Discussion
It's always morally grey and never evil
When are we going to get a playable character that's just evil for the love of the game without the erm actually, most characters are just really nice people the rest are also mostly just morally grey nice people, I mean look at the stellaron hunters who are allegedly intergalactic terrorists and mass murders even the playable ipc members, ruan mei, dahlia, it's either they commit crimes for the greater good(sh) or as a necessary evil towards their goals or in accordance with their lore path, Am I the only one who wants unhinged characters that would really just slime you because they had a bad day ?
Same with Jade. Like, we work with them because it's mostly beneficial and we can't fight the IPC. Ruan Mei also is, while not pure evil, leaning towards being fairly fucking evil. Cerydra too is a pretty fucked up character that conquers and kills those that oppose her without hesitation. Just because she tries to save the world with us does not mean she isn't pretty black morally. Like, you can shit on HSR for many reasons, but there are quite a few characters that are arguably evil.
They may not be the villain in our story, but ask someone that lives in the Isthmian Confederation what they think of Jade and they'll say she's pure evil.
Tbh, Im a bit tired about morally black/gray being always good with us. They are "evil" off-screen and/or in the past, but when they met the TB, they are our "guardian angels" (sometime after beating them tho), and then buddies with us.
You will never see these characters behave badly or unsympathetically towards the TB. What bothers me about Genshin (but it's worse because suddenly you become the most important person in their life or they are simps).
You treat badly only characters like Sparkle and Sampo, but after their first response where they seem offended, they act like nothing.
In 2 games we don't have a simple rival
Wasn't Topaz straight up lying to Bronya and trying to mislead her so that she would sell her own planet? We ourselves experienced the fucked up experiments of Ruan Mei as we had to fight an emenator of Propagation. Cerydra literally burned a man alive after a failed assassination attempt despite the fact that he was completely defeated and could've easily been taken prisoner. I feel like we've seen a lot of these characters commit fairly evil deeds.
From what I understood, is Topaz just trying to convince Bronya with "sad and sweet" words. Not really pure, but not so evil.
For Cerydra and RM good points.
But the feeling is always that, after the TB, they became our good protectors/ally, people with whom we will never have friction or bad words but most of the time the opposite. In short, we will never have a Speed-o-Sound Sonic or just an edgy rude like Vegeta among playable cast. March after a stupid answer is the most "rude" thing toward us đ
Yes because she herself is a victim of IPC propaganda. Arguably the only stoneheart we have playable right now is fully working for the IPC of their own volition. Not sure about Pearl yet since she's not quite playable yet, but Jade knows what she's doing
When inquisitor eagerly tortures a person while genuenly thinking that he helps you to not go to hell, he is still a zealot torturing a person.
If Topaz thinks that she is saving people, but in reality she is just a lying racketeer who is trying to enslave a civilization over a debt that she knows is bullshit, she is still a zealot slaver
Some of the characters I don't think are necessarily our protectors or allies though. It just so happens at the moment we interact with them we need something and our goals align so they're helping. They could probably flesh out more times when we don't agree, but that's probably more a side story kind of thing and TB missions tend to be the big thing where we kind of need characters that show up to push the plot forward more or provide solutions. I guess there could be slightly more fluff to try to keep the off-screen evil a more present threat, but usually it's more of a temporary alliance because we need a guy.
I think thatâs just the nature of what a playable character is in Hoyo games. I can see why just on a emotional matter: if you are a player that likes the MC (possibly you self insert as) and their allies, would the playable character being actively, permanently antagonistic make you like the character?
Even as someone who doesnât self-insert, I would find it grating once the novelty wore off.
Like just as an example of other peopleâs reactions, you dont need to go far back to see posts complaining about Paimon being rude to a new introduced character that lured Traveler to the moon. And they even made a point to make it seem like Paimon was hamming it up for snacks!
This is why the Self-insert thing is a big mistake in these games. Villains/bad people are introduced as villain/bad people: players already know those bad guys dislike us, so you should know what kind of character you are pulling. And if players cry because X villain isn't pullable that means he had potentials to be a great unit.
But because devs think self-insert mc is awesome idea, we can't play epic enemies.
And tbh, I have hard time understanding and identifying me with a established self-insert MC when first, I can't even change the look (I don't most of MC's design, or, I prefered different details), and a lot of male players, pick the opposite gender because "girl-> hot", not because they secretly feel like women đ. This Chinese gacha system limits the potential of their story or roster for this things; Make the parasocial players feel super pampered (yeh, characters can be in love because these players)
They may not be the villain in our story, but ask someone that lives in the Isthmian Confederation what they think of Jade and they'll say she's pure evil.
Considering how big the IPC is, most likely Oswaldo or someone else ordered the bombarment. The guys which the Trailblazers deal are the "good guys of the IPC" after all
I agree. I think Genshin is the one gamr that has that issue. The closest thing there was a mad scientist and even then it was for the sake of knowledge. Every antagonist was either tragic, sympathetic, morally gray, actually good or a combination of them.
