The WOL and Mass Murder

[Alleo]

Now then... the main issue is that our primary way to interact with the game world is "kill stuff". You kill stuff to level, to progress quests, and in general to do nearly everything. The body count is staggering, but most of them are nameless random things. If you added them all up, though?

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The problem is that we look at this from a gameplay perspective which means that someone could have killed over 200k enemies to get that one achievement but that would not make sense if you look at the main story. And if we want to find out if we are truly a mass murderer than we have to see it from story point. Which makes it not very easy too since we dont even know if we truly kill all the things or knock them out. Are there really so many monsters/people in a dungeon? I mean we had a few test or training dungeons where we normally should not have killed anything at all. So how many did we really kill? In the end murder is still seen as bad in Eorzea (Raubahn murdering that Lala for example) so killing people in battle or for self defense is not that bad otherwise we would have been punished by now. At the same time most of our kills go towards monsters. A lot of the story dungeons have monsters in them and I am quite sure that this would not be murder.

Also I know that your picture was meant as funny (and it is) but our WoL has shown quite a lot of emotions especially in dungeon against human bosses. We did not smile when we had to kill Edda so the WoL does feel quite the emotions too.

What would the city states truly do if we refused their help (which we could)? Suddenly say that all of our past actions are somehow wrong? Why would they kill us or try to imprison us? What if a worse enemy was on the run which is the reason why we could not help them? I can just never see Raubahn, Nanamo or Aymeric turn on us. Not only did we do something personal for them but we also helped saved their countries more than once or were the reason that their country still exist at all. Gridania might turn if the elementals would want us death but why would they? The only reason I would accept them betraying us would be something truly horrible from the WoL himself. Or if we need to sacrifice a state or something. But I am not sure if our WoL would ever be in such a situation.

Its worse than you know. Soldiers returning from warzones are often afflicted with PTSD simply from witnessing the horrors of war. As the WoL, we have died HUNDREDS of times and while we may be restored, we still carry the memory of each death. Combine that with the fact that we sometimes stay awake for Eorzean weeks at a time (3 hrs = about 10 eorzean days), and the fact that we have seen SO. MUCH. DEATH. We’ve seen our friends die, beastmen summoning monsters that would give any normal person nightmares for the rest of their lives, witnessed war, famine, rape, and, possibly the most cruel of all, all the people we couldnt save. Point is, despite the stabilizing influence of the operator on the other side of the screen, I think every single warrior of light has long since gone completely insane, just waiting for the right moment when the players’ attention stays to snap entirely.

Gameplay mechanics =/ story. We as the story WoL never died. Heck they even use the echo as a reason for our ingame "deaths". All of our failures are just visions of what could have happen but the WoL itself never died. Things like times never should be factored in this because you could also argue that the WoL never sleeps at all. Or that we are still living in a time bubble even after ARR, HW and SB (and even though it will take months to reach Kugane from Eorzea)

Also the WoL does suffer from stuff which is the point of the dark knight but at the same time they bear the burden and carry on because they also know that they are the last hope of the mother crystal. The journey did leave some marks on the WoL which can be seen in his behavior but he seemingly also handle stuff much better too.

I dunno? I didn't say it had to be US? Just that something got invented. I'm pretty sure that in a world where tempering can happen that somebody would always been trying to think of a way to reverse it. Try not to get stuck on only that though, like I said I'm no writer nor a lorehound. Other reasons for public opinion turning could be found.

But they told us that people tried to find a way to "cure" them but that they are not successfull. The problem is that they cant just simply put them away somewhere and nothing will happen. Give those people a bit of crystal or let them break free and suddenly you have another primal at your door..and unlike now where they have the WoL, a summon of another primal mostly meant the death of a huge amount of people. If this was truly a disease that just affected the person then they would have probably left them alive but the risk is way too high.

[BillyKaplan]

Which makes it not very easy too since we dont even know if we truly kill all the things or knock them out.

That's a good point, yet the story is very fickle about that. They sometimes explicitly say you killed people and a plot battle can go either way (Nero being alive, Gaius' other henchmen, not so much), but sometimes they outright say you didn't intend to kill them (BLM 50-60 quest where you end up killing them because they were in bad health to begin with, but the implication is that you were holding back and only meant to neutralize the threat).
Thing is, it's enough to take this one example to say that maybe we ALWAYS mean to just knock them out, in which case unless stated explicitly, we haven't killed anyone - which really reduces the body count. And also makes us all the more hotshots at what we do because damn, that's some skill required to do that.

[Pells]

But they told us that people tried to find a way to "cure" them but that they are not successfull. The problem is that they cant just simply put them away somewhere and nothing will happen. Give those people a bit of crystal or let them break free and suddenly you have another primal at your door..and unlike now where they have the WoL, a summon of another primal mostly meant the death of a huge amount of people. If this was truly a disease that just affected the person then they would have probably left them alive but the risk is way too high.

