Uhm...I was thinking, in order to characterize Eredin and his generals (but mostly Eredin) it would be not only necessary simple more screenplay, or the explanation of his motivations and plans about Ciri...but even showing his "human" side. What define us as person is mostly our emotions.
The necessity of saving his people have to be showed through his words and his attitude. Maybe even show him crying the death of one of his friends (Caranthir, maybe?) would add a lot to his human side, allow the player to think... "are this a bad guy"?
Well, the most basic problem of the depiction of Eredin is that CDPR "perverted" him in any possible way to be able to present the "ultimative evil guy". But the truth is: Eredin never killed Auberon Muircetach. Auberon committed suicide after he recognized that would never be able to impregnate Ciri. He was way too proud to accept that and so he chose death to deal with it. Eredin was actually surprised when he heard the news about his dead. And I mean genuice surprise, the way it was described in the books.
And you're right, like Avallac'h and Auberon he really cares for his people. He might despise the human race and so he might be a fanatical racist but he still has good sides to him. He protects his people and like Auberon and Avallac'h he wants their "brother race", the Aen Seidhe, to be saved from the White Frost. He wants the elven culture and superiority to reign supreme again, like it is the case in Tir la Nia, at least on the first sight.
Their biggest issue of course is their open racism and violently practiced discrimination and domination of other elven races and especially human races. But not only Eredin is like that. Avallac'h all shares the very same believings. To that regard, both characters are "evil", they just pursue different strategies to get to the goal: Eredin, the sparrowhawk, tries to convince the swallow with direct and open arguments and the stick while Avallac'h, the fox, tries it with a more nuanced strategy and the carrot. But following the unicorns and Vysogot alike tell Ciri that both are equally lying and dangerous, only pursuing their own goals. They both don't care about the human race, they only care about their own power and the elven races. But can we trust the unicorns? To which extend? What do we really know about them and their agenda? Actually there would be quite a lot of space for good stories here but all the possbilities were wasted. The unicorns play an important role in the Aen Elle - humans - interaction in the books, but they don't even appear in the games. Even more so, they weren't even mentioned. Like they never existed which is pretty sad and another inconsistency with the books.
And why the hell looks Imlerith like a thug instead of a hundred of years old highly cultivated and sophisticated elf? Why does he have skinhead? I mean, really? An elf? A skinhead? Although that doesn't match any description of any elf in the books and although the Aen Elle are described to have long hair and a typcial elven face? Epic face, I'd say. Why making a complex character that doesn't match the stereotype of an evil, bad guy if you could just make exactly that stereotype character, even in art design? I don't get if, really. It's so clichéd and stereotype, you would assume CDPR would never do something like that and that some other studio had created his character (and pretty much all of the bunch of the Wild Hunt).
Eredin being the ultimate bad guy and Avallac'h being the ultimate good guy in the end is just bollocks and inconsistent with the books (which of course is based on the fact that the whole portal scene at the end is a huge inconsistency with the books itself). So much potential wasted with these characters and the whole Aen Elle aspect of the world. Shame...
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This is the problem. The narrative pretends that Radovid is a tactical genious...but this "genious" is never showed.
It actually IS shown or at least mentioned. He apparently took whole Kaedwen by using a ploy.
