Can we get choices that really matter and have a effect?

[KalinOrthos]

Right, I'm just going to duck out if this conversation, but I want to leave you with a thought.

as for zenos he just wanted a play mate to fight with he wasnt evil or good he was chaotic neutral

This right here tells me everything I need to know about how you view the world. You're stupid or naive enough to believe that alignment is based on the words you write in the "Alignment" space. The truth is, your alignment is based on how you affect the world around you, how your personality fits within the paradigm of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos. Zenos is, at the absolute best, Neutral Evil, and at worst Chaotic Evil. If you cannot realize why that's so, then there is genuinely no help for you.

Coincidentally, it also makes me genuinely pity anyone who has the displeasure to play D&D with you if you think wanton murder is justified with "But I'm just chaotic neutral, guys". Screw you.

[LolitaBansheeMeru]

Right, I'm just going to duck out if this conversation, but I want to leave you with a thought.



This right here tells me everything I need to know about how you view the world. You're stupid or naive enough to believe that alignment is based on the words you write in the "Alignment" space. The truth is, your alignment is based on how you affect the world around you, how your personality fits within the paradigm of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos. Zenos is, at the absolute best, Neutral Evil, and at worst Chaotic Evil. If you cannot realize why that's so, then there is genuinely no help for you.

Coincidentally, it also makes me genuinely pity anyone who has the displeasure to play D&D with you if you think wanton murder is justified with "But I'm just chaotic neutral, guys". Screw you.

Okay I get he might fall under that... regardless

I still like and respect characters like Emet-set and honestly do believe what they are doing as good because just really trying to fix things is that really so wrong. I mean really when people respect the jokers/harleys partnership as romantic is it really concerning thatI respect and care and want character like light yagami to win and fix things in the storys.
I always have respect and understanding of those characters yes I would want to help them because honestly I can get where they are coming from okay Really whats so naive or stupid about that.

Thats all I really want from a story is for it to not dismiss characters that honestly atleast myself can understand and get why they are doing it .. I mean its like the books the summoning I can understand the character Chloe but ya

I just need for once people not put this characters into Villian catagorys just because the methods they use i need it to happan because would show that sometimes such things are needed you know

[Deusteele]

You don't ever make a counter argument.

Their methods are what makes them villains. Choosing to arbitrarily hurt and kill others just because you've been hurt, isn't anything that should ever be lauded. It's something to be pitied and shunned. And that's being generous with some of the characters you've talked about.

Anyway, I'm going to bow out of this now. If you're being serious about this, you have problems.

[KalinOrthos]

Okay, I said I was bowing out, but I can't get over this.

OP, you keep referring to Light Yagami as some sort of good guy. To which I must say, "Have you even seen or read Death Note?" Light is unquestionably a villain. By the end of the series he holds the world in his palm through fear under his guise of Kira. He acts as judge, jury, and executioner for any he deems unfit for his new world, even murdering cops whose only crime is trying to find him. Even before he received the Death Note, he was a pretentious narcissist who thought he knew best. He is, without a doubt, the villain of the story.

He is also the protagonist. He's the central character of the events of the series, and we experience most of the events through him. Ohba did an excellent job in making Light both compelling and charismatic, the sort of character you love to hate.

Here's the thing: Protagonist =/= good guy. Death Note is only one example of the villain being the protagonist. Spoiler, but Braid is another example, and even Lupin the Third falls into that subgenre. It's a heavily subversive form of storytelling that could easily mess up, yet Death Note toes that line masterfully, so much so that it's actually deluded you into thinking that Light is the good guy.

Just because we can understand someone's motivations doesn't mean they get a free pass to commit atrocities. Many of us, MOST of us know or at least sympathize with the feeling Emet Selch feels about the loss of his own world; no sane person would say that gives him carte blanche to exterminate entire civilizations, entire worlds, to get it back.

And with that, for real this time, I'm out. Get help, or grow up.

[Razard]

snip.

"But guuys he had a bad life..."

Wait, crap! That doesn't apply to Light Umm...

"But guuys, he was a blandly attractive Asian man. So he was totally justified because thats how heroes work!"

xD Meru The Edgy 12 year old is a joke.

[LolitaBansheeMeru]

Okay, I said I was bowing out, but I can't get over this.

OP, you keep referring to Light Yagami as some sort of good guy. To which I must say, "Have you even seen or read Death Note?" Light is unquestionably a villain. By the end of the series he holds the world in his palm through fear under his guise of Kira. He acts as judge, jury, and executioner for any he deems unfit for his new world, even murdering cops whose only crime is trying to find him. Even before he received the Death Note, he was a pretentious narcissist who thought he knew best. He is, without a doubt, the villain of the story.

He is also the protagonist. He's the central character of the events of the series, and we experience most of the events through him. Ohba did an excellent job in making Light both compelling and charismatic, the sort of character you love to hate.

Here's the thing: Protagonist =/= good guy. Death Note is only one example of the villain being the protagonist. Spoiler, but Braid is another example, and even Lupin the Third falls into that subgenre. It's a heavily subversive form of storytelling that could easily mess up, yet Death Note toes that line masterfully, so much so that it's actually deluded you into thinking that Light is the good guy.

Just because we can understand someone's motivations doesn't mean they get a free pass to commit atrocities. Many of us, MOST of us know or at least sympathize with the feeling Emet Selch feels about the loss of his own world; no sane person would say that gives him carte blanche to exterminate entire civilizations, entire worlds, to get it back.

And with that, for real this time, I'm out. Get help, or grow up.

I wanted to avoid saying this but it needs to be said

While light yagami had no back ground for what he did... He wrote the names of those who were honestly the trash of society the only "innocents" he targeted were those were softys that didnt have the heart to save the world instend they tried to stop the one casting the judgement that needed to be casted...

