3.5/4.0 Speculation & Discussion (Spoilers)

[Theodric]

Nidhogg, to be fair, was the main antagonist of 3.0 - I do think his return could have been handled better though. For starters him taking over Estinien was a pretty cool moment but...it ended up being yet another 'fake out' by the end of it all. I do like Estinien, mind you, but after Haurchefant's demise I felt like there was just too much 'fake danger' when it came to Estinien, Aymeric and a handful of other Ishgardian NPC's.

Nidhogg also damaged the Steps of Faith and slaughtered many nameless generic soldiers but all of allies, both major and minor, emerged unscathed. I know some people will dislike me saying this but I feel like the main cast is too bloated at the moment and that some characters need to be written out of the plot one way or another. With any luck the events at Baelsar's Wall will at least result in some minor characters biting it. If it's just generic soldiers that we've no reason to care for or it ends up with yet another 'fake out' in regards to character deaths then it's going to be pretty disappointing and predictable.

As for the whole 'Garlemald was also meant to be evil' angle? Eh, I doubt that very much. It's no secret that there's a handful of vocal posters on this board who don't particularly like Garlemald and fight tooth and claw to try and paint them as stereotypical villains at every turn with little to no justification for their actions. They did this with the Dravanians, too, at first - as well as with the Ascians. Those of who did some digging and pieced together the subtle hints that existed, however, figured out pretty early on that was there much more to Garlemald than what was immediately apparent.

Thankfully we can take comfort in our righteousness, for we were correct in our speculation and much of what was revealed in the lore book was similar to what had been speculated. So I, for one, look forward to seeing what the future brings for Garlemald and I have faith that the developers really do have a satisfying, morally grey approach to their ongoing storyline.