Is it BETTER?! | Zepla checks out the Re-recorded WUK LAMAT Lines [FFXIV Dawntrail]
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- Опубліковано 4 лют 2025
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Editor : TakSangre [Discord : taksangre]
4:01 its true. Voice lines are like 5% of the issue when 95% is terrible writing.
Its a build up story for the next 10 years, XD And here again people havent read or pay attention what the developer says.
Which means it's 100% a problem.
@@lu1gi92 If you build a 10 story building on a rotten foundation you get collapse. It's the reason so many people fervently dislike this.
@@lu1gi92 That doesn't mean it's okay to have a poor start. I swear apologist will find/say anything to disregard the issues in this "perfect" game of theirs.
Edit: And before the "ARR was boring/bland/slow" comments/replies appear, we had different systems in the game back then that are completely stripped now that made it more engaging & enjoyable in the long term. Yes, it started to get a little dragged out there towards the end, but it wasn't terrible right out of the gates.
@@lu1gi92 Hey if in 10 years the story is good again, Dawntrail on it's own is still bad.
Or would you like to play ARR with all of the removed quests still in tact?
hopefully they will re-record ARR voice lines for the mobile version
Before: spleeen.
After: SPLEEEN!!!!!!
They knew they had to follow the formula and have a big moment where a character jumps in at the last minute to save the day. Gotta stick to that formula. Their problem was the last couple times it happened was G'raha, who everyone loves, and Zenos, who may not be everyone's favorite, but was completely fitting to him as a character. Both of those characters had YEARS to develop alongside the WoL. Our experience with Wuk Latard was 8 hours of boring ass bland MSQ. Big difference.
I have to assume that the English voice cast were just given 0 direction on what the context was for each line, so the VA in this case was left to assume that these lines were said with Wuk Lamat and Sphene just standing in a room somewhere, and not Wuk Lamat hurtling through space or being crushed by a giant robot hand. It is nice that they took the time to re-record lines in this instance, but as much as I love memes, I hope it encourages S.E. to consider a better workflow so that context is given alongside lines.
Thank you! I've been advocating this idea for Wuk Lamat. That the Voice Director didn't lead the VA through the scene correctly
@@Redfield253The VA is shit.
@@1986Hikaru hard to fully judge when the VA Director themselves couldn't direct the va properly with her scenes
@@1986HikaruWuk Lamat is one of Sena’s first few VA roles. It isn’t that she’s a bad VA, it’s that she’s so new to voice acting that whoever was in charge of casting was either a moron or didn’t read company memos and thought Wuk Lamat was a one-off character
The dialogue is bad, but what would make that character any better, is having a different voice actor altogether.
Doesn’t change the issue that that weak a** cat shouldn’t have appeared in that scene. You literally get a weak character protecting the saviour of the world. That will always be weak writing
Not the biggest fan of Wuk but doesn’t the fact that she’s able to hold off Sphene specifically mean that she’s not weak? One of the dumbest moments everyone is shitting on involves a character dying because we and the scions just stand around and watch while doing nothing. I’d be mad if Wuk came with us to the final fight and did fuck all.
She does infact outdps every player in a 10minute trial with a single press of a button
Martin Septim
The re-recording sounds significantly better to me. To be fair, the initial recording was very, very bad, so it wasn't exactly a high bar to clear, but it seems actually decent now. Like you can listen to it and not have your immersion broken by it.
Better? Yes, obviously. And while I give them points for admitting the previous version was terrible, it's still not great.
I hate that you cannot criticise it normally. Because people will take up the VAs orientation as why you are criticising it.
Personally not a fan of the VA, better now based on what I am hearing, but still iffy about it. Does not help that I am not a fan of the writing as well.
The LGBT community is also very toxic and they will attack you if you say out loud that you don't like Wuk Lamat. Also the VA is an idiot and called players racist for not liking the song "Smile"
I don’t give a crap about who the VA is.
The character was written poorly, and line delivery in English was delivered poorly.
The accent is non-sensical and doesn’t fit at all.
Sadly and whether we like it or not, there is a natural quality of the voice that is lost in the transition. Regardless of the acting, which I think is fine, at least in this scene, and of the overall narrative, which is clearly lackluster but not the point being made. The VA's voice treads that almost uncanny valley of sounding feminine enough but not quite there, like something indescribable is missing, and it becomes obvious if you think two seconds about it, but you can't say it without being called names or misconstrued.
