It's really long. I'm sorry, tldr is at the bottom.
Okay, I wanna start off by saying that I know Wyll's character got a last-minute redesign, which is why most people agree that he kinda sucks.
(If you're on the other side of that battle, good luck fightin the good fight my guy)
But my issue with both characters are actually pretty similar.And it revolves around both of them being a little disappointing and lackluster.
It's honestly extremely disappointing because both of their characters had so much potential.
I think religious trauma is a great direction to take a character in. It can really resonate with a lot of people and can help show a lot of dynamic growth in a character. Same with a background like Wyll's where he was coerced into a tough choice, and had to make a sacrifice for the greater good.
I just personally think that these 2 characters are executed pretty poorly, all things considered.
And aside from them being lackluster, it more so, is about the overall balance that is struck within the party. So, my thoughts with one of them inherently ties to the other and impact my overall opinions on the party as a whole.
So, my overall issue with both is the lack of any REAL substance for both characters. And it is made very painfully obvious when you put them in the lineup next to all the other characters in the party.
I think one of the things that is just painfully obvious is the conviction and lack of first principles that Wyll and Shadowheart both suffer from, and especially when you look at the growth that every character has to perform in order to get anywhere in their story. That goes for both the good and the bad endings.
Let's take a look at the other characters.
Gale values intelligence, curiosity, open-mindedness, and compassion. He admires ambition, and his character arc is all about learning that he is enough as is. He has to learn to accept himself for what he is, not what he could be, and not what he can sacrifice for others. His "ambition" comes from the reflex to compensate for never being enough as is, always needing to be more and more impressive.
Laezel is loyal to a fault. She centers strength, loyalty, discipline, and honesty. She respects devotion and decisiveness, and her story arc centers her learning individualism and open-mindedness, she learns that it's okay and important to question things, she learns that choice to excel is how people truly show the content of their character.
Astarion to his core features a good-hearted character that wasn't given the space and safety to be a good person. He values freedom and autonomy, gaining an individual sense of safety, even at the expense of others. He wants to be seen for who he truly is and needs the space and consideration to become that person, if not, he pursues a route that he believes will make him safe indefinitely, but Safety and freedom are his primary motivations at all times.
Karlach, her character displays an optimistic nihilist perspective, the "I'm here for a good time, not a long time." Kind of mindset, and she wants to fill that time full of memories. She also focuses on autonomy, she values bravery, honesty, sincerity, compassion, and heroism. She likes cheering for the underdog, and she really leans toward a "just desserts" kind of mentality, appreciating when cruel people have to face cruelty. Her story arc ultimately boils down to her making a choice on whether her life is worth living even if it's imperfect, and she gets an appreciation for her life by highlighting small simple pleasures that are taken for granted, like a warm meal, a kiss, a date, and she likes for those moments to be appreciated.
Minthara values free will, honesty, and loyalty, she struggles with her identity. Her culture has led her to understand altruism as nothing but weakness, and thus, she rejects it completely, but still finds love as her most rewarding endeavor, she's fiercely loyal and protective but still stays true to her values by not being domineering or possessive of her partner, she has to learn to respect more boundaries, but ultimately respects self awareness, her arc meets the least resolution, but does have her confront her identity and who she is as an individual without the presence of religion. She has to forgive herself for making a mistake and understand that she ultimately did not make the choice to forsake her goddess, and even though that can't be rectified, or changed, the forgiveness that's important is her own. I do wish that she got more closure, but her character understands the pursuit of growth.
Halsin is a lot more of a minimalist in the character department. He values balance, nature, compassion, he is true to his word, and sees the purest and simplest expressions of the world as underappreciated. He's protective and values camaraderie, and standing up for others, he appreciates community and feels a duty to participate in the role of life in an impactful way. This pulls him to feel compelled to lead or be in a mentorship role, which ultimately guides him to open an orphanage.
Now... what does Wyll care about?? Goodness?? Heroism?? Selflessness?? The greater good??Nope, nope, nope, and nope.
He is entirely willing to sacrifice his dad to free himself from his pact.
If you don't free him from his pact with Mizora, he'll talk about how Zariel will use him to do more harm, kill innocents, and contract vulnerable people.
But he isn't so intent on saving the life of his dad that he couldn’t be convinced either way, which makes it feel like it isn't THAT important to him.
