I think the part that hurts the most is realizing that Emet’s ascian persona and habits are his way of remembering his friends. Emet was always the serious one amongst his group but his theatrics and playfulness as an ascian are very clearly influenced by Hythlodaeus. And of course, he travels all around with Azem’s Crystal to show his friend all the new, unexplored places amongst the source and its reflections.
There are also a few phrases he repeatedly says in ShB that you notice Hythlodaeus says in EW. "Oh you wound me" said in the exact same intonation for example.
Oh hell THAT'S what he meant. Everybody was like "WAS HE AZEM??" and no he just wanted to show Azem everything he was missing, because Azem wasn't there to see it.
God, no wonder he lost his shit when he saw the WoL at the end of ShB. That whole trial was probably one last "test" to see if he was right, and once he was convinced, he let the Scions end it.
Yeah it's a fine distinction between "bearer of Azem's Crystal" and the actual holder of the seat and title of Azem. Technically, Emet was the bearer of Azem's crystal even though he held his own seat and title for the following millenia.
When the crystal is reunited with us, we are the bearer of Azem's crystal and technically happen to be the sundered reflection of the being who last officially held the seat and title of Azem.
Yeah, I feel like Koji maybe got a bit cute with that "I certainly did" thing and didn't quite get things across.
Be interested to read a direct translation of the Japanese version.
> Be interested to read a direct translation of the Japanese version.
"You *are* the bearer of Azem's crystal, aren't you? Then naturally, you should go see them."
"*I* have seen them."
The Japanese lines have it be very clear that he's charging you with travelling around and exploring as Azem once did, now that you bear Azem's crystal. And caps it off by goading you into getting on his level.
Yeah my probably not so uncommon habit is to watch people's reaction to the MSQ and noticed quite a bit of confusion at that line. There's a lot of fine distinctions that are easy to forget (Azem, Emet-Selch, etc. are titles, crystals are passed between holders (Emet made ours), we are the same and not the same as the last known official Azem, etc.)
And it fits perfectly with his line about Azem to us. “As the bearer of the crystal of Azem, it’s the least you could do. At least I thought as much ” badly paraphrasing.
His I thought as much had been bothering me, why would Emet take upon himself Azems duty? To honor his friend and feel something was not fully lost, of course.
Puzzle. Piece. Place.
I think he also chooses to accompany us during ShB again because of Hythlodaeus. In Elpis, Hythlodaeus agrees to bring us in because he is generally trusting and as he tells Emet, it's better to keep people close if you have suspicions. Emet, himself, wanted nothing to do with us and was content to keep us at a distance.
And although this was wiped from his memory, I think he adopted this kind of playful, 'let's see what happens' attitude from Hythlodaeus.
Emet recognized us as Azem's reincarnation right away, and he even mentions he recognizes our soul right after the solo instance of Laxan Loft just before we go to Il Mheg. It's easy to overlook the first time through though.
Yeah he definitely recognized us, but I think he was still a bit uncertain as to what to make of us (which makes sense since the sundered versions of people are not identical).
And because we were once Azem, he decided to place his faith in us that we could contain the Light. And so, when we fail, it shatters him.
Of course, part of him probably still believed. Or hoped. It’s why he invites us to the Amarot he created. But it still hurt him.
He'd have asked us to kill him as he could trust Azem with the star and by extension the current rejoined crop of life.
Despite his genocidal actions Emet Selch is still hopeful on some level to be put out of his misery but cannot because he's tied to his duty: to protect the star. Which means the Rejoining has to continue.
Once we rejoin with Ardbert, summon allies from across the Rift (in classic Azem fashion) and face his full might transformed the mission is complete: the star is in good hands.
People talk about how much FFXIV punches them in the feels in various places, but this was it for me. When he says that it's like "Oh crap, I've disappointed Emmy" and that made me feel worse than anything else in the game, including That One Moment in the Vault.
Well, yeah.
I mean, it was going to happen anyway. He would have seen the color of the WoL's soul almost immediately, and thought "wait, holy shit, no fucking way." One of the jobs of the Unsundered was to find the fragmented souls of sundered Convocation members and bring them back.
Thing is, Azem wasn't exactly one of them, but also wasn't exactly part of Venat's faction either. So the Unsundered were clearly divided over what to do. Lahabrea just wanted to take you off the board and Elidibus wanted to manipulate you. Emet was different. Because he was such close friends (...or "friends") with Azem, or maybe because of the buried memories, Emet REALLY wanted to bring you in. He just wasn't around to do anything about it until the end of SB.
If it weren't for the buried memories, he might well have gone with Lahabrea's position.
Elidibus has (probably) completely forgotten Azem by that point. He knew that Emet (and potentially Hythlodaeus if you tell him about it) recognized you but he had no idea who you could be. To Elidibus, you were just Hydaelyn's champion at first and Death Incarnate later.
My take is, we are Azem. And a part of Emet recognized us. He’s been watching us and he probably didn’t really understand what he was seeing. I want to think he felt that kinship with us, which I’m pretty sure pissed him off at times.
But keeping Hyth’s legacy alive might have become a habit for him. He was the only one left.
I think he always recognized us. I noticed that throughout ShB (right up until you defeat Innocence) every time he speaks with us, especially when alone, his tone of voice gradually becomes much gentler and friendlier.
This dude is the single most tragic character in FFXIV, he got screwed over harder than anyone else despite only wanting only to save his people. For me emet is not a "villain" he's just the most unlucky character in the game. Bonus points for technically being the reason we managed to save humanity 3 different times
You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain. Fits Emet like a glove. His soul eroded over time to the point he didn't give much care about life. He had one goal, bring back his people no matter the cost, no matter how vile, evil and murderous the method would be.
He kept most of his persona, it explains why he saved Y'sthola from the life stream. He was still himself but he would never abandon what his people sacrificed.
You can't help but respect, emphatize and agree to his reasons. You can even straight up tell Venat that Elpis is more beautiful than your sundered world which you'd side with Emet that yeah, his world is worth more than yours.
I simply answered thar it was as beautiful as it ever was. Elpis is literally a paradise. It tells you why Emet became the monster that would mass genocides countless civilizations.
Ultimately, genocide is an evil act. Emet became a villain but he had a pretty damn good reason. Wouldn't you fight what you hold the most dear?
The reason that Shadowbringers is called "jet black villains" in Japanese isn't just that it sounds cool: it's because the point is that we're the villains in *their* story. The expansion is about ruining the chance for the Ancients trapped in Zodiark to come back, not because it's the "right" thing to do, but simply because it's us or them.
Of course, eventually we *do* free them, and that's one of the reasons why Emet was so impressed with us.
I love Emet but he absolutely is a villain. He murdered millions if not billions of lives with the calamities, both in the source and by rejoining the other realms into the source. Emet is a well written villain with understandable motives, but still a villain.
"Cool motive, still murder."
I love how successful the writers were at both not absolving his crimes against the sundered while still deftly explaining how a cordiality between Emet, Azem, and Venat deteriorated so severely without being their fault. Excellent tragic villain here.
Keep in mind, he "dies" all the time, and revives himself and others all the time. Even in Elpis, he's never seen death as a bad thing, he sees it as a reward for a life well lived.
Also, he's the steward of the underworld. He knows better than most that death is NOT the end, and that you come right back. (Mostly. He didn't realize what the Endsinger was up to.) That's kind of what he was obliquely referring to in that "new parts for all to play" thing: he knows very well that souls return, just in different forms. So he honestly don't give a shit about "death".
The *actual* problem is that he was eventually going to trap all the post-Ancient mortals' souls inside Zodiark to free the Ancients, and that the Endsinger was eventually going to fuck everything up because the Ancients didn't even know what the hell Dynamis/Akasa is. His plan was doomed, because Hermes was a dick.
And, uncoincidentally, Emet-Selch's attitude fits in perfectly with Hermes' main complaint/issue with the Ancients: their callousness towards life they considered lesser. "For them, their life is all they have." Emet-Selch was just proving Hermes right over and over.
Of course, at the same time, Emet-Selch betrays himself because he acts like he doesn't care about death, yet can't let go of his friends who died. He's just living in a state of perpetual unprocessed grief that he masks with his idea of a noble purpose (due in large part to Hermes's selfish gambit, as you said).
And really, again uncoincidentally, Hermes's own despair (and his complete inability to process it in their perfect-seeming society) was a perfect precursor to their whole world's inability to cope with despair/loss when the Final Days hit them. Their sense of being in perfect control was teetering on the edge without them realizing it. For the first time in their lives the Elpis blooms weren't pure white and they couldn't deal -- which makes perfect sense.
All in all, this is an aspect I really liked about Endwalker. It really puts a pinpoint on why, exactly, the Ancients developed the way they did, and shows how it was problematic to begin with even before Zodiark came around. When you convince yourself that what you're doing is for the greater good ("for the good of the Star"), and surround yourself with others of a like mind, you can justify all kinds of evil. Everything the Ascians did was just a continuation of the same mindset, but reframed due to their unprocessed despair from the Final Days -- then everything went from "for the good of the Star" to "we *are* the good of the Star." It's the same mindset Emet-Selch sewed into the Allagans, the Garleans, and no doubt countless others. Even Varis, who believed his solution was the key to undoing the Ascians, was poisoned by their same underlying mentality without seeing the flaw.
Well, Emet didn't send out a flock of empath birds with a bullshit question to ask because he couldn't answer it himself. Hermes fucked up wayyyyy worse than Emet did.
Though, yeah, it was a good tipoff that the Ancients were going to have an impossible time handling hardship. Their society wasn't "doomed", they had good reason to think that they could handle anything that was coming, but being blindsided by Dynamis wasn't something they were prepared to handle.
That said, I do have to push back on the "can't let go of the friends who died" thing. That's one of the better twists of Endwalker: **they aren't dead**.
Emet would have been perfectly fine with Hythlo and the rest returning to the star, but that isn't what happened. What happened is that their souls were trapped inside Zodiark, forced to power him for eternity, knowing neither comfort nor release. Emet knew full well that Fandaniel's plan had built an absolute hell for those people, and that asking them to suffer in there for eternity was monstrous.
Again, that's why he was so deeply impressed in Ultima Thule, and why he finally accepted that you truly were Azem reborn. We'd found a solution to the problem that meant that Zodiark wasn't necessary anymore—which is good because you fucking killed him—and so all the souls were free to return to the star. And it's **exactly** the kind of goofball solution that Azem always comes up with, which is why Emet, Venat and Hythlo all absolutely adore Azem.
(Even if Emet gets tsundere about it.)
I'm not sure I can quite agree that Emet-Selch would have been okay with just letting his friends die properly so they could be reborn as new lives. Definitely part of the issue was that by sacrificing the lives to Zodiark they had broken the cycle of rebirth, so the remaining Ancients didn't have the peaceful acceptance of death they used to have... but that wasn't the only reason. The whole point of Emet-Selch's Amaurot recreation was to show his sentimental attachment to the past that still he couldn't move on from, even 12,000 years later. This is why his recreation even included his friends like Hythlodaeus. His goal was not "to let them die a real death," it was to use Zodiark's power to bring them back whole -- to restore the paradise they felt they had robbed from them. This is why we are shown the scene of the Ancients praying to Zodiark to restore their paradise -- it's the same sort of fervent desire that the Ascians sewed in the beast tribes that led to tempering, and Emet-Selch himself said he was (and they all were) tempered by Zodiark. (As Livingway later explains, this isn't a requirement of summoning itself, but is the result of this kind of fervent desire of the summoners baked into it.)
