Emet-Selch Is Not That Tragic

[HyoMinPark]

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.

In terms of sacrifice, Emet-Selch told us that he wanted to take the lives of the people on the Source and the remaining Shards, and offer them up to Zodiark as payment to restore the original Amaurotines that sacrificed themselves to Zodiark when he was summoned initially. The Ascian’s plan all along was to bring about the Rejoining, reunite with Zodiark, and return their world (at the cost of ours and the Shards’).

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.

He actually asked us if our people would ever do the same as his did: give up half their number to save their world. The implication when Alphinaud didn’t answer was that it’s likely our people wouldn’t be so selfless; which gave Emet more reason to condemn us as weaker/lesser beings.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

In the end, all he really wants is his people and civilisation back, but the methods by which he means to accomplish this makes it clear he needs to be stopped, it's hard to sympathise with him, I don't want his plans to come to fruition if it means catastrophe on a cosmic scale, but I can understand why he is the way he is. The point is that he can't let go of the past and is completely blind to the present, which is possibly due to his unending nature as an Ascian, there's no guarantee that a rejoining will prevent another calamity from happening to Amaurot again, being tempered by Zodiark also may have a hand in how he views the world as well.

[Lersayil]

In terms of sacrifice, Emet-Selch told us that he wanted to take the lives of the people on the Source and the remaining Shards, and offer them up to Zodiark as payment to restore the original Amaurotines that sacrificed themselves to Zodiark when he was summoned initially. The Ascian’s plan all along was to bring about the Rejoining, reunite with Zodiark, and return their world (at the cost of ours and the Shards’).

You are thinking about plan B. I meant the original plan A they had before ol' mommy crystals summoning and the sundering of the original world.

1. Summon Zodiark, stop the cataclysm -> 50% of the pop gone
2. Restore planet to working order -> 75% of original pop gone
3. Cultivate new life on restored planet
4. Sacrifice newly cultivated life -> get back originally sacrificed people
????
5. Profit

[Bright-Flower]

I felt the pulled him off well. I think the goal was to make him sympathetic with actual motivations, but not make him or the ascians 'right.' And they struck that balance for me at least. He wasn't a 'good' person but I understood him.

[ChaoticCrimson]

The fall of Amaurot in itself is a sort of tragedy. I do not believe the majority of the Ancients had any particularly malevolent intentions, but the problem was believing that they could maintain such dangerous magics indefinitely without consequence. It's currently unknown what exactly initiated the Terminus, but it is known one of the consequences was the loss of control over the creation magics, and ultimately it was the reliance on these magics that would lead to their near-extinction when they used their powers to turn to Zodiark and Hydaelyn to fix everything. While they essentially did end the Terminus, it was at the cost of the majority of the population, which was then subsequently sundered into the fourteen reflections by Hydaelyn, who deemed it the best way to preserve the life that was left, sparing only Elidibus, Lahabrea, and Emet-Selch himself.

Emet would try to understand and live among the sundered. However, Emet could never let go of his memories of his original home and people, and would grow more and more contempt for the sundered, seeing them as hollow mockeries of all he once knew and held dear. Instead he would have to endure ages and ages while watching everything die over and over again, a pale imitation of the grand people he once believed were eternal and all-powerful. One can only imagine what that alone would do to a person's sanity and perception of the reality around them. Furthermore, he was tempered by Zodiark, which certainly could have twisted his views. In the end, what makes Emet an interesting and effective antagonist is that despite his methods and perceptions being wrong by our standards, by knowing what brought him to such a point one can understand and sympathize with him. Emet needed to be stopped, this is true, but anyone can see he really believed he was doing the right thing, and that millennia of letting his losses fester in combination with his tempering took their toll on him until he became what we had to face. Not to mention that the Ancient from which the WoL's soul was derived from was apparently a close friend of his before the sundering, which must have been a dig for Emet to reunite with them only to see them as a shadow of their original self, and as a champion of the one who sundered them in the first place no less. Even if our character has no memory of this friendship, it's not hard to at least feel bad that things ended the way they did. Knowing all of this, but not being able to change the outcome of becoming two enemies fighting for their people's right to exist, I think could certainly be considered a tragedy. Emet's final words to us were to "Remember us." This, to me, means he must have finally come to let go of the past, and accept that he and all that he once knew was gone, and so he asks to let that legacy live on by never having it be forgotten. Assuming Emet stays gone, I think that's a good way to leave it, so we can at least take peace in the fact that maybe he found peace of his own in the end.

