Mysterious Villain
Mysterious Villain
February 28, 2021
There’s been a lot of interest in this unused character in the ROM data:
It can be found among the Emperor’s bodyguards, so it may have been replaced by one that appears in the final game. It may be unfinished or even a test, as evidenced by the simple palette and lack of defining features. According to the programmer regrs, this character and Fanha are the only two generals with a complete set of animations. He also mentioned that it was likely replaced by Sheex, considering that it’s next to the other generals in the game’s memory, but Sheex is off somewhere else.
My theory is that that was supposed to be Dyluck!Thanatos. Maybe Thanatos took over Dyluck’s body earlier in an earlier draft? This could have been the form that Thanatos greeted the crew in in the Mana Fortress.
The white-and-gold palette definitely fits in with Dyluck’s good guy image, and has a sparkly-clean look. (Probably even has that “new body” smell that’ll be replaced all-too-soon with Thanatos’s grotty lich funk.)
As was said, there has been a lot of interest in this unused character. I might be misremembering this, but I believe that there were more musings made on this subject on the old website.
One such that I might be mis-remembering was the idea that this sprite could be a religious/cult disguise for Thanatos in the early game. There is a noticeable lack of story to explain the temple ruins and strange statues within such, or even what drew people to gather in the ruins in the first place. His garb is very similar to papal garments, the white robes with heavy gold accents tends to envoke ideas of holy and powerful person. The face of this character is conspicuously shadowed, also lending itself to perceived anominity of the character.
This theory seems to do a pretty good job of filling in some gaps, such as the previous mentioned motivations of the villagers to gather and be drained of life force, and why emperor Vandol would be so willing to trust an obvious lich.