let me join the garlean empire

[Shougun]

I wouldn’t call that the Garlean Empire then though. It’s like saying Alexandria under Garnet is the same as it is under Brahne. And that was a much simpler takeover than anything else. If you’re siding with rebels (which is what Gaius at least is) then you’re not the empire.

Which is more or less my answer to Shougun too.

Well don't get me too wrong, I add the caveat this stuff would work so much better if it was done that way from the start lol. There are certainly a number of issues if we just hoped over, I just think it's a bit boring and not the pinnacle writing could offer if someone is bad because they're bad. The nonredeemable empire with not a single iota of good, bit boring. It's true FF has done that in the past, although you have some more nuance in like FFXII's empire, but I generally don't play FF for the empire is 'scury' narrative.

Our last villain, even though clearly a villain still lol, was one of my favorite FF villains even over say classics like Kuja, Sephiroth, or Kefka, or whatever other mentally broken I'm a bad boy because I'm bad (I'm aware those three are bred weapons, the other villains often share similar issues though, like Edea and why she has her problems). Don't have to be eeevvvilllll (queue spooky ghost voice here lol) to be the bad guy, or even the perceived bad guy.

To force that empires always must be evil as the narrative for all FF seems a bit. . . bleh and hyper-conservative for the growth of the series in general.

So I'm speaking more of an encouragement to SE to try and mess with us, not create simple moral narratives- which I think we need less of these days especially, the great social media echo chambers already do that. Before when we had less social media contact perhaps it was great. Make me hurt lol.

That's why I suggested, if there was ever a company- even if it wasn't SE, that used the faction system that they have propaganda and similar concepts, just like real life would, such that the truth is not always clear even when both factions compare narratives.

Or allow for certain ideologies to speak their pros and cons, as well as not make one 'the good' and the other simply 'the bad', as I said not rewriting things to do it now, but even with our current setup there are many racial issues on our own side, even our own leaders could be doing so much more, yet they've clearly dropped the ball, perhaps in part because they have to due to their people being who they are, but no one bats an eye if we go into the beast tribe and murder everyone but if the Garleans do it OOH NOOOOOOO HOW EVI. Noting of course the ones we kill are indeed tempered, many the ones Garleans kill would also be tempered, the others conquered, but hardly are our own relationships with tribes that great- still so much racial issues beastmen are still not welcome at the door (and Nael being a bit of a madman turned the whole surrender thing into a genocide, with a wonderful parting gift of a freaking moon..., but that goes back to my point on different parts of the government having their own identity). Especially different because when an empire takes over they usually bring services that can improve some facets of life, albeit also at the cost of freedoms (not saying it's all good lol). You see this in real life like I've talked to some people who talk about their past invading empires not in an entirely negative light, mentioning how they brought over schools, roads, and infrastructure that didn't exist before (of course depending on what country we're talking about that can change massively to "yeah they sucked I hate them, they've ruined us" lol).

Just encouraging and see SE capable of a more developed story than "they're bad". They've done it a few times already, I might even note how in their recent FF7 they made a stronger emphasis on how Avalanche is a terrorist group with repercussions for their actions.

Love that stuff, generally not as impressed with the big bad because they big and bad as reality is often not that simple. Doesn't mean I hate those simple stories- wont be the last time we see bred villains, just think the nuanced thought pausing almost painful ones are far more impressive (so I'm encouraging that, rather than 'is bad because is bad' , 'is because is' which I think restricts potential creative future stories).

[MirronTulaxia]

Snip.

I mean, I wouldn't say the Garlean Empire (or even any Empire analog in FF barring I suppose the original one) is all evil without any good. But being an empire inevitably means you're going to be evil. Ignoring the fact that simply that much power isn't maintained by benevolent means, being part of a group with that much power means it's really hard to have a bad guy strong enough to challenge it.

