it's not a big secret that villains tend to be very popular in media and the harbingers are no different I love the harbingers you probably love the harbingers a Winter's Night lzo has 17 million views people just seem to really like them no of course they aren't for everyone sometimes when done poorly villains are cringe at best and ruin the entire story at worst with the recent release of the Nave I think now is the perfect time to talk about the state of villain in gened Impact specifically the harbingers before that we're going to have to Define what a villain in a story is and how it differs from an antagonist a villain is a character that is basically someone who does evil things like they do bad stuff that hurt others around them with little to no remorse this definition definitely applies to a lot of the harbingers that we know like dor is the most obvious one he's a murderer he experiments on children and is just an overall evil person he's also what we consider to be an antagonist because he does serve in opposition to the protagonist that being the traveler now all of the harbingers are antagonists they have gone against the traveler at least once but are they all villains uh I would say so they all do bad things some of them more than others there's no denying that they have done really messed up in order to achieve their goal be it the serita's goal or their own personal goals but are they all good villains so let's talk about the harbingers the morality of the harbingers and what makes or breaks a villain now I actually made this uh position ing map for the harbingers at least one that we know now to see where they land while making this video was this necessary no I 100% pulled this out of my ass but I thought it might be fun so I share with you all so on the x-axis we have the are they actually developed three-dimensional villains or were they shelf aside as fast as they were introduced why this metric because for me personally to have an interesting memorable and well-written villain they need to at least have some develop Vel m in the actual story and that development is needed because we as the audience or players need to understand the motivations behind a villain character or else they would feel very one note and forgettable if we as the audience can understand what motivates them it's a lot easier for us to understand their actions we need to spend as much time as we can with said villains and if it's really good they would have an entire Arc about why they do the things that they do and even have that story affect the protagonist and the overall narrative next we have the morality Spectrum or in this case the not necessarily evil and pure evil now we need to be clear when I say they're not evil is that they're not out here actively trying to harm others because let's face it being a Harbinger does mean that you're up for some pretty shady and dubious stuff by default but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're pure evil hence why there's a spectrum and I've placed each of the harbinger on this positioning map and by that I mean only a few of them of course the five that we know so far and I'll explain their placement as I reveal them one by one so let's start with Senora I think she has the least development out of all the harbingers and that's because uh she died which is a shame because she had so much potential it makes me so sad that she was gone too soon so a bit of background on Senora right off the bat we know that she's not a good person she first appears at the end of the that Aron Quest where she ambushed venty and the traveler and stole vent's nosis after kicking his ass so not the nicest person that you can meet the next time we see her is in Le where she essentially duped a fellow Harbinger which shows that she's very manipulative but is also very reliable and competent in her job her deceiving or at least keeping child in the dark is purely based off of the serita's contract with Jang Lee so from that we know she's only acting in the his interest and we see her again in Inazuma as the one in charge of causing chaos the whole delusion Factory and everything that's been happening is orchestrated by Senora scar mush was there due to her request and then she accepted the Traveler's challenge for a duel Before the Throne and then she lost and got executed by the Ryden Shogun in hindsight this makes Senora feel like a one note villain and character we essentially know nothing about her other than she's mean and she's collecting the no s that is of course unless you read the entire lore behind the Crimson Witch of flames artifact set the entire lore behind that artifact set is sora's backstory it's revealed that Sora whose real name is rosalin by the way is originally from monat and then she went to suu to study in the Academia around 500 years ago she also had a lover named rosom in monad at the time who is also a knight and when rosom died in the cataclysm Rosaline became consumed with grief and anger and she used her life flame to cleanse the world she abandoned her mortal body to let liquid flame flow through her body Instead This is mentioned to be a lost art and magic in recent days she then would use her Firepower to cleanse the monsters in monstad but due to the unusual nature of her power and her overall appearance she's often dubbed as the Crimson Witch of Flames by the people which you can understand why she would feel insulted by this all she wanted to do was eradicate the monsters responsible for for her lovers demise and yet people