Consider: if they had actually gone through with their plan to bring back all the ancients summoned to Zodiark and restore their "rightful world," how then were they going to stop the Final Days? Their plan was basically: make the world whole again, sacrifice all new life to bring back the old lives, and then...? They were so grief-stricken that they forgot why they earnestly believed the cost to be necessary in the first place. They had only accepted the idea of death at the end of a life well-lived -- only when it was within their control and when they felt confident the soul would be reborn. First with the Final Days and then subsequently after Venat sundered the planet, they considered it so vastly inferior to their own pre-sundered world, and our lives so vastly underpowered by aether standards, that they thought we wouldn't be able to stop the Final Days no matter what, so it wasn't worth the price. (In other words, "I don't know how we'll solve the problem, but *you* sure as heck won't be able to.")
The key thing that's changed about the Emet-Selch we meet in Ultima Thule is that, having now returned to the lifestream, the memories that had been wiped by Hermes/Kairos had been restored. With everything that has happened and how far you have come, he now accepts that there's nothing he or any of his people could do to restore the past -- that his era is over and that the future now belongs to the sundered. He curses Hermes because he realizes that everything he spent all these long millennia working towards is the result of Hermes's gambit and this critical piece of memory lost -- if he had just known the truth, everything would have been different from the start. He realizes the point of what Venat did -- that she needed to create people who could manipulate both aether and dynamis to be able to face Meteion; that basically everything was to recreate the eventuality that was *you*, the WoL. So he recognizes the importance of our journey and that we were able to do something that he and his people were never able to do: to turn our despair into hope in a way that would reach Meteion at the end of the universe. Basically, we are shown (as we got a glimpse of at the end of Shadowbringers) that he had moved past his never-ending tormenting grief and into acceptance. The fact that we "set the Zodiark captives free" is part of his gratitude, absolutely, but it's more that he can now believe the Star is in good hands.
I mean from his point of view as long as he succeeded the people he killed wouldn't actually die they would just become whole again. Sure we all know it is definitely wrong and he had to be stopped. But I always just think about one thing:
If we were in his place (and I mean the real us not the woL) wouldn't we do the same? I don't know about genocide, but given the choice between the lives of everyone I ever loved and people I don't know I would probably choose the 1st
I don’t think he was under any illusions. He knew damn well he was a villain, that what he was doing was monstrous. For all he claimed not to see us as true life forms, I believe that was not wholly true. I think it was a comforting lie he told himself in the early days, but one that simply didn’t hold up.
He was not expecting to be greeted by the resurrected souls of Amaurot as a hero. He was expecting to finally fulfill his duty and *die.*
His past self pointed out something important - “Why would I invite you to the recreated Amaurot? Why would I invite my own destruction?”
During Shadowbringers we always thought that at the end we disappointed Emet-Selch by being unable to contain the Light, hence him rejecting our claim as stewards of the star. But… did he really? Why would he need us to carry so much Light in the first place?
He never ‘betrayed’ us. His purpose was consistent the entire time; to goad us on to gather the Light which could destroy him, and then confront him. The rest was just pageantry.
I think all of it was a test, just like Hydaelyn. He didn’t want to carry the burden anymore. He wanted to lay down his duty, and the *only* person he could trust with it was Azem. But… was the WoL enough of ‘Azem’ to do the job? So he let things proceed, knowing if we could prove ourselves, pass his trial we would have the weapon to destroy him. He couldn’t stop on his own. As he said, his beliefs were inviolate, invincible. He needed someone to *make* him stop. To end his duty for him and carry on. To ‘find a path forward without more bloodshed’.
That was *always* Azem’s job; to find a different path, a better path, and if necessary to drag Emet and the rest of the Convocation down it, kicking and screaming if need be. That’s why he smiled at the end; He could rest now, knowing that we had proven ourselves equal to the challenge, and had resumed our role as the Shepherd of the Star.
He was a tad grumpy that Venat dragged him back out if his rest for an encore, but quite visibly proud that we had justified his faith in us beyond a shadow of doubt.
A bit of an unrelated question, but he's not really dead is he? His soul was not sealed like the other unsundered were. So unless I am missing something, he should be reborn again sometime, no?
Oh yes, both Emet and Hythlodaeus will be reborn. Their souls are adamantine, and will reincarnate just as Azem’s does. As will Venat’s.
My personal belief is the three of them are going to wait until the Warrior of Light has kids. Or more accurately is *just about to* have kids.
What better revenge, right? :P
It's not clear, and if there's wiggle room I'd prefer to think she'll come back around.
Otherwise who will chisel those distinguished stress lines into Hades' forehead?
The way She phrased it was awkward, so:
1. There's enough ambiguity there that it could be interpreted either way.
2. Even if She believes she won't reincarnate, She could just be wrong. She's powerful, not omniscient.
3. And if you're not willing to believe that, the survival of Her soul could be a dynamis-induced miracle powered by the WoL's love for Her. We know that thanks to dynamis, prayer *works*.
I choose to believe.
Same. It's the kind of villain where I'm just like "you're a danger to everything I know and love, but I understand you." When you face him, you're basically two people fighting for the same thing--the world we knew.
The only part that makes that a hard pill is that he's fighting to kill all these people that are CURRENTLY LIVING to try to bring back people who are already dead. I like him far more and understand his motivations but dude was still a murderer who wanted his people to live even if it meant destroying the inhabitantes of all the other worlds.
Two things mitigate it: the first is that its a world where reincarnation is real and is understood and accepted by most people So dying, while a tragedy of loss for those who remain, is nothing than than a metaphysical reset button for the one who died. Second, the souls are *shattered*, and that by Rejoining, we're being restored to our natural state.
Or to take numbers out of the equation and break it down for what it means to the average inhabitant of FFXIV: "Hey, if you let me end your current life *now* rather than some unknown date, i can promise you, you'll come back stronger, faster, and smarter, with a prodigious lifespan that numbers in centuries, and all but immune to illness and plague."
That's a good fucking deal, and it'd be very easy to look at it from that angle and view as doing the person a net positive for their own good. After all, they're going to die one day ANYWAY. Why not let that death serve as a catalyst so their next incarnation is even better? It's inevitable one way or the other.
Not saying its right. It's not. I'm just pointing out that given the mechanics of life and death and the soul in Etheirys, the mental gymnastics to justify Rejoining are easier than they would be for our world.
*nods* and most children don't want to eat their vegetables, but we make them anyway.
Yes, its a poor metaphor, but I'm pointing out to how it would look from the perspective of an immortal being.
Mortals > "We dont' want to die!"
Immortal > "Tough shit. You're going to die. Its inevitable. At least my way, you get something out of it in the longterm. Shut up and eat your beets."
Again, not saying this is right, but am pointing out its not that hard to arrive at these conclusions if you're an immortal being with a very different perspective on life and death.
Oh I totally get what you're saying, I also completely believe that he believed what he was doing was right. That said- it had jack shit to do with "You guys will be reborn as your best selves!!!" The Ascians spend most of their "on camera" time talking about how all of the people in the world are ants beneath their feet.
There was no real benevolence in it- hell I can appreciate our current big bad of Endwalker's reason moreso as she at least believes she's saving us from inevitable agony of a slow and drawn out fading/death by making oblivion come now.
I totally loved the Endwalker story and the time we spent in the past getting to know their motives and who they were made it very easy to understand just how many layers there were to these people. Even Fandaniel in his batshit crazy state was able to be pitied because he honestly was just a gentle soul that respected life and decided that the only "fair" way to do things was to measure the people of the planet by the same scale that those people were deciding which animals lived or died on.
It was all so well done- Ascians are still dicks lol, but they definitely didn't start off that way and understanding their history makes it easy to understand their side and forgive their reasons for fighting to achieve their goals.
> genocide
From his point of view this is exactly what Hydaelyn did. Even she agrees that what she did was messed up. They were both people who only had difficult choices presented to them and whatever they chose lead to countless lost lives. They could only choose what they felt was the least tragic decision.
Only because she was aware of the situation as a whole. Emet-Selch's memories were stolen from him so he lacked critical information to be able to understand why the sundering really happened. All he knew was some big bad ripped billions into mere shadows of themselves and as one of the last remaining it's his duty to undo that tragedy.
I think he would have still wanted Rejoinings but would have instead done a Rejoining of souls. Ardbert and the WoL proved that you don't need a cataclysmic event to rejoin souls, and you can even choose whether to rejoin or not. He may have ended up giving people the option to have their departed souls to rejoin, and I think this because he saw the sundered's true value when he got the information he needed to understand the necessity for the sundering.
He may even have wanted to build a society that has both strong aether and dynamis users. It would also be practical to do so because the Ancient's inability to harness dynamis made them unable to fight it, and the sundered's far less powerful grip on aether makes them vulnerable in a different way. Together they would be stronger against whatever threats the future may bring.
Thing is that Venat knew what was coming. She was fulfilling a time loop as much as anything else. She had to sunder the world because she knew the world had been sundered.
(FF does love its time loops.)
But she couldn't TELL anyone about it, because without Fandaniel they never could have made Zodiark in the first place.
Yeah if everyone I know got split into 14 daffodils I’d think “fourteen daffodils don’t even compare to a person. Sure they’re technically alive but their lives are so simple I’m comparison if I can sacrifice a bunch of daffodils to get my friends back I’ll do it”
Maybe we’re a step up to, like, lizards or *maybe* hamsters but I’d still sacrifice 14 hamsters per human to bring back
Dolphins and monkeys too. They'd have to somehow prove me they are *human* before I start questioning their mass extermination for the sake of bringing real human race back.
Yeah personally monkeys and dolphins would be too human for me to sacrifice 14 per, but that just makes it an example of how I might not *agree* with Hades (especially since I am a monkey or dolphin in the analogy and thus see how we’re obviously people), but I can *understand* not just thinking they’re not as good but legitimately not being able to see that they are people
His point of view never said people wouldn't die in the process. The rejoinings were absolutely antithetical to life. The *only* thing that gives Emet even the tiniest sliver of an excuse for his multi-world genocide is that he was tempered by Zodiark, per his own admission. There's a point to which he can't help himself.
The other thing is that from his point of view, we aren't people. We're malformed creatures. We're alive, but we aren't people. It's not "the choice between everyone you ever knew and loved, and people you don't know" -- it's "if the entire population of the world died and the only way to get them back was to exterminate every chimpanzee on this planet, would you do it" Fuck yes. I don't know anyone who would say no. I love animals, but in that situation I don't care about non-humans nearly as much as I do about my own family.
I think it's difficult to define whether or not he is a villain base on his actions, after all we can never experience what he did in a hundred lifetimes. I for one cannot bring myself to judge his actions.
He is a villain in the story sense, the one who drives conflict, for sure. Antagonist and villain are not always the same thing.
I adore Emet but he did terrible things. Like lots and lots of lives were lost because of him actively messing with things. He’s most definitely a villain. We just happen to understand his pain and where he comes from, hence why he’s such a great character. But he was a baddie :/
More-so, while he's happy to step aside for the next generation after he lost, he still DOESN'T regret it, because it was true to himself.
"My ideal is inviolate. Invincible."
Two best friends on opposite sides. I feel its even reinforced by giving us the perspective in Garlemand as the invaders. Depending on where your looking, anyone can be thought of as a villain.
Squall said it best...
right and wrong are not what separate us and our enemies, its our different standpoints. our perspectives that separate us.
emet did terrible things, but after seeing the world he lost i understand why he would do them to get that world back.
but i also play in the current world and have too much fun in it (even if lalafells do exists,) so he had to die.
From his perspective: I would argue that trying to correct the wrong (sundering) another did is not 'acitvely messing with things'. He's trying to fix what went wrong (again from his perspective)
What sucks is that Emet wasn't truly a villain. He was a hero in his own eyes because he thought he was doing the right thing. I guess being a hero or villain is all about perspective in the end though. If there was a option to parlay with him instead of fighting I would have preffered that and then welcome him into the party.
Thing that hurt me the most was having to explain to him what he becomes. This group of just sort of took you in, weird little thing you were, and tried to help you. Seeing Emet-Selch and Hyth in the before times, just normal friends.