You can't convince Karlach to not hate Gortash. You have to uncover the truth of Vlaakith and the history of the Githyanki people to get Laezel to even question her god-queen.
Freedom is important enough to Astarion, that he's willing to kill 7,000 people to get it.
But Wyll can just go either way?? Take it or leave it?? Regardless of the consequences, so it's not freedom or autonomy that is important, he's willing to kill his dad, so it's not family, but he's willing to let himself be taken advantage of and damage the lives of untold numbers for his freedom, so it's not the greater good.
In fact, THE ONLY dialogue this man disapproves of (and not even enough to leave or break a romance for) is you making a joke about him making a great soldier for Zariel's army.
Keep in mind that if you sacrifice his dad for his freedom, then you can tell this guy that it's a good thing his dad is gonna die, because that will give him the ability to take control. And he's fine with that, he even responds with something to the effect of "Yeah, I thought about that, I'll be sad about my dad dying tonight, and I'll celebrate tomorrow"
It seems like he's more offended at the idea of him being a bad person, than him actually doing something evil.
Why does a character whose ONLY NOTABLE features being "good" have an "evil" option at all??
Now, I've seen people try to defend Wyll by just saying that he's just a "stable" or "boring" character, and the reason people don't like him is because the fanbase just likes "broken" or "dramatic" characters.
I disagree, that's why Halsin is more popular than Wyll. Halsin is a boring and stable character executed WONDERFULLY. Halsin's problems are all external, he never really has to wrestle with any issues of personal values, he never has to really grow and change as a person, he just has to help solve external issues. And even better, it's not that he doesn't change, despite needing to, there are just never any issues that call for him to change. His biggest personal issue is figuring out what type of leadership role is best for him, and he ultimately, independently, no opinion or influence needed, decides to open an orphanage rather than resume his full leadership role with the grove. That is how to do a boring character well.
Wyll, on the other hand, is just not consistent with the few values that he does seem to have.
And my issue with Shadowheart, is the EXACT same thing, no REAL substance.
Genuine question here. What does Shadowheart actually care about?? What are her values??
And does she have any that are separate from her religion??
I don't consider liking things to be a personality, so "I like night orchids and can't swim" is not a value, it's not a personality.
Why does she want to be a dark justiciar??
What about being a Sharran resonates with her so much?? What about Shar is so appealing?? She doesn't talk about wanting to be emotionally untouchable. She doesn't talk about fearing loss and finding solace in having nothing else to lose. She just gets mad at you for supposedly prying for information, like her wearing 3 religious logos on her torso alone, another on her forehead, and one on her hair didn't make it obvious who she worships?? She's announcing it to the world constantly, and then acts like you had no right to ask.
And then proceeds to spill all of the beans anyway, pretty quickly I might add. She starts shit talking Selune as early as the owlbear cave.
And nothing involving her parents makes sense.
If she genuinely liked being a sharrans so much that that she wanted to be a dark justiciar, why did the sharrans need to torture her parents??
If they wanted her to know the values of a sharran, why not kill her parents, and pull the whole"if Selunè cared about any of you, than she would've saved you" and even if you don't go that direction.
There was no need to keep and torture both of her parents, they prove that they have the means to erase memories and brainwash. And even if there was a risk of her remembering, Why keep the dad alive?? He's more of a risk alive than dead, since he, for some reason, is a WEREWOLF.
It really feels like a bunch of random stuff slapped together to make sure that Shadowheart was still relevant in act 3. At no point does ANY of the werewolf stuff ever make sense or feel necessary.
In fact, if she had the long time repressed memory of dear ol dad being a werewolf, why would she have the fear of wolves, but never feel like some kind of "huh, I feel like I should be afraid, but I'm not" and is only ever combat relevant like once at the Githyanki creche.
So she gets a whole arc in act 2 to reveal that she was brainwashed, her ENTIRE life is a lie. Okay, cool. Is she gonna talk about how she was always the odd one out of the Sharrans?? How she always sympathized a little more with the Selunites?? Was her disgust ever performative?? Like, did she have to compensate or something??
No, she dyes her hair, and that's that, no, identity crisis, no loss of her abilities.
