What makes for a good villain?

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Myths of the Realm tried to soft retcon how brutal the elementals can be by having Nophica talk about how they love mankind so much but don't know how to express it or understand us, which got rid of a lot of the reason why padjal leadership is important. They used to play the role of mediator and needed institutional power to keep people in line, because everyone was at risk of getting wiped out otherwise.

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True, but I’d also argue that ‘loving mankind’ and ‘being extremely aggressive about it’ aren’t mutually exclusive. I’d say it’s less ‘retcon’ and more ‘recontextualising the action from a different perspective’. Though I suppose those are basically the same thing really lol.

I mean, they effectively nuked everyone out of ‘love’ for mankind because they’d have inevitably sucked up all the aether from the land with their magical antics. But idk if Mhach, Nym or Amdapor would have felt very ‘loved’ in that moment. Likewise with their hostility/aggression towards outsiders, because the inhabitants of the Shroud have been threatened before and the elementals want to protect them from harm, rather than out of hate or spite for things that they don’t control.

We haven’t really seen how much (if any) influence they still hold over how Gridania operates, but I figured they still held the same importance and thus necessitate the need for Gridania to be run by a Padjal. It would be kinda weird if the Elementals just stopped caring one day and left them all to their own devices to chop as many trees or cast as much dangerous magic as they wanted lol. And ultimately, despite not having tangible physical bodies they’re still technically inhabitants of the Shroud, so it probably isn’t very ‘woke’ to just ignore their wishes (end the non-corporeal discrimination!). So from that angle, even without taking leadership Padjal would still need to have a central role so the Elemental’s voice could be heard

The big issue with the Elementals is that they technically are a whole developed race of people that we can't directly talk to. The whole reason the Padjal became a thing is so the Elementals could have a liaison that they could actually teach their language to and try to have a back and forth over a length of time to build a real relationship. And it was a Hyur that started this whole system, too.

But it BARELY works and Elementals can only vaguely emote to let the Padjals and hearers know how they feel, and if they're overly emotional, particularly with fear or anger, they can accidentally hurt those same Padjali and hearers by complete accident just by proximity.

They also exist on the same time frame as dragons, if not even longer, so the War of the Magi was like a few weeks ago for them, and are still very much reeling from the 7th calamity which probably feels like it just happened fir them.

Basically we have a sentient race made from the life energy of nature itself that are happy to find a middle ground with humans, but what humans need to thrive (like harvesting wood for shelter, clearing areas for farmland, hunting for meat and materials) can directly injure an Elemental because they rely on the things that must be used up by humans to *simply exist.*

So the core issue is that certain peoples within the Shroud that are just living their lives but aren't attempting to communicate with the Elementals (such as Dusk and Moonkeeper tribes) are being treated as hostile invaders because it doesn't take much of anything to hurt an Elemental that's just existing in the same space. And obviously assault and property damage is a crime even if you aren't aware you hurt anyone, so the horrible social situation Gridania is in.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

Now if you guys wanted a truly evil twisted mother trucker for an expansion theni believe before endwalker came out we shoulda got a garlemald expansion with Valens Van Verro as the villain. This guy is disgusting and it made sorrows of werlyt a far more memorable story line

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Yeah that story was quite memorable and worked really well, even when the characters were people we've just met, tho I bet even harder for people who were doing it during the patch cycle.
So there is proof that SE is capable of writing interesting characters and isn't afraid of certain types of evil doers. But it's seemingly also written by Ishikawa, so it's probably no surprise why it's still a good story.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

I think with ff14 the top villains are emet number 1 for sympathetic villains, The heavensward and thordan were our best pure evil villains.

Zenos sucks...
Yotsuyu was the second best sympathetic villain...
Hermes and Endsinger are just meh...
Illberd pissed me off...

Gaius was meh until the werlyt...

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Think there's an underlying theme going on here, which is that when you give characters room to grow they become better on hindsight. In the case of Zenos for example it's difficult to say if I ever liked him as an antagonist,
but that was mainly because it was clear from a writing perspective that the devs didn't know what to do with him for a long time. All of a sudden he's body hopping from people to people (Like Calyx) and at the end they just decided to triple down on the frenemy stuff.

Yotsuyu was great, partially because of the whole amnesia situation and it became just interesting to see what was really going on, even if amnesia story devices aren't all that great all the time.

Hermes I think fixed the issue I had with Fandaniel at the very least. Where Fandaniel felt like just a sidecharacter even during Endwalker, right up until the reveal of his ancient self.
But that kind of shows the "the more you show about a character, the more you start to enjoy them" aspect.

Endsinger for me felt very well done, but not as a villain necessarily as much as just an overall doomsday device.

Gaius's beef has never been a villain to the WoL directly, more so the politics of Aldenard and that was clear when ultima happened. I do think they should use him more in whatever future holds in Garlemald, even if he himself wouldn't necessarily want to anymore.
I think it's somewhat important that he and Cid are at least present in the future, whatever that is. He has a good arc to his story overall as just a misguided patriot. But never was he truly a villain imo.

Michael meyers villain, who knows the scions and just shows up and deletes some of them because he can, and then the wol changes and has to become evil ourselves to fight him.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

Now if you guys wanted a truly evil twisted mother trucker for an expansion theni believe before endwalker came out we shoulda got a garlemald expansion with Valens Van Verro as the villain. This guy is disgusting and it made sorrows of werlyt a far more memorable story line

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To be honest, Garlemald not having it's own expansion is still the most disappointing thing to this day.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

To be honest, Garlemald not having it's own expansion is still the most disappointing thing to this day.

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Not just lacking it's own expansion but completely collapsing off-screen.
The few glimpses we got of how Garlemald looked and functioned were quite interesting, but when we finally get there it's nothing but rubble...