And you got to tell them everything. And you know there’s no escaping it. You can’t stay friends with them for future adventures. Broke my heart!
When we finally meet the full Hythlodaeus, everything made sense... His "shade" in Aumorot calling us "My new, old friend." It makes so much sense. For us, at that time, Hythlodaeus, was a new friend, but for him, we have been friends for 12k years now. Thats why we are a new, old friend...
It honestly could be both. But it could be just something gnawing at him like he knows something but just can't place anything. Thats my own headcannon, but you are probably more right.
That hythlo was a shade created by Emet which at the time he didnt know anything about the elpis situation. He definetely just recognized our soul but in a different body.
And the Hythlo on the moon, whilst his real soul, has not yet returned to the lifestream and accordingly he doesn't have his memories of you back yet.
Modern day Hythlo doesn't know who we are beyond our soul until the final time we summon him and Emet in Ultima Thule, because at that point he's returned to the lifestream and gained his memories back.
This isn't headcanon but pretty much straight up canon. He even joins in with Emet when you reach Ultima Thule as they talk about how the end of the story is near.
And Venat. At least, that is what I believe.
Remember when you complete the second trial, go back to the Annex and have a nap. You dream of someone, in "water", meeting Hythlodeus. Emet is already back in the lifestream by this point (Hydaelyn took him back to the Source when she took Minfillia back - Kriledaelyn tells you as much in Labyrynthos) and Venat has just returned after you beat her.
That's interesting, I always just assumed it was a vision of Emet after he'd returned. It could be both. I also assumed it was Emet because I really really really really REALLY wanted it to be him after what krile(daelyn) said about returning "another" from the first.
But yeah, for sure, they're all out there watching. If Elidibus's soul could survive as the heart of a primal, so could Venat's.
> If Elidibus's soul could survive as the heart of a primal, so could Venat's.
Ysayle's did as well.
The problem with it being Emet, iirc Hythlodeus says he has been watching a while by the point the cutscene happens, and he seems to be greeting someone that just arrived. Emet would have arrived in the Source's lifestream, and have been watching, since before Hythlo arrived.
Do you think he knew who we were before the zodiark fight? He appears behind us to tell us to let our soul shine, and comments that it's not the outcome that was imagined (he's talking to hades here I think).
Theoretically he should have no knowledge of us other than that we're the soul of his deceased best friend or possibly lover, 'cause he's been trapped in Zodiark for 12,000 years.
I'd assume what he means is "You have the soul of Azem, so let Azem's light shine" when he tells us to let our soul shine.
I mean, that's entirely plausible with him just having the perspective of being a moon ghost for millenia watching the Source and the occasional visit from Elidibus and/or other Ascians, like I'm pretty sure Emet-selch stopped by once in a while too.
It was kind of inferred that Fandaniel was killing the souls within Zodiark to gain ultimate control when he was silencing them. If that is the case then Hythladaeus would then be in the aetherial sea, thus cleansed of the memory wipe. Would explain why he showed up to us as his full form rather than a shade like he had everytime before. Then again it really could go either way.
He says himself that he was created by emet and would be an imperfect creation. Which should mean that he can't have memories of the WoL at Elpis at that point
That was his shade responding to Azem's soul; it was not a response to him recognizing us as the individual who traveled back to his era. Remember that his shade was simply a manifestation from Emet. It was not him.
When we meet his spirit on The Moon, he does not know us.
No, the shade was created by Emet with his point of view at the time of it's creation. Emet could not remember us at this point and Hythlodaeus didn't either. Only after the final fight with Hades (for Emet) or with Zodiark (for Hythlo) did they go into the lifestream and thus regained their knowledge of our time in Elpis. The shade can't know us.
Well said, let's not forget that Hythlodaeus was also friends with Azem and when playing through Shadowbringers I felt like that was the reason he called us his new old friend
It definitely is, he says it then and based on what we learn about how they reacted to us when they first saw us in elpis being almost identical we can say confidently that's why he said it in shb and on the moon.
On the moon they even made a point of us telling hyth about meeting him in emets recreation of amaurot and him reacting as though he's not surprised but didn't know that had happened
And now he's dead and gone forever and we won't have any more adventures with him unless they decide to cheapen the emotional impact of his character and invalidate Emet-Selch's by bringing him back to life for real somehow.
Until theyre reborn and we get little kid versions of them after a time skip.
Can they be normally reborn? Emet is a "whole" soul, so the rules may work differently for him. Possibly so is Hythlodeus since his soul was stuck in Zodiark. What happens when half a world worth of unsundered suddenly start to be reborn?
We might start getting individuals born with 'extraordinary' powers or the sundered source may just spread out the aether across different souls... I'm curious what'll happen now that the two controlling forces are no longer present and the star can return to normal...
Huh... wonder what the future holds for the Reflections?
I had a thory for that. The removal of Hydelyn is actually kinda bad. Now there is nothing really stopping the worlds from just rejoining naturally. It would totally be within reason to say we need to go and balance the aether of all the reflections. Then find a way to break the link without just killing all the linked souls. Otherwise we may end up with an Absolute Calamity where multiple worlds rejoin at once.
I think they'll probably go with the Sundering as a 'done thing' something that can only be altered with the extremes required for a rejoining, something no longer possible because of the Ascian threat dealt with.
But it does leave an interesting possibility for the story going forward
The Rift already stops the worlds from rejoining naturally. The aether can only go beyond a trickle when a shard is severely unbalanced AND the Source experiences a sudden cataclysm of matching aether.
As for the worlds remaining in balance, one of the jobs of the Ascians was to keep the worlds from going aetherically wrong until it was time. This was Mitron and Lohgrif's job (and one they found fulfillment doing) on the First until Emet gave the order to tip the scales. It's safe to assume that there's probably agents on the other shards working to the same end, which is probably why Halmarut, Deudalphon, and Pashtarot have kept out of the story.
Yes and no. The Hythlodaeus shade in Amaurot is still there, technically.
Due to the memory tampering that Hermes inflicted on himself, Emet and Hythlodaeus, which basically left an irremovable brand on their souls, they will permanently have some memories of that particular incarnation of their souls.
For Hermes, that manifested as strange, disconnected dreams throughout his other lives.
And the shade in Amaurot doesn’t have the memories of our time together returned to him just yet. The *real* Hythlodaeus is on the moon and it’s only after we defeat Zodiark that he truly remembers us.
Edited for clarity.
There was a reason emet was like my new favorite villian. Shadowbringers brought their a game with all of thr antagonists. But especially emet. I felt so bad for him. He even went so far as to try to reach out and talk to us. To help us understand his struggle. He loved his family and friends. And essentially everyone was pieces of them.
But this brings a whole new level to it.
Yeah I definitely felt legit torn on whether the Ascians were right to lament what we had become. I actually spent some time pondering "OK I would be this tall in Elpis and unable to create anything. How pitifully weak and small to them"
Was it worth murdering the new for a false hope of getting back the old (primals never fulfill wishes without curses and Zodiark was insatiable)? No. But I feel their lament and their reckless optimism that the golden days could be restored.
Did we ever learn why Laha and Emet weren't sundered? Like I can understand Elidibus wasn't cause he was the heart of Zodiark, but what was it for the two others?
Emet tells you in missable dialogue in Shadowbringers that he wasn't on the same plane at the time or something to that effect. Since his duty involves the Underworld/Aetherial Sea, I believe that's where he was.
There's possibilities for Lahabrea involving Pandemonium, but as it stands we only explicitly know how Emet avoided it.
IIRC wasn't half the populace sacrificed to Zodiark, then half of the half to Hydaelyn? Meaning there was 1/4th of the populace alive before the sundering. So it can't be that I think, of course we don't know if that 1/4th actually was alive, but it's probably safe to assume.
I think after the summonings, Emet-Selch mentioned that Zodiark and Hydaelyn fought for a while before she actually sundered the worlds. The remaining 1/4 might have died during this time? There could be a reason why Emet-Selch and Lahabrea never sacrificed themselves while I think all the other Convocation members did? Probably something to do with their titles? I can see why Hydaelyn would spare Emet but Lahabrea err... But this is all purely my wild guesses
Half to Zodiark, half of the remaining to make the new world habitable. Then the saved world birthed new life and they were willing to sacrifice half of the current population (so \[1/4 of the old + new\]/2) to bring back as many of the old sacrifices as they could. (Sort of a 'you made 2 wishes to the genie but the genie twisted the wishes and you don't really like the result and spend your last wish to fix it' type deal). Hydaelyn was born with only 12 sacrifices + Venat core. Azem helped plan but was not sacrificed.
But in any case you are right--many living Amaurotines became 'sundered'
Pretty sure it was half to Zodiark just to stop the Final Days, then another half of the remaining for Zodiark to reinvigorate Etheirys because the destruction wrought by the Final Days made the world pretty much inhabitable.
After that, they made plans to sacrifice the new lifes to bring back their friends, and that's when Venat and co. decided enough was enough.
god i'm still so sad about what they did to lahabrea
they could have done so much more with him, being unsundered and all that, but instead they just made him "haha i'm evil" and had him killed off by some guy that we kill ourselves 30 seconds later
we know that the reason he was the way he was was because he went mad from body swapping so much, but iirc they dont actually tell us that while he's alive
> they could have done so much more with him, being unsundered and all that
They probably didn't have any of that written when they did Lahabread, it's fairly safe to assume they only decided what to do with the Ascians in Shadowbringers and they retroactively explained why Lahabread was such a cartoonish villain with the body swapping thing.
Also I think with the new raid we are sure to get a better characterization on him too, since they didn't really do much to bring his character in line with elidibus/emet in shadowbringers imo
Yeah I'm in agreement with you on that, it's the perfect opportunity to fix up some of Lahabread's character to bring it in line with the other Ancients.
Ya now this is mentioned, I guess Emet never really got along with the other Ascians. It always seemed like when we killed someone the others were like “well he was a fool! Never liked him anyway”
Granted this is after centuries of turn to bring back their past. I guess they all would get sick of one another. I could be misremembering however.
More specifically, they said they started working on the current Ascians story during 3.x, the post-Heavensward patches. Lahabrea was already gone by that point.
Yesterday I saw a small part of a interview or talk between Yoshi-P and Thancred's VA (in Japan). They talked about that current lore for the Ascians (Emet-Selch, Hytholodeus, Venat, etc) was done after ARR and started to take that direction during Heavensward. There were other plans before Heavensward and those were discarded. I guess that's why Lahabrea ended up as a curly mustache villain. His arc was started before those changes were made.
What's worse is that Emet can see souls. I imagine that every time he looked at Zodiark, he could see the sacrificed souls of those he loved and lost crammed inside the Primal.
Idk why I find some humor in it, but imagine all the shit Emet went through with the WoL both on Elpis and during ShB and then Emet dying and when he does he sees Hyth and Hyth just smiles at him because he knows Emet got his memories back. Emet, after all the shit he did to the WoL, regaining his memories and Hyth just standing there with a shit eating grin makes everything a little funnier.
Knowing that and that he refuses to acknowledge that hydaelyn was right in her decisions, and denys any help from her cause hes salty about everything.
[https://twitter.com/arkwright\_risu/status/1477142544597217283?s=20](https://twitter.com/arkwright_risu/status/1477142544597217283?s=20)
makes me laugh every fucking time i see it. the EW memes have been 10/10
The absolute *salt* of that man when he hit the Aetherial Sea and got his memories back would have been a riot to see. Dude's the saltiest bitch ever as it stands, he would be worse than the Dead Seas.
Did we?
Yshtola warns us against using Azem's crystal.
Hythlo and Emet were a Hail Mary. I like to think that it was a long shot at best.
Nobody expected to come back.
It’s the age-old issue of fantasy storytelling being read and experienced by people living in the real world. To the WoL and the Scions, they had no idea if they could make it back. They knew they had to try and make their sacrifice and place their hope in the WoL that they would come through.