branded her as a witch she's also very angry at the animal archon who in her mind failed to protect his own people and let her lover die as a result it's debatable whether or not venty actually knows about Senora SL rosalin but knowing venty he probably does she was later discovered by the jester himself and he gave her a cry delusion and the rest was history she became a Harbinger and seems to be the one tasked with finding the nois before well she died with all of that it's pretty obvious that Senora was a wasted potential her time in the main quest and with the players was too short to fully develop her and make players understand her motives as far as most of the player base is concerned Senora just died doing her job and being overly confident in her abilities her fire abilities were also never really explained there's another Harbinger that has very unusual Firepower but unlike her Senora's was only mentioned as Fire magic which unfortunately leaves her as an underdeveloped villain there was so much to explore with her like just being able to see her backstory before she died would have done wonders to her as a character like if we did she would have been more nuanced and when she does die in the story it would have felt like it was a tragic conclusion to her Arc even her last words were translated weirdly now I don't speak Chinese but I remember this being pointed out by Chinese and Japanese speakers Senora saying that she can't afford to die here because she has a lot of Unfinished Business yet somehow this is the English translation which makes her feel even more like a one-note villain that lacks Nuance at the end of the day she was really a character that was Gone Too Soon a shame really and in terms of morality because we never really got the chance to see her that much it's actually really hard to say all we know that is what the jester says about her in a Winter's Night lzo and also the flower in the pale flame set Senora's one true goal was always to cleanse the world of tavat a world that to her is filled with Injustice and Corruption a world that was cruel enough to take away the one person that mattered to her the most a world where a god abandoned his people and she saw the cleansing of that world in the delusion that was given to her by Pierro and in the promise made by the Serita Pierro also promises her on her death bed that she will be buried alongside the old world further confirming that was always Senor school and why she stuck around with the foule so then why not just establish all that in the main quest before you kill her off it will forever bug me because that's so much wasted potential like that's an entire tragic character Arc that we could have had but instead it's locked behind a wall of text but maybe shora will get resurrected or something I don't know but for now this is where I would Place her in my positioning map she's underdeveloped and in terms of morality she's in the fouille because she wants to watch the world that hurt her burn away so not the most moral thing you would do I don't think soraa is a morally gray character by any means I wouldn't say she's pure evil but she is completely okay with the destruction of innocent people if it means she can cleanse the world and I think that's fine not every villain character needs to be morally gray I think it's fine that we have characters that are morally bad especially the ones that we can understand we understand that Senora's actions and anger comes from grief and her inability to overcome it despite living for over five centuries it definitely doesn't make her a badly written character her criminally short screen time did now moving on to the second Harbinger that we meet Tyle Talia Ajax he is introduced in a very different way than Senora he is actually very friendly to The Traveler he even saved the traveler when they were being chased by the milleth under the suspicion of murdering leeway's archon now he didn't do all that because he just felt like helping someone he had his own ulterior motives he just has a much nicer approach than a lot of the harbingers we spent quite a bit of time with him in the Leo AR Conquest he's the one who introduced us to jeang Lee he gave us the Sigil of permission and he genuinely seemed like a nice guy he serves as a great jux toos to Senora's hostility in the Aron Quest prior to this one child does eventually come head-to-head with the traveler because he is after den nois and after he loses the fight he comes to the conclusion that morax is not dead he tries to lure him out with OS but that plan is of course thwarted by the leway chesing and The Traveler this event has always been considered the moment child showed us his true colors and how evil he is to some extent I think that's true this moment showed that child willingly gambled the lives of the people of Le in order to do his job did he want to kill all of those people no he has said that hurting innocent people is something that he doesn't want to do he says so himself that he's reluctant to summon oosile that was his last resort because it could potentially hurt a lot of people but in the end he still did it anyway anyway and yes the chesing and adep were able to defeat oosile on their own and if they somehow failed Jang Le was there to take care of the problem and again child did unleash OS while convinced that Jong is alive but if he were dead and if the chesing had failed then child would have harmed an entire nation because he wanted to obtain the nosis this is obviously not an act that a morally