I used tank lb3, but it didn't seem like it was needed as we survived further ones without it, healers needing to lb3 instead. friends I've asked all said their tanks used lb3 in the instance... countdown ptsd
You actually get three LB3s that fight.
The first one is natty and should fill up right before the debuffs mechanic. The second one fills up right after the debuff mechanics resolve. for some reason. And the third one happens once P2 starts
Nothing in that fight needs a tank LB3, though I guess it COULD help with the debuffs since that usually kills a couple people every time
I was tanking as well and I definitely would have used it, except we were still at 2.5 bars of LB the first time it happened. Just shrugged and threw up all the mit I had instead. Anytime they give a countdown like that it just feels natural for it to be a tank LB.
Its the result of doing a voice that is not in your range. Sure you can imitate a way a person sounds but there are certain nuances in the voice that cant be kept when aiming for more emotion without going back to your original voice.
Which should have been caught by the voice director during screening for the role. This isn't something that should have made it into production, much less the finished product.
There were a bunch of voiced scenes in the MSQ that were subpar compared to previous expansions. The eating sounds, G'rahas emotional moment in the last zone, the background characters during the fountain scene. Last zone felt like an HW era rush job.
Yeah, I actually found it weird because she _does_ have some really great screams and yells and barks throughout other scenes and fights. The voice direction in FFXIV has always been off here and there, like, you can tell they're performing the hell out of whatever they were _told to do._
Now we've truly come full circle with the story.
Brings you all the way back to the cutscene after the final fight of ARR, when everyone screams "ahhhhhh" at Lahabrea while trying not to wake their parents up.
Guys we have to be quiet when destroying Ascians. My parents are asleep and you do not want to wake them up rn.
You thought a primal was scary? You haven’t seen my dad when he doesn’t get exactly 8hours of sleep 🤣
I honestly didn't dislike Wuk Lamat's voice acting for most of the expansion, but every time that she's supposed to be angry, either the voice actress or the voice director just completely failed at that and it sounds really bad, especially for the main story.
Not the 1st time they blunder the english VA though, Barbaraccia and Pallas Athena were both handled badly in the previous expansion.
Athena's shouting was awful imo.
Idk if English has had questionable direction since End's post-patch content or what, but it was almost kinda funny how she said some of her lines, which was meant to have this super commanding/imposing tone, only for it to be the equivalent of me going "arrgh!" in Discord.
Idk if the EN voice directors are the same in CBU3, so this could be an entirely different vocal director, but coming off XVI and Ben Starr fucking nailing every scene he had where he was screaming to someone like Wuk Lamat showing emotions other than "hopeful shounen protagonist", it was roooooooough.
honestly i thought Athena sounding ridiculous was an artistic choice since shes completely delusional, not only it fits but also pretty funny
TrEMbLeEEeee
It wasn't the only odd voice work. While the line reads from Y'sh were fine there's this bit where she sounds like she's literally phoning it in. On a phone.
Edit: Typo
A lot of the scenes where background NPCs go "wow" "whoa" etc. Like with the water fountain, or the big scenes in tuliyolal also had some really bad VA work, straight up worse than ARR crowd NPCs.
The voice direction this time around is.... questionable. It's not just Lamat, it's just we constantly are around her cause MSQ. There are entire zones of voices dialogue that sound very weird, especially considering what we got in ShB and EW. Localization team got some internal QA to do
Yeah honestly in normal dialogue she's fine and even has some louder lines that sound good
Whoever the voice director was is more likely to blame, there had to have been multiple takes of this line and _this_ is what they went with?
A lot of it sounds to me like it was recorded remotely, and whoever was dealing with the recording levels didn't know how to lower it right down so the performer can yell without going over the limit - because the amount of fake shouting and avoidance of raising her voice is really noticeable with Wuk.
I rewatched some scenes and it's not just Wuk
Alisae is oddly restrained at points and even Graha sounded off
I genuinely think the director just did a shit job
Totally EN thing. JP was perfectly fine to me. I tune in to my favorite Twitch streamers play the opening of the game and I could already tell some voices just sound kind of scuffed from Endwalker.
I also don't understand how they decided which cutscenes to voice and which not to.
Feels like a lot of superfluous scenes are voiced while important scenes are left in text.
When Thancred first showed up in the MSQ I legitimately thought they had replaced him with someone new. The mixing was so weird it sounded like someone was trying to do a Thancred impression
Didn't help that she was literally only used as plot device.
"we have a portal"
-enter Shtola-
"I'm a mage with a passion for portals"
"yes this portal is exquisite in craft, I can keep it open"
-exit Shtola-
Oh I absolutely would.
But I hadn't seen them in weeks and they were one my super closest friends, I'd also be hanging out with them, asking what they were up to, and bantering or something. Even if they were there to help with a dire situation
I mean... IIRC, at the point you absolutely need to go through that portal, you're trying to chase Sphene down before she merges worlds and starts sucking the life aether out of the Source. Not really time to sit down and have a good, long catch-up.
The same with Urianger and Thancred though.
It feels like a bait that they used "rivalry with fellow scions" in the promotional materials, because they literally collapsed a single wall on us to delay us by the whole ten minutes ..once.
Or Fanservice Estinien.
yes, that would have been somewhat amazing, or at least as instance fights.
They even state they'd all love to test their mettle against you but...they don't.
I really expected them to be on the other side more than just... you know, one and a half zones. Hell at least give us a solo instance where we fight each other. I'm glad they at least delayed G'raha and Y'shtola, ever since the scion's disbanded and went their separate ways I've been annoyed by how the MSQ keeps putting the gang back together every single patch.
But with DT I straight up feel lied to. There was no rivalry, no confrontation, and we didn't even get some of the cool stuff from the cinematic. Like there's that scene where it looks like Urianger and Thancred have some kind of treasure map and are recruiting people to go on an adventure, none of that, they are just dogs on a leash nodding at anything Koana says.
And I absolutely adore Estinien but he had somehow even less to do this expansion.
I did not mind Wuk the entire expansion. Hell, I even grew to like her. But. This scene made me legitimately upset in the moment.
Why couldn't she have her scene *after* the fight?
The WoL and Sphene, both using Azem artifacts, locked in an epic battle... only for Wuk to force her way in and make the boss easier? Why!?
I literally cannot understand what direction the VA was given during that scene.
The idea is kind of neat, but the delivery was awful. It's supposed to be a really serious and dramatic moment, but it feels like casual talk almost the whole way through. There's no hint of seriousness. If it wasn't for the loud epic music blaring, you could have closed your eyes and thought it was a normal talk at a table.
I wasn't bothered by the VA up until that moment. I dunno if it was just bad direction or bad acting; but I could not believe how bad that moment felt when it was supposed to be the big epic finisher
They changed studios and I suspect that most of the voice acting was done over the phone. Which meant that a lot of data was missing. Is cheaper, as you do not have to move the VA into a studio, but quality is damaged while doing that. And the actors do not have a cue on what emotion are they supposed to convey.
It's very noticable that Wuk Lamat's English VA struggles to get above normal speaking voice in several scenes, and I unironically think it might be the accent or just general struggling with keeping the voice as she gets louder. I can relate; trying to sound femme while shouting is *hard.*
I think it would have been fine if the "femme"ness was dropped when shouting as especially for a Hrothgar it would have felt more "bestial" but I can understand if the voice director wasn't a fan of the idea or if the VA wasn't comfortable with it.
It does leave Wuk feel like she's shouting in lower-case most of the time.
I use jp voices so I can't comment on her voice, but the ending of the trial was stupid. wuk lamat does more damage than the ENTIRE FUCKING RAID. it might as well be a cutscene, we had 5 people dead and the time she just shows up and kills the boss for you. What is even the point when an npc just kills the boss?
I'm glad other people are noticing her DPS. Most NPCs don't even touch one WoL's damage, being half or less. The closest I've ever seen an NPC get is 2B, and she still can't outdamage DPS jobs. Wuk not only outdamages the player, she outdamages the whole party.
She is literally the strongest being in the universe.
At the point Lamat appears you are pretty much done with the actual fight. You are only facing 2 repeating mechanics of cone and donut, while everything before had you guess and move around a lot more.
Endsinger was basically the same. After the phase transition you get buffed so much that the fight only exists at that point to facilitate playing ‘With Hearts Aligned’.
See, while I do think baseline japanese VA is always pretty good, this kinda just sounds like every other Japanese voice over I've ever heard. There's nothing here that makes it stand out or have any flair.
IMO, that's the biggest drawback to using JP over EN. You may have overall higher quality direction, but losing out on all the accents and uniqueness to a lot of the multicultural cast really sucks.
They wanted another scene like the Endwalker final fight and instead we got whatever the hell this was. 2 other characters also got sucked into the abyss but only the cat gets out.
The fight is fantastic but I would’ve been happier if this had just happened in a cutscene after the fight instead.
I feel like there were a lot of VA oddities, but this one took a lot of us out of it.
