I’ll get blasted to oblivion for this. I don’t care. Just had some ideas and wanted to put them out there for what the Vessel of Hatred could have been with the same characters and basic plot points but in way that we would have been more invested in than the multiple disconnected deaths during a long meandering set of fetch quests that just fell totally flat for most of us.
SPOILERS BELOW
- Massively play up Urivar as the villain. Lots more scenes with him and interactions with him.
- Eru becomes unhinged as the things he loves are taken away. We’re really starting to lose him.
- Mephisto has found a vessel, but we don’t know who. It’s revealed to be Urivar.
- Eru almost betrays us, but Neyrelle figures it out and with Akarat talks him back from the edge. Akarat brings Maka back to life but tells us he cannot fight Mephisto directly but knows a way to weaken him.
- Akarat directs us to the spirit realm and we kill the spirit god but in a much more meaningful fight where we talk to him and try to bring him back to sanity but we can’t. He sacrifices himself but instead of the heart literally being eaten, it is a spirit heart that is literally absorbed by Neyrelle who now has a shield protecting her from Mephisto.
- Mephisto angrily realizes he’s lost Neyrelle and so now strengthens his hold over Urivar.
- We then fight Urivar and we have a war of words as well as a physical battle where we tell Urivar how he has betrayed Inarius. He hesitates and Mephisto burns him up.
- Now Akarat, knowing he will lose his life, engages an epic battle with Mephisto. We try to help during the fight but get cast aside as the battle becomes more epic.
- Akarat dies but Mephisto is gravely weakened and his power is contained. Neyrelle makes it her purpose, since she was chanting the whole time about Akarat, to remember him and share what he told her.
- Eru goes back to the council and we, the wanderer who has unwittingly spread so much harm, has the opportunity to make amends by helping Eru regain the trust of Ormus.