Will Final Fantasy ever make a "Dark Side"?

[Iscah]

Do primals really count as "sapient life"? They're figments of our imagination given form.

About the only reason to think they might be intelligent is that they talk, but that could be part of the conjured illusion. The "living primal" within the story might not be any more aware of what it's saying than the computer program we-the-player are actually fighting. It's simply been subconsciously programmed by the WoL when they dreamt it up.

And if it turns out creation magic does genuinely create living sapient beings? I'd sooner put it down to "the writers didn't realise the implications of this". They're primals, long established to be not truly alive, at least by the characters' understanding of how they work.

[Rosenstrauch]

I'd be inclined to say they (the Eden primals) are sapient, if only because of Raktapaksa. I find it highly unlikely that we went into the fight with the idea that they would fuse upon realizing they can't defeat us, and he's the one who came up with his own name on the spot. At least until a new lorebook comes out and goes "actually Raktapaksa is just another primal that Garuda and Ifrit inadvertently summoned back into existence", or something like that.

But like I said in my own post: I doubt this was actually the intention when they were writing the Eden primal summoning plot. It is just something that's been on my mind ever since reading that some people aren't happy with Eden Shiva because she's so divergent from Ysayle's take on her. I found the idea of wanting to summon a Ysayle-esque version of Shiva just to kill her to be, well, disturbing. And from there, it got me wondering as to the actual sapience of primals as a whole. 90-some% of the time we're killing them out of necessity, so it doesn't necessarily matter there. But if they are sapient, then intentionally creating them to sacrifice is rather—again—disturbing.

It also doesn't help that I've been playing a lot of Xenoblade Chronicles lately. The idea of gods/creator figures treating their creations as disposable and having it blow up in their faces is very fresh in my mind.

[Peace-Division]

Not in this story format, no. They'd have to write everything twice.

I think this is what Bioware regret when making SWTOR. 8 Classes (4 on each side) a huge amount of character dialogue to reflect the class and "side", plus they were fully voice acted. it sky rocketed the budget to 250 million.

[LineageRazor]

Do primals really count as "sapient life"? They're figments of our imagination given form.

About the only reason to think they might be intelligent is that they talk, but that could be part of the conjured illusion. The "living primal" within the story might not be any more aware of what it's saying than the computer program we-the-player are actually fighting. It's simply been subconsciously programmed by the WoL when they dreamt it up.

And if it turns out creation magic does genuinely create living sapient beings? I'd sooner put it down to "the writers didn't realise the implications of this". They're primals, long established to be not truly alive, at least by the characters' understanding of how they work.

There's some implication that the Ancients themselves didn't realize the implications of what they were doing with their creation magic, so this fridge horror could be intentional on the part of the writers. Perhaps they WERE creating sapient beings, but their system of morality didn't allow them to even consider that these intelligent creations should have any kind of innate rights. "I created it, therefore it is mine to do with however I please, obviously." Essentially, every Ancient had a god complex; not a malign one - they don't deliberately set out to harm their creations, and are as a whole pretty even tempered beings - but a god complex nonetheless.

For example, when Emet Selch casually produced a copy of Allisae to demonstrate the Sundering. The copy didn't move or speak, so it's easy to assume that it was just an image or an empty shell - but I could just as easily have seen Emet creating an actual true clone of Allisae (albiet one unable to move or speak) and then casually destroying her without thinking twice about it. After all, the sundered mortal beings, in his own words, don't even really count as living beings by his standards! It's easy to imagine the other Ancient ones also having this mindset - with the difference that in their time, the created beings were a distinct minority, while in the current time the few remaining Ancients are a minority to the point where they actually have to pretend to be peers with them to accomplish their goals.

The mysterious "sound from below" that was the Ancients' undoing could well have been one or more of their own sapient creations, rebelling against its masters - such rebellion being something they didn't even consider a possibility. And when the Dissenters suggested that the remaining Ancients allow the new life forms to inherit the planet, the idea was considered absurd by most. It would be like bequeathing your estate to your vegetable garden.

And primals in particular? They've shown evidence of having knowledge that their summoners likely do not, such as Ifrit's ability to recognize the taint of Hydaelyn upon us, or some of the cryptic blather Ramuh laid out in his conversations with us. Granted, those Primals were created by way of a summoning process taught to the Beast Tribes by the Ascians, so it's feasible that some of the Ascians' knowledge got mixed in there, somehow (though this seems unlikely, given that the Ascians typically are not present or taking direct part in the summoning). There's a possibility, at least, that some part of the Primal lingers on after its destruction - a soul, after a fashion - and when a new summoning of that Primal occurs, this soul returns to the summoned being.

