Are <5.0 main villain> fanboys also supportive of <6.1-6.5 main villain>? *SPOILERS*

[Cleretic]

It's kind of funny for me as it's the same feeling for me when it comes to another villian (in a different game) who has done a lot(though maybe not as high of a body count as Emet-Selch) horrible things that a lot of the fanbase goes wild for and keeps on asking for them to show up somehow. That being Handsome Jack. Or as I like to do is use Tassiter's name for him aka John. Is he a great villian and one I love killing? Yes. But he is an annoying piece of trash that any time I'm playing the pre-sequal I'm constantly telling him to stfu. And his reson for why he did ANYTHING was all due to a very bad parenting decision in response to trauma. That he then used to go and do all of those other horrible things. Well that and greed. The only thing that's connected to him and well it's more of a person that I like and give some level of sympathy for and want more of is poor Timothy cause that guy didn't know wtf he was signing up for when he made the deal to become a doppelganger in order to clear out his debt.

I've made the same Emet and Handsome Jack connection, too. Mainly because there's one thing Borderlands 2 does with Handsome Jack that Shadowbringers never did with Emet:

Bruise his ego.

The best part of having a character with such a towering image of themselves and what they've made is to see what happens when it actually gets damaged. (It's the entire reason Frasier was a good TV show.) Handsome Jack's full of fun quips and jokes, but the times he really got interesting for me were when we actually foil his plans or break his things, and he gets genuinely mad, it's great. His attacks on you and your allies get so much blunter, meaner and more personal, and his delivery starts carrying so much venom that it could kill an elephant. It's actually the thing that takes him from a kind of funny joke to a genuinely compelling villain for me, and adds so much texture to the arc, there's enormous peaks and valleys in Jack's mood and attitude.

Emet might have a more complex inner life, but externally he's much the same sort of character... except he never takes those hits. We never see him have to respond to his best-laid plans going awry, he just stays in his smug, self-assured internal castle for his entire screentime. Hell, he even dies on top, as far as emotional storytelling and stability goes. I think that's a real mistake in how to handle a character like that.

I have more and bigger problems with Emet-Selch, fixing this would hardly save him in my eyes, but I do think his Shadowbringers story could've benefited from having him really lose his cool once or twice. We had him doing a bit of that during Elpis in Endwalker, but that was too little too late.