A thing or two about Werlyt

[MoofiaBossVal]

I feel like you are missing my point. Not only do the examples I provided come from Stormblood, which is when the game already was past it's crisis, and also the aforementioned DRK quests actually tackle the player killing lots of people. The devs do not do it because "they don't care and it's a format flaw". It is clear that they know the player killing people is a thing and, touched upon the subject in different content, and continue doing so.

We don't casually kill that many people after HW 3.0. Someone on Gamefaqs is wrapping up a let's play of the MSQ where he counts everytime the WoL is forced to kill a humanoid to progress through the MSQ. The vast majority of the deaths are in ARR and HW, when the player is constantly killing Garleans and beast tribes and dragon heretics. After HW 3.0, the only humanoids the WoL really kills are Garleans in Stormblood 4.0 and 4.5. It's rather telling that otherwise, the WoL doesn't really mass kill people starting in the HW patches. Only Garleans really. Which was what I was trying to say; Garlemald's status as mob fodder is a holdover.

the player and their NPC allies have killed lots of people in-universe, by the same methods that you seem to condemn in the bad guys, making said condemnation pointless.

Aside from fighting Garleans, the only time the Scions really went on a mass killing spree was during ARR and the ARR patches, when they were regularly invading beast tribe territories and killing everyone on the way to the Primal. It is somewhat justified depending on which instance you're talking about (ie trying to rescue people from being sacrificed by Amal'jaa, or the mobs were tempered and there was nothing that could be done about them anyway), but again it's telling that early on there wasn't really any consideration for this. Starting in the HW patches the Scions never really kill a lot of people, only Garleans during the war segments. I think for the most part, those segments are justified, because of how the cutscenes are structured.

Like I said, Gaius has plenty of misdeeds. But talking how horrible him sending Livia to raid the Waking Sands is when the WoL's superiors do the exact same thing is a bit hypocritical, don't you think?

There is a disconnect between how the WoL is portrayed in cutscenes, and how the WoL acts in gameplay. In cutscenes, the WoL and the Scions got out of their way to save people and try not to kill anyone. The WoL is characterized and treated as a reluctant warrior and very pacifistic. However, in gameplay, the WoL constantly goes to a purple circle, and then 5 Garleans spawn out of thin air, and then the WoL butchers, and then does it more 200 times because the quests need to be padded out. That's where the cracks of FFXIV's format begin to show. It's pretty much impossible to reconcile this with how the WoL is presented in cutscenes.

The Scions don't suffer from this because they aren't following you around to the purple circles and killing the mobs that spawn. The Scions only exist in cutscenes, when they are presented as good guys who try not to kill people unless they absolutely have to. That being said, if we get a Garlemald trust dungeon where we kill like 200 Garleans in 15 minutes with the Scions, then problem of the MMO format is going to cast these issues upon them as well.

This isn't limited to FFXIV either. How many heroic characters in fiction are seen raiding enemy strongholds? If we condemn every character in fiction that raided an enemy stronghold and killed lots of people and believe them to be eviler than the others in their setting for that fact alone( even when the other characters do the same), then most Star Wars characters should be condemned, and a lot of other characters in fantasy/ science fiction works that portray war.

I do agree that fiction tends to be very schizophrenic about this. The first Star Wars movie wasn't really trying to be nuanced so the Emprie serving as fodder made sense. But you definitely see in the sequels that there is more of an attempt at humanizing them, with the good guys offering the stormtroopers mercy rather than just cutting them down like in the first film (don't forget that RotJ deleted scene where we see the Death Star operators hesitating to blow people up). The good guys also don't really cheer at the deaths of their enemies after A New Hope. George seemed to be pretty self conscious about that by the time the prequels rolled around, which is probably why the bad guy armies were droids instead of people. The good guys almost never kill people in the prequels.

It's rather jarring in FFXIV's case because they try to go out of their way to humanize almost every nation and faction in the setting... except for Garlemald. So there is a clash between the narrative and what's happening in gameplay.

[EliTheGunbreaker]

( RE Moo)

I do not see are your responses relevant to the subject anymore. The topic was originally about Gaius and the writing surrounding him. My comment about killing people was originally a counterpoint to you judging Gaius for doing the same thing WoL does to the Garleans. And the fact that Garleans are killed more frequently than anyone, being the Empire and all, does not change the fact, and the fact that the devs tackled the theme of WoL's not-so-heroic deeds in the DRK quests. My point stands, the good guys do the same thing the bad guys did ones, so it doesn't make sense to judge anyone for that alone.

