The Next Set of "Relic Weapons" in Heavensward

[Allyrion]

There is no moral complexity to the game. The bad guys and good guys are cut and dry, clear as night and day. The PC is the good guy, "Eorzea's hope" as Minfilia so succinctly puts it. Anything you do is justified or excused by the narrative because it's for the "greater good"... even if that's mindlessly slaughtering sentient beings for a glowing stick because a musty book told you to do it.


Is that justified because those same sentient beings are the thralls malicious, planet-killing gods and goddesses? Maybe. I'd wager most players just do it for fun and profit, though.

Black and white duality can be complex.
FF's more like a mix of Marcus Aurelius's Stoicism and Immanuel Kant's Transcendental Idealism.
There is depth to that, it's just a beneath the surface of the reasoning.
FF has a history of being aware of any questionability, but rebukes it with a stoic response. Fully aware of its stance.

With players, I'm pretty sure CoD or other games that don't narrative for their main game focus is actually a better argument for Nihilism.
Or most other MMO's where you kill massive amounts of sentient beings without any backstory justification.

Morally grey stories can be done well.
But they're usually surface level deep for psudeo-philosophers to think their thoughts are provoked, but usually over the same tried issues.
It's a cop-out because like more simple black and white stories, it doesn't acknowledge the difference between a priori and posteriori heritage of morality.

See, that kind of blind sheep mentality is exactly what you need to stop following. Kind of part of the reason for the Dragonsong War, or so Ysayle says. Still, I'm glad you're able to grasp the fundamentals.

The silent protagonist should not be taken as a person with choices.
They are more of an agent of the world.
It's precisely because these games still use a silent protagonist, without choice, that it emphasizes a deterministic but non-nihilistic(usually brought up, such as with the Gaius Baelsar) narrative.
In these cases, there was never any real choice anyway. It's an illusion.

[Cilia]

snip

Eheh... I wasn't trying to bring philosophy into this. I'm not a learned philosopher, and I totally accept that the game has a black and white view of morality. Maybe kind of grey in regards to the Garleans and Grand Companies sometimes.

Anyway, the player character is a silent protagonist, but that just makes them an extension of the player. In that regard, there is always a choice, doubly so with regard to the totally optional Relic Weapons (what the original topic is about). Takes a bit of out-of-the-box thinking, but there is a choice.

C'mon, give it a shot! Work those brain cells!

[Allyrion]

Eheh... I wasn't trying to bring philosophy into this. I'm not a learned philosopher, and I totally accept that the game has a black and white view of morality. Maybe kind of grey in regards to the Garleans and Grand Companies sometimes.

Anyway, the player character is a silent protagonist, but that just makes them an extension of the player. In that regard, there is always a choice, doubly so with regard to the totally optional Relic Weapons (what the original topic is about). Takes a bit of out-of-the-box thinking, but there is a choice.

C'mon, give it a shot! Work those brain cells!

Well, because of the given setting, the context can be assumed to still follow the type of character the Warrior of Light is.

But if we're talking about player motivations, I agree.
It's on the same level, though, to me as those who raid or do content without caring about the story.
Even when there is clearly outlined context, it matters little to these type of players anyway.
They play to kill stuff and get rewarded.

In this particular case, the players that consider the setting and context should assume there is more backstory that fits the PC.
For the players that don't, they just kill stuff cause it's fun and they get rewarded.
It didn't matter, to the latter, if those things are sentient or not because the story and setting is irrelevant to them.

The choice might be there, but it's a binary one.
If you reach the point of considering the setting to think of the killing of other sentient creatures as wrong, you might as well consider there might be more in books to justify it.

There are a lot of good cases for choice in games.
Just not really for a theme park MMO, with such the PC being a paragon of heroism.


But on the other side, I agree about people thinking more about what they're doing in the game.
People are different though. And playing and battling without considering the story or knowing why you're fighting, it's not really something I understand.
But I can't tell people how to play, and games like Chess or Go are mental exercises which can be fun.
To some extent, this is an extension of that.