#wallaru

but throughout wallaru we get very little peeps of either problem-- dasein is off fighting his own battles stuck in sap in the dreaming, and sure, the governors send some like... spiders.... to fight you, but it's never a substantial threat -- and they never really continue to escalate.... they just fade into the background until directly the end. (hell, dasein fades out too as the kroaker becomes a bigger threat.)

it feels like what should be our biggest priority going into wallaru is the continuation of the novus plot - be it through dasein or through the governors. but we're left basically floundering on that point until the Very Last Area(s) -- when there was plenty of space throughout the world to weave in information about what's going on there. they TRIED to weave in dasein information - but ultimately were so cryptic with it that it had no payoff and indicated basically nothing to us.

1.5) massive pov problems

I realized this is a continuation of my last point - so I'm putting it as a .5. When I say pov problems, I more mean "subject of focus" - wallaru had a bit many subjects of focus this time around for my taste, and certainly didn't pay appropriate attention to any of them.

dasein (existential struggle), the governors (colonial/power struggle), the 3(or 4) main wallaru groups (townies,drovers,kids,+dingos), sandiago(?), & the old one (past colonial/power struggle), joan&cane, judge veg, freddie kroaker, sybil, on and on and on.

you get my point, right? way too many hands in the same few bowls - all competing for attention, screen-time, characterization, and importance.

usually i've seen the golden rule for good characterization in wiz worlds as using characters at gateways. let's take novus for example.

copyqat/fuzhi - established as a strong character in her own right, (though is also a continuing character), who provides a gateway into catmandu npcs. you are compelled to learn more about catmandu through her (&later moo bu) strong foundations of interest - she becomes a companion, along with moo bu.

moo bu - also established as a strong character provides a gateway into the stone of heaven & the first leg villain, tung-ak. you want to learn more about the villain because he is the key to moo bu's character arc closure - not necessarily even because he's excessively interesting in his own right.

and tung ak passes the torch to dasein-as-novus! who becomes the grounding gateway for much of the rest of the world. it is compelling to investigate novus because he is it - and it is him - and he is such a strong (and priorly fantastically established) companion and plot device that he makes even the least tolerable of jokes semi-tolerable. and there are a lot of stakes to ending his suffering / opening his psyche back up to continue to talk to him. the moments with dasein in the gallery were a perfect example of weaving a fragmented dasein CORRECTLY into a world.

briefly we have that lil nonbinary dog person to carry us through the dog area even! & entwine them into dasein-as-novus motivation interests!

novus had a GREAT flow of attention and supplied a lot of motivation for a player to continue (thru emotional attachments to npcs and dasein) as well as a very sensical reason perhaps a wizard oc might continue as well.

wallaru however, much like karamelle, failed to supply a consistently meaningful companion baton toss while also introducing way too many one off characters w/o a meaningful connection to main npcs or companions .... leading to a very convoluted and confusing plot experience.

our primary&first companion, sandiago, theoretically has the motivating factor of a mystery - who is he, why is he /was he in wallaru, etc..... but because his involvement with the old one is introduced too late in the world, there's no clear connection to existing themes within his character - and therefore, very little drive to learn his mystery in comparison to other characters. he acts as an opinion device and a concealer of information, which is merely frustrating when he isn't a well established companion.

then: for a little while it's that acting gator guy? who is funny i guess, but not a grounding or continual companion - he's a one-off joke character we drag about for a while.

same with all the judges - they're mostly samey people.

essentially for the bulk of the middle of wallaru's plot, we're stuck playing sidekick to various wallaru npcs we don't already know in order to be immersed in their world (a very tourist-y perspective even once the overt tourism wears off).....wasting time that could be spent learning about sandiago (or god forbid, dasein&the governors.)

the intermittent time spent with dasein in the dreaming is great, don't get me wrong, the irks-as-emotions is a great explanation device and actually led to some of the least annoying exposition in the world -- but he's not much of a companion this world.... because other than "vaguely stuck in the dreaming" - we don't know where he is, how to get him, or WHAT HE'S GOING THROUGH. HOW HE CHANGES FROM THE END OF NOVUS TO WHEN WE MEET HIM FORMALLY AT THE END OF WALLARU IS ENTIRELY UNCLEAR (because it's told largely from sybil's perspective, who is just as cryptic as sandiago if not worse).

i consider joan locke & judge veg some of the stronger companions of the world, w/ judge veg having GREAT prior establishment and characterization and joan locke being a decent theme character. but they can't save what's already a train wreck - judge veg can only weakly 'introduce' freddie kroaker - mostly because we already know full well who he is.

what we needed from this world was the same tight plot we recieved from lemuria&novus - characters who scaffold the world and themes, rather than flounder and drown within them.

and we also needed tighter focus in general - to the same themes novus&lemuria were about (power, colonialism, *old one manipulation*, etc) and to a few concrete, reliable and lovable companions/minor antagonists. (if it were me, i'd go santiago -> judge veg/morb -> any novus character with dasein information weaved more strongly throughout... and leave sybil&the old one to fill out between santiago, dasein&morb. but alas).