Krile sounded like she was sick and coming off a cold or something early in the MSQ.
Thancred had more gruff in his voice than usual. It was like the mic was picking up more.
I did notice some weird stuff with Y'shtola.
It was like someone didn't go over/edit/clean the audio completely to prep for production use.
However, I loved Wuk and did not like the voice work. It was fine most of the time, but it was a complete miss whenever there was higher emotion involved. It's like the VA doesn't have the vocal strength to pull off those kinds of moments. Other times, it sounded like someone parodying telenovellas. I saw someone say the VA was Puerto Rican, but that accent was almost as whitewashed as the bronze skinned beauty from last year's summer event.
To me this just felt like Wuk had a Hero complex and wanted to be the main character in every single part of our story. As to how she got there... It makes no sense, she isnt stronger than a member of the Scions, so why isnt it one of the others instead? Honestly I'd rather it was just he WoL's and Sphene for the ending, I get why they did it, but if i didnt click with this character at the begining, the middle or near the end, it kinda ruins this epic fight moment between you and another calamity level threat.
We spent the entire expansion babysitting her, I was so disappointed not being able to have just one moment without her, they tried to pull an Endsinger and it fell flat because it doesn't have the same impact. I mean, hell, we couldn't even have a nap without her barging into our room to tell us for the umpteenth about how much she wants peace.
DT was practically 95% Wuk Lamat... Just look at how many times you had to Speak with Wuk Lamat. Lol.
Wuk lamat's voice is fucking flat like printer paper.
It sure as hell isn't you.
And the situation felt awful for a variety of reasons for me, it took the epic finale out of the fight, it suddenly ripped the difficulty away, and then there's wuk doing the same muttering in the same tone she's done throughout the whole story, while tanking A boss that 8 WOL level adventurers have canonically been fighting.
Also somehow only wuk jumps through the dimensional cracks to help out.
Graha fucking Tia is there.
Not only is he incredibly wise and versed in transportation magics, he would also NEVER let us go without his help if it was up to him.
But we only get Wuk, because It's Wuk Lamatting time, all the time.
"My favorite part is when Wuk Lamat, Wuk lamatted all over the final boss" isn't even a funny meme, it's just a sad truth.
No I agree it took me out of the moment *hard*. It was just another Ryne/Gaia moment but without the emotional buildup and the VA sounded so flat trying to be emotional.
I, like many others, started out liking Wuk Lamat. But very quickly I got annoyed with her. Her constant preaching for understanding everyone was the beginning. Yes the message is cool but after the 50 millionth time hearing the “emotional music” come on and the same lines being said, you get a bit frustrated; we aren’t getting anywhere. You said this stuff a bunch already.
Then I got annoyed when she fought Bakool Ja Ja, not because she took the limelight, but because she (who could not even get one attack off on him before) was now suddenly able to beat him AND an entire group of Mamool Ja through the power of friendship. She hadn’t really grown throughout the entire time, all she had realised was she didn’t need to compare herself and had joined us when fighting Valigarmanda. And I’m assuming she didn’t do much in that fight because if she couldn’t fight Bakool Ja before then how could she fight Valigarmanda.
But okay. Fine, we go with that. Now suddenly we get our own time…. And she is back, and she also is back to being a cry baby instead of a resolved leader unable to protect her people. Then we go to the dome, we go in and we meet Sphene who is at one second our mortal enemy then they are friend, and they talk about loving their people and understanding some more!
Skip forward a bit and now we are having to fight Sphene. Time is of the essence!! The Meso terminal could finish its calculations any second! Let’s take the time to get to know the endless. Good idea Wuk Lamat, and I’m sure there will be no repercussions for this decision because the story this expansion loves to bend over to let Wuk Lamat’s choices work.
Tbh the scene where Otis locks up during the play is probably the best representation of it all. Tense, dramatic moment with a character having a darker side and a backstory…. Oh! Here comes Wuk Lamat! In she comes with her very witty remarks, and her naive thinking that the world will just work out! And even after she stumbles her way through her ending to the story, everyone just claps cause it’s Wuk Lamat.
But then we come to this scene, the final big battle. The rest get teleported away and we use our crystal to summon allies, it’s the WoL time to shine. We have an intense battle and then ope, there is Wuk Lamat to talk about her love, understanding, trying to talk to Sphene and somehow she gets her memories back because of good ol Wuk Lamat. Who is also somehow now out in front of the party in THEIR big final battle. And they can’t even get the voice acting well done.
That is my experience with Wuk Lamat, *shortened* and even then it still takes a short story to explain it all.
Nope. Wuk Lamak's VA missed the tone half the time, which is kinda insane considering she's the main cast this expansion. Anything other than normal small talk and comedic relief sound awkward and out of place.
Yeah. It makes me wonder how did she manage to become the VA of a beastwoman when she can't do loud and growling properly, much less THE beastwoman of the expansion.
My reaction when she broke in was "That damn cat better not be getting to kill-steal." Probably would've been better if she had. Didn't realize until looking at some of the comments here that the boss fight was effectively over at that point. Makes more sense now how a dps could hit limit break at sub 10%, have the cast finish sub 5%, and I'm not even sure the damage from it connected. Almost seems we may as well all bust out the /beesknees or /mandervilledance after that scene.
I'll be honest, I did not like this final moment at all.
She had her focus the whole expansion, she had her whole story, this final fight could have been left for the Warrior of Light, and she could have made her appearance in the cutscene after, not during the damn fight.
The character became really obnoxious, and it's very unfortunate.
Honestly after the rite of succession, wuk lamat's part should have ended there and then. The part at shaaloani was really the part where I felt the adventure starts.
Yet the doma appearance cut the adventure short and it was back to catsitting immediately
Even though at that point, we should have rushed the fuck over to the dome with our friend Erenville who should've been worried fucking sick about his mother and literally running there. at all costs
There was absolutely no way the WoL would do anything other than follow the airship in that situation. The city was a known quantity compared to what's under the dome and they'd want to be there to protect people.
A shame the writers didn't let us do that and just had the WoL go back in order to stand around with their jaw hanging open while civilians are gunned down in the street. No big deal though, Alisaie informs us five minutes later that no buildings were damaged so it's okay.
The WoL would know there's a bunch of scions there they can trust + wuk lamat and galool.
Even if the wol would head back,Erenvillle himself should have been more worried about his mother.
yeah the assault was so strange.
Cutting out Wuk Lamat's part entirely wouldn't have been it, as there was both thematic and narrative relevance for her to continue along with the WoL.
But by the time Sphene's objective and plans were made clear, it was time for the WoL to take center stage.
She should've stayed at the captial after the midpoint, and let Erenville/Krile have their moment.
I was already not a fan of her personality from early on: all the whining and self-doubt, cliched low self-steem underdog wins contest, etc. And also how the MSQ goes out of its way to ALWAYS pair you with her every time everyone splits up, I wanted to spend more time with the scions, or Krile/Erenville but nope, go do chore with Wuk Lamat. Happens also in dungeons. You have G'raha who can tank, nope, you gotta take Wuk Lamat. Even when someone else is having their emotional moments, like the final area, she HAS to chime in and tell them how the situation reminds her of that one test she overcame. She couldn't even let us have the final trial in peace.
I really enjoyed the last map, loved the fight, but that cutscene... Ugh, I can't take it anymore. I'm overfed with Wuk Lamat. I actually laughed when the queen just yeeted her away with words "away from my presence", like, FINALLY, we get some time without this annoyance. But nooooo, gotta shove her in our face again.
I loved it when erenville said"our time spent with the dawn severvant has scarred me for life" just before we crossed the big big bridge.
You know what bro i fucking agree. She has been terrible
My thought at the pre-instance cutscene: Kids are out now its time to pull the Azem stone out to beat up someone
Suddenly in the fight: Wuk jumps in, starts fighting in front on her own platform. That confuses the boss so much it forgets all its good moves.
At least Lyse let us kill Zenos here she does a nergiZenos-Gaia and goes super saiyan and best part? She is out dpsing the party if you watch her damage. I kind of feel robbed on a otherwise great trial.
One of her hits legitimately does 10% of the boss's health bar. I've ran it twice and paid attention the second time. Took her from about 21% down to 10-11%. One singular hit. Our level 3 limit break doesn't even hit that hard.
While I wasn’t really one for the Wuk Lamat hate, this is the one instance the haters had a pretty good point and the game crossed the line. Beating the final boss is the player’s job. The other characters can help indirectly, but having them directly jump in diminishes the players involvement.
My opinion of Wuk Lamat was a rollercoaster this entire expansion. At first, I loved her character and how whimsical she was. I like that our character even admits to Gulool Ja Ja that she is definitely not ready to take the throne, acknowledging that she's a bit of an air head. It was when we helped her defeat the shade in what should of been one on one combat that I kind of started to be like "Oh. She's going to get the throne anyway."
