Religion is bad, M'kay?

[Belhi]

In 2.0 you had a guy posing as a priest that was feeding peons to Ifrit.

Yes but the actual true priests were shown to be not only innocent but to be rather selfless in caring for people.

[Adrasteia]

It's not that religion is evil; it's that fanaticism is evil. The counterpart in the Heavensward story to Thordan - who's obsessed with an unobtainable vision of perfection (because being a Primal king would eventually bleed the world dry) - is Nidhogg, who's obsessed with enacting revenge for something that happened a thousand-odd years ago against people who are no longer even alive. Both of them seek to shirk their responsibility for what they've caused during the Dragonsong War: Thordan uses "Halone's will" as the excuse for his actions, whereas Nidhogg clings to the betrayal of the Dravanians as his ultimate justification.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUtW6KIdtxE

[jomoru]

We also have in the MSQ the Seedseer going out and helping the warrior of light. She is as much a theocratic head of state as the Archbishop. We are introduced to the head of the Church of Nald'Thal coming in and cleaning up much of the situation in Uldah. So in comparison to 2.0 where the only religions we see are the Beast Tribes and its "SMASH PRIMALS" things seem honestly more balanced.

[Cilia]

See here for an in-depth narrative on why Final Fantasy (and JRPGs in general) treat organized religion as a bad thing.

Or, if you don't feel like listening to that nasal voice for 10 minutes, here's the long and skinny: Japanese society never developed an organized religion, and to this day they practice a mish-mash of most modern religions, so they don't see the value in having an organized religion. Furthermore having a structure places someone at the top, and as we all know power corrupts people, making organized religions an easy target.

JRPGs aren't anti-religion, they just don't really understand or like organized religions.

[PogueX]

It could be worse, you could be playing the Xenogears

that game and religion....wow

[Toranja]

Yes but the actual true priests were shown to be not only innocent but to be rather selfless in caring for people.

The theme here is that religion is an easy way of fooling people.

[CyrilLucifer]

It could be worse, you could be playing the Xenogears

Forgive the tangent, but Xenogears isn't that bad. A lot of people focus on the fact that its main plot does have a lot of negativity towards religion due to circumstance, but it's really just the same message as FFXIV. Extremism and using religion as a front for for power is bad, but religion itself isn't evil. Hence why you have Sophia, Margie, and Billy who are shown to genuinely love and care for the people, as do many of the lower members of Ethos. They bring aid, comfort, kindness, and acceptance to the average person.

If anything, Xenogears has a rather positive overall view on religion, given the themes of forgiveness by God regardless of atrocities.

[Adrasteia]

The theme here is that religion is an easy way of fooling people.

Right, but so are secular, totalitarian regimes that have good PR. The Garleans have this burning desire to (essentially) wipe out all religion everywhere, because they're convinced it's the source of the Primals that threaten the world. The thing that the game keeps continually hitting home, however, is that Garlemald and the other city states are actually causing the Primals to appear due to their relentless territorial expansionism that puts them in conflict with the subaltern. Even so, you've still got people lining up in the conquered territories to become enthusiastic Garlean troops, because it's an appealing sort of rhetoric that puts the problems of the world on the shoulders of easy-to-identify villains ("beastmen" and "Primals") instead of harder to grasp concepts like the expansion of nation states in the pursuit of land and material wealth.

[jomoru]

JRPGs aren't anti-religion, they just don't really understand or like organized religions.

Wow that profoundly shows a lack of understanding of Japanese history and well a really profoundly Christian biased view on Religion. The short of it is various periods of Japanese history have had active state support for SHinto and or Buddhism including WW2 Era Japan. Notice how they generally don't take the tropes and concepts of Buddhism or Shinto as the corrupt evil religion(though I can name a TRPG where that is the case) but generally the to them exotic religion of Christianity(SPecifically Catholicism) that has its tropes and visuals used for the corrupt Church.

Doman morality is treated as somewhat objective worship of natural spirits. Same with Gridania which play upon Shinto aspects. And the 12 seem to be treated as more "real" than Primals

[Kaiser-Ace]

WRPGs, Other cultures, and even the rest of Christindom take pot shots at the Chatholic Church.

It was, and still is to a large extent, extreemly corrupt. All the themes are Anti-Corruption not Anti-Theistic.

The Roman Orthidox Church just so happens to have long history of corruption in it's infrastructure. One that nobody is going to let them forget anytime soon.

That's why they're always the target of "Corrupt Church" cheep shots because they were the prime examole when the steriotype was made.

P.S. Please forgive my butchering of the english language, my phone's spell check is unrelyable so I turned it off.