Hey everyone. I hope that y'all are alright :) I rarely write here on Reddit but after beating Will of The Wisps [which was AMAZING!] I have something that I need to talk about regarding the game. I'm not a native English speaker so apologies for any mistakes that I'll make :)

On paper Shriek's story is simple, emotional and - more importantly - logical. She's born in decay, deformed, rejected by owls which caused her to embrace the darkness and reject any form of light. That's the base of her story. Simple, logical but more importantly - that's a story of a sympathetic villain, someone that a player can feel sorry about, maybe even care for.

Which brings me to my question - why was the sympathy that the writers created for shriek completely evaporated as soon as it happened?

Let me explain.

As soon as the final boss fight is done, two things happen - Ori absorbs the light to become the new tree and Shriek gets WHOLE 10 seconds of screentime where she gets a heartbreaking scene where she hides under her parent's wings. And that's it. Zero. Null. Nada.

Nobody cares.

There is a certain paradox between Shriek's backstory and stubbornness of the writers to just keep her villain status as "villain" as possible. Everything about her screamed "redemption" and yet as soon as the game is done, she's immediately abandoned.

And sure, we had a scene where Ori tried to reach her one time which she turned away, but I refuse to believe that a creature that walked across two lands, faced countless dangers of different kind for the pure reason that it CARED just stops caring after trying only one time (ESPECIALLY AFTER it becomes the new spirit tree, which is the personification of the same light that neglected Shriek at birth.)

I just wish that there was some sort of acknowledgement of Shriek's story. I may be a little too passionate about this subject but the game treated her like the worst and despicable villain [despite creating clearly the symphatetic story of her childhood and struggles]. I hate that she was so ignored after the end boss by the whole Niwel but more importantly by Ori that - feels like - really didn't give a damn.

I'm not saying that she should be redeemed [altough a potential storyline where she finally sees and accepts light as it shows her that because of it, no child would be born deformed or rejected by how it looks and will never be misarable and her deciding to be the tree's guardian/protector and standing ground on that principle is a really good angle] but I would like to see... something. Have Ori turn the whole silent woods into a nature's paradise, have Gumo, Naru and all Niwel's creature visit her grave and decorate it with flowers, make the game do something.

Because - and I can't believe that I'm about to say this corny like - she deserves much better.

Anywho that's it. My 2 cents. Hope that I did not took too much of your time with this ramble :P