Quote Originally Posted by Lunaxia View Post
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If, if, that were the case. In this hypothetical scenario. And assuming your assessment of Emet Selch is correct. If I were reading a book with a character nuanced because of reasons like those, this is what I as a reader would think of them: I would say the writers are insecure

Because they're relying really hard on what gave them good publicity and made Emet Selch a memorable character. And I say "memorable character" rather than "good villain" because, to me, they're separate concepts and separate identities of Emet Selch. The Good Villain is the guy we had in early Shadowbringers: completely uncaring about whether we lived or died, affable toward us and manipulative. Someone whose backstory was tragic, but his motivations didn't justify the means, simply made him jump off the slippery slope. Rather than the villain being a stereotypical evil man, this guy was once a good guy. Or at least someone we would have befriended. He just had a really rough time, and because of that, he basically set aside any pretense and care. He views whatever remains as meaningless, and while he doesn't relish on it, views the suffering he inflicts as a necessary evil. One that, because he views the lives of the suffering as meaningless, has zero bearing on his moral compass as far as he can see.
The memorable character was that of a bitter old man who wanted nothing more than to chill and be respected among his peers. A no-nonsense serious face whose conversion to evil was simply because he was in the bad guy club. As in, "I'm in the bad guy club, I need to do bad things, but just because I'm bad guy doesn't mean I'm bad guy".

HOWEVER. at the end of Ultima Thule, he reiterates that he'd do it all over again. That he isn't remorseful of all the bad crap he got. But that's one line out of all the rest of his portrayal, meant clearly to "redeem" him and pass him off as someone respectable. It's all framed like he's a good guy deep down, even when the content of what he says is "I literally would nuke you guys right now if I could, but I can't so go on". He's always portrayed as someone who is fair and cordial to his enemies, though. Hence why even when he loses and admits his motivations are evil, he still sees your goal as being something you earned from him. So one could make the argument that they just explored him being fair even when he's an antagonist. The issue I take with this is that the game considers him to be redeemed, which... sure, it's what most fans feel, but it kind of ignores the consequences of what he did. We would not do this in real life.

And by pandering to this, it makes it look like the writers are insecure about having written a character people enjoy despite being evil. That they realized the hole they dug by making him likeable, and in capitalizing on why he's so likeable casually excuse the crap he's done.

Another way of showing insecurity is shirking responsability for what they've established. For whatever reason, be it because fans love the character and you want to give them a brighter outlook, or because of real-life biases and opinions of the author, they just didn't believe it necessary to harp on all the crap that's been shown with him as the origin point. For expansions we've been consistently told that Garlemald's expansionistic motivations stem from Emet's lies and nationalistic rethoric. We've seen the effects of Garlean hate and might through Ala Mhigo, Doma, Bozja and Werylt. And we know that the height of the Allagan empire came due to his machinations, as did the establishment of Eulmore as a power nation of decadence. It wasn't just "Oh I cutely blew up a world and nearly blew up this one for my God" like the story likes to present it. No, to lead those worlds into such a direction, he motivated a lot of torture, death and pain for people and didn't bat a single eye. For whatever reason, the devs insist on excusing those "smaller" but more realistic issues (nationalism, dictatorships and abuse of power are real-life threats, not dimensional merging...) in favour of the more fantastic sins. Because the other stuff is far too "real" and they thus feel insecure in writing these things, either because they don't know how to approach it or don't feel comfortable exploring them, and thus don't tend to focus on those things.

Now, these are criticisms of the way Emet is written, sure, but I'm saying it right now. This is hypothetical. I do see some of these as potential reasons why Emet is written the way he is, but a) I'm not thinking of every single interaction with Hades from start to finish, just his overall path and how it made me feel, which isn't enough to say whether that's what happened or not, b) this is again assuming I knew that that's what happened. That the authors really did beat around the bush with Emet past Shadowbringers and cast him in a better light. But there's no way for me to know, so I'm only relying on observations and purposely approaching them from that angle. My only observations are that Emet IS cast in a much more benevolent light in EW and they DO focus more on the fantastical crimes than the more realistic crimes. But as he does at least mention that he doesn't regret his antagonistic side and some more I might have missed, so I can't say for certain that's actually happening. Much less that that is the road they took.

What do you guys think of Emet's portrayal? And if it did indeed shift, why do you guys think it did?