http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CompleteMonster
I just want to see if any of you would agree with my assessment as to why he didn't qualify?
His entry on there used to be:
My Response:
All of this is true - he created nearly 700 kids out of his own DNA to blow up a planet. He has also been stealing bodies for centuries, a pretty terrible and utterly unique sin to the Xenosaga verse.
However he does have a Freudian Excuse (a substantial explanation for why he is evil). This is from the third game's database, basically the most impartial and omniscient source of information in the game:
"A test subject in a living matter transportation experiment conducted in the earliest days of the U.M.N., he made contact with U-DO during the experiment and was contaminated. The terror he felt at the time resulted in trauma which later motivated him to assemble the URT Vs in the hope of obliterating U-DO entirely."
Another character exposed to "U-DO contamination" had this said about him: "He developed a mental instability as a result of U-DO waveform contamination"
"His half-mad personality was the result of U-DO contamination"
So Yuriev was possibly driven insane by what happened to him and at the very least he had terror driven into his very soul. This terror is the entire motivation for everything he does in the series.
He's also kinda - KINDA - a Well-Intentioned Extremist, at least in his own mind. He's a very selfish prick of a character but his misunderstanding of the aforementioned U-DO being (a completely alien consciousness with no real ill will towards anyone) led him to believe it was a hostile threat to all existence:
Jr.: You knew if we confronted U-DO, it might've destroyed Miltia! How could you do that?!
Yuriev: Oh, please. I don't recall raising you U.R.T.V.s to be idiots. If we could save the star cluster at the cost of a single planet, I'd say that's a small price to pay.
And that's all I got. We are not meant to sympathize with Yuriev - he excels at Kick the Dog and is ultimately in it all for himself. But he didn't just decide to do all these evil things one day for no reason at all.
I just want to see if any of you would agree with my assessment as to why he didn't qualify?
His entry on there used to be:
"Dr. Dmitri Yuriev. A man who created an army of clones of his own child and then sent them off to battle a deity, knowing that doing so would likely cause a reaction that would incinerate a planet, children, innocents, and combatants alike. He was already planning to use this genocide as political leverage to increase his own power. He held back one of those clones, though not out of mercy. No, he planned to use that one to assassinate any of the boys he grew up with as brothers who might survive and then take over his body in order to continue living forever. Once he finally takes over the body of said clone, he used that appearance to get close to a very sweet girl who trusted that clone implicitly, and then shot her in the stomach. Then he went on to murder a starship's crew, including civilians."
My Response:
All of this is true - he created nearly 700 kids out of his own DNA to blow up a planet. He has also been stealing bodies for centuries, a pretty terrible and utterly unique sin to the Xenosaga verse.
However he does have a Freudian Excuse (a substantial explanation for why he is evil). This is from the third game's database, basically the most impartial and omniscient source of information in the game:
"A test subject in a living matter transportation experiment conducted in the earliest days of the U.M.N., he made contact with U-DO during the experiment and was contaminated. The terror he felt at the time resulted in trauma which later motivated him to assemble the URT Vs in the hope of obliterating U-DO entirely."
Another character exposed to "U-DO contamination" had this said about him: "He developed a mental instability as a result of U-DO waveform contamination"
"His half-mad personality was the result of U-DO contamination"
So Yuriev was possibly driven insane by what happened to him and at the very least he had terror driven into his very soul. This terror is the entire motivation for everything he does in the series.
He's also kinda - KINDA - a Well-Intentioned Extremist, at least in his own mind. He's a very selfish prick of a character but his misunderstanding of the aforementioned U-DO being (a completely alien consciousness with no real ill will towards anyone) led him to believe it was a hostile threat to all existence:
Jr.: You knew if we confronted U-DO, it might've destroyed Miltia! How could you do that?!
Yuriev: Oh, please. I don't recall raising you U.R.T.V.s to be idiots. If we could save the star cluster at the cost of a single planet, I'd say that's a small price to pay.
And that's all I got. We are not meant to sympathize with Yuriev - he excels at Kick the Dog and is ultimately in it all for himself. But he didn't just decide to do all these evil things one day for no reason at all.