As far as Emet goes I wouldn't say any of those villains are "evil because they're evil". The closest is Kefka but there is still a reason for his being a villain. Edea isn't a villain, you mean Ultimecia, and she too has reasons/justifications for her actions. But I would add as well that having reasons doesn't stop them from being evil either. Emet is still evil, all of them are still evil. The empires, even without being solely evil, are still overall an evil force. Fixing the empire in XIV is about utterly dismantling it, reducing its reach ridiculously, reducing its power ridiculously, creating a brand new culture just about, so on and so forth.

With regards to the Eorzeans versus the Garleans, the Eorzeans don't really just go and kill a Beast Tribe because they're a Beast Tribe, which is what the Garleans do. They fight them when they attack (and to be fair they are justified at times), but the Garleans modus operandi is flat genocide, so it's not really a "both are equally right" kind of thing. If everything was changed from the ground up you could certainly pull it off, but as is the current empire needs to be demolished and whatever is built from its ashes is probably not going to resemble it except somewhat superficially.

[Shougun]

I mean, I wouldn't say the Garlean Empire (or even any Empire analog in FF barring I suppose the original one) is all evil without any good. But being an empire inevitably means you're going to be evil. Ignoring the fact that simply that much power isn't maintained by benevolent means, being part of a group with that much power means it's really hard to have a bad guy strong enough to challenge it.

As far as Emet goes I wouldn't say any of those villains are "evil because they're evil". The closest is Kefka but there is still a reason for his being a villain. Edea isn't a villain, you mean Ultimecia, and she too has reasons/justifications for her actions. But I would add as well that having reasons doesn't stop them from being evil either. Emet is still evil, all of them are still evil. The empires, even without being solely evil, are still overall an evil force. Fixing the empire in XIV is about utterly dismantling it, reducing its reach ridiculously, reducing its power ridiculously, creating a brand new culture just about, so on and so forth.

With regards to the Eorzeans versus the Garleans, the Eorzeans don't really just go and kill a Beast Tribe because they're a Beast Tribe, which is what the Garleans do. They fight them when they attack (and to be fair they are justified at times), but the Garleans modus operandi is flat genocide, so it's not really a "both are equally right" kind of thing. If everything was changed from the ground up you could certainly pull it off, but as is the current empire needs to be demolished and whatever is built from its ashes is probably not going to resemble it except somewhat superficially.

[edit: some shb spoilers]


For Edea I was talking about when she was possessed lol, as it seems like you should be aware of. Just an aside example of stuff being evil because being evil, she was evil because something evil possessed her. Ultimecia's reason for being evil being in essence ultimate power, that's just pure evil man. Edit: just to be fair (she has some reasons lol), she goes for ultimate power because she wants to persecute instead of be persecuted (but it's a super 180 from protecting yourself to being like "yall gonna die" lol- although I do like the whole sorceress persecution thing, that added a bit of flavor). Perhaps not as good of an example as Kefka, Kuja, or Sephiroth, all three of which are just experiments gone bad (or gone right depending on how you look at it lol). Of course there are other examples like Ex-Death, wasn't trying to go comprehensive was just thinking semi-recent stuff.

As for whether an empire has to be /evil/, at least a pure evil, I would not agree. They've afforded us significant amounts of strength, historically, with a lot of evidence to many features of life gaining great leaps forward, of course at a cost (with the social progress usually being the slowest/worst, but is not always true), but the strength /has/ been needed historically to fight and dissuade off others, as much if we had not had we would have fallen to another anyways, all our countries being basically formed from empire mentality. Japan would be significantly weaker for example if they had not been unified (through their wars, before they were one), and would not be afforded the position it has today without it (being careful not to think just land is power, also people), but that's not to celebrate what it cost- ideally you conquer through peaceful means . Might suggest EU is towards a peaceful empire (whether people want to be part seems to depend on country though lol).