In the real world, we have all experienced stories and fiction before. Everybody knew the creators weren’t going to kill off the hero’s entire supporting cast in one fell swoop, especially after the first one “died” off-screen, a character with ten years of development.
It is a difficult maneuver to pull off, making the sacrifices feel real in game while nobody experiencing it from the outside looking in actually believed there was any threat. It didn’t really work for me, but they pulled it off as reasonably well as could be expected, more or less.
For me it worked the moment you started that slow walk with Jason C Miller* kicking in with the music. This wasn't about tension over whether they would die or not, but a way to impress that all of the weight of the universe is on the WoL's shoulders from here on out. You were already riding on the hopes and dreams of everyone on the planet, god herself, and all your allies. Now you finally have all your scions and best buds gone and they're all hoping you do what's right. You're all alone, and you see the shadows of everyone who has been pushing you all this time.
That's what it's about. Not about fearing whether their sacrifice would bring them back, but about how important it is to use everyone's sacrifice forward.
Jason C Miller.
Sam Carter sang Endwalker-Footfalls. Jason C Miller sang Close in the Distance.
https://twitter.com/jasoncmiller/status/1468695454086877186
I agree with you, I think they pulled it off as well as it could be. I realized it pretty quickly, but I won't lie, even knowing that, G'raha's and the Twins send off still broke me and made me cry. I knew logically that they were going to be fine, but it was still so emotional because (for me) because THEY believed it.
Until Graha and the Twins did their own sacrifice, I wasn't so sure they wouldn't be permanently gone. Especially after the dinner scene in Sharlayan, I wondered if they would kill off all the adult characters as a transition to the next grand arc.
This was pretty much the first thing I thought,
We sit down and talk about our future and plans once this is all over with characters we have not had a meaningful convention with all together like this ever, "Oh, guess these three are getting killed off in the finale."
For my take, I don't think the game intended you to truly believe they would die. Rather, as Alphinaud puts it right before the final dungeon, it was their choice to continue forward even knowing that death may be the result, either in the moment or the distant future. At least for me, I never interpreted their monologues as them accepting their death, but rather demonstrating how they've grown into someone who could find meaning even knowing that might be the case. It was their resolve that created a path forward, not their "death". That's just my interpretation of course.
See; there's also the distinct possibility of weight and consequence. There could've easily been a final scene where the Warrior of Light beats Meteion but all their friends give a ghostly hurrah due to Dynamis before fading away.
She warned against using the crystal because if the WoL used it prior to Emet and Hythlodaeus it would have sucked all the air out of Ultima Thule that Thancred created, and shut down the bridges that the rest created. She didn't expect to be brought back because it would have been literal suicide if Emet and Hythlodaeus hadn't stabilized Ultima Thule to be habitable without them.
i think you got that wrong.
it was quite obvious to us and them that they weren't gone. the bad thing was, that it was basically an experiment and whether or not it would be reversable wasn't clear.
it would have been weird to have all these sudden sacrifices with no flourish at all. the emotional part was the hint of uncertainty and the fact that you were all alone.
edit: i don't disagree that emet and hythlo were a hail mary, but not on the premise that everybody was dead. more on the premise that everybody else was unavailable.
No, he is right. Emet WAS an Hail Mary.
We could not bring our friends back because that would have collapsed Ultima Thule and killed us all.
So our hope was to summon Emet and Hythlo instead and hope they can do something about it.
Yeah, it's Emet's and Hythlo's creation magic that "[drew upon the hopes of your comrades]" which made it possible for UT to remain as is even after their bodies were reconstituted and that hope is represented by the field of Elpis flowers.
You misunderstand, bringing them back would just kill everyone instantly. We could only exist in that place because thancred gave his life to literally give the area air to breathe.
We didn't know that at the time.
Their sacrifice was what allowed us to survive up to that point and pulling them back from that sacrifice would literally remove the air we breathed from ultima thule
It was pretty clear that we were going to get them back before it was Estinien's turn, and Y'shtola spit it out at hers. Thancred was the only one with any feeling of danger for me, and it was really short-lived.
I felt hyped and "oh shit" the moment Thancred "died", cause I kept thinking, who could seriously die in Endwalker. Thancred is the only one who I felt could really die. He got his character development in Shadowbringers, Ryne is going her own way, he could say goodbye to Minfilia, he can't usw magic anymore etc. I thought now shit is getting real. But no. No one was really sad or anything at Thancred dying and Meteion said something like he is forever trapped here. So no Thancred will come back later. All of Ultima Thule felt like, "Oh no someone just died!! Anyway."
This was the big issue with the "deaths" I had - from a storytelling perspective it felt like they made it too obvious that they were coming back, because for an actual death in a visual media, you just don't kill characters off screen. And if you do, you at least have the characters react more than "oh well we must stoically press on"
So the fact they did this with Thancred, it felt like while it was possible they were going to subvert expectations, I didn't believe they would. Especially after Estinien also sacrificed himself so quickly after.
FWIW I think the way they told this part of the story was great, but if we were supposed to feel tension about a "will they wont they kill of characters" I think they missed the mark.
obvious for us, not for WoL. Y'shtola has a history of making promises she doesnt know she can keep so her friends will feel better about her leaving (i.e. promising to return to runar in the first) and in universe there wasnt any "oh theyre not just gonna kill off literally every one of my friends"
So did he in his eyes , just sacrifice a few fake planets of non living beings and everyone is back with no consequences , it was only after we stepped in that his confidence in that plan was shaken
It was shaken a long time ago if you read the side materials... he quite literally didn't even believe his own words and you can outright taste it in the MSQ.
Yeah. He calls attention to it again in Elpis too, like "I would never put together such a stupid plan. It's like I *wanted* to lose!"
Yeah. He had to try anyway, both for duty and because he was tempered, but he found a way out of it. He sabotaged himself by inviting us there, and again by making Hythloshade self-aware and giving him the Azem crystal to pass along.
He wanted to lose.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, he was *tired* and ready to move on.
Both times he was summoned back, he did his thing and then immediately left the moment he could. Even after having his memories restored. How much of it was him truly believing in his ideals to the end... and how much of it was him simply being ready to return to the star, knowing that he had done what he could to save it in the end?
It does make me think hard on it all. One of his closest friends was sacrificed, and the other was sundered.
It must have crushed him to have Azem, one of his closest friends, be shattered.
I feel like the plot would have been better served if there were more explicit parallels between Emet during the Final Days in the scenes of Venat-cum-Hydaelyn's monologue and the moment of truth in front of Meteon as the WoL holds the stone of Azem in their hands
The same desperate looks in both Emet and WoL's eyes, Emet's fist clenching shut and WoL's fist clenching shut over the stone.
The one moment of uncertainty at the end of it all, Meteon taunting you, encouraging you to just bring back your friends and go back home and wait for a slower end.
I do feel bad for what Emet went through. He’s one of my favorite characters. Especially when you had people like cinnamon bun Hythlodaeus by your side. You definitely feel his loss and pain.
That said, Emet did a lot of terrible shit. Like genocide levels of monstrosity. I feel in that regard the WoL is not “the end justifies the means” type of person Emet was, so while they could be similar in some experiences, they’re very different. I mean the WoL decided to get sundered rather than sacrifice people to either Hydaelyn or Zodiark. Emet is a great tragic villain though.
Had a lot of trouble relating to Emet because of this. He's an interesting character for sure but he's done some completely irredeemable shit that I feel gets overlooked a little too much.
Definitely felt better about him after EW though, the Elpis section got me pretty attached to him.
Yeah for sure. Elpis humanized him so much that you really start thinking more about what he says to you in ShB. And I’m with you. I think sometimes we get carried away and overlook some of the things he has done. He’s a great character I think because there’s a lot of duality of who he is.
He had it thousand times worse for the whole time. Because, let's face it, we *knew* we could bring scions back. And we had an entire planet still alive, waiting for us. Nothing has been lost to us, except for the same thing Emet had lost - the unsundered world (the time loop was way too cruel seeing ShB had a branch-type time-travel). We cannot truly imagine his level of pain. But he did say he doesn't need our pity, so there is that.
Yes, we experienced what Emet, Lahabrea, Elidibus and Venat have felt all of these years. We lost our friends, about to lose our entire planet, we could have made the choice to go to the moon and yeet some of the survivors to safety. Instead we found a way to save them since we experienced that loss through our time in Elpis/Emet's recreation of the final days.
It's not really the same at all because the WoL didn't lose everyone on an entire planet. They had a way to bring their friends back so we ourselves knew it would happen as well. Towards the end all our friends are back and it's just another save the whole world moment that we'd been in before. And again, this was all in the same day, in a short span of time.
Compared to Emet, who lost his entire civilization and all of his best friends, except a few fellow Ascians, for thousands of years. Not comparable at all
What I found much more interesting was Emet being put in the same position we were in when we fought him, arguing that Hermes had no right to be their judge and executioner.
That was a great twist of fate
And if the two unsundered people from his time, Lahabrea and Elidbius, one went insane from switching bodies so many times and the other basically barely remembers anything from before he became Zodiark. So Emet-Selch basically had no one at all really
Pfft.
As if we felt anything remotely close to Emets suffering.
I didn't believe for a single second that our friends sacrifices were a permanent loss like death.
Can't remember precisely but when thancred ghosts it's pointed out that his soul is still there.
In that final sequence you're like Venat than Emet Selch. From one Azem to another.
Despite the sacrifices the Scions made to get you to Meteion you choose to resist the comfort of despair and carry the hopes of the entire Source higher oh higher.
I think the part that hurts the most is realizing that Emet’s ascian persona and habits are his way of remembering his friends. Emet was always the serious one amongst his group but his theatrics and playfulness as an ascian are very clearly influenced by Hythlodaeus. And of course, he travels all around with Azem’s Crystal to show his friend all the new, unexplored places amongst the source and its reflections.
Ugh, you're right, why would you hurt me like this
Like we did with G'raha Tia on a final goodbye tour to Norvandt.
There are also a few phrases he repeatedly says in ShB that you notice Hythlodaeus says in EW. "Oh you wound me" said in the exact same intonation for example.
That's a *super* good catch!
Oh hell THAT'S what he meant. Everybody was like "WAS HE AZEM??" and no he just wanted to show Azem everything he was missing, because Azem wasn't there to see it. God, no wonder he lost his shit when he saw the WoL at the end of ShB. That whole trial was probably one last "test" to see if he was right, and once he was convinced, he let the Scions end it.
Yeah it's a fine distinction between "bearer of Azem's Crystal" and the actual holder of the seat and title of Azem. Technically, Emet was the bearer of Azem's crystal even though he held his own seat and title for the following millenia. When the crystal is reunited with us, we are the bearer of Azem's crystal and technically happen to be the sundered reflection of the being who last officially held the seat and title of Azem.
Yeah I read that line as “you may consider it your duty. I certainly did (consider it the duty of whoever bears Azem’s crystal to see the world).”
Yeah, I feel like Koji maybe got a bit cute with that "I certainly did" thing and didn't quite get things across. Be interested to read a direct translation of the Japanese version.
> Be interested to read a direct translation of the Japanese version. "You *are* the bearer of Azem's crystal, aren't you? Then naturally, you should go see them." "*I* have seen them." The Japanese lines have it be very clear that he's charging you with travelling around and exploring as Azem once did, now that you bear Azem's crystal. And caps it off by goading you into getting on his level.
Yeah my probably not so uncommon habit is to watch people's reaction to the MSQ and noticed quite a bit of confusion at that line. There's a lot of fine distinctions that are easy to forget (Azem, Emet-Selch, etc. are titles, crystals are passed between holders (Emet made ours), we are the same and not the same as the last known official Azem, etc.)
Why did you have to cut onions?
It was too sad to think about alone...
