Why Emet-Selch Is The Best Villain (FFXIV Lore) 

It is peak "How to debut a villain"

Talk about scene stealing. He's the highlight of every one he's in.

Part of me wonders if the reason why nobody mentions it or references it is because it happens so regularly. Like, that's how the Emperor says "Hello" to Emet Selch every time he stops by, and everyone in the castle just acclimated to it.

@@StoutHelm At least until Hythlodeus shows up to bounce off him.

@@alden2085 let’s be frank, both of them are top notch.

Brandelis from World of Final Fantasy: "Only seven?"

​@@andreasiccardo8063 Meteon: "GeT oN My LevEl."

So true! FFIV had the best heroes and FFVI the best villain, until FFXIV and Emet Selch!

Kefka "only" devestated his world, but didn't fully destroy it. But it'd work if you replaced Kefka with Kuja, since he truly wiped out Gaia, together with every single one of it's inhabitants, all local species, the history and genetic information - just everything (safe for some artificially created beings, who managed to escape to Terra).

I heard that in Emet's voice

i know ffxiv wont do drastic turns but i really was hoping emet set up a situation where WOL had a choice bringing back his recently deceased scion friends or saving a city or something. so in a way Emet is testing if mankind's current champion will go on the same path as his or will choose moving forward

@@greggreyes6869 We quite literally get that choice in Ultima Thule if we ignore the fact that by bringing the Scions back we would just... die. We choose to summon Emet and Hyth back, not to save our friends, but to give us a way forward.

@@Cartafilo_XXI i was thinking emet giving us that choice IN shadowbringers. emet giving us that predicament not meteion

"The future you seek is not the past I loved. That is why we fought. That is why I lost."

@@greggreyes6869 I mean, just by being scions that's a choice everyone already made to an extent. Everyone could theoretically just bug off, live their lives, and leave the world to its own devices. But instead they actively work to help the world, even at the cost of their own lives.

I really think I'd put him at #1 on a personal level. He's so... fully fleshed out. A truly wonderful character.

My friend and I both felt that the slouch grew more pronounced throughout Shadowbringers. He has been doing this so, so long and it is clearly weighing on him. Then Endwalker comes out and we see the younger him, standing straight and tall.

@@nathanscott3339 not only the younger him in Endwalker but it was more telling for me in Shadowbringers.. watch his posture when he pleads the WoL to remember they (the ancients) once lived.. He's standing straight there.

@@lunasilvermoon2283 I mean ... of course. His struggle of 10k years was finally at an end, whatever form that end took.

@@nathanscott3339 hence, one of the reason "tomorrow and tomorrow" played after Hades defeat, because one of the lyric have "Stand tall, my friend" foreshadow actual infatuation you have with Hades.

@@dood52751 Everything with Emet-Selch was masterful and shows what Square can really do with characters when they are doing their best.

"I bade you remember, yet all this time, it was _I_ that had forgotten! A right fool you've made of me, Hermes!" I love how _indignant_ he sounded at that point, like he's both outraged and impressed at being party to such a grand twist in the production!

@@Archris17 One of the best lines :D

To quote a great writer: "Wait and see."

there was 1 little dialogue line with emet in elpis that really shows the skill of the writers. after hermes got super emotional over killing the lykanos(?) he was wondering to himself what it must feel like to feel such grief. it made me tear up cause all you can think off. oh buddy... you're going to find out.

This is an underrated comment. The last sentence is particularly poetic. Differences should not be seen as weakness, but celebrated. I often like to say, "Where two people agree on everything, one of the two is not needed".

Now I can't quote it, but I do believe when Emet is resummoned in Ultima Thule he does still say his ideals are at odds with the WoL even at the end, which I can appreciate he is unwavering but accepting of the defeat. (After looking it up) Emet: But more than that, the future you seek is not the past we loved. That is why we fought. and why I lost. But though you defeated me, my ideals are inviolate. Invincible."

@@Renagadezzzz A perfect way to title drop his actual final boss theme song. :D

So he’s the Chrono Trigger fan who hates Chrono Cross? Haha

Love your analogy! LOL!