The other villains I called bred villains because Kefka was an experiment, like Sephiroth. They're evil because something in their core is off, they're mentally broken. I assume this is how Zenos will be why he is. I know why Kefka is messed up, magitek gone fried his brain. Kind of a Joker like character, bad happens to them so they wish bad on the world. It's not a terrible character, like Joker isn't, but am encouraging more time for the enemies to speak so they don't appear just as the Joker / evil empire/corporation doing evil stuff.

I think dismantling the empire (Garlean) would be a mistake over if you could stabilize and bring some peace within, like if you've already taken over Japan (speaking Japan's history here) and done all that damage why in the world would just throw it out if you can keep it as a strong unit (as it is now). Of course some groups might be unmaintainable, too far from capital and still wanting freedom, but if you can maintain as much power within a far more stable peaceful setting I see no reason why would dismantle it (significant strength comes from that unity). Restructuring- sure, ripping it apart if you have other options just seems like a huge waste of lives cost before and resources.

Garleans fight the beast tribes primarily because of the primals, not simply because killing people is fun- you'd be giving our side too much credit and theirs too little. Of course Nael went for genocide, as his own thing (leader of his own part of the military), but before that they had sent out a surrender request to the tribes, and our side has gone for genocide before too (just not as spectacularly as theirs, and some of it not as recent (like not recent but very horrible stuff might be the copperbell mines or what happened to Sil'Dih)). Most likely the genocide could be argued being pushed by Ascians, since they helped create chaos, and if we removed them from the equation things would become far more 'normal'. Garleans clearly have a serious internal issue, but like our countries of today it would be better to save the internal structure whenever possible rather than going "yeah sorry America, sorry Japan, sorry Iran, sorry China, sorry insert country here, we're just going to nuke you to extinction cause you messed up too much- time to restart from the very beginning". And to those countries you could easily point out moments where they've done wrong, great wrong. One, or a few, of those were traumatically attacked and is a point of significant contention / argument even to this day.

As for Emet I agree he's bad, cause he'll have to kill us all to do what he needs, but I find him one of the most interesting bads- since like we to animals feel superior and use them, he and his race are indeed some ways plainly superior to us, especially depending on how much lying he did about their behavior lol, as well other things they did like invest into saving the world and now are being asked to cancel said investment. That's not to say I'd not stop him if given the chance (got to save your species), but he's not simply a broken experiment looking for UlllTtimmaATtteeEE Poowwaaaa.

I'm encouraging more developed reasons for being bad than "I was borked due to an experiment" "I was possessed by ultimate evil" "I'm just bad bro" "I NEED MORE POWERRRRRR, I WANT TO LIVE FOREVER", etc. Make me hurt or at least pause for the other side. It doesn't need to be always, those other reasons can work (Sephiroth is pretty popular lol), but whenever and as deep as possible (while still being interesting to gameplay and story of course).

Good ol alien being naughty can still make a fun story, I just don't want to dissuade SE from hyper-nuanced / uncomfortable situations where it's not clean cut good and evil.

So a faction system that wasn't simply and wholly 'evil' would be welcomed, that's what I'm encouraging, and to be honest to some small extent done already (obviously not to the point you're supposed to be them / not fight them). With the note that making things playable isn't really something to do out of no where, especially as you'd want more nuance then which is where some of my comments are coming from, as a sort of future/different game desire rather than a 'now' desire, not something I think should just be added willy nilly. As for this game- well to repeat I'm not saying Garleans are blood free (but there are many examples where our factions are not blood free either, we're just not as organized and powerful- especially if our team was without us lol), just that you -could- give them, and certainly SE has in many situations already, a lot of reasons that make them not simply 'evil' or even always wrong. More gray, less black and white. Even if they're very dark shades of gray. I don't like something has to be evil because it has to be.

[MirronTulaxia]

1. I wouldn't call that Edea though, that was all literally Ultimecia wearing a body suit. And Ultimecia does have motivations, at least as deep as "kill others for my friends" Emet. Ultimecia wanted to defy fate, make up for being persecuted, so on and so forth. It's not the deepest reason in the world, but no villains are.