upstanding guy would do so does that mean child is evil I wouldn't say that he's completely evil because outside of these very extreme moment moment child seems pretty normal or as normal as an unhinged guy would be he actively looks for strong opponents to fight and he does get himself into a lot of trouble but he doesn't actively harm the innocent at least so far it's not shown that he does he sees himself as the weapon of the sitaa and will follow orders so he's more like the ultimate Soldier more than anything and as The Story Goes On child does seem to really only care about three things in his life as pointed out by this comment on my child video those three things being one his family two the sitaa and three fighting him genuinely loving his family doesn't mean he's not evil or that the things that he was willing to do Were Somehow okay he was still very much in the wrong and he will probably continue to do morally questionable things as long as it serves his interest in providing for his family helping the Serita and getting him into lots of good fights it does however make him an almost morally Great Character he's a wild card he's a villain that is unpredictable which makes him an interesting character to follow let's talk about some madeup scenarios so like what if the fatui holds his family hostage or puts them at risk which seems to be the case as implied by The Wanderer will child's loyalty towards the stre of halter will he abandon his position as a Harbinger will he sacrifice himself in order to save his family or team up with the traveler to do so if he does abandon the foule then how would he feel abandoning a cause that he himself fully believes it this kind of moral dilemma is something that I hope to see from child when we do finally get to snsh NAA next year by the way can you believe that which is why I think this is where I would Place child at least as of right now he's not a complete good guy but he's not a complete bad guy either he's shown to be nice to the people around him his subordinates The Traveler outside of that one confrontation and even some randos he met in jail but he's also someone who doesn't seem to have any qualms making decisions that could potentially harm a lot of of people and we have spent enough time with child both in the AR conquest and some events to get a sense where hoyo might be going with him as a character it's definitely enough material to make him feel like he has layers and isn't a one-note villain and of course I think we're just barely scraping the surface when it comes to child like there's still so much that we don't know about him especially stuff that's related to skark and the abyss and how the abys really changed him as a person the next Harbinger that we encounter in the game chronologically is the B Bader the ballader is actually one of the most polarizing characters in genin you either love him or you hate him in the beginning he's definitely very well note like he says and acts like a standard villain would he's very sarcastic and after being fake for a good few hours he is openly hostile towards the traveler like he actually actively tries to kill them multiple times and the more we know about his history it also actually gets worse because thanks to the husk of opulence dream artifact set and also the irodori Festival event we learned that he's responsible for the downfall of multiple blades smithing Clans specifically those related to the ryen Gaden and he does this because of an event that happened earlier in his life it's a very long story but the gist of it is that early in his life right after he woke up in the Shak Pavilion he lived alongside bladesmiths in Tatar rasuna and one of those bladesmiths who he trusted very deeply betrayed him well at least he thought so but we all know the truth behind that whole Mass so because of those events and several others that pushed Karam over the edge he decided to exact revenge on the bladesmiths by destroying the families tied to the ride and goet that and because he also hates a for abandoning him in the Shak Pavilion and later on for not agreeing to meet with him when he needed her the most but of course now we know that a was in no position to even see him even if she agreed to she was already inside the plane of euthamia when Scaro requested to see her these families of course did nothing wrong they were innocent people even the original blades Smith niwa was innocent because toor orchestrated the whole thing toor killed niwa in Cold Blood took this man's heart and then lied to Scaro that niwa was the one who murdered some random guy took his heart and ran away in shame and even if Scaro was betrayed he still chose to direct his anger on people who were completely innocent he soon got bored and stopped his killing spree and joined the fouille where he was also mean spirited and abusive towards his subordinates like he would hit them for no reason he's definitely not a favorite amongst the fouille he maintains this behavior for pretty much the entire time until we meet him in the unreconciled Stars event which again where he was very much two-faced and tried to kill the traveler as soon as he had the chance the second time we bumped into him is actually in the delusion Factory in Inazuma where he wasn't really much better he still insulted The Traveler made fun of their dead friend and tried to kill them until Yi go whooped in in suu it actually gets kind of worse because we learned that scam create the fatui since it no longer served him any purpose and ever since he was