"Zenos was too emotionally stunted to be a villain, that's why Emet is a well rounded well written villain"
THE FACT HE'S EMOTIONALLY STUNTED IS THE FLAVOUR!!!! YOU GUYS WILL ONLY LIKE VILLAINS IF THEY GO BY THE USUAL FORMULA OF SAD BACKSTORY LEADS TO EVIL DRAMATIC WORLD ENDING PLAN
I'm not here to bitch about Emet since I also like him and I like the way he was written and even how it makes you question yourself: if you too had to live while everyone you know and love had to die, would you not go to some great lengths of trying to bring them back IF YOU COULD? Would you not also be stuck in the past in some sort of melancholy and nostalgia and would you not also feel like every time you presently believe you're getting better, you're only proven wrong by your peers and find them lacking and imperfect, and then that plan of bringing everyone back starts ringing back into your ears?
Cool, cool, but Zenos having the also very human backstory of despite being born into the most privileged family and class of his country, ending up as an emotionless husk of a person because he was not even RAISED into an adult, he was merely allowed to exist only by Empire rules and FOR the Empire's goals, is apparently not enough and only gives him the "emotionally stunted" tag? That's the whole fucking point!!
The whole fucking point is nature vs nurture, the whole fucking point is showing that the Empire was so rotten from within it wouldn't even support its royal class, the whole fucking point is lack of any kind of human connection WILL bring you into this state. We've had this guy on and off for 2-3 expansions, reaching a boiling point in EW where he gets that one moment of epiphany, given to him by a teenage girl no less, where he turns around, thinks on it for a while, then COMES TO OUR RESCUE ACROSS TIME AND SPACE. He could very well let us die there since he himself talks about how much he doesn't like being alive. He even tells you you can walk away from him at the very end and that he won't force a fight on you anymore (not my fault that the game still pushes you to fight after cause duhh script).
But sure, he's emotionally stunted :( he doesn't qualify to be a villain. I guess only the guy who allowed 5000 years worth of nostalgia, melancholy and depression to make him attempt mass cross universe genocide gets to be a villain, oopsie.