SH3sPerfect33 Thanks for the analysis, this was very interesting to read from a creator perspective. You are pretty spot on overall, I shared it with the writer and that made him very glad too which is nice considering since some months the game is getting more and more criticized and stagnating on the support, the morale is not very high. Those kind of message keeps us going, thank you for that.
I'm so glad it could brighten your day! I'll say this to you and your writer - It shows when you CARE about the story you're telling. These characters mean something to you. They aren't just there for sexy time (although that's always nice) they have their own desires, flaws, and ultimate goals, including the Dark Lord himself. And whether this ends well or badly is going to depend on the personalities involved and how they come together.
A mental exercise I like to do when I'm enjoying a story is try and predict the ending. The obvious one is "Dark lord wins, his adversary is defeated, evil blue haired lady is r@ped until she likes it, the day is saved, our antihero and his chosen consort and his harem retire to a fortress of evil somewhere to have lots of hot sex, the end." And that is a good goal. But so far this game has avoided being quite that straightforward. The goal is obvious but the best way to get there is less so.
Like, I'm pretty sure decisions on who to favor and who to ignore are going to play into the ending somehow. If you've got zero campatability with a character, is it possible that at a moment of truth, she betrays you? I'm imagining something like the suicide mission at the end of Mass Effect, where deploying your allies with a sense of their strengths and weaknesses and also how high their approval ratings are determine who lives and who dies in the last mission. Maybe that's aiming a little high. But some sort of climax where you show how far you've come and how well you understand your allies would be a perfect capstone on the game.
Also, the Main Character himself is at some point going to need to decide what he wants. While he has an enemy to fight, his goal is obvious. But does he actually WANT to be a benevolent king ruling over a peaceful countryside where everyone carries on their lives unmolested? Even if he does, is he going to be allowed to? I LOVED the inclusion of the farmboy in chapter 6, who exists to finally put a face on the suffering the Dark Lord's forces inflict on the little people. Will that boy ever forgive or forget? Does the Dark Lord have any right to expect him to? Or are the Dark Lord's enemies right, and his victory will do nothing but bring more pain and suffering to the world as his forces pillage and murder until everyone is dead or enslaved. Does he really just want to stomp on necks until there are no more necks to stomp on? It doesn't look like it, but if he had the choice of killing EVERYONE, everyone including his enemies, but leaving himself all alone in the world, would he take it? Will he be satisfied with the fall of the Matriarchy or will he always be looking for somewhere new to conquer? Can he stop the darkness inside of him from devouring everything he cares about? Or will this wind up being a "what's good for me is good for the world" situation where he confuses his own self interest with the good of the nation?
Thing I love about the farmboy - he shows how tyrants plant the seeds of their own downfall. When you rule by fear, sooner or later someone is going to just get sick of being afraid and decide to do something about it. Not today or tomorrow, but eventually. Somewhere out there is the person who is destined to destroy the monster. What if the fate of the villain is always to fall, and rise, and fall again, over and over? He cannot win but he refuses to die, so he will just be doomed to repeat the cycle over and over?
There's also a saying - you can survive your enemies, it's your friends who will get you in the end. Maybe the one who is going to destroy him is right under his nose, learning from him.
Terry Pratchett once wrote that if a man ever has you completely at his mercy, hope he's evil. An evil man will draw out the death, and make it last as long as possible, giving you a chance. A Good man will kill you with barely a word. The Dark Lord is lucky that the Matriarch is so evil. The problem with being a villain is sooner or later you're going to be up against someone Good and then you're REALLY screwed.
Also - this is just headcannon, but seeing the blue-haired villainess's giant boobs and Seren's boobs, I am now convinced neither rack is real. The witches use magic to enhance their bustlines, perhaps always have. Morgana would've taught the trick to her female decendants, crediting her boobs as well as her brains for getting the Dark Lord's attention. She even has a calculation for how large they can be without causing back issues. Nothing about her presentation is accidental. She got a magical boob job. I am very certain of it. I wonder how the Dark Lord would react if he knew - would he feel betrayal that she deceived him or feel flattered she went to such great lengths to get his attention? Boobs that big don't just HAPPEN on women that slender, I tell ya! I made a graph!
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I'm overthinking this, I'll shut up now. Thanks for hearing me out. Eagerly awaiting the next chapter.