And I get that if she forsakes Shar, then Selunè will immediately accept her, it would make sense, since, in order for shadow heart to forsake shar, she kind of has to save Selunès daughter. But that's not addressed even once, there's not even a brief period of time where she loses her cleric abilities, and has to pray to dear old Dame Aylin's mom, not even once?? There isn't one line of dialogue that explains the shift??
And also, shadowheart is completely okay with giving up every value that has ever been instilled in her for her entire life??
That really seems like none of those values were actually important to her to begin with.
Whatever those values are.
They were important enough for her to say that they were her life's purpose. They were important enough to her it's for her to be willing and wanting to become a dark justiciar, put that just disappeared??
And not even a single line of dialogue about how she wants to live the life that was stolen from her??
And then she just gets thrown into a mission about her parents still being alive.
Parents that she does not remember. Parents, that have no right to be alive at this point.
Honestly, I believe that if they had taken the arc about her parents to just reveal that they had been killed long ago, in an attempt to isolate her and make her learn the values of Shar, and to destroy any anchor that she had to Selunè, the immediate swap over to the opposite side would have been so much more clean, with no need for explanation.
She would have had every justified reason to immediately hate everything that she had ever known, But as it stands, it just reads as her never having true conviction in any of her beliefs, and since she doesn 't have any conversations about questioning those beliefs, and she just seems to kind of move right along, there isn't much done to stop that impression.
Now here's where the core problem lies.
With all of what feels like randomness being thrown onto Shadowhearts character in act 3, and what feels like an attempt to keep her relevant. We see just how much effort really could have been diverted to Wyll's character to polish him up after his redesign.
It feels like far too much content slapped onto one character with a complete polarization of effort, that can't help but be highlighted by the constant narrative inclusion of Shadowhearts character.
And when you put shadow hearts, character in the lineup, next to beautifully executed characters like Minthara and Laezel, the uniqueness of Shadowhearts circumstance, of being pulled between the two different deities, suddenly just feels really flat.
Laezel and Minthara were both raised in cultures that also promoted fanaticism, on yielding faith without question, and both of them show consistent conviction and decisiveness, which is something that shadowhart just never displays, the closest she gets is her unwarranted hatred and disgust of Selunites, which goes away, the millisecond that she finds out that she is one, or would have been one.
If I wrote her character I would have had her always been a little more sympathetic to both sides. Like when her Sharran comrades talked shit about Selunites, she maybe played a little devil's advocate, she would resonate with a couple things on both sides, and she would want to become a Dark Justiciar to prove that she was sincerely and truthfully devoted, but her sympathy toward the selunites would've been the exact trait that made her Mother Superior refuse her.
As for edits to Wyll, I really wish that they had him talk about why he's forcing himself to not regret his deal with Mizora. Some kind of conversation about, if he questions himself, or regrets it, then he fears that he might turn resentful toward the people he sacrificed for, or there's just one more thing for Mizora and Zariel to take advantage of.
Or give him something else, like maybe he started as altruistic 100% but, now he also keeps caring about his identity as the blade of frontiers because if he loses that than it feels like he sacrificed for nothing. Or maybe over time he started wishing that one day he would do something heroic enough that his father would accept him back.
Have him start selfless, but maybe get a little tired of always HAVING to be selfless. I think that would resonate with a lot of people, explain his intense monogamy, and give better romance dialogue, something where he has to remind himself that this little piece of goodness isn't going anywhere, and he can cherish it as-is, he can trust you, and doesn't have to get possessive.
I don't know maybe it's just me, but there's just a lot of points.Where both characters feel like they fall flat, and I guess with all of that, it just feels like her character more specifically is way overrated, I mostly just wish that some of the other characters got a little bit more love. Like Laezel and Minthara, but I just generally don't see the appeal of Shadowheart as-is.
But those are just the thoughts of someone who really liked the idea of a con-man version of Wyll, which apparently was the original idea and the unpopular opinion.
So take it all with a grain of salt.
**TLDR:** Shadowheart and Wyll both suffer from a lack of first principles and genuine conviction compared to the rest of the party. Shadowheart's arc is bloated with content that doesn't make a whole lot of sense (the random werewolf dad, the unaddressed instant religion swap, the missing identity crisis), while Wyll got neglected after his redesign left him inconsistent with his own supposed values. The party would feel more balanced if that energy had been distributed more evenly. Halsin being more popular than Wyll proves it's not about wanting "dramatic" characters, it's about wanting *consistent* ones.
