Sure, I understand where you and dozens of other posters from separate threads on this topic are coming from, but it just seems pedantic to me. The events that you saw are what happened in the story. It would be nice if the player character showed a bit more assertiveness in his/ her attempt to alter them, but we were powerless to do anything. To me the only problem is that said powerlessness isn't very clearly demonstrated, however, since it's a fictional narrative I don't really have a problem with it. I could conjure up some reason we were powerless to do anything. For example, we had no weapon at the time. From a gameplay standpoint this is so detrimental it can't even happen. One might think that a MNK without a weapon is still very powerful, but we all know just how important weapon damage is and we were at 0 as far as that goes.

The variables involved in how a player character might try to change the outcome of those events are too tedious and plentiful to bother with, especially since they would all have ultimately funneled into the same conclusion (such that every player ends up in the same place). SE could have handled the details a bit better, but ultimately it doesn't change the story and if we were allowed to actually fight people would just be complaining that 'Brass Blades aren't that strong and shouldn't be able to beat us, nevermind Ilberd in a 2 on 1 fight!'