I feel Sylas' potential was cast aside to make him an easy villain, and that disappoints me
pretty disappointed riot considers this a villain, I suppose that explains why they darkened him so much from the boy in the color story, but I feel all you'd have to do is put more emphasis on the revolution part to turn it into a more interesting story, one that could honestly change demacia for the better, but instead it's "violent so must be bad" and "he was wronged so even if he's goals are noble he's just bitter and lashing out" it's weird seeing the way you play it up too, having Sylas quotes against fellow mages like lux and taliyah be more biting and mocking than supportive and uplifting.
I feel you took a hot button issue in demacia (magic) and brought forth alot of the issues surrounding it (nobles have magic and typically go unscathed, the poor are more frequently/brutally punished for magic than said nobles are, they evoke honor and brotherhood to keep people compliant, but cast it aside the minute they would be impeded by it (Vannis forgot about their brotherhood real quick with that farmer). I enjoyed this, and it's admirable.
Yet what you did right with his color story was wonderful for the lore, what you did with the champ, Sylas, is the reverse, you took a compelling character, that may have sympathies with both the mageseekers and the mages, and just shoved him on the mage side, THAN, you throw him in prison for 15 years as your excuse to make him obscenely bitter and twisted (even tho when you do it to other champs like graves and veigar you keep something redeeming, heck I think Graves is pretty chill now.)
and I get it, you don't wanna front load this character's story, maybe you plan for him to learn to be more "constructive" in his later attempts to change the world, or have some sort of change of heart, but my questions is how? and change to what? Sylus in the color story is painted as a child learning of these discrepancies in his society and is split between them, this is a compelling story, that sadly gets revolved by it's end and he's thrown into the mage side, which is fine by itself but the reason why this conflict is over so quickly is because it's painted to us as obvious that mage seekers and this anti magic society is a bad one, YET altho you have Sylas come to this conclusion you make HIM the villain because he wants to topple an unjust society, that's obviously didn't come across villainous enough so you jaded and darkened him, and while he speaks of a revolution, of brothers and sisters, who does he have to actually call that? who is he actually revolting for cause while the story mentions he has a following of support it seems he'd kill anyone for simply not knowing what took a pretty brutal lesson for him to learn, and seems to be on unfriendly terms with everyone else, demacian, OR mage.
THIS is what bugs me so much, cause Sylas could be a compelling revolutionary, there could even be a huge change in demacia based on an event of demacian's that support him and demacians that dont, like that noxus vs ionia match back in the day. But instead Riot decided they needed a "demacian villain" so you took the interesting concept of a freedom fighter for mage equality or something of the sort, and threw it out with the bath water to get a less sympathetic, spiteful villain who while preaching of a new better world, seems only focused on destroying the current one, and I really think you did the mage issue in demacia wrong with not just his portrayal (ofc demacians will think of him this way, they'd slander him this much and worse) BUT ACTUALLY HAVING HIM BE AS BLOODTHIRSTY AS HE IS RUMORED is a farce, you took a beautiful grey, and dumbed it down to a black and white (mages bad because their reacting poorly, demacians good cause their defending themselves and justified in light of the violent mages.
As you have it now, I can see his story a mile away, 1.you have him doing his "revolution" (which again, can't be a real revolution cause thats relatable) 2.it goes wrong/ too far and he kills lux or he hurts her bad (with unreasonable amounts of spite cause he's a "villain") 3. he feels awful about it now cause he realizes he's the villain (as you intended) 4. he laments if only he hadn't been so violent, and something to the effect that the "demacians were right, mages are to dangerous/violent, I was fool" 5. have his redemption be some kind of surrender/ suicide 6. have the demacians go "happily ever after", and thus mages never rose up in revolt ever again, and no one supported mage freedom ever again cause they were so "evil" the last time the topic came up.
again if demacia thinks he's evil thats fine, but he isn't just thought of as evil you made his character evil too, he's not like viktor, misrepresented and misunderstood, he's exactly what demacia paints him to be, a ne'er-do-well that just destroys stuff, you set him up as the villain so despite their hypocrisy demacia can keep their label as "heroes" and the "good guys"
