Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail's story didn't exactly land with its players. I know because I'm one of them. But while I think a lot of the critiques are pretty understandable, and even asked game director Naoki Yoshida (aka Yoshi-P) about them at Gamescom this year, the discussion around what went wrong has also been hijacked to peddle hate.
Sena Bryer, the English voice actress for Wuk Lamat, a character at the heart of critical discussions about Dawntrail, is trans, and has said multiple times that she's been subjected to unacceptable transphobic abuse as a result of her role—strangers using her business email to sign her up for far-right newsletters, as well as "misgendering, death/rape threats, doxxing attempts, threats against my family, etc in every post and all across Twitch/YouTube/Reddit, all [because] I voiced a Final Fantasy character".
In a recent interview with Checkpoint Gaming, Yoshi-P commented both on Wuk Lamat as a character, as well as the abuse that Byrer received: "There were comments about how we are too accepting of diversity—some people seem to be disapproving of that. 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."
The language used here is a little roundabout—but these interviewers are often conducted through an interpreter, which adds another layer of (unintentional) opacity to his remarks. However, the interviewer also makes an editor's note that Yoshida was, in fact, directly referring to Bryer, and the transphobic abuse she received.
"It doesn't do anything except make the staff lose motivation," he adds, "and in the end that could potentially damage the quality of our game and take away from what makes this game so interesting. So if there are any sort of criticisms, bring it to me, because I'm the one approving this material. I wanted to reiterate that, please refrain from personal attacks against our staff."
As for Wuk Lamat the character, who I personally thought wasn't so much a cause of the expansion's writing woes as a symptom of them, Yoshi-P speaks candidly: "She's a very complex character, and she even has a bit of a complex about herself. Unfortunately, we didn't delve very far into the background of why she had those feelings, so it appeared as if she left a negative impression. We accept that feedback. I feel a little sorry that we weren't able to properly depict her."
Patch 7.1 will be arriving mid-November, and I was surprised to see both Wuk Lamat and Zoraal Ja featured as prominent figures in the upcoming main story quests—Yoshi-P confirms to Checkpoint that, yes, they will be focusing on developing Wuk Lamat further to help address some concerns: "We're hoping that we can show more of what makes Wuk Lamat so great, and I'm hoping that we can regain from there."
I'm genuinely excited to see how that plays out—and I'm hoping some structural changes have been made to the team's editing and writing processes. But however it turns out, good or bad, nothing would make the hate Bryer's received acceptable. It might've been a long time coming for Yoshi-P to say something, but I'm glad he's finally voiced his support.
"What you like or don’t like is definitely up to you," he adds, with a characteristic level of diplomacy: "But I think it’s just sad to see this attacking of other people if they don’t agree with you. As Final Fantasy 14 attempts to grow even more to the next level, we’re going to have more people, which means more opinions flying about. That’s perfectly fine, but I think it would be great if we could continue to work to reduce the amount of pointless attacks against each other." Hear hear.