All my old toys got thrown out, after my cat peed in my toybox

i bet emet selch eats ass

Probably the best analogy I've ever read

Whaaaat? I’ve gotta go check this out.

whaa

omg i just witnessed this!! ;( ;( ;(

I did not realize that!!!

There's a *WHAT?* The sheer amount of detail these people put into this game never ceases to amaze me.

This was the very future that Hydalen sought to save the rest of the Acians from, and she did, other than those that were not sundered, but it didn't come without cost. Which she was willing to bear

Me too! Even if it’s told second hand through stories.

You mean the past :D

There's a parody Tumblr thread about this very thing and it's honestly pretty funny. Can't remember the name of it though.

Him and Hythlodaeus showing back up made the Elpis chapter so much more interesting.

@@StoutHelm it's was fun seeing how much of a push over he was XD meeting Hythlodaeus and seeing a little of how much of a menace he was to emet poor emet had Azem, Hythlodaeus and Venat to deal with all at once XD

@@StoutHelm The whole of Endwalker felt like experiencing Doctor Who.

SE knew what they did, after we defeat him Alphi line just broke me '' Emet Selch is gone'', that hit like a truck, who would teach me history now, how could we connect with Ascians again? And well..

i think SE was trying to go for like this in Ardyn but it didnt quite land right for me. then they got it perfect for emet.

I cried too... no shame in that. And I have cried several times over rewatching that scene.

Killing him and all his dreams he fought for for thousands of years was the hardest thing I'd ever had to do in FF14. I never really got over it.

I do have at least a little bit of hope that they may come close in FFXVI. If there's any dev team that can do it, it's them. I mean, they top themselves in FFXIV time after time already, maybe that transfers over to a new game. But then again, maybe not. Best not to have high expectations like that.

It’s close between that an Endwalker but I think I agree with you.

in my opinion ShB is the best turning point, EW is the best conclusion.

@@KoNekoNoUta EW was good, my only gripe was how quickly we ended up taking on meteon, and that the scions all came back. It cheapened their sacrifices imo. Otherwise it was a good end to the story.

As good the whole game is.. I really miss Shadowbringers so much, it truly is something else.. damn.

@@MisplacedShadow idk. i never really thought of them as meaning to be permanent sacrifices; more like pivotal character moments. the peaks of their respective arcs and the heights of their emotions. Thancred was able to overcome the dynamis likely by shutting off the flow of aether in his body as he did in the first, his weakness once again becoming his strength. estinien was able to convince the dragons to never give up, and to never lose hope. not in anger, but in love. He'd lost his family to nidhogg, yet he's willing to make friends of dragons for his new family. if you've ever played the 30-50 DRG quests, he was more than willing to lose himself to Nidhogg's eye just to kill its' owner. now, his sacrifices are for his friends and loved ones, everyone with him and everyone at home. Y'shtola has some sort of scholarly thing about knowledge and how it should be stored and spread, but Urianger has legitimate guilt about the many times throughout the story that he's had to go behind everyone's back. he doesn't believe he has the resolve to do one of those dynamis-emotion things alone, so he's more than willing to help others. he forgets the many times he alone has been pivotal in the scion's success though, like 90% of the times he has had to not disclose knowledge. G'raha has his many years on the future/source and the first, both doomed worlds unwilling to resign themselves to death, to inspire literal machines to act against their programming. he knows how to inspire hope and change, and how to overcome the creeping stagnancy becoming of old machines, because he's lived through it several times. the twins have all of it. they have their love of each other and the scions in general, Alphinaud has Thancred's determination, Alisaie has Urianger's self-doubt and g'raha's unflinching hope, and they both have a little bit of everyone else. the twins are, in the end, still literal children; those of the scions most likely to learn from their adventures and their comrades. i honestly think that if they all died there, or even just a few of them, that it would have cheapened the experience and made the finale less impactful. "the walk" worked because, like all of the scions, you've learned from the journey yourself. in a purely meta, out of story way though, i didn't actually believe that anyone had "died" at all. it may have painted my experience differently than others, but i never really thought "oh dang he's actually dead" like i did with haurchefant.