2. The EU isn't really an empire though. "An empire is a sovereign state functioning as an aggregate of lands and peoples that are ruled over by an emperor-like monarch or oligarchy. The territory and population of an empire is commonly of greater extent" might not cover it entirely, but I don't think you can really call the EU that without really stretching the definition of "oligarchy". I would say an important part is how you add lands to that area as well, as at least every empire that we've actually called that tends to gain lands through hostile takeover. With regards to how good/bad that is at least for me I would say the cons outweigh any pros. Especially as you don't need to take over somewhere to grant them technology/knowledge/trading/resources/etc, but you do if you want to extract wealth from that place while maintaining a power disparity.

3. Sure, but that's still a reason. And in Sephiroth's case he wasn't bred to be evil, just a super weapon. He went evil because his mind snapped. Personally I find it pretty flimsy, but it's not really different from being tempered like Emet.

4. There isn't really any way to maintain control over that large of an area. At best you're just looking at a slow destabilization or cessation of power to other smaller bodies. And again, it probably will not resemble an empire at the end of it, with people being able to voluntarily or not be part of it, and individual areas maintaining large amounts of power relative to what they had. So more of a federation than an empire. But really the rot is pretty much set into the foundation, if you try to just plaster over everything and keep it mostly the same the entire structure will just get worse, again.

5. The Garleans absolutely have a "kill all Beast Tribes" policy. It's why the Eorzeans worry about them learning anyone can summon. Prior to that the Garleans policy is "kill all Beast Tribe, subjugate all Spoken", but if they know that isn't how it works then it could very well be "kill all non-Garleans". They're killing because they can summon Primals, yes, but not every Beast Tribe individual is summoning Primals or tempered. As for the Ascians that's absolutely part of it. The Ascians built the Empire to be a genocidal war machine that would collapse without their help, that's... kind of the point. And again, part of why it needs to be taken apart entirely. That doesn't mean "kill all the Garleans" or "drop a nuke on them", it just means a huge, fundamental restructuring of the government, its economics, trying to change its culture, so on and so forth.

6. Emet is tempered by his own admission. He is absolutely broken, there isn't any fixing that. And his justifications are ultimately wrong (from a might makes right standpoint Ascians clearly aren't more powerful than mortals in a meaningful sense, from a moral standpoint all the people he wants to sacrifice are sentient/sapient, from an intellectual standpoint they can perform feats Ascians haven't accomplished such as the Crystal Tower traveling to the First, so no matter which way you slice it Ascians aren't sitting above the rest) really.

7. I mean, Emet's reasons for being evil are "I want to sacrifice people for my friends" mixed with "I'm evil because I was broken due to a Primal". If you boil down any villains motivation down to simple lines it's pretty easy to make them shallow.

8. I would argue that black versus gray versus white is usually very meaningless as outside of Saturday Morning Cartoons nothing is absolutely evil for no reason or absolutely good for no reason, which is how people usually use those terms. If we aren't arguing in terms of absolutes then the Garleans very much so are black in pretty much any meaningful sense, as they are an organization created by fundamentally broken individuals to exert their power over a larger scale and create as much chaos and destruction as possible, all for the end goal of sacrificing all life on the planet and other shards for their god and select chosen people. That's... not exactly justifiable in any way, and while the Garleans certainly aren't entirely to blame as the Ascians certainly have a hand in it all, there are plenty of people who go along with it. You can't run an empire comprised of the unwilling.

[Shougun]

1. I wouldn't call that Edea though, that was all literally Ultimecia wearing a body suit. And Ultimecia does have motivations, at least as deep as "kill others for my friends" Emet. Ultimecia wanted to defy fate, make up for being persecuted, so on and so forth. It's not the deepest reason in the world, but no villains are.