And the implications of our summoning and destroying Primals in the Eden raids? It could be exactly that bad. We might well be summoning and slaying living, sapient beings. Our excuse here is ignorance. Much like the Ancients themselves, we don't even consider the implications of what we're doing. (Though, given how the Eden storyline is written, its pretty clear that everyone involved is holding the idiot ball. Ryne, that was a very bad idea.)

[HeulGDarian]

stuff

Creation magic is Arcanima so basicly it is an empty husk but they introduce to it their will, the one example everyone has seen is how tatarus carbuncle run in fear when she herself was afraid. the difference is however that we dont talk about tataru but about beings with 13 times the aether density of ours so when they were afraid their fears manifested . another story akin to the alisae copy is the one in the main story the one copy of an ancient which he created along with the city , the reason he felt more sentient and aware of himself its cause like a story maker emet thought that he should be able to . The last piece of info on it is that those structures can be possessed , there was a story the devs wrote about how once upon a time in the ancient world someone had created a pheonix , a scared spirit who just died possessed the pheonix and just like the spirit it run off confused and scared and they had to call emet to put it down. There is also more to it than this , in arcanima the egis and the carbuncles like i said before are not sentient , but the fairies of scholar seem to be sentient, the fairies you control remember their prior master , they can also disobey you to protect stuff they know you shouldnt attack so whatever the scholar crystal is using to make the fairies is not like a gem nor , a primals true essense for it has will.

[Alleo]

The Warrior of Darkness and Scions broke into the home of a pregnant woman and slaughtered both her and her unborn children in the latest patch, so the game definitely does not shy away from having the protagonists do some very questionable things. In addition, as mentioned earlier the writers themselves are on record in various interviews stating that character actions and motivations are a matter of perspective rather than a case of 'good' and 'evil'.

Barring a few rare exceptions such as Zenos who are deliberately designed to be completely without redeeming qualities and sympathetic/justified motivations.

You mean the woman that was ready to launch these children into a war against our comrades who until that point have tried everything to end it peaceful? I mean if you post it just like that it might sound horrible, but lets not forget that the other side was far from innocent and started it. (If I remember it correctly they were already hurting/killing people even before we took away the water, I think it was since after the calamity of light) If we did nothing they would have killed them all and take it to the lands..in the end they did not give us much choice and if you try to genocide a whole race then you cant hide behind "but I am pregnant!".

With the Xaela tribes: They are tribes of warriors who take great pleasure in fighting. They solve their whole government issue by fighting (and in some cases killing) each other. Hien "used" one tribe that was already on his side and gave them their very first victory. Honestly that tribe could have still said no afterwards but wanted to fight alongside him. In the tradition of the Xaela one could say that Hien did nothing else than what you normally try to do with diplomacy. But instead of just simple agreement from the leader, they simply helped to establish the new leader without any cheating. We took them fair and stayed true to their tradition.

I do agree about Hien and the castle even though it was still war.

In the end an evil option is imo not just a switch in perspective. Its not just a "you are fighting in a war and now we play from both sides". Evil choices go beyond that, they go into the territory of pure slaughter, of genocide..of torturting and loving it. Everything else just feels more like a middle path or grey path but not truly dark.

[And even though war is horrible for both sides and will have innocent people on both of it, you cant just say that its all perspective either and both sides are as bad or good as the other. It imo matters why a war was started and if you just travel from your country to another to conquer it because you simply want more power then you are morally wrong]

About sapient life and primals: Wasnt it in the short stories where one soul attached itself to their creation (phoenix) which was horrible because the regrets and things it held? Which imo could imply that normally they dont create beings with souls.

[MirronTulaxia]

Yeah, definitely not seeing a good and evil are just perspective thing. They pretty unequivocally point out who is good, even if the other side has some justification the means they go to reach it are too much. The closest you get is some city states and the like, but they also make it rather clear you aren’t the same as them. The Scions at least are consistently presented as good, the Ascians/Empire (not the same as all Garleans mind you) bad.

As far as the original request goes, the Beast Tribe quests and the like are probably the closest you’d get. Showing the good people in the conflict as opposed to (usually) the tempered ones or the like. Other than that not sure what’s being requested could be done. Playing as a Beast Tribe/Garlean would be hypothetically plausible from a cosmetic standpoint, but lore not so much. The analog to Horde vs Alliance is probably more the city states if anything.

