Thread:Great Mara/@comment-35180808-20180624220035/@comment-35180808-20180625024826

"Jesus Christ..."

Now, let's not get huffy over this. I've been perfectly polite to you, even though this was originally a conversation between me and Great Mara. If you're getting tired of it, you don't have to participate.

Call Shido nameless at the start if you will, but he's certainly not some worthless NPC. I admit, he wasn't the undisputed antagonist from the first moment he arrived, but he was certainly already an enemy of the player and of Joker, and the mystery of who he is leading up to his reveal is a compelling factor. His reveal isn't that he's a villain--we knew that right away--the only thing close to a "reveal" is learning just how large of a threat he is. His character doesn't hinge on a last minute twist, unlike Yaldabaoth; your counterargument would only work if we already had an established villain before him, and Shido just shows up at the last minute to try to explain to us why he's actually the villain we should care about. And even if it was, Shido still had far more direct involvement in the story after his "reveal" than Zanza--I mean Yaldabaoth did. More on that in a minute.

"Yes he's the main antagonist because everything was done by him"

Now you're just repeating yourself. And forcing me to do it too--being the main antagonist of the story doesn't just mean being the highest ranked baddie, or being responsible (off screen) for the most bad stuff. It's the person the protagonist--and more importantly, the viewers the product was made for--identify as their nemesis.

A "man behind the curtain" has a much tougher time being an actual main antagonist than most characters. They walk a fine line between being a compelling and logical plot twist, and just ruining an already well-crafted villain by saying they were nothing more than a pawn for this generic god-figure to manipulate.

You use a lot of video game examples of this trope. Let me use one more in return: Zant in Twilight Princess. Zant truly was, from minute one, developed to be the ultimate antagonist of the game, and it was done beautifully. His every scene was terrifying. His every line was gold. All of Hyrule feared him, for good reason. Every action the heroes took was a desperate countermeasure to Zant's moves on the chessboard of Hylia, where he controlled all the pawns and their king as well. He was well on his way to becoming the greatest Zelda villain of all time.

Then, at the last minute, he's shafted by Ganondorf. And not just any Ganondorf; the worst incarnation of Ganondorf ever introduced. He's nothing but a generic, bland, two-dimensional evil-for-the-sake-of-being-evil baddie with a god complex. And Zant is jarringly "revealed" to be a wimpy, crybaby lunatic who only got his powers from Ganondorf and is nothing without him.

Not only was their buildup almost non-existent, but it hinged entirely on Ganondorf's name alone to convince you he was worthy of the position of ultimate villain. If this was anyone's first Zelda game, their first thought would probably be, "who's this idiot, and what happened to Zant?!"

So, when we (the viewers) are told-not shown-that Ganondorf was really the villain all along, most people's reaction was along the lines of, "no he friggin isn't! He's not the guy I spent the last ten hours getting ready to fight! He's not the guy I was afraid of, who I was trying desperately to figure out how to beat! He's not the ultimate threat the game was building up to! You ruined Zant for this?!"

So many "man behind the curtain" villains have this problem. Twilight Ganondorf, Tabuu, Euzeth Gozzo, Adventures Andross, Z-ONE...all god-figures inserted into the story at the last second, claiming responsibility for the actions of better villains before them--and usually ruining their character in the process. It's becoming an almost sickeningly exhausted trope, and ruins the endings of so many games it's not even funny.

This isn't to say that it can't ever be done well--though it's becoming increasingly rare--or even that Yaldabaoth is as bad as the rest of them. All I'm saying is that to actually be the main antagonist of a story, it takes a little bit more than monologing to the audience about how you're really the one who paid Darth Vader to kick your puppy, and being some one-winged-angel form final boss from nowhere.

That's really the point of my whole argument. I postulate that it takes more than showing up an telling the audience you're the villain to make you the villain, and being the last baddie to hit the dust. Even if Shido wasn't the ultimate villain from minute one, you yourself have admitted the obvious--that his role is massive, impactful, and deeply personal to our protagonists. He and the other Targets are the antagonists of the game--Yaldabaoth isn't even a contender. He's a plot twist to end the game on, nothing more. As you say, he doesn't need to be in every scene...but I think he should've been in more than ONE.

That's basically it.