The three of them are certainly captivating.

I swear he’d create a sleeping eyepatch over his head just to mock us for waking him up again… such a diva 😂

Elpis was so hilarious. Our eyes meet, and you can practically see him think “that thing looks like Azem. That means mayhem that I am NOT dealing with today!” Yep, definitely our Emet! My only regret is that our characters didn’t hug him and Hythlo one last time in Ultima Thule. I know the different character heights would make animating hugs difficult, but still. You know Emet would gripe about being hugged….then hug his “foolish hero” back.

I've experienced too much media to claim he's the saddest I've been over a character death, but he is by far the saddest I've been over a villain death. I ultimately still sided with the scions over him in ideology (some of my friends did want to side with him), but I was still so f-ing sad anyways. Edit: Actually, at the time I was fighting him at the end of Shadowbringers, I don't even know if I was fighting based on ideologies. I think at that moment I just realized he'd do anything to bring back the world and people he knew, and I'd do anything to protect the world and people I got to know over the entire game, and it was just a matter of who was going to win this fight.

@@corvidaegudmund1186 I do love how one of the very first things he says is that Venat must be laughing about the whole thing. As after having died and come back he got those memories back.

i actually felt worse for elidibus as he was depicted as this broken and empty husk and the way he just sat there at the end really got me.

Exsctly. In his mind he’s the hero.

Technically, if the rejoins would happen, the broken souls would rejoin. They would not be murdered but regaining their memories and become gods, like they were before. We literally saw it happening when the wol joined with the wod in the first. So I never got why we weren't given the option to side with him and destroy the world PROPERLY, thus saving it, you know, since this is a final fantasy game. But I guess the whole 1.0 to 2.0 thing is the best "destruction" we get. :(

@@georginaraven1691 Because, very simply, not everyone was an Ascian: in fact, most of the people in the Source were not. The shards and their inhabitants are fragments of sundered beings, but not everyone on the Source was: as is stated multiple times, life began blossoming again in the wake of Zodiark terraforming the planet after the damage of the Final Days, and the Ancients planned to sacrifice that life to bring back those who gave themselves up prior. That was the moment Venat and co decided that enough had been sacrificed; the cutscene in Thou Must Live, Die and Know was just a vision. So even if those who had been Ascians prior to the Sundering were rejoined, literally everyone else would perish. Emet is an interesting character and a well-written villain, but he's still a villain, who murdered uncountable numbers of people to recreate a world that no longer belonged to him and his kind.

I have a feeling they may give us some of that in side stories one day.

I think the dialogue was "one thousand thousand of your lives" so astronomically more than 10000 years

@@deathwolf1767 he may have been counting his pre-sundering life in with that. Because the official timeline has the sundering 10,000 years ago.

@@Ashtari another thing! Time flows differently between reflections, a few months for us was over 100 years for the First remember, so who knows how long emet dwelt within other reflections.

@@abyss8471 that is true as well. Excellent point!

Thank you king.

He admits that much himself in the Final Walk. He even admits the WoL was right in the same line.

"Standing here, I realize. You were just like me, trying to make history. But whose to judge, right from wrong? When our guard is down, I think we'll both agree. That violence breeds violence. But in the end it has to be this way."-First stanza of "It has to be this way" From Metal Gear Rising:Revengance. Reading your comment made me recall the song

You’re definitely not alone.

I have to admit, I still don't understand his deal in Shadowbringers. For quite a while he talked as if he truly wanted WoL to contain the light of the Lightwardens and used it as a "test" for mankind ("You were the specimens by which I might gauge man's potential as it stands"), yet when at the end it turns out that yes, WoL actually *is* capable of doing that, Emet actually grows angry and lashes out like a stereotypical "this cannot be" villain. ...So was he lying and truly just wanted to fuck with Scions (pulling back Y'shtola from the Lifestream etc) or was he truly pulling some sort of test? Why then was he so petty about WoL passing his "test"?