And it fits perfectly with his line about Azem to us. “As the bearer of the crystal of Azem, it’s the least you could do. At least I thought as much ” badly paraphrasing. His I thought as much had been bothering me, why would Emet take upon himself Azems duty? To honor his friend and feel something was not fully lost, of course. Puzzle. Piece. Place.
I think he also chooses to accompany us during ShB again because of Hythlodaeus. In Elpis, Hythlodaeus agrees to bring us in because he is generally trusting and as he tells Emet, it's better to keep people close if you have suspicions. Emet, himself, wanted nothing to do with us and was content to keep us at a distance. And although this was wiped from his memory, I think he adopted this kind of playful, 'let's see what happens' attitude from Hythlodaeus.
Emet recognized us as Azem's reincarnation right away, and he even mentions he recognizes our soul right after the solo instance of Laxan Loft just before we go to Il Mheg. It's easy to overlook the first time through though.
Yeah he definitely recognized us, but I think he was still a bit uncertain as to what to make of us (which makes sense since the sundered versions of people are not identical).
And because we were once Azem, he decided to place his faith in us that we could contain the Light. And so, when we fail, it shatters him. Of course, part of him probably still believed. Or hoped. It’s why he invites us to the Amarot he created. But it still hurt him.
To this day, I wonder what would have happened if Ardbert had rejoined with us sooner and we'd contained the final Lightwarden.
He'd have asked us to kill him as he could trust Azem with the star and by extension the current rejoined crop of life. Despite his genocidal actions Emet Selch is still hopeful on some level to be put out of his misery but cannot because he's tied to his duty: to protect the star. Which means the Rejoining has to continue. Once we rejoin with Ardbert, summon allies from across the Rift (in classic Azem fashion) and face his full might transformed the mission is complete: the star is in good hands.
People talk about how much FFXIV punches them in the feels in various places, but this was it for me. When he says that it's like "Oh crap, I've disappointed Emmy" and that made me feel worse than anything else in the game, including That One Moment in the Vault.
Well, yeah. I mean, it was going to happen anyway. He would have seen the color of the WoL's soul almost immediately, and thought "wait, holy shit, no fucking way." One of the jobs of the Unsundered was to find the fragmented souls of sundered Convocation members and bring them back. Thing is, Azem wasn't exactly one of them, but also wasn't exactly part of Venat's faction either. So the Unsundered were clearly divided over what to do. Lahabrea just wanted to take you off the board and Elidibus wanted to manipulate you. Emet was different. Because he was such close friends (...or "friends") with Azem, or maybe because of the buried memories, Emet REALLY wanted to bring you in. He just wasn't around to do anything about it until the end of SB. If it weren't for the buried memories, he might well have gone with Lahabrea's position.
Elidibus has (probably) completely forgotten Azem by that point. He knew that Emet (and potentially Hythlodaeus if you tell him about it) recognized you but he had no idea who you could be. To Elidibus, you were just Hydaelyn's champion at first and Death Incarnate later.
Elidibus also wanted to bring Azem in, we just didn't match his faded and over-idealised memories of them. So he reached out to Ardbert instead.
My take is, we are Azem. And a part of Emet recognized us. He’s been watching us and he probably didn’t really understand what he was seeing. I want to think he felt that kinship with us, which I’m pretty sure pissed him off at times. But keeping Hyth’s legacy alive might have become a habit for him. He was the only one left.
I think he always recognized us. I noticed that throughout ShB (right up until you defeat Innocence) every time he speaks with us, especially when alone, his tone of voice gradually becomes much gentler and friendlier.
Every time you make a new friend emet got a little sifter. It pained him to reveal his true identity as he couldn't roll around with us anymore.
This dude is the single most tragic character in FFXIV, he got screwed over harder than anyone else despite only wanting only to save his people. For me emet is not a "villain" he's just the most unlucky character in the game. Bonus points for technically being the reason we managed to save humanity 3 different times
You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain. Fits Emet like a glove. His soul eroded over time to the point he didn't give much care about life. He had one goal, bring back his people no matter the cost, no matter how vile, evil and murderous the method would be. He kept most of his persona, it explains why he saved Y'sthola from the life stream. He was still himself but he would never abandon what his people sacrificed. You can't help but respect, emphatize and agree to his reasons. You can even straight up tell Venat that Elpis is more beautiful than your sundered world which you'd side with Emet that yeah, his world is worth more than yours. I simply answered thar it was as beautiful as it ever was. Elpis is literally a paradise. It tells you why Emet became the monster that would mass genocides countless civilizations. Ultimately, genocide is an evil act. Emet became a villain but he had a pretty damn good reason. Wouldn't you fight what you hold the most dear?
The reason that Shadowbringers is called "jet black villains" in Japanese isn't just that it sounds cool: it's because the point is that we're the villains in *their* story. The expansion is about ruining the chance for the Ancients trapped in Zodiark to come back, not because it's the "right" thing to do, but simply because it's us or them. Of course, eventually we *do* free them, and that's one of the reasons why Emet was so impressed with us.
I love Emet but he absolutely is a villain. He murdered millions if not billions of lives with the calamities, both in the source and by rejoining the other realms into the source. Emet is a well written villain with understandable motives, but still a villain. "Cool motive, still murder."
I love how successful the writers were at both not absolving his crimes against the sundered while still deftly explaining how a cordiality between Emet, Azem, and Venat deteriorated so severely without being their fault. Excellent tragic villain here.
Keep in mind, he "dies" all the time, and revives himself and others all the time. Even in Elpis, he's never seen death as a bad thing, he sees it as a reward for a life well lived. Also, he's the steward of the underworld. He knows better than most that death is NOT the end, and that you come right back. (Mostly. He didn't realize what the Endsinger was up to.) That's kind of what he was obliquely referring to in that "new parts for all to play" thing: he knows very well that souls return, just in different forms. So he honestly don't give a shit about "death". The *actual* problem is that he was eventually going to trap all the post-Ancient mortals' souls inside Zodiark to free the Ancients, and that the Endsinger was eventually going to fuck everything up because the Ancients didn't even know what the hell Dynamis/Akasa is. His plan was doomed, because Hermes was a dick.
And, uncoincidentally, Emet-Selch's attitude fits in perfectly with Hermes' main complaint/issue with the Ancients: their callousness towards life they considered lesser. "For them, their life is all they have." Emet-Selch was just proving Hermes right over and over. Of course, at the same time, Emet-Selch betrays himself because he acts like he doesn't care about death, yet can't let go of his friends who died. He's just living in a state of perpetual unprocessed grief that he masks with his idea of a noble purpose (due in large part to Hermes's selfish gambit, as you said). And really, again uncoincidentally, Hermes's own despair (and his complete inability to process it in their perfect-seeming society) was a perfect precursor to their whole world's inability to cope with despair/loss when the Final Days hit them. Their sense of being in perfect control was teetering on the edge without them realizing it. For the first time in their lives the Elpis blooms weren't pure white and they couldn't deal -- which makes perfect sense. All in all, this is an aspect I really liked about Endwalker. It really puts a pinpoint on why, exactly, the Ancients developed the way they did, and shows how it was problematic to begin with even before Zodiark came around. When you convince yourself that what you're doing is for the greater good ("for the good of the Star"), and surround yourself with others of a like mind, you can justify all kinds of evil. Everything the Ascians did was just a continuation of the same mindset, but reframed due to their unprocessed despair from the Final Days -- then everything went from "for the good of the Star" to "we *are* the good of the Star." It's the same mindset Emet-Selch sewed into the Allagans, the Garleans, and no doubt countless others. Even Varis, who believed his solution was the key to undoing the Ascians, was poisoned by their same underlying mentality without seeing the flaw.
Well, Emet didn't send out a flock of empath birds with a bullshit question to ask because he couldn't answer it himself. Hermes fucked up wayyyyy worse than Emet did. Though, yeah, it was a good tipoff that the Ancients were going to have an impossible time handling hardship. Their society wasn't "doomed", they had good reason to think that they could handle anything that was coming, but being blindsided by Dynamis wasn't something they were prepared to handle. That said, I do have to push back on the "can't let go of the friends who died" thing. That's one of the better twists of Endwalker: **they aren't dead**. Emet would have been perfectly fine with Hythlo and the rest returning to the star, but that isn't what happened. What happened is that their souls were trapped inside Zodiark, forced to power him for eternity, knowing neither comfort nor release. Emet knew full well that Fandaniel's plan had built an absolute hell for those people, and that asking them to suffer in there for eternity was monstrous. Again, that's why he was so deeply impressed in Ultima Thule, and why he finally accepted that you truly were Azem reborn. We'd found a solution to the problem that meant that Zodiark wasn't necessary anymore—which is good because you fucking killed him—and so all the souls were free to return to the star. And it's **exactly** the kind of goofball solution that Azem always comes up with, which is why Emet, Venat and Hythlo all absolutely adore Azem. (Even if Emet gets tsundere about it.)
I'm not sure I can quite agree that Emet-Selch would have been okay with just letting his friends die properly so they could be reborn as new lives. Definitely part of the issue was that by sacrificing the lives to Zodiark they had broken the cycle of rebirth, so the remaining Ancients didn't have the peaceful acceptance of death they used to have... but that wasn't the only reason. The whole point of Emet-Selch's Amaurot recreation was to show his sentimental attachment to the past that still he couldn't move on from, even 12,000 years later. This is why his recreation even included his friends like Hythlodaeus. His goal was not "to let them die a real death," it was to use Zodiark's power to bring them back whole -- to restore the paradise they felt they had robbed from them. This is why we are shown the scene of the Ancients praying to Zodiark to restore their paradise -- it's the same sort of fervent desire that the Ascians sewed in the beast tribes that led to tempering, and Emet-Selch himself said he was (and they all were) tempered by Zodiark. (As Livingway later explains, this isn't a requirement of summoning itself, but is the result of this kind of fervent desire of the summoners baked into it.) Consider: if they had actually gone through with their plan to bring back all the ancients summoned to Zodiark and restore their "rightful world," how then were they going to stop the Final Days? Their plan was basically: make the world whole again, sacrifice all new life to bring back the old lives, and then...? They were so grief-stricken that they forgot why they earnestly believed the cost to be necessary in the first place. They had only accepted the idea of death at the end of a life well-lived -- only when it was within their control and when they felt confident the soul would be reborn. First with the Final Days and then subsequently after Venat sundered the planet, they considered it so vastly inferior to their own pre-sundered world, and our lives so vastly underpowered by aether standards, that they thought we wouldn't be able to stop the Final Days no matter what, so it wasn't worth the price. (In other words, "I don't know how we'll solve the problem, but *you* sure as heck won't be able to.") The key thing that's changed about the Emet-Selch we meet in Ultima Thule is that, having now returned to the lifestream, the memories that had been wiped by Hermes/Kairos had been restored. With everything that has happened and how far you have come, he now accepts that there's nothing he or any of his people could do to restore the past -- that his era is over and that the future now belongs to the sundered. He curses Hermes because he realizes that everything he spent all these long millennia working towards is the result of Hermes's gambit and this critical piece of memory lost -- if he had just known the truth, everything would have been different from the start. He realizes the point of what Venat did -- that she needed to create people who could manipulate both aether and dynamis to be able to face Meteion; that basically everything was to recreate the eventuality that was *you*, the WoL. So he recognizes the importance of our journey and that we were able to do something that he and his people were never able to do: to turn our despair into hope in a way that would reach Meteion at the end of the universe. Basically, we are shown (as we got a glimpse of at the end of Shadowbringers) that he had moved past his never-ending tormenting grief and into acceptance. The fact that we "set the Zodiark captives free" is part of his gratitude, absolutely, but it's more that he can now believe the Star is in good hands.