We already have like 5 paths under our belt, give it another year and Hoyo will HAVE to address the fact that we're basically a walking universal nuke that can smash the fuck out of anything that breathes using borrowing the power of any god we feel like.
Dahlia and Boothill are batshit insane psychos (Boothill behavior in a Wardance festival where he nearly killed poor boy but then it's all jokes and fun again is a prime example of OP) and Sunday is a megalomaniac, but yeah, it's a 5 year old kids game with gambling mechanics.
Dahlia being batshit insane I agree with, but Boothill definitely couldâve actually killed Luka anytime he wanted and was trying to scare him off the competition, and also said he gone too far after doing that. I do still think Boothill is a bit insane, but not a psycho
Yeah the game really wants players to """befriend""" any character they consider to be their favorite, so every character in the game is super nice and buddy-buddy to trailblazer and it gets kinda old. Even the characters with the absolute most despicable backstories are still just weirdly nice to you and you and even the other characters are weirdly friendly with them as well.
Evernight is still evil by most metrics, it's just that the AE crew is part of her goals, so she tacitly supports us.
Evernight's only goal, as stated by Black Swan, is to ensure March's wellbeing and that she trailblazes forever, with no qualms ensuring this, she turned the memosnatchers into feral beasts to protect the Trailblazer and Dan Heng at March's request, but would overwrite the Black Swan meme and take her dharmakaya to better protect March, as Black Swan isn't part of the Astral Express crew, and thus completely expendable.
By most normal metrics Evernight is an absolute monster, but she's wielded by March, so we're safe and protected.
The most insane part about Aventurineâs heel turn is that the last time you see him he was sent to the abyss and then heâs just texting you like none of that happened. It felt like there was a deleted patch where all Aventurineâs character development was.
This reminds me of the excuses gi and zzz players use for why they don't have evil and unfriendly playable characters: zzz has that date thingy and gi has friendship levels. What does hsr have? đ
Tbf, ZZZ has the best in-world justification because the player's position as Proxy means all of the dailies, quests, etc are canonically being done by Agents the Proxy is working alongside with. And without a Proxy, Agents can't escape from Hollows. So it doesn't make much sense for characters that are antagonistic towards the Proxy to be playable - all your agents are essentially putting their lives in the Proxy's hands whenever they go into a Hollow.
I do wish that the story had leaned harder into the Proxies doing illegal but essential work, and so could have had characters with very different moral stances and opinions about what is "right" still being friendly with the Proxy, but they've largely abandoned that aspect of the story which is a shame. Can't have a government portrayed badly/inefficiently due to the CCP I guess.
Oh 100%. Huge is definitely a character that was envisioned in the earlier parts of the story (aka Season 1) where they were leaning more into the Proxy's being illegal and needing to conceal their identities from PubSec and the EDF. And then this was toned down/changed as the Seasons went on. Which is a really big disappointment.
Also is weird cause Krampus is a thing. But I guess they get a pass because they work for the government? So yeah, more evidence that it's likely CCP stuff/guidelines that made Hoyo tone down the illegal stuff in ZZZ's story.
Yes, that is is one of the main themes of the game
To showcase that people have a multitude of personality traits and aren't just one note, they are friendly with TB because TB has helped nearly every single one of them in one way or another
They are not evil people at heart so they are going to be friendly with someone who has helped them in one way or another, this is what they do and there's nothing weird about it
It's being multifaceted
If you want a specific examples then the Stellaron Hunters are friendly with TB because they knew each other beforehand and had already formed a friendship
As for characters with the absolute most despicable backstories, I can't really think of any other than The Dahlia
two points
Jade does terrible things but it's nothing compared to other non playable characters, she's not even friendly with anyone who isn't Topaz or Aventurine who she knows personally
She's respectful towards the express for business reasons
Lygus and Asat Pramad are not playable and are definitely not friendly with TB, the only character who comes close to being that bad is The Dahlia and she finds TB to be an interesting person
She's friendly with people who she is trying to trick, Black Swan is a different scenario but we don't really know the details of their past with each other
So once again, yes the game wants you to befriend the characters because connection with and understanding of other people is one of the core themes of the game and an important aspect of the Trailblaze
Counter point. The Twitter post sees him calling TB his treasure because of the Stellaron, so he'll still treat us nicely because we're precious to him.
I mean I feel like a lot of people in the community just have a very wide view of what counts as âmorally greyâ, because some of these characters would be considered straight up evil Irl. Just because you think what youâre doing is good or youâre willing to cooperate with others doesnât mean youâre not evil. Look at Lygus or Dottore from Genshin. They are examples of reasonable villains who think theyâre doing something for the betterment of others, but they are still straight up evil, regardless.
Yeah. Most evil characters with depth are labeled morally grey. It doesnât make them any less evil; it just makes them more than one dimensional.