[Fynlar]

Someone (presumably either Emet or one of the fabricated Amaurotines, can't remember) specifically mentions a "noise from the earth" causing the Amaurotines to lose control of their creation magic and create the monstrosities that caused their downfall. I wouldn't be so sure they are the ones to blame for their fate. The game was intentionally vague enough about what this "noise" was that I suspect that it will be revisited at some point in the future of the story.

In summary, I could feel bad for the Amaurotines and their society as a whole (as much as it's possible for me to "feel bad" for fictitious entities, anyway, which isn't very much), but not so with Emet. He was just slightly too much of a jackass with how he went about things for me to feel the least bit sorry for him in the end.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

we were never shown the tragic side to Emet-Selch

We absolutely were. The thing is that you're probably mistrustful of him the entire time that he's being genuine with you about a number of his feelings. Thancred, in particular, accuses him of being a liar at a number of points and even when the shoe drops at Mt. Gulg, he still has to outright tell the Scions that he was being truthful the whole time.

I'd say the thing that made Emet-Selch so tragic is that his standards were too unrealistically high and he was unwilling to see the flaws within Amaurot. He seems genuinely touched to see people coming together to build the Talos, or troubled when Alisaie points out that he's basically doing to their world what Therion and the other monsters did to Amaurot. But then he just brushes that aside and just convinces himself that, no, everyone is wrong but him and this is the only way to fix things. Similarly, he convinces himself that Amaurot was this perfect place that could do no wrong, but his comments on all of the Ascians, even the unsundered ones, are dismissive at best and scathing at worst. Never mind the fact that he sees nothing wrong with the fact that said perfect society basically destroyed themselves with their nightmares and then repeatedly culled their own numbers through summoning Zodiark.

If he'd been a bit more flexible (and probably not enthralled by Zodiark), he might've been able to calm down before he got speared through the chest.

[Gemina]

Yeah, it's difficult for me to sympathize with Emet because he lives in the past and is willing to commit genocide in the name of faith. These are concepts I've rejected as I've learned about them and their futility.

What's really sad is during the duration of his immorality, he could not acknowledge how the people of this star make sacrifices every day all in the name of selflessness, and the WoL is the very representation of these acts as a whole. He just needs to see it on a grand scale, while our sacrifices prevent such things from happening in the first place.

All those years to acquire such vast knowledge, yet his logic is flawed.

[Alleo]

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.

Hythlodaeus says that the Ascians wanted to use the new life to get their old ones back while others said that it was enough and that the new life should be the stewards of the planet and that their time is over. For me at least that does not sound like something you would say about a plant or animal. (I also would doubt that the ancients ones would be truly against them planting some trees somewhere and chopping them down later) Especially when Emet later states that he cant just see us as being the stewards of this planet because of our behaviour.

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.

Alisaie does wonder if we would do the same but the story already showed in a small scale that we dont do that. Thancred could have forced Ryne to "die", thus sacrificing the new life to get the old loved one back. But instead the story teaches us quite a bit that we should not do that.

In terms of sacrifice, Emet-Selch told us that he wanted to take the lives of the people on the Source and the remaining Shards, and offer them up to Zodiark as payment to restore the original Amaurotines that sacrificed themselves to Zodiark when he was summoned initially. The Ascian’s plan all along was to bring about the Rejoining, reunite with Zodiark, and return their world (at the cost of ours and the Shards’).


He actually asked us if our people would ever do the same as his did: give up half their number to save their world. The implication when Alphinaud didn’t answer was that it’s likely our people wouldn’t be so selfless; which gave Emet more reason to condemn us as weaker/lesser beings.

