What makes for a good villain?

[Kirutsuki]

Playing through Dawntrail this is something I've been thinking about every now and then, now with 7.4 out of the way and what revelations that had I kind of want to give my view points on antagonists to the protagonist.

The more I think about it I've come to realize that good villains very rarely are all that good within their own story that is presented. Simply because those stories are often too short to fully fledge out the character and their motivations, it takes a lot of time for people to start understand what their goals are, why they think a certain way etc.

I say this because I want to challenge you guys with a question;

Do you think Emet-Selch would be such a loved antagonist within his own story in ShB if there was no other attachments to him as the person who manipulated Garlemald to conquer or who manipulated the Allagan Empire to war? If you just look at the parts that are currently happening in our timeline?

Before Dawntrail launched, when Wuk mentioned his warmongering brother Zoraal Ja and that he needs to be stopped. I was actually pretty exited, because at the time it sounded like Zoraal Ja wanted to conquer the rest of Eorzea and already had a significant army and resources behind him, much like Garlemald. But since the Garlean Empire is on a sort of a standstill it sounded like there was going to be another force trying to take over Aldenard and beyond. And it had the notion that this character would have a rich history behind him of how he got to that spot.

But when we get there we realize that he barely has any political power at all beyond his status as an heir to the throne and still needs to prove to the people that he's earned his place, not only that, but he needs to rely on the "golden city" to get an actual army to go beyond the sea, which is quickly turned to ash with a single dragon and the party of scions. (I am being a bit extreme here). Yet he had the audacity to call the Garleans weak or short sighted or whatever.

The point is that there was a disconnection between what Wuk was saying at the end of Endwalker, especially how angry and determined she was that Zoraal Ja needs to be stopped, but the funny thing is that if the Rite of Succession was never even held, Zoraal Ja would have probably never figured out how to get to the Golden City at all and he would have never been able to cross the sea with an army considering they barely know how to travel within their own continent safely and we need to come and fix that stuff for them. (One of the allied sociatey questlines is literally about how to connect these two towns with a good transportation system)

And then we have Calyx, he at the very least has some history within Alexandria and their reflection, but as it stands Calyx as himself heavily relies on MacGuffin-esque items to do things for him that he can't himself do. And even if he had succeeded with his plan on tempering all the people on Alexandria they would still have to deal with the entire force behind the bubble from all the continents. Or I guess he could have rebooted Living Memory and restart the merge. And now in 7.4 he is given another MacGuffin-esque thing in the form of traveling between worlds as a teddybear.

However Calyx has potential, because he alone doesn't have any sway on people's hearts or even the power to conquer anything, but if this is just the start of him becoming something, then sure, I will stay my judgement until then, but he does remind me awful lot of Fandaniel who's ultimate downfall was his hubris. And Calyx 100% shares that character trait, but if he keeps on relying on gadgets or other people too heavily I feel like it will lack urgency.

While I don't think the Garlean Empire was a great "villain" either all the time, especially during ARR. There were aspects that really made them feel like something that needed to be dealt with.

1. They had already conquered pieces of land across Eorzea (something I wish the game would do more)
2. They had a rich background and history
3. It wasn't just a single dude alone plotting evil things.
4. They didn't rely on others for their power, (they did, but it was such a long time ago it doesn't play a role in what's happening)
5. They are just as much a victim of a much larger evil.

And somewhat similar traits can be found from Emet-Selch, but it's his relations to what he has done with his own powers that truly sets him apart. He wasn't going alone end relying on powerful people to get to his goals or relying on powerful items. He used other people for his own gain, manipulated them.

But without all that what is he? Just an angry dude with a sad past who doesn't even remember his real past.

I am not holding out hope for 8.0, but one of the aspects that really needs to happen is for them to show the player that there is a bigger force than us at play and one way to do that is to have that force destroy or conquer areas in Aldenard, Othard or Garlemald. One of those potential forces is of course Meracydia.

We need to see areas change in meaningful ways, because it no longer makes much sense that the Garleans still occupy large parts of zones in ARR when you are at a certain point in the MSQ.

How cool would it be that when we return from our vacation in the new world that in 8.0 areas have actually changed and evolved during that time. And I don't think that sort of story progression based changes to the world is that hard to implement, the game already does it with Allied Society quests, so why not MSQ? Why not show us that the wall Garlemald built is being stripped down.

