Emet-Selch *Major Spoilers*

[IzVale]

While I would've loved for Emet being around much much muuuch longer, there was a need for him to end. A tortured, insane soul like his needs to rest. Besides, he got a - in my opinion - perfect ending.
The music was epic, the story was good, it was an emotional ride. His arc left an impact, that will not be forgotten so easily. At least for me.

R.I.P. best Ascian boy

P.S. I dislike Minfilia, because she seemed so damn useless in all her story. I don't think Ryne is quite as bad.

[Katie_Kitty]

he wasn't that great. Fanboys are always talking like he was the best thing since sliced bread but really he was just the only ascian so far with a personality and a coherent motivation. He really only looks interesting because the other ascians have all been mustache-twirling cardboard cutout villians.

Bottom line he wanted to kill lots of innocent people because he couldn't move on from the life he lived over 10,000 years ago. It was all one big pathetic pity party for him that he insisted on dragging many many uninvolved people into. Good riddance.

[TeraRamis]

Because if you didn't kill him, he was going to kill you, your friends, the planet you were fighting to save, and cause such devastation on your own world that two hundred years and countless deaths later, it still had yet to recover.

But he cute tho, so I guess we should've just let him have his way.

A good character need not be eliminated so quickly. People keep saying "the story dictated" as if the story is some legend we've handed down for generations, known to all.

The story can be whatever they want it to be. A compelling character should be viewed as a precious resource: hard to unearth, and foolishly cast aside. That doesn't mean Selch should never have been killed off, but merely had his arc drawn out.

I'm tired of these one-hit-wonder baddies. It gets absurd that we keep bumping into these colossal world-ending threats, just to dunk on them a few hours later as if it was nothing. Maybe - just maybe - we should lose, occasionally. Or at least suffer a setback that can't have a little bow put on it by the conclusion of a single expansion.

[Nejiro]

MOAR ZENOS PLS!

No seriously. I need my archnemesis more, let me fight and struggle with him. Again, and again, and again. Call it repetititve but It would be so good of a narrative. Uncompromising strength versus inalienable will.

[BlitzAceRush]

MOAR ZENOS PLS!

No seriously. I need my archnemesis more, let me fight and struggle with him. Again, and again, and again. Call it repetititve but It would be so good of a narrative. Uncompromising strength versus inalienable will.

I second this, I actually always liked Zenos in all his one-dimensional glory. He's simple but with purpose in that he has none, he's like a reflection of us, all our power but no desire to use it beyond to be tested and he finds all (save us) to be lacking.
The irony is that if he tried helping others as we do he might find some of the foes we've had to fell interesting challenges.
I could see that as an interesting twist of us throwing his join us offer back at him. "We could fight to the death Zenos, or you could follow us about and help us kill gods, eternal beings, machines of infinite power, horrors from other dimentions, elder dragons and who knows what ells we'll tick off in the future."

[Melichoir]

Why did we have to kill Emet-Selch? Yes, yes, I know: Ascian and Empire combined made him the sum total of all "evil" insofar as the Eorzian universe is concerned. But he was also complex and pretty darned interesting - far, far more compelling than any other Ascian that Square-Enix had yet written.

But we had to off him. So... so much for that.

I just don't understand the decision. Yes, he was the expansion's antagonist (of sorts), but he could have definitely served an interesting role as some kind of dark horse champion - a 'Loki' of FFXIV, if you will. And, if not that, just don't kill him so quickly - defeat him, drive him away, but don't eliminate all possibilities of reappearance moving forward.

Sigh.

All that is out the window now, of course... but it sure would be nice not to just throw away interesting characters every time your writers accidentally stumble onto one. Yet, amazingly, they seem to accomplish the inverse - killing everyone interesting, like Yotsuyu, but managing to make the truly insufferable ones eternal (like Minfilia, and then - because reasons - Minfilia 2.0).

Interesting doesnt mean they dont get the axe. It's good you find him compelling.

As for killing him, frankly, I still somewhat view it as suicide by WoL. He makes it very clear to us early on that he isnt looking for a direct fight with us because the odds are not in his favor (as we have a habit of killing ascians). This gets even more important when he literally says they got all the time in the world - should they disrupt their plans on the first its not that big a deal. Regroup and start again til they succeed. In reality there was absolutely no reason for Emet to actually fight us. He remains fairly calm and composed throughout the entire xpac til the end, where he just gets mad and is like "Fight me Bro." which was out of character up til that point.

Emet wasnt an idiot and a blowhard. If anything, I think that while he did get mad at you for not living up to his standards, I think that anger is because on some level he probably did want you to and was angry you werent quite there. Him fighting you was to goad you into rising to the occassion and becoming someone with the potential to be an equal and prove that you and everyone else are not just things but actual living things, even if its fully understood that he might and probably will die should that happen. Pair this with the melancholy at the end, and I think that he was at the end just tired of it all and really didnt want to keep it up.



