What we had in Early Access, as I often find to be the case. Daisy wasn't perfect, a little too obviously wanted to seduce us into committing atrocities, but it was a stronger foundation for the mystery and the manipulation. I still don't understand why it had to be reworked as extensively as it was. It's not like it didn't work, it was just that there was no plausible deniability so the feedback reflected that. The Guardian is a far cry from the intent of that feedback, as was stripping Wyll of everything interesting about his backstory. Complete overreactions to the general vibe of "wow a lot of this is looking more evil than we expected." Toning down how strong Daisy comes at you out of the gate so that we could get to the real in-depth parts that weren't in Early Access instead of completely replacing it with an entirely separate entity would've been far closer to the intent of most of the feedback I ever saw, and following that example with other reworks probably would have saved a fair bit more time. The only complete rework I fully agree with related to this is how the tadpole powers work now. The progression of whatever transformation was happening in Early Access was VERY INTERESTING but unfortunately also guaranteed a shitload of players were never going to use a single power beyond maybe freeing Shadowheart right at the start, and if they wanted the world to react to what stage of transformation you were at beyond Act 1 that might've been a bit of a nightmare.
The Emperor isn't a bad character to have here, the Guardian role is ALMOST as good, but the problem is exactly that it isn't as good as what we were originally going to get and like many things that got reworked there are still artifacts of what we were originally going to get littering the game punching little holes in the consistency of what we now have. The biggest problem by far however is just that the Emperor makes no sense if you want to do the most reasonable thing in the big moment of choice between him and Orpheus. Deny becoming a Mindflayer or letting him eat Orpheus as many people will and after going on extensively about wanting his freedom he just gives up and spitefully goes back under its control voluntarily. And like the reason the Mass Effect 3 endings suck so much, that seems to happen SPECIFICALLY to force you into a bad choice. Totally nonsensical contrivance that I can only imagine was made because they assumed it'd be another case of "if we don't attempt to force it, 95% of players won't choose it themselves." What would the scenario have been if we had Daisy? Probably more interesting than what we got, and the Emperor could have been off being interesting as the character he was originally supposed to be.
this is a great feedback.
emperor's background shows too heavy burden and daisy is a better one for the role -- dream guardian.
i think that tav should counterattack emperor or daisy in the early act 3 and have a result.
if tav believe emperor or daisy give the 3 stones to him/her, this will lead a bad end in later act 3 to tav.
the screenwritter shouldn't put the issue choice so late in the final, to force you into a bad choice, and mislead tav's destiny hold by emperor -- a untrustable one.