Building a better Alphinaud

I thought the Garlemald section was extremely strong for its stark illustration of how horrifying and powerful that nationalistic indoctrination is on people, and for achieving a very compelling balance between recognizing the humanity of its civilian population and showing compassion, while not excusing their greater nation's atrocities or anyone's inclinations to make excuses for it. Garlemald's fate and outcome as an empire all the way down completely worked for me, including the anticlimactic, ignoble self-destruction. It wasn't actually a "powerful enemy for us to overcome" like it always wanted to narratively be, in essence. Instead, strip away the pretenses, and it was always - by design - a pathetic, shambling mess built on skeletons and deliberately harmful ideology, and the simultaneous complicity and victimhood of its populace as a result is a complex issue with no easy answers. I felt for a lot of the Garlemald NPCs because they were so irrational, hateful, flailing, and self-destructive - and it was a complicated feeling that I appreciated a video game giving me.

Some parts of Endwalker were, in fact, Good. (And some were decidedly not!)

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

And they pay very strong focus on that particular element. Isghard's xenophobia or Ala Mihgo suspicious toward turn-coat is NOTHING comparing to Empire's indoctrination. This was illustrated in the EW's MSQ when the woman risk taking her sick sister escaping to the wild rather than receiving help from the "barbarian". If the Eozea army was shown to have any connection or in a cahot with the supposed-regicide, that will not end well.


I don't know why people are acting as if EW is like the end all for the Empire story. If anything, FF14 is known for to pace out the story over a lonnnnggg time. We just finally put the final seal on Isghard's redevelopment. Doma is almost there but Ala Mihgo is still a WIP. I wouldn't be suprise if the conclusion to the Empire story will only be seen in 3 expansion packs away. There are still a lot of material regarding Garlmean, like Corvos where they were driven off, and Goug which was their ancestral home. The current identity of the Garlmean is an Ascian construct to serve as tool for the end of the world, my guess is the resolution to the Garlmean would be they try to trace back their original identity as a race of people.

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I do wonder if our Pro-Garlamald friends considered that.
Not like the expansion is done anyway, and its not like we ever revisit areas later...
Bah, thats thinking to hard and rationally

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Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

I do wonder if our Pro-Garlamald friends considered that.
Not like the expansion is done anyway, and its not like we ever revisit areas later...
Bah, thats thinking to hard and rationally

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To be honest, I think their core complaint is that Garlemald flat out lost in the first place -- not just in battle, but in every respect. Based on past posts, they seemed to want the narrative to validate the Empire's ideology and nationalism, at least to the degree that it's "equal" to the Scions' (especially Alphinaud's, to bring it back to the title) principles of peace and global cooperation, which they have demonstrated repeated contempt for. That, I assume, is why there's constantly a push for more "isolationism".

The Garleans have no reason to like or trust the WoL. They should hate us and they do. I didn't see this as propaganda as much as a reasonable reaction give our actions. You have to remember that from their POV the Scions are the bad guys. They are essentially an Eorzean city-state sanctioned terrorist group who have attacked/destroyed Garlean facilities, defeated/killed some of their respected/beloved leaders, and been responsible for deaths of their countrymen in the thousands at least. All largely thanks to the Scions getting their hands on a superhuman weapon of mass destruction (who some could argue is little better than a trained dog who'll sic on command). I'd be pretty bitter about that too and especially loathe to accept assistance from a couple of idealistic teenagers.*

Like I said, I'm not even a fan of Garlemald. Much like the Ascians were generic villains in the background until ShB, to me the Garlean empire was a generic military threat. I personally didn't feel they were fleshed out enough for any meaningful story one way or another (despite ample opportunity to do so), but I appreciate that EW at least tried to make them something more (or I suppose more specifically that Ishikawa humanized them). I just think that tribalism should not have been unexpected, especially given Garlemald's history, and that would've been present even without the supposed "indoctrination".