created all Scaro wanted was a nois he was created by a to hold the nosis after all so he had always felt like it belonged to him that and he's also developed a major God complex and agree to work with the grand Sage of the Academia and the doctor to achieve Divinity unlike child and Sora scar clearly has no loyalty he at this point in the story doesn't seem to care about anyone but himself like he will throw you under under the bus or kill you if it means getting what he wants but it wasn't always like this in the very beginning Scaro or the kabukim mono as he was known back then used to be very gentle he was often described as a blank slate and was very kind to the people around him he was also implied to have cared a great deal about the people of Tatar rasuna when the furnace inevitably caused the people to fall ill the kabukim mono voluntarily went all the way to narukami Island in hopes that he can persuade the ryen Shogun to help he was met with Yim Miko instead and unfortunately when the help that Yim Miko promised arrive things had already escalated in Tatar rasuna and this event only added to the kabukim monos already Brewing anger towards both humans and gods that is obviously a lot of Flore and what surprised me is that hoyu really took their time with Scaro SL The Wanderer he was introduced in 1.1 and then he shows up in inauma and was teased multiple times in events that being the Labyrinth of Warriors one and the irodori festival was essentially about him and how he was responsible in destroying the kidhar clan and then he became one of the main antagonists in suu and then he got an entire interlet Quest that was there to explore his backstory in great detail and The Wanderer did have character development I went into more detail in my 1hour Wanderer video but in my opinion while he did go through some changes he was not redeemed like he himself knows that just because now he can acknowledge that what he did was evil and hurt a lot of innocent people that doesn't automatically mean that he is redeemed after meeting nitaa and and learning the truth behind what really happened in taruna the wander learned that everything he did all of the people he hurt all of his anger was all for nothing he was able to recognize that perhaps without him the doctor would not have even been in Tatar rasuna therefore niwa and so many others might have lived Better Lives he wanted to erase himself from existence because he thought by doing so the people who unfairly lost their lives because of him would have been given a second chance in my opinion this does show that he does have some human ity in him that he does care for other people like the people of Tatar rasuna confirms that all of his actions were driven by anger and rage more than it was anything else does that justify the murder of countless innocent people no absolutely not which is why he's not redeemed he has only started his character growth and Redemption Arc even now he's still a pretty awful person like he's outwardly rude to almost everyone he meets but he does seem to at least respect naha after all she done for him and I do think that this makes him the most developed Harbinger hell I think character in the game in general we had more than enough time to understand his actions he's had an entire character Arc and has developed relationships with different characters so in my opinion SCAR or The Wanderer Falls somewhere around here on the positioning map he's not pure evil I still think that he's morally very bad even now like you can care about some people in your life and be kind and respectful toward towards those people and also you can acknowledge your past mistakes and the harm that you've done but it doesn't mean that you're automatically a good person now The Wanderer still needs a lot of work to make up for all of his past mistakes and I think with Nita's guidance he might just have a chance at Redemption next we have doore now obviously up until this point doore is not yet playable and honestly given how terrible of a person he is I'm not sure that he will be I personally think having the characters be on good terms with the child in order to be playable is kind of dumb I don't like it because I think it's very hard to make someone as irredeemable as notor playable because I have a hard time imagining The Traveler tolerating someone like him sure Scaro was terrible like mass murderer terrible but the whole point of the interlude Quest was to show the players that he had no real autonomy of his own life he was merely a puppet pun intended and guess who was basically the puppet master that pushed Scaro over the edge and murdered NWA on screen if murder wasn't enough for you the Tor is also responsible for human experiments one of his victims is Kay he also had the fatui kidnpped children so that he could lure the arinara out and experiment on them because you know only children can see the arinara like every super villain thing you can think of this guy has probably done it he even has hor cruxes running around before nahita made a deal with him to destroy them and that deal cost her the electron nois he was also only able to create these for cruxes or segments of himself after he experimented on scar Mo for years on end and as pointed out by Senora those experiments were not pleasant not even a backstory can make him sympathetic at this point like it would be very difficult to pain Dori as someone that is redeemable or even morally great this guy is just pure evil and I think that's fine again not every villain needs to