His motivations are much clearer here. Ok so in the English version Bhunivelze wants to "know" the souls but at the start he talks about how souls are full of pain and all that other shit that Lightning says makes them human. But then after that Bhunivelze goes on to say that their bodies must be remade because their souls are invisible and they have no value if they're invisible to god. Which has nothing to do with pain and despair. His official motivation in the English version is that he wants to inhabit the souls of everyone so that nothing is unknown to him. Lightning in fact uses the word puppets in the English version instead of dolls. However in the original he says that he chose to inhabit Hope so he could understand everyone and even despises that form. So what's happened here is that Bhunivelze did in fact experience pain and despair as he inhabited Hope and became a bit human but didn't like what he felt. In the end this is more tightly written then the localized version. Lightning is similar to this version of Bhunivelze in that they both refuse to accept part of what makes people human. And fake Serah developing her own "soul" is exactly what happens to Bhunivelze. So in the end Bhunivelze's motivations are now thematically in line with a lot of the other characters' behavior. And if we're doing Christ parallels Bhunivelze descended to become human and instead of communing with them and finding solidarity he resents it. It's a fucked up version of Jesus Christ, because of course it's Final Fantasy, where instead of accepting suffering he wishes to "save" humanity from their suffering. It's always a mixed bag when it comes to Final Fantasy localisations, Sometimes you have unfaithful ones that are improvements like Locke saying he learnt to celebrate life and the living as opposed to finding someone new to protect, sometimes you have faithful ones that are still different when read but same when felt like Yuna saying "I love you" instead of "Thank you" and then there's this. I just don't understand the change. It doesn't even have anything to do with Lightning and Hope which is the number 1 thing they would want to avoid. Are the religious parallels too much?
