Warrior of Light: A Mindless Killer

[Theodric]

-snip-

Most of the side quests serve the same purpose as the MSQ's - they flesh out the game world and reveal important lore and events. You can make the argument that some side story content such as Hildibrand exists in a little bubble of its own but beyond that...

The Warring Triad quests are tied heavily to the MSQ's. A lot of minor side quests only open up after completing certain milestones within the MSQ's too. Some of them are very in-depth, too, revealing a lot of stuff about a particular area or telling a story that fleshes out specific characters to a decent extent.

I feel like it does a disservice to the development team to act like they're irrelevant or not necessarily canon. FATE's, too, reveal a lot of interesting lore that serves to flesh out the game world. We learn about what sort of threats plague a particular region, the habits of specific types of monsters and so on.

It's also very unfortunate to see posts pushing blatant headcanon so heavily upvoted within this thread. Though I suppose that only serves to cement my belief that a handful of the regulars here aren't interested in the canon lore so much as their own personal interpretation of it. Surprisingly, I see more in-depth and nuanced discussions surrounding lore on the FF14 Reddit and general discussion sub-forum these days.

[Cilia]

It's also very unfortunate to see posts pushing blatant headcanon so heavily upvoted within this thread. Though I suppose that only serves to cement my belief that a handful of the regulars here aren't interested in the canon lore so much as their own personal interpretation of it. Surprisingly, I see more in-depth and nuanced discussions surrounding lore on the FF14 Reddit and general discussion sub-forum these days.

The entire discussion is based around headcanon and a personal interpretation of the Warrior of Light as Hydaelyn's mindless killer. Spare everyone the sanctimony.

[Theodric]

The entire discussion is based around headcanon and a personal interpretation of the Warrior of Light as Hydaelyn's mindless killer. Spare everyone the sanctimony.

You, too, can do your part in that regard. It's most definitely something that requires a group effort around these parts.

Thankfully, many can safely weep in joy and relief because the answer to this artificial predicament is rather simple - side quests and FATE's are canon, therefore some of what the Warrior of Light does is not necessarily wholly pure, righteous and without cause to criticise. I'm sure we can agree on that much, at least.

[Alleo]

I feel like it does a disservice to the development team to act like they're irrelevant or not necessarily canon. FATE's, too, reveal a lot of interesting lore that serves to flesh out the game world. We learn about what sort of threats plague a particular region, the habits of specific types of monsters and so on.

But we still cant say for 100% that all of these are canon. Yes the more important ones like Bahamut, Warring Triad quests and others like that are probably canon too but every single fate? I cant believe that. The WoL only has a certain amount of time per day thus he cant just do everything all the time.

Also yes if we go around and say everything is canon than that means that he is a master at all fighting, gathering, crafting jobs, does countless of stuff for all the NPCs around the world and much more. I find it hard to believe that one person can do all that much. (And I am quite sure that he would be called a Gary Stue if he can truly do it) And I see nothing bad in seeing some not that strongly as canon, not every single quest is a written masterpiece filled with lore.

Anyway just because you believe that only the derplander should count and nobody else, it does not necessary mean that everyone has to see it that way. We do have a really blank character because we as the players should find ourselves in them. If they wanted the derplander to be the only one important then they would have used a complete and fleshed out character to explain the story not something so open like ours. Also even the lore book itself remains ambitious about lots of lore inside the game because the devs wants to leave it still open ended on some parts. So who is to say that the headcanon some have cant be true in the lore that exists.


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So after thinking about it some more: Even if we assume that derplander does every single quest/fate/dungeon canonically, I would still say that he is far away from a mindless killer.

First lets look at some things:

Dungeons: Mostly done because we wanted to help someone out and most of the enemies are monsters or animals. We have some training ones but we definitely dont kill those people in there. So WoL is doing good by running through them.

Fates: I would dare to say that over 90% (and much more imo) is done for good. We escort animals and NPCs, we mostly just kill dangerous animals or those that have grown too much and sometimes we have to kill humans but those are always written down as bad. So WoL is mostly good there too.

Side stories:
- all the bigger ones like Bahamut, Warring Triads, Alexander, Omega and 24 man raids: We do it to stop really dangerous beings from destroying the world and none of those beings in the raids are good. We might just start some adventures without the want to save the planet but we also finish everything that we unwanted awakened off too. Most of the time its not our fault that the situation started and yet we take care of it anyway. So I dare to say mostly good too.

- most of the side quests has the derplander helping out the locals, sometimes you will be ordered around by morally ambitious characters but there is nothing really bad there. (Only if you see killing some dangerous looking animals as morally wrong). So mostly good again.

- helping the beast tribes and other people that barely anyone wants to interact with.

Next to all of this Derplander stops wars, tries to save humanity from Ascians, help NPCs like Zhloe out in his spare time and much more. You could say that there is nothing really big in the MSQ that shows the derplander as being a mindless killer.

So the only mixed ones are the relic questline and maybe the killing of some NPCs. But you have to kill in war and most of those kills happens in self-defense. Also since we dont know what the canon answer for the derplander is, we cant even say if he enjoys big fights or not.

I took my time to split them up and think about it and yet I can nowhere see how even Derplander himself is anywhere near a mindless killer..he does kill people and there was a part of him that felt remorse (even though I would say that it was more about the part of losing those dear to him) but this point alone shows that he is far away from being mindless, he is just a human like any other thus can make mistakes and wrong decisions too.