I only play in Japanese so I learned after the fact that people were saying the dub was lackluster. I think that's probably why I kinda had a decently nice time with Dawntrail lol - my biggest criticisms were the "find 6 people... find 6 more people" quests, the tutorial-plays-every-single-time-you-walk-a-buddy-around-town quests, the stealth quests, y'know, the stuff that they did in Endwalker to try and mix things up that would have been more harshly panned in a non-MMO game (and it was more ok then because it was kinda new, but now it seems to be a staple that imo just bogs things down). Those kinds of things. So I saw the memes and when I heard the voice acting I could understand that that was just the icing on the cake for people experiencing it in English who really didn't enjoy the story (I was indifferent; had 0 expectations going in and was more interested in the gameplay), on top of the other things I mentioned. There are aspects of the original clip that I think are ok, actually if you completely ignore what is on-screen, but when you do watch, the action of the scene itself just makes it so jarring. The second clip fits what is on screen better (though I dislike the very first line of the re-dub. It, to me, is worse than the original), to the point where the re-dub actually sent a little chill at the part where she lifts the hand off of her the first time I watched it, so yeah, I think the re-dub is a fine improvement and that person who uploaded is just a hater lol.
Reminds me of the saying "polishing turds".
Oh god…the first one is so bad. Thank god i switched to JP voice.
I’ve always played in English, but DT made me switch.
It’s so damn bad and the accent is ridiculous.
Instructions: “sound exotic”
JP Wuk isn't any better, the character is a big lion woman but somehow they have her sound like a 6 years old in Japanese. They could have cast Shale's JP VA instead, she has a much more fitting voice for the character and still sounds lovely.
The real winners of this shit lottery are FR and DE.
@@benoitrousseau4137 German was my favorite for sure. I guess I don't mind the JP as much because most of my 20-30 yo JP friends sound really young too. All in all, I'd prefer the JP one to be more...rugged, but I am just glad that it's not as bad as the EN version.
I remember thinking “oh for the love of…shut the f up and let me do my WoL thing.”
Better, still hate that character
Outside of pacing (I felt Part 1 was to long and Part 2 to short), this scene is the only thing that really bothered me about the xpac. The Voice Acting is 1000x better and if I heard the re-recorded the first time I might have not had such an issue with it. Maybe? I just hate another (This Scene Cannot Be Skipped) situation.
"This Sphene cannot be skipped."
Delivery of the lines are much better imo, if it was like this from the start there would never be a meme. the overall writing of wuk lamat and the interesting pacing and dull story of MSQ you aren't gonna fix unless you summon Bahamut and destroy the game.
Giff 1 hour long dawntrail video 🙌
Meanwhile, I'm over here wincing at Wuk's broken foot problem!
cant wait to see the MSQ review video tho, gonna have to grab some popcorn and a drink for that
I don’t understand why is it now they are having this issue? It doesn’t make sense. After all the expansions they have.
Every other VA prior to Dawntrail was a stage actor. Dawntrail was the first time they went with video-game VAs. There is a huge difference in range and vocal projection.
I still don't like it. It sounds...wrong somehow. Unpleasant even.
is it better than before? Yeah sure. is it good? Sadly...it's still not.
SPEEEEN is gone... She's with the grapes now. Always in our hearts.
What good voice direction does, like damn the first one feels like a 1 and done take like bruh....
Zepla is going to have to do a watch party now if her review is going to be over an hour long.
@3:40
Please look forward to it
mee tooo
SPEEEEEEEEN!!!!
On a scale to 1-10 before it was a 1, now it's a 3. But as ya said, the voice acting is only a small segment of the issues the game has at large, especially when it comes to DT
The new voice lines are much better. It's fine.
Man, I was kind of excited to play Dawntrail on release but all of this crap just made me quit
I haven’t played a minute of this garbage. Add in no improve character customization, no Viera hats, no added glamour plates, no expanded player backstory options for adventure plates- this whole expac was a complete failure.
I play an Idol on Balmung, I couldn’t give a crap about an Ultimate. But I don’t want to need a degree in programming to download mods so my character can look how I want. It’s all just dumb
Way better. I'll keep the english voices on, for now
That's why I play in Japanese...