be morally great sometimes it actually helps to establish a spectrum and make the more morally gray characters feel actually well morally gray with the existence of characters like the Tor the other characters like child Scara mush and Senora all feel like they're not as bad now do they like they're still bad but in the presence of a character that's pure evil it puts things in perspective d t toé is interesting to me because he's barely on screen and isn't playable yet but he already has so much lore surrounding him and all of them are terrible like wherever this guy goes there's always chaos he's like the boogeyman of GHIN at this point we know from the pale flame artifact set that he was always keen on making enhanced humans even as a student in his Academia days which is later elaborated that his desire to find ways to enhance humans is so that they could be on the same playing field as the gods he was of course expelled from the Academia after multiple misconducts and apparently being suspected of murder of a fellow student it's never confirmed but it's implied that dor murdered a student and then reported to the Academia that she died from a tiger attack while she was exploring the jungle with him on an expedition she was later exhumed and there were hints that there was F play in her death he would also use body parts of deceased elazar victims to treat elazar like the ones implied on the notes found in the abandoned elazar Hospital in the desert kle who is also a victim of notorious elazar treatment somehow ended up with God remains inside her that is later on sealed by Soo he also worked very closely with crus Saina who was the predecessor of arino and who was the one making orphan children kill each other the children that survived crus saina's sick games were either sent to dangerous missions or to dor where most of if not all of them ended up dead but clearly dor has no problems in experimenting with children body parts krian technology Aron residue and even Forbidden Knowledge there is nothing that will stop the Tor in in the name of research so for now I will put him on this side of the map like I don't know maybe this spite age like milk and maybe hoyo will find ways to redeem him but for now it's pretty safe to say that the guy is pure evil last but definitely not least is ARL Kino now she's actually the entire reason I wanted to make this video because she's what I would call morle Gray at least amongst the harbingers she's the antagonist but she's never really done anything that's harmed The Traveler like even in the Fontaine in archon quest she was mostly in the background and didn't do any of the Dirty Work in hunting down the noses she mostly intimidates everyone and shows up to say cryptic stuff while the children of the House of the Hearth do the sleuthing for her she does try to murder Farina though but changes her mind as soon as she realizes that finina might not hold the nosis or is even the archon of Fontaine which is interesting to me because then it seems like arle Kino isn't really one to kill unless it's for a purpose or if it's for Revenge there's also the fact that it her story Quest she's shown to care very deeply about the children of the house she willingly worked with the doctor so that they could leave the house and live normal lives if they wanted to without having to be executed because they knew too much she also didn't punish Linny Lynette and F for their betrayal this is obviously because she was once a child of the house herself who had it a lot worse because she grew up under an actual psychopath F does speak a lot about this and how when AR leino became in charge of the house of The Hearth a lot changed but at the end of the day she is still using these children as agents of War it's a known fact that once the children of the House of the Hearth grow up some of them are chosen to be part of the foule either serving directly under arino herself or the other harbingers she's manipulative she's ruthless and she's very much capable of coldblooded murder the bar that crus Saina set was literally underground okay compared to her it's easy to make someone look like a good person obvious obvously arino is supposed to be more complex than crusina like she's supposed to have more layers her motivations aren't as shallow as her predecessor in fact we still don't know what she really wants but it doesn't seem to be torturing children or murdering innocent people or even wanting to see the world burn which is what makes her so great like despite everything she went through it's not like she's taking out her anger on the world the same way Scara Moosh or even shora did like as far as we know she's essentially the same same person she murdered crusina after clery died but once the person responsible for her pain is gone she's still as ruthless as ever which again I like because I think it makes her different from senora and Scaro where their pain became the source of their anger I think it's also interesting that despite everything that she went through she still believes that the system set in place by crusina is still necessary not the Hunger Games part but the part where certain rules cannot be broken in order to ensure the safety of the house and the children despite all of her reforms arino does still enforce one vital Rule and that is loyalty now I don't know how long she's had her Flames engineered like we know based on what Linny said that she was approached by the doctor fairly early on but we don't know when she was able to use those Flames so before