Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
That having been said, I feel like the Emperor is one of those situations where the character's nuance is kind of an accident, a result of inconsistencies working in Larian's favor (at least to the opinion of some like you).The various inconsistencies and issues indicate to me that there was just a general disunity in the writer's room and they were just trying to get him to work for his function, which is primarily a mechanical story function. I think you see that in the Balduran reveal because it's very meaningless in the context of the game. Balduran isn't a meaningful figure in the game's story. It's not like he was brought up repeatedly as a person to be admired or anything like that. He's just a guy who founded an important city. He was presumably a famous adventurer but aside from founding the city, how many of his deeds to we actually hear about throughout the game? Making the emperor Balduran doesn't make any themes stronger, it's just a name that's meant to be a big reveal but is probably not going to mean anything significant to the majority of the players. To me that indicates that they felt the Emperor wasn't working and were trying to scrounge up something to improve him and made that very blatant, lackluster attempt.

Thank you for your feedback. I read an interview with The Emperor’s voice actor, Scott Joseph, that I’ll link here if anyone wants to check it out. It came out after I had written my original post, but in the interview he talks about finding The Emperor’s voice - both his actual voice and his movements. He discusses portraying emotion and vulnerability in his role, so I don’t think his nuance is an accident, but I do think there was disunity in the writer’s room. The romance scene is actually a great example of this. It’s this very sweet romantic scene that clearly had a lot of thought and care put into it. However, it’s probably most infamous for the companions walking in looking completely disgusted in this moment that feels like tonal whiplash. I guess it’s funny for the players who “did it for the achievement,” but for players who enjoy this character and wanted to explore a monster romance outside of the typical hot vampire option, it feels very out of place. I almost feel like you can tell exactly when Swen bulldozes his way into the process and undermines the careful work of his creative team.

I also think you make a lot of good points with the Balduran reveal. Establishing his lore beforehand would have gone a long way in setting up the reveal to feel more significant to the story as a whole.