Bak'al Lore Rework

So, Bak'al has been in the lore for a very very long time now and of all the things that have gotten reworks both lore-wise and gameplay-wise, I'm surprised that Bak'al has never been one of them.
I'll skip to the point: I think Bak'al is an extremely boring one-note villain and also one that isn't even present for 99% of the game's story other than the Secret Discoveries which are all in the past.
He's just a boring "super strong bad guy" who kinda also conflicts with the concept of Corruption. And nothing about him has any answers, I presume because his lore is really old and plot holes weren't necessarily a concern back then.
Why is his intelligence unaffected by corruption? We don't know. How does he control the other corrupted? We don't know. Why is he, an embodiment of chaos, working for the Dern Beast? We don't know. Does he have his strength back and if so, why isn't he attacking anything? We don't know.

I know that these are things that can be addressed in new content, but that doesn't fix the problem that he's kinda built up as the "main villain" of the Wynn province by all the secret discoveries and yet... he just doesn't even exist there.
His first and only interaction with the player in the entire game (not counting A Hunter's Calling) is in Realm of Light V in Gavel, and even then, he's almost exclusively interacting with Lari instead of you.
I think Bak'al is long overdue for a lore and personality rework.

So, here are the things I would address with Bak'al's lore and how I would address them.

Early Role:
For obvious reasons I don't think Bak'al should directly interact with the player until they are at a somewhat decent level. Instead, Bak'al could have cameos silently watching you complete dungeons, spawning corrupted and disappearing if you notice him. Perhaps he could also directly appear in Wynn below a certain level and upon encountering him, he just spawns a bunch of corrupted and leaves because he is too busy or indifferent to do any more. It could even be as simple as him being the one who summons the goliaths that appear in Wynn.

Personality:
Bak'al as I've mentioned is extremely boring. Just your average ol' emotionless "kill everyone" villain. So here's my idea.
Within the secret discoveries and early encounters, Bak'al would be either mostly silent or just stoically command the corrupted, basically what he is right now. But when he talks to the player in a new medium-level corruption questline (see Story) and in Realm of Light V, Bak'al should speak and act like a casual guy with a sense of humor, basically like Emet-Selch from FFXIV meets Hades from Kid Icarus. This would make him more off-putting with how otherwise murderous he is and give him an actual personality to add flair to his interactions with the player. It's always cool when a villain can just be a chill guy one second and then switch on a dime to be terrifying.

Story:
With his much more regular demeanor to the player and sense of humor, I think Bak'al should be a recurring character of a new corruption-driven questline in which the player tries to figure out how the Portal destroys people's minds and intelligence, and why Bak'al is seemingly unaffected. This questline would presumably be at least higher than level 40 and throughout the questline Bak'al himself would appear and directly introduce himself to the player in an offputtingly friendly fashion, and over the course of the questline he will sometimes accompany you and half-mockingly cheer for you, as if he's your best friend.
You could have an option to ask him why he acts so friendly, and he responds that he treats most people the same way he treats the corrupted; he thinks they are just as mindless as the corrupted, and you're the only one worth being civil to. You could also have the option to be aggressive and insult him which he just plays off as a joke instead of getting offended. Exactly what happens would of course be up to the CT but what's important is that this would build a direct connection between the protagonist and the villain. I think it would also make A Hunter's Calling make more sense as an "alternative future", as it could potentially be the future Bak'al is trying to turn you towards.

This questline would all culminate in a revelation that besides his appearance, Bak'al was always the way he is now and the realm of war simply gave him more power to do what he wants; entering the portal only breaks the minds of those who are afraid or even mildly uncertain of it (hence why Theorick was corrupted), and Bak'al wasn't. The corrupted only follow Bak'al in the same way wild animals heed the strongest.

Conclusion:
I think Bak'al as he is currently portrayed is just really boring, one-note, and has no goals or motivations to make him a reasonable villain. I think that making the mass-murderer into just a chill guy if you're a high enough level not only makes a lot of sense as a manipulative villain, but also builds an important connection between the player character and the villain. It also fits really well into the serious but sometimes comical tone of Wynncraft.
The only other villain I can think that has a comical tone when talking to the player is the Antikythera Supercomputer, but that seems to be unintentional from his perspective and more of just Wynncraft itself having a sense of humor.