I have no idea where did you grab the pacifistic part at all. They are shown as stoic and somewhat reserved in earlier expansions( which has changed as of late due to larger budget), nothing about them implies that they are afraid to fight. If anything, there are several responses in ShB that allow one to say they will not back down from a fight, and plenty of extremely mean responses in ShB. WoL may be portrayed as a kind hero sometimes, but a pacifist they are not. I think the correct word you are looking for is "passive".

I do see your frustrations about Garlemald, but at the same time you dismiss the cases of actual moral ambiguity as retconning someone into a good person as if bad people can't do good deeds or have moral codes, and ignore side content that presents a character you called cartoonishly evil in a better light( also kills him off in the end, but whatever). While yes, we have yet to receive a good person on the side of Garlemald, I do not think anyone whose hands are completely clean would stay in a nation like this for a long time. Garlemald is an Empire bent on conquering the world after all, you are bound to have people who support it be morally ambiguous at best( Fordola) and completely horrible at worst( Zenos).

My complaints about Gaius are isolated to 5.4 and how he all of a sudden turned from someone who was proud, cunning and completely believing in him being right to someone who is completely oblivious and acts like an idiot most of the time. Him stopping the Black Rose is not a personality retcon because bad people can do good deeds for whatever reasons, like I said. Neither is his rule of Ala Mhigo, because the only thing to suggest it is good was Fordola's parents telling her Gaius is "honorable", which is an extremely subjective thing to say, especially from people whose previous ruler was even worse an they sold out said ruler to the Garleans. Lots of what is actually going on in Ala Mhigo suggests his rule was bad, and he wasn't the "good" ruler like you say. Zenos just happened to be even worse, because, well, Zenos is straight up crazy. We even see him retain some loyalty to the Emperor in ShB by how he treats Varis. I complain about Werlyt because I am unsatisfied, but to call everything that led up to it a character retcon is one hell of a stretch.

[Veloran]

We don't casually kill that many people after HW 3.0. Someone on Gamefaqs is wrapping up a let's play of the MSQ where he counts everytime the WoL is forced to kill a humanoid to progress through the MSQ. The vast majority of the deaths are in ARR and HW, when the player is constantly killing Garleans and beast tribes and dragon heretics. After HW 3.0, the only humanoids the WoL really kills are Garleans in Stormblood 4.0 and 4.5. It's rather telling that otherwise, the WoL doesn't really mass kill people starting in the HW patches. Only Garleans really. Which was what I was trying to say; Garlemald's status as mob fodder is a holdover.

Maybe if you only count the MSQ itself, but you kill tons of humanoid enemies in non-MSQ content like the beast tribes or job quests. In the SB Bard job quests there are several moments when you're attacked by like thirty NPCs in waves and kill them all, 30-50 DRK quests, ROG/NIN quests, probably way more I don't remember. You also fight a fair few Eulmorans and various other groups in ShB.

I agree the Garleans in particular get used as mob fodder, and probably are about to get that even worse in the future, but it may be because the overall story has focused on them a lot more than any other singular group for a long time.

[Kuroka]

I do believe that Ala Mhigo was shit. But I do consider what he did at the Waking Sands to be something most people would do at war. Taking advantage of an opportunity.

Actually if you look into it, he sent a small team for a precision strike.... the civilian ppl barely even realized there was an attack lol
-He couldve burned half the city down and then attack, yet he didnt. Heck for all we know if someone else made the strike there might not even be that many deaths...

[ObsidianFire]

My thing with Gaius (and really, a lot of the Garlean characters) is that... all of them have been growing up in a society that Ascians have purposely been sabotaging so that it's very hard to be a decent person and get anywhere. And so that it's very easy to be an aweful person and have a lot of power over people. The point of the Garlean Empire, from the start, was to cause chaos. To the point that the world would be so disrupted, a Calamity would happen. And as many Calamities as possible. And Gaius is young enough that he wouldn't have grown up with any other moral or societal system other than the Garlean Empire's. And the Garelan Empire's system isn't a system that gives people a reason to do things for sympathetic or empathetic reasons. Anyone who can't make a reason sound pragmatic isn't going to get anywhere. So I see Gaius' pragmatism not just as pragmatism but also as the only way he can be remotely sympathetic/empathetic towards the people he does care about and get away with it in Garelan Society (particularly in military society which effectively runs the entire country anyway).