@@Rettomus he experienced life since the first splinter of the stars. All those life times and other stars made him a bit crazy over the years. So he wasn't all there and after all is said and done when he regains his memories after death he feels like a real tool to see what he became

@@xtremefurrycat I get that many lifetimes had made him unstable. That doesn't really answer my question of whether he truly meant to test people in SB or not...

@@Rettomus it was all a big game to him having fun messing with others. Until things got out of hand is when he stop playing his games and actively tried to stop the wol from saving the star by trying to set them up to changing into a sin eater.

I was happy though, to imagine Hades getting to the other side and remembering everything. That must have been a huge stream of annoyed grousing for just days. XD Hyth was probably laughing through the whole thing. "I turned into a comic opera villain! Where is that idiot? I want to have words with him about his moronic memory erasure nonsense!"

@@eshbena So true! Brilliant

@@eshbena is it bad that I can imagine him finding fandaniel and strangling him?

I’ve been thinking about who in the franchise matches him based on the criteria from that article and I’m struggling to find someone else who comes close.

@@StoutHelm Ardyn in my opinion fits a lot of the criteria but unfortunately he's bogged down by the mess of Final Fantasy 15

@@StoutHelm I'd vote for Kefka Palazzo, i never have remembered in any of the Final Fantasy series that has succeeded as much as Kefka did. Emet would be the close second and then Kuja would be the 3rd.

Well to be fair. Even if you did save the Ancients. The Scions themselves must also have unsundered counterparts in that world but that also means they were all in the group that summoned Zodiark so probably for the best we never meet them.

@@StoutHelm Emet is kinda unique in that he is alot older than other FF villians. So old in fact that he is actually tired of being seen as the villain from fighting Heroes over and over again. To save his people, Emett sees himself as thr Hero and the sundered champions as the villains. Elidibus even takes this further. With him believing the WoL genuinely is death itself, the murderer of his companions and the being who will burn the hopes of the Ascian people to ash and that actually hurts the WoL because they can't fully deny it.

Thank you! And he’s for sure on my to do list.

@@StoutHelm i think it may be wise to wait..or make an update video once the pandemonium raid is over, as "willbe"elidibus is your sidekick there

@@dafire9634 agreed.

Caius is a decent contender, and Ardyn does have some solid motivation.

@@StoutHelm Which didnt get addressed until years later in a paid dlc before shutting down FF15 futures development. Ardyn as a character at the launch of FF15 isn't good at all. The best villians of the series are from FF6, FF9, FF7, FF10, FF12, FF13-2. However FF7's is sorta a strange case as he is barely in FF7 and its Jenova we are encountering for the majority of the game and the majority of his character development is told from past encounters with Cloud, Zack, Tifa. In a way Shinra & Hojo are the main villians of FF7's core plot. FF12's is much more simple, hes just a guy that wants power and wants his birthright to rule over his little brother. However he's not directly related to any of the mian cast. FF12's story is very much a War story between 2 nations & Venat is not the main villian of FF12. Its very based on the Starwars story which has given alot of FF fans to dismiss FF12 for the most part.

And what sells those 3 choices over a Villain like say Kefka, is all three are Voiced so wonderfully. Enough can not be said about the voice acting talent and awesome direction these 3 were given.

@@notsure9466 FF12's villain actually is not fighting just for power, he has a very noble cause ( I think many people miss that somehow). To live in a world without gods, that control the fate of the people. He goes to great lenghts to achieve this and even does a lot of horrible stuff, but this makes him all the more refined as a villain.

Easily one of my favorite moments from the game.

And yet his very next line he admits we are, indeed, a shard of Azem. "You are a broken husk, nothing more!" He knows, but because we aren't whole he still doesn't consider us 'correct.'

Well said.

