BioWare Should Take Notes from Emet-Selch for Solas’ Arc
Emet-Selch is one of my favorite villains. He’s irreverent, unapologetic, tragically full of despair, and connects with you even in his final moments after your final fight with him in Shadowbringers. Solas is also one of my favorite companions-turned-villains, and Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is setting him up for a similarly epic and emotional fall. How Shadowbringers and Endwalker handle Emet-Selch’s story arc made him a fan favorite, and I hope BioWare takes notes in order to make Solas a more compelling villain in Dragon Age: Dreadwolf.
As a huge Dragon Age and Final Fantasy XIV fan, the similarities between Emet-Selch and Solas are impossible to ignore. Both are gods in their own rights. Both come from an ancient and tragically destroyed era. Both want to bring that reality back, even if it means destroying the world. It’ll be worth it to both of them if murdering everyone in what they both view as false or horrible versions of their realities brings their people, their loved ones, back from a terrible fate.
That flawed logic is ultimately why they’re the villains of their narratives. Emet-Selch creates catastrophes and an entire empire to upend the world to free the primal Zodiark and use that power to bring back the Ancients. Solas, likewise, decides to plunge the world into chaos, killing thousands through war and destruction in order to weaken the Veil so that he might tear it down and bring back the ancient elves.
You also get to experience both of these characters in settings outside of their villainous actions and choices.
For most of Shadowbringers, Emet-Selch is an antagonistic companion that promises not to hinder you. He’s curious about the Warrior of Light and even goes so far as to help several times, showing moments of vulnerability and sadness about what he lost, his friends. But while Emet is violent, callous, and cruel, there are also moments in Shadowbringers where he considers the possibility that you’re right, that the world as it is now isn’t so horrible after all, that maybe he should stop his world-ending schemes. He ultimately decides to fight you to the bitter end, but there’s a sad resignation to him in his final scene. You can’t help but pity him.
These dual experiences,which let the player see a personal side to Emet-Selch, are what made him so popular; similarly, BioWare could evoke similar reactions with Solas in Dragon Age: Dreadwolf by calling back to the experiences many had with him in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Because the two characters are very adjacent—even their backstories are similar.
Once, in an ancient age before the main FFXIV series of events, Emet-Selch was a member of the Convocation of the Fourteen. He was the keeper of the Underworld as Hades and had great power over aether. All beings were immortal back then and it was a utopian society. However, through hubris and, honestly, depression, a researcher and later member of the Convocation conducted an experiment which ultimately resulted in cataclysmic devastation, leading to the Final Days.
Emet-Selch and other members of the Convocation sacrificed half the population of the world to bring back life through the power of the primal, Zodiark. But Hydaelyn stops his plan, and he spends an age to restore the Ancients, plotting with his fellow Ascians to restore what he lost. He even recreates Amaurot, an Ancient city, in the Tempest zone of Shadowbringers, flexing his aetheric power to recreate what little he can of what once was and what he so desperately and sadly hopes could be again.
Emet-Selch goes from outright villain in FFXIV to antagonistic force in Shadowbringers, impeding your progress just enough while also helping because he thinks he sees something of an old friend’s soul in you, back to villain by the end. Then he becomes something of an anti-hero in Endwalker as you see him as he was before he lost his entire civilization, defiant of your ominous warnings of the Final Days and his actions after, but not apologetic. He is helpful to your quest in Endwalker and helps you stop the source of his people’s disaster once and for all—but also in the emotional finale tells you he would still try to bring his people back, if he was asked to do it all over again.
Once Solas was Fen’harel, the Dread Wolf. In an age before the Dragon, er, Age, he was part of ancient elven leadership, both official and rebellious, as well as a devout follower and friend of the elven goddess Mythal.
The ancient elves of Thedas were powerful, capable of manipulating reality and creating pocket realms, traveling through a magical system of gates to anywhere. They were ruled by the Evanuris, a pantheon of immortal, powerful elven mages who were as fickle gods always thirsting for more resources to consume and exploit. In their greed they murdered Mythal, and so Solas rebelled against them and sealed them away behind the Veil.
Afterward, he fell asleep for thousands of years. He hoped his actions would save the elves from the Evanuris, but he was wrong. The Veil sundered the elves from magic and made them mortal. The world itself, cut off from the Fade, began to die and a Blight began to spread. Solas wakes to find a world he didn’t intend, a shadow of its former self. He tries to undo what he wrought with an ancient elven artifact, an orb capable of tearing the Veil apart. It falls into the Inquisitor’s hand, literally, and Dragon Age: Inquisition begins.
If your Inquisitor is a Lavellan, you have the option to romance him, which I definitely did. Near the end, Solas proceeds to break up with you and leave the Inquisition. It turns his romance into a tragic romance, and you get a front row seat to his turmoil over going from companion to antagonist. Afterward, romance or not, you discover his true identity and purpose.
In Trespasser, he embraces his role as villain with sadness and apologies, and you vow to either try to get through to him first or destroy him.
Again, it’s impossible to be a fan of both characters and not spot the parallels. Solas and Emet-Selch are both tragically compelling (if that’s a villainous trope you enjoy). Interestingly, the more sympathetic moments you get in the Endwalker with Emet-Selch already happened with Solas in Inquisition. You get to know Solas as a friend, romance interest, general annoyance you can jump down and slap if you hate him enough.
That’s why his portrayal in Dreadwolf has to have touchstones to that. It needs to show that this is a conflicted, sad, and desperate character trying his best to undo the damage he inflicted to his people in the absolute worst way possible. He doesn’t need to be apologetic for his actions, either. He’s a villain. Emet-Selch himself never apologizes for what he’s done, either. If anything in the end he reinforces that he’d do it again. He’s not a character meant to be pitied.
I don’t think Solas needs to be redeemed, but it would be great to see that moment, that hesitation. To see that he was once someone you, as the Inquisitor, knew. This may be difficult since each Dragon Age game has a different protagonist, but I hope BioWare still manages to pull on our heartstrings regardless.
I have my own personal fan theories and hopes. I want Solas to work with you against the Evanuris and whatever bigger bad he sealed away. It would be similar to how Emet-Selch helps the Warrior of Light in Endwalker—despite being your enemy. I want at least a single moment of the Dread Wolf mask to crack, like Hades did in Shadowbringers—a pause of sadness at what Solas feels he has to do. If you opt at the end of Trespasser to try and get through to him, will you be able to? Even for a second?
We’ll have to wait and see where Fen’harel’s story leads when Dragon Age: Dreadwolf comes out, but pulling from Emet-Selch’s narrative arc would give Solas’ journey the impact it deserves. When the Warrior of Light defeats Emet-Selch at the end of Shadowbringers, it’s a somber moment. And when you meet him again in Endwalker, you know his end and that makes it all the more tragic to get these lighthearted and humorous moments with him.
I hope Dreadwolf reinforces that, like Emet-Selch says in Shadowbringers, both villains only want their people to be remembered. Both Emet-Selch and Solas want you to know their people existed, that they were loved, despaired, and didn’t deserve to end in tragedy.