And... asking people to think that the system they grew up with for 50+ years is completely wrong doesn't really work out well. No one wants to know or realize that there's something fundamentally wrong with the cause they have been fighting for their entire adult lives. And Gaius is... actually capable of doing that to some extent. More than capable of doing that in fact. In 1.0 and 2.0 Gaius has no idea what the Ascians are using him and the rest of Garlemald for. Once he finds out in the Praetorium (mess things up for everyone else to destroy the world), he spends an... entire expansion and a half going after the Ascians that are manipulating the situation in Illsabard. Which needs to be done. But the WoL and the Scions can't get into Illsabard themselves easily; they're still taking care of the Asican problem in Eorzea. And when Gaius does meet up with the WoL and Scions again, he gives them a lot of information they really do need and doesn't ask for anything else in return. Because he knows the situation in Garlemald is small potatoes compared to the Ascian problem that both he and the WoL are dealing with.

The reason why Gaius and the WoL are working together on the WEAPON problem is because the WoL can't know what is going on in the Empire the way an ex-Legatus can. Gaius does know though and he has resources and enough knowledge to know when it's a problem he can deal with without the WoL (make sure Black Rose will never be a problem) and when he does need the WoL's help (taking out the WEAPONs). He also is known by the people involved in the project in a way the WoL is not and that opens up more options. I can't see Allie and Gaius' kids wanting anything to do with WoL if Gaius wasn't there because to them... we're the bad guy. We've been taking down Castra and pushing back the Garleans for ages. The way the Eorzeans think about Gaius, Nael, Regula, Zenos? That's probably how most people in the Garlean military think about us. That Gaius is willing to work with us instead of against us says... a lot about the WoL to the Garleans in all honesty. That one of the Garleans known for their sense of honor thinks we are honorable ourselves is... probably not what the Garleans were expecting.

The thing is, Gaius did stop what he was doing in 2.0. He didn't just... go back to his Legion and their still-functioning Castra and think of a different way to try to conquer Eorzea (can you imagine if he tried doing that in Stormblood while the Eorzean Alliance was off in Gyr Abania?). He instead got pissed that he (and probably the rest of Garlemald) were getting used to do someone else's dirty work that would result in the world getting destoryed. At the end of the day, Gaius wants order. He actually isn't that picky about who is keeping order... so long as they are indeed doing that. And... what he saw in 1.0 made him think Eorzea wasn't all that ordered (and going by the early 1.0 cut-scenes... he was... not incorrect!). A huge part of 2.0 is Eorzea getting it's shit together and proving to... really the rest of the world... that they do have order and that order works even if it's a different kind of order than the Empire uses. And that there's this other threat that wants to destroy the world via the chaos caused by political upheaval and they're kind of busy making sure they themselves don't get manipulated by it.

Gaius... basically looked at the biggest source of political upheaval, realized he was helping to cause that upheaval and... stopped causing that upheaval and started helping getting rid of the actual people causing that upheaval. If that isn't what it looks like when someone realizes that they've been doing something they shouldn't have been doing and starts trying to fix it.... I don't know what is. As far as I'm concerned... so long as Gaius doesn't go back to conquering people... that's good evidence he's at least admitted to himself that he messed up bad. If he does go back to conquering people... then I'll be more concerned he doesn't think he messed up. But I don't think he'll ever go back to that. He knows Garlemald is really broken in it's current state and needs to change if it's going to survive to get the chance to survive as a culture/race/nation.

[thegreatonemal]

The Ascians have not been doing much. All Emet did was give people with an inferiority complex a weapon and they ran with with. Emet says himself that his MO is to just give the people the tools to make their own chaos. He was very hands off. The Garlean people are the racist, counqoer race because of how they were treated and pushed from theri homes. They got a weapon that could compete with magic and then ran with it. The only other thing Emet did was say primals are bad.

[Cilia]

Actually if you look into it, he sent a small team for a precision strike.... the civilian ppl barely even realized there was an attack lol
-He couldve burned half the city down and then attack, yet he didnt. Heck for all we know if someone else made the strike there might not even be that many deaths...

If you're talking about Ala Mhigo, it was not a small attack. While we don't have a firsthand account to go off, it was so bad it soured Cid's relationship with Gaius and was a major motivating factor in his defection.

In regards to the Waking Sands incident, the fact nobody in Vesper Bay was aware the place had been attacked was a plot point. The only people that should have been able to get into the Waking Sands were Scions, who were a much smaller underground group at the time. Thus it is heavily implied that Lahabrea (possessing Thancred) simply teleported Livia's strike force in and out to avoid suspicion.

[ObsidianFire]

The Ascians have not been doing much. All Emet did was give people with an inferiority complex a weapon and they ran with with. Emet says himself that his MO is to just give the people the tools to make their own chaos. He was very hands off. The Garlean people are the racist, counqoer race because of how they were treated and pushed from theri homes. They got a weapon that could compete with magic and then ran with it. The only other thing Emet did was say primals are bad.

