What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Brinne]

What are your thoughts on his scenes in Ultima Thule?

My feelings about that scene basically reflect on my feelings on Endwalker in general: some really good stuff there that I truly enjoyed, but meanwhile, almost everything associated with Venat and the insecurity of her writing - in urging us to like her, see her as benevolent, and get on board with the "everyone had good intentions and wanted to save the world and once they understand that they can all unite behind you!" uplifting tone of Endwalker - felt disingenuous and agitating.

I think it's important, if you're approaching a character in an authentic way and allow them to be interesting, to allow them to be hated for things they have a right to be hated for. Like I said, I love Emet-Selch as a character, but never once have I had issue with people like G'raha or Thancred hating his guts, or for someone like Tiamat to loathe the Ascians and want to see them burnt to the ground. They have a right to feel that way given how they've been impacted by Emet-Selch's actions, have no obligation to be worried about his feelings, and that that is allowed makes every character involved better and more sympathetic. Even if they're all good people in their own ways, not everyone can and should necessarily like and approve of one another, or else there's a level of strange, plastic insincerity to their individual emotions that emerges - and the feeling of everyone becoming a weird conglomerate.

On the other hand, in a vacuum, I don't think Emet's attitude there necessarily has to be seen as out-of-character, or overall ruins the character for me, because I can identify that once again he's being driven mostly by his kindness. He's there to support the WoL, who is in pretty rough shape emotionally at the time, first and foremost, so no - given the circumstances, he's not going to take the chance to harp on about how the WoL's prime benefactor slaughtered everyone he loved and erased them from history for extremely dubious reasons. Nothing would come of that at that point. The thread of kindness and concern guiding him also comes very through clearly when he falters upon seeing the WoL sad about his departure and takes that long moment to cheer them up again before departing. He doesn't want the WoL to feel bad, and he can acknowledge that he agrees with Venat at least that WoL is an amazing person - WoL also won over Emet by the end of Shadowbringers, after all.

But as part of the overall picture relentlessly pushing that framing of Venat on us? Yes, it was tiresome, and I wasn't much into the "oh, you scamp" tone when Emet noted how very deeply Venat had screwed him over in particular. I was glad, at least, he fairly brusquely flipped Hydaelyn off and rejected her "apology" to him altogether.