2) events that didn't provide any meaningful payoff or further the story in any way

here's a running list:

-dasein's suffering in the dreaming (we don't see an arc from him, just senseless suffering & constant prodding from sybil to produce a realization we don't see)

-the huntsmen spiders (empty threat / annoyance, no real information about novus gleaned and especially not about the governors plan for novus)

-the entire fake walkabout tourist area (enforces the surface themes of wallarus tourist problem, but could've been resolved a little faster and gotten more done in the meantime)

-honestly? most of anything the furryosa crowd was involved in. maybe i'm just a dedicated hater but i feel like their agitation could be completely removed from the plot and it wouldn't have affected much, especially if the dingo family took the stage as the main third force as oppressed colonizer ?

-sadly some of the old one historical information. it felt... too spotty, inconsistent, or too late delivery of information to matter. which sucks and is the exact same way i felt abt karamelle's t.o.o information

3) MASSIVE amounts of exposition in inappropriate places

all dasein sequences pretty much struggled with massive exposition problems. exposition is great in wiz, it can feel earned, but because most of the world was spent in ignorance and suspense (so to speak), the massive worddump about the dreaming and dream water and the reverie and the dreamer and dasein..... feel unearned and almost annoying.... and that's coming from somebody who eats up lore with a spoon.

sandiago also did a fuck ton of it - which is fine, that's what he does, but he did it in big short bursts rather than slowly throughout. which did suck.

constant constant constant exposition about wallaru's political landscape and an npc's place in it. really really obnoxious after a certain point especially when the writers overtly showed pro-tourist/settler bias while arguing an ambiguously pro-indigenous point.

a resolution that didn't feel earned

see above: im still absolutely stunned.... the exposition and then a sudden truce..... felt so weird.

4) story felt secondary to gameplay/visuals (which is fine, BUT...)

but in an arc like arc 4, where story&visuals feed into each other very well, and where visuals were at times sacrificed (at least in effort put in - work smarter not harder) in order to serve story development -- seeing the opposite in wallaru was unnerving. it was gorgeous, yes. absolutely. i was fascinated by the architecture, the landscapes, the character models, the lighting&colors, the spells. it was all fantastic. but it felt like a distraction from a confusing plot... or rather an excuse for a confusing plot. not to mention, wallaru itself seemed a subject of focus (see above bulletpoint) throughout, but not in a thematically interesting way - wallaru is inert, subject to the whims of magic and politics, all while sitting very pretty and consumable for the viewer... and it is a non-diegetic as well as diegetic consumption. it's a rather odd turn from novus, in which we are carefully informed that the world matters too, yknow. (even if it isnt directly sentient.) in novus, when we stare at beautiful architecture, it was beautiful and served a very good thematic or characterizing purpose -- in wallaru, it seemed more an exercise of pushing the boundaries of scenic and character art. (which - again - is fine. i like it. but with a weak plot it just makes me sad.) -- not to mention, story seemed molded around cool battles and cutscenes rather than the other way around at certain times, especially toward the end battles. the only time this really felt excusable to me was during the lead-up quest to malus, mostly because there was a self-awareness involved that i did respect a bit.

very annoying characters, too many throwaways

furryosa, freddy kroaker, many random judges my beloathed. 0 meaningful characterization despite taking up so much goddamn screentime. fuck off forever

5) long running puns and jokes that sucked

again, furryosa&freddy kroaker - the nightmare on elm street joke was fun until it got dragged through the entire plot and also got misused to be pretend creepy. that's not what these damn jokes should do. same with mad max - it ACTIVELY inhibited furryosa's character from going anywhere to be a mad max archetype.

straight up continual racism toward indigenous ppl (in australia and elsewhere?). (known going in - somehow worse than imagined.)

i could make an entire whole post about this. the terms dreaming and walkabout being thrown around either as wizard101 lore terms (sitting on the same infamous shelf as 'cabal' i reckon, for being both technically important but very embarrassing and racist) or as a basically meaningless word for 'journey' dressed up to sound more """drover-y""".

the feeling that this story got drafted much like a spell circle that you run out of space for at the end.

all the exposition, realization, and heavy hitters got saved for the end, and happened so fast my head spun. they were all regarded with the same importance when some really did not have the same importance. (joan locke's reproduction of harmful power structures was not nearly as important as why the old one was even mentioned in relation to wallaru in the first place.....)

TLDR: come on, man. novus had some big shoes to fill, but wallaru was an offbrand novus shoved through the lens of curious tourists just begging for some 'nuance' . could've used a couple more cuts, tighten-ups, killing of darlings, ceasing of jokes, etc.