Warrior of Light: A Mindless Killer

[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.

[Brightmore]

The game as most of adventure books explore one trait that fill all of us: the necessity of being a hero and do what is right.
We lust for adventure and success...
And when it comes to war, what it comes to? What is right?
POV for a pacifist demands us for diplomacy. self defense demands us to take actions for survival.
There's a line in FF 8 where Squall talks to another character about that. "When words fails, it falls to us to take up arms and do what is right." or "when words are not enough, there is not another way"... or something like that.
In game, garleans if you think are not wrong at all. They have some really good traits (Science, development) but that all falls back when they take that as military force and try to shove that upon anothers, beliving that their are the responsability to guide the weaker. Eorzea, if you analyze it, have some pretty nasty political issues behind each City State.

[Brightmore]

What I do love in FF series is all the political, ecologic and religious debate: what do we do? Why we do? Must we do it?
A civilian, pay his taxes for security. A soldier fight for the Peace.
If we have only civilians, we will be sheeps. If we only have soldiers, we will practically just live for dominance.
We need both.
A civilian repulse to take action because he doesn't want to take responsability. A soldier surely is not happy to take out a life, but can't stay silent to oppression and to protect his world (culture, beliefs).
The soldier requires the civilian, to remember why he fights.
The civilian requires the soldier, so all that he knows of right keep that way.
See... til this point, it is all good. Problem is when divergent cultures clashes and each side claims the rightous cause.
How to remain sane and human?

Hear, feel... think.

[Grayve]

Spec Ops: The Line doesn't get the point across for you? How about Undertale?

[/b]

No. A choice would have been a) Use White Phosorphos, or b) Turn Around and leave the city. Not turn of the game. Because turning of the game is a very violation of the entire point. If we are the protagonist, and thus it is our choice, it is not a game with can turn off. We are leaving the story. If we are not the protagonist, then we have no choice, because the developers didn't give us one.

As for Undertale, I have no idea what that is about. I've heard the name, and some critics say its great, but I have no idea why it is 'great'.

[YianKutku]

I see it as a limitation of the medium. Possibly not inherent to the medium, but more of what most players expect the medium to provide.

As I've mentioned before in other threads, our interaction with the world is limited to four options: collecting, crafting, moving, and fighting. ("Collecting" is a catch-all for "click on something to see an interaction bar fill up".) And since this is a level-based game, progression is gated around XP, and the game is designed around combat classes being the primary gatekeeper.

So as it ends up, everything looks like a nail to be hammered down by the mallet of combat. We assume this combat is mostly lethal, because it's difficult to depict knocking someone out non-lethally every time, and it gets weird when we're blasting them with fire or slicing them with blades.

I mean, if this game were designed differently, we could be asking why the WoL is a mindless crafter, rapaciously consuming materials to create ever more ostentatious yet pointless artifacts. At some point, deep analysis of our actions has to acknowledge that violence is our primary response to many situations, because violence is all the game allows us.

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.

This Magnai/Sadu interplay is significantly less entertaining on the forums than in-game.

[Draginhikari]

I think the question is a bit more complicated as the world of Hydaelyn is kind of a crapsack world and the level of danger throughout the world makes our world look like a daycare center by comparison. The wildlife is aggressive, bloodthirsty, and is capable of horrifying powers. People and beastmen are capable of calling forth primals that are capable of wiping and taking control of people's minds, the City-States themselves seem to have very little control over their territories as bandit groups and shadowy organizations wreak havoc on the less defensive populous.

I think the Warrior of Darkness put it best when he said 'We weren't trying to become heroes, ‘we were just adventurers trying to make our way'. Adventurers in Eorzea in particular seem to be born of necessity and the failing of the City-States themselves. They are paid mercenaries to assist those incapable of braving the wilds of the world itself and just like in the real world mercenary work often times can lead to unexpected and unintended consequences of an action. It becomes a difficult to avoid situation in an awful situation. Whether the Warrior of Light actually wants to commit horrible acts or just sort of makes themselves numb to the situation kind of is based on perspective of the player themselves. Becoming a Warrior of Light just resulted from the mother crystal's intervention in the end. When the Warrior of Light is not performing duties for the Scions, fighting primals, or engaging the Ascians. They are still adventurers in the end and their actions reflect on what Adventurers are in society that created them in the first place.

