FFXIV is just FFTA from the other perspective

[YianKutku]

Which is exactly how the Ascians see the situation. To them the current world and the people in it aren't real, and destroying it will bring the real world and all the real people back.

Not quite.

Literally only three "real people" (by the standards of Emet-Selch) survived the Sundering. One of them died, and Emet-Selch seems contemptuous of their demise. One of them is off planning stuff, and Emet-Selch doesn't even bother learning what, choosing to isolate himself and hide whenever Elidibus is around.

The plan was to destroy thirteen shards (or however many it took), and the attendant loss of life on the Source, to prepare for Step One of the plan. As in, all the Rejoinings and destruction that entails are Step Zero, as mere collateral damage. After everything is Rejoined, the plan was to cultivate enough life, then sacrifice that to bring the Ancients back. (Exactly what they will have to sacrifice next to bring the sacrificed life back is left unstated.)

And apparently Emet-Selch thinks that he can do all of this alone.

Given his plans also implicitly destroyed the ruins of Amaurot on the Source (according to dev comments), he's evidently not as attached to the past as he claims to be.

[Elladie]

But ironically it's fine for G'raha Tia to do the same thing as the Ascians, right? Fine to wipe out all the current people as if they never existed in order to save the old people from a few hundred years ago, right? The point being made is that we base our moral judgement on the side of the argument that we represent.

If someone can present me with a convincing explanation of how G'raha Tia's actions are different from the Ascians, I'll be happy to accept it. I don't think anyone is disputing the necessity of putting an end to the Ascian machinations - much though I enjoyed the ShB story, I didn't expect us not to kill Hades - but some of us do think the moral hypocrisy is pretty bad. I believe that's the point the OP is making, and that's the point I'm agreeing with him on.

[Cilia]

Emet-Selch acknowledges the concept of moral relativism more than once over Shadowbringers; ultimately regardless of whether one considers the Ascians "evil" or not, they are still gigantic threats to the safety and stability of the current world order and will be opposed by inhabitants of the current world(s) based purely on that fact.

G'raha's actions are utterly unprecedented; we do not know the full ramifications of what he did, as it's the first time anyone's ever done as much. Not even the Ascians were able to unlock the secrets of spacetime travel, so it's unknown what all the consequences of what he did are. What you're suggesting is that the timeline he came from was wiped out in its entirety, but we don't know that for sure. It may still exist in parallel or something; even if it doesn't, if the lives that were sacrificed are fewer than those saved, it's good from our perspective.

G'raha has the power to literally undo a calamitous event from the past. That's very different from the Ascian method of forcibly reintegrating the fractured worlds into one so they can go back to the "good old days" of Amaurot.

Think of it in terms of franchise reboots. G'raha is trying for a soft reboot, creating something new from what already exists (i.e. using the 8th Calamity timeline tech to make it so the 8th Calamity doesn't happen). The Ascians are trying to hard reboot the world to the way it was before the Terminus, wiping out everything that came to exist in the interim.

Is it hypocritical? To a degree. But everyone is a hypocrite on some level or another; that's just a fact of life.

[YianKutku]

But ironically it's fine for G'raha Tia to do the same thing as the Ascians, right? Fine to wipe out all the current people as if they never existed in order to save the old people from a few hundred years ago, right? The point being made is that we base our moral judgement on the side of the argument that we represent.

If someone can present me with a convincing explanation of how G'raha Tia's actions are different from the Ascians, I'll be happy to accept it. I don't think anyone is disputing the necessity of putting an end to the Ascian machinations - much though I enjoyed the ShB story, I didn't expect us not to kill Hades - but some of us do think the moral hypocrisy is pretty bad. I believe that's the point the OP is making, and that's the point I'm agreeing with him on.

G'raha Tia was willing (and planning) to sacrifice himself. Emet-Selch was not.

[Theodric]

I completely agree with this.

But prepare yourself to be harangued by a number of people who remain convinced that 'good' and 'evil' are absolutes and that we represent the former whilst the Ascians are entirely the latter. Similarly Zodiark is entirely evil, according to them, whilst Hydaelyn is entirely good.

I wonder how much the writers regret using the darkness metaphor for the Ascians initially since it plays so much into the hands of the absolutists. I guess they did their best to show us 'Light as evil' in ShB but an age-old trope is still an age-old trope.

I think a lot of those posters are often led astray by bias towards certain characters but also often due to allowing head-canon for their Warrior of Light to bleed with reality.