Or if there is a new grand antagonist of the story, show us that places we hold dear are being torn apart. That alone gives the player a reason and drive to try and fix things. Or curiosity about what something is when things look different.

[Kirutsuki]

Sorry if my sentences are windy and all over the place.

[Aonns]

You've hones in on a lot of my own issues with the recent expansions.

Our villains have been too self contained. They do not extend beyond their immediate motivations. Now this does have a narrative purpose. It makes them easy to digest. You don't need to play prior expansions to understand the goals of THIS expansion's big bad. But What made ARR - StB so beloved is that all three expansions were tied together. We fought corruption and brought down tyrants, but there was still an overarching evil at play. Something to connect everything.

That changed in ShB. Now don't get me wrong, ShB was an amazing expansion. But it was the first nail in the coffin. Our overarching evil was personified with Emet-Selch. He was a wonderful character that brought everything we had been working for to the fore. An end to the Ascians and an end to the Calamities.

But we were separated from the core of our plot. We were not in Eorzea. We did not have the Garlean threat nipping at our heels. It was replaced with the very cool but self contained Sineaters.

Then we go back to Eorzea in EW but we aren't reading the same story anymore. We aren't going to stop Garlemald, we are going to save it. We spent one expansion away from this ever present threat and we disconnected from the terrible atrocities they committed. They became pitiable. And the people of Garlemald are pitiable. But the armies and legions are still out there. But everything is hand waved away. Neither Garlemald nor Zodiark, the greatest threats we have been training to defeat, are just mid game fodder. Suddenly there is a NEW terrible threat that's going to destroy not just the star but the whole universe!

All this to say that the expansions have become stale because they are self contained. They don't connect to a greater narrative anymore. And because of that, our villains feel weak and watery in comparison to the villains of the earlier expansions.

[Kirutsuki]

All this to say that the expansions have become stale because they are self contained. They don't connect to a greater narrative anymore. And because of that, our villains feel weak and watery in comparison to the villains of the earlier expansions.

I do think that they weaved in Emet into the story really well, but you're right in that you do feel separated from the story in a way that came before.
Similarly I felt about Dawntrail, because the continent has virtually nothing in common with the Eorzea/Aldenard we all love. Even if we go to Othard or Garlemald, there's a common thread, even something like seeing a familiar race of people
or a chocobo can be something that connects it.

Now in that sense... Us in SHB and in the first there were still connections, the Warriors of Darkness or characters that come from the void. You still feel somewhat connected.
And it's helped with the fact there are moments where the story goes back to our world where Estinien is doing something or we go back and check up on something.

But in Dawntrail specifically you really have to have invested into the Mamool Ja or the bird people to even have a resemblance that you are still playing the same game. Beyond that it's mostly references to other FF games, and if you do not have that connection
it might feel like you're not even playing a Final Fantasy game in that sense, because where are the chocobos or moogles or the rest of the aspects that generally are easy to recognize.

I don't necessarily agree that ShB was any kind of a nail in the coffin or even Endwalker, now sure some of the stuff in Endwalker did feel like they ended too quickly and that they probably should have done a whole expansion in Garlemald alone,
but I'm still very happy how things turned out considering they wanted to end the story somehow.

Now whatever happens next needs to be weaved into the story of what has happened before extremely carefully. Especially if we're heading back to Aldenard. Whoever the Wintere's are whatever Calyx & Halmarut are planning,
if it's not somehow connected to something we all know from ARR-Endwalker, it'll be a hard sell to actually make me convinced these people are of any concern to anything. Because I need there to be actual stakes, actual repercussions to our actions.
It can't be just Calyx going to other worlds finding new ways to annoy us with some new gun he found.

But if he does find the Heart of Sabik, that could be interesting...But even that's just a big gun. But at least it's a connection to something we know.

[Xieldras]

What makes a good villain is always subjective, but right now my main concern is that we have no evident overarching story nor villains. They tried setting it up in 7.2/.3 with a new evil group (that feel like Discount-Ascians), but we should've had the crumbs within the main Dawntrail story itself or even before that, be it by a random mention of something going on, or overworld NPC dialogue. There needs to be an immediate (expansion-long) threat and a slow-burn one, to give us something to look forward to and chatter about.