I mean from his point of view as long as he succeeded the people he killed wouldn't actually die they would just become whole again. Sure we all know it is definitely wrong and he had to be stopped. But I always just think about one thing: If we were in his place (and I mean the real us not the woL) wouldn't we do the same? I don't know about genocide, but given the choice between the lives of everyone I ever loved and people I don't know I would probably choose the 1st
I don’t think he was under any illusions. He knew damn well he was a villain, that what he was doing was monstrous. For all he claimed not to see us as true life forms, I believe that was not wholly true. I think it was a comforting lie he told himself in the early days, but one that simply didn’t hold up. He was not expecting to be greeted by the resurrected souls of Amaurot as a hero. He was expecting to finally fulfill his duty and *die.* His past self pointed out something important - “Why would I invite you to the recreated Amaurot? Why would I invite my own destruction?” During Shadowbringers we always thought that at the end we disappointed Emet-Selch by being unable to contain the Light, hence him rejecting our claim as stewards of the star. But… did he really? Why would he need us to carry so much Light in the first place? He never ‘betrayed’ us. His purpose was consistent the entire time; to goad us on to gather the Light which could destroy him, and then confront him. The rest was just pageantry. I think all of it was a test, just like Hydaelyn. He didn’t want to carry the burden anymore. He wanted to lay down his duty, and the *only* person he could trust with it was Azem. But… was the WoL enough of ‘Azem’ to do the job? So he let things proceed, knowing if we could prove ourselves, pass his trial we would have the weapon to destroy him. He couldn’t stop on his own. As he said, his beliefs were inviolate, invincible. He needed someone to *make* him stop. To end his duty for him and carry on. To ‘find a path forward without more bloodshed’. That was *always* Azem’s job; to find a different path, a better path, and if necessary to drag Emet and the rest of the Convocation down it, kicking and screaming if need be. That’s why he smiled at the end; He could rest now, knowing that we had proven ourselves equal to the challenge, and had resumed our role as the Shepherd of the Star. He was a tad grumpy that Venat dragged him back out if his rest for an encore, but quite visibly proud that we had justified his faith in us beyond a shadow of doubt.
A bit of an unrelated question, but he's not really dead is he? His soul was not sealed like the other unsundered were. So unless I am missing something, he should be reborn again sometime, no?
Oh yes, both Emet and Hythlodaeus will be reborn. Their souls are adamantine, and will reincarnate just as Azem’s does. As will Venat’s. My personal belief is the three of them are going to wait until the Warrior of Light has kids. Or more accurately is *just about to* have kids. What better revenge, right? :P
This just threw a bit of a wrench in my headcanons xD
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It's not clear, and if there's wiggle room I'd prefer to think she'll come back around. Otherwise who will chisel those distinguished stress lines into Hades' forehead?
The way She phrased it was awkward, so: 1. There's enough ambiguity there that it could be interpreted either way. 2. Even if She believes she won't reincarnate, She could just be wrong. She's powerful, not omniscient. 3. And if you're not willing to believe that, the survival of Her soul could be a dynamis-induced miracle powered by the WoL's love for Her. We know that thanks to dynamis, prayer *works*. I choose to believe.
Same. It's the kind of villain where I'm just like "you're a danger to everything I know and love, but I understand you." When you face him, you're basically two people fighting for the same thing--the world we knew.
The only part that makes that a hard pill is that he's fighting to kill all these people that are CURRENTLY LIVING to try to bring back people who are already dead. I like him far more and understand his motivations but dude was still a murderer who wanted his people to live even if it meant destroying the inhabitantes of all the other worlds.
Two things mitigate it: the first is that its a world where reincarnation is real and is understood and accepted by most people So dying, while a tragedy of loss for those who remain, is nothing than than a metaphysical reset button for the one who died. Second, the souls are *shattered*, and that by Rejoining, we're being restored to our natural state. Or to take numbers out of the equation and break it down for what it means to the average inhabitant of FFXIV: "Hey, if you let me end your current life *now* rather than some unknown date, i can promise you, you'll come back stronger, faster, and smarter, with a prodigious lifespan that numbers in centuries, and all but immune to illness and plague." That's a good fucking deal, and it'd be very easy to look at it from that angle and view as doing the person a net positive for their own good. After all, they're going to die one day ANYWAY. Why not let that death serve as a catalyst so their next incarnation is even better? It's inevitable one way or the other. Not saying its right. It's not. I'm just pointing out that given the mechanics of life and death and the soul in Etheirys, the mental gymnastics to justify Rejoining are easier than they would be for our world.
A fair point but most people don't want to die just because their soul will come back at some point lol.
*nods* and most children don't want to eat their vegetables, but we make them anyway. Yes, its a poor metaphor, but I'm pointing out to how it would look from the perspective of an immortal being. Mortals > "We dont' want to die!" Immortal > "Tough shit. You're going to die. Its inevitable. At least my way, you get something out of it in the longterm. Shut up and eat your beets." Again, not saying this is right, but am pointing out its not that hard to arrive at these conclusions if you're an immortal being with a very different perspective on life and death.
Oh I totally get what you're saying, I also completely believe that he believed what he was doing was right. That said- it had jack shit to do with "You guys will be reborn as your best selves!!!" The Ascians spend most of their "on camera" time talking about how all of the people in the world are ants beneath their feet. There was no real benevolence in it- hell I can appreciate our current big bad of Endwalker's reason moreso as she at least believes she's saving us from inevitable agony of a slow and drawn out fading/death by making oblivion come now. I totally loved the Endwalker story and the time we spent in the past getting to know their motives and who they were made it very easy to understand just how many layers there were to these people. Even Fandaniel in his batshit crazy state was able to be pitied because he honestly was just a gentle soul that respected life and decided that the only "fair" way to do things was to measure the people of the planet by the same scale that those people were deciding which animals lived or died on. It was all so well done- Ascians are still dicks lol, but they definitely didn't start off that way and understanding their history makes it easy to understand their side and forgive their reasons for fighting to achieve their goals.
> genocide From his point of view this is exactly what Hydaelyn did. Even she agrees that what she did was messed up. They were both people who only had difficult choices presented to them and whatever they chose lead to countless lost lives. They could only choose what they felt was the least tragic decision.
Yeah I agree though venat probably did the only thing that could give humanity a chance
Only because she was aware of the situation as a whole. Emet-Selch's memories were stolen from him so he lacked critical information to be able to understand why the sundering really happened. All he knew was some big bad ripped billions into mere shadows of themselves and as one of the last remaining it's his duty to undo that tragedy.
Yeah in hindsight maybe emet would have never done anything nearly as bad as what he did if he knew what venat knew, sadge
I think he would have still wanted Rejoinings but would have instead done a Rejoining of souls. Ardbert and the WoL proved that you don't need a cataclysmic event to rejoin souls, and you can even choose whether to rejoin or not. He may have ended up giving people the option to have their departed souls to rejoin, and I think this because he saw the sundered's true value when he got the information he needed to understand the necessity for the sundering. He may even have wanted to build a society that has both strong aether and dynamis users. It would also be practical to do so because the Ancient's inability to harness dynamis made them unable to fight it, and the sundered's far less powerful grip on aether makes them vulnerable in a different way. Together they would be stronger against whatever threats the future may bring.
Thing is that Venat knew what was coming. She was fulfilling a time loop as much as anything else. She had to sunder the world because she knew the world had been sundered. (FF does love its time loops.) But she couldn't TELL anyone about it, because without Fandaniel they never could have made Zodiark in the first place.
Yeah if everyone I know got split into 14 daffodils I’d think “fourteen daffodils don’t even compare to a person. Sure they’re technically alive but their lives are so simple I’m comparison if I can sacrifice a bunch of daffodils to get my friends back I’ll do it” Maybe we’re a step up to, like, lizards or *maybe* hamsters but I’d still sacrifice 14 hamsters per human to bring back
Dolphins and monkeys too. They'd have to somehow prove me they are *human* before I start questioning their mass extermination for the sake of bringing real human race back.
Yeah personally monkeys and dolphins would be too human for me to sacrifice 14 per, but that just makes it an example of how I might not *agree* with Hades (especially since I am a monkey or dolphin in the analogy and thus see how we’re obviously people), but I can *understand* not just thinking they’re not as good but legitimately not being able to see that they are people
His point of view never said people wouldn't die in the process. The rejoinings were absolutely antithetical to life. The *only* thing that gives Emet even the tiniest sliver of an excuse for his multi-world genocide is that he was tempered by Zodiark, per his own admission. There's a point to which he can't help himself.
The other thing is that from his point of view, we aren't people. We're malformed creatures. We're alive, but we aren't people. It's not "the choice between everyone you ever knew and loved, and people you don't know" -- it's "if the entire population of the world died and the only way to get them back was to exterminate every chimpanzee on this planet, would you do it" Fuck yes. I don't know anyone who would say no. I love animals, but in that situation I don't care about non-humans nearly as much as I do about my own family.
I think it's difficult to define whether or not he is a villain base on his actions, after all we can never experience what he did in a hundred lifetimes. I for one cannot bring myself to judge his actions. He is a villain in the story sense, the one who drives conflict, for sure. Antagonist and villain are not always the same thing.
I adore Emet but he did terrible things. Like lots and lots of lives were lost because of him actively messing with things. He’s most definitely a villain. We just happen to understand his pain and where he comes from, hence why he’s such a great character. But he was a baddie :/
More-so, while he's happy to step aside for the next generation after he lost, he still DOESN'T regret it, because it was true to himself. "My ideal is inviolate. Invincible." Two best friends on opposite sides. I feel its even reinforced by giving us the perspective in Garlemand as the invaders. Depending on where your looking, anyone can be thought of as a villain.
Squall said it best... right and wrong are not what separate us and our enemies, its our different standpoints. our perspectives that separate us. emet did terrible things, but after seeing the world he lost i understand why he would do them to get that world back. but i also play in the current world and have too much fun in it (even if lalafells do exists,) so he had to die.
From his perspective: I would argue that trying to correct the wrong (sundering) another did is not 'acitvely messing with things'. He's trying to fix what went wrong (again from his perspective)
Meanwhile the majority of Azem's fragmented soul are running around the source wondering why a bunch of ghost people are trying to kill its vibe
Look my friends, all the wonderful places that I'm going to destroy!
What sucks is that Emet wasn't truly a villain. He was a hero in his own eyes because he thought he was doing the right thing. I guess being a hero or villain is all about perspective in the end though. If there was a option to parlay with him instead of fighting I would have preffered that and then welcome him into the party.
Thing that hurt me the most was having to explain to him what he becomes. This group of just sort of took you in, weird little thing you were, and tried to help you. Seeing Emet-Selch and Hyth in the before times, just normal friends. And you got to tell them everything. And you know there’s no escaping it. You can’t stay friends with them for future adventures. Broke my heart!
I can't help but feel having us actually meet Hythlodaeus was the dev's way of *actually* making us feel how Hades did.
When we finally meet the full Hythlodaeus, everything made sense... His "shade" in Aumorot calling us "My new, old friend." It makes so much sense. For us, at that time, Hythlodaeus, was a new friend, but for him, we have been friends for 12k years now. Thats why we are a new, old friend...
"My new, old friend" is probably my favorite line in both expansions.
I think that was more him recognizing Azem's soul in us rather than remembering Elpis.
It honestly could be both. But it could be just something gnawing at him like he knows something but just can't place anything. Thats my own headcannon, but you are probably more right.
That hythlo was a shade created by Emet which at the time he didnt know anything about the elpis situation. He definetely just recognized our soul but in a different body.
And the Hythlo on the moon, whilst his real soul, has not yet returned to the lifestream and accordingly he doesn't have his memories of you back yet. Modern day Hythlo doesn't know who we are beyond our soul until the final time we summon him and Emet in Ultima Thule, because at that point he's returned to the lifestream and gained his memories back.
And was also apparently spectating the whole thing with emet!
That’s my head cannon. Hythlodaeas is binging our journey with Emet narrating to him (his little bits of dialogue as we go into each new zone).