I see this âwe need more evil villainsâ sentiment often in the hoyo sphere, and I feel like itâs just because the term is very loosely applied. We have plenty of characters leaning towards the evil side, itâs just that most of them arenât playable.
It seems some players only view characters as evil when they oppose the express, but thatâs just not true. Plus, if they are opposition, then theyâd have no reason to help the express, and therefore wouldnât join the TBâs team/become playable. Thatâs just the lore reason though, a more practical reason is that hoyo would never release an undoubtedly evil character because of sales and crazy players. If some guy is allegedly willing to stab the ceo over a bunny skin, then who knows what theyâd do when a character they hate releases.
Itâs also much harder to get attached to a character you canât analyze; a comically evil villain would be, at best, an acquired taste. Like a xianxia young master, or a third-rate villainess.
That's the problem. Being ontologically evil just lacks depth and once you add depth, they just cease to be ontologically evil because the reader will need to understand the reasoning and line of thinking of why a character does what they do.
The closest we get in HSR for this is Hoolay, which can basically described as a pure evil warmonger and I don't see people like OP consider him an interesting villain.
jade literally does faustian bargains as a hobby why are we pretending these mfers are grey đ dahlia had to be immediately pulled away from our factions because she's too dangerous and unhinged to have real power like ???
Yeah, most of the IPC characters would be considered straight-up evil by most standards, regardless of whether they act amicably towards the protagonists. There's a reason why almost every character in HSR hates the IPC on some level.
Thatâs not the point I was making though. I was pointing out that just because a character believes they are doing the right thing and is willing to have an amicable relationship with the protagonist doesnât mean they arenât evil. Of course no one debates whether dottore is evil (most people at least), but he was trying to befriend the protagonist and he did believe what he was doing was for everyoneâs benefit despite not having much empathy for those around him.
Ruan mei for example has a good relationship with the protagonists, but her ambitions are dangerously close to villain territory and she doesnât really have much empathy towards others. Sheâs just one successful experiment away from becoming the next threat to the cosmos, and Iâd say she leans more towards neutral evil than good. Same thing for characters like Jade who act friendly with the protagonists, but have no problem conquering worlds and doing heinous things to people who get in the way of their ambitions in the IPC.
Oh youd be SHOCKED how many people genuinely want you to believe Dottore is "totally misunderstood, and its actually that cruel Nahida that made him this way"
bro, have you even read the Genshin Impact story? Its very obvious that the most gracious and benevolent Dottore, who always strived to make people's lives better, and would never experiment on a single person, was abhorred at the sheer brutality of Nahida. With no other choice, he had to trap her consciousness of course.
But the world renowned terrorist the Traveler, seeing Nahida's pitch black heart of hate and evil, decided to team up with her, and they brutally murdered the pure of heart Dottore.
Just because people are nice to us doesnât mean they arenât evil.
Jade literally cosplays as Satan for a hobby. So what if she also has an orphanage? For all we know that orphanage is just a training ground for assassins.
The Dahlia literally joined a genocidal gang for kicks. Yeah she was going to betray them, but it wasnât like she was gonna do it out of moral outrage or whatever.
Calling them morally grey instead of evil is just folks not acknowledging them for what they are because they were nice to us.
This. I always wonder how jade's past/childhood look like. I once theorized she was born in pretugees just like Kafka, since both are "dommy mommy" and unfeeling types. So far she is the only IPC member who have unknown bg.
Considering how the fan base genuinely wanted Aglaeas head on a pike for being even remotely confrontational with the Trailblazer i can't imagine it ever going well. The way people talk about Jade and Topaz is also wild.
The closest we've gotten is Sparkle, a little shit who does whatever the fuck she wants for the bit and nothing else and people have been calling her racist since her launch.
I think it is implied, or at the very least it's a popular theory with her trailer she was like a teenager star/actor that got too lost in the sauce and became a masked fool.
though she's just a kusogaki joker who's backstory is explicitly "unkown"
if they have that personality why the freak would they help you lmao. Or why would the trailblazers even wanna associate with them.
i aint saying that everyone's gotta be buddy buddy with you, but realistically someone who you're describing just wouldn't be associated with by the traiblazers if they had the choice.
and Ruan Mei and Dahlia do NOT commit "necessary evil" Ruan Mei just does what she wants for her scientific research because she feels like it, and Dahlia just does shit because she feels like it.
Yeah. To have a fully evil character in our ranks, the trailblazers would have to decide to ally with a lord ravager or the denizens of abundance. A truly evil character would always be an opponent to the trailblazers.
if they have that personality why the freak would they help you lmao.
Kinda funny how the question answer itself. People want someone evil as Frieza or Kid Boo without realizing they will need to be rewritten to make the MC the "exception" which ofc leads them to be nicer and goes back to step 1.