Nobody cares 🎉.
@ and you replied to a comment that you don't care? Weird.
Droped the ball as in, “in my world the voice actor is able to completely rewrite the story and re-animate cutscenes and yet they chose not too.”
Square should hire me for some voice acting, man. I’ll knock that shit right outta the park and make Japanese dub look like weak sauce.
from wuk lmao to wuk lol
Man they are trying really hard to hide that voice.
So to be fair we shouldn't hold the line delivery, emotions being used, etc. against her completely. People tend to forget that VA don't often know the context of the scene they are recording for. They aren't the ones writing the story, script, etc. but are just given the lines to record.
That's why there is someone with the VA who knows more about the scene & story to direct them on how to sound, what emotions to convey, give a brief description/summary of the scene, etc. when recording their lines. It's why they often have to do a few takes. It's not like acting on a stage or movie where you can physically see & hear the other person acting with you.
Way often they don't even get to watch the scene the lines will be used for.
The voice actor knows how to convey emotion & does so very well. Examples being the updated lines, during the mid point of the story regarding her father (y'all know it, not gonna spoil it) & a particular scene between Wuk Lamat & a woman in the last area (not with Sphene).
Honestly it's more likely that she wasn't directed properly, given proper information on the scene & what emotions to convey, etc. while recording. And this is unfortunately common in the VA world.
100%. Hearing her va now there's no way they had them see the context or give them direction at the time of original recording. Arr had the same problem with va English direction. Totally uninspired and dry.
The original seemed like a line read.
Now it feels like part of the scene.
VAs are usually not 100% at fault for a phoned in sounding performance. The va director is critical to context when there is none. And the dev team still decides to keep it in the game or not... people said Yes yes this is good.
"People tend to forget that VA don't often know the context of the scene they are recording for." Then it's the voice actors job to require proper context, just like any other job in any other industry. I'm a programmer, and when I encounter a program design issue that I need proper context for then I can't just assume their intentions and do whatever I feel like, it is my job to contact my contract partner and work out exactly what they need before continuing to work on it. So if a VA does not remember to demand proper context before recording, then it's their fault. On the other hand, if the studio refuses to give proper context and just tells the VA to do whatever, then it's the studio's fault.
@kyoai
"then it's the voice actors job to require proper context"
It shouldn't be required & neither would your side regarding program design if the person on the other end does the job they were hired to do.
Voice directors IS a job. Program designer IS a job. It is THEIR job to make sure the voice actor is properly informed like how it is the program designers job to be sure they get you the correct context, information, etc. They are positions filled for a reason.
You also forget that VA & just actors in general don't take on 1 client or 1 job at a time but in fact several. An example would be Jonathan Bailey, the English VA for G'raha Tia. Not only has he been recording voice lines for G'raha Tia but he's also filming in-person for several episodes in Bridgerton & is Fiyero in the recent Wicked movie, soon to be in Wicked part 2 & is playing Dr Henry Loomis in Jurassic World Rebirth.
That's WHY voice director & even just movie director jobs are so key: because actors have multiple gigs going on that they need the director to steer them where they need to go for their acting of the scene because they have multiple movies, shows, etc going on at the same time they bounce from set to set daily. You act as if directors for movies & even your own supervisor needs to be supervised in order to do their job.
Mind you I understand program design & clients as I deal with it on a day to day basis as an AutoCAD tech & my husband is an engineer.
SPHEEEEEEEENE
It's better, but still worlds away from the Japanese version imo.
It was a *ballsy* move.
And the VA surely knows about balls.
Maybe if they substituted her for morgan freeman.
Unironically would make it better
Unironically, Morgan Freeman can do a better female voice.
Okay, so a marginal improvement, it still sounds dreadful compared to what we were used to in Shadowbringers and parts of Endwalker though.
Wuk Lamat VA's true colors showing with the new version.
Yeeeah they cant shout or anything as their 'original' voice will leak out. Still stuck trying to force a voice without it sounding natural.
This is what the apologists don't understand: If the MSQ was up to par, then they'd barely even mention the bad VA work. It's like seeing a scratch on your phone screen making you suddenly notice all the blemishes the device has piled on over time.
It is optics hiring.
