Emet-Selch Is Not That Tragic

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Originally Posted by Selova

His motives are not what's evil, It's what he tried to do to make his motives a realization that is evil. I'm not sure why people claim that he's a tragic character, It's his plight that's tragic. The way they weaved Emet's story was to get the player to understand why he's doing the things he's doing. There is nothing wrong with the intention of wanting to save your own race, but the way he went about trying to do it was wrong obviously. I'm not sure why people keep trying to paint him as some tragic anti-hero.

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I already explained the snip you made in an above post, so I won't repeat them here. Tl;dr -- It's all a matter of perspective, but from the hero's perspective, his motives are evil. They may be to resurrect his race, but that's at the cost of our worlds and our lives. I did specify that I was speaking from the perspective of the heroes, not Emet-Selch.

I'm not sure either, because he's not a tragic character or an anti-hero. He's an anti-villain. Perhaps it's misunderstandings regarding how these concepts and character types are defined.

That's just like your opinion.

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Originally Posted by MitsukiKimura

I personally prefer him over Zenos any day. We may not feel bad for him personally but I will say I felt bad for what his people went through. The dungeon amarout and his quote "Remember us, remember that we once lived"

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Agree
I'm a little concerned with the whole it's Zenos AGAIN story arc. The character is one dimensional with a worn down 'gunfight at dawn' scenario in the making. Hopefully he'll be sidelined pretty quickly, although I fear we'll be faced with his boring narrative for quite a while.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I already explained the snip you made in an above post, so I won't repeat them here. Tl;dr -- It's all a matter of perspective, but from the hero's perspective, his motives are evil. They may be to resurrect his race, but that's at the cost of our worlds and our lives. I did specify that I was speaking from the perspective of the heroes, not Emet-Selch.

I'm not sure either, because he's not a tragic character or an anti-hero. He's an anti-villain. Perhaps it's misunderstandings regarding how these concepts and character types are defined.

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Yeah that was my fault, didn't see your earlier post.

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Originally Posted by ValyrianBlood

[I]

Well his motivation is to bring his whole perished race back to life, I wouldn't exactly call this evil? But the means to do it certainly are.

All in all I do find Emet to be a tragic figure (maybe not in a classical sense) but still. I can understand his motives, I feel for him but ultimately he had to be defeated...

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The problem is that after they got tempered (when their planet was save again) and they could just go on with their lives they decided to instead stomp over the sacrifices their people made and to cause further tragedy by wanting to sacrifice a huge amount of new life to Zodiark in return of the old one. And lets remember that this was at a time where everyone still got a whole soul. They might have had the rights to summon Zodiark to save themselves from something they may or may not have caused but they had no rights to then turn around and sacrifice unwilling life to get their friends back. Emet is all about us never being able to do such a sacrifice (which is not true seeing how the people of the bad future did that) yet unlike most mortals they cant just accept this death, either because of them being tempered or because of them never seeing such death.

Had they accepted death then Hydealyn might have never been summoned, the world might have never been split.

I can feel for them and I can understand their sadness and I even really like Emet-Selch as a character, but what the Ascians had planned after the calamity was over was evil. And people disagreed that much with it that they thought that it would be better to summon Hydealyn and go against them.

All the fan girls swooning over him and people saying I have to like emet he's so great killed him for me, he reminds me of someone who'd be in one of those twlight movies that your GF or wife would make u watch with her.

He went from bad ass charasmatic founder of the garlean empire back in 4.4 and 4.5 to 5.0 twilight guy, compared to Zenos he's a bitch and the fan girls and people saying I have to like him ruined him for me, I'm hoping elidibus don't get ruined cause he's the coolest ascian imo.

Plus as far as tragic villians go I like the way they did niddhog better.

The guy just wanted his friends, family, people, world and life back.
The way he went on about it was evil and wrong. But it's just sad really.

He was nice enough to give us Y'shtola back!
(Which I've hated said poster girl until late 4.0 and she's my fave Scion now.)
So he's ok in my book lol!

But yeah, can't let you kill us all for your own reasons. :/

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

His motives may have been “noble”, but that’s strictly from his point of view. His plans were to sacrifice the “half-lives” of the beings of the Shards and the Source to pay Zodiark for resurrecting the Ancients that once gave their lives to save Emet’s world. From the perspective of us—the main character—it is an evil motive to sacrifice all those lives to return those he lost. He believes it’s just, but to us it’s unjust because what of our worlds and our lives. He doesn’t view us as even whole people—we’re lesser creatures to him, one “who has known perfection”.

One can argue “it’s a matter of perspective”—which is why I specified our perspective in my response (the player character; the “hero”).

That he can garner an audience’s (and perhaps even the WoL’s) sympathy despite our perception of him as evil makes him an anti-villain.

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I think Nanamo explained it quite well (as in I agree with her 100%) when she talks about the strengths of one, compliment the weaknesses of the other. I know she was describing her relationship to Rabauhn and how the two of them together make an extremely formidable opponent, but it can also be used to describe that the very flaws that make us imperfect is exactly what makes us perfect. Emet of course, would never be able to see it that way having seen the trials of humanity for himself and deems as anything but.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

... but they had no rights to then turn around and sacrifice unwilling life to get their friends back. ...

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Was it ever defined what sort of life they were planning to cultivate and sacrifice? For all we know they could've meant plants, monsters, animals and such. I'd say we are still lacking a lot of information on that part to pass judgment on the happenings pre sundering.

Also, accepting death is a neccessity for us, and still many don't. How many would if there were other options?

On topic though: Emet is an anti-villain to us, and a anti-hero to himself. I don't think it was ever intended as outright tragic. Moral relativism and all that, as once a wise Ascian said.

Personally i don't think Emet was a bad person at all. Considering if you actually read every line throughout the expansion and the way he acted and his facial expressions. Yes what he was trying to do was "Evil" but like he said before you entered the last dungeon "You would do the same" in trying to save your people. I really enjoyed Shadowbringers, it was a damn good roller coaster.