* Side note: I've come to the conclusion that I'm just too old and cynical to find adolescent idealists interesting or compelling anymore. It's another reason why I absolutely do not want Arenvald on the team since he is probably the most optimistic of all the Scions. (Please, please give me an actual realist on the team, OMG.) I really, desperately wish we could get some self-reflection like we did in early HW with the Crystal Braves (especially after the questionable ethics of EW), but it seems like we're back to a teenager's vision of the world is what we should all strive for and nothing bad will come as a result of that. In fact, Garlemald was its own fault, not the twins' ignorance and naivety!

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

Well you can blame Solus himself for that.
Also Solus (Hades) and and Varis died in ShB (or maybe Varis died at the end of SB, it's been awhile) not EW iirc

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Varis wasn't the end of the Solus line. As far as I know, Nerva was after Zenos died unless we find out he had children or there are other as yet unidentified relatives.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

The Garleans have no reason to like or trust the WoL. They should hate us and they do. I didn't see this as propaganda as much as a reasonable reaction give our actions. You have to remember that from their POV the Scions are the bad guys. They are essentially an Eorzean city-state sanctioned terrorist group who have attacked/destroyed Garlean facilities, defeated/killed some of their respected/beloved leaders, and been responsible for deaths of their countrymen in the thousands at least. All largely thanks to the Scions getting their hands on a superhuman weapon of mass destruction (who some could argue is little better than a trained dog who'll sic on command). I'd be pretty bitter about that too and especially loathe to accept assistance from a couple of idealistic teenagers.*

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I'm not talking about the basic fact of disliking the WoL. I actually loved the Garleans hating the WoL (more people should do it! dunk on my character and their protagonist powers! i welcome it!) I'm talking about the repeated instances of them deliberately choosing self-destruction over a chance for survival for themselves and their family members; of buying into the ideology to the point that they sincerely see the death and destruction of their country and loved ones as a better option than "submitting to the savages" or being "corrupted by magic." That one-sided understanding of what drove the wars with Garlemald that you describe is also a form of propaganda - Garlemald (again, as a nation, the general populace are largely victims of circumstance and manipulation that almost anybody would be vulnerable to if immersed in - it's part of what makes things so difficult) has very carefully nursed a persecution complex that also makes them just flat-out refuse to engage. I would say the same thing about a country pushing the line that the Garlean people are just wicked and evil and oppressive, denying the history where they were oppressed.

I strongly disagree that Garlemald is an instance you can point to as "it's all the twins' fault and the narrative blindly buys into their idealism," because the actual sequence of events in Garlemald was about demonstrating the opposite. They failed repeatedly - they failed to convince the sisters, they failed to understand the mindsets and the (sometimes futile) effort to talk through the indoctrination, they failed to judge Quintus properly multiple times, culminating in his suicide. And they explicitly blame themselves, repeatedly - as recently as the Omega quests - for those things. Even in the present era, Garlemald still has holdovers who refuse to accept help all over the zone, and the twins are having to continue putting forth their efforts.

Yes, there are times when Endwalker's shallow shounen-idealism gets very tiresome, but not so much with Garlemald, which was a pretty grim, difficult part of the scenario. More like the actual climax of the story at Ultima Thule, I think.

Zenos was old enough that it's kind of odd he didn't have a wife or kids, given that all his ancestors back to Solus seem to have been married and reproducing at about 20. Someone claiming to be his secret girlfriend/wife who had his baby would be hard to disprove. Given what we know of Zenos, someone showing up claiming to be the mother of his baby who he was hiding from Varis would seem very unlikely, but I suspect they could sell it to at least some of the Garlean populace. If they wanted to get a member of the royal family (or at least someone who claimed to be part of the royal family) back on the throne, Zenos's Secret Baby would probably be the most effective strategy. Of course, then you sink into the political quicksand of figuring out who the regent ought to be until the kid's old enough to actually govern (Zenos is 26, he can't possibly have a child who's old enough to be running a country), whether this is actually Zenos's kid, what this should mean for the woman, and so on.

