[SPOILERS] Stormblood Ending

[_Koneko_]

I don't mind Yotsuyu being alive as for mass murdering psychopath the wol needs only look in the mirror they been killing on command since 1.0 a hero to your people maybe to your victims family and friends you're simply a deranged killer light is not always good and darkness is not always bad one man's hero is another man's villian if you look it from the other point of view Yotsuyu has not done anything that we as the player has not done ten times worse to the imperials

in war all are guilty the winning side simply have better PR

[Daralii]

I don't mind Yotsuyu being alive as for mass murdering psychopath the wol needs only look in the mirror they been killing on command since 1.0 a hero to your people maybe to your victims family and friends you're simply a deranged killer light is not always good and darkness is not always bad one man's hero is another man's villian if you look it from the other point of view Yotsuyu has not done anything that we as the player has not done ten times worse to the imperials

in war all are guilty the winning side simply have better PR

The WoL has never killed people to get off on seeing them die. Yotsuyu has been at least since she was appointed Viceroy.

[_Koneko_]

psychopath means many things the wol would fit several of the Characteristic specially back in 1.0 when you was basically the yes man
the way the wol is written if the scions told you to burn the empire to the ground you'd simply do it no remorse

option
1. kill them all
2. i guess ill save them

you pick option 2 but get told it was the wrong option and you kill them all

the word hero does not make you less of a mass murdering lunatic it simply was created to make people feel less bad about it there is no glory in war its simply an excuse to make you kill people

[Neophyte]

psychopath means many things the wol would fit several of the Characteristic specially back in 1.0 when you was basically the yes man
the way the wol is written if the scions told you to burn the empire to the ground you'd simply do it no remorse

option
1. kill them all
2. i guess ill save them

you pick option 2 but get told it was the wrong option and you kill them all

the word hero does not make you less of a mass murdering lunatic it simply was created to make people feel less bad about it there is no glory in war its simply an excuse to make you kill people

I don't think we "murdered" ór "manslaughtered" that many people, especially not on order and if also without any malice aforethought.
E.g. did we at some point kidnap any person of interest, tortured them, made experiments with them and that more than once? If, would the Garleans recue their own people (would the emporer even had rescued his son if possible?!)?
Did we assassinate anyone or killed anyone without having more or less a fair battle face to face?

It's a bit cheap to put us on the same level as the games "villains", if you need to ignore like every motive and agenda and base your evaluation of good and bad only on "who put whose hp to 0" and "Oh my achievments say i killed 10.000 enemies. I'm a mass murderer.".

Also tbh, we (the player) usually rather outrun every entity who wants to attack us on sight instead of fighting it, right? ^^

[_Koneko_]

I dunno about that most raiders in mmo have no issues releasing ancient threats that would doom the planet just for a good fight what I'm merely saying is that we aren't exactly a symbol of good the wol makes a lot of questionable choices which if you look it from the other side would make them a terrorist and a mass murderer that's why i don't think branding Yotsuyu as irredemable is the right thing to do

Also if you look at it from Yotsuyu's view is not doma responsible for creating the kind of people who abused her in the first place people are shaped by their society any society that condones this type of behavior perhaps they deserve to burn

[Eyvhokan]

Also if you look at it from Yotsuyu's view is not doma responsible for creating the kind of people who abused her in the first place people are shaped by their society any society that condones this type of behavior perhaps they deserve to burn

If you look at it from Zenos's view, is not doma responsible for not creating the type of people who are enough of a challenge based on their society, and any society that condones this type of behaviour deserves to be oppressed and terrorised to produce better challanges

[Dualgunner]

I dunno about that most raiders in mmo have no issues releasing ancient threats that would doom the planet just for a good fight what I'm merely saying is that we aren't exactly a symbol of good the wol makes a lot of questionable choices which if you look it from the other side would make them a terrorist and a mass murderer that's why i don't think branding Yotsuyu as irredemable is the right thing to do

Wait...what? What ancient thread did we, in FFXIV, release for the lulz? You can't base our character's morality off of other MMO character morality.

So far the only ancient threat that comes to mind we released, was less for the lulz and more for "We need a bigger bad to kill big bad" type situation.

[NoblePigeon]

snip

Um. No. That's not how it works. What you're doing is false equivalence. "The WoL is just as bad as the Empire!" No, they're really not. Yes, FFXIV is a setting that definitely has a lot of moral greyness to it, but it is ultimately a Final Fantasy game, where absolute good and absolute evil exist in the forms of Hydaleyn and Zodiark, and to call the WoL a psychopath is grossly twisting the facts to suit this ridiculous narrative that they're just as bad as the Empire.

The Scions wouldn't tell the WoL to "burn down the Empire" because they're not dumb, and understand that "burning down" an entire civilization makes Eorzeans no better than them. The Scions oppose the Empire because they've posed an existential threat to Eorzea several times. I'm sure people are going to tell me that the Meteor Project was opposed by certain Imperials, and Gaius's plans for Ultima weren't endorsed by the Empire. That doesn't matter; those are still Imperial-derived threats. But the Scions don't endorse "destroying" the Empire.

