As the gears turn toward Evercold, a look back at Dawntrail’s most misunderstood character. 

Hey there, Skybox. Some of you might know me; I’ve popped up here and there. But for those who don’t, I’ve been working as a games and culture reporter for just about sixteen years now, everywhere from Game Informer and Inverse to Unwinnable. I’m here to talk about MMOs, but more specifically, Final Fantasy XIV.

A lot of my childhood and teenage years were spent growing up in MMOs; I honestly shudder to think how much of my formative years were spent inside games like RuneScape, Flyff, EverQuest, and Lineage. But for a socially awkward kid with incredibly strict parents, MMOs were a way for me to connect with others that I simply didn’t have in real-life, a way I could make and keep up with friends, all while exploring these massive, riveting fantasy worlds. 

But as I grew older, gained more responsibilities, and had less time for playing games, I gravitated away from MMOs – until COVID hit. Once again, I found myself locked into the world of FFXIV, using a virtual world to supplement that social interaction I direly needed, but couldn’t get. But at that time something new emerged, a different way for me to look at the game. Suddenly I found myself fascinated by the stories of people who played the game, the divergent communities that sprouted up, the funerals for celebrities like Berserk creator Kentaro Miura, and the personal reasons people spend so much time in these virtual worlds. 

Over the last five years, I’ve spent copious amounts of time interviewing both the creators and players of MMOs, collecting stories on both sides. And that’s exactly what I hope to keep doing here, with Eorzean Nights. 

Because of the way MMOs are designed, and the communities that sprout around them, I think more than any other genre out there, they provide a window into the way we consume games, think about them as art, and make them parts of our lives. That’s exactly what I hope to explore through original reporting and my own musings, and while I’d love to broadly talk about MMOs, no one has time for that. My admitted affinity for FFXIV is a big part of why it’s the single game I keep up with these days, but rather than cast a wide net, I want to really zero in on a particular game and examine every part of it. 

There’s a lot to explore. I hope you’ll join me.

There are a lot of reasonable criticisms you can level against Dawntrail – from the sluggish pacing of the first half of its story to the homogenization of jobs that has removed some of the uniqueness from various roles. And while I largely agree with those two points, there’s an exceedingly common complaint about Dawntrail that I’ve never agreed with – that Wuk Lamat is boring, poorly written, or annoying. I disagreed with any of those points at launch, and the more I’ve sat with the expansion over the last two years, the more I’ve disagreed with them. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that Dawntrail as a whole doesn’t work without her specific story arc, particularly how it smartly subverts the typical “Shonen” hero arc. It’s a surprisingly fitting moment that brings Final Fantasy XIV full circle a decade after its revival. 

To get one thing out of the way, I sincerely doubt FFXIV will ever get anything as narratively ambitious or cathartic as Shadowbringers or Endwalker again. The build-up to Endwalker was something I simply don’t think can ever be recreated, similar to how the Marvel Cinematic Universe will likely never  reach the heights of Endgame – it’s just not realistic. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be something meaningful that takes its place, and going for a drastically different vibe with Dawntrail was the right move. 

To that end, the role the Warrior of Light plays in the overall story naturally, necessarily, has to change. And I’ve found that’s been one of the big sticking points with a lot of players for Dawntrail. The Warrior of Light isn’t the hero of Dawntrail. This isn’t your story, but rather a story you play a role in – specifically the role of the mentor. 

That’s what I find so fascinating about Dawntrail from a narrative standpoint: how it builds on everything the Warrior of Light has gone through, turning them into more of a defined character than ever before. Yes, there’s still plenty of room for variation in how each player builds their own head-canon for their Warrior of Light, but on a basic level this hero is someone inherently caring and more than happy to take a headstrong young warrior under their wing, which is where Wuk Lamat comes in. 

I don’t need to go into great detail to describe how much she mirrors the classic Shonen protagonist. She’s a fiery, headstrong young warrior who dreams of greatness and cares about the idea of “doing what’s right” above everything. She’s loud in her idealism, a bit naive, and fully believes in the power of friendship. It’s Shonen to a tee, which is fitting because FFXIV, arguably, is the Shonen of MMOs, or even video games at large. A sweeping drama with specific arcs, power scaling, a host of allies for the hero, the whole shebang. 

For the early beats of Dawntrail, Wuk Lamat advances on the typically trope-y Shonen track, trying to overcome each new obstacle with pure strength and optimism. She quite literally goes through training and powers up to try and overcome specific enemies. But Dawntrail’s big subversion lies in how these efforts consistently fail, time and again. 

Wuk Lamat learns hard lessons in that she can’t overcome everything through sheer force of will, even when aided by the Warrior of Light. Instead, her personal growth is in realizing the importance of cooperation, of leaning on her family, and realizing that she’s simply not fit to be the Dawnservant –the singular leader of Tuliyollal. 

You see this arc play out as the battle- hardened Warrior of Light. And while she is clearly written as a stereotypical Shonen protagonist, the subversion lies in her path diverges, and how those divergences cause her to arrive in a very different place. And, despite what some may think, this theme fits with FFXIV on a larger scale. The story has always been about how the “journey” can shape and mold people; the place they end up may not be where they have in mind. FFXIV constantly stresses the importance of cooperation and understanding between different peoples and cultures, 

In the later stages of Dawntrail, after Wuk Lamat has learned her lessons, the game starts asking larger philosophical questions about how we carry on our duties after those who taught us are gone. The Warrior of Light has to move on to what’s next, and that brings our story full circle.

Through Dawntrail opens up its storytelling to a whole new world of possibilities. I’ve constantly found myself frustrated by people who claim Dawntrail “sidelines” the Warrior of Light. Very few games have the presence of mind or are around long enough to explore what an actual, real legacy looks like.

FFXIV’s narrative focus has allowed it to go places few other games have, and exploring the Warrior of Light’s role as a mentor and guiding light is far more compelling than simply giving you another world-ending threat to deal with. I hope Evercold and future expansions take a similar tack, casting the Warrior of Light in atypical and unexpected roles. We’re never going to hit the heights of Endwalker again; we’re never going to have another soul-shaking moment like seeing the Scions sacrifice themselves to help you save the universe. And that’s okay. There’s still a storytelling future for FFXIV to explore, but it has to be different — and sooner or later, people are going to have to accept that. Perhaps, sometime down the road, we’ll look back at Wuk Lamat’s journey as the first step down that road.

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