[SPOILERS] Revelations from Patch 3.3

[CyrusArjuna]

And how can they be seen as sympathetic? While the generals so far seem to be about "We're doing this for your own good", both emperors we seen so far seem to only care about aggressive expansion. They're generic as you can get and in the end, we are still going to fight them to keep them out of Eorzea's backyard. The only sympathies I have is how they treat their own people.

The same way we saw a fundamentalist theocracy in a sympathetic light once they got more development?

[Theodric]

The same way we saw a fundamentalist theocracy in a sympathetic light once they got more development?

Mm.

If and when Garlemald is addressed directly I have little doubt that it will be painted in a more sympathetic light. If it isn't then quite a lot of people are going to become rather bored, I'd wager, myself included. The developers are well aware that a great many Final Fantasy fans are rather keen on the franchise's antagonists. In many titles great efforts have been made to make the antagonists have sympathetic elements. Even in some cases where they've been more bad than good they've even been redeemed as part of the story - with Rufus and Kuja being the two most prominent examples.

Ideally when we do enter territory occupied by Garlean forces it'll play out much the same way as it did in FFXII when we entered territory occupied by Archadian forces. It makes sense to me because the story went to great lengths to bring peace to both sides in a war that spanned a thousand years. The war with Garlemald, however, hasn't spanned more than fifty years (give or take) and it's even easier for the developers to create sympathetic Garlean characters - loyal to their homeland and cause - given that they're more 'human' than the dragons are.

There's a chance they may not do that, of course, but then I think a lot of people on this board will be very worried if the story takes a turn towards painting the protagonists and purely good and the antagonists as purely evil.