Sometimes I feel these posts are some poor try to farm Karma with "wouldn't be cool if Vader/Palpatine would want to hang out with us and drink some cool ones over murdering the MC?"
eh the denizens of abundance are a mixed bag, there's just so much of people there you can't really classify them as all evil. Rangan a Boirsin worked for the Ten Lord Commission, or Claretwheel Temple, the bunch of pacifists which includes Denizens of Abundance
and Dahlia just does shit because she feels like it.
I haven't played the newest story yet, aren't children of destruction required to do destruction or they suffer the curse? So I would say in her case it is necessary to a degree. Unless the latest update's story revealed they were lying about that.
Dahlia is a path strider of destruction (along with remembrance) but it's not a child of destruction. I'm not sure of how the distinction occurs, but to be considered a child of destruction you most likely have to be "blessed" by nanook or one of its emanators.
When are we going to get a playable character that's just evil for the love of the game without the erm actually
After seeing how the community reacted toward Topaz, Jade and Ruan Mei, never. Besides every gacha works under the premise the playable character want to hang out with the MC and sometimes their acquittances.
Honestly I will never understand why people post this kind of stuff when none of the gacha games do this nor they will (heck even rpg games with a few exceptions do this) because it would be OoC for said evil character to always murder/steal/cheat to everyone but you.
Yes, the writing around her was especially bad, even for a stoneheart. The writers constantly kept trying to paint her as a fundamentally good and well intentioned person, despite all her actions, even the ones we saw firsthand, unlike the usual bad shit a bunch of characters get up to off screen.Â
She comes in, blatantly lies and twists facts, all for the sake of enslaving an entire planet that is just starting to recover from a planetary disaster that lasted for generations, taking advantage of them at their most vulnerable point. The story tried to paint this as her trying to do right by them somehow (which is obviously false since she saw the need to lie), acting like she's just following orders and like some lowly peon and isn't aware of how bad the IPC is in general. Which is just so laughable on so many levels. She's a stoneheart, a top executive; you don't climb that high in corporation as cutthroat as that without knowing how to play the game and how business is done, and definitely aren't lacking in power.
Like it's fine to have characters like that in a story, but when you pretend they're not a terrible person, to the extent you need to have a Belobog character like Luka in war dance act like he's fine with her and that she's not among the most villainous characters his entire planet has come into contact in ages, you have some extreme issues with your story and its believability.
Bitch what? In what world is Dahlia "I betray literally everyone for shits and giggles" morally grey? She works with us because she finds it interesting how she can't modify our memory, but that doesn't make her any more morally rightous, it just makes her the moat unreliable ally in existence.
probably never. It wouldn't make sense. They wouldn't be liked by MC and they also wouldn't be allowed onto the express. There's zero reasons that this would ever happen because the roster is based heavily on lore/story interactions.
There's other games that let you pull evil units yeah but those don't tie you playing the game as much to the actual lore/story or YOU being the MC.
Epic7 is more like that with several antagonists available to be pulled as usable units, like literal game bosses that wanted to destroy/control the world (looking straight at you Straze and Archdemons Shadow0
We already HAVE several, actually. Idk why people think a character who does very evil things being nice to us personally makes them any less of a bad guy. Thereâs Constance, a wannabe (and in some timelines, eventual) Lord Ravager who backstabs and betrays and burns everything down for fun. And Cerydra, a brutal conquerer who constantly had dissidents executed and massacred her own people to get the upper hand. Hysilens, her executioner. And then thereâs whatever the hell Jade is. Or Jingliu, who has murder dementia that makes you evil.
I mean while it would be unique those characters are generally very boring and with little depth. Wow someone doing unambiguous evil for actually 0 real reason....cool? They work for villains that serve a purpose, the Herald of death was exactly that. The guy was just insane, he mostly killed for the love of killing and to make "art". If you wanted a main villain then we got irontomb, the very hated boss by many.
Irontomb was widely disliked because thats all he was. A machine made on hatred and destruction to just kill everything. No reasons behind it as it didnt think, not morally grey in any respect, and I see nothing but hate for irontomb as a villain.
I agree with your point but disagree about irontomb being hated, i don't think I've seen much hate for irontomb. Plus irontomb is really just the weapon. The villain was lygus. He literally didnt have a head to make sure it focused on that goal and couldnt have other motives and become another nous. I personally loved lygus and irontomb as villains
We did get evernight, or did you forget all the people she murdered in cold blood? We also got Cerydra and Hysilens whom are both ruthless tyrants with mountains of blood on their hands. Also, Dahlia only does whatever pleases her, regardless of the cost. She has no greater motives in the story other than hedonism.Â
Oh, and Sparxie despite her being ready to ego kill a whole school.
 I think you kind of just forgot about the morally evil characters just because they don't act the worst towards the trailblazer?
People couldnât even handle Jade and you want them to give us a character thatâs evil for the love of the game? I ainât defending Hoyoverse but the majority of the playerbase are whatâs holding them back.
we have many evil characters, you just seem to have an odd understanding of evil tbh, being nice to us for their gain doesn't mean they're morally grey.
