Emet-Selch Is Not That Tragic

[ValyrianBlood]

You can't feel sorry for someone just because they say "I've been through shit", you have to let the players *experience* what it's like to be in his own shoes.

You can't? That's sad. I don't need to experience the demise of my whole family (as example for 'being though shit') myself to feel sorry and emphasize with someone who lost theirs.

His motives are evil

Well his motivation is to bring his whole perished race back to life, I wouldn't exactly call this evil? But the means to do it certainly are.

All in all I do find Emet to be a tragic figure (maybe not in a classical sense) but still. I can understand his motives, I feel for him but ultimately he had to be defeated...



Possible Dragone Age: Inquisition spoilers
Oh boooy, I cant wait for Dragon Age 4, I think many tears will be shed... Emet is nothing like Solas but in the end it's the same story and I feel for both of them

It's things like that that go a long a way to creating an absolutely fantastic villain, which Emet hits on all cylinders. It also doesn't hurt that he is extremely charismatic, and those of us who love eccentricity in a villain will definitely be lured in. But it is understandable that he won't resonate with everyone.

Yep, that's pretty much it, u summarized perfectly why I just love love love him

[HyoMinPark]

Well his motivation is to bring his whole perished race back to life, I wouldn't exactly call this evil? But the means to do it certainly are.

All in all I do find Emet to be a tragic figure (maybe not in a classical sense) but still. I can understand his motives, I feel for him but ultimately he had to be defeated...

His motives may have been “noble”, but that’s strictly from his point of view. His plans were to sacrifice the “half-lives” of the beings of the Shards and the Source to pay Zodiark for resurrecting the Ancients that once gave their lives to save Emet’s world. From the perspective of us—the main character—it is an evil motive to sacrifice all those lives to return those he lost. He believes it’s just, but to us it’s unjust because what of our worlds and our lives. He doesn’t view us as even whole people—we’re lesser creatures to him, one “who has known perfection”.

One can argue “it’s a matter of perspective”—which is why I specified our perspective in my response (the player character; the “hero”).

That he can garner an audience’s (and perhaps even the WoL’s) sympathy despite our perception of him as evil makes him an anti-villain.

[Gemina]

His motives may have been “noble”, but that’s strictly from his point of view. His plans were to sacrifice the “half-lives” of the beings of the Shards and the Source to pay Zodiark for resurrecting the Ancients that once gave their lives to save Emet’s world. From the perspective of us—the main character—it is an evil motive to sacrifice all those lives to return those he lost. He believes it’s just, but to us it’s unjust because what of our worlds and our lives. He doesn’t view us as even whole people—we’re lesser creatures to him, one “who has known perfection”.

One can argue “it’s a matter of perspective”—which is why I specified our perspective in my response (the player character; the “hero”).

That he can garner an audience’s (and perhaps even the WoL’s) sympathy despite our perception of him as evil makes him an anti-villain.

I think Nanamo explained it quite well (as in I agree with her 100%) when she talks about the strengths of one, compliment the weaknesses of the other. I know she was describing her relationship to Rabauhn and how the two of them together make an extremely formidable opponent, but it can also be used to describe that the very flaws that make us imperfect is exactly what makes us perfect. Emet of course, would never be able to see it that way having seen the trials of humanity for himself and deems as anything but.

[Reynhart]

His motives may have been “noble”, but that’s strictly from his point of view.

Most of motives are based on a point of view. I'm not really sure killing beastmen so that they won't summon their primal again is not really noble from their point of view, especially since they summon it by fear of being killed.

Is that noble to use a bug bomb if your house is crawling with insects ? From his point of view, that's what humans are and did since they only have a fragment of a soul compared to him yet have taken the whole world. After all, those insects only look for a place to live.

[Alleo]

[I]

Well his motivation is to bring his whole perished race back to life, I wouldn't exactly call this evil? But the means to do it certainly are.

All in all I do find Emet to be a tragic figure (maybe not in a classical sense) but still. I can understand his motives, I feel for him but ultimately he had to be defeated...

The problem is that after they got tempered (when their planet was save again) and they could just go on with their lives they decided to instead stomp over the sacrifices their people made and to cause further tragedy by wanting to sacrifice a huge amount of new life to Zodiark in return of the old one. And lets remember that this was at a time where everyone still got a whole soul. They might have had the rights to summon Zodiark to save themselves from something they may or may not have caused but they had no rights to then turn around and sacrifice unwilling life to get their friends back. Emet is all about us never being able to do such a sacrifice (which is not true seeing how the people of the bad future did that) yet unlike most mortals they cant just accept this death, either because of them being tempered or because of them never seeing such death.