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Not just lacking it's own expansion but completely collapsing off-screen.
The few glimpses we got of how Garlemald looked and functioned were quite interesting, but when we finally get there it's nothing but rubble...

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Well to be fair, Regio Urbanissima, which is the rubble wee see, is only the political heart of the captial city and while the Tower of Babil probably destroyed alot more as well,
there's a chance that the captial city of Garlemald is still thriving. So there is room to expand into the regions beyond if need be. It is afterall just a single zone in Garlemald and that doesn't make much sense considering what kind of force they were.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

Zoraal Ja is the biggest miss of Dawntrail. He had so many pieces in place to be an interesting antagonist.

-He's Galool Ja Ja's birth son and has so many traits of a blessed sibling without actually being one. He's apparently a total miracle on top of the rarity of blessed siblings. They don't elaborate on this.
-We never met or learned a thing about his mother, nor if he had a nanny like Wuk Lamat did. Galool Ja Ja seemingly left his perfect, mega strong and emotionally stiff child to do his own thing while focusing on his two adopted children instead. So he lacked a proper parental figure.
-Zoraal Ja had supporters in Tural! There were planty of people fully on board with his desire to continue growing their empire. Way more than those is support of Wuk Lamat keeping the peace. That never went anywhere even when it was discovered he took over Alexandria. Also, HE TOOK OVER ALEXANDRIA SINGLE HANDEDLY. A, comparatively, barbarian lizard using bone swords walked into Night City and proceeded to win in a hostile take-over.
-Man got baby-trapped by a stalker. (Holy crap.) And said stalker happily ran the most vile experiments on people in his name.
-Man had such a bad relationship with Galool Ja Ja as father and son that he has a full on nervous breakdown upon seeing his own newborn son and fully ignores the kid until on his death bed, where in he forces the child to inherit everything he built up verses the contest that his own father forced upon him.
-If he had any love or good memories of Koana or Wuk Lamat, anything at all, we never saw it from any of them. Nothing. He may as well not have been related to them at all. Let alone any detail on his childhood with Galool Ja Ja.

It's so weird! They had plenty there to really expand upon to build up a proper villain, but he's so stiff and stoic and invincible, no emotional hook. Why did he want to become a warlord? Why didn't he have any relationship with anyone? How the hell did he pull off becoming a king of Alexandria off-screen?

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I agree with everything in this post. Zoraal Ja was underbaked, underbackstoried, and underdeveloped. There are villains we met in other FF games for all of 20 minutes that have more emotional resonance than the Resilient Son.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

The big issue with the Elementals is that they technically are a whole developed race of people that we can't directly talk to. The whole reason the Padjal became a thing is so the Elementals could have a liaison that they could actually teach their language to and try to have a back and forth over a length of time to build a real relationship. And it was a Hyur that started this whole system, too.

But it BARELY works and Elementals can only vaguely emote to let the Padjals and hearers know how they feel, and if they're overly emotional, particularly with fear or anger, they can accidentally hurt those same Padjali and hearers by complete accident just by proximity.

They also exist on the same time frame as dragons, if not even longer, so the War of the Magi was like a few weeks ago for them, and are still very much reeling from the 7th calamity which probably feels like it just happened fir them.

Basically we have a sentient race made from the life energy of nature itself that are happy to find a middle ground with humans, but what humans need to thrive (like harvesting wood for shelter, clearing areas for farmland, hunting for meat and materials) can directly injure an Elemental because they rely on the things that must be used up by humans to *simply exist.*

So the core issue is that certain peoples within the Shroud that are just living their lives but aren't attempting to communicate with the Elementals (such as Dusk and Moonkeeper tribes) are being treated as hostile invaders because it doesn't take much of anything to hurt an Elemental that's just existing in the same space. And obviously assault and property damage is a crime even if you aren't aware you hurt anyone, so the horrible social situation Gridania is in.

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Weren't the elementals also creations of Elpis? They are three of what appears to be them hanging around the NPC Meleagros near the aetheryte at Poiten Oikos.

Illberd and Teledji are more interesting than Goth Melia Antiqua or anime Tensai-kun for the simple fact they're not deity-like or supernatural characters and still manage to cause damage in the setting that still lasts or lasted for years in the story the player is active at. Teledji went down quickly but he went very far for how much of an ordinary clown he is. Just to name a few, him and Illberd are directly and indirectly responsible for Thancred losing control of aether, Y'shtola's blindness, Shinryu and Omega's awakening, destroying the Crystal Braves and changing Alphinaud and the Scion's PoV of Eorzean city-states since, and to a lesser extent seemingly canonically made the WoL avoid drinking for like 10 years worth of cutscenes.

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

Illberd and Teledji are more interesting than Goth Melia Antiqua or anime Tensai-kun for the simple fact they're not deity-like or supernatural characters and still manage to cause damage in the setting that still lasts or lasted for years in the story the player is active at. Teledji went down quickly but he went very far for how much of an ordinary clown he is. Just to name a few, him and Illberd are directly and indirectly responsible for Thancred losing control of aether, Y'shtola's blindness, Shinryu and Omega's awakening, destroying the Crystal Braves and changing Alphinaud and the Scion's PoV of Eorzean city-states since, and to a lesser extent seemingly canonically made the WoL avoid drinking for like 10 years worth of cutscenes.

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I would credit another certain NPC in Heavensward for why the WoL doesn't accept drinks from strangers anymore.

Though, arguably, the events of ARR should have already taught them better, but much like the WoL was cutscene-dumb when they were arrested in the sulatana's quarters, they were also stricken with laser-guided stupidity while at a pub in Falcon's Nest.