she could does that mean she had to kill the children who wanted to leave based on the way she was adamant about adhering to the rules I don't think it's that farfetch but she did try to find a way to make sure that she doesn't have to kill them anymore I also think that her backstory was never intended to make her sympathetic I think it's there just to make the players understand her and her actions better AR Lino can feel pain and be a victim of abuse and is suffering from trauma but she can also be guilty of basically grooming children into being soldiers those two things don't have to be mutually exclusive I guess there was a high expectation of her to be this ruthless psychopath because of what child and The Wander had to say about her which either means that they're unreliable narrators or that we've only been scratching the surface when it comes to our Lino I think it's also stated or implied somewhere that arino actually lets people believe what they want to believe about her because it works to her Advantage so The Wanderer and child having this complete misconception about who she is is actually pretty believable as of now we only know her backstory and not much else and that backstory was already fully shown in a fully 2D animated video released by hoyo and it's ultimately an exploration of her relationship with the house of the Heth and its children we still don't know anything about her Heritage and why she's special and has special powers but from what we have seen as the traveler she can show a lot of compassion towards her own kin despite being a Harbinger Yes again she's grooming child soldiers and is completely fine with them being in danger but she will also mourn the loss of their lives and has apparently murdered the people responsible this behavior that we have seen so far allows her to have nuance and Nuance automatically makes her a more interesting character and villain we are left in a place where we actually don't know what she will do next she's tolerable to The Traveler because she's never done anything directly to them and their companions but let's say later on if we come face to face with the Nave and are on opposite sides what will she do this dichotomy is actually perfect for her because now I don't know what she'll actually do in a situation where the well-being of the children of the house of the Hearth isn't on the line because that does seem to be the only thing that she cares about this is a question that I personally don't have an answer to because we really still don't know enough about her despite knowing so much of her backstory and having spent a good amount of time with her during our time in Fontaine and with that this is where I would place arlino now please let me know if you disagree with this and why and also where you think they might land I personally think the harbingers so far are probably the most interesting group of people to follow they're all awful people to an extent but the ones we know as of now are surprisingly distinct from one another like hoyo did a really good job in making them feel like actual human beings and actual characters they're pretty much complete with Back stories motivations and moral principles that are vastly different yet they're all working for this reset and towards one common goal at least for now it's an interesting Dynamic and I wish we got more Harbinger interactions because this unique Dynamic is what makes them fun to watch and follow like that interaction between arino and child that was very short and nothing really happens but it's still entertaining to me because I found it funny that child kept asking seemingly harmless questions that are actually Vital Information like why arino is called father instead of mother which begs the question is that why villains are so popular in this case why are the harbingers so popular like to have a good villain they have to be memorable and they have to be interesting or at least entertaining and I think the harbingers are more than entertaining they serve the same person but they're also distinct from one another like some of them are loyal some of them are purely acting based on self-interest they are a very unhinged group of people like do Tor is there because the fatui can fund his crazy research child just wants to fight and have a good time and provide for his family the W was basically just passing time there and thought it would be fun which is why he bolted the moment he got bored and wanted to do something else Senora was there to see the world burn and AR like you know not entirely clear yet on why she's serving the Serita it could because she wants to take care of the children but who knows and I'm pretty sure the jester is aware of this which also makes me wonder why he and the Sera would place all of their cards on people who are basically impossible to control I mean look at Scaro he turned his back on them as soon as he got his hands on the noses unfortunately that's all we know of the harbingers so far I want to place all of the harbingers on the positioning map but we literally know nothing about them other than their names and Crumbs from voice lines that's apparently not even 100% reliable now so we'll just have to wait and that's all I have to say for now was there a point to this video probably not I just wanted an excuse to talk about them because I like them as characters and I think they're pretty easily misunderstood as characters also so yeah thanks for watching subscribe if you want if not that's okay and I'll see you in the next one bye