The writers have thankfully confirmed on multiple fronts - both in-game and out - that nuance exists and beyond a few straight up evil characters such as Zenos many battles are merely a matter of perspective, moral relativism and politics.

Luckily Emet-Selch has proven to be a very popular character so I'm fairly confident in saying that the writers will very likely take that on board moving forward.

[Eggpop]

But ironically it's fine for G'raha Tia to do the same thing as the Ascians, right? Fine to wipe out all the current people as if they never existed in order to save the old people from a few hundred years ago, right? The point being made is that we base our moral judgement on the side of the argument that we represent.

If someone can present me with a convincing explanation of how G'raha Tia's actions are different from the Ascians, I'll be happy to accept it. I don't think anyone is disputing the necessity of putting an end to the Ascian machinations - much though I enjoyed the ShB story, I didn't expect us not to kill Hades - but some of us do think the moral hypocrisy is pretty bad. I believe that's the point the OP is making, and that's the point I'm agreeing with him on.

The Ascians were killing people of 14 worlds unwilling to die. G'raha Tia was carrying out the wishes of people in one world that were willing to sacrifice their existence for a future they'll never see. It was meant to pararell the Ancients that sacrificed their aether to summon Zodiark, that yes, even the shattered people were willing to save their world in contrast to Emet's low opinion on them.

Aka, post 8th calamity people spent generations turning a theory that will literally wipe out their lives into reality, and had G'raha Tia carry it out because he was the only one that can. G'raha Tia was awoken after the people decided to carry out this plan. He acknowledges the immense sacrifices it carries. The Ascians doesn't think of the lives lost on the same level.

[Falar]

I completely agree with this.

But prepare yourself to be harangued by a number of people who remain convinced that 'good' and 'evil' are absolutes and that we represent the former whilst the Ascians are entirely the latter. Similarly Zodiark is entirely evil, according to them, whilst Hydaelyn is entirely good.

I wonder how much the writers regret using the darkness metaphor for the Ascians initially since it plays so much into the hands of the absolutists. I guess they did their best to show us 'Light as evil' in ShB but an age-old trope is still an age-old trope.

After finishing the Shadowbrigners MSQ if this was a game where the player had branching choices like a lot of aRPGs I'd be joining the Ascians.

[Elladie]

The Ascians were killing people of 14 worlds unwilling to die. G'raha Tia was carrying out the wishes of people in one world that were willing to sacrifice their existence for a future they'll never see. It was meant to pararell the Ancients that sacrificed their aether to summon Zodiark, that yes, even the shattered people were willing to save their world in contrast to Emet's low opinion on them.

Aka, post 8th calamity people spent generations turning a theory that will literally wipe out their lives into reality, and had G'raha Tia carry it out because he was the only one that can. G'raha Tia was awoken after the people decided to carry out this plan. He acknowledges the immense sacrifices it carries. The Ascians doesn't think of the lives lost on the same level.

In fact this is not true. If you read the OMG short story, it's made very clear that large numbers of people did NOT support G'raha Tia and the Ironworks. In fact they went so far as to attack the Ironworks to try to prevent it happening.

Yes, it's true we don't know that the other timeline was wiped out. But that is the consequence that G'raha Tia expected. He thought he would die and was very surprised he didn't. He thought it was a noble sacrifice he was making, but a lot of the people who thought he was dooming them to stop existing absolutely did not agree. Life was a big struggle for them, but they still wanted to live.

[Eggpop]

The story also said that, while a vast majority left Ironworks due to the implication of Cid's plan, they were also met with unanimous support from those who remained, and were able to recruit survivors of many different species when they presented their plan as a way to save WoL. Obviously, not everyone was ok with sacrificing their future and their children's future for the sake of saving the world, but enough did since this plan was actually kept alive for generations until its success. Putting morality and the sheer difference in causality aside, you can't equate the genocide of 7 doomed worlds who didn't even know what their sacrifices were meant for, and a portion of people from 1 world who knew the consequences and still carried out their plan to change the past.

The story never made G'raha Tia and Ironwork's plan 'ok'. They made a clear implication of its consequences. I don't find it ok either. But the key difference is that Ironwork's sacrifice lean towards the preservation of the remaining worlds, while the Ascians will eventually wipe them all out, including the future native lives on the Source. How are these two the same?