[Alleo]

Yeah, definitely not seeing a good and evil are just perspective thing. They pretty unequivocally point out who is good, even if the other side has some justification the means they go to reach it are too much. The closest you get is some city states and the like, but they also make it rather clear you aren’t the same as them. The Scions at least are consistently presented as good, the Ascians/Empire (not the same as all Garleans mind you) bad.

I think my problem with "its just perspective thing" comes from the feeling that some (not all!) people want to use this so that even though they are on the "dark" side they still feel good about it. IMO a path where its really just the perspective is not truly a dark side. A lot of heroes will not be 100% angels just like our WoL is not, so honestly a "perspective switch" is nothing more than a hero on the other side. Its imo not dark or evil.

If you want to play the dark side or the evil side then also commit to the idea that you are the bad/evil guy and no change of perspective will change that. But dont play it and then say that the other side is just as bad and its just perspective because the others are not perfectly acting well all the time. No if you go around and genocide innocent people for the sake of it you are an evil person. It does not matter that one person of that race was mean to you as a child.

And a lot of wars are fought for selfish horrible reasons, so "different perspective" falls flat there, because no matter how normal the soldiers are, the country that started the war for some reasons are the bad guys. Garlemald is the bad guy too (as a Government). They started the war and conquering for their own selfish reason. IMO one cant just say that they are the same like Eorzea, because they are the aggressors. They are the ones at fault and any punishment they get from it (other than pure war crimes) are reasonable because they acted first. Just like its understandable that we would go and kill the Queen because they were ready for genocide and war and it had to be stopped. Their perspective does not matter because they had years to make peace with the others and never did.

[MirronTulaxia]

I mean, for me a lot of people will take "it's just a perspective" and push it to huge extremes. Moral relativism has its place, but "let's kill everyone" isn't exactly a stance that should apply to. Moral relativism would be something more along the lines of "is it right to risk your life to save another" where there are two reasonable answers (if not more) and which one is "right" is up for perspective.

[Iscah]

I'd be inclined to say they (the Eden primals) are sapient, if only because of Raktapaksa. I find it highly unlikely that we went into the fight with the idea that they would fuse upon realizing they can't defeat us, and he's the one who came up with his own name on the spot. At least until a new lorebook comes out and goes "actually Raktapaksa is just another primal that Garuda and Ifrit inadvertently summoned back into existence", or something like that.

True, Raktapaksa is an oddity. (Is it a reference to another FF thing or is it completely original?)

If you wanted to argue the "happened despite them being non-sapient" route you could go with it being something out of a story that just floated into the WoL's mind by chance as they thought about things that had similar attributes...

That makes me think we had a massive missed chance of the birdlike primal and fire primal muddling into a Phoenix primal in the WoL's mind.


Also the business with Ryne-Shiva was definitely odd. I think they just wanted to work some kind of dramatic excuse for Ryne to lose control and have Gaia come and save her, never mind the plot logic of doing so.

For example, when Emet Selch casually produced a copy of Allisae to demonstrate the Sundering. The copy didn't move or speak, so it's easy to assume that it was just an image or an empty shell - but I could just as easily have seen Emet creating an actual true clone of Allisae (albiet one unable to move or speak) and then casually destroying her without thinking twice about it.

I'd be far more inclined to consider it an illusion - he's demonstrating the ability of something far beyond his individual power, that had to be brought into existence by the combined force of multiple Ancients. It's also specifically - if I remember correctly - while he's already "borrowing the Exarch's plaything" to show images of the fourteen worlds as he narrates.

That also sets me thinking - do the Ascians still have their creation magic, or has that been taken from them? Perhaps in the process of "rewriting the laws of the star", that boundless creative potential had to be shut down. It would add up with what they needed to do - their own ability to create things was running amok, so perhaps the only way to stop it was to remove that ability.

They might not be any more capable of summoning things into existence on their own than the mortals they're manipulating.

There's a possibility, at least, that some part of the Primal lingers on after its destruction - a soul, after a fashion - and when a new summoning of that Primal occurs, this soul returns to the summoned being.

That's how it's described to us in one of the "PowerPoint presentations" in post-ARR: that when primals are summoned, their essences are drawn from the aetherial sea and given form by their summoners, then return there once the physical primal is vanquished.

It seems to contradict Hraesvelgr's rejection of Ysayle as having conjured "Shiva" out of her own thoughts rather than any true eternal soul of the original Shiva - though that could be a special case since her soul apparently remains with him rather than having gone to the Lifestream.