As a WoL, we're also simply too strong canonically. We destroy gods before breakfast to then go gamble in the Gold Saucer for lunch. We have very powerful allies and a united general front for all the Kingdoms/City States/Beast Tribes. There is no threat to us because we can brute-force through anything. Though I'm not sure a repeat of the isolation from ARR-HW would be popular, I do believe there needs to be some political discord sown within our general assembly. Make our allies hesitant to assist us, or heck outright hostile if need be! Crafting details and subtleties within the politics of Eorzea would enable for stronger storytelling.

After all, a savior to someone is a demon to another.

There are many possibilities here for a smart-not-Calyx villain to take us down via reputational damage.

[Kaurhz]

I liked Emet, because there was ultimately some level of relatability there, and the wider story did a good job with trying to blur the lines between light and dark in a way that actually felt impactful to Emet.. A lot of extrinsic things went well for Emet to be all that he was... Getting those strides again ... Just too difficult ...

Zoraal I think could've been good, but Dawntrail followed the same issue as Endwalker in that it feels like they tried to deliver way too much in too short of a timespan.. Like it felt that by the time you started to care, is when they were just about getting ready to terminate the character.... Dawntrail would've been a lot better if they just skipped the whole rite of succession arc entirely.

I am not sure how I feel about Calyx or any of it... He does remind me on Fandaniel also, and I am really not sure that I actually like it.. Plus it all suffers from the problem of what Endwalker did... We had this truly existential threat, and it's just hard to have that same level of urgency given what we are, and what we've done... He just feels like... A pest... A nuisance..

I think for me to be interested.. I think they need to consider having us as the villain... Not intentionally... But by just pure circumstance.. Have us nerfed in a way that makes everything feel impactful going forward... Part of Shadowbringers being as good as it was is because there was that sense of helplessness which they were slowly teasing until Rak Tika - Innocence ... Give a break from this "new bad guy wants to end or conquer the world" ... This is kind of why Zenos was (even if I HATED him) a bit of fresh air... Man was just in it for the thrill of strong opponent..

[Deejudanne]

look at thanos for example a perfect example of a good "villain" from the peoples perspective he's this evil giant but from his perspective he's saving the world, gotta have some depth and not just "guy is evil for the sake of being evil

[Daralii]

look at thanos for example a perfect example of a good "villain" from the peoples perspective he's this evil giant but from his perspective he's saving the world, gotta have some depth and not just "guy is evil for the sake of being evil

"Evil for evil's sake" antagonists can be good, but they need to either be so over the top or insane that it's fun or feel like a genuinely insurmountable threat.

[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?

It also makes Galool Ja Ja look WAY worse, too, as one kid was so far left behind while the other two were fine.



I think one immediate difference with Calyx is how much better he's already been portrayed. He's acting in compassion, truly thinking he's saving everyone with his Endless system. He was given insane power to run experiments on memories with zero repercussions, all while withering away from a mystery illness. But he's also a child. He's currently running around as a mascot plushy of the theme park he built for those Endless to eternally play in. He came at us with the total confidence of a teenager and is now utterly terrified of us when we won. He's desperate, traumatized, and thinks he's doing the correct thing.

It's already a vastly better start to developing a character than who was our big bad in base DT. We have backstory, motivation, personality, and quirks. Calyx makes sense already.

[Kirutsuki]

They tried setting it up in 7.2/.3 with a new evil group (that feel like Discount-Ascians), but we should've had the crumbs within the main Dawntrail story itself or even before that, be it by a random mention of something going on, or overworld NPC dialogue. There needs to be an immediate (expansion-long) threat and a slow-burn one, to give us something to look forward to and chatter about.

Yup, I think the main problem with the "Winterer's" is that it's yet another NEW group we've never heard about, probably has no relations to anything that has happened or what we've seen in ARR-Endwalker and they have to write them into that story for us to have any actual connection with them.

And there is 100% ways to make the WoL be weak again. ShB did it in it's own way, but there's other wayss to portray helplessness or weakness. It can be something as simple as political change within Uldah, Limsa or Gridania.
Or just in general have someone who actually has a big army, alot of political support and power come and take over part of Aldenard. While the WoL is powerful they can't do almost anything alone. That was my hope in Dawntrail, but Zoraal Ja turned out to be a nothing burger.

Having someone smear our reputation as well could be fun, especially considering we kinda acted like Ascians in Living Memory shutting down "people" we didn't consider were real people. So that could be an interesting avenue to take things.