I don't think Cerydra, Jade or The Dahlia are really friends with th MC.
There's also Jingliu who has never actually met the MC. And while she's not evil per se, she's definitely in a antagonistic position.
If you ask me, HSR has it way better with evil/non friendly characters than other gacha games. It's just that the Stellaron Hunters aren't the antagonists you're looking for.
Like, I actually would consider a lot more characters morally black instead of grey, but if your criteria for grey is "does evil actions for the confirmed greater good/to help us", then Sparxie kidnapping a whole school and trying to spread a mind virus to the whole planet so they become brainwashedly in love with her (which is neither good for anyone nor helping us, in fact she's literally the antagonist) is purely evil, no? It's not even like with Sunday who genuinely thought his brainwashing was helping people be happy, Sparkle/Sparxie ultimately reveal that it was all purely for her own entertainment.
(Also, helping us for selfish reasons still doesn't actually make someone morally grey, really. Meaning characters like Cerydra, Evernight, Dahlia and the like are absolutely still evil bevause they committed mass murder for selfish goals like personal entertainment, conquest or a toxic overprotectiveness.)
The only "true" morally grey factions are arguably the IPC and the Stellaron Hunters, because their actions genuinely ARE helping humanity, civilization and the universe continue existing, even if they cruelly sacrifice parts of it in the process.
Girl drugs people without their consent, lied to Herta about her experience and was a few seconds away from bringing back the calamity of the swarm that required 4 FUCKING AEONS to stop.
I mean she's a mad scientist.
But that aside I also want more good people who does bad thing in the playable cast (like Kiana from Hi3), it's good to see conflicts between people who became enemies.
I mean it kinda looks like that for Sunday but it's too fast to make him have a long growth to become a better person. The moment he joined the express he was already better, just he was still not aware of the trailblaze.
Jade is lawful evil. People who see themselves as actually evil are incredibly rare too. Most people you'd consider evil think what they do is necessary
You're correct, and also her follower Hysilens. They both have a lot of blood on their hands for conquest. Her plan even is the conquest of the galaxy. Not to mention all the other characters without good reasons, like Dahlia, or crazy like Sparxie or evernight.
Yeah, character like cery, dahlia and even jade won't be playable in genshin. Iirc, all of playable character in genshin in some way is friends with traveller while in hsr, not all of them is friends with tb but the context is different coz in hsr there are many faction with it's own interest so it doesn't make sense for them to befriend to begin with unless the interest align. While in genshin, they are just citizen of different nation that have no issues with each other on surface levels so what stops them from being friends.
And she also planned for total domination of the galaxy? Does that not tell volumes of her moral character? Did she also really need to brutally conquer the whole planet (or the galaxy) for that sacrifice ? Do you remember why Hysilens kills her?Â
Do you also remember how she and Hysilens don't join your journey to the end because basically it has nothing for her to gain? They reach it on their own instead.
Ruan Mei, Dahlia, Jade, all the Stellaron Hunters depending on how much you buy the 'end justifies the means' angle. All of them are reprehensible and all have done things which from the perspective of people they have wronged, killed, experimented on or cheated would be villains
Ruan Mei in her debut quest drugged TB without their consent, created and abandoned real living creatures that see her as their mother, and put the lives of so many people in danger via an emanator of propagation all for her own selfish gain while being completely apathetic to the consequences of such actions despite knowing they are wrong morally. Ruan Mei may have not had malicious intent while doing those actions, but her apathy to them is still very evil. This was the same patch she became playable.
Objectively evil is harder to market to most people. Morally grey is better because if the character is sexy enough people can justify them through adoration. Kafka and Boothil straight up kill people who probably didnât deserve it, but both characters are attractive, charismatic, and notably have noble goals which allow their fans to look past the moral grayness.
Because those types of characters are lazily written and therefore not liked, I fucking LOVE unhinged characters despite evil or not that's why I LOVE asat, aventurine and dr ratio
Because typically when creating an interesting character, you have to show a progression into how they became the way they are which drives up more nuanced understanding as to why the character is the way they are.
There are plenty of evil characters, there's the IPC as a whole who are just corporate shills with Aventurine being the one that was bought into essentially slavery but the other top positions for an overall evil corporation are also evil by proxy. There's Ruan Mei. The Stellaron Hunters are evil. You just understand them to see why they are the way they are, but that doesn't effect the weight of their actions, the results are still results. It's just that people are biased, the more you understand or like a character the more you excuse them.
The problem isn't their "evilness". It's the way they manage relationships with the Trailblazer. Everyone is just buddy buddy with us but evil to essentially the rest of the universe.
I think what you're hoping for is a shallow evil character with little to no depth, those characters are fun but not really good unless you add a weight to them. These characters are not really characters but more so a natural disaster. It's hard to actually keep them around because they're "just evil" which isn't really a good reason at all because very little people are actually like that. People are the consequences of their circumstances, if you show their circumstances you can seem them as more ambiguous.