Once the invasion started though, that's when it started going downhill. Her people slaughtered in the streets. An entire region zapped 30 years ahead. And literally coming face to face with one of the rulers...and we decide to go the route of "Oh, well let's get to know everyone first because culture."
So. That said. When she decided to break in on a fight between Nega-Sphene and what she considered to be "her greatest threat"....I eyerolled. We spent the entire expansion babysitting Wuk Lamat. And in the end, we couldn't even get a single fight on our own.
I agree with you. That’s what killed me with Zoraal Ja. “You bested father in his prime!” No. Eight of us did and I did the heavy lifting.
I was fine with her at first. I liked her. But I thought we would help her out and then she’d go rule the city like the Admiral, Nanamo, and others and we would go learn the mysteries of the continent with Krile and Erenville.
The second half should have had a bigger focus on Krile and Erenville. We didn’t need Wuk Lamat sticking her nose in and delaying things. We sure didn’t need her sticking her nose into our fight. She had every other fight in the expansion. I want to play my Warrior of Light I’ve invested in for 10 years. I want to be the hero.
Go back to your city and play mayor with your more interesting brother.
The MSQ team in Dawntrail has Separation anxiety with WuK Lamat anytime she's off screen. It's bizarre to experience in a freaking video game. For some weird reason they wrote the whole MSQ on the basis we would forget about her if she was gone for longer then 30 mins.
I honestly feel like the MSQ team just straight up forgot they were writing a video game story and not a visual novel.
I fully understand the "I'm on vacation, leave me alone" for 80% of the MSQ but that last 20% Wuk was un-welcome. She's supposed to be a leader.
Clapping would be gods trying to genocide entire shards is WoL/Scions territory
It would have genuinely been such a hype ending if we got to nega-sphene, and instead of sphene rando yeeting the party like every final boss does, it's the WoL locking them out of the final room. Cue the WoL turning around and looking the boss down with a "was wondering when I'd have a chance to stretch the legs a little" and then clap her since we finally have a non-jobber to face.
Sphene: I am going to betray you a fourth time now and go to harvest your people.
Wuk Lamat: Noo, how could this has happened.
me: whats the correct way to continue once, twice, thrice? fource?
Even when Sphene says "If you're that strong, are you able to protect what is dear to you without sacrifice", she doesn't even address it to wuk lamat but to you as the character. That was when I realize wuk lamat's part should have ended at the end of rite of succession.
Honestly I think I agree. I didn't dislike her throughout most of the story, but... it would have been a much stronger experience if she stayed back. Hell, have ***Koana*** join us for the last stretch. We barely got to know him at all, and he's fascinated with ***technology*** and well, would you look at that, the single most technologically advanced society in possibly all of Final Fantasy except for 13 and maybe 4 depending on how you look at it. Even outstrips FF8's tech. And... he just stays back to give orders and doesn't really participate. I don't know. If they felt the need to have someone drag along with us, make it the one we've barely gotten to know.
Definitely breaks the immersion, I like Wuk Lamat but this part of the fight genuinely brought down what is one of the best fights they have in the game
Super agree i got super hype when we do awesome WOL things and then......this was like wtf completely threw me out the scene i literally picked up my phone to check reddit lol
I was on the side of hey you win some you lose some when it comes to the story of Dawntrail, but when this happened I genuinely hated the story.. This is not a change of pace this is just shitting on our WoLs. It is a very obvious "let's do something like endwalker, yea they liked that didn't they?" and put no effort in thinking whether it was reasonable or not.
Difference is, your companions could do nothing but PRAY for you because they feared you'd die, etc. The stakes felt high. It just doesn't work with Wuk Lamat because the Scions have pretty much become your family, whereas you've known her all but a few days.
It just doesn't have the same impact.
Tbh I think she's an okay character. My problem was I was always with her in every quest. If the scions split up she would pick me as her partner.
TAKE ALPHINAUD or ALISAIE for once give me a break.
It felt completely out of place to me too, and the entire chat I was watching the fight with immediately started spamming how bad the VA was there.
There was a complete lack of emotion and scream in lowercase arial font size 6... in the delivery at FINAL MOMENT OF THE BIGGEST FIGHT IN EXPANSION i do not understand how this could ever get trough QA.
I died of cringe when it happened. When I thought we would finally get to do something without the house cat she obviously had to come and ruin it all. All my homies hate Wuk Lamat
Honestly it was the final nail in the coffin for me not liking the character. She felt so forced into literally everything. At this point I just wanted to be left alone to fight and she breaks in.
Not a great start to the expac. The story overall is moderately interesting but a few bad characters sour it
Also just completely ignoring other characters. Could we have just had a five minute chat with Erenville? Seriously. Everyone just ignores him having lost his family and home.
Krile feels like she got her story shafted as well. Even when the two were given a few scenes towards the end, Wuk had to chime in with her fortune cookie wisdom about what she had learned earlier in the expansion and how it applies here.
The expansion screams toxic postivity. We're so busy comforting random people and when his mother drops dead in front of him we're just like oh yeah we've got stuff to do. No words of comfort. Jesus.
Because the writer made her the main character for this expansion. The moment you make a character other than the player the main focus. FF14 story telling just dies. (See stormblood Lyse)
There are people that says being a side character is good is missing the point that FF14 whole existence is the player, YOU. It's what it set itself apart from the other MMORPG competitor in the current market.
Idk, imagine if Krile was the main character for this story? And WoL comes along to help out a friend and a fellow Scion. I think it would've worked out.
It would've worked out more than with Wuk, because we've known Krile for a whole lot longer. There's a lot more investment into the character imo.
While for Wuk it's just that she comes in, announces she wants to become the next hokage, and then suddenly proceeds to suck up almost every single minute of screen time. You barely get any time for yourself, or any opportunity to just explore the place with literally anyone else. She's (almost) always there. That's a big and sudden insert for someone we've known for only 3 quests.
For some reason it took me 5-10 minutes to genuinely like some of the new characters (I won't put the name in case of spoilers), but all the hours I had to endure Wuk's presence weren't enough to like her. It had the opposite effect, actually. So it's not just about her being new, I believe.
DT actually has a lot of charming side characters. I liked the pelu and hanu we interacted with (forgot their names), the apologetic hrothgar, ketenrram, koana, and a bunch more. With Wuk I didn't mind her much in the patches prior to the expansion, but by the end of the first zone I was already growing tired of her, and it only got worse.
Same, I actually liked her during the patch story. The only thing that confused me is why such intelligent characters like Krile, G'raha Tia and Alphinaud decided to blindly support this kindhearted, but juvenile and silly person to be a ruler. But I was sure it will be explained later.
Krile is best gal. Honestly what they were thinking giving wuk lamat so much air time is crazy.
I remember yoshi P saying wuk lamat is a nice character look forward to her in a live letter..
Yeah fucking thanks yoshi she sucks and you know it lol.
Swap out Wuk for Krile and you just made the MSQ 80% better.
Wuk fatal flaw is she's paradoxical. Somehow she's both super naive/childish, then in the literal next sentence wise and cunning and full of worldly wisdom!
She also has some super contradictory values.
Bakool Ja Ja does a bunch of horrible things, straight up releases a winged serpent god that could genocide the whole continent if let loose, revels in his malice, and only does it for personal gain? Forgiven because they had a strict dad.
Zoraal Ja is a remorseless killer, shuns their son, almost kills them, leads a ruthless war against his own people, then tries to sacrifice his own kingdom for personal strength? Oh poor misguided brother rest in peace.
Now, Sphene is willing to do anything for her people, even when she knows the only option is awful and heavily regrets resorting to it? She straight up tells her "sorry you are irredeemable".
Bro's before Hoes: Turali Edition. Makes about as much sense as Lamat makes at any point in the MSQ.
/Sigh at least the Dungeons/Trials are pretty good. Crossing my fingers the raids are too
I have been hoping to have an option to tell Wuk shut up because she know nothing about the reflections, life and all the sacrifices we see so far just to let the ppl at the source live. Even after few other NPCs told her to understand Sphene's burden, she ended up understand nothing. In contrast, Sphene understand her fate of her path is to die, I wanted to push wuk out of the way and give Sphene a hug at the last cutscene.
I'm one of those people who actually liked Lyse. Her story and progression made more sense, she was actually trying to improve things, just going about it the wrong way. Wuk Lamat whines for the first 2-3 areas and is extremely passive, then kinda becomes confident, then spends the 2nd half of the game photobombing every single cutscene to tell people how she learned to solve this from an earlier challenge in the story.
If the expansion had focused on someone likeable, whether new or old (Krile, Erenville), I'd have been completely ok with being more of a supporter/mentor to a character.
The main issue with Dawntrail, other than Wuk Lamat's personality being overbearing and getting annoying fast, is that she's EVERYWHERE. Every dialogue, every scene, every dungeon if you do trusts because they won't let you choose other tanks. Party splits to accomplish various tasks? WoL is stuck with her. Krile or Erenville are trying to advance their plot? Wuk Lamat is the quest giver, the quest turn in, and is also in all cutscenes telling them to not be sad and be strong like her.