But anyways, what do you guys think?

 

You don't know yet. Wynncraft is not a closed book, and Bak'al's character is not fully told. Just because there isn't an explanation now doesn't mean we don't have one that'll come in the future.

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So my answer is no, this isn't a good idea. Your portrayal of him does not match his character and there are reasons we are yet to revealed more of his story. You can't make complete judgements on a character you don't know much about, and it's honestly a bit ridiculous to expect a fanon rewrite to fit with the canon plans.
Like seriously, imagine you go up to an author writing a series and say that a character that you know little about needs to be rewritten, without having any clue as to what the contents of the other books yet to release might have. It's absurd.

 

I directly addressed this already. Even if you wanted to say that it these questions haven't been addressed yet, for one, that's not even my or anyone else's fault except the game itself so you cannot call my or anyone else's desire to rewrite him "ridiculous".
This post was essentially me saying politely "hey, this guy's lore has been boring for years now and almost nothing has been done with him, I think we should rework him",
only for you to say "you're rewriting Bak'al just because he hasn't been properly utilized in almost a decade? That's ridiculous! How absurd!" and that's just really fucking rude of you.

He is built up to be a major villain of Wynn and yet just doesn't exist. You may argue that it's a misread of the lore but it's one that any normal person would make given the same circumstances.
This is like if Warframe built up the Man in the Wall as the main villain of the new storyline but you never actually encountered him, and their response to that criticism is "but he might be in the next expansion! You don't know!"

If you want to tell me there are plans for Bak'al, then by all means I support that. But instead you just randomly decide to start insulting me for justifiably thinking that there aren't any when he's existed in the lore for literally almost a decade now and the only plot relevance he has to Wynncraft is in Secret Discoveries, a cameo at the end of Realm of Light, and a what-if scenario in A Hunter's Calling.
This just comes across as you being a condescending ass because I don't know something that only the content team would know.

 

You cannot look at me and tell me with a straight face that you don't think we'd ever plan on answering the countless unanswered questions surrounding Bak'al. You cannot pretend like it isn't above and beyond obvious we aren't done with him when he's still relevant at the current end of the game.
And yes, proposing a fanon rework of the lore for a character you don't know the lore of is ridiculous.

 

I would like to add for clarification that I do not think Bak'al's current minimal presence in the early game is great. I think he should be slightly more relevant, especially in dialogue.
He is not, however, really the main villain of the Wynn province. There is a huge gap in him doing anything between the events of SE's ultimate and Realm of Light 5-- in other words, he doesn't really have the presence he formerly did.
Bak'al is less of an active, immediate threat like Annihilation, and more of something simmering in the background. That's kind of why you learn of him from things he's done as opposed to things he's doing.

 

The only sense I had regarding Bak'al is that it might eventually get answered, but the problem is that I had the idea that it might get answered several years ago as well, and nothing has truly progressed since then.
So yes, here I am looking at you and telling you that I truly thought that there were little to no plans for Bak'al, so little that it would be completely reasonable to rework him entirely. I treated the current Bak'al as being in the same boat as any other lore ever to be outdated and get reworked. There are even other characters within Wynncraft's lore that specifically fall under this category that I fully expect to be reworked.

Tell me, if I made this exact same post about, say, Orphion a few years ago before 1.20 would you have the same volatile reaction throwing insults around and calling me "ridiculous" and "absurd" for thinking to rework a character that isn't being used? You shouldn't, because that's the entire point of a suggestion. I didn't really want to go here but you seem to be proving my past point that you have no concept whatsoever of what a suggestion is meant to accomplish, and the only reason I didn't ever go there is because I never thought you would ever be this condescending to me or anyone else over a suggestion.

All you had to say was "there are plans for Bak'al". Genuinely, what is your problem? What is your beef?

 

Just by the fact he has some relation to the Realm Beast of Darkness, and the Realm of Darkness is upcoming content, it's kind of easy to see that he's still going to be relevant.
Its been several years as you've said because Wynncraft updates take several years.

I apologize if I insulted you (I do not see any insults looking back on what I wrote, but if what I said was hurtful to you, then I am sorry). My frustration is for the idea, not you.
It felt a bit insulting, as a lore writer, to have someone effectively suggest we just forgot about a character, when it seems so obvious we have plans for them.

