Curious about something regarding Emet-Selch ***Endwalker spoilers***

He seems pretty dead set on stopping you, even knowing full well that you're Azem, all through Shadowbringers. Sure, he hopes to do it peacefully until the end, but he's obviously your enemy.

Then he's willing to help you in Endwalker. It makes sense, since you're trying to stop the thing that destroyed his civilization, but I wonder how much of it was motivated by guilt. When it was some unknown disaster, followed by Hydaelyn sundering them, Emet seemed to feel cheated, like his civilization deserved another chance and you were standing in the way of him giving it one. I wonder how much the realization of "well dang, we did this to ourselves" changed his mind.

Edit: I'm aware that the Elpis version is his past self. I'm talking about the Emet ex Machina where he shows up in Ultima Thule and revives the Scions.

More important why does he look like Xehanort?

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Originally Posted by BiddyBatnana

More important why does he look like Xehanort?

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IT'S UNCANNY

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Originally Posted by PredatoryCatgirl

He seems pretty dead set on stopping you, even knowing full well that you're Azem, all through Shadowbringers. Sure, he hopes to do it peacefully until the end, but he's obviously your enemy.

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Emet-Selch didn’t know that we were Azem until the very end, when our soul merged with Ardbert’s and he momentarily sees an Amaroutine standing in our place—and even then, he doesn’t want to believe it. In the Japanese, he says ‘No, it’s impossible. You couldn’t be them’. Before that, he didn’t know us from Adam/Eve, despite his ability to see the color of souls. Could be because ours was tainted with Light and not entirely recognizable—Y’shtola mentions to Urianger when we find her that our aether didn’t look like our normal aether, so this could likely also have extended to our soul.

EDIT: I believe there may have been one other mention of our soul prior to that—but I’m fairly certain he still shrugs it off as impossible. I’d have to go back through ShB again, but it’s very clear at the end before we fight him that he never realized who we were prior to that moment. And he vocally didn’t accept it at that time. Kind of like at the end of Elpis when we’re about to be whisked away before Hermes can manipulate our memory, he still says “I still don’t believe your story”. Even then he disagreed with Hythlodaeus about us being Azem’s familiar.

Of course, how much of his behavior and words in Elpis is fact and how much is just him being a stubborn, ol’ Grumpy Gus could be debatable. But he never acknowledged us as a sundered part of Azem in ShB.

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Originally Posted by PredatoryCatgirl

He seems pretty dead set on stopping you, even knowing full well that you're Azem, all through Shadowbringers. Sure, he hopes to do it peacefully until the end, but he's obviously your enemy.

Then he's willing to help you in Endwalker. It makes sense, since you're trying to stop the thing that destroyed his civilization, but I wonder how much of it was motivated by guilt. When it was some unknown disaster, followed by Hydaelyn sundering them, Emet seemed to feel cheated, like his civilization deserved another chance and you were standing in the way of him giving it one. I wonder how much the realization of "well dang, we did this to ourselves" changed his mind.

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The Emet-Selch we interact with in Endwalker (until the very end of Ultima Thule) has no memory of his actions in Shadowbringers. It's his past self. Even when WoL tells him what happened, he never believes it, not for a second. So, no, he's not motivated by guilt; he can't be. He is completely unaware of everything that he did. Further, the last bit (at the end of Ultima Thule) where it is not his past self, remember that he does an about-face at the end of Shadowbringers, so his assistance makes sense.

There are a bunch of reasons for this throughout Shadowbringers and Endwalker. He didn't really figure out who we were until the end of Shadowbringers. The entire time he's traveling with us and informing us about things he seems to sort of see his own defeat coming but has to go through with it anyway because he's been working toward it for over 10,000 years or whatever. He specifically tells us that he and the other members of the Convocation were tempered when they summoned Zodiark, as you would expect from a primal, and they have to work toward restoring him because of it. In his last scene in Endwalker he says that even after you have defeated him and get to do things your way, that he still holds onto his ideals of the perfect civilization of the ancients he wanted to restore; basically he was doing the right thing from his perspective even though yours is right for the world and everyone living in it now (remember that in Shadowbringers he says that he doesn't even consider sundered souls real people from his perspective).

Then there are the implied reasons. Due to Hermes's usage of Kairos, he doesn't know what the cause of the Final Days is at all from that point all the way up through Shadowbringers, and so why would he ever listen to Azem or Hydaelyn/Venat who "defeated" Zodiark and stops you from restoring not only his personal god but also the thing that actually worked to stop the Final Days? Along this same line of thought, he's had millennia to do so if it ever would have worked - Venat and Azem both attempted to persuade the other members of the Convocation as well as other members of their society before and after summoning Hydaelyn to carry out their own plan, and if he didn't listen to the actual people, why would he listen to you, who's only around half of one of them?

Elpis Emet is past Emet. He hadn't been tempered at that point so thats who he was before things went to hell: prickly, snappy, whiny (lol) but ultimately a good and honorable person.

He helps in Seat of Sacrifice/Ultima Thule because on top of his memory being returned and the tempering being undone, he's accepted that his friend lives on in us and because of that he'll honor the promise he recorded in Azem's crystal (FR: "Even now, when we are more than ever separated by time, space and feelings, it would take just one gesture, one word, to unite us again.") should we call on him.

As I undestood it, Emet did know who we were during Shadowbringers, but he considered us an inferior version of ourselves due to being incomplete. He did ask to acompany us through the msq so he could be able to judge our worth.

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Originally Posted by PharisHanasaki

As I undestood it, Emet did know who we were during Shadowbringers, but he considered us an inferior version of ourselves due to being incomplete. He did ask to acompany us through the msq so he could be able to judge our worth.

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That was to judge the worth of mankind as it stood now—he stated as such later when he told us that he still found us wanting (us meaning mankind, not us meaning Azem’s sundered self). Not because he recognized us as a sundered part of Azem. He says at the end that we couldn’t be them.

He didn't remember until he died because of Kairos. And he was tempered.