However, that is strictly definitional. The reason so much is left to Player perspective because we are generally give little context for the Warrior of Light mindset specifically for the purpose of allowing the player to fit their character into whatever moral mind frame they want the character to exist is. Nearly every time we have face sentient opponents, they already have their weapons drawn and intend to fight to the end. Since we generally do not see what the Warrior of Light does or says before these weapons are drawn, it is left up to imagination on what could have lead up to that moment.

[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.


----

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.

[Cilia]

No. A choice would have been a) Use White Phosorphos, or b) Turn Around and leave the city. Not turn of the game. Because turning of the game is a very violation of the entire point. If we are the protagonist, and thus it is our choice, it is not a game with can turn off. We are leaving the story. If we are not the protagonist, then we have no choice, because the developers didn't give us one.

As for Undertale, I have no idea what that is about. I've heard the name, and some critics say its great, but I have no idea why it is 'great'.

Spec Ops: The Line (SO:tL) is meant as meta commentary on the part of the developers, trying to force players to ask themselves uncomfortable questions like "Is this really what war is like?", "Is this what happens to real people in all those shooters I play?", "Am I really being heroic, doing all this?", etc. The big one, though, is "Is virtual violence harmless?"

Despite possessing a personality and history of his own Cpt. Walker is, like all video game player characters, an extension of the player's will. Given the somewhat meta nature of SO:tL's narrative, turning the game off and letting it end there symbolically represents Cpt. Walker turning around - deciding that what he's doing is too extreme, too immoral to carry on with. Yet players force him to continue onward, leading to mental degredation and eventual insanity as he tries to rationalize what he's doing... just like the player.

None of it would happen if you'd just stop. All you have to do is say "I won't do this" and leave the open-ended Skinner box. You, the player, have a choice to turn back. To deny the player character from engaging in violence, should you so wish. But you press on... why, exactly?

(Aside from the cash you shelled out for it, I mean. That part is obvious.)

This question goes for most any game, violent or no, and especially ones with player-defined characters such as FF XIV. And for the record, I did play Spec Ops: The Line, all the way to the end, and I did so knowing full well what I was getting myself into. So yeah, I may love stealthy pacifist runs and try not to kill anyone when I can but... I'm the worst of anyone here.

... being totally honest, I haven't played Undertale either. Don't have the time right now anyway; 5 12s and an 8 every week eat up my time like nobody's business. Still, I have watched and read a bit about it, and to my knowledge it, like SO:tL, places the blame for what happens on the player as much as if not more than the player character. Unlike SO:tL, though, it's a retro indie game, so there is a route you can take that doesn't involve killing anyone and still reach an ending proper.

This Magnai/Sadu interplay is significantly less entertaining on the forums than in-game.

But Moooooooooom...

[Theodric]

Back in WoW, it was common for some of the more vocal residents of the lore forum to pick and choose what they accepted as canon because it suited whatever agenda they sought to push at the time. Mostly that revolved around painting their favoured faction or playable race in the best possible light whilst doing everything possible to paint their least favoured faction and playable race in the worst possible light. Eventually most of the regular posters ended up being terribly bored by it all and either stopped posting altogether or simply resorted to lurking instead.

It's a very slippery slope to pick and choose what is considered to be canon. If it's in-game then it's reasonable and safe to assume that it's canon and relevant until stated otherwise. Let's not pretend as if the game doesn't bend over backwards to try and make as much stuff as possible make sense in the context of the lore, including certain game mechanics such as dungeon timers being attributed to how long adventurers can delve into a particular ruin before succumbing to aether sickness.