Honestly that is fair. I used language that was too aggressive. I felt provoked after your response where you cussed me out.

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It doesn't feel polite. It feels condesending. I think if you were in my position, you'd feel the same way.

While I should've been more gentle with my initial comment, this is exactly how it feels, not that it justifies me not taking the time to weed out the evident frustrations in what I wrote.

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It's like if I was Toby Fox and you were suggesting I needed to rewrite Berdley's character in Chapter 1 because your interpretation of Berdley based on the 2/7ths of the story you've seen isn't done well, completely disregarding the other 5 Chapters where he's featured.

 

The point is, within Wynncraft there are tons of forgotten ideas waiting to be reworked and revisited but there is next to no indication for players to know that something is ever going to return, except as a rework. I mean, using the old pre-1.20 Orphion and the Heliolux as an example, for all we knew there could have been more stuff brewing with them but we wouldn't know because the line between things being forgotten and things being intentionally vague is incredibly thin.
For your Toby Fox comparison, I know for a fact that Toby Fox has plans for all of his characters because he didn't have to build his lore off of something that was originally just "Minecraft but with MMO mechanics", nor does he ever go back and rework old lore that he considers outdated. Wynncraft however is incredibly inconsistent with its lore, and even major things in the lore are never immune to being reworked or updated (case in point, The Nether).

Using the idea of creepers as a more current example, the old Creeper Infiltration is still in the game today... but Garoth's creeper lore was reworked... but the old Garoth is still in the Forgery... but toxic creepers were going to be removed... but then they're not... so what's going on here? Are creepers in the lore or not? That's Wynncraft lore in a nutshell. We don't know these things unless a CT comes up and says it. And that's not me insulting the lore or the work of the people making it, that's just me using a example to point out that expectations are all but impossible.

Also, I never even knew the Realm of Darkness was confirmed to be upcoming content because one CT cryptically mentioned that "Dern isn't coming after Fruma", which until now I didn't know if they meant that it wasn't coming at all or that it was just going to be more than 2 updates away (and your response here seems to imply the latter) and that led me to believe that any content regarding the Dern Beast and by extension Bak'al was a very long time away, if ever in development at all. Yeah, the portal is there, but Wynncraft is not only wildly inconsistent with its foreshadowing but it's also an MMO, a genre infamous for the amount of blueballing it does to players. Looking at you Bungie, making me an Iron Lord and then never revisiting that idea again.

Also also, my original post here was never in any way intended to be condescending in any way whatsoever. The only negative thing I said in it was that Bak'al was a boring one-note villain which is just simple criticism of his character, and I will absolutely defend that point. You may disagree with that but at the end of the day, I simply have criticism of Bak'al's personality (or lack thereof) and I wanted to make a suggestion for how I would fix it.

 

I completely agree that from what you currently see of Bak'al, he is very much a one note villain. Because you do not yet know his origin, motivation, why he retained his intelligence, why he's serving the Realm Beast of Darkness, and a bunch of other things related to his character, basically all you have to work off presently is that he's malign and destroys stuff.

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It's definitely easier for me, as a CT who basically knows all of the stuff in each update, to see the trail that shows that Bak'al is still relevant. As an example, recently he had his skin updated-- and even more recently, the whispers of the past accessible from the towers around Ragni Outskirts and Nivla were altered to include a visual of him.

A player wouldn't necessarily be aware of this, and I should've thought about that perspective more thoroughly

 

I think a big thing about these questions regarding Bak'al is that I don't know (until now of course) if they're questions the game itself wants to answer, or if they're just plot holes. I didn't know how to put this into words before but I'll try to explain. This is something I call a Lightfall moment.

Spoiler: Lightfall moment

D2: Lightfall spends its entire campaign talking about getting to "The Veil". They say this over and over and over again for hours and when it's over, it's never even explained what The Veil is. But not only that, but none of the characters even question what the Veil is, making it impossible for the player to understand if the characters even know what it is or if it's just a plot hole.
This is why Lightfall is panned by players.

These questions I mentioned regarding Bak'al fall under this category; a player can't know if it's an important piece of Bak'al's lore that he's still intelligent after being corrupted, or if it's a plot hole that the characters don't care about. This and others are what I refer to as "Lightfall moments".
I don't have a problem with these questions being answered later, but it should be evident that it's an actual lore question wanting to be answered instead of a plot hole.