2. The EU isn't really an empire though. "An empire is a sovereign state functioning as an aggregate of lands and peoples that are ruled over by an emperor-like monarch or oligarchy. The territory and population of an empire is commonly of greater extent" might not cover it entirely, but I don't think you can really call the EU that without really stretching the definition of "oligarchy". I would say an important part is how you add lands to that area as well, as at least every empire that we've actually called that tends to gain lands through hostile takeover. With regards to how good/bad that is at least for me I would say the cons outweigh any pros. Especially as you don't need to take over somewhere to grant them technology/knowledge/trading/resources/etc, but you do if you want to extract wealth from that place while maintaining a power disparity.

3. Sure, but that's still a reason. And in Sephiroth's case he wasn't bred to be evil, just a super weapon. He went evil because his mind snapped. Personally I find it pretty flimsy, but it's not really different from being tempered like Emet.

4. There isn't really any way to maintain control over that large of an area. At best you're just looking at a slow destabilization or cessation of power to other smaller bodies. And again, it probably will not resemble an empire at the end of it, with people being able to voluntarily or not be part of it, and individual areas maintaining large amounts of power relative to what they had. So more of a federation than an empire. But really the rot is pretty much set into the foundation, if you try to just plaster over everything and keep it mostly the same the entire structure will just get worse, again.

5. The Garleans absolutely have a "kill all Beast Tribes" policy. It's why the Eorzeans worry about them learning anyone can summon. Prior to that the Garleans policy is "kill all Beast Tribe, subjugate all Spoken", but if they know that isn't how it works then it could very well be "kill all non-Garleans". They're killing because they can summon Primals, yes, but not every Beast Tribe individual is summoning Primals or tempered. As for the Ascians that's absolutely part of it. The Ascians built the Empire to be a genocidal war machine that would collapse without their help, that's... kind of the point. And again, part of why it needs to be taken apart entirely. That doesn't mean "kill all the Garleans" or "drop a nuke on them", it just means a huge, fundamental restructuring of the government, its economics, trying to change its culture, so on and so forth.

6. Emet is tempered by his own admission. He is absolutely broken, there isn't any fixing that. And his justifications are ultimately wrong (from a might makes right standpoint Ascians clearly aren't more powerful than mortals in a meaningful sense, from a moral standpoint all the people he wants to sacrifice are sentient/sapient, from an intellectual standpoint they can perform feats Ascians haven't accomplished such as the Crystal Tower traveling to the First, so no matter which way you slice it Ascians aren't sitting above the rest) really.

7. I mean, Emet's reasons for being evil are "I want to sacrifice people for my friends" mixed with "I'm evil because I was broken due to a Primal". If you boil down any villains motivation down to simple lines it's pretty easy to make them shallow.

8. I would argue that black versus gray versus white is usually very meaningless as outside of Saturday Morning Cartoons nothing is absolutely evil for no reason or absolutely good for no reason, which is how people usually use those terms. If we aren't arguing in terms of absolutes then the Garleans very much so are black in pretty much any meaningful sense, as they are an organization created by fundamentally broken individuals to exert their power over a larger scale and create as much chaos and destruction as possible, all for the end goal of sacrificing all life on the planet and other shards for their god and select chosen people. That's... not exactly justifiable in any way, and while the Garleans certainly aren't entirely to blame as the Ascians certainly have a hand in it all, there are plenty of people who go along with it. You can't run an empire comprised of the unwilling.

1. I'll give it to you that I only know FFVIII via a friend and videos on theroies it's all fake after the death scene lol (honestly hated the magic system >.>), she just stuck out from how my friend told me (and when I said Edea I was thinking the lady behind the mask). Maintain point on the other three I brought up though, and that there exists more, like Ex-Death.

