Will They Change Xehanort's Original Goal?

[Sephiroth0812]

as much as we think it would suck, i can see it happening, but being played off welll to the point where we feel kinda bad for a minute or so and then focus back on sora & crew.

That's a highly subjective thing anyways. The only reason I could ever feel the slightest bit of genuine sympathy for Xehanort would be if he was in a situation similar to Golbez in Final Fantasy IV, meaning under the control of something or someone else the whole time.
And even that would be a stretch considering all the horrible things he did to not only the main characters which stand nearer to us but also the universe at large.

im assuming people keep watching happy hollywood endings where the villains go all nice and all that crap

i sure as hell hope that does NOT happen for the Xehanort saga. Xehanort is evil and will always be evil till the end. he is fked in the head and what he did all these years was inexcusable. he was even more crazy as MX than he was as Apprentice Xehanort.

Making every villain go the nice route at the end does also get boring if used too often. And it's unrealistic for some as well. Still, some villains may play that ball in order to get some "justification" for their horrendous misdeeds but this way only shows how pathetic these villains are.

The entirety of the Xehanort being a "Tragic-Hero" idea is silly... He's a bad guy, he has a few good intentions but in all honesty I don't see how anyone could justify him as any sort of "Hero" period

Eraqus is like Xehanort's opposite... while he does a lot of good, he has a few bad intentions but an overall good guy (both are corrupt though, in their own ways)

He had a few good intentions when he was young, but who knows if that even holds true anymore. I clearly don't get people trying to make Xehanort less of a monster when he clearly is one now. Past intentions do not excuse your crimes in the present.
And seriously, I cannot help but chuckle when I notice people ranting at Terra being stupid for trusting MX's words without scrutizining them while some do the same by just assuming everything the crazy old loon wrote in his reports is genuinely true in the current time period.

What "bad intentions" does Eraqus have if I may ask? The only thing he might be accused of in my view would be that he is too one-sided and generalizes everything darkness = bad without differentiating.
He doesn't go deliberately out harming people like Xehanort does or uses them as tools for his own gain. He just wants to keep order.
Some people argue he attacked Terra just because of the darkness, but that is too short-sighted. He already decided (with tears in his eyes no less!) before Terra summoned the dark aura that he would have to go through Terra because he was shielding Ventus, his true goal.

Now, one can say Eraqus is an asshole and a jerkass for trying to kill Ventus, an innocent child who was not at fault for everything that transpired. Yet even there he was not going at this because he really wanted to, he also apologized to Ven beforehand and mumble how he was left without a choice...he was so blinded by his "light" and fear of darkness that he lost his ability to think rationally and therefore could only come up with an action that would derail/postpone Xehanort's plan by destroying a vital part to it.
After Terra beat the crap out of him he did realize the error he was about to do and apologized for both attacking Terra and Ven. That's a huge difference to Xehanort who never apologizes for his crimes, on the contrary, he revels in the pain he causes and enjoys seeing others suffer.

I don't even think that Eraqus and Xehanort can be that easily compared with each other. I think people tend to view Eraqus more of a monster than he really is and vice versa for Xehanort, which makes them more similar in audience views than they really are.

Who can be sure how sincere or how much of a ruse that was though, if he was writing hypothetical situations on his research or if he had an ulterior motive by then?

The only sliver of empathy I could offer his character is due to Young Xehanort, once in a similar position as Riku, yearning to leave the "prison surrounded by water" that no doubt caused suffering on the inside. Even then we can't be sure what moral code he lived by, what dictated his becoming a Keyblade Master, or any other redeeming traits he may have had. We do know, that unlike redeemed Riku, he chose to continue down the path of destruction despite positive, order-keeping influences like Yen Sid and Eraqus. For that he deserves to be LOCKED (hohoho) up without parole.

Yeah, that's what I meant above. One can't take everything Xehanort says or writes as truth...Terra made the same error and the audience chewed him out for that.

You make an excellent point. Riku is a character that can be sympathized with because while he did horrible things he turned around, saw how wrong they were and worked for more than one game to make up for his misdeeds. He practically turned around when he was only down a third of the dark path while Xehanort took it fully.
Curiosity and the urge to venture out aren't bad by themselves, yes, and young Xehanort may have been at least more in the "grey" area in terms of morality and stuff, but applying that to the current Xehanort is a great mistake.