Obviously you imply here that these are not just plot holes but my point is any Lightfall moments like this can be avoided by having any character ask the question even if nobody can answer it yet, because that shows that it's a question that other characters want to be answered and makes it a new question that the player is excited to have answered.

Also just so this is clear, "Lightfall moment" isn't an insult to you, the CT, or even the lore, it's an insult to Lightfall.

 

DANG HES HIM

 

I'm just gonna say this: On my first playthrough, I had no idea who Bak'al was (or that he even existed) until fate of the fallen. That is the FIRST place Bak'al was mentioned at the time that wasn't a secret. It wasn't even immediately clear that Bak'al is a guy who is still intelligent after portal encounter, I thought Bak'al was some kind of corrupted creature, as the line goes "The last man that entered the portal and returned became Bak'al...", with it not being evidently clear that Bak'al is THE Bak'al rather than A Bak'al.

additionally, Watchmen, (Wynn Plains SD) I had completed, despite being ENTIRELY about Bak'al's attack on ragni, had no actual explanation of who "oh it's him" was referring to, though that seems to have been addressed (let me tell you I thought they were talking about CHARON)

So yeah, this guy who's meant to be at least somewhat integral to the lore in the early game is completely ignored except by SDs, and while I agree with Deus, I also agree with OP on this one. He should probably have a larger early-game story presence, mostly because that is WHERE he caused the most havoc and stuff.

basically bak'al does have a lot of issues

 

That's the biggest issue people have.
We do not know anything. And and lore we do get is either told off screen or gets forgotten and rewritten every few years.
This has been going on for years and years and it's pretty resonable for the community to be tired of it all.
Same thing happend when Gavel was being released. No content for years and people just lost interest in the game.
Recent years had been WAY more transparent, but this isn't really a transparency issue but more of ann issue where we just have no real lore, because there's nothing really there and when something is there there's so little of it you can't really make things out.
I get the development time takes, well time, but you can't expect the lore community to survive off the same information with only a promise that EVENTUALLY it will get updated.

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To add to this what you CAN do is:
Add very small lore additions, like having new npcs tell stories about the past, like who is Bak'al or what he did.
Add some new lore to items that reference eent that happend like the lore of Immolation does.

 

This actually isn't really the case. Stuff might be added onto pre-existing lore, but that is not a rewrite. The only real rewrite has been scrapping the lore from before the game was taken seriously. From the perspective of a community member, it can seem like we are rewriting a bunch of stuff, but in reality it was already rewritten a while ago and it's just slowly being updated.

 

Why don’t we have a new thread in Your Work where people can write their specific lore ideas, and this thread can be for discussing general plans for updates and CT philosophy?

 

I think the reason for this suggestion is that it's pretty obvious to both players and CT that the Wynn Province is somewhat lacking in midgame (lvl 40-75) content. Characters like Bob and Bak'al are not as well fleshed-out as they could be, and as Desuphage pointed out:

CT is well aware of the glaring issues in the storyline from back before Wynn's standard of quality was raised. They are slowly and steadily making their way through these reworks, but things like this take time. They're trying to finish these reworks while also adding a whole new, fully fleshed out province for endgame players to enjoy.

 

If you haven't noticed, we've been slowly updating the game since 2.0, starting from early game. We're at level 30 quests now

 

I was thinking that Bak'al would be mainly more of an end-game villain, as in the early game he can't be bothered with someone as weak as a Lv 1 - 25 player, and would gain more interest in you after you defeat, say the Parasite or The Eye, as they were very strong foes.
And maybe we'll see more of him in later updates- not Fruma probably since corruption doesn't exist there.
But it would be nice to have more early-game references, like you know the citizen near the flame patch in Ahmsord who talks about Siegfrieds fight with the dragon? Maybe we could have a singed crater on the Emerald Trail, and a citizen saying something like

"See this hole? This is where the legendary hero Bob fought the corrupt warlord Bak'al in 885AP! And Bob won- easily!"

Either way some early game Bak'al references would be nice :)

 

B-but
You skipped the Nemract quests :( I know grave digger but Dwelling walls? Dark descent??LOST TOWER???? no but fr yeah new quests are fire