Had they accepted death then Hydealyn might have never been summoned, the world might have never been split.

I can feel for them and I can understand their sadness and I even really like Emet-Selch as a character, but what the Ascians had planned after the calamity was over was evil. And people disagreed that much with it that they thought that it would be better to summon Hydealyn and go against them.

[Lersayil]

... but they had no rights to then turn around and sacrifice unwilling life to get their friends back. ...

Was it ever defined what sort of life they were planning to cultivate and sacrifice? For all we know they could've meant plants, monsters, animals and such. I'd say we are still lacking a lot of information on that part to pass judgment on the happenings pre sundering.

Also, accepting death is a neccessity for us, and still many don't. How many would if there were other options?

On topic though: Emet is an anti-villain to us, and a anti-hero to himself. I don't think it was ever intended as outright tragic. Moral relativism and all that, as once a wise Ascian said.

[HyoMinPark]

Was it ever defined what sort of life they were planning to cultivate and sacrifice? For all we know they could've meant plants, monsters, animals and such. I'd say we are still lacking a lot of information on that part to pass judgment on the happenings pre sundering.

Also, accepting death is a neccessity for us, and still many don't. How many would if there were other options?

On topic though: Emet is an anti-villain to us, and a anti-hero to himself. I don't think it was ever intended as outright tragic. Moral relativism and all that, as once a wise Ascian said.

In terms of sacrifice, Emet-Selch told us that he wanted to take the lives of the people on the Source and the remaining Shards, and offer them up to Zodiark as payment to restore the original Amaurotines that sacrificed themselves to Zodiark when he was summoned initially. The Ascian’s plan all along was to bring about the Rejoining, reunite with Zodiark, and return their world (at the cost of ours and the Shards’).

Personally i don't think Emet was a bad person at all. Considering if you actually read every line throughout the expansion and the way he acted and his facial expressions. Yes what he was trying to do was "Evil" but like he said before you entered the last dungeon "You would do the same" in trying to save your people. I really enjoyed Shadowbringers, it was a damn good roller coaster.

He actually asked us if our people would ever do the same as his did: give up half their number to save their world. The implication when Alphinaud didn’t answer was that it’s likely our people wouldn’t be so selfless; which gave Emet more reason to condemn us as weaker/lesser beings.

[Lersayil]

In terms of sacrifice, Emet-Selch told us that he wanted to take the lives of the people on the Source and the remaining Shards, and offer them up to Zodiark as payment to restore the original Amaurotines that sacrificed themselves to Zodiark when he was summoned initially. The Ascian’s plan all along was to bring about the Rejoining, reunite with Zodiark, and return their world (at the cost of ours and the Shards’).

You are thinking about plan B. I meant the original plan A they had before ol' mommy crystals summoning and the sundering of the original world.

1. Summon Zodiark, stop the cataclysm -> 50% of the pop gone
2. Restore planet to working order -> 75% of original pop gone
3. Cultivate new life on restored planet
4. Sacrifice newly cultivated life -> get back originally sacrificed people
????
5. Profit

[Alleo]

Was it ever defined what sort of life they were planning to cultivate and sacrifice? For all we know they could've meant plants, monsters, animals and such. I'd say we are still lacking a lot of information on that part to pass judgment on the happenings pre sundering.

Also, accepting death is a neccessity for us, and still many don't. How many would if there were other options?

On topic though: Emet is an anti-villain to us, and a anti-hero to himself. I don't think it was ever intended as outright tragic. Moral relativism and all that, as once a wise Ascian said.

Hythlodaeus says that the Ascians wanted to use the new life to get their old ones back while others said that it was enough and that the new life should be the stewards of the planet and that their time is over. For me at least that does not sound like something you would say about a plant or animal. (I also would doubt that the ancients ones would be truly against them planting some trees somewhere and chopping them down later) Especially when Emet later states that he cant just see us as being the stewards of this planet because of our behaviour.

Personally i don't think Emet was a bad person at all. Considering if you actually read every line throughout the expansion and the way he acted and his facial expressions. Yes what he was trying to do was "Evil" but like he said before you entered the last dungeon "You would do the same" in trying to save your people. I really enjoyed Shadowbringers, it was a damn good roller coaster.

Alisaie does wonder if we would do the same but the story already showed in a small scale that we dont do that. Thancred could have forced Ryne to "die", thus sacrificing the new life to get the old loved one back. But instead the story teaches us quite a bit that we should not do that.