TLDR: He doesnt have to fight you, but out of character does, with the likely intention of dying intentionally if atleast to push you to be worthy of being called alive.

That was my read at the least after thinking about it. No matter how you cut it though, he was definitely a more memorable villain than the previous ones.

I second this, I actually always liked Zenos in all his one-dimensional glory. He's simple but with purpose in that he has none, he's like a reflection of us, all our power but no desire to use it beyond to be tested and he finds all (save us) to be lacking.

The compelling part of Zenos to me was that he actually not only fought us head on, but straight up kicked our asses 3 or so times. Up until then, we typically fought people as one and done and after a while it was kind of expected that being the WoL, youd always win. Zenos actually seems to be able to beat us and make our survival not guaranteed. It was refreshing.

[wereotter]

Every time we attempted to show him mercy, he used that to try to kill us. He wasn't a sympathetic character, and I had no sympathy for the fact that his people were destroyed when you consider that in the millenia since he has been (at least partially) responsible for the destruction of entire worlds and all the inhabitants of those worlds. They made us understand WHY he did it, but that didn't make me sympathetic to the facts of what he actually did.

For me, we've had far more impactful NPC deaths in this game.... I really don't understand why people get so hung up on him. I still am mourning Noraxia.

MOAR ZENOS PLS!

No seriously. I need my archnemesis more, let me fight and struggle with him. Again, and again, and again. Call it repetititve but It would be so good of a narrative. Uncompromising strength versus inalienable will.

My opinion, but no thank you. He's the most boring villain they've ever created, in my mind. Also god damn but he's ugly, and I can't stand looking at his face.

[Jojoya]

Why did we have to kill Emet-Selch?

What's one of the first things we learn back in the level 20 MSQ after defeating Ifrit?

The tempered must be killed because they exist only to serve the primal who tempered them.

[Morningstar1337]

The possibility also exists that their undoing was to an extent their own fault. Consider this, Primals, which had been stated to bleed the land dry of Aether, were established to be creation magic. And the Aumarotines had more internal aether than modern man, but the possibility remains that such frequent use of their godlike magic would still had dire consequences on the star they are supposedly stewards of. I'm also of the opinion that their fates were less Cosmic Horror more a Tale of mythic hubris that uses cosmic horror as dressing (a case of pride before a fall). the "sound" was implied to originate form within by Therion's epithet and possibly others, further lending credence to the fact there it was internal rather than external.

Ironically I can sympathize with Emet-Selch despite that (it is not that different form the Exarch's plan and reasoning when you think about it, its only a matter of scale), but the fact still remains that he had to be stopped, lest his actions doom countless worlds to revive the shadows of one long past (and with no guarantee that those revived will be as he remembers him, the HW Hildibrand quests of all things, and IIRC the ALC quest point out that while the flesh can be revived, a destroyed soul cannot be restored, and We can assume that the Ascians that sacrificed themselves to Hydealynand Zodiac would had merged with the entities and this be considered destroyed [And I'd also extend this to Minfillia and Ardbert as well, as they fused with other entities]), plus it's not just him that has this goal, Lahabrea and Elidibus had that in mind as wlel and I can assume that it would also factor into the motives of the sundered Ascians as well.

[Edax]

Why did we have to kill Emet-Selch? Yes, yes, I know: Ascian and Empire combined made him the sum total of all "evil" insofar as the Eorzian universe is concerned. But he was also complex and pretty darned interesting - far, far more compelling than any other Ascian that Square-Enix had yet written.

But we had to off him. So... so much for that.

I just don't understand the decision. Yes, he was the expansion's antagonist (of sorts), but he could have definitely served an interesting role as some kind of dark horse champion - a 'Loki' of FFXIV, if you will. And, if not that, just don't kill him so quickly - defeat him, drive him away, but don't eliminate all possibilities of reappearance moving forward.

Sigh.

All that is out the window now, of course... but it sure would be nice not to just throw away interesting characters every time your writers accidentally stumble onto one. Yet, amazingly, they seem to accomplish the inverse - killing everyone interesting, like Yotsuyu, but managing to make the truly insufferable ones eternal (like Minfilia, and then - because reasons - Minfilia 2.0).

Some interesting villains in Star Trek like Gul Dukat ended up sticking around far too long after the conclusion of their story resulting in the character getting tarnished. When the story of a antagonist ends, the antagonist should not stick around. One of the biggest problems with modern writing is that death has no meaning because characters get resurrected all the time because writers just can't resist. Having Palpatine just resurrected for no reason so serve as a last minute antagonist for Rise of Skywalker did that Star Wars trilogy no favors. Let Emet's death have meaning.