The Emporer (spoilers if that still matters)

[Jeff Smith]

My first playthrough I was suspicious of everything it said to me. I assumed I was being manipulated every step of the way.

Then after playing all the way through, I realized everything it says is actually the truth despite how suspiciously altruistic it seems.

THEN I played through just negatively responding to everything it said, until I finally provoked it into admitting that it is just using people like me as disposable tools in its plan. It openly called me a thrall and told me I have no choice in things and if I wouldn't play along willingly, it would bend me to its will and force me.

I'm not sure if the game is just sort of showing me a reflection of my own playstyle or if this is really how it's always intended to be - that even when it's romancing you, it's actually still just manipulating you.

But it's pretty interesting.

[Orion Invictus]

It's manipulating you. It's always been manipulating you.

[℧ | Quaffie]

death to the squid

[Dyrstbyrt Wargjaega]

Originally posted by Jeff Smith:

My first playthrough I was suspicious of everything it said to me. I assumed I was being manipulated every step of the way.

Then after playing all the way through, I realized everything it says is actually the truth despite how suspiciously altruistic it seems.

THEN I played through just negatively responding to everything it said, until I finally provoked it into admitting that it is just using people like me as disposable tools in its plan. It openly called me a thrall and told me I have no choice in things and if I wouldn't play along willingly, it would bend me to its will and force me.

I'm not sure if the game is just sort of showing me a reflection of my own playstyle or if this is really how it's always intended to be - that even when it's romancing you, it's actually still just manipulating you.

But it's pretty interesting.

Honestly outside of your own character assume everyone lies to you or tries to get you to solve their problems without wanting to promise it'll actually lead to something. I don't trust the squid, never did. But then again I trust noone in that game lmao. I just distrust everyone I meet, there does not seem to be anyone who is just HONEST. All manipulators and liars, all your companions too. Altho lae'zel does it out of ignorance and pride in vlaakith. The rest seem to intentionally blindside you.

Altho some of it is really on the nose. Like Astarion. It always surpises me how my characters never just see his vampire on him. He actually needs to try to feed on us or actually tell our character he is.
Doesn't matter if you're 8 or 20 on your intelligence either. But the emperor? simply by being linked to the tadpole makes me distrust him. He is not a natural part of my characters or their brains.

[Favonius]

I'm a partisan of the emperor always manipulates you, but it's mostly because i trusted him in my first playthrough and he forced half-transformed me in return.
Even worse, i had to admit Laezel was right since the beginning.
Once you know you have plenty of indications in-game on how manipulative illithids are.

But i must admit that if you never doubt him (and succeed this wisdom roll, or if you have been very moderate on your use of illithid powers), he will not betray you at the end. I doubt this could go up to a sincere romance though.

[ruler2k2k2]

You are correct OP, the Emperor behaves in line with how you see him. If you trust them, they are worthy of your trust. If you don’t trust them, then they brag about being able to control you if they felt like it. Is it a copout? Maybe, since there will never be a definite answer to ‘is the Emperor good or evil?’, but think of it as a role-play opportunity; ‘would the character I’m playing as trust such an individual?’. Both answers will let you complete the game.

[Clangeddin.86]

The game is showing a reflection of yourself in the figure of the Emperor.
If you treat him like ♥♥♥♥ he will treat you like ♥♥♥♥, if you treat him well he treats you well, basically he's a sort of appeaser of your expectations.

In a way, I think he's a metaphore for Artificial Intelligence and what humans can make of it.

I don't buy the "manipulating from the beginning" theory, too much does not add up and the Emperor's behaviour changes too much based on player input, basically all his choices are your choices or responses to it.
Even the fact that you have to convince him to overtake the Elder Brain instead of having to dissuade him from doing it is a strong indicator that the "Emperor manipulator" theory does not add up.

A true manipulator, like Raphael for example, would not change his behaviour so much depending on your choices, he seeks to manipulate the player to obtain the Crown of Karsus and that's it, nothing the player does can change that, you can oppose Raphael, kill him, overthrow his schemes, but you cannot change his mind, and that's because the Manipulator does not see the Manipulated as a peer worth listening to, but as a tool to use and discard when their usefulness is over.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Clangeddin.86:

The game is showing a reflection of yourself in the figure of the Emperor.
If you treat him like ♥♥♥♥ he will treat you like ♥♥♥♥, if you treat him well he treats you well, basically he's a sort of appeaser of your expectations.

In a way, I think he's a metaphore for Artificial Intelligence and what humans can make of it.

I don't buy the "manipulating from the beginning" theory, too much does not add up and the Emperor's behaviour changes too much based on player input, basically all his choices are your choices or responses to it.
Even the fact that you have to convince him to overtake the Elder Brain instead of having to dissuade him from doing it is a strong indicator that the "Emperor manipulator" theory does not add up.

A true manipulator, like Raphael for example, would not change his behaviour so much depending on your choices, he seeks to manipulate the player to obtain the Crown of Karsus and that's it, nothing the player does can change that, you can oppose Raphael, kill him, overthrow his schemes, but you cannot change his mind, and that's because the Manipulator does not see the Manipulated as a peer worth listening to, but as a tool to use and discard.

A manipulator would absolutely adapt their speech patterns depending on your reactions. That's part of what makes them manipulative.