In terms of sacrifice, Emet-Selch told us that he wanted to take the lives of the people on the Source and the remaining Shards, and offer them up to Zodiark as payment to restore the original Amaurotines that sacrificed themselves to Zodiark when he was summoned initially. The Ascian’s plan all along was to bring about the Rejoining, reunite with Zodiark, and return their world (at the cost of ours and the Shards’).


He actually asked us if our people would ever do the same as his did: give up half their number to save their world. The implication when Alphinaud didn’t answer was that it’s likely our people wouldn’t be so selfless; which gave Emet more reason to condemn us as weaker/lesser beings.

Yes its clear that now he wanted to sacrifice the people but we talked about back then, when the world was still whole. There they already talked about sacrificing huge amounts of new lifes to get the old ones back which then lead to Hydealyn being summoned.

The funny thing is that our people did that already. The people from the bad future knew that there was a high chance that their timeline would cease to exist if they change the past, yet they still did this in the hopes of a better future. And unlike the ancients which could have been remembered through their surviving people, the bad future ones wont even have that. Also a couple of people have shown in the story to be quite ready to throw away their lifes for the safety of others and I am honestly not sure why they decided to let Alphinaud be quiet there.

Someone (presumably either Emet or one of the fabricated Amaurotines, can't remember) specifically mentions a "noise from the earth" causing the Amaurotines to lose control of their creation magic and create the monstrosities that caused their downfall. I wouldn't be so sure they are the ones to blame for their fate. The game was intentionally vague enough about what this "noise" was that I suspect that it will be revisited at some point in the future of the story.

In summary, I could feel bad for the Amaurotines and their society as a whole (as much as it's possible for me to "feel bad" for fictitious entities, anyway, which isn't very much), but not so with Emet. He was just slightly too much of a jackass with how he went about things for me to feel the least bit sorry for him in the end.

I thinkt they also mentioned how the planet was dieing. So either it was just an unfortunate situation where the planets life was simply over, or there was something from the outside that infected it. Of course there could also be the chance that the planet died because they used too much creation magic over the time. Feo Ul mentions that if you take, then you have to give back to keep a balance. And maybe they never kept it and one day it was just too much.

[Lersayil]

Hythlodaeus says that the Ascians wanted to use the new life to get their old ones back while others said that it was enough and that the new life should be the stewards of the planet and that their time is over. For me at least that does not sound like something you would say about a plant or animal. (I also would doubt that the ancients ones would be truly against them planting some trees somewhere and chopping them down later) Especially when Emet later states that he cant just see us as being the stewards of this planet because of our behaviour.

Thats one way of interpreting it, and possibly the case, but we don't really know for sure. To be honest the Amaurotians seemed just bonkers enough to argue that no type of sacrifice is worth messing with the dead. Or maybe thinking as you do and assuming the cataclysm was their fault? All speculation at this point.

The funny thing is that our people did that already. The people from the bad future knew that there was a high chance that their timeline would cease to exist if they change the past, yet they still did this in the hopes of a better future. And unlike the ancients which could have been remembered through their surviving people, the bad future ones wont even have that. Also a couple of people have shown in the story to be quite ready to throw away their lifes for the safety of others and I am honestly not sure why they decided to let Alphinaud be quiet there.

Time travel is a different can of worms depending how you look at it. They theorized that their timeline wouldn't change with the past, so they could be just creating a new timeline without changing their own. And even if they were wrong, and the timeline shifted, we don't quite know how they viewed the decision. It could've been a noble sacrifice unanimously decided by the masses, or just looking at the current timeline as worthless and throwing it away at a chance for anything better. Or for the uneducated, not familiar with time travel, they could've just thought of it as changing their own lives with a magical fingersnap for the better.

As for the smaller sacrifices, I'm not trying to belittle them, but systematic and voluntary sacrifice of your civilization is really on quite a different scale. I think I agree with the twins on this one. The Source (or humans generally) could or would not make this decision (and I don't count the timetravel because their world was already doomed anyways, and they weren't sacrificing a part of them. They we're throwing away the whole timeline).

I thinkt they also mentioned how the planet was dieing. So either it was just an unfortunate situation where the planets life was simply over, or there was something from the outside that infected it. Of course there could also be the chance that the planet died because they used too much creation magic over the time. Feo Ul mentions that if you take, then you have to give back to keep a balance. And maybe they never kept it and one day it was just too much.

Indeed, the cataclysms reason was never mentioned or explained, only its effects. Personally I doubt we'll go down with the "Creation magic is bad, mkay?" route, since that would make the Amaurotians plight a lot less sympathetic. Or it might mean they we're idiots for not drawing parallels between cause and effect, which isn't much better.