Summary
Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrailhas been and gone, and now that the dust has settled -and we’re eagerly awaiting Patch 7.1- we can look back on what was an honestly decent expansion that far more hated than it probably deserved. That hatred came from many aspects, but a large part of what drove it was the reaction to Wuk Lamat, arguably the expansion’s true protagonist, and a character that continues to divide opinion to this day.
While there were legitimate reasons for not really vibing with Wuk Lamat,abuse and death threats sent to voice actress Sena Bryervery quickly turned any conversation around the character into a toxic nightmare. It became such a problem that even Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshia (Yoshi-P)asked fans to stop directing personal attacks towards the game’s voice actors and localizers.
Almost two months on from that statement, Yoshi-P has opened up a little bit more about the negative reception to Wuk Lamat, and has once again addressed the abuse that Bryer experienced.In a new interview with Checkpoint Gaming, Yoshi-P was asked what his thoughts were about the reception to Dawntrail as an expansion, given that it’s quite divisive among fans.
Final Fantasy 14 Director Says Wuk Lamat Voice Actor Abuse “Broke His Heart”
He began by explaining that he “knew from the get-go” that opinions would be mixed, thanks to our Warriors of Light taking more of a backseat this time around, before quickly getting onto the character of Wuk Lamat. Yoshi-P says that his team have accepted the feedback regarding the character, and apologized for not being able to “properly depict her” in Dawntrail, promising that future patches will “show more of what makes Wuk Lamat so great”.
He then goes on to the abuse suffered by Bryer, and pushes back at the claims that his team were “too accepting of diversity”, and that the negative comments thrown at Bryer “broke [his] heart” because of how hard she was working during development.
I’m afraid one of our staff members received very negative comments and it almost felt like a personal attack, which breaks my heart, because she worked really hard and these criticisms were not constructive at all.
After that, he stresses that these kinds of attacks “make the staff lose motivation” and can potentially damage the quality of the game as a result, and urges anyone with problems to “bring it to [him]”. Yoshi-P then claims that as Final Fantasy 14 grows, the game will “have more people, which means more opinions flying about”, so he wants to try and reduce the amount of “pointless attacks” that his staff is dealing with. I think I can speak for most fans when I say we couldn’t agree more.
Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail
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Dawntrail is the fifth full expansion for Square Enix’s MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, and marks the start of an all-new story arc. It takes the Warrior of Light across the ocean to the continent of Tural, adds the new Viper and Pictomancer jobs, and a host more dungeons, raids, and more.