[Clangeddin.86]

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

Originally posted by Clangeddin.86:

The game is showing a reflection of yourself in the figure of the Emperor.
If you treat him like ♥♥♥♥ he will treat you like ♥♥♥♥, if you treat him well he treats you well, basically he's a sort of appeaser of your expectations.

In a way, I think he's a metaphore for Artificial Intelligence and what humans can make of it.

I don't buy the "manipulating from the beginning" theory, too much does not add up and the Emperor's behaviour changes too much based on player input, basically all his choices are your choices or responses to it.
Even the fact that you have to convince him to overtake the Elder Brain instead of having to dissuade him from doing it is a strong indicator that the "Emperor manipulator" theory does not add up.

A true manipulator, like Raphael for example, would not change his behaviour so much depending on your choices, he seeks to manipulate the player to obtain the Crown of Karsus and that's it, nothing the player does can change that, you can oppose Raphael, kill him, overthrow his schemes, but you cannot change his mind, and that's because the Manipulator does not see the Manipulated as a peer worth listening to, but as a tool to use and discard.

A manipulator would absolutely adapt their speech patterns depending on your reactions. That's part of what makes them manipulative.

It's not only speech patterns, he radically changes his course of action at the end depending on your input. It's clear there is no pre-planned goal in him, which is the whole point of a manipulator, manipulating someone else to achieve a preset goal.

And every character changes speech patterns based on your reactions, that doens't make every npc in RPGs a manipualtor.

[GAMER3223]

Originally posted by Favonius:

I'm a partisan of the emperor always manipulates you, but it's mostly because i trusted him in my first playthrough and he forced half-transformed me in return.
Even worse, i had to admit Laezel was right since the beginning.
Once you know you have plenty of indications in-game on how manipulative illithids are.

But i must admit that if you never doubt him (and succeed this wisdom roll, or if you have been very moderate on your use of illithid powers), he will not betray you at the end. I doubt this could go up to a sincere romance though.

Aside from Omelluum. [did I spell that right? idk] That one's chill. (He tries to help you with the tadpole in the Myconid Colony, and he even tells you to save Duke Ravenguard over him in the Iron Throne)

[Majorita]

I think what makes it hard to tell whether or not the Emperor is... let's just say bad, or not, is that he sees things from a different perspective to the player.

One of the key things is that the Dream Guardian from the very beginning actively presses you and encourages you at every turn to take tadpoles and put them in your brain.

This is also one of the reasons why I pretty much guessed from the beginning what was going on because, when literally EVERY SOUL-HAVING MORTAL IN THE GAME tells you, that tadpoles are THE worst thing imaginable, it's kind of obvious who the one guy is that's telling you "hey um... tadpoles... aren't THAT bad tbh"

But anyway, I think that his perspective is quite clearly, "being an Illithid is fine actually" and thus the idea of eating tadpoles is just literally a boost to your power level. I think though part of it probably was the idea, that, if you do tadpole more you might be easier to control, more receptive.

Because I do think regardless of how you treat with the Emperor he IS manipulating you like a puppet, he's in my opinion basically grooming you into a hardened adventurer, and he knows how these things go after all, he knows intimately how to raise a strong adventurer.

So the idea is he wants to use you to be his scouts in the Material Plane, do the legwork, get ♥♥♥♥ done, you are basically his thralls except your role is basically almost decided by yourself needing to find a cure.

And that is imo one of the most compelling reasons to for it to have been him tadpoling you on the Nautiloid. Because it makes it that much more effective to know, oh, well he was doing this intentionally and you guys are just the ones that survived the Nautiloid's destruction.

I like that much better personally than, it just being a 'random Mind Flayer' and you just 'happening' to survive and so on. I like you being earmarked by this calculating creature, because that just makes so much more sense.

I think that by definition the Emperor is manipulating you because he basically only tries to give you information, when he does offer information, that suits his purposes in order to get you to follow his suggestions, that in reality would be orders if you were able to actually tell him 'no' or if your goals did not align. I think if you could legitimately say like as a player character "screw this my tadpole is working out fine, I'm just gonna go to Calimshan" then the Emperor would just mind control your guy into doing what he says.

[LadyOdds]

I was so upset because I had a friend who spoiled the Emperor storyline for me before I even met the Emperor at all. I knew I wasn't allowed to trust him before I even got his first cutscene, so I didn't really get to experience whether or not you're supposed to trust him. I just was always aware that you shouldn't. Even roleplaying through different playthroughs it still bugs me lol. I can't roleplay anything with the Emperor because of that first hint

[GriffinPilgrim]

The Emperor makes an interesting counterpart to Omelluem. Both are Mind Flayers who broke from the control of their Elder Brains but where Omelluem chose to take this as a chance to explore a different way to live, painstakingly constructing a morality purely by observation, the Emperor basically went right on being a normal Mind Flayer, just with the higher levels of the hierarchy removed.

[.Master Jiren, The Strongest]

originally you were going to create a character you were attracted to and it would seduce you, this was meant to make it more difficult to refuse the emperor later because you'd be refusing your hand crafted love interest. they dropped it for the usual reasons and now its very easy to just turn the squid away and kill it, because you know, its a mindflayer.

[Jeff Smith]

I made my original guardian very attractive to me. Since then I always make them menacing, with tentacle tattoos around their eyes to "make me suspicious."

[Dragon_Dude1]

how do you get the guardian/emperor to thrash you like that? I constantly called it out and told the beast i dont trust it at every opportunity, but all i got was him saying our alliance is over and he will join the netherbrain