[Deviri]

I wanted to avoid saying this but it needs to be said

While light yagami had no back ground for what he did... He wrote the names of those who were honestly the trash of society the only "innocents" he targeted were those were softys that didnt have the heart to save the world instend they tried to stop the one casting the judgement that needed to be casted...

Wow, you are a professional level troll here.

[Packetdancer]

I could not tell you why the heck I'm weighing in on this thread when I doubt it will be productive, but, hey, I have Thoughts and Opinions, so...

So, one thing I like about FFXIV compared to a lot of games is that many of the villains do have complexity. Simplistic "evil overlord for the sake of being evil" villains—as the Ascians sort of appeared to be in ARR—can be dull. "I do evil because I serve an evil god, who is evil." is a boring backstory.

Whereas I can easily envision a JRPG where the world gets broken in some cataclysmic event, and the hero wanders through these broken shards, seeing pale echoes of people they knew, and where their Epic Quest is to reassemble the world and restore the lost. The narrative probably portrays these 'pale echoes' as not really people, and the tale as gluing together a broken vase. It's not destruction... sure, the individual shards cease to be shards when put back together—they're a vase again—but that's just repair, right? You could literally make an almost cliche JRPG storyline out of that, and no one would really bat an eyelash at the hero's motivations.

Similarly, you can easily see how Nidhogg's rage at the betrayal of mankind and the loss of his sister would infuriate him. It's understandable; revenge is a simple motivation.

Except seen from the point of view of the 'pale reflections' on the shards, the hero of that JRPG is a genocidal monster planning to destroy everyone. And Nidhogg's immortal lifespan has him looking at random people who've never even known the truth—some of whom even expressly want to try to make peace and make amends when they learn that truth—and considering them just as guilty of sin as their ancestors.

FFXIV is a compelling RPG because we can often understand the villains; they're not just a faceless evil with incomprehensible alien motives; they're ones whose motives are all too understandable. (Arguably, the reason Stormblood isn't as strong an expansion as the other two—while still good—is that of the villains, only Yotsuyu/Tsukuyomi really has a motive we can personally understand or empathize with. Zenos is just a fundamentally broken individual, and Asahi is downright cartoonishly cruel and vile.)

But just because you understand a villain does not mean they're right. It certainly doesn't mean you should necessarily sympathize with—much less support—them.

As I said elsewhere: We can understand them, pity them, and even mourn them when they're gone. But we sure as heck don't have to forgive them.

[Packetdancer]

To add to this (thank you, forum post 3000 character length limit):

I think in fact that Heavensward and Shadowbringers are each a contrast between a failure and a success in similar positions. (Again, probably why they're somewhat stronger narratives than Stormblood.)

In Heavensward, you have several people who've lost loved ones to this conflict. Nidhogg and Hraesvalgr lost their sister, Aymeric has lost men and women he's trained and lived with—people who are more his family than his father, in truth. Nidhogg lives in that pain, dwelling on it, like picking at the scab on a wound. He's unable or unwilling to move past it. Aymeric, however, is willing and able to put aside that loss and try to reach for a new day. To reach for a future where people don't have to keep dying, on either side. One where dragon and mankind can live... if not in cooperation, at least in coexistence.

In Shadowbringers, you have two people—Emet-Selch and Thancred—who have each lost someone very dear to them. Each of them keeps company during the Shadowbringers arc with someone who isn't that person, but is all that's left of them. In Emet-Selch's case it's the Warrior of Light/Darkness, in Thancred's, it's Ryne. And in the end, Thancred is able to move on. He's able to make his peace with Minfilia's loss, and accept that while Ryne isn't Minfilia she has as much—if not more—right to live as Minfilia does. Emet-Selch is not able to do the same thing. You could argue that he tries, in his broken way; he 'tests' the Warrior of Light to see if you're 'as good as' the Amaurotian loved one he lost. But unlike Thancred, he proves unable to move on from the pain of the past, whether because of his Tempering by Zodiark or whether just because it's not in him to do.

That makes them interesting villains, and more compelling than many you find in video games because their motives are tragically understandable, even if we vehemently disagree with how they act on them. I don't think many people will debate that.

And while it might be interesting to see the story where it all goes wrong—where the world burns, and everyone dies, or the hero falls—it is not practical from a technological standpoint to tell two wildly and fundamentally divergent stories at the same time in an MMO. (Speaking here as a former game developer for a moment, back before the crunch time mentality burned me out.) So there's only space for one story... and the story that SquareEnix demonstrably wants to tell is about what happens when you can move past your pain and loss. The strength you can find when you accept them, and make them part of you rather than letting them control you. (See also: the entire DRK job quest storyline.)

It's a narrative element they've hit repeatedly across multiple expansions, and it's one I expect they'll keep hitting.

And if that's not to your taste, perhaps the game isn't the right one for you.

[Deviri]

But just because you understand a villain does not mean they're right. It certainly doesn't mean you should necessarily sympathize with—much less support—them.

I would argue it is possible to both sympathize and empathize with a villain while still being able to call them a villain.

I sympathize with Emet-Selch because he's a tragic villain in my opinion; he lost everything. His home, any friends or family he might have had, his whole world, and what he got in return were these half creatures that he couldn't relate to, whether that's because of aether and souls or how he views us vs. how he viewed his people. He's alone except for two other whole Ascians.

And then I empathize because I can imagine why one would go to such measures to return their love. Not to mention the possibility of Tempering and what that does to the psyche.

But at the end of the day he's still the villain, he still wanted to kill thousands and thousands of people.