Shiro's Not Such A Bad Guy... **spoilers**

I've got to agree with 2ndname on that.

I have a great story to place in the gaps of this.

the old 200 year ago emperior had descovered a way to live forever, his body would be preserved against age by stealing the life force of the ones he kills, but his body is already quite old, and so he unearths a spell that will let him take the body of one who kills him. So he find the strongest warrior in the land and hires a peasent to pretend to be a fortune teller and reel shiro in. The emperiors plan goes right.

He says the incantation just as Shiro strikes him down, The soul of the Emperior leaves his body and consumes Shiro's soul. From there the Luxons and kurzicks that were on the island attack, so The now Emperior starts his body preservation spell and kills anyone that comes near, but he has underestimated the warriors and is quickly struck down, and when he dies the spell of presurvation he was charging explodes into what was known as the Jade wind, preserving the majority of Cantha, in the state it was in.

The end result, the emperiors Soul having consumed Shiro's has taken its appearance, and the great warrior Shiro was to be given the great Honor of being inducted as a Envoy upon his death, the Emperior uses this as his advantage and works toward his goal of regaining his body, and beginning his spell of preservation anew.

His spirit connection between the new emperior and himself is do to the new emperior being one of his decendants. Which is a requirement for his reincarnation spell, he must use the blood of his body, but since his body is long gone, a decendants is the next best thing.

He is reborn, and is soon defeated by the heros, but Suun is wise and knows that the preservation spell would unleash another jade wind so the students seal him in jade to prevent it.

Being reborn his life had begun with a clean slate which he choice for evil, so he was not gifted a envoy position and thus was sent to the UW.

All I can say is....

"Beware.... the Harvest... Ceremony!"

Repeat that 100X in that cutscene

all this was the emperors fault. who takes an ASSASSIN for personal BODYGUARD?


something like that just has to go wrong

Taking an assassin as a bodyguard is a good move IMO. They will know how/when/where if any other assassin will try to assassinate your boss.

But once your personal assasssin bodyguard figure out who it is, they can't tank for you :P

agreed, shiro new from the start when his employer would die

Now all I have to say is that hopefully later we'll have an expansion onto the Underworld and be able to fight Shiro again as long as everyone in the party has beaten factions. That'd be awesome.

Although I do think the Envoys are a bit foggy. They don't seem quite... kosher... I mean none of them look like really nice people, I don't know, maybe in later plots the Prophecies and Factions storylines will be furthered so we more thoroughly understand and get that great feeling inside of, "AH-HA!" This game could use a good one of those where everything just slides into place, and it all makes sense, because there are a lot of mysteries still out there... heck there could be Bloodstones in Cantha... Maybe not.

An ordinary assassin can't tank, but Shiro is a different breed. He is an assassin + steroids + Spirit Bond, lol.

I liked the game play of factions, but the story line wasn't great. I kept expecting there to be plot twists like in prophecies. In prophecies I remember rushing to each mission just to see what was going to happen next. Yes the end was alittle bit wimpy, but for the most part it was interesting, and made some sort of sense.

In factions, the storyline just seemed to be thrown together. Maybe they think we don't really care about the story, but I was dissapointed. When Shiro came into the story with the fortune teller, I thought they were going to put in a plot twist. Up until the harvest ceremony they lead up to it...with the emporer taking people in when he wasn't supposed to, but then they dropped the ball. It felt like they were going to do something, and then decided against it for some reason.

I felt sorry for Shiro, he was just trying to do his job. Is it his fault his storyline sucked?

Ari

I still wonder what the Jade Wind is supposed to be. It happens on Shiro's first death and it happens again when the heroes kill him, only this time it is quickly contained within this protective bubble thingy. It kind of just happens. Him suddenly turning evil, OK, I can deal with that, he became bitter after his trust was misused and he overdid it with the revenge. He's more of a tragic character than an evil one...

Heck, the Emperor may even have received a prophecy that there'd be an attempt on his life at the Harvest Ceremony, which prompted him to break tradition and bring his guards in for his own protection... Talk about self-fulfilling prophecy!

He killed someone cause she said something he dont like to hear....
You are telling me he have good nature??

Even though his theories were well thought out, I'd have to disagree with Doomlord Slayermann's assessment of Shiro being evil.

Is there any evidence that Shiro killed rebels and hung their heads on the palace walls? If he did so, it would be to send a message to people who are attempting to kill the Emperor and all the people loyal to him.

He didn't kill her "Without a second thought" he killed her in a maddened rage, having just heard the location of his own death. If someone told me my best friend was going to kill me, I'd be pretty upset myself, perhaps enough to hurt that person. Shiro had two powerful blades, in a maddened rage of beign told the Emperor would kill him, he killed the Fortune Teller.

He killed the Emperor because he feared for his own life, and he was driven mad by her premonition. He had to choose, the life of his would-be-killer, or his. Naturally, as anyone would have chosen, he chose his life over the one who he thought would kill him in cold blood for no reason or provocation whatsoever.

My assessment of Shiro: He was a tortured spirit who was forced into killing the Emperor. He wanted revenge, evil or no, from the people who killed and dishonored him.

"He didn't like to hear" is a sad understatement. This woman, was telling him, the one he protected these long years, served as his most trusted bodyguard for all those years, would kill him. If the Emperor killed Shiro then and there, it would be in cold blood, no provocation whatsoever on Shiro's part. He killed her in a rush of grief and anger, an irresistable inpulse if you could call it that.

I don't think we have seen the last of him

shiro is evil the cutscene says so (man that was the best game cutscene i have ever seen) "evil walks cantha" unless they were talking about queen christie or something.

He was just defending himself from the evil emperor. Then when he was killed, he came back for revenge. If he'd been played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, we'd all been pulling for him.

This brings to mind that conspiracy theory that the seer in tyria and the fortune teller in cantha have been manipulating people to yet unknown ends that will culminate in a later campaign