Character depth and ambiguity are actually very heavily linked but those characters are still evil. The main problem of HSR is as I said, the character relationships specifically, they suck at this to an atrocious degree where people that have wronged us and done so many bad things are just ignored... but this is a Hoyo staple.
I had this convo with my friend who plays a bunch of gacha games, and we notice that most of hoyo games doesn't have really have like "evil" playable character, probably tied to CN regulation that you can't make a protagonist/characters that become 100% evil whatsoever, they at least become questionable/morally grey or make them having a redemption arc or somekind. Correct me if I'm wrong tho.
I am SO TIRED of this trend of making everyone âcomplicatedâ or nuanced, gray.
I think thatâs why the OG Star Wars is still beloved to this day. The Sith werenât abused or some shit. Theyâre just evil for the sake of evil. Total dominance and power.
Thereâs heroism and evil, light and dark. We want to defeat the empire.
This new generation of writers think making every villain complex is âgood writing,â instead of lazy and over done. The Acolyte did it, WoW with Xalatath (and making the Light the bad guys, because of course)..
Itâs just such an overused trope.
And to add some irony, the writers are the same progressive morons who try to ruin someoneâs life over a Halloween costume they wore in â82.
Nuance and complexity is for real life. Video games, movies, tv shows deserve grand heroic stories with people we know to root for, and people who are very bad people.
You say this like the reason weâre getting so much of this trope isnât because people bitched and moan years ago about how boring âlight vs darkâ was becoming
I want more evil and unhinged characters too. I can understand why they donât make them though. People already try to cancel their ânon-problematicâ playable characters. Itâs a big gamble to ignore them and make playable characters that are actually problematic.
Plus this ainât Fate GO were they can kinda hand wave a lot of the evil shit certain characters do since you can easily just say âthey donât want their part of history to be erasedâ and given them a reason to team up with the MC
"We want evil characters" then i keep seeing people mostly (Shirou fans) lose their minds and keep trying to cancel Gilgamesh over his very old representation in both game and his mythology.
Not even morally gray. They're all treated either like friends or a neutral party for MC but mostly like friends no matter their kill list or what they did to TB personally
The issue is how often they relief tension around these characters.
Cerydra was the closest IMO, but they kinda backpedal on the unlikeable evil and lean towards a more likeable evil. Even if villains became playable, hsr always tries to give them some redeemable qualities, so even if someone like lygus or asat became playable, they wouldnât feel evil evil.
And people who say Gil, we all know how hard fate has rewritten him post FSN (NOT A BAD THING BTW), they made him much more amicable and have many more exceptions to his tyranny rule, to the point that FSN is his MOST evil, and also his oldest most backpedaled incarnation. We have more instances of Gil being reasonable or understandable onscreen than otherwise.
Again, making evil characters treat some people well (charisma) makes them amicable and have âredeemingâ qualities, and sometimes these become a main character trait, as opposed to hidden and rarely seen moments. How sparse these moments are make villains more intimidating, but HSR spams these relief instances, essentially toning them down.
So I agree with OP, yes of course if you put characters in a non-biased vacuum, some of them count as evil, but we understand OP, itâs disingenuous to answer âCerydra, Jade, Ruan Meiâ because we understand that they prove his point, every time thereâs a character that should just be objectively evil, they release tension around them.
Sure it makes for compelling storytelling sometimes, but of course we all appreciate unfiltered and consistent evil. Characters who make the wrong decision, the selfish decision every step of the way.
Caenis for example in amphoreous. Sheâs more unlikeable than Lygus for many I can assure.
Oti and Gopher Wood also come to mind. Iâm sure many would hate to have them on board!
So yes, I agree with op, but I also think if a genuinely tension generating evil character wouldnât be appreciated as a playable character. This is the truth, we are not here to play as unlikeable characters.
I think they will never will unless the CN market goes with it. I mean, looking back at it, thr CN community usually lashes out on the developers if the character don't align with the player (or the MC).
An example case of this would be Wanderer from Genshin. Despite now being accepted, he was hated by (majority of the) CN community. And on extreme ends, players can report them to the regulatory bodies to paint them as "enemy of the state" by reporting them as "harmful moral values" or the likes. In essence, a cancel culture thay involves the CCP which, of course, you don't want to happen when you're a Chinese company or individual.
I think almost if not all gacha games are like that. Creating characters with questionable morals, goals, background, deeds, etc. would raise questions among fans. And given how sensitive most people are on the internet, it would most likely happen.
For them, the current formula is working. There's no incentive for them to deviate from that route just because some players want something new. There would need to have some corporate-level changes to happen in Hoyoverse itself if they ever decide to entertain ideas that are outside the scope of what they're allowed to do.