Even keeping the tempered imprisoned isn't good; leaving them alive makes it easier for the ones who are free to summon a primal. Faith is nearly as important as crystals, when it comes to summoning.

[Krotoan]

But they told us that people tried to find a way to "cure" them but that they are not successfull. The problem is that they cant just simply put them away somewhere and nothing will happen. Give those people a bit of crystal or let them break free and suddenly you have another primal at your door..and unlike now where they have the WoL, a summon of another primal mostly meant the death of a huge amount of people. If this was truly a disease that just affected the person then they would have probably left them alive but the risk is way too high.

Tried and failed sure. I'm going to preface this with it really doesn't have to be the ONLY reason, but I'll say that just because someone tried and failed doesn't mean that nobody will ever try again. We've failed trying to cure many diseases in real life yet we keep trying. I'm not saying we should have kept the tempered around, there are a lot of good arguments for what we've done (killed them). But if anyone finds out HOW to reverse the process , the people who have lost loved ones because the prevailing method to deal with them has been to kill them would look back and realize they could have been saved and possibly harbor resentment. That's all I'm saying there.

[KaivaC]

snip

Which brings up the question (story and gameplay segregation), how exactly do you knock somebody out if you're a mechanist. I'm going down the route of wild mass guessing, but you can't exactly knock somebody out if you're shooting them with bullets, or using Flamethrower. This might be skirting a little too closely to our reality however.

[BillyKaplan]

Which brings up the question (story and gameplay segregation), how exactly do you knock somebody out if you're a mechanist. I'm going down the route of wild mass guessing, but you can't exactly knock somebody out if you're shooting them with bullets, or using Flamethrower. This might be skirting a little too closely to our reality however.

Hard to keep them alive if you're slashing at them with a great-axe, or even if you're shooting fireballs at them. This is one of those places where gameplay stands apart from the story, but as is always the case, the story wins over the gameplay and you just need to hope your suspension of disbelief is strong enough.

[KaivaC]

snip

True. I appreciate the gameplay and story segregation. But going down this little tree on a more serious note, I suppose it could be argued that Eorzeans in general are more resilient than we are, given that even the ladybugs, squirrels, and lambs could easily kill many NPCs who happen to be wondering around and accidentally aggro them. If we were to take just storyline body counts by our own hands, I think it might be comparable to what Zenos did during his reign.

[Kallera]

Um, people didn’t believe the mirder of Nanamo because it was viewed as so far out of left field(presumably, I thought it wasn’t handled well in any case.)

But what could be more beliveable is the idea of the WoL choosing war with Garlemald over peace out of personal hatred, and dragging Eorzea along with. They’ve been fighting Garlean troops for years without a sweat, who is to say that maybe, with their echo, they’re that prejudiced and overconfident enough to light a potential olive branch ablaze? If such a war is seen as more a spat between two echo users, would the rest of society view them so highly once the body bags start rolling in?

I've kinda wondered if perhaps there should come a time when the WoL ends up becoming feared, instead of loved. a kind stranger helps you out and offers to make you tea, maybe you might consider them to be a new friend, but take that same stranger, and give them a reputation of death and violence, and would you really still consider befriending them?

[BillyKaplan]

Um, people didn’t believe the mirder of Nanamo because it was viewed as so far out of left field(presumably, I thought it wasn’t handled well in any case.)

Actually everyone just kept it under wraps, as I believe was brought up prior in this thread. In Ul'dah, the only people who knew about it were the people present when Teledji accused the WoL as well as his henchmen, but the official statement was that Nanamo was bedridden. The Syndicate were smart enough to keep it under wraps to not rock the boat too much until things settled down. In Limsa and Gridania no one was there to spread word because both the Admiral and the Elder Seedseer, who were present during the accusation, knew it was utter rubbish from the first. People can't believe what they don't hear about.

But what could be more beliveable is the idea of the WoL choosing war with Garlemald over peace out of personal hatred, and dragging Eorzea along with.

I can see people believing in it if it became wide-spread, thought it would certainly be a frustrating turn of events if it happened, given that we know that we were never ever an active force. A catalyst, for sure, as many things happened due to us even existing, but we never waged war, only fought other people's battles.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Which brings up the question (story and gameplay segregation), how exactly do you knock somebody out if you're a mechanist. I'm going down the route of wild mass guessing, but you can't exactly knock somebody out if you're shooting them with bullets, or using Flamethrower. This might be skirting a little too closely to our reality however.

1. Machinist
2. Plenty of ways to shoot someone non-lethally, plus we've seen Y'shtola take a katana cut and live. We took a sword wave and lived. Eorzea's a fantasy realm; I'm sure there are degrees of force that can be applied, otherwise everything a Black Mage, Red Mage, Samurai, Warrior, and Dark Knight might do is just lethal. As said before, suspension of disbelief is definitely due here. Overdue at this point.