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Originally Posted by Sarkany

Zenos was old enough that it's kind of odd he didn't have a wife or kids, given that all his ancestors back to Solus seem to have been married and reproducing at about 20. Someone claiming to be his secret girlfriend/wife who had his baby would be hard to disprove. Given what we know of Zenos, someone showing up claiming to be the mother of his baby who he was hiding from Varis would seem very unlikely, but I suspect they could sell it to at least some of the Garlean populace. If they wanted to get a member of the royal family (or at least someone who claimed to be part of the royal family) back on the throne, Zenos's Secret Baby would probably be the most effective strategy. Of course, then you sink into the political quicksand of figuring out who the regent ought to be until the kid's old enough to actually govern (Zenos is 26, he can't possibly have a child who's old enough to be running a country), whether this is actually Zenos's kid, what this should mean for the woman, and so on.

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At one point I did wonder whether he had his sights on Fordola....

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Like I said, I'm not even a fan of Garlemald. Much like the Ascians were generic villains in the background until ShB, to me the Garlean empire was a generic military threat. I personally didn't feel they were fleshed out enough for any meaningful story one way or another (despite ample opportunity to do so), but I appreciate that EW at least tried to make them something more (or I suppose more specifically that Ishikawa humanized them). I just think that tribalism should not have been unexpected, especially given Garlemald's history, and that would've been present even without the supposed "indoctrination".

* Side note: I've come to the conclusion that I'm just too old and cynical to find adolescent idealists interesting or compelling anymore. It's another reason why I absolutely do not want Arenvald on the team since he is probably the most optimistic of all the Scions. (Please, please give me an actual realist on the team, OMG.) I really, desperately wish we could get some self-reflection like we did in early HW with the Crystal Braves (especially after the questionable ethics of EW), but it seems like we're back to a teenager's vision of the world is what we should all strive for and nothing bad will come as a result of that. In fact, Garlemald was its own fault, not the twins' ignorance and naivety! .

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To paraphrase someone else in this thread -- if I need more cynical, "realist" worldviews, I can walk outside my door and talk to a politician. I don't play videogames to see cold, shallow reflections of the real world. I want to see worlds and people who dare to make something better.

The argument that "Silly rabbit, idealism is for kids" is, in my opinion, complete nonsense. If anything, what's more of a teenager belief is completely moral relativity. That's just lazy, because even in the real world, sometimes people (and their ideology) are just wrong. For example, there are millions of people who believe in anti-vaxx nonsense and vote for their politicians accordingly. And that is a belief that can (and has) done lasting harm.

Likewise, while I can have sympathy for the Garleans' POV, it was no less a position of cultural genocide fueled by ignorance. Even if we argue that the average Garlemald citizen views the WOL as a "attack dog superweapon", that position is still both wrong and ignorant because it overlooks the fact that Empire (for most of the story) had even stronger superweapons than the WOL, were still trying to create new superweapons, and even tried to recruit or capture the WOL multiple times. The Empire weren't some honorable underdogs who fought without the cheap edge the EA had -- they gave themselves EVERY edge they could find. So both in and out of the story, that argument doesn't work. It's pure Garlean sour grapes propaganda. And while I can understand if the averge Garlean believed such propaganda, that doesn't make it any less ignorant or WRONG, and thus why I feel it was necessary that the country's government (NOT its people -- its government) was completely wiped out.

You can make benevolent heroes that aren't nearly as preachy as Alphinaud and should especially consider doing it given the age of the playerbase. I couldn't stand Alphinaud as a teenager when I first started playing. The years have not made me view him any better. Evolve and adapt.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

You can make benevolent heroes that aren't nearly as preachy as Alphinaud and should especially consider doing it given the age of the playerbase. I couldn't stand Alphinaud as a teenager when I first started playing. The years have not made me view him any better. Evolve and adapt.

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Every character in FFXIV is preachy. Even the villains. Hell, there's a certain MEME that starts with "Tell me, for whom do you fight?"

Alphinaud can't be singled out for a trait that every single character with any sort of philosophy has.

Except that is absolutely not the case given that there are characters like Estinien and Ardbert who aren't nearly as grating or overt as Alphinaud.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Except that is absolutely not the case given that there are characters like Estinien and Ardbert who aren't nearly as grating or overt as Alphinaud.

