“Hunter, the Guild authorizes” is so damn cool

[u/EnderDracon]

The handler in wilds feels so much less like some sidekick and more of a HANDLER. Like, we’re the guild’s blade and she is the hand that guides us. The guild has given her FULL AUTONOMY to act on their behalf, and she alone can decide what we are hunting. The lines also came at really good times during cutscenes and overall just fed the vibes lol. Especially the final fight of low rank? SHIVERS

[u/DemonLordSparda]

He's a kid, and he learned a rather surprising thing about Wyvern Milk and artificial monsters. He dealt with it by relating his situation to Arkveld's. It's relatively common in the innocent to extend empathy to the things around them. It felt reasonable to me.

[u/GladiatorDragon → u/DemonLordSparda]

And then when we have to kill it, it terrifies him, because that makes it seem like if he makes a bad choice without knowing any better, he’s next.

[u/MrChilliBean → u/GladiatorDragon]

I mean, there's bad choices and then there's becoming a literal mindless killing machine that exists only to violently kill everything it sees

The story was way too rushed to earn that emotional pay-off. It came off as hollow when just a couple of hours earlier, we were fully ready to just annihilate Arkveld. If we'd gotten a couple more scenes that showed Arkveld as misunderstood, I might have felt something, but as it stood we'd only ever seen it causing massive amounts of damage, so when the time came to hunt it I felt absolutely no remorse even though the game clearly wanted me to question the ethics of it. Arkveld did nothing to earn the benefit of the doubt.

[u/G3sch4n → u/MrChilliBean]

It would have been a better pay off if somehow it was made clear that Arkveld only gorged on energy to be able to fight Zoh Shia to protect the other guardians and the keepers.

[u/PookAndPie → u/G3sch4n]

I thought this is where the story was headed.

Rather than Arkveld having its joker moment and becoming addicted to blood and meat, I thought they were going to do something like "Arkveld is sacrificing its body to do its final act as guardian to protect Wyveria from Zoh Shia" or something.

Which would have been Primordial Malzeno 2 Hunter Boogaloo, but I'd have no issues with that, really.

[u/MrChilliBean → u/G3sch4n]

Is that actually what it was doing, or is that what you'd do to fix it? If the former, where is that information given, because that would go a long way to making the Arkveld sympathy more understandable.

[u/G3sch4n → u/MrChilliBean]

That is what I would do to fix the story. The sympathy for Arkveld kind of feels out of place, since the transition from "kill it with fire" to "please do not kill it" is so abrupt and the disregard for the monsters being eaten is kind of insane. Nobody with a working brain would see Arkveld over a mountain of bodies and think "oh the poor victim". But Arkveld being an anti-hero, that does abhorrent things for the greater good would make more sense and allow for the sympathy.

[u/MrChilliBean → u/G3sch4n]

Ah okay yeah I agree. From the wording of your first comment I wasn't sure if this information was buried somewhere in a text file or something.

But yeah, they desperately needed to flesh out Arkveld if they wanted the player to feel any sympathy towards it.

[u/G3sch4n → u/MrChilliBean]

I would have preferred a retcon type story. It would not change much either. You arrive at the massacre, everybody is shocked, you decide to kill it. The whole Nata bit about keeping it alive simply does not happen. And once you reach the real villain, you have a vocal epiphany about how it was absorbing the energy to slow down the end boss and you as a hunter/handler kind of fucked up. That is your reward for being hasty with judging and emotional. And the villain isn't a construct, but an elder dragon to explain the discrepancy in behaviour.

[u/Shradow → u/DemonLordSparda]

Yeah the end result made perfect sense I just feel like maybe one more mission in between would have helped the pacing of it a bit.