Honestly, though, Xehanort's so terrible that if he isn't killed outright, it'll feel like he got off too easily. Subverting the audience's desire for vengeance is one thing, but it would take bad fanfic levels of character breaking to turn Xehanort into a halfway-decent human being, and I doubt Nomura'd go for that, especially given his love for the darker and more painful sides of fiction.

Full agreement. It would be not only subverting the audience's desire for "vengeance" but also dilute all the crap he has put the characters through by having suddenly him as the one who should be pitied. Same would actually also go for Vanitas...sometimes I feel people are just ignorant about the actual atrocities he commits and point him as the woobie when in reality he's also a culprit and an offender, not worse than MX, but close, just because he has Sora's face and Kanemaki couldn't resist to give him an overdosed sob-story in an extra chapter of a second-tier canon novel?
Sometimes I feel it's like in real life when offenders try to obtain sympathy points by whining about how bad their childhood was and sadly there are even people who let themselves be entangled by that even if the crime in question is murder or rape.

 

[JustSnilloc]

He had a few good intentions when he was young, but who knows if that even holds true anymore. I clearly don't get people trying to make Xehanort less of a monster when he clearly is one now. Past intentions do not excuse your crimes in the present.
And seriously, I cannot help but chuckle when I notice people ranting at Terra being stupid for trusting MX's words without scrutizining them while some do the same by just assuming everything the crazy old loon wrote in his reports is genuinely true in the current time period.

"Had"... That seems about right, he seems to have abandoned those altogether by the end of BbS. As far as Terra being stupid, I find it hard to imagine what makes people think that, it's almost if some people can't distinguish their knowledge from a particular characters. Terra had every reason to believe Xehanort's words at the time, just like he had every reason to believe all the others in his journey... However, that doesn't make him stupid - that just makes him deceived (by trusting others just like Aqua and Ven did on their journey... It really just comes down to a matter of who they met first as they are all just as trusting as the next)

What "bad intentions" does Eraqus have if I may ask? The only thing he might be accused of in my view would be that he is too one-sided and generalizes everything darkness = bad without differentiating.
He doesn't go deliberately out harming people like Xehanort does or uses them as tools for his own gain. He just wants to keep order.
Some people argue he attacked Terra just because of the darkness, but that is too short-sighted. He already decided (with tears in his eyes no less!) before Terra summoned the dark aura that he would have to go through Terra because he was shielding Ventus, his true goal.

Now, one can say Eraqus is an asshole and a jerkass for trying to kill Ventus, an innocent child who was not at fault for everything that transpired. Yet even there he was not going at this because he really wanted to, he also apologized to Ven beforehand and mumble how he was left without a choice...he was so blinded by his "light" and fear of darkness that he lost his ability to think rationally and therefore could only come up with an action that would derail/postpone Xehanort's plan by destroying a vital part to it.
After Terra beat the crap out of him he did realize the error he was about to do and apologized for both attacking Terra and Ven. That's a huge difference to Xehanort who never apologizes for his crimes, on the contrary, he revels in the pain he causes and enjoys seeing others suffer.

Like you said, one of the bad intentions he had was killing Ven. Another was (albeit not bad in his point of view) shielding his apprentices from any and all darkness (usage of/being close to/learning about)... He really didn't have many bad intentions, but he let the light blind his judgement and realized what he did wrong... Like I said, a few bad intentions but those don't make him a bad guy (if you look at the circumstances it makes him seem even less so)

I don't even think that Eraqus and Xehanort can be that easily compared with each other. I think people tend to view Eraqus more of a monster than he really is and vice versa for Xehanort, which makes them more similar in audience views than they really are.

Perhaps... Although without a deep look at things, it's the logical path for people to follow as Xehanort in his reports seems like less of a monster, and what little we see of Eraqus (combined with what is said in Xehanort's reports) he doesn't seem as nice. Given the deeper look however, we see them for who they truly are; Eraqus - A loving mentor, and Xehanort - An Evil Megalomaniac