Quote Originally Posted by Valence View Post
Adding to this, a lot of people do not remember how the story felt until ShB showed up because they started playing after.
Before SHB happened, the WoL was the blandest, derplandest character ever made. It was so much designed so that and I quote "every player could insert themselves in its skin and identify as the main protagonist" that it was literally a blank cardboard that was just doing chores for the scions. The WoL had no story, no personality, no voice, nothing. It was just there, as Yoko Taro said, exercising its neck muscles toned by a lifetime of nodding. ShB has been the first time where they put the spotlight over the actual story of the WoL and started inserting it into the overarching plot, but before this? There was no Azem, there was nothing. The spotlight has never been on the WoL before except when a primal needed be killed, let's be real.

I preferred it when the WoL wasn’t such a focal point. I think of it like a book because, in a book, you—the reader—aren’t the main character. In fact, you’re not a character at all. That’s one of the reasons ARR through SB felt so much like a novel—except instead of reading it, we were playing it. I had never experienced anything as immersive as that in all my years of media consumption. Great times.