[Alleo]

Which is exactly how the Ascians see the situation. To them the current world and the people in it aren't real, and destroying it will bring the real world and all the real people back.

But it is real (unlike the dream world in FFTA) and just because these handful of old beings want their old ways back does not give them the rights to do so! Heck even before the split at least enough Ancient ones were against their idea of just sacrificing new lifes (thus whole souls) and fought against them. Yet they still believed that they are in the right and nobody else..who are they to decide the fate of billions? They are ready to kill the reborn souls of their own people..to save a relative few amount of those that sacrificed themselves willingly..and they probably dont even know if they can be brought back..

In the end their old world is gone. Its over. They have no more right to live there than we do. Its like someone from ancient rome being thrown into our world and believing their city to be worth more and trying to kill us all to get it back..I am sure that most of us would be against something like that.

But ironically it's fine for G'raha Tia to do the same thing as the Ascians, right? Fine to wipe out all the current people as if they never existed in order to save the old people from a few hundred years ago, right? The point being made is that we base our moral judgement on the side of the argument that we represent.

If someone can present me with a convincing explanation of how G'raha Tia's actions are different from the Ascians, I'll be happy to accept it. I don't think anyone is disputing the necessity of putting an end to the Ascian machinations - much though I enjoyed the ShB story, I didn't expect us not to kill Hades - but some of us do think the moral hypocrisy is pretty bad. I believe that's the point the OP is making, and that's the point I'm agreeing with him on.

Lets pretend and say that what Graha did was exactly the same as the Ascians do: What would that even change? Sometimes you have to choose the lesser evil of both options (just like splitting the world was probably better for the life than it being completely sacrificed to Zodiark) but that makes Emets and the Ascians choices not less bad.

But there is still a difference: The world after the calamity (which killed another millions of people btw) was not recovering. After 200 years the world was still in a bad place and the short story seems to hint that it has not gotten better for those still surviving it. Graha changed a world that was dieing. He did not leave a world behind that has become better and that has rebuilt..no he only did it because that calamity messed up too much. (I wonder if even the Asicans were shocked about it...seeing how Emet did not know the consequences of the chemical weapon infused with Light) Going back and preventing this calamity has saved millions of people (a whole shard and all those that died on the source) and also made it so that new life will continue to live. These souls of the future people are also still save and can be born unlike when the Ascians are winning because they would be used as sacrifices. And at the end this was an decision which was done by the future people themselves. We dont know how many agreed but Cid only left them a plan.

This is in no way comparable to what the Ascians want to do..their world had been saved by Zodiark..they could have lived on and started anew with the survivors (and there should at least be quite few of those) and let the death be reborn over time to repopulate the planet. But instead they wanted to sacrifice the new lifes making the situation worse..heck at the end after all those rejoinings and sacrificing the rest of the source..would the world even be alive anymore? Suddenly the circle beginns again...because Zodiark would need to repair that huge damage.

Luckily Emet-Selch has proven to be a very popular character so I'm fairly confident in saying that the writers will very likely take that on board moving forward.

Yeah like Yoshida who pointed out that just because Ascians (including Emet) have reasons does not change the fact that they have done genocide. He also pointed out that he found it interesting how fast some accepted Emets explanation and suddenly see Hydealyn as the bad one while he (Yoshida) is more of a person that wants to see both sides before making an assumption. Honestly I was a bit surprised by that interview because he made it quite clear that the Ascians are the bad guys who are murdering millions and that Hydealyn might have a bit different of a story in that.

In fact this is not true. If you read the OMG short story, it's made very clear that large numbers of people did NOT support G'raha Tia and the Ironworks. In fact they went so far as to attack the Ironworks to try to prevent it happening.

Yes, it's true we don't know that the other timeline was wiped out. But that is the consequence that G'raha Tia expected. He thought he would die and was very surprised he didn't. He thought it was a noble sacrifice he was making, but a lot of the people who thought he was dooming them to stop existing absolutely did not agree. Life was a big struggle for them, but they still wanted to live.

People going against the plan was at the time when Cid was still alive. Where he only was doing the research while he hoped that the future generations might solve the problem.

In addition, by presenting their plan as an attempt to save the Warrior of Light rather than a bid to rewrite history, they were able to gain the support from survivors of many different species and subgroups.
This again was when Cid was still alive and needed ressources for his research. In the short story there was never a hint on how the people thought about it 200 years in the future. But seeing how many generations after him they went with that plan there is quite a big chance that the world was simply not getting better.