Ahistorical villainy?

As Radiant Historia comes to a close, one gripe with the story nags at me.

Heiss, Stocke's mentor and the one in charge of Spec Ops at the game's beginning, is framed as a villain. But this doesn't add up. Maybe that's just the risk that a game that can have its linearity broken, and yet relies on that linearity for its story, runs.

Early on, I chased one of the timelines further than I should have, and so some things were a little jumbled around that part of the story. Stocke fought Heiss at this point...for some reason. And now he's a villain. Chances are, he is, in the end, the one with the Black Chronicle, but the game will have to offer up a good reason for it to keep me on board.

Speaking of story conceits that are a bit jumbled, the fight with Viola is entirely unavoidable. Nonetheless, though she's more or less absent for the middle of the game, her death and the reasons why she accepts it fit well with the story and make it feel perfectly pitched to what the game's going for theme-wise. In particular, her accepting her death as necessary to signify a break from the old regime to the remaining Alistellians really hammers home the destructive power of the blind faith that country's citizens had in the false Prophet Noah.