I remember finishing FF9 a while back and really enjoying the dynamic of the villain; the desire to live as opposed to mere existence, even at the cost of so much. Then… that…… thing appeared and I was just… really confused and it kinda made the ending feel a bit hollow. =/

You know you’re doing something right as writers when your villain can have multiple monologues and instead of players going “oh great, another rant”, they practically get pen and paper out and go “yes, please continue”.

@@GmaerXQ I love 9 but I agree, it hurts the narrative.

The reason I love basically all FFXIV villains in the past few expansions is because we get to know them.

Q is about 1000 times better than Emet.

It could be both. It’s unclear if Emet was aware of Hyth’s chosen purpose. If he was, I think he’d be more understanding. Even so the death of a close friend, even if it’s a willing, it would be tough on anyone.

Venat also kills all the people who would be sacrificed anyway through the sundering. That's a big thing that was just glossed over.

@@tyriaxepheles7996 I wouldn't really call what Venat does killing, per se. In the same way that Emet-Selch gets his erased memories back when he returns to the lifestream, Fandaniel likewise remembers his life as Hermes when he dies. Sure, they aren't the same people anymore, but functionally they're still themselves on a level they don't remember. It's like a weird form of reincarnation.

@@TheAzulmagia reincarnation doesn't negate the fact that they're dead

Hermes is also very well written. Elidibus has some very meaningful moments. I’d like to cover him at some point as well.

I hope he’ll come back but I think his time is done.

Thank you friend!

Bro thank you so much. I’m glad these pieces are hitting for you.

The fact that he tows the line is a testament to how well written he is.

Villains and antagonists are one and the same. People who oppose antagonists will consider them villains. After all, what is evil to one person may be right to another. His ideals are inviolate, invincible, if you recall ;P.

Because he's not a villain! He's a tragic hero - he was not evil in action nor intention. Antagonist to the main character for sure - but people conflate that with evil/villain for no sensible reason. If anything, there's ample reason to see the WoL and his crew as villainous (in action) if not in intention, at several times along the story, both in their fighting Emet, and in fighting Zodiark.

@@StoutHelm He doesn't toe the line at all. He's not a villain. None of his actions were evil, nor his intentions.

I miss Zenos already.

@@StoutHelm I think the best thing they did to Zenos was make us understand him (and him understand *us* as Players, not WoLs), RIGHT at the end. Its an excellent catalyst for turning the negative opinion we've held of him for more than two thirds of the game, into what can only be surmised with "That, I can't deny."

@@Meoiswa you’re right, and it won’t work for everyone. There’s lots of commenters who were just ready to ship Zenos off into the great beyond. Which is fine, but damn he’s a great character all things considered.

Honestly? I grew to love Zenos well before EW. He was an annoying leech to be sure but, I understood his plight. And seeing his desperation to grow stronger and to fight us again it was kinda moving. I mean people could see his obsession over us gross and unhealthy. But you can't deny it made him improve himself and that is always a good thing. So when we had that final smack down at the edge of the universe, I was always apologizing with each qnd every hit. I felt like I was fighting a friend and yet, when it was over I had to say my good byes. I don't think there was any other way to send him off. He deserved the grandiose fight he got. Every ounce if it.

Honestly? I always hated Zenos. He didn't work for me. That fist-fight at the end of time was badass, but it doesn't change how I feel. I'm glad he's finally gone.

Thank you, so glad you are!

I think this is correct. He was probably really, really mad when he was suddenly enlightened. Haha

Right, instant memory returns.

That's funny. I agree with rejoining but what I want to do is join the souls not the planet. That being said if you join souls like we did with Ardbert, we would not have the memories of the ancient world which I am ok with as long as we make the people whole again. I would expect them to build another utopia.

The funniest thing is that canonically, sometime between 5.0 and 5.3, Emet must have woken up in the First's lifestream and been like "FUUUUUU-" finally realizing he'd been bamboozled for 12000 years

@@kaye507 “…. Oh, for the love of!”

Rejoining in any way is evil. We aren't going to have 13 versions of everyone and everyone's homes together on the source, we are going to have 13 completely independent unique sapient individuals forceful merged into one person. And since you can't have 13 personalities independently living their lives in one body any way you rejoin the reflections with the source resorts in a calamity for the reflections where their lives/Independence/sense of self is taken from them to make the source whole.