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They are absolutely just as preachy. Whether or not one is more "grating" than another is a personal opinion.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

Every character in FFXIV is preachy. Even the villains. Hell, there's a certain MEME that starts with "Tell me, whom do you fight?"

Alphinaud can't be singled out for a trait that every single character with any sort of philosophy has.

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Yeah, he must had forgotten the MSQ dungeon in lvl-roullete before the redesign, several Garleans characters essentially gave sermons about their world view, Gaius even gave several. Everyone favorite Ascian delivered one sermon per zone when he was accompanying you, and several at the end.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

To paraphrase someone else in this thread -- if I need more cynical, "realist" worldviews, I can walk outside my door and talk to a politician. I don't play videogames to see cold, shallow reflections of the real world. I want to see worlds and people who dare to make something better.

The argument that "Silly rabbit, idealism is for kids" is, in my opinion, complete nonsense. If anything, what's more of a teenager belief is completely moral relativity. That's just lazy, because even in the real world, sometimes people (and their ideology) are just wrong.

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It's psychology. Cynicism is something you pick up with the age after experience life for what it is. It's a "negative" words that most actual old people will get piss off if you call them cynical because it's taken as a demeaning accusation. Yet, I have seen young people (teenage or young adult in their 20s) actually embrace it and call themselves cynical because they think it makes them look mature and wise above their age ... I have seen so many teenage buff their chest "I'm just cynical ok?" as if it's a good thing when I just shake my head "you haven't lived long enough to be cynical yet".

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Originally Posted by Brinne

I thought the Garlemald section was extremely strong for its stark illustration of how horrifying and powerful that nationalistic indoctrination is on people, and for achieving a very compelling balance between recognizing the humanity of its civilian population and showing compassion, while not excusing their greater nation's atrocities or anyone's inclinations to make excuses for it.

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I agree, if anything I think it's the best zone story in EW, and they pulled all the stop. It's one that constantly surprised me with the outcome. The storyline at the hamlet started out innocently enough, I thought it will be another "feel good" quest, didn't expect it ended up with 2 graves and the scion questioned whether if it was a mistake to reach out and help people. Than you have the first legion story, which is supposed to be the best Garlemald have to offer ... and it ended with the commander putting a bullet in his own head.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

You can make benevolent heroes that aren't nearly as preachy as Alphinaud and should especially consider doing it given the age of the playerbase. I couldn't stand Alphinaud as a teenager when I first started playing. The years have not made me view him any better. Evolve and adapt.

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Evolve and adapt could be said to you as well tbf

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

To paraphrase someone else in this thread -- if I need more cynical, "realist" worldviews, I can walk outside my door and talk to a politician. I don't play videogames to see cold, shallow reflections of the real world. I want to see worlds and people who dare to make something better.

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I don't think I could fundamentally disagree with a post more. Since when are politicians realists? What a bizarre thing to say. Also, we were shown a world and people who made something better. They were torn apart by an ideologue that the game lauds as a heroine and laughably held up as "what not to do" despite the fact that the entire supposed purpose of the protagonists is about reducing suffering and trying to make a better world for everyone. Are we the baddies now?

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The argument that "Silly rabbit, idealism is for kids" is, in my opinion, complete nonsense.

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Black and white morality, a group of protagonists who always win, never suffer setbacks or losses, don't question their beliefs/values because they're inherently 'right', enemies who are utterly defeated with a moral message at the end, do you know what that is? It's literally Saturday Morning Cartoon crap. You can think it's complete nonsense all you like, but it's a programming formula for small children despite FFXIV being rated Teen (at least in the US). It's almost ironic the phrasing you chose for this statement is a slogan from a kid's cereal.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

I don't think I could fundamentally disagree with a post more. Since when are politicians realists? What a bizarre thing to say.

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....Is the term "Realpolitik" new to you?

