To contribute to the topic though, Ivar in of themselves is fine they’re basically just misused in approach boss fight wise. Story-wise they do feel a bit out of nowhere but at the same time not, definitely agree there could’ve been a bit more elaborative build up.
Particularly highlighting that although that a son of Wotan isn’t present at the Fenrir. Bringing up the fact that there will at least be a Jarl there or at least mentioning that there will still be strong individuals defending the place.
Then when raiding the camp we could’ve had ordinary keraxe soldiers mention how the Jarl will claim glory in their stead as a death/default dialogue. The thanes could’ve mentioned how they wish the Jarl to claim a glorious honorable battle with us when we defeat them since it goes into a cutscene anyways.
Things like that.
As for the boss fight side of sides, its largely a matter of whether you think his moveset is fine but the arena just sucks. Or the arena is fine but his moveset sucks and needs to be changed to fit it similar to Maria.
Personally lean on both approaches, as his moveset isn’t too bad just needs to be placed somewhere with a bigger arena on the Fenrir or make his arena slightly larger. Could potentially also place him over where the captain quarters/cabin portion of the Fernir is at. Would be a bit more fitting to place Ivar there, rather than some random storage area or smth.
The other route is keeping the Arena and changing his movesets to be more fixed in per-determined areas/sections. Where Ivar really leans into the buzz saw move by making the flow and walls erupt with saws like how Maria’s tentacles will crash down on specific parts of the ship.
Replace Ivar’s devastate move with a double horizontal slash or smth, where the player is supposed to jump over the first room wide slash then t-jump over the delayed second slash. Rework the metal pillars to crash down in fixed spots and have the buzz saw move come in and rip through them making the place play hole in the wall a bit.
Something changed with his moveset to make it feel like an up-scaled version of Maria without the i-frame hassle. Making you want to finish the fight quickly and as soon as possible to get out of the cramped hyper dangerous tormet dungeon Ivar quickly setup.
The forums ran out of image space again . . Luckily we found a small bypass through quotes, but this does mean have have to annoyingly comb through our replies for past emotes we used.