2. "an extensive group of states or countries under a single supreme authority, formerly especially an emperor or empress." via google. Formerly especially. Obviously the supreme authority part is probably where significant issues would still come in lol, I was using the word loosely though. It's fair to say there are significant cons to the empire ordeal, I just want it to be clear there have been significant gains as well. Of course you could have charity, here have some tech, sort of deals.. but that seems like asking a lot from us humans lol. Even our charity is usually bundled through means of power of some sort. Watch what we do in other countries, or what China is working on. . XD

3. It is a reason indeed! To be clear I'm not calling any bred villains terrible stories just that I want to encourage SE to do other types too (well and that I find the villains with more depth than being bred evil or getting revenge are far more interesting, but that doesn't mean being simpler reasons for action has to mean not good). I'd still call Sephiroth bred villain since he'd have not snapped if it weren't for the science part, like Kefka or Kuja (well Kuja literally bred lol). You can split the hair if you'd like but close enough to the intent of what I was meaning, and wasn't meaning it like "these stories suck" just wanting SE to have as much creative freedom as possible and not think "empire always bad no matter what circumstances".

4. Eh... with technology, which Garleans have, I think that's not quite true. Certainly in the old days of real world though that was 10,000% true. Sail that boat for one month to make it to an entirely different situation than the one you just got news about, good ol days.... lol.

5. Isn't ANYONE that summons a primal is to be killed? Similarly they should be aware that people can summon them, potentially, due to Othard long ago. Also the Dalamud project was thwarted, in part, by within the Garleans own ranks iirc (like the XIVth legion), which was to kill all the beastmen (and a boat load of us too lol). Showing that strife within the government I mentioned a few pages back, Gaius didn't want to kill the city-states/beastmen, being a symbol that we've not need to destroy all of Garlean (we just REAAAALLLLLYYYYYY need a new leader haha). He did want to rule us, but until proven, by beating his weapon lol, why would they believe we can handle our own? Primals take a lot of power to defeat, besides ourselves there naught much to take care of them on our own side.

6. Maybe controversial but I honestly believe he would have done what he would have done either way, so long as the tempering didn't cause him to lie to us. I believe that the tempering might have actually been a feature rather than a consequence of Zodiark, to forever prevent creation magic going haywire again. Ensured order through some loss of freedom (on a far less extreme scale it might be like if we give up some freedoms for enhanced security, which happens all the time). As the superiority thing they're entirely superior to us in might, and they may as well be in emotions and intelligence too, given what we know about them. In comparison if someone said we HAD to kill all the dolphins or monkeys on the planet to survive we'd do it in a heart beat. The might difference is clear, the emotional/intelligence seems potentially feasible given Emet didn't lie when talking to us. On top of that many of us are just fragments of what we were once, so in that way he's trying to repair the damage. I'm not saying I'm on board with him killing everyone, but if he saw us as monkeys and I see that possible, like if type III aliens came down and saw us they might potentially think we're really fancy ants lol. With their creation magic they really are a bit like gods, rather than just some regular Joe mortal.

7. Well I definitely kept calling him the bad guy lol, I never said he was good- but did give him credit for being a very dark shade of gray vs say like Ex-Death or the created evils which I called bred villains or maybe you might call them Jokers (like the recent joker movie, as again I'm not trying to say bred villains are terrible villains, I just really like seeing gray). Even in bred villains you can feel sympathy, like Joker movie, but like when Emet says 50% volunteered, that none of us could save the world like they did, their might and glory were so great we are basically ants, I'm like "yeah.. lol.. sounds like it... I agree we sound like ants man.. I still can't let you kill me, but I feel really small down here".