I kept seeing all the scions walk away to gather firewood or whatever else, and wishing to go with them, but instead I have to listen to wuk lamat complain that she's clumsy for the 30th time. Like, I feel Shadowbringers or Endwalker did a great job at evenly letting you spend time with all the relevant characters, but here it feels like the scions were barely in it because every conversation gets hijacked by her.
They did the same in the patches tho. We were sidelined for zero and the scions having a moment.
Its like the writering team suddenly forgot we are the main character.
The simple fix would have been wuk lamat stayed on tuyollol after she is made dawn servant and massively cut down the time that part takes like 4 levels and 4 feats would have been sufficient
Krile and erenville were enough to carry on the story along with us back centered as main character. Shorter expansion but more bearable
Banri Oda worked on Stormblood as the main writer and again in Dawntrail as the main writer. this is why it probably feels the same, why we have a war plot and a poorly written main character.
Yoshi did say that the direction they go will be based on our reaction so I really hope they take note because every single other MMO makes you an unnecessary side character while FFXIV always had the WoL central to the story. After the 95 MSQ, Wuk should have been nothing more than a side character/supportive role so the WoL could continue his adventure.
I hope they go back to that because have to go through a 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, and 7.55 with Wuk front and center is going to burn me out very very quickly.
The VA is awfully amateur and has no range. They had no right to be casted in a AAA game as a main character. They completely ruined the trial for me with the voice work from a narrative and hype perspective. Genuinely the character model is screaming but they're just talking in a light voice.
Yeah, she is preventing a giant robot from crushing her but her voice shows no exertion.
I don't know if the voice actors can actually see the scene though since they don't have to match mouth movements too much. They might only have direction from the director who didn't relay (or have) the needed information.
meanwhile Koana's VA read the situation for Several different characters and managed to put out a lovely range for all of them. So I doubt that the MAIN character for this expansion wouldn't have proper directions.
That is actually interesting. It would be awesome if someone could make video of this specific scene for every voiceacted language so we could see the difference
Theres a lot of her lines where shes supposed to be "yelling" and its barely above her normal talking voice. None of her passionate lines seemed to have any weight behind them which is unfortunate cause I think a lot of the newer cast did get to show out more.
Bakool Ja Ja especially IMO. His VA (or the two of them?) were good at playing their role especially when you get to know the methods to breed dual headed Mamool Ja and the scene right before you go to the second half of zone 3. His anger before the fight is strong and Wuk Lamats response seemed like she was barely trying.
As someone that plays with Japanese voices, I thought the Japanese VA nailed it. Haven't played on english tho. Curious if any other Japanese voice enjoyers had a similar thought?
Played with Japanese voices as well, and also think it's was fitting, quality of VA in general was the same as previous xpac. I dont know how Wuk Lamat sound in english, but i 'm not sure i want to know.
I switched to Japanese for the first time after 10+ years of being solely on English because I couldn't stand listening another 30\~ hours to the English voice acting. I think that every single one of the Japanese VA's did a terrific job.
DT had won me over quite well with zone 5 and 6, but the Alexandria dungeon and build up to final trial was quite weak.
Fight was great, up until this moment. From this moment where wuk comes in swinging and through the ending cutscenes this became the worst X.0 ending for me. Wuk did not earn this moment for me, and then the ending song and scenes feel completely tone deaf after zone 6.
So yeah DT almost had me back but it is the weakest base expansion msq for me cuz of how badly it sticks the landing.
The whole holding the hand up thing was what got me as well. I don't blame the VA at all, we don't know what they see, nor what info they were given.
"Wuk is holding a massive giant arm of a robot that is trying to crush her, and is audibly strained whilst saying these lines" is something the voice director should have pointed out, AND if they did and the VA didn't do it as they'd want, they should have then done another take and reiterated. Ultimately the thumbs up was given by someone that wasn't the VA on this one, and it felt so flat as a result
I cant help but laugh at this scene every time I see it because the VA is so out of place for the circumstances we're placed under. No hate on her but... I was expecting a little more of a shouting climax than a soft announcement of her name. Definitely know what you mean, wish there was more emotion in it
It reminds me of a scene in family guy when Peter says the god father insists upon itself.
Never found a use for it until now.
Wuk lamat insists upon herself.
Awful god damn character awful story.
Krile and erenville were enough to carry this.
Yoshi P sort your writing team out as this is not it.
I saw so many complain about Wuk Lamat and the voice actor, that i just checked out the english dialog and holy shit, (especially in that scene) the actor sounds weird. I played the whole story in german and i have to say im really happy about how wuk lamats voice was in german.
I would have joined Sphene right then and there if she splat Wuk Lmao right when she landed.
”You know what? Maybe we can work something out. Can I get a sweet space gun now, Your Highness?”
Not gonna lie, I was a little happy when Sphene squashed her like a bug. Then sad again when Wuk didn't get crushed. The MSQ deserved a better character, I really enjoyed it except whenever Wuk talked. I didn't mind her until she became dawnservent. But her antics got old, and annoying in all the zones after that.
I am not a fan of this scene at all to be honest. I started to get annoyed with the weird VA lines and her demeanor in the last zone and wished she did not show up here. It almost ruined the entire expansion for me (you may think I am being dramatic here but I am honestly upset about this scene more than any other part of this expansion. Went from a great expansion to just a good one)
The last zone I was seriously starting to say this was on par with the other best expansions despite its slow start. Then this happened and it really did ruin it for me.
Wuk VA has painfully low range, when she raising her voice she keeps her neutral tone and its so artificial, this voice role was chosen via nepotism.
this expansion im definitely playing in Jp.
The only thing I got from this fight was Accidentally using a Tank LB3. Like IT HAD ALL THE QUEUES HOW WAS I SUUPOSED TO KNOW!?
Wait... you don't need a Tank LB3 for that? It even replaces the whole damn bar if you survive the mechanic.
I used tank lb3, but it didn't seem like it was needed as we survived further ones without it, healers needing to lb3 instead. friends I've asked all said their tanks used lb3 in the instance... countdown ptsd
The bar should refill though. I swear I LB3'd as dark during my run and then after the mechanic finished up it had refilled to full.
You actually get three LB3s that fight. The first one is natty and should fill up right before the debuffs mechanic. The second one fills up right after the debuff mechanics resolve. for some reason. And the third one happens once P2 starts Nothing in that fight needs a tank LB3, though I guess it COULD help with the debuffs since that usually kills a couple people every time
I was tanking as well and I definitely would have used it, except we were still at 2.5 bars of LB the first time it happened. Just shrugged and threw up all the mit I had instead. Anytime they give a countdown like that it just feels natural for it to be a tank LB.
Don't worry we did the same... for both :L
She screams in lower-case and struggles with tone that isn't just 'happy'
Its the result of doing a voice that is not in your range. Sure you can imitate a way a person sounds but there are certain nuances in the voice that cant be kept when aiming for more emotion without going back to your original voice.
Which should have been caught by the voice director during screening for the role. This isn't something that should have made it into production, much less the finished product.
There were a bunch of voiced scenes in the MSQ that were subpar compared to previous expansions. The eating sounds, G'rahas emotional moment in the last zone, the background characters during the fountain scene. Last zone felt like an HW era rush job.
Makes me wonder if the budget got gutted for DT. Would also explain so many unvoiced scenes
Yeah, I actually found it weird because she _does_ have some really great screams and yells and barks throughout other scenes and fights. The voice direction in FFXIV has always been off here and there, like, you can tell they're performing the hell out of whatever they were _told to do._
Now we've truly come full circle with the story. Brings you all the way back to the cutscene after the final fight of ARR, when everyone screams "ahhhhhh" at Lahabrea while trying not to wake their parents up.
Guys we have to be quiet when destroying Ascians. My parents are asleep and you do not want to wake them up rn. You thought a primal was scary? You haven’t seen my dad when he doesn’t get exactly 8hours of sleep 🤣
I'm gonna be honest, I legitimately have no idea what she said because I was dumbfounded at how she got in there in the first place.
Sphene started to lose control and she broke back in from where she got teleported to.
I honestly didn't dislike Wuk Lamat's voice acting for most of the expansion, but every time that she's supposed to be angry, either the voice actress or the voice director just completely failed at that and it sounds really bad, especially for the main story. Not the 1st time they blunder the english VA though, Barbaraccia and Pallas Athena were both handled badly in the previous expansion.
Athena's shouting was awful imo. Idk if English has had questionable direction since End's post-patch content or what, but it was almost kinda funny how she said some of her lines, which was meant to have this super commanding/imposing tone, only for it to be the equivalent of me going "arrgh!" in Discord. Idk if the EN voice directors are the same in CBU3, so this could be an entirely different vocal director, but coming off XVI and Ben Starr fucking nailing every scene he had where he was screaming to someone like Wuk Lamat showing emotions other than "hopeful shounen protagonist", it was roooooooough.
honestly i thought Athena sounding ridiculous was an artistic choice since shes completely delusional, not only it fits but also pretty funny TrEMbLeEEeee
Barbaraccia I thought was okay, but Athena just did a lot of normal volume 'shouting'.