Glad you enjoyed it friend!

No doubt!

Thank you friend! This comment made me smile. And great question about those lesser races, I’ll look into it!

They were right.

He did his best to stoke that greed and villainy in the thinking species from the get-go. It's hypocritical of him to judge us.

Thanks for taking the time to check it out!

You leave Ardyn out of this. It’s ludicrous that Bahamut from the very beginning set Ardyn up to be the sacrificial lamb to drive out the darkness and the Star scourge. Why intentionally pit brothers against each other in this way? Ardyn screwed himself over and Bahamut simply had to accommodate and rework the plan.

@@madambutterfly1997 Let him enjoy the characters he likes, yikes xD.

Thank you friend, he’s awesome.

Thank you so much friend. I’m confident if I keep providing and stepping up my game, we’ll keep seeing growth.

Thanks friend!

Fiction is so vast that it’s really hard to quantify that but of all the fiction I’ve experienced over the years, he’s certainly among the best.

He's not a villain, he's a tragic hero, if anything. His intentions, actions and character was at no point evil.

@@NukeCloudstalker He orchestrated the deaths of untold millions of people, and regardless of how he claims not to consider them people, they still are. He's absolutely, unequivocally evil.

​@@lordhughmungus He isn't. He was working towards an end that provably makes people immortal in a prosperous, peaceful society - people dying only out of their own will. Souls are known to be reborn in FFXIV. Meaning that even if people died - they'd come back. But unsundered and immortal - even if that wasn't the case, he'd still be working towards a greater good. He was fighting for his people, their survival and existence, and he was fighting for the denizens of all the shards, whether they knew and recognized it, or not. Continuing the cycle of death and destruction that the sundering caused, would lead to orders of magnitudes more death and suffering - and that is exactly what was orchestrated by those opposing him, whether they want to admit to it or not. "regardless of how he claims not to consider them people, they still are." And so is all the people that are now doomed to live a mortal life with far lower aspirations, potential and harmony, than those same souls could have had, had their worlds been rejoined, when their souls would be reborn. The whole problem with calling him evil, is that he can only be held to be so, if you discard the entirety of the differences between our world and the world of FFXIV. Even then, it's a stretch to call him evil - he was making an omelette, yet people cry over him breaking some eggs? It was veritable utopia he was working on revival - not without struggle and strife, but immortal life, culture and capacities far beyond anything a sundered mortal could dream of. But "oh no he killed people", amirite?

@@NukeCloudstalker I'm not reading all that copium, but I will address the last line. Yes, he killed people. Millions of people. No matter how you try and justify it, it was evil. Don't bother writing another dumb, fangirling rant. I won't read that one either.

Appreciate it friend!!

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it!

I’m going to wait to cover Lahabrea until Pandaemonium is concluded, that way it’ll be as comprehensive as possible. I promise I’ll eventually get to him and Elidibus.

Oh yeah, his debut was amazing.

Elidibus is one of those characters that flew under the radar expansion after expansion, only to blow it out of the water for the small amount of time we really got to see him.

I think it was because of WoL's soul colour. Its the same as Azem's. And since WoL is the reincarnation of Azem's soul...

Emet’s voice acting is iconic.

@@StoutHelm so very much so...

I love you homie

@@StoutHelm no I love u more

100 percent

Thank YOU, I’m really glad you enjoyed it!

Given the team making FFXVI, I am really curious to see what that game’s antagonist will be like. It could rival Emet-Selch since they seem to have the formula for a really great villain down now. Ardyn was good but I agree he wasn’t on the same level as Emet-Selch.

Emet is that villain that feels like your character should be having tea or drinks with instead of fighting….even though you know this can only go one way.

The second time I'd ever done the Seat of Sacrifice was after finishing Endwalker. The realisation that he remembered those days was a stab in the chest. I was sobbing while fighting Elidibus. Gosh, I adore Emet.