Zoraal Ja’s a bit of a weird character. Not overtly weird, but quietly weird, written just a little bit unlike everyone else, to the point where I’ve seen him confuse people. So let’s talk about why!
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Section timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
1:19 – Story Rundown
12:39 – Why was that so hard?
18:11 – A story teaches you how to read it
23:28 – Outro
Questions, suggestions, other characters that make FFXIV’s storytelling get a little weird? Drop a comment here! You can find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Cleretic/, at Cohost at https://cohost.org/Cleretic/ for stuff that’s too long for a tweet but too short/fleeting for a video, or on Bluesky (there’s less chance of using this) at https://bsky.app/profile/cleretic.bsky.social!
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I like your sword in your room ❤
bit wierd finding positive opinions on DT despite my youtube feed really wanting to recommend me why DT is the worst thing ever
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.
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
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Insta like and subscribe. Great to see a genuinely excited person and fan of this expansions story
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.
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.
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
For me the biggest hole in zoraal ja's writing is his so called motivation to teach the masses the folly of war by ironically waging war. It doesn't check out because never does the MSQ ever show that Tural is still suffering from an endless cycle of war. The x'braal and mamool ja stopped fighting decades ago and whatever escalation risk the chirwagur pose is negligible if wuk lamat could talk them down so easily.
It would be a different story if the nation were still rife with assorted conflicts and zoraal ja wants to end it by beating up everyone till they are too broken to fight any longer. Heck it would even make for a good source of animosity between him and his more pacifistic father who doesn't want such an extreme solution while his son is fed up with years of stalemate that costs the landsguard men and resources when they could just crush their opponents decisively.
Instead we got stuff like zoraal ja mad cos he can't cook… His writing to me was a total letdown.
I think they missed out having Zoraal Ja show up in Living Memory.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lizard Ranking:
Gulool Ja Ja > Bakool Ja Ja > Gulool Ja the Second > Zoraal Ja
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.
bruh some weird mfs play this shit
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.
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.
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."
"Why is this Lizard so mad?"
“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.
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.
Figures.
he’s just Vergil to me, and i like that lol
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.