8. Yeah see that's where I don't agree because you're taking some parts of Garleans and applying it to the whole. Part of the reason why the dalamud project failed was due to the XIV legion- rather than massacre us they wanted to conquer and ensure we don't mess everything up later with primals, I'm not saying Gaius is a little sweet heart but Ultima weapon was to be the tool to keep primals down and ensure we don't mess it all up. It makes sense they don't trust us to handle our own affairs when they know how insanely dangerous the primals are (and they are), and it was up to us to be like "hey knock it off we can handle it, watch we just destroyed your toy". It also makes a lot of sense that they feel uncomfortable trusting us to handle such insanely dangerous matters (if we fail, oh man stuff is going to go really south- a well functioning team of ultima weapons would have likely been far more reliable). Imagine if two primals are summoned in far off corners at the same time, we'd have to let one go wild for a short period of time- in fact I hope SE does that story point in the future to show just relying on us is not that great. Of course you could just say whatever Gaius does right will be messed up later anyways by the Ascians, but the point is to say the Garleans are not just one person. If one part of the US government does something horrible it does not make us all horrible, it doesn't even make the whole government horrible. In such an example too you can find situations where parts of the government strongly disagree with other parts, or the people if they're in loop. There is still too much corruption to be like "if Gaius was successful it would have been better" since one command from daddy or daddy in cloak and it all goes up in flames anyways, so don't get me wrong on that, but if we can help Gaius take back Garlean I think Garlean has a lot of hope.

Which again to all the above I don't want to suggest Garleans done no wrong, just that I encourage SE to continue what they've done for quite a few times and not make something have to be evil because some previous games did it. Like we have quite a few stories of our city-states messing up big time, especially if you go in the past and not with our current leaders with Sil'dih or Copperbell being quite short thoughts of "oh.. nice..." (although even with our current setups you could point out sketchy stuff). That's where we go away from black and white and into gray. Cheering for that. We obvious have to take care of the Ascians and Zenos, but Garleans, and the empire? Eh... There are probably a few places that need to be released because it's impossible to maintain relationship as it is, but I could see arguing many places being able to adjust into a new leadership, especially with better representation (Gaius + friends). Noting empires don't need to be kings / queens and Garleans can offer a lot in terms of leadership, I'm sure you can argue they've already done that (with too much chaos obviously, serious costs), but under more peaceful terms I bet you could argue a significantly better and graceful empire.

[ItMe]

Which again to all the above I don't want to suggest Garleans done no wrong, just that I encourage SE to continue what they've done for quite a few times and not make something have to be evil because some previous games did it.

Considering how FF14 is basically a collection of homages I don't think you can ever expect them to incorporate an existing element from another Final Fantasy game... but do something super different with it.
That's just not what this game's aim is.

[Shougun]

Considering how FF14 is basically a collection of homages I don't think you can ever expect them to incorporate an existing element from another Final Fantasy game... but do something super different with it.
That's just not what this game's aim is.

Like all FF they have some homage, but each also has its own liberties. FFXIV is no different. Yoshida has in essence said it's a FF on its own and that it pays respects to other FF games. It's not simply other FF's greatest hits in different colors.

[MirronTulaxia]

1. I mean, I wouldn't say Exdeath is evil for evil's sake either though. That's kind of my point. I'm disagreeing with the fundamental divide you're placing between the two. Evil isn't just nature, it's nurture too.

2. The "single authority" is the big issue, yes. And again why the EU isn't one. It's a lot of power concentrated in a small location, and in all instances of something being called an Empire it's forcibly taken. I suppose you could theoretically have huge countries completely cede all power to a lone individual voluntarily but that seems to stretch belief a bit. As for whether people would do it voluntarily I believe people help each other all the time.

3. Empires inevitably are bad though again. If you have an entire continent under one person's power that... really, again, isn't a voluntary thing. The closest we've had to that would be Cocoon and Spira, both of which didn't really have rebels but were doing it through religious and social control, so it just looked nice on the surface. As for the rest again I don't really find them to have any less depth than Emet.

4. Is it? The Garleans have been maintaining that control via... violent conquest and dealing with insurrections brutally. Like... the technology doesn't help them except make it easier to put people down.

