Seeing as the thread is rather listless at the moment and I have my sub back (Pandaemonium is doing some tremendous heavy-lifting when it comes to my interest in the game lately), I thought I'd share something that I've been wondering on and off since finishing EW: did they perhaps shelve a chunk of planned Garlemald content because it would reflect poorly on Emet's character, and after his popularity and the sudden upswing in player numbers during ShB, they chose to play it safe and cater to fanservice than paint him in his original darker shades of grey, thus potentially threatening a large part of what contributed to their success in the first place?

It seems to me there was more in the works prior to Garlemald's fall; the power plays for the throne, the civil war, Fandaniel's comments concerning Zenos' memories and that Emet-Selch might be behind them - which I dare to stretch to hinting at experimentation, along with the cloning - and regardless of how you may choose to look at it, any relatively lore-rich Garlemald content wouldn't have exactly cast him in the best light. However you may want to spin his reasons, his changes of heart, his soft spots, he created and used that empire for his own ends, manipulating an entire race of people by preying upon their vulnerability and latent desire for power and revenge into committing terrible atrocities against other nations, and ultimately, even if somewhat indirectly, set them up for the collapse of their society one way or another. I was actually surprised how light of a wrist tapping he gets during the Garlemald portion for this - the most noteworthy reference to him being in a sightseeing log entry - and there was a part of me that, as fond of him as I am, found his moral whitewashing in EW to be a bit disconcerting. His complexity was part of his appeal as a character, but the curious motives and emotional turmoil behind the flippant facade wound up stripped down into a grumpy heroic tsundere stereotype. I don't regret seeing Ancient Emet, and I won't deny I enjoyed him, but I wish his character had retained some of the depth, mystery and inscrutability that had made his original appearance so memorable. His moody affectation felt almost a little like lazy writing at times.

To see darker sides of Emet's character against the Garlean backdrop alongside his brighter portrayal pre-Sundering would have been interesting, but perhaps they feared the fans wouldn't think so? Or mayhap it simply boils down to what many of us have been griping about all along when it comes to Endwalker, and Emet was one casualty amongst many in oversimplifying the story and its characters to achieve their desired sugarcoated ending and inspirational message. Thoughts?