Fair enough. I wouldn't be against a revision that leaned more towards the Emperor being the friendlier, more heroic version you describe, although I'm not entirely sure whether that's where I feel like the fundamentals of him currently are. There are times when the game tries very hard to convince us of that, while I feel like a lot of the subtext leans the other way. Obviously, the answer could be to try to address some of those things that currently lean towards seeing the Emperor as a sociopath (We were all there for the scene where he talks about what a beautiful sight it is to have someone captive under his control, right?) but that really was not my impression with the character.
Though, specifically about
Balduran. My main issue with this is that Balduran was NEVER "my hero" -- he has no bearing on 90% of this story. In a different story, where we had a real sense of Balduran as a heroic figure that we personally looked up, finding out that the Emperor is Balduran might indeed have that kind of message. That is not the story we experienced, though. That's my main issue with it. And because they've gone and used that here, now Balduran is forever locked out from getting a proper story like that.
You are right that designing the Dream Guardian wouldn't make as much sense if it was their original form, and I wouldn't care if they stuck with the idea that the Emperor chose this form to play to our expectations. But unless they are going to be a character whose history is strongly intertwined with the story of this current game, I do think it would be better for them not to have one, rather than name-dropping someone who means very little to the player.
