One of the marks of an excellent games writer is the ability to craft a villain that players can empathize with. Final Fantasy XIV has done this expertly with Emet-Selch, one of the MMO's most beloved villains, and with Patch 6.55, he finally has a codex entry that has fans reminiscing about his story.
Emet-Selch is considered one of the most beloved villains in the entire Final Fantasy franchise by many fans. There have been countless questions on social media about players' favorite Final Fantasy villains, and Emet-Selch always comes up as one of them. Of course, not every FFXIV player is going to love him, but most of the community is quite enamored with the Ascian.
Patch 6.55 brought a bunch of new things with it, including the last part of the Endwalker story, the new NPC Wuk Lamat, more Manderville quests and Relic Weapons, and other side quests. However something not mentioned in the patch notes was a codex entry for Emet-Selch. While other characters' entries contain lore and explanations about them, Emet-Selch's entry reads more like a poem.
There are an infinite amount of things the developers could have written about Emet-Selch's lore. The character is deep and has a rich story behind him, including his many aliases, his motivations, and his ties to the Scions and the Warrior of Light. He is a villain that developers wrote in a way that allows us to empathize with his wants and desires, even though they conflict with our own, making it very hard to dislike him.
Despite the fact that Emet-Selch doesn't have much lore in his codex entry at all, many players think that the summary of the character is fitting. Emet-Selch is many things, but one of the most iconic things he has ever said has stuck with players when they think about Emet-Selch, therefore this entry seems like the perfect nod to the villain they've loved throughout the FFXIV series.
"Remember... remember us... Remember... that we once lived..."