^THE ^WORLD ^SHALL ^TREMBLEEEEE
poor cover for when the heavens fALL???
It wasn't the only odd voice work. While the line reads from Y'sh were fine there's this bit where she sounds like she's literally phoning it in. On a phone. Edit: Typo
How about the "Eating Icecream" sound in Living Memory?
I got a decent case of Misophonia and i wanted to scream. I don't care if Raha can Deepthroat a whole icecream i never wanted to hear that.
This expac was so fucken slurpy, crunchy, and gulpy I wanted to peel my skin off....
Thankfully in my case video games very rarely trigger my Miso, but holy fishpaste did it this time.
>Raha can Deepthroat Another important note for Fanfic writers
I think the audio is instead going to be used in, uh, animations
If you look up the VA, the sound might be authentic
Please don't remember me of this scene. Never in my live have I heart people eat icecream like this.
Yeah they might have over done it reacting to peoples' positive feedback over the EW eating scenes.
A lot of the scenes where background NPCs go "wow" "whoa" etc. Like with the water fountain, or the big scenes in tuliyolal also had some really bad VA work, straight up worse than ARR crowd NPCs.
The voice direction this time around is.... questionable. It's not just Lamat, it's just we constantly are around her cause MSQ. There are entire zones of voices dialogue that sound very weird, especially considering what we got in ShB and EW. Localization team got some internal QA to do
The weirdest for me is the guy in Solution9 thats sounds like an AI voice
I thought the same! He sounds like when i played WoW classic with the addon that has AI voice the quests for you
Yeah honestly in normal dialogue she's fine and even has some louder lines that sound good Whoever the voice director was is more likely to blame, there had to have been multiple takes of this line and _this_ is what they went with?
A lot of it sounds to me like it was recorded remotely, and whoever was dealing with the recording levels didn't know how to lower it right down so the performer can yell without going over the limit - because the amount of fake shouting and avoidance of raising her voice is really noticeable with Wuk.
I rewatched some scenes and it's not just Wuk Alisae is oddly restrained at points and even Graha sounded off I genuinely think the director just did a shit job
Think that was an EN thing specifically.. JP audio sounded pretty good throughout.
Totally EN thing. JP was perfectly fine to me. I tune in to my favorite Twitch streamers play the opening of the game and I could already tell some voices just sound kind of scuffed from Endwalker.
I also don't understand how they decided which cutscenes to voice and which not to. Feels like a lot of superfluous scenes are voiced while important scenes are left in text.
There was also some really bad quality Thancred lines in one of the campfire scenes with Koana. Like straight up his lines had static noise.
When Thancred first showed up in the MSQ I legitimately thought they had replaced him with someone new. The mixing was so weird it sounded like someone was trying to do a Thancred impression
Didn't help that she was literally only used as plot device. "we have a portal" -enter Shtola- "I'm a mage with a passion for portals" "yes this portal is exquisite in craft, I can keep it open" -exit Shtola-
To be fair if a portal opened in your backyard and you knew someone who knows portals i guess you'd also call them lol
Oh I absolutely would. But I hadn't seen them in weeks and they were one my super closest friends, I'd also be hanging out with them, asking what they were up to, and bantering or something. Even if they were there to help with a dire situation
I mean... IIRC, at the point you absolutely need to go through that portal, you're trying to chase Sphene down before she merges worlds and starts sucking the life aether out of the Source. Not really time to sit down and have a good, long catch-up.
They had to justify having her somehow, even if they really didn’t need her
The same with Urianger and Thancred though. It feels like a bait that they used "rivalry with fellow scions" in the promotional materials, because they literally collapsed a single wall on us to delay us by the whole ten minutes ..once. Or Fanservice Estinien.
They should have had Urianger and Thancred as bosses for the first dungeon, like they were stalling you so Koana can get ahead kind of thing.
yes, that would have been somewhat amazing, or at least as instance fights. They even state they'd all love to test their mettle against you but...they don't.
Which would have been hilarious when we brought Thancred and Urianger in as trusts later for that dungeon.
Yeah, I was *really* looking forward to beating the shit out of Thancred...
We've already fought thancred twice! Once while possessed and once as Ryne's imagining of him
Never turn down the chance to hit Thancred in the face and have him remember it this time.
I really expected them to be on the other side more than just... you know, one and a half zones. Hell at least give us a solo instance where we fight each other. I'm glad they at least delayed G'raha and Y'shtola, ever since the scion's disbanded and went their separate ways I've been annoyed by how the MSQ keeps putting the gang back together every single patch. But with DT I straight up feel lied to. There was no rivalry, no confrontation, and we didn't even get some of the cool stuff from the cinematic. Like there's that scene where it looks like Urianger and Thancred have some kind of treasure map and are recruiting people to go on an adventure, none of that, they are just dogs on a leash nodding at anything Koana says. And I absolutely adore Estinien but he had somehow even less to do this expansion.
Estinien randomly being in a saloon in the western town was so weird and out of place.
or him doing the fanservice battle at the start only to immediately fuck off
I did not mind Wuk the entire expansion. Hell, I even grew to like her. But. This scene made me legitimately upset in the moment. Why couldn't she have her scene *after* the fight? The WoL and Sphene, both using Azem artifacts, locked in an epic battle... only for Wuk to force her way in and make the boss easier? Why!?
>Azem artifact Either i was blind or Wuk was saying something stupid and i didn't watch. Sphene had a Azem artifact?
Azem's symbol is glowing on the artifact she uses.
The key had Azem's symbol on top of it, the same moment you use the crystal.
Going to need to rewatch that now! That's actually something interesting
She also out damages everyone by a significant margin. Most NPCs don't even come close to WoL DPS.
She's the main character now... apparently... yeah I'm also super upset about that.
I literally cannot understand what direction the VA was given during that scene. The idea is kind of neat, but the delivery was awful. It's supposed to be a really serious and dramatic moment, but it feels like casual talk almost the whole way through. There's no hint of seriousness. If it wasn't for the loud epic music blaring, you could have closed your eyes and thought it was a normal talk at a table. I wasn't bothered by the VA up until that moment. I dunno if it was just bad direction or bad acting; but I could not believe how bad that moment felt when it was supposed to be the big epic finisher
They changed studios and I suspect that most of the voice acting was done over the phone. Which meant that a lot of data was missing. Is cheaper, as you do not have to move the VA into a studio, but quality is damaged while doing that. And the actors do not have a cue on what emotion are they supposed to convey.
I saw a quote elsewhere that Wuk Lamat's VA screams in lowercase and I think that sums it up
It's very noticable that Wuk Lamat's English VA struggles to get above normal speaking voice in several scenes, and I unironically think it might be the accent or just general struggling with keeping the voice as she gets louder. I can relate; trying to sound femme while shouting is *hard.*
I think it would have been fine if the "femme"ness was dropped when shouting as especially for a Hrothgar it would have felt more "bestial" but I can understand if the voice director wasn't a fan of the idea or if the VA wasn't comfortable with it. It does leave Wuk feel like she's shouting in lower-case most of the time.
I'm glad someone pointed it out. This has been in the back of my mind whenever I hear Wuk Lamat attempt to yell.
I use jp voices so I can't comment on her voice, but the ending of the trial was stupid. wuk lamat does more damage than the ENTIRE FUCKING RAID. it might as well be a cutscene, we had 5 people dead and the time she just shows up and kills the boss for you. What is even the point when an npc just kills the boss?
I'm glad other people are noticing her DPS. Most NPCs don't even touch one WoL's damage, being half or less. The closest I've ever seen an NPC get is 2B, and she still can't outdamage DPS jobs. Wuk not only outdamages the player, she outdamages the whole party. She is literally the strongest being in the universe.
At the point Lamat appears you are pretty much done with the actual fight. You are only facing 2 repeating mechanics of cone and donut, while everything before had you guess and move around a lot more.
Endsinger was basically the same. After the phase transition you get buffed so much that the fight only exists at that point to facilitate playing ‘With Hearts Aligned’.
Thank goodness. I'm not the only one who disliked it. Wuk lamat coming in was dumb to me.
For context here is the Japanese version. [https://youtu.be/AL5xCjO-2tE?t=1256](https://youtu.be/AL5xCjO-2tE?t=1256)
Yeah significantly better.
See, while I do think baseline japanese VA is always pretty good, this kinda just sounds like every other Japanese voice over I've ever heard. There's nothing here that makes it stand out or have any flair.
IMO, that's the biggest drawback to using JP over EN. You may have overall higher quality direction, but losing out on all the accents and uniqueness to a lot of the multicultural cast really sucks.
