Emet-Selch Is Not That Tragic

[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.