8,000 expansions in and this is what we're getting from the eng va department: retakes.. let alone the style of cutscene direction of delayed emoting and paused npc turning while the camera pans up & everyone walks away. It's excruciating now. We get another 10 years of it..
A drop in an ocean of meh. You’re correct.
spleeeen
There's still so little emotion in it, even if the speaker strains the voice.
It's absolutely not better. It's the same because the problem is the VA and the writing. This retake only attempted to solve one half of that equation.
They just need to replace that VA already. No one likes her, and the writing in general is terrible for DT.
Sena did significantly better however by this point wuk lamat cant be taken seriously and her entire inclusion in this fight will forever kill peoples will to play so much so my friends saw me play and they are legitimately just waiting to buy the skip
Definitely better
It's better for sure, but that hardly matters when the content itself is crap.
Sounds more manly, I wonder why
Was that the only rerecord?
Genuinely better in the second take. The cut scene is just unnecessary imo.
it's better but still bad
Wow that was a LOT better. Did they change a lot of her dialogue or just that one scene?
I think it's just the one scene for Wuk Lamat. But I think I read somewhere that Y'Shtola's dialogue was cleaned up to sound not as tinny. I don't think it was re recorded, just cleaned up.
well, it went from terrible to not as bad as terrible🤣
With the re-record, a lot of people missed that it's actually through to the end of the fight. It was underwhelming through and through but having recently gotten it in roulette, it's actually decent to the end. That said, yeah, writing was the main problem to begin with, not just the VA.
It would better WITHOUT WUKLAMAT.
Wuk Lamat is the worst written character in all of FF. No VA can fight that uphill of a battle.
Ayaka Shimoyamada does a great job tho
@Overkill195 I haven't listened to the Japanese VA, so I can't say. However, as I'm a Japanese anime sub nut, I'll give it a shot.
Really dramatic
I played every FF game she is definitely the worst, she even surpassed Hope 🤣
Hard to go worse, though from a 1 to a 3 is not a huge difference
While I'm actually really glad they went back and re-recorded some things because Wuk definitely sounded very... emotionless most times. The story will always be in the writing, not the voice acting. If its a good story, you can usually look past mediocre voice acting. YoshiP really did drop the ball with DawnTrail. It's really unfortunate.
If the next expansions doesn't pick it up, FFXIV might very well become a dead game.
The story could be complete dog ass and the game still would never die. The game is mostly populated by raiders and RPers who’ll stick around so long as their cat girl is still on screen.
I feel like early Dawntrail storyboarding needed to stew for another month or two before they went into full production. There are some great ideas and moments in the expansion, but they're organized weirdly. Zoraal Ja's motivations don't make much sense. Sphene should have been introduced earlier so we can actually get to know her. The entire Shaaloani cowboy side quest felt completely pointless considering we had just found the entrance to the city of gold and were basically leaving it alone. This was the first FFXIV expansion where it took me a while to get through the MSQ because I just didn't feel very motivated to keep at it. Not that I wasn't enjoying myself, but I dunno, it just wasn't an addictive "page turner" until I got to Heritage Found.
It still just sounds like a dude trying to sound like a woman. Do all female Hrothgar sound like that, or just Wuk Lamat? You can tell they are struggling to not be tone deaf.
still bad and cringy imo, SE bring in an actual good english VA and replace all the Wuk lines, thanks.
Voice acting is the like the smallest margin of the problem here tho. Yes the new one is better, old one is shittier, but the biggest problem for DT is the writingnot the VA
To me, this further cements that the VA was never the issue-- the direction was just beyond abysmal. And abysmal direction paired with some of the worst writing and worst use of a character XIV has ever had resulted in... well... SPHEEEEEEEENE
I don't understand how this game can have such a dramatic shift in quality from Shadowbringers/Endwalker to Dawntrail.
Its still bad.
It’s better for sure, but still pretty bad…
@jacob3761 the character is bad full stop!
Wow that is actually much much better. It's worlds apart.
Better? Marginally.
Good? Not at all.
You know how to actually save this scene and make it work?
Have Wuk sacrifice herself by throwing herself in the way of the attack to save the WoL. She doesn't have to die, but being severely injured and maybe have a humbling speech at the end.