Also, real life, modern career politicians are probably the definition of "realists", in terms of someone who is concerned with the here and now instead of wide-eyed ideals. The only thing they really care about is winning elections, acquiring and maintaining power, and keeping campaign money coming in. They certainly won't toe too far out of party lines at the risk of losing its support.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Also, we were shown a world and people who made something better. They were torn apart by an ideologue that the game lauds as a heroine and laughably held up as "what not to do" despite the fact that the entire supposed purpose of the protagonists is about reducing suffering and trying to make a better world for everyone. Are we the baddies now?

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In the context of the current game timeline, that's irrelevant. I dislike Venat's logic as much as anyone, but the point of our discussion was The Source as it exists now. Even if we object to how we got here, and the game's attempts to justify it, its relevance on modern Source politics is already a bridge that's been burned.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Black and white morality, a group of protagonists who always win, never suffer setbacks or losses, don't question their beliefs/values because they're inherently 'right', enemies who are utterly defeated with a moral message at the end, do you know what that is? It's literally Saturday Morning Cartoon crap. You can think it's complete nonsense all you like, but it's a programming formula for small children despite FFXIV being rated Teen (at least in the US).

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As Brinne said, do I think the WOL and the Scions could stand to be challenged more on various points? Sure. Do I think there should be more tangible consequences and less plot armor? You betcha.

But do I think the overall morality, as presented, is "Black and White" and thus "for kids"? Absolutely not. As has already been said, Garlemald's MSQ quests were pretty well-done in terms of moral ambiguity and grayness. There were no easy answers and no correct answers.

But "no easy answers and no correct answers" is not the same thing as "no wrong answers". The existence of complicated, nuanced problems in the world (or a fictional world) does not change the argument that some people are just villains and some ideologies are just wrong. Personally, I'd find a plot in which the bloodthirsty, fascist, theocratic, dictators are just poor misguided souls who need to hear Talk-no-Jutsu to stop being bad more unrealistic. Some people simply do NOT want to engage or want to live and die by the sword.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

It's almost ironic the phrasing you chose for this statement is a slogan from a kid's cereal.

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It's actually from TV Tropes, who like to make puns.

re: cynicism and idealism, for me, the "sweet spot" would be not compromising how grim and harsh reality is, and how people are - and depicting it starkly - and then considering "all right, so what should we do about it?" and coming to an answer informed by kindness - still, without looking away from that the kindness in and of itself doesn't guarantee any better results.

"Depicting the harshness of reality" is why In From The Cold was so effective to me - those poor Garlean soldiers hyping themselves up and being good people, risking themselves to help you, saying the "right words" about how if they work together, they can get through this - and then all being casually slaughtered anyway. This is what happens. This is what a lot of traumatized people carry. Bad things happen to good people for absolutely no reason, and looking away from that and denying that, softening that, is irresponsible and harmful.

But I like the response to that to skew more idealistic - to suggest that it is possible to others to stop looking away, and encourage compassion and empathy. To still be able to find glimmers of light in a fundamentally meaningless world. As I've said, Endwalker came so close to nailing a message that's incredibly dear to me, and then whiffed so horrifically I ended up utterly repulsed instead (at least in terms of the primary thrust of the MSQ - some of the side content captures it well.) Shadowbringers, in terms of acknowledging the tragic, unfair horror of the conflict between the Unsundered and the Sundered, and the senseless, horrific, wrong, fate of the Ancients - and then encouraging compassion, even if you can't fundamentally change the situation and the stakes - was close to perfect for me.

This is another part of why Garlemald's storyline worked for me as well. The twins failed, in ugly ways, and people died senselessly as a result. Sometimes people will choose death rather than help. A mind immersed in propaganda is often excruciatingly hard to deprogram, let alone with being psychologically comforting, reassuring their targets that "you're the real victim here, always." The twins reel from the impact of that and how they misunderstood, and have to think about how they respond - which is ultimately, that they still want to help, even if these people hate them for it.

Do I think the twins overall, and this process, could have done with more elaboration and nuance, in an ideal world? Yes, of course. I would have loved to see more active personal struggle instead of a couple scenes of quiet reflection. But for what it is, and given the limitations of the story structure, I appreciated it.

In hindsight the Betinaud upgrade was inadequate.

He has thus been updated to the better tested Gamminaud!