They wanted another scene like the Endwalker final fight and instead we got whatever the hell this was. 2 other characters also got sucked into the abyss but only the cat gets out. The fight is fantastic but I would’ve been happier if this had just happened in a cutscene after the fight instead.
It's more similar to Gaia in Eden Shiva
I feel like there were a lot of VA oddities, but this one took a lot of us out of it. Krile sounded like she was sick and coming off a cold or something early in the MSQ. Thancred had more gruff in his voice than usual. It was like the mic was picking up more. I did notice some weird stuff with Y'shtola. It was like someone didn't go over/edit/clean the audio completely to prep for production use. However, I loved Wuk and did not like the voice work. It was fine most of the time, but it was a complete miss whenever there was higher emotion involved. It's like the VA doesn't have the vocal strength to pull off those kinds of moments. Other times, it sounded like someone parodying telenovellas. I saw someone say the VA was Puerto Rican, but that accent was almost as whitewashed as the bronze skinned beauty from last year's summer event.
To me this just felt like Wuk had a Hero complex and wanted to be the main character in every single part of our story. As to how she got there... It makes no sense, she isnt stronger than a member of the Scions, so why isnt it one of the others instead? Honestly I'd rather it was just he WoL's and Sphene for the ending, I get why they did it, but if i didnt click with this character at the begining, the middle or near the end, it kinda ruins this epic fight moment between you and another calamity level threat.
She is stronger than the whole 8 party in that last fight.
She literally does one hit that does 10% of the boss's health bar at once. Yeaaah.
I was generally ok with the character but I feel like this scene was unneeded.
Agreed. I like Wuk Lamat, but... really?
We spent the entire expansion babysitting her, I was so disappointed not being able to have just one moment without her, they tried to pull an Endsinger and it fell flat because it doesn't have the same impact. I mean, hell, we couldn't even have a nap without her barging into our room to tell us for the umpteenth about how much she wants peace. DT was practically 95% Wuk Lamat... Just look at how many times you had to Speak with Wuk Lamat. Lol.
The fact that they had the text 'Speak to Wuk Lamat yet again' more than once in this expansion as quest text says a lot.
This entire final trial was a fantastic mirror of the expansion as a whole. Potentially cool things interrupted and ruined by too much Wuk Lamat.
What, you didn't enjoy being saved by the new strongest being in the universe, Wuk Lamat?
Wuk lamat's voice is fucking flat like printer paper. It sure as hell isn't you. And the situation felt awful for a variety of reasons for me, it took the epic finale out of the fight, it suddenly ripped the difficulty away, and then there's wuk doing the same muttering in the same tone she's done throughout the whole story, while tanking A boss that 8 WOL level adventurers have canonically been fighting. Also somehow only wuk jumps through the dimensional cracks to help out. Graha fucking Tia is there. Not only is he incredibly wise and versed in transportation magics, he would also NEVER let us go without his help if it was up to him. But we only get Wuk, because It's Wuk Lamatting time, all the time. "My favorite part is when Wuk Lamat, Wuk lamatted all over the final boss" isn't even a funny meme, it's just a sad truth.
Kinda happened out of nowhere.. the English VA is very.. unenthusiastic about everything going on too, it's very distracting to me
No I agree it took me out of the moment *hard*. It was just another Ryne/Gaia moment but without the emotional buildup and the VA sounded so flat trying to be emotional.
I, like many others, started out liking Wuk Lamat. But very quickly I got annoyed with her. Her constant preaching for understanding everyone was the beginning. Yes the message is cool but after the 50 millionth time hearing the “emotional music” come on and the same lines being said, you get a bit frustrated; we aren’t getting anywhere. You said this stuff a bunch already. Then I got annoyed when she fought Bakool Ja Ja, not because she took the limelight, but because she (who could not even get one attack off on him before) was now suddenly able to beat him AND an entire group of Mamool Ja through the power of friendship. She hadn’t really grown throughout the entire time, all she had realised was she didn’t need to compare herself and had joined us when fighting Valigarmanda. And I’m assuming she didn’t do much in that fight because if she couldn’t fight Bakool Ja before then how could she fight Valigarmanda. But okay. Fine, we go with that. Now suddenly we get our own time…. And she is back, and she also is back to being a cry baby instead of a resolved leader unable to protect her people. Then we go to the dome, we go in and we meet Sphene who is at one second our mortal enemy then they are friend, and they talk about loving their people and understanding some more! Skip forward a bit and now we are having to fight Sphene. Time is of the essence!! The Meso terminal could finish its calculations any second! Let’s take the time to get to know the endless. Good idea Wuk Lamat, and I’m sure there will be no repercussions for this decision because the story this expansion loves to bend over to let Wuk Lamat’s choices work. Tbh the scene where Otis locks up during the play is probably the best representation of it all. Tense, dramatic moment with a character having a darker side and a backstory…. Oh! Here comes Wuk Lamat! In she comes with her very witty remarks, and her naive thinking that the world will just work out! And even after she stumbles her way through her ending to the story, everyone just claps cause it’s Wuk Lamat. But then we come to this scene, the final big battle. The rest get teleported away and we use our crystal to summon allies, it’s the WoL time to shine. We have an intense battle and then ope, there is Wuk Lamat to talk about her love, understanding, trying to talk to Sphene and somehow she gets her memories back because of good ol Wuk Lamat. Who is also somehow now out in front of the party in THEIR big final battle. And they can’t even get the voice acting well done. That is my experience with Wuk Lamat, *shortened* and even then it still takes a short story to explain it all.
Nope. Wuk Lamak's VA missed the tone half the time, which is kinda insane considering she's the main cast this expansion. Anything other than normal small talk and comedic relief sound awkward and out of place.
She’s uncomfortable/ incapable of properly getting loud or yelling or growling
Yeah. It makes me wonder how did she manage to become the VA of a beastwoman when she can't do loud and growling properly, much less THE beastwoman of the expansion.
The one time she yelled was in that time you play as Wuk Lamat.
Yeah it comes off really weird. Definitely effected the view of the msq overall because of it
My reaction when she broke in was "That damn cat better not be getting to kill-steal." Probably would've been better if she had. Didn't realize until looking at some of the comments here that the boss fight was effectively over at that point. Makes more sense now how a dps could hit limit break at sub 10%, have the cast finish sub 5%, and I'm not even sure the damage from it connected. Almost seems we may as well all bust out the /beesknees or /mandervilledance after that scene.
I'll be honest, I did not like this final moment at all. She had her focus the whole expansion, she had her whole story, this final fight could have been left for the Warrior of Light, and she could have made her appearance in the cutscene after, not during the damn fight. The character became really obnoxious, and it's very unfortunate.
Honestly after the rite of succession, wuk lamat's part should have ended there and then. The part at shaaloani was really the part where I felt the adventure starts.
Yet the doma appearance cut the adventure short and it was back to catsitting immediately Even though at that point, we should have rushed the fuck over to the dome with our friend Erenville who should've been worried fucking sick about his mother and literally running there. at all costs
There was absolutely no way the WoL would do anything other than follow the airship in that situation. The city was a known quantity compared to what's under the dome and they'd want to be there to protect people. A shame the writers didn't let us do that and just had the WoL go back in order to stand around with their jaw hanging open while civilians are gunned down in the street. No big deal though, Alisaie informs us five minutes later that no buildings were damaged so it's okay.
The WoL would know there's a bunch of scions there they can trust + wuk lamat and galool. Even if the wol would head back,Erenvillle himself should have been more worried about his mother. yeah the assault was so strange.
Those cutscenes should have been a duty. And it was, in ShB. And even SB.
Cutting out Wuk Lamat's part entirely wouldn't have been it, as there was both thematic and narrative relevance for her to continue along with the WoL. But by the time Sphene's objective and plans were made clear, it was time for the WoL to take center stage.
That small quest line in shaaloani was amazing, i actually felt like i was exploring and adventuring
She should've stayed at the captial after the midpoint, and let Erenville/Krile have their moment. I was already not a fan of her personality from early on: all the whining and self-doubt, cliched low self-steem underdog wins contest, etc. And also how the MSQ goes out of its way to ALWAYS pair you with her every time everyone splits up, I wanted to spend more time with the scions, or Krile/Erenville but nope, go do chore with Wuk Lamat. Happens also in dungeons. You have G'raha who can tank, nope, you gotta take Wuk Lamat. Even when someone else is having their emotional moments, like the final area, she HAS to chime in and tell them how the situation reminds her of that one test she overcame. She couldn't even let us have the final trial in peace.
I really enjoyed the last map, loved the fight, but that cutscene... Ugh, I can't take it anymore. I'm overfed with Wuk Lamat. I actually laughed when the queen just yeeted her away with words "away from my presence", like, FINALLY, we get some time without this annoyance. But nooooo, gotta shove her in our face again.
