Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

[ZeroInfinity]

I find Emet-Selch annoying, deeply unlikable, and I think his extended presence (among other things in the Elpis storyline...) made for a worse EW experience.

While i don't dislike Emet (i liked him as a villain in ShB), I do dislike some of the stuff they did with him. Making it that he was one of our closest friends in a previous life, all the "see he's not a bad guy, he's just grumpy" shit in Elpis (I hate the scene where we're forced to beg him for help "Please, Emet-Selch." ugh my wol would not have gone along with that shit.) and the way they basically force your wol to like him, like all the terrible shit he did is just forgiven and now he's just your slightly grumpy uncle giving you a travel bucket list. Yet another "redeemed" villain to throw in the pile.

For my own hot take, I also dislike a lot of the Ancient shit in general. The Pandaemonium raids are a prefect example. I just don't give a shit about what's going on and want everyone to just shut up. Like what does any of this shit have to do with me? Who are you people? No, I don't care about your daddy issues, Eric. Only story content I've been tempted to skip. We never should have gone back to Elpis. It should have been one and done for the story. Now we have even more time travel shit to deal with, and it was already questionable in EW MSQ.

The only Ancient thing I even really like is Hythlodaeus, and even then he just showed up, looked pretty, was funny and once all was said and done I barely ever thought about him again.

[Turnintino]

While i don't dislike Emet (i liked him as a villain in ShB), I do dislike some of the stuff they did with him. Making it that he was one of our closest friends in a previous life, all the "see he's not a bad guy, he's just grumpy" shit in Elpis (I hate the scene where we're forced to beg him for help "Please, Emet-Selch." ugh my wol would not have gone along with that shit.) and the way they basically force your wol to like him, like all the terrible shit he did is just forgiven and now he's just your slightly grumpy uncle giving you a travel bucket list. Yet another "redeemed" villain to throw in the pile.

For my own hot take, I also dislike a lot of the Ancient shit in general. The Pandaemonium raids are a prefect example. I just don't give a shit about what's going on and want everyone to just shut up. Like what does any of this shit have to do with me? Who are you people? No, I don't care about your daddy issues, Eric. Only story content I've been tempted to skip. We never should have gone back to Elpis. It should have been one and done for the story. Now we have even more time travel shit to deal with, and it was already questionable in EW MSQ.

The only Ancient thing I even really like is Hythlodaeus, and even then he just showed up, looked pretty, was funny and once all was said and done I barely ever thought about him again.

Couldn't agree more.

Tangential, and I don't think this is a hot take by any stretch, but it was also just... insane to me that Venat got to keep her memory. I thought for sure that the convenient memory-eraser was inserted solely to tie up all the timey-wimey loose ends... A little lazy, to say the least, but it would've made what we know to be her behavior afterwards a hell of a lot less baffling lol.

Re: Emet, while I can see how he could make for a compelling villain to some players, I was already pretty burned out by the Ascians at that point, so it was just a miss all the way through for me. And even by the end of his storyline in SHB, it was clear we were meant to be sympathetic to him, and I was just, like... No?? Like you said, these writers love to redeem a villain, and while it's not exactly offensive to me that they'd try -- this is a fantasy game -- it's still almost breathtaking that they'd expect us to hand-wave all the genocide just because baby misses his fwends~ uwu

Obviously a lot of people love him, and they are free to do so, but man oh man does he leave me cold. And as you mentioned, it did not help that the narrative forced our character to fall in line with him. If the game had allowed us even a little more freedom to express any kind of distaste or resistance, I probably wouldn't have been quite as annoyed lol.

[VeyaAkemi]

While i don't dislike Emet (i liked him as a villain in ShB), I do dislike some of the stuff they did with him. Making it that he was one of our closest friends in a previous life, all the "see he's not a bad guy, he's just grumpy" shit in Elpis (I hate the scene where we're forced to beg him for help "Please, Emet-Selch." ugh my wol would not have gone along with that shit.) and the way they basically force your wol to like him, like all the terrible shit he did is just forgiven and now he's just your slightly grumpy uncle giving you a travel bucket list. Yet another "redeemed" villain to throw in the pile.

One thing I feel the need to say is that the Emet we met in Elpis didn't need to be forgiven for anything, we were in the past, that Emet had done nothing and the grumpy-but-has-a-big-heart guy we met was who Emet-Selch used to be, before the trauma of losing everyone he loved and cared for set in and he lost everything, and that changes a man, plus a good chunk of Zodiark tempering which may or may not have been in effect, that's deeply debatable, and you get present-day villain Emet.

What bothered me far more is the scene in Ultima Thule, when Hyth and Emet are summoned, because at that point, that was present-day Emet, a purified Emet that had been returned to the star after his death, but it was still him, and while I enjoy the scene and this didn't ruin anything for me, it did get me thinking that it was a rather glaring flaw, maybe you could argue that the stakes were too high to be picky about who would help us, we accept help from Zenos of a all people shortly after, but it still glosses over everything he did.