That would have been a good start to a redemption arc in future patches. Instead we got SPEEEEN LEESUN TO MIIIII
and thats why JP>>>>>>>>>>
When they got squished from the hand. I cheered because I was hoping she died. But she didn't! So I stopped playing 😂
Why did they re-record them? Did the voice actor leave?
they wernt very good
Same person. Did you even watch the video, lol?
Because, as other FFXIV VAs have said in the past... SE, mostly, doesn't tell them what is the context of the lines they need to deliver... so some lines, like this ones, end up falling flat for the purpose its supposed have
Because the voice acting was embarrassing before. Still is honestly, but it's a big improvement at least.
@@kevinyonson it was the tone everyone clowns on the 1st version because it felt so emotionless
since launch I switched the cutscene language to Japanese and have not looked back, I rather hear the original lines in Japanese with English subtitles 🤷♂
If the VA was the only problem then the Japanese fanbase wouldn't also be annoyed by Wuk Lamat. I hate when people say "I switched to Japanese VA and that fixed the problem for me." Like Dawntrail's story is still shit, no matter what language you listen to it, and I have a feeling Japanese players are saying the exact same thing you just did "Switched to English VA and Wuk Lamat sounds way better" cuz it's easier to listen to her if you don't know exactly what she's saying lmao.
@@NeoDMC "since launch" I mean since the game released, NOT the last expansion, DT does have problems, never said it didn't, just that the cutscenes have never been one for me
What happens when you hire based on ideology instead of merit.
For sure.
The director told the VA: “do an exotic accent. Make it up.”
@@metalmilitia89 Nah, the VA said "I am latinX" and she is just a Californian.
And is friends with pink danger hair Kate lol no merit at all.
It still sounds so bad.
My issue with that sequence is there is two parts....
When she breaks through the reality fissure is part 1, and when she is coming down on the stage talking is part 2.
Part 1 was better before re-recording because Wuk Lamat is shown t be dumber than a sack of wet marbles, so her asking "is this a break in reality ? has she lost control of the power?" She is confused as to what is happeneing, hell so is the WoL and even we the players.... changing it to her knowing exactly what is happening is dumb "There a rift in reality, she's losing control of the power !!"" I mean get real...
Part 2 Is when she pops out, those lines are much better in the re-recorded version... she comes in shouting after clearing teh rift, makes sense, she's angry, she's a warrior, she is here to stop her friend/rival, and then after Sphene's sad reply and calling her name she calls it back stern, but calm.... in the original she comes in super calm like she is done caring, she doesnt sound like she is struggling under the weight or the arm, and then shouts Sphene's name after sphene says her line.... it was dumb, and got better.
Better acted, still poorly written.
Wuk, that's not the real Sphene. She's a memory recreation of a dead queen who you've literally seen switch bodies.
Better voice acting, Still dumb.
The simulacrum is still Sphene, her memories, the way she behaves. She is that, a recreation of the original and while she is not the real one, it would be weird for wuklamat to call her something else
still garbage
But still shit.
both are fine
It's actually fine now.
Thank you ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ gimme some mo 😊
The audio for the voices in these expansions is just bad. That redue of that cutscene was way better than before, so I hope they do other improvements for the rest of the expansion.
I just finished 7.0 last night, so luckily the new version is what I experienced. It's a huge improvement over the old version. Whoever made that video is just a hater who will never be satisfied.
PlAy On Jp, PrObLeM sOlVeD.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I cringed so hard 😂😂😂 SPHEEEEEEENEEEEE
Thank god I play this on Japanese
makes no difference.
the Va is a minor issue.
the writing is just bad
There's nothing wrong with the recording in the 2nd version, it's fine. But i think people are going to misdirect their hatred anyway towards the voice actress when really its the laughably cringe dialogue, being overused as a character, and just having her show up and involve herself in points in the story where she absolutely wasn't needed which make it meme-able. Like when I was doing it on release, and i made a point to stay off social media cause i wanted no spoilers, I remember being face in hands laughing during this scene cause "Of course, Of course she's fucking here - go away i didnt even need your help at all, leave."
And that's not the voice actress' fault at all - It's the script she was given. And that's all the more telling when the Japanese community and people in other languages also do not like Wuk Lamat as a character.
At least credit the original video made...
Wuk Lamat rules! 🎉