I loved it when erenville said"our time spent with the dawn severvant has scarred me for life" just before we crossed the big big bridge. You know what bro i fucking agree. She has been terrible
I actually said: "Yeah, you and me both, bro"
Lmao same that 😂😂😂
My thought at the pre-instance cutscene: Kids are out now its time to pull the Azem stone out to beat up someone Suddenly in the fight: Wuk jumps in, starts fighting in front on her own platform. That confuses the boss so much it forgets all its good moves.
At least Lyse let us kill Zenos here she does a nergiZenos-Gaia and goes super saiyan and best part? She is out dpsing the party if you watch her damage. I kind of feel robbed on a otherwise great trial.
One of her hits legitimately does 10% of the boss's health bar. I've ran it twice and paid attention the second time. Took her from about 21% down to 10-11%. One singular hit. Our level 3 limit break doesn't even hit that hard.
While I wasn’t really one for the Wuk Lamat hate, this is the one instance the haters had a pretty good point and the game crossed the line. Beating the final boss is the player’s job. The other characters can help indirectly, but having them directly jump in diminishes the players involvement.
My opinion of Wuk Lamat was a rollercoaster this entire expansion. At first, I loved her character and how whimsical she was. I like that our character even admits to Gulool Ja Ja that she is definitely not ready to take the throne, acknowledging that she's a bit of an air head. It was when we helped her defeat the shade in what should of been one on one combat that I kind of started to be like "Oh. She's going to get the throne anyway." Once the invasion started though, that's when it started going downhill. Her people slaughtered in the streets. An entire region zapped 30 years ahead. And literally coming face to face with one of the rulers...and we decide to go the route of "Oh, well let's get to know everyone first because culture." So. That said. When she decided to break in on a fight between Nega-Sphene and what she considered to be "her greatest threat"....I eyerolled. We spent the entire expansion babysitting Wuk Lamat. And in the end, we couldn't even get a single fight on our own.
I agree with you. That’s what killed me with Zoraal Ja. “You bested father in his prime!” No. Eight of us did and I did the heavy lifting. I was fine with her at first. I liked her. But I thought we would help her out and then she’d go rule the city like the Admiral, Nanamo, and others and we would go learn the mysteries of the continent with Krile and Erenville. The second half should have had a bigger focus on Krile and Erenville. We didn’t need Wuk Lamat sticking her nose in and delaying things. We sure didn’t need her sticking her nose into our fight. She had every other fight in the expansion. I want to play my Warrior of Light I’ve invested in for 10 years. I want to be the hero. Go back to your city and play mayor with your more interesting brother.
At least poor Koana got some relief XD
Probably why he was actually able to defend the city.
The MSQ team in Dawntrail has Separation anxiety with WuK Lamat anytime she's off screen. It's bizarre to experience in a freaking video game. For some weird reason they wrote the whole MSQ on the basis we would forget about her if she was gone for longer then 30 mins. I honestly feel like the MSQ team just straight up forgot they were writing a video game story and not a visual novel. I fully understand the "I'm on vacation, leave me alone" for 80% of the MSQ but that last 20% Wuk was un-welcome. She's supposed to be a leader. Clapping would be gods trying to genocide entire shards is WoL/Scions territory
It would have genuinely been such a hype ending if we got to nega-sphene, and instead of sphene rando yeeting the party like every final boss does, it's the WoL locking them out of the final room. Cue the WoL turning around and looking the boss down with a "was wondering when I'd have a chance to stretch the legs a little" and then clap her since we finally have a non-jobber to face.
"That looks like fun can I join in?"
It wasn't 'supposed' to be one on one combat. lizard hitler wanted to try to prove a point
Right, Koana pops his tablet because non-claimants are expected to help. The Electoral makes fun of zoraal ja for not letting his wizard help
Sphene: I am going to betray you a fourth time now and go to harvest your people. Wuk Lamat: Noo, how could this has happened. me: whats the correct way to continue once, twice, thrice? fource?
Even when Sphene says "If you're that strong, are you able to protect what is dear to you without sacrifice", she doesn't even address it to wuk lamat but to you as the character. That was when I realize wuk lamat's part should have ended at the end of rite of succession.
Honestly I think I agree. I didn't dislike her throughout most of the story, but... it would have been a much stronger experience if she stayed back. Hell, have ***Koana*** join us for the last stretch. We barely got to know him at all, and he's fascinated with ***technology*** and well, would you look at that, the single most technologically advanced society in possibly all of Final Fantasy except for 13 and maybe 4 depending on how you look at it. Even outstrips FF8's tech. And... he just stays back to give orders and doesn't really participate. I don't know. If they felt the need to have someone drag along with us, make it the one we've barely gotten to know.
It's also insane the scions aren't freaking out at the soul extraction stuff and just mentioning it briskly almost.
There's so much bullshit we see and then don't call out, but by that point it's par for the course. We can only be her cameraman and nothing more.
Definitely breaks the immersion, I like Wuk Lamat but this part of the fight genuinely brought down what is one of the best fights they have in the game
Super agree i got super hype when we do awesome WOL things and then......this was like wtf completely threw me out the scene i literally picked up my phone to check reddit lol
I was on the side of hey you win some you lose some when it comes to the story of Dawntrail, but when this happened I genuinely hated the story.. This is not a change of pace this is just shitting on our WoLs. It is a very obvious "let's do something like endwalker, yea they liked that didn't they?" and put no effort in thinking whether it was reasonable or not.
Difference is, your companions could do nothing but PRAY for you because they feared you'd die, etc. The stakes felt high. It just doesn't work with Wuk Lamat because the Scions have pretty much become your family, whereas you've known her all but a few days. It just doesn't have the same impact.
I'm as surprised as everybody else here. The moment she appears and I'm just wtf where is krile and g'raha?
They're just not as strong as God-Queen Wuk Lamat.
The best part about this scene is that it actually happens during the trial, so you get to relive it every single time you do the trial from now on.
kind hilarious the amount of times we've had side npc break through reality to smack boss on forehead and give us a nod
I play it in Japanese, and the lines, and tone seemed appropriate for that
Tbh I think she's an okay character. My problem was I was always with her in every quest. If the scions split up she would pick me as her partner. TAKE ALPHINAUD or ALISAIE for once give me a break.
I have to be honest. The fight was amazing... except phase 2... I REALLY didn't like wuk coming in out of nowhere and stealing our thunder.
It felt completely out of place to me too, and the entire chat I was watching the fight with immediately started spamming how bad the VA was there. There was a complete lack of emotion and scream in lowercase arial font size 6... in the delivery at FINAL MOMENT OF THE BIGGEST FIGHT IN EXPANSION i do not understand how this could ever get trough QA.
I felt impartial to the final trial, and her breaking into the trial like that made me actively dislike the experience.
I died of cringe when it happened. When I thought we would finally get to do something without the house cat she obviously had to come and ruin it all. All my homies hate Wuk Lamat
Honestly it was the final nail in the coffin for me not liking the character. She felt so forced into literally everything. At this point I just wanted to be left alone to fight and she breaks in. Not a great start to the expac. The story overall is moderately interesting but a few bad characters sour it
Also just completely ignoring other characters. Could we have just had a five minute chat with Erenville? Seriously. Everyone just ignores him having lost his family and home.
Krile feels like she got her story shafted as well. Even when the two were given a few scenes towards the end, Wuk had to chime in with her fortune cookie wisdom about what she had learned earlier in the expansion and how it applies here.
The expansion screams toxic postivity. We're so busy comforting random people and when his mother drops dead in front of him we're just like oh yeah we've got stuff to do. No words of comfort. Jesus.
Man i was really getting into the msq after the coronation, just me and erenville exploring, no Wuk in sight, and then it was all ripped away from me.
Yeah but wuk lamat has something profound to tell us all like peace and protection lol
Because the writer made her the main character for this expansion. The moment you make a character other than the player the main focus. FF14 story telling just dies. (See stormblood Lyse) There are people that says being a side character is good is missing the point that FF14 whole existence is the player, YOU. It's what it set itself apart from the other MMORPG competitor in the current market.
Idk, imagine if Krile was the main character for this story? And WoL comes along to help out a friend and a fellow Scion. I think it would've worked out.
It would've worked out more than with Wuk, because we've known Krile for a whole lot longer. There's a lot more investment into the character imo. While for Wuk it's just that she comes in, announces she wants to become the next hokage, and then suddenly proceeds to suck up almost every single minute of screen time. You barely get any time for yourself, or any opportunity to just explore the place with literally anyone else. She's (almost) always there. That's a big and sudden insert for someone we've known for only 3 quests.
For some reason it took me 5-10 minutes to genuinely like some of the new characters (I won't put the name in case of spoilers), but all the hours I had to endure Wuk's presence weren't enough to like her. It had the opposite effect, actually. So it's not just about her being new, I believe.
DT actually has a lot of charming side characters. I liked the pelu and hanu we interacted with (forgot their names), the apologetic hrothgar, ketenrram, koana, and a bunch more. With Wuk I didn't mind her much in the patches prior to the expansion, but by the end of the first zone I was already growing tired of her, and it only got worse.
