!It’s actually my third playthrough, just my first where I progressed Lae’zel’s story to the point where she rejects Vlaakith and wants Orpheus freed lol. And I may be in the minority here, but even after seeing all of The Emperor’s shitty dialog, I see it as more complex than that. It’s self serving and manipulative for sure, but I do think it believes it is being honest and acting in your best interest. Its dialog about illusion being a part of Illithid nature strikes me as it being quite candid and an indication that while its sense of morality is maybe alien to non-Illithids, it does at least somewhat trust you. That’s the mentality I had in coming up with these dialog options. You’re never going to convince The Emperor to act against its own survival and interests (hence it still refusing to leave the astral prism), but it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibilities that you could convince it to trust you with its life in return for you trusting it with yours. I feel like that would be a more interesting thematic capstone to the whole Emperor story.!<
You may be right. I just think that’s a weird characterization for some of the themes the game seems to be going for, or at least I feel like they could have done more to cement that characterization and tie it to those themes. Like so much of the game asks questions about freedom, survival, and the way reciprocal trust interacts with those things- see the stories of Shadowheart, Lae’zel, Astarion, etc. This scene could have been an affirmation of how those other stories answer those questions (by convincing The Emperor to trust you despite everything), or it could have been a brutal rebuttal of that answer (e.g. maybe it betrays you after you trust it with the stones). Instead, it kind of just shrugs off the questions. Like it doesn’t really feel meaningful for The Emperor to act the way it did, even if it’s within its character, if that makes any sense.