Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-6349681-20171110092822/@comment-31808207-20171110224324

Just throwing my own two cents in on the topic... (Note there may be spoilers here). Simon as an intelligent, pragmatic, moral hero is definitely the game's biggest draw for me as well, and you're definitely not alone in that given that Simon won the character popularity poll that Sierra ran by a pretty strong margin--and she said that she thinks this is because he embodies the things that set TLS apart as a game.

Honestly, though, early Simon is far from perfect. Not only is he too passive and careful, as others have pointed out, he's also fairly set in his ways. This comes out in how much trouble he initially has grappling with the nature of succubi's views on sexuality and especially in terms of fighting, where he doesn't really embrace his power and use it in combat. Even his morality can be, at times, a weakness (c.f. Megail's recruitment scenario could've gone reeeeeally badly if he'd misjudged her). And in general, as noted in the early parts of chapter 3, by himself, he tends to think too small. Without everyone else involvedm The Plan would've probably been blown up by an outside context problem in the same way that certain of his enemies' plans were messed up by the party's involvement.

These flaws don't make him a bad character, of course--in fact, I'd argue that starting with flaws to overcome is necessary for a good character, and watching his development has been one of my favorite aspects of TLS. In general, two of my favorite moments in the game as a whole are times when something happens that totally screws up expectations, once on a large scale and another time on a more personal level (speaking in vaugeries too avoid toooo much spoiler). Plot is basically what happens when things go wrong. But I think if Simon were "corrupted" in the sense you suggest you'd like to see, it would undermine the premise of the whole game. To loosely quote one of Sierra's early posts that I read recently, "I;ve always felt that most characters who 'need' a harem really don't deserve one, so I wanted to make a harem game about someone who does."