Same, I actually liked her during the patch story. The only thing that confused me is why such intelligent characters like Krile, G'raha Tia and Alphinaud decided to blindly support this kindhearted, but juvenile and silly person to be a ruler. But I was sure it will be explained later.
Krile is best gal. Honestly what they were thinking giving wuk lamat so much air time is crazy. I remember yoshi P saying wuk lamat is a nice character look forward to her in a live letter.. Yeah fucking thanks yoshi she sucks and you know it lol.
Swap out Wuk for Krile and you just made the MSQ 80% better. Wuk fatal flaw is she's paradoxical. Somehow she's both super naive/childish, then in the literal next sentence wise and cunning and full of worldly wisdom!
When is she full of worldly wisdom tho? 🤔
She also has some super contradictory values. Bakool Ja Ja does a bunch of horrible things, straight up releases a winged serpent god that could genocide the whole continent if let loose, revels in his malice, and only does it for personal gain? Forgiven because they had a strict dad. Zoraal Ja is a remorseless killer, shuns their son, almost kills them, leads a ruthless war against his own people, then tries to sacrifice his own kingdom for personal strength? Oh poor misguided brother rest in peace. Now, Sphene is willing to do anything for her people, even when she knows the only option is awful and heavily regrets resorting to it? She straight up tells her "sorry you are irredeemable".
Bro's before Hoes: Turali Edition. Makes about as much sense as Lamat makes at any point in the MSQ. /Sigh at least the Dungeons/Trials are pretty good. Crossing my fingers the raids are too
I have been hoping to have an option to tell Wuk shut up because she know nothing about the reflections, life and all the sacrifices we see so far just to let the ppl at the source live. Even after few other NPCs told her to understand Sphene's burden, she ended up understand nothing. In contrast, Sphene understand her fate of her path is to die, I wanted to push wuk out of the way and give Sphene a hug at the last cutscene.
I'm one of those people who actually liked Lyse. Her story and progression made more sense, she was actually trying to improve things, just going about it the wrong way. Wuk Lamat whines for the first 2-3 areas and is extremely passive, then kinda becomes confident, then spends the 2nd half of the game photobombing every single cutscene to tell people how she learned to solve this from an earlier challenge in the story. If the expansion had focused on someone likeable, whether new or old (Krile, Erenville), I'd have been completely ok with being more of a supporter/mentor to a character. The main issue with Dawntrail, other than Wuk Lamat's personality being overbearing and getting annoying fast, is that she's EVERYWHERE. Every dialogue, every scene, every dungeon if you do trusts because they won't let you choose other tanks. Party splits to accomplish various tasks? WoL is stuck with her. Krile or Erenville are trying to advance their plot? Wuk Lamat is the quest giver, the quest turn in, and is also in all cutscenes telling them to not be sad and be strong like her. I kept seeing all the scions walk away to gather firewood or whatever else, and wishing to go with them, but instead I have to listen to wuk lamat complain that she's clumsy for the 30th time. Like, I feel Shadowbringers or Endwalker did a great job at evenly letting you spend time with all the relevant characters, but here it feels like the scions were barely in it because every conversation gets hijacked by her.
They did the same in the patches tho. We were sidelined for zero and the scions having a moment. Its like the writering team suddenly forgot we are the main character.
Except that Zenos didn't shove herself down our throat at every possible moment.
they gotta bring ishikawa back man…
The simple fix would have been wuk lamat stayed on tuyollol after she is made dawn servant and massively cut down the time that part takes like 4 levels and 4 feats would have been sufficient Krile and erenville were enough to carry on the story along with us back centered as main character. Shorter expansion but more bearable
Banri Oda worked on Stormblood as the main writer and again in Dawntrail as the main writer. this is why it probably feels the same, why we have a war plot and a poorly written main character.
I felt the same, tbh all of the scenes she talks exactly the same, half asleep monotone voice.
Yoshi did say that the direction they go will be based on our reaction so I really hope they take note because every single other MMO makes you an unnecessary side character while FFXIV always had the WoL central to the story. After the 95 MSQ, Wuk should have been nothing more than a side character/supportive role so the WoL could continue his adventure. I hope they go back to that because have to go through a 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, and 7.55 with Wuk front and center is going to burn me out very very quickly.
The VA is awfully amateur and has no range. They had no right to be casted in a AAA game as a main character. They completely ruined the trial for me with the voice work from a narrative and hype perspective. Genuinely the character model is screaming but they're just talking in a light voice.
Yeah, she is preventing a giant robot from crushing her but her voice shows no exertion. I don't know if the voice actors can actually see the scene though since they don't have to match mouth movements too much. They might only have direction from the director who didn't relay (or have) the needed information.
meanwhile Koana's VA read the situation for Several different characters and managed to put out a lovely range for all of them. So I doubt that the MAIN character for this expansion wouldn't have proper directions.
Funny, the german VA screamed her lungs out, it was really good voice acting
That is actually interesting. It would be awesome if someone could make video of this specific scene for every voiceacted language so we could see the difference
Theres a lot of her lines where shes supposed to be "yelling" and its barely above her normal talking voice. None of her passionate lines seemed to have any weight behind them which is unfortunate cause I think a lot of the newer cast did get to show out more. Bakool Ja Ja especially IMO. His VA (or the two of them?) were good at playing their role especially when you get to know the methods to breed dual headed Mamool Ja and the scene right before you go to the second half of zone 3. His anger before the fight is strong and Wuk Lamats response seemed like she was barely trying.
As someone that plays with Japanese voices, I thought the Japanese VA nailed it. Haven't played on english tho. Curious if any other Japanese voice enjoyers had a similar thought?
Played with Japanese voices as well, and also think it's was fitting, quality of VA in general was the same as previous xpac. I dont know how Wuk Lamat sound in english, but i 'm not sure i want to know.
I switched to Japanese for the first time after 10+ years of being solely on English because I couldn't stand listening another 30\~ hours to the English voice acting. I think that every single one of the Japanese VA's did a terrific job.
I was actually having some fun until **she** appeared fuck my life...
DT had won me over quite well with zone 5 and 6, but the Alexandria dungeon and build up to final trial was quite weak. Fight was great, up until this moment. From this moment where wuk comes in swinging and through the ending cutscenes this became the worst X.0 ending for me. Wuk did not earn this moment for me, and then the ending song and scenes feel completely tone deaf after zone 6. So yeah DT almost had me back but it is the weakest base expansion msq for me cuz of how badly it sticks the landing.
There's still hope the Raid/Alliance storylines might have an actual proper story without Wuk
It will be a 100% based on Wuk Lamai. And she will be forced on the party on every fight. :)
The whole holding the hand up thing was what got me as well. I don't blame the VA at all, we don't know what they see, nor what info they were given. "Wuk is holding a massive giant arm of a robot that is trying to crush her, and is audibly strained whilst saying these lines" is something the voice director should have pointed out, AND if they did and the VA didn't do it as they'd want, they should have then done another take and reiterated. Ultimately the thumbs up was given by someone that wasn't the VA on this one, and it felt so flat as a result
I cant help but laugh at this scene every time I see it because the VA is so out of place for the circumstances we're placed under. No hate on her but... I was expecting a little more of a shouting climax than a soft announcement of her name. Definitely know what you mean, wish there was more emotion in it
It reminds me of a scene in family guy when Peter says the god father insists upon itself. Never found a use for it until now. Wuk lamat insists upon herself. Awful god damn character awful story. Krile and erenville were enough to carry this. Yoshi P sort your writing team out as this is not it.
It was pretty bad yeah, but it's also sad that everyone has to preface before posting any criticism about this expac specifically.
I saw so many complain about Wuk Lamat and the voice actor, that i just checked out the english dialog and holy shit, (especially in that scene) the actor sounds weird. I played the whole story in german and i have to say im really happy about how wuk lamats voice was in german.
I would have joined Sphene right then and there if she splat Wuk Lmao right when she landed. ”You know what? Maybe we can work something out. Can I get a sweet space gun now, Your Highness?”
Not gonna lie, I was a little happy when Sphene squashed her like a bug. Then sad again when Wuk didn't get crushed. The MSQ deserved a better character, I really enjoyed it except whenever Wuk talked. I didn't mind her until she became dawnservent. But her antics got old, and annoying in all the zones after that.
I am not a fan of this scene at all to be honest. I started to get annoyed with the weird VA lines and her demeanor in the last zone and wished she did not show up here. It almost ruined the entire expansion for me (you may think I am being dramatic here but I am honestly upset about this scene more than any other part of this expansion. Went from a great expansion to just a good one)
The last zone I was seriously starting to say this was on par with the other best expansions despite its slow start. Then this happened and it really did ruin it for me.
As much as i hate saying it Wuks voice acting is garbage, its like im listening to a very young stoned kindergarden teacher.
Wuk VA has painfully low range, when she raising her voice she keeps her neutral tone and its so artificial, this voice role was chosen via nepotism. this expansion im definitely playing in Jp.