You keep saying that there's no glory in war, and that in war, all are guilty. This is usually the type of thinking that I don't understand: broadly generalizing conflicts as "everyone's the bad guy, no one's the good guy", ignoring a lot of factors that highlights the fact that Eorzea is constantly subjected to Imperial aggression, and fight defensive wars against an expansionist polity. And yes, the war to liberate Ala Mhigo was an offensive war; but a) it didn't matter how much diplomacy was going to happen, Illberd's attack was going to provoke the Empire into war anyway, and b) the Empire has no damn business to occupy Ala Mhigo. Now, if Eorzea invaded Garlemald proper, that might be different, because it stops becoming a pre-preemptive or defensive war, and one of aggression. But we'll cross that bridge (if we ever do) when we get there.

[Alleo]

I understand being frustrated arguing about the Empire and your desire to move away from it... that's... not really what I'm getting at, though.

Oh I myself is not that frustrated about the topic itself and I like to read your points since they are really in a way like mine just better written. Its more along the line of taking a lot of time to post about the good and bad things the empire did in SB (as one example) and it being nearly completely ignored by the other side. And on top of that you even get personal insults as an answer from some posters. (I am not saying that some of my posts have not been a bit aggressive too but I cant remember one instance where I directly attacked a person so getting attacked is kinda annoying) Also the one comment about how this topic is going out of hand and is making the lore forum look bad did get some likes so I thought that it would be better for me to drop this discussion. But I am in no way saying that anyone else should drop it. Just that I will stop it as far as possible. At least in this thread.

About dark knight spoilers:

Well it is a bit strange of who is being summoned and who not. Before lvl 70 Myste also summons people that had no direct contact to us (like the husband/friend of that barmaid) and I am not really sure why we should feel regret about her? I mean it was not our fault that this person died and she even poisoned us. Its fine that we overcame it and did not hate her for that but why should we fell bad for her? It would have made more sense to see people like the small orphan girl that froze to death in the snow because we took the stolen wood away from her but the maid really was a bit surprising. Also Sidurgus master and Rielles mother had not much to do with us. (I did not watch the whole cutscene with his master so no idea what happens there) Why should we feel regret about her death after all she did to Rielle? And why should Rielle or Sidurgu feel any regret for her death? (Since it was him who killed her)

It could be that we would feel regret about Ilbert but I am not sure if we feel it about his death or more because of the regret of not stopping him after his betrayal. Also theoretically even if we did not kill Gaius our character still believe that he must be death so at least ingame there should not be a reason why he was not summoned. since even if he is somehow still alive, Myste does not know that and he creates "fake ghosts" of people anyway.

The WoD are also a bit strange and after seeing all those examples it really gives me the feeling that Myste just summoned those in the last fight, that left any kind of stronger impression or emotions on us. And not necessarily only feelings of regret but maybe even sadness, hate and more. But it still is a bit surprising if its that way, because that would mean that Gaius was not that memorable for our character.

psychopath means many things the wol would fit several of the Characteristic specially back in 1.0 when you was basically the yes man
the way the wol is written if the scions told you to burn the empire to the ground you'd simply do it no remorse

the word hero does not make you less of a mass murdering lunatic it simply was created to make people feel less bad about it there is no glory in war its simply an excuse to make you kill people

If you see killing people regardless of the circumstance as cold blooded murder, we would fall under that category. But since we are still running free even after killing people (and no we werent always famous) it seems that Eorzea, like our own real world, makes a difference between killing people. Yotsuyu may have had a bad past but she was killing innocent people that were unarmed and did not do anything wrong..and she even enjoyed it. Nothing like that was ever done by the WoL. We never went around and just slaughtered some innocent civilians. We might have killed a lot of people but they are not really innocent. We might not know every fact about every person we killed but its really simple: We go there, we are attacked and we defend ourselves. We know that they would kill us (because a failed duty will leave us death) thus we are using self-defence to protect ourself. Also in situations like war you most of the time have to kill people on the other side. (And with people I mean soldiers, not civilans) We are also not seen as torturing someone else and we also not only healed enemies but also tried to talk it out.

We also never set something free just for the laughs. Often we have NPCs that want to look at something and we join them in that adventure which often leads to seeing godly beasts but we do not let them roam free, no we try to kill them as soon as we see them as a threat. Sometimes they are still alive but are again taken care by us. You cant just go around and put the morality of other games in this one too. And please dont forget that ingame mechanics =/ ingame lore. We go through a dungeon once and not every day and we definitely dont go around and slaugther countless of beast in countless of fates. So the counter for our killed enemies is not showing how many we truly killed in the story itself. (Otherwise there would be no wild life left in Eozrea..and no plant and rocks too)

Anyway I am waiting for an direct example of us killing someone that was truly innocent.

[Clethoria]

psychopath means many things the wol would fit several of the Characteristic specially back in 1.0 when you was basically the yes man
the way the wol is written if the scions told you to burn the empire to the ground you'd simply do it no remorse

Your WoL=/= everyone's WoL. I think you're trying to enforce the way you view your character to generalize the entirety and it's just not the case.