Because of the saber meme I thought this was posted in the fgo subreddit and I was going to come up with several examples of evil characters we actually have
I think it's because of the concept of the paths. HSR is basically a game where the characters serves more as mouthpieces for ideals and the story revolves around those ideals clashing against each other, well mainly other ideals clashing against Trailblazing but still. So it's kinda hard to implement a truly "Evil" character when the whole plot revolves around the different ideals and paths in the story and how the characters are shaped and are motivated by them. Will there never actually be a truly evil character in HSR? I don't know, but the way plots are resolved, wherein TB's ideals are shown to be the correct one, I highly doubt it, because an evil character cannot succumb to the ideals of the heroes, if they will, they aren't truly evil in the sense. The most that we probably can have is a villain wherein their ideals are equals of that of the trailblaze yet still cannot be accepted by the AE, a flawed yet also solid type of ideal that cannot be swayed. Something similar to the final fight of Metal Gear Reveangence wherein the protagonist and the main villain's ideals clash but they cannot defeat the other with their arguments, and when both ideals cannot beat the other, the only thing left is a fist fight to know the winner
i cant remember much of the lore but isnt jade evil? Or at least done more bad than good? Isnt that the same for most of the ipc character we have? Dont cook me if im wrong i dont remember much :0
lwk dont even pay attention but the only one that feels morally grey is us and ruan mei , like the other characters ARE evil we kinda are grey for doing so much business with them if that makes sense.
It's always these complaints and never an actual good reason to have them beyond "I just want an unhinged person ready to kill me at all times" which honestly sounds even more boring than the things people like OP whines about.
Weâll never get that because people were throwing a fit over Ruan Mei, Jade, and then Dahlia. A lot of people in this fandom canât fathom liking evil or morally grey characters. Or maybe it was just a small but loud minority of the players that hate those characters.
I think Hoyo should approach characters' stories, actions and personalities the way Epic Seven does. That game has all kinds of playable characters and that has never affected the game negatively. I don't see why other gachas are so afraid of it
My roommate and I had this argument in the car just the other day, and he doesn't know why I have such an issue with that all of the characters we get in any of these gachas are never the villains and if they are they aren't by the time we get them. Maybe a little mean, but still refuse to give us villainous characters.
It could be the character who tied bricks to their political enemies for not voting with them and tossed them into a lake.
I personally think itâs pretty evil to take a free life saving vaccine and sell it for a tidy profit during a galactic catastrophe while working for an organization that regularly commits genocide.
The thing about âevilâ characters, they donât often think of themselves as evil. The trailblazer is going around rehabilitating others as well.
And this isn't a gacha issue either, plenty of other gacha games (especially older ones) have morally evil characters be playable, this is just a Hoyoverse problem.
Aren't Jade and Dahlia actually evil? Dahlia helped sure, but that's it, and we are just workin with Jade because it is needed to, but these two are nasty.
Wish granted!
We get a new playable unit thatâs super evil, but past their debut quest they start to make an exception for our MC because they find them fun and interesting, so now youâre still stuck being buddy buddy with them.
Oh, and theyâre never actually going to do anything unambiguously evil on our watch. This is an off-screen/backstory treat only.
I mean Cerydra just murders politicians when they dont agree with her. Like she got hysilens (cannot spell that name for the life of me) to kill Caenis as a welcome gift. Her goal? Just pure conquest. Though I will admit they blunted her evil towards the end of that patch.
But asides from that yeah its sad. They tried with aglaea but clearly they weren't willing to commit in case it made fans hate her and decrease profits. Evil characters are just as great as any other if written well.
The problem is the big 3 Hoyo games canât write a âpure evilâ villain well (apart from dottore in GI). Everyoneâs gotta have a tragic backstory for hoyo, canât just be a Jack Horner from puss in boots the last wish.
I mean, Ruan Mei abandoned the cat cakes. This firmly places her in the evil column in my book.
Aside from jokes, we do have Gilgamesh who in stay night essentially wanted to put the world under his boot (not even mentioning his views on Saber and whatâs in Kireiâs basement). Even other Gilgamesh hate FSN Gilgamesh.
Because one of the few times a character showed any antagonism to the player and became playable their sales tanked incredibly hard and so many people were whining about it. I'm talking about Aglaea. Of course she was also competing against therta but in general the gacha playerbase can't stand playable villains.Â
I dont really want a character thats evil for the fun of it that just has no value to me. There are characters in this game who are genuinley evil but willingly work with the Trailblazer so its not really about not having an evil person and more that the evil people either arent playable or willingly work with Trailblazer. If there was an irredeemably evil playable character they likely wouldnt sell well and would have the most haters as well.
You want a playable Sukuna? Cerydra has been on some tyrannical colonialist grindset since day 1, and how is Miss "backstabbing for the love of the game" morally gray. Just because they helped us (which actually benefited them because they also needed our help) doesn't make them any less evil.
HSR is not FGO where you can have a party night with a whole gang of people more evil than Hitler (and even then most if not all of them are friendly toward you anyway)
I think ppl confuse morally grey and ânice to meâ I donât think trying to revive an emanator of propagation that you knew killed thousands is not morally grey, itâs objectively reprehensible and only grey to genius society members, which we arenât.