5. I mean, we didn't kill Ysayle. Eden arc has us literally summoning multiple Primals too. The issue isn't "summon Primal = execution", it's "summon Primal = tempered = lose all sense of reason = execution", because once tempered they can't be reasoned with in any way. And the issue isn't if someone did summon a Primal, it's that they can summon a Primal at all that leads to the Garleans killing them. Gaius didn't want Meteor not because he thought Beastmen should be spared, but because it was a waste of potential resources to use, which is the key difference there. He still had every intent to take everyone over and rule them, it really isn't meaningfully different. It's just classic "rule over all" versus "destroy all" villain stuff. And like I said, it isn't "kill all Garleans" it's "dismantle the Empire". Though this is also not really addressing again that the Empire wants to kill anyone who can summon, not anyone who does summon. It's why they try to commit genocide on Beastmen, and why again the reveal of "anyone can summon" is kind of a worrisome thing for the Eorzeans (and a big difference in terms of policy, as even knowing for instance the Sylphs can summon the Gridanians (the most xenophobic of the city states) still works with them). Lastly Gaius should know we beat Primals, as we beat three of them up to that point and in the past the Eorzeans had bested Primals before, so clearly it wasn't some sort of noble "protect the weak Eorzeans because they can't handle Primals" thing, nor was it about power, in the end we bested him, in his weapon, but he still saw us flawed in belief. That's where the issue lay, and ultimately why there wasn't any recourse except fighting him off.

6. If he would have done what he did then he was just as unreasonable before being tempered as after, so that honestly doesn't change anything. Security vs freedom is certainly something to debate, but not really related to most of this. They aren't superior to us in might (every clash of Ascians versus us ends in the Ascians being beaten, even when Hades powered up with the dead and went pseudo-Primal he wasn't able to win), and he isn't doing it to survive. He's doing it to erase sacrifices willingly made, because he wants to have his cake and eat it too. That's not noble, that's childish. As for emotional differences I don't think we can say, but again intellectual we can. We did things the Ascians didn't predict. We constantly do things the Ascians can't count on. If they are stronger than us, smarter than us, then that's simply bad writing. That Hades has a warped perspective, something we know from his being tempered? Then it makes sense.

7. I would still call him full evil, not dark grey, because there isn't anything grey about "killing billions of innocents for the sake of a small group". As for if humans would volunteer, again, I think you underestimate them. Honestly we have no idea if it even was given Hades is, again, a very biased source.

8. Again, the Eorzeans have successfully fought off Primals. If Gaius wanted to help he could have offered an alliance. He could have exchanged tech. He could have done any number of possible actions. He wanted Eorzea for the Garlean Empire. Stopping Primals is their justification for their actions, but it's not their primary motivation in what they do. Their actions are literally designed to create more desperate people to summon more Primals, that's how the Empire was designed. If you want to stop people from summoning Primals putting them between a rock and a hard place isn't the method. As for the Empire the issue is, again, the Empire as a whole, regardless of any individual components, is still doing certain things. It's quite justified to say the government as a whole is flawed without saying that means every individual in it is, which again is not something I have been saying.

9. I mean, I wouldn't call it an empire then. If every individual state within that group has representation and they have some degree of autonomy that isn't an empire, that's a federation again. And it isn't evil because previous games did it, there are very good reasons empires are evil which I already went over, and you really can't have anything that can accurately be called an empire without that. With regards to the city states messing up I wouldn't say the city states are the same as the Scions, so them being grayer is kind of moot.

[ItMe]

Like all FF they have some homage, but each also has its own liberties. FFXIV is no different. Yoshida has in essence said it's a FF on its own and that it pays respects to other FF games. It's not simply other FF's greatest hits in different colors.

Yes, it does it's own thing. But when it DOES incorporate elements from other FF games it has a clearly established interest in importing those elements fairly straight.

[Alleo]

As if the story isn't moving towards putting Gaius or Maxima in charge, and us being honorary Garleans, in the same sense that we're honorary Ishgardians, Ala Mhigans, Domans, and Crystariumians.

I agree with Maxima (he seems to be more towards peace) but no I would not want Gaius anywhere near a powerful position..that guy would have blown up Eorzea with Ultima if we had not stopped him..who knows if he does not suddenly change his view again if it fits him.