamat should've sat out the last fight.
Awwww yeah, stealth Wuk Lamat video! ;D Almost as good as a straight-up Wuk Lamat video!