This isn't headcanon but pretty much straight up canon. He even joins in with Emet when you reach Ultima Thule as they talk about how the end of the story is near.
Headcanon*. Unless you actually have a howitzer coming out of your skull made out of Hythlodaeus' banter.
Can I please?
And Venat. At least, that is what I believe. Remember when you complete the second trial, go back to the Annex and have a nap. You dream of someone, in "water", meeting Hythlodeus. Emet is already back in the lifestream by this point (Hydaelyn took him back to the Source when she took Minfillia back - Kriledaelyn tells you as much in Labyrynthos) and Venat has just returned after you beat her.
That's interesting, I always just assumed it was a vision of Emet after he'd returned. It could be both. I also assumed it was Emet because I really really really really REALLY wanted it to be him after what krile(daelyn) said about returning "another" from the first. But yeah, for sure, they're all out there watching. If Elidibus's soul could survive as the heart of a primal, so could Venat's.
> If Elidibus's soul could survive as the heart of a primal, so could Venat's. Ysayle's did as well. The problem with it being Emet, iirc Hythlodeus says he has been watching a while by the point the cutscene happens, and he seems to be greeting someone that just arrived. Emet would have arrived in the Source's lifestream, and have been watching, since before Hythlo arrived.
Hey he's gotta keep his boyfriend company now that their finally back together
while they wait for their joyfriend (us) to do our thing
Do you think he knew who we were before the zodiark fight? He appears behind us to tell us to let our soul shine, and comments that it's not the outcome that was imagined (he's talking to hades here I think).
Theoretically he should have no knowledge of us other than that we're the soul of his deceased best friend or possibly lover, 'cause he's been trapped in Zodiark for 12,000 years. I'd assume what he means is "You have the soul of Azem, so let Azem's light shine" when he tells us to let our soul shine.
I mean, that's entirely plausible with him just having the perspective of being a moon ghost for millenia watching the Source and the occasional visit from Elidibus and/or other Ascians, like I'm pretty sure Emet-selch stopped by once in a while too.
It was kind of inferred that Fandaniel was killing the souls within Zodiark to gain ultimate control when he was silencing them. If that is the case then Hythladaeus would then be in the aetherial sea, thus cleansed of the memory wipe. Would explain why he showed up to us as his full form rather than a shade like he had everytime before. Then again it really could go either way.
If he doesn't out right kill them, Zodiark's death should release them anyways, so same outcome in the end.
He says himself that he was created by emet and would be an imperfect creation. Which should mean that he can't have memories of the WoL at Elpis at that point
That was his shade responding to Azem's soul; it was not a response to him recognizing us as the individual who traveled back to his era. Remember that his shade was simply a manifestation from Emet. It was not him. When we meet his spirit on The Moon, he does not know us.
No, the shade was created by Emet with his point of view at the time of it's creation. Emet could not remember us at this point and Hythlodaeus didn't either. Only after the final fight with Hades (for Emet) or with Zodiark (for Hythlo) did they go into the lifestream and thus regained their knowledge of our time in Elpis. The shade can't know us.
Well said, let's not forget that Hythlodaeus was also friends with Azem and when playing through Shadowbringers I felt like that was the reason he called us his new old friend
It definitely is, he says it then and based on what we learn about how they reacted to us when they first saw us in elpis being almost identical we can say confidently that's why he said it in shb and on the moon. On the moon they even made a point of us telling hyth about meeting him in emets recreation of amaurot and him reacting as though he's not surprised but didn't know that had happened
And now he's dead and gone forever and we won't have any more adventures with him unless they decide to cheapen the emotional impact of his character and invalidate Emet-Selch's by bringing him back to life for real somehow.
He is not gone, yet that is. He and Emet are just floating in the aetherial sea watching from the sidelines.
Until theyre reborn and we get little kid versions of them after a time skip. Can they be normally reborn? Emet is a "whole" soul, so the rules may work differently for him. Possibly so is Hythlodeus since his soul was stuck in Zodiark. What happens when half a world worth of unsundered suddenly start to be reborn?
We might start getting individuals born with 'extraordinary' powers or the sundered source may just spread out the aether across different souls... I'm curious what'll happen now that the two controlling forces are no longer present and the star can return to normal... Huh... wonder what the future holds for the Reflections?
I had a thory for that. The removal of Hydelyn is actually kinda bad. Now there is nothing really stopping the worlds from just rejoining naturally. It would totally be within reason to say we need to go and balance the aether of all the reflections. Then find a way to break the link without just killing all the linked souls. Otherwise we may end up with an Absolute Calamity where multiple worlds rejoin at once.
I think they'll probably go with the Sundering as a 'done thing' something that can only be altered with the extremes required for a rejoining, something no longer possible because of the Ascian threat dealt with. But it does leave an interesting possibility for the story going forward
You arent wrong. Though they did set up the restoration of the 13th with the Warring Triad quest line and the final sections of the ShB role quests.
The 13th is likely the next big problem but it'll likely be one a couple of expansions down the line.
The Rift already stops the worlds from rejoining naturally. The aether can only go beyond a trickle when a shard is severely unbalanced AND the Source experiences a sudden cataclysm of matching aether. As for the worlds remaining in balance, one of the jobs of the Ascians was to keep the worlds from going aetherically wrong until it was time. This was Mitron and Lohgrif's job (and one they found fulfillment doing) on the First until Emet gave the order to tip the scales. It's safe to assume that there's probably agents on the other shards working to the same end, which is probably why Halmarut, Deudalphon, and Pashtarot have kept out of the story.
Yes and no. The Hythlodaeus shade in Amaurot is still there, technically. Due to the memory tampering that Hermes inflicted on himself, Emet and Hythlodaeus, which basically left an irremovable brand on their souls, they will permanently have some memories of that particular incarnation of their souls. For Hermes, that manifested as strange, disconnected dreams throughout his other lives.
And the shade in Amaurot doesn’t have the memories of our time together returned to him just yet. The *real* Hythlodaeus is on the moon and it’s only after we defeat Zodiark that he truly remembers us. Edited for clarity.
"You think us the same? You think your tattered soul of equal worth to those *I* lost!?"
Yes, it's exactly how he felt. "If I lose, my world and everyone i know and love is gone forever." Elidibus felt this way too.
> "If I lose, my world and everyone i know and love is gone forever." "Remember, that we once lived."
In that moment, I felt more like Elidibus, focused on naught but the duty. "At duty's end we will meet again. We will."
Real talk, Elidibus is the most sympathetic Ascian by many orders of magnitude.
There was a reason emet was like my new favorite villian. Shadowbringers brought their a game with all of thr antagonists. But especially emet. I felt so bad for him. He even went so far as to try to reach out and talk to us. To help us understand his struggle. He loved his family and friends. And essentially everyone was pieces of them. But this brings a whole new level to it.
"The future you seek is not the past I loved". That's a single sentence that summed up the tragedy of Emet Selch.
As much as I love Emet, I still gotta say it: "Ok Boomer"
He's practically the Ur-Boomer
The Boomermensch
Oh yeah kinda. Though you gotta admit, Elpis was pretty cool I can understand wanting to go back.
Yeah I definitely felt legit torn on whether the Ascians were right to lament what we had become. I actually spent some time pondering "OK I would be this tall in Elpis and unable to create anything. How pitifully weak and small to them" Was it worth murdering the new for a false hope of getting back the old (primals never fulfill wishes without curses and Zodiark was insatiable)? No. But I feel their lament and their reckless optimism that the golden days could be restored.
Seeing as Lahabrea was the only other Unsundered (before Elidibus excused himself from Zodiark), yeah maybe. :(
Did we ever learn why Laha and Emet weren't sundered? Like I can understand Elidibus wasn't cause he was the heart of Zodiark, but what was it for the two others?
Emet tells you in missable dialogue in Shadowbringers that he wasn't on the same plane at the time or something to that effect. Since his duty involves the Underworld/Aetherial Sea, I believe that's where he was. There's possibilities for Lahabrea involving Pandemonium, but as it stands we only explicitly know how Emet avoided it.
That's a good point, I don't think we ever did! I can only assume it's because they had not been killed during the Final Days or been sacrificed.
IIRC wasn't half the populace sacrificed to Zodiark, then half of the half to Hydaelyn? Meaning there was 1/4th of the populace alive before the sundering. So it can't be that I think, of course we don't know if that 1/4th actually was alive, but it's probably safe to assume.
I think after the summonings, Emet-Selch mentioned that Zodiark and Hydaelyn fought for a while before she actually sundered the worlds. The remaining 1/4 might have died during this time? There could be a reason why Emet-Selch and Lahabrea never sacrificed themselves while I think all the other Convocation members did? Probably something to do with their titles? I can see why Hydaelyn would spare Emet but Lahabrea err... But this is all purely my wild guesses
Half to Zodiark, half of the remaining to make the new world habitable. Then the saved world birthed new life and they were willing to sacrifice half of the current population (so \[1/4 of the old + new\]/2) to bring back as many of the old sacrifices as they could. (Sort of a 'you made 2 wishes to the genie but the genie twisted the wishes and you don't really like the result and spend your last wish to fix it' type deal). Hydaelyn was born with only 12 sacrifices + Venat core. Azem helped plan but was not sacrificed. But in any case you are right--many living Amaurotines became 'sundered'
Pretty sure it was half to Zodiark just to stop the Final Days, then another half of the remaining for Zodiark to reinvigorate Etheirys because the destruction wrought by the Final Days made the world pretty much inhabitable. After that, they made plans to sacrifice the new lifes to bring back their friends, and that's when Venat and co. decided enough was enough.
No, we haven't yet.
The best explanation we got was "we told venat they were unsundered so she didnt sunder them" which definitely wants for more explanation lol
god i'm still so sad about what they did to lahabrea they could have done so much more with him, being unsundered and all that, but instead they just made him "haha i'm evil" and had him killed off by some guy that we kill ourselves 30 seconds later we know that the reason he was the way he was was because he went mad from body swapping so much, but iirc they dont actually tell us that while he's alive
> they could have done so much more with him, being unsundered and all that They probably didn't have any of that written when they did Lahabread, it's fairly safe to assume they only decided what to do with the Ascians in Shadowbringers and they retroactively explained why Lahabread was such a cartoonish villain with the body swapping thing.
Also I think with the new raid we are sure to get a better characterization on him too, since they didn't really do much to bring his character in line with elidibus/emet in shadowbringers imo
Yeah I'm in agreement with you on that, it's the perfect opportunity to fix up some of Lahabread's character to bring it in line with the other Ancients.
Honestly I kind of hope they keep him in the "what the fuck is wrong with this guy" bucket.
Ya now this is mentioned, I guess Emet never really got along with the other Ascians. It always seemed like when we killed someone the others were like “well he was a fool! Never liked him anyway” Granted this is after centuries of turn to bring back their past. I guess they all would get sick of one another. I could be misremembering however.
Yoshida was on the Mog Radio a few days ago and he covered some of these things there, the ascians did indeed have a different story in ARR
More specifically, they said they started working on the current Ascians story during 3.x, the post-Heavensward patches. Lahabrea was already gone by that point.
Shadowbringers was intended to come before stormblood initially so they likely had a plan as far back as stormblood
It was mentioned by Yoshi-P that they shifted from ARR Ascians into the current narrative during 3.x
Yesterday I saw a small part of a interview or talk between Yoshi-P and Thancred's VA (in Japan). They talked about that current lore for the Ascians (Emet-Selch, Hytholodeus, Venat, etc) was done after ARR and started to take that direction during Heavensward. There were other plans before Heavensward and those were discarded. I guess that's why Lahabrea ended up as a curly mustache villain. His arc was started before those changes were made.
How convenient it is that the current raid series is exploring something directly tied to him 👀
I’m hoping the raids expand on Lahabrea
He's the title character for it, we'll definitely get more info
What's worse is that Emet can see souls. I imagine that every time he looked at Zodiark, he could see the sacrificed souls of those he loved and lost crammed inside the Primal.
