Thread:Great Mara/@comment-35180808-20180624220035/@comment-3409031-20180625001717

Benandi wrote: You say that if we're not told all that information specifically, then evil Yaldabaoth isn't the main antagonist anymore, even though he's still technically responsible for everything. This ties back into the case I was making: it's not about who's responsible for what, it's about the experience of the the viewers. And for 99% of the game, their experience is that Shido is the game's villain. It's not about the experience of the viewer but ofthe actions of the character in question. Yaldabaoth acts as the main antagonistic force that drives evil forward, Shido is one of his pawns to do so. And no, Shido wasn't there 99% of the time, he was revealed as an antagonist much later on after Okumura's arc. To further demonstrate, you claimed that without that reveal, Yaldabaoth as a character essentially doesn't even exist. But that means that until said information is revealed, Yaldabaoth also doesn't exist! That means that for 99% of the game, Yaldabaoth doesn't exist as a character, and certainly isn't the antagonist of the story. That sounds like such a strawman, dude... His character revolves around the twist of him being the mastermind of everything. If you take away the twist then yes, he wouldn't exist as a character because the twist wasn't put there, and if we don't know he exists we wouldn't know he was an antagonist at all in the same way Shido wouldn't be an antagonist if he wasn't revealed as the one that put Joker in probation... both arguments work on each other. Meanwhile, Shido as a character and antagonist always exists. Both the viewers and the protagonist want to bring him down, and view him as the one responsible for said tragedies. Yaldabaoth wasn't meant to replace Shido as the main antagonist; merely to act as a final plot twist to end the game with a bang. Shido is the villain of 99% of the game, which seems more than enough to make him the "main" antagonist of it. As I've stated before, no... Shido doesn't exist for 99% of the game as you said. Shido isn't an antagonist until he is revealed as one later on after Okumura's Palace or Sae's. Yaldabaoth, however, is in the game, even as Igor he's forshadowed as an antagonist. By your argument, if Shido wasn't revealed as an antagonistic force later on then he wouldn't exist as a character either and thus not an antagonist... both arguments are the same by your logic. So let me ask you this: how can you say that Yaldabaoth is the main antagonist of Persona 5, when according to you, his character doesn't even exist for 99% of the game? Because he was the one that orchastrated everything... if it wasn't for him Shido wouldn't be an antagonist at all. I also never said he didn't exist for 99% of the game, my argument was that we wouldn't have known that he was an antagonist if it wasn't revealed as such, in the same way this also applies to Akechi, Shido, Adachi, Ikutsuki, Nyarly, etc. If the twist didn't exist then no, we wouldn't have known of him as an antagonist but we would know Shido was... and vice versa. You are pretty much comparing Yaldabaoth to Necron of FFIX, who only appeared as a final boss and that's it, nothing else... in this case Kuja would be the main antagonist because everything was done by him, not by Necron. Yaldabaoth on the other hand did everything and Shido, without knowing, followed said everything.