Yes its clear that now he wanted to sacrifice the people but we talked about back then, when the world was still whole. There they already talked about sacrificing huge amounts of new lifes to get the old ones back which then lead to Hydealyn being summoned.

The funny thing is that our people did that already. The people from the bad future knew that there was a high chance that their timeline would cease to exist if they change the past, yet they still did this in the hopes of a better future. And unlike the ancients which could have been remembered through their surviving people, the bad future ones wont even have that. Also a couple of people have shown in the story to be quite ready to throw away their lifes for the safety of others and I am honestly not sure why they decided to let Alphinaud be quiet there.

Someone (presumably either Emet or one of the fabricated Amaurotines, can't remember) specifically mentions a "noise from the earth" causing the Amaurotines to lose control of their creation magic and create the monstrosities that caused their downfall. I wouldn't be so sure they are the ones to blame for their fate. The game was intentionally vague enough about what this "noise" was that I suspect that it will be revisited at some point in the future of the story.

In summary, I could feel bad for the Amaurotines and their society as a whole (as much as it's possible for me to "feel bad" for fictitious entities, anyway, which isn't very much), but not so with Emet. He was just slightly too much of a jackass with how he went about things for me to feel the least bit sorry for him in the end.

I thinkt they also mentioned how the planet was dieing. So either it was just an unfortunate situation where the planets life was simply over, or there was something from the outside that infected it. Of course there could also be the chance that the planet died because they used too much creation magic over the time. Feo Ul mentions that if you take, then you have to give back to keep a balance. And maybe they never kept it and one day it was just too much.

[Lersayil]

Hythlodaeus says that the Ascians wanted to use the new life to get their old ones back while others said that it was enough and that the new life should be the stewards of the planet and that their time is over. For me at least that does not sound like something you would say about a plant or animal. (I also would doubt that the ancients ones would be truly against them planting some trees somewhere and chopping them down later) Especially when Emet later states that he cant just see us as being the stewards of this planet because of our behaviour.

Thats one way of interpreting it, and possibly the case, but we don't really know for sure. To be honest the Amaurotians seemed just bonkers enough to argue that no type of sacrifice is worth messing with the dead. Or maybe thinking as you do and assuming the cataclysm was their fault? All speculation at this point.

The funny thing is that our people did that already. The people from the bad future knew that there was a high chance that their timeline would cease to exist if they change the past, yet they still did this in the hopes of a better future. And unlike the ancients which could have been remembered through their surviving people, the bad future ones wont even have that. Also a couple of people have shown in the story to be quite ready to throw away their lifes for the safety of others and I am honestly not sure why they decided to let Alphinaud be quiet there.

Time travel is a different can of worms depending how you look at it. They theorized that their timeline wouldn't change with the past, so they could be just creating a new timeline without changing their own. And even if they were wrong, and the timeline shifted, we don't quite know how they viewed the decision. It could've been a noble sacrifice unanimously decided by the masses, or just looking at the current timeline as worthless and throwing it away at a chance for anything better. Or for the uneducated, not familiar with time travel, they could've just thought of it as changing their own lives with a magical fingersnap for the better.

As for the smaller sacrifices, I'm not trying to belittle them, but systematic and voluntary sacrifice of your civilization is really on quite a different scale. I think I agree with the twins on this one. The Source (or humans generally) could or would not make this decision (and I don't count the timetravel because their world was already doomed anyways, and they weren't sacrificing a part of them. They we're throwing away the whole timeline).

I thinkt they also mentioned how the planet was dieing. So either it was just an unfortunate situation where the planets life was simply over, or there was something from the outside that infected it. Of course there could also be the chance that the planet died because they used too much creation magic over the time. Feo Ul mentions that if you take, then you have to give back to keep a balance. And maybe they never kept it and one day it was just too much.

Indeed, the cataclysms reason was never mentioned or explained, only its effects. Personally I doubt we'll go down with the "Creation magic is bad, mkay?" route, since that would make the Amaurotians plight a lot less sympathetic. Or it might mean they we're idiots for not drawing parallels between cause and effect, which isn't much better.