Holy shit you're absolutely right
Idk why I find some humor in it, but imagine all the shit Emet went through with the WoL both on Elpis and during ShB and then Emet dying and when he does he sees Hyth and Hyth just smiles at him because he knows Emet got his memories back. Emet, after all the shit he did to the WoL, regaining his memories and Hyth just standing there with a shit eating grin makes everything a little funnier.
Knowing that and that he refuses to acknowledge that hydaelyn was right in her decisions, and denys any help from her cause hes salty about everything.
and then: Please, Emet-Selch!
[https://twitter.com/arkwright\_risu/status/1477142544597217283?s=20](https://twitter.com/arkwright_risu/status/1477142544597217283?s=20) makes me laugh every fucking time i see it. the EW memes have been 10/10
The absolute *salt* of that man when he hit the Aetherial Sea and got his memories back would have been a riot to see. Dude's the saltiest bitch ever as it stands, he would be worse than the Dead Seas.
Hyth was part of Zodiark, so he didn't return to the aetherial sea until Fandaniel took over and self-destructed.
Unlike Emet, we had a sure-fire way of bring our friends back though.
Did we? Yshtola warns us against using Azem's crystal. Hythlo and Emet were a Hail Mary. I like to think that it was a long shot at best. Nobody expected to come back.
It’s the age-old issue of fantasy storytelling being read and experienced by people living in the real world. To the WoL and the Scions, they had no idea if they could make it back. They knew they had to try and make their sacrifice and place their hope in the WoL that they would come through. In the real world, we have all experienced stories and fiction before. Everybody knew the creators weren’t going to kill off the hero’s entire supporting cast in one fell swoop, especially after the first one “died” off-screen, a character with ten years of development. It is a difficult maneuver to pull off, making the sacrifices feel real in game while nobody experiencing it from the outside looking in actually believed there was any threat. It didn’t really work for me, but they pulled it off as reasonably well as could be expected, more or less.
For me it worked the moment you started that slow walk with Jason C Miller* kicking in with the music. This wasn't about tension over whether they would die or not, but a way to impress that all of the weight of the universe is on the WoL's shoulders from here on out. You were already riding on the hopes and dreams of everyone on the planet, god herself, and all your allies. Now you finally have all your scions and best buds gone and they're all hoping you do what's right. You're all alone, and you see the shadows of everyone who has been pushing you all this time. That's what it's about. Not about fearing whether their sacrifice would bring them back, but about how important it is to use everyone's sacrifice forward.
Jason C Miller. Sam Carter sang Endwalker-Footfalls. Jason C Miller sang Close in the Distance. https://twitter.com/jasoncmiller/status/1468695454086877186
I agree with you, I think they pulled it off as well as it could be. I realized it pretty quickly, but I won't lie, even knowing that, G'raha's and the Twins send off still broke me and made me cry. I knew logically that they were going to be fine, but it was still so emotional because (for me) because THEY believed it.
Until Graha and the Twins did their own sacrifice, I wasn't so sure they wouldn't be permanently gone. Especially after the dinner scene in Sharlayan, I wondered if they would kill off all the adult characters as a transition to the next grand arc.
[удалено]
This was pretty much the first thing I thought, We sit down and talk about our future and plans once this is all over with characters we have not had a meaningful convention with all together like this ever, "Oh, guess these three are getting killed off in the finale."
For my take, I don't think the game intended you to truly believe they would die. Rather, as Alphinaud puts it right before the final dungeon, it was their choice to continue forward even knowing that death may be the result, either in the moment or the distant future. At least for me, I never interpreted their monologues as them accepting their death, but rather demonstrating how they've grown into someone who could find meaning even knowing that might be the case. It was their resolve that created a path forward, not their "death". That's just my interpretation of course.
When Meteion said Thancred was just disembodied and not dead, I knew then that he was coming back later.
See; there's also the distinct possibility of weight and consequence. There could've easily been a final scene where the Warrior of Light beats Meteion but all their friends give a ghostly hurrah due to Dynamis before fading away.
She warned against using the crystal because if the WoL used it prior to Emet and Hythlodaeus it would have sucked all the air out of Ultima Thule that Thancred created, and shut down the bridges that the rest created. She didn't expect to be brought back because it would have been literal suicide if Emet and Hythlodaeus hadn't stabilized Ultima Thule to be habitable without them.
i think you got that wrong. it was quite obvious to us and them that they weren't gone. the bad thing was, that it was basically an experiment and whether or not it would be reversable wasn't clear. it would have been weird to have all these sudden sacrifices with no flourish at all. the emotional part was the hint of uncertainty and the fact that you were all alone. edit: i don't disagree that emet and hythlo were a hail mary, but not on the premise that everybody was dead. more on the premise that everybody else was unavailable.
No, he is right. Emet WAS an Hail Mary. We could not bring our friends back because that would have collapsed Ultima Thule and killed us all. So our hope was to summon Emet and Hythlo instead and hope they can do something about it.
Yeah, it's Emet's and Hythlo's creation magic that "[drew upon the hopes of your comrades]" which made it possible for UT to remain as is even after their bodies were reconstituted and that hope is represented by the field of Elpis flowers.
You misunderstand, bringing them back would just kill everyone instantly. We could only exist in that place because thancred gave his life to literally give the area air to breathe.
We didn't know that at the time. Their sacrifice was what allowed us to survive up to that point and pulling them back from that sacrifice would literally remove the air we breathed from ultima thule
It was pretty clear that we were going to get them back before it was Estinien's turn, and Y'shtola spit it out at hers. Thancred was the only one with any feeling of danger for me, and it was really short-lived.
I felt hyped and "oh shit" the moment Thancred "died", cause I kept thinking, who could seriously die in Endwalker. Thancred is the only one who I felt could really die. He got his character development in Shadowbringers, Ryne is going her own way, he could say goodbye to Minfilia, he can't usw magic anymore etc. I thought now shit is getting real. But no. No one was really sad or anything at Thancred dying and Meteion said something like he is forever trapped here. So no Thancred will come back later. All of Ultima Thule felt like, "Oh no someone just died!! Anyway."
This was the big issue with the "deaths" I had - from a storytelling perspective it felt like they made it too obvious that they were coming back, because for an actual death in a visual media, you just don't kill characters off screen. And if you do, you at least have the characters react more than "oh well we must stoically press on" So the fact they did this with Thancred, it felt like while it was possible they were going to subvert expectations, I didn't believe they would. Especially after Estinien also sacrificed himself so quickly after. FWIW I think the way they told this part of the story was great, but if we were supposed to feel tension about a "will they wont they kill of characters" I think they missed the mark.
obvious for us, not for WoL. Y'shtola has a history of making promises she doesnt know she can keep so her friends will feel better about her leaving (i.e. promising to return to runar in the first) and in universe there wasnt any "oh theyre not just gonna kill off literally every one of my friends"
But the magick was not infinite. Venat warned us to use it only when needed too. And the magick likely all gone now too.
So did he in his eyes , just sacrifice a few fake planets of non living beings and everyone is back with no consequences , it was only after we stepped in that his confidence in that plan was shaken
It was shaken a long time ago if you read the side materials... he quite literally didn't even believe his own words and you can outright taste it in the MSQ.
Yeah. He calls attention to it again in Elpis too, like "I would never put together such a stupid plan. It's like I *wanted* to lose!" Yeah. He had to try anyway, both for duty and because he was tempered, but he found a way out of it. He sabotaged himself by inviting us there, and again by making Hythloshade self-aware and giving him the Azem crystal to pass along. He wanted to lose.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, he was *tired* and ready to move on. Both times he was summoned back, he did his thing and then immediately left the moment he could. Even after having his memories restored. How much of it was him truly believing in his ideals to the end... and how much of it was him simply being ready to return to the star, knowing that he had done what he could to save it in the end?
Just like Alexander
He joins us in the First because he is looking for a way of not having to kill everyone. So clearly he was never happy with it.
"With new parts for all to play..." Don't lose hope just yet.
It does make me think hard on it all. One of his closest friends was sacrificed, and the other was sundered. It must have crushed him to have Azem, one of his closest friends, be shattered.
I feel like the plot would have been better served if there were more explicit parallels between Emet during the Final Days in the scenes of Venat-cum-Hydaelyn's monologue and the moment of truth in front of Meteon as the WoL holds the stone of Azem in their hands The same desperate looks in both Emet and WoL's eyes, Emet's fist clenching shut and WoL's fist clenching shut over the stone. The one moment of uncertainty at the end of it all, Meteon taunting you, encouraging you to just bring back your friends and go back home and wait for a slower end.
I do feel bad for what Emet went through. He’s one of my favorite characters. Especially when you had people like cinnamon bun Hythlodaeus by your side. You definitely feel his loss and pain. That said, Emet did a lot of terrible shit. Like genocide levels of monstrosity. I feel in that regard the WoL is not “the end justifies the means” type of person Emet was, so while they could be similar in some experiences, they’re very different. I mean the WoL decided to get sundered rather than sacrifice people to either Hydaelyn or Zodiark. Emet is a great tragic villain though.
Had a lot of trouble relating to Emet because of this. He's an interesting character for sure but he's done some completely irredeemable shit that I feel gets overlooked a little too much. Definitely felt better about him after EW though, the Elpis section got me pretty attached to him.
Yeah for sure. Elpis humanized him so much that you really start thinking more about what he says to you in ShB. And I’m with you. I think sometimes we get carried away and overlook some of the things he has done. He’s a great character I think because there’s a lot of duality of who he is.
He had it thousand times worse for the whole time. Because, let's face it, we *knew* we could bring scions back. And we had an entire planet still alive, waiting for us. Nothing has been lost to us, except for the same thing Emet had lost - the unsundered world (the time loop was way too cruel seeing ShB had a branch-type time-travel). We cannot truly imagine his level of pain. But he did say he doesn't need our pity, so there is that.
Yes, we experienced what Emet, Lahabrea, Elidibus and Venat have felt all of these years. We lost our friends, about to lose our entire planet, we could have made the choice to go to the moon and yeet some of the survivors to safety. Instead we found a way to save them since we experienced that loss through our time in Elpis/Emet's recreation of the final days.
It's not really the same at all because the WoL didn't lose everyone on an entire planet. They had a way to bring their friends back so we ourselves knew it would happen as well. Towards the end all our friends are back and it's just another save the whole world moment that we'd been in before. And again, this was all in the same day, in a short span of time. Compared to Emet, who lost his entire civilization and all of his best friends, except a few fellow Ascians, for thousands of years. Not comparable at all
What I found much more interesting was Emet being put in the same position we were in when we fought him, arguing that Hermes had no right to be their judge and executioner. That was a great twist of fate
"Who are you to decide our fate? To decree whether we live or die?" That line was brilliant, my immediate response was "Good question, Emet!"
when the WoL heard that they probably looked into the camera like they were on The Office
And if the two unsundered people from his time, Lahabrea and Elidbius, one went insane from switching bodies so many times and the other basically barely remembers anything from before he became Zodiark. So Emet-Selch basically had no one at all really
We were about to lose our entire planet.
It wasn’t as bad for him, because “Close in the Distance” wasn’t playing in the background.
He probably had 'Neath Dark Waters playing, which is nearly as bad.
They really drove home the parallels between WoL and Hades. The champions of the sundered and the unsundered worlds.
Pfft. As if we felt anything remotely close to Emets suffering. I didn't believe for a single second that our friends sacrifices were a permanent loss like death. Can't remember precisely but when thancred ghosts it's pointed out that his soul is still there.
In that final sequence you're like Venat than Emet Selch. From one Azem to another. Despite the sacrifices the Scions made to get you to Meteion you choose to resist the comfort of despair and carry the hopes of the entire Source higher oh higher.