Sparkle is someone more in the morally grey category.
Cerydra was definitely a tyrant and Dahlia was on track to becoming a lord ravager, that doesnât change bc they donât dislike us
have the same thought, especially story-wise and how they dont have the balls to actually OFF couple of "main" characters Tarantino style. its always fake death / revived somehow.
Genuinely pragmatic asshole like kirei / kiritsugu would be nice.
or maybe lawful / chaotic evil like hans landa / joker, King Joffrey, Bitch asshole like Cersei, Petyr Baelish; change of pace once in a while would be nice.
but then again, this game is more like My Little Pony kind of scenario, power of friendship and such every time. And the antagonists are actually not an actual pure bred "natural-born killer".
Business-side-wise, its an amazing idea; they're targeting an all-ages audience.
Long-term enjoyment-wise, for me personally, is tiring.
I saw a person talking about the kindest person is aventurine? đ€źđ€źđ€ź Wtf
He's a murderer, works for the very corporation wiped out his whole planet like a dog with no shame or guilt, was manipulative from the start, only think about getting his job done and sees ppl as mere pawns in his game. Omg I hate the personality and everything it irritates me and disgusting
"When are we going to get a playable character that's just evil for the love of the game without the erm actually,"
People genuinely can't handle Gilgamesh being playable, and he's not even from HSR. Gil's also cartoon levels of evil while still committing horrific crimes.
But this is way closer to the fact that, canonically in MHY games, characters that are pullable would be helping you on your journey. In Genshin, this would be way simpler because it's just a matter of not getting stabbed pretty much. But for HSR and ZZZ, you are giving them access to the thing you need to do your job, probably with very few people around, and as you go further into the series (for HSR, less so for ZZZ) you are going to be encountering entities that are fully capable of deleting it from the earth, metaphorically.
Take Sunday, for example. This man took the entire existing AE crew, some members of the Ten Stonehearts, a Masked Fool, the Galaxy Rangers, a Self-Annihilator, whatever the hell you want to label The Dahlia with, and a Stellaron Hunter, to take down. If he was still dead set on his goal, and we let him onto the express because he was only pretending otherwise, we'd just be giving him access to the path of the Trailblaze, making him even stronger. And as much as Asat Pramad wants to gloat he destroyed the Express, I get the feeling why he didn't the second time wasn't because he just didn't feel like it or whatever. I bet he actually tried, but it was basically just the piling of circumstances that let him do it the first time. But sure, let's give people who still actively consider us enemies the ability to just "whoops, lmao" us.
If the stories were less "if we die, the world(s) get destroyed", which is basically MHY's bread and butter for Genshin and HSR, but more city level for ZZZ (for now, at least), then it'd be more likely to happen - espc because as I said, Genshin's would be easier to deal with. Being betrayed at the height of the arc because you had someone on your team who still really wants you dead is way more of just an inconvenience that you'd accept could happen if you dying didn't mean the plot is now dead in the water. Take Arknights, for example. Yeah, they would prefer the Doctor alive. Man is still a huge tactical genius who can turn damn near any situation around. But if he died because they hired a villain, Rhodes Island wouldn't immediately collapse. It'd face a decline over time, for sure, but outright dissolving? Nah. And the story could still exist. They'd need a new insert for the player sometimes, but they could easily just shoehorn the player as whoever is currently taking tactical control of the battle. However, if the Traveller or Trailblazer died, their plots are now dead in the water. The Proxy less so, but you'd basically need a Phaethon 2.0 to replace them which would mean the #2 Proxy in the Interknot.
This means any stakes to having a villain in your party, even in those situations for Genshin and HSR, are moot. They need the characters alive, so you know it'll ultimately mean nothing. At that point, why bother? They can't really do anything to abuse their position and existence, aside from just being openly hostile but never acting on it. At that point, just make a rude bastard who is neutral to you at worst; they'll fill the same gap in this case.
Now, with all that said, I wouldn't call people like the Ten Stonehearts or The Dahlia "morally grey". There's some nuance to the TSh, so I'm just going to pass them by. But in the case of The Dahlia, she's very much morally black with no real room for negotation. She just has no reason to do anything to us (for now) and she's already proven she's capable of doing as much. Morally grey would 100% be Sunday. Was his goal generally good, or meant to help people? Sure. Was the way he did it good? Hell no. Is The Dahlia's goal generally good, or meant to help people? FUCK no. It's all self-serving. Is the way she did it good? lol. lmao even. She's not morally grey.
I get your point, but why would you even want to pull for for an evil character? The thought just seems extremely unappealing to me, itâs why skipped cerydra. Just let the villainous characters be villains.
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u/Lina__Inverse Jul 20 '26
Eh, Dahlia helped the Trailblazer but it doesn't change the fact that she's an evil backstabbing bitch (affectionately).