Playing Z-A

I approached Corbeau's character as I played the game from the angle of why he was written like this, instead of why a character would act like this. So to me, he was a bad attempt at yet another twist in this game. It felt like the game was constantly trying to surprise you and subvert your expectations, and Corbeau felt like one of the poorer executions of this idea. He's set up as this evil man who set the interest on a loan so high it ended up going from 100,000 to 1,000,000 and wrote about the interest in the deal in a font too small to read without zooming in, everyone acts like the Rust syndicate are violent with people and force them to do evil work. And then it turns out that the evil unpaid labour he wants you to do is, essentially, rescuing kitties from trees and cleaning up litter at the beach. We never see him once do something that could get the Rust syndicate its reputation outside of absurd interest on loans that can barely be read on the paper and implied threats in his introduction that never happen again. He's even treated as a hero by multiple NPCs, contrary to the entirety of team MZ thinking he's evil or intimidating or scary. It feels like a rushed twist done for the sole sake of surprise. The game also tries a little too hard to make you like him, which rubbed me off the wrong way. Some of his lines feel like "It sure is great how we can all Pocket these Monsters." levels of writing.

I don't think he's a bad character— he's just written awkwardly in my opinion.