Quote Originally Posted by Vexander View Post
However, Papalymo's death doesn't signify anything that important to the narrative or the plot. At most it is the catalyst which convinces Lyse to finally start living her life for herself, but once she has begun to do so, there is no point to Papalymo's continued death. I feel its important when the death of character -has- that impact on the plot and the narrative, such as the death of Haurchefant and Ysayle during Heavensward did. Or even the death of characters like Ilberd. These deaths meant something, and they affected the story. Papalymo's death pales in comparison. Its wasted potential. He wasn't developed enough, and we didn't have enough investment in him emotionally to be strongly affected by his death.
First I'd like to point out that someone was affected enough by his death to make this thread and ask to change it.
Wether his death was a good plot decision or not matters little by now, if you ask me - hes dead now and even if it was a bad idea rewriting the whole thing and basically repeating the Nanamo-mistake wouldnt improve that.

I'd also liked to point out my personal theory on why he died: As hurtful as that may be for 1.0 people I'm under the impression our current dev team is trying their best to get rid off the old Scions. Seeing how non of those were really well developed characters (Vexander is so kind to prove my point here: Papalymo wasnt developed enough), they're basically having two options: Improve the characters or replace them with their own ones. I can fully understand and support the devs rather bringing their own characters in now - basically killing off Yda aswell and replacing her with an original character was a pretty clever move in that regard.
So even if Papalymos death didnt affect a lot of use emotionally, it fullfilled a purpose: It removed a character that they didnt thought would fit well into the story anymore, from it and made room for new, better developed characters. (And at the same time it served as a trigger to get rid off a second old character)

While I normally agree that the death of a character needs to have signficance, its even more important to me that once a character is dead, they stay dead - magic revives only cheapen their death in the first place.