One of the big things about Emet-Selch's character is that he's lying to himself about his own motivations for the most part. And that he's especially lying about what people's motivations actually tend to be. All so that he can be in the right and everyone else in the wrong.

There's... pretty much nothing mentioned in in the information we have about the Garlean Republic that they had an inferiority complex. Heck, a full 1/3 of their population wasn't even racially Garlean (and no, I'm not talking about the part of the population in the conquered provenances). Their preferred method of doing politics was spywork and subterfuge and hiring mercenaries. Also, the legions were a thing before there was an Empire, so somehow those had to be manned... But there's nothing that suggests Garlemald wanted to expand past where their historical borders were before Emet-Selch came along.

In Garlemald, Emet-Selch wasn't just... some person in the background whispering into some power-hungery Legatus' ear about conquering the continent. He was the legatus conquering the continent. And grabbing control of all of Garlemald. And then deciding what to do after he got power. He was the Emperor. An Emperor who lied to the people he was leading about a lot of things. Including about the effect Primals had on the surrounding land, which was his reasoning for Garlemald to go about conquering people and stamping out their cultures/beliefs. It wasn't just "primals temper people". It was "Primals caused the Burn". Which he knows is a lie because he... would have been around with Amon created the Burn (and Azys Lla) back in the days of Allag.

Emet-Selch flat out admits he needed a Calamity to happen. And that his preferred meathod was political upheaval because he likes doing "nation building". Which pretty much means lying about who and what he is and how the world in general works to an entire nation's worth of people. And he himself knows the truth about all of it. He wants the current races of man to prove that they can't live up to the Ancients. So he purposely makes sure that's as hard for them to do as possible.

[EliTheGunbreaker]

( RE Obsidian, great, Cilia)

The whole thing about Garlean ideology and how it came to be reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend. While we don't have that much lore on the Republic( SE we want a Garlic expansion T_T), I feel like what is the closest to the truth would be that the Ascians fostered the seeds of prejudice that already were due to the Garleans being mistreated by their neighbors and blowing it out of proportions by giving Garlemald a leader they worship nudging them in certain direction. Where Solus pointed, people followed because they agreed with him. And it wouldn't be the first time the people in this game or IRL followed a charismatic person whom they regarded as a savior of sorts. Or maybe not even that charismatic, as we see in Ishgardians following King Thordan to slay a dragon.

In the end, it matters less how a government and society like Garlemald came to to be, what matters more is the fact that it is what it is, and it has become a problem to both citizens and conquered lands alike, very likely as the Ascians intended, and there is very little chance that a ( non-civillian)person who believes in it is a person without their hands stained in blood. The Empire as it is fosters a lot of destructive beliefs while discouraging a lot of good thing. And in the end, those who are born there, be it Gaius, Cid, Varis, Nero or whoever reap the way it is. If one is not a civillian, he options are to either defect or become a reflection of that system. And the Empire seems to more than encourage loyalty towards it's government. All in all, whether these are Ascians, Garleans, or both who created this, in the end, everyone is fed the same ideology.

I do find it interesting that he did not instantly resume conquest in 2.0, but I think there was a strategic reason for that if I remember right( think I read an article about tnat, but it was Google Translated from Japanese), or that he didn't go back to the remaining Castra. Was it Valdeaulin that stopped him? But then that begs he question on why strike a bargain with the elf instead of cutting him down. I wonder if returning to the Empire after such a failure would have been with disgrace or punishment... They did say in 2.x Gaius had problems after disobeying Garlemald to stop Nael. If memory serves me right, conquest of Eorzea should have rectified that, but... It went where it went. I am also curious about him attackig Zenos and foing to Ala Mhigo afterwards. If elaborated upon, this could shed more light on re exact relationship he had with Solus aka Emet and showcase more about what exact boundaries he has. I hope these points are elaborated on in the future.

As for al the Versper Bay discussion I think what Kuroka meant related to how I said that act alone is not the evilest thing that has been done in this universe or should be judged exclusively in Gaius and Livia when we and our superiors do the same. There may have been more vicious ways to do it too.

[Kesey]

The Ascians have not been doing much. All Emet did was give people with an inferiority complex a weapon and they ran with with. Emet says himself that his MO is to just give the people the tools to make their own chaos. He was very hands off. The Garlean people are the racist, counqoer race because of how they were treated and pushed from theri homes. They got a weapon that could compete with magic and then ran with it. The only other thing Emet did was say primals are bad.

I think you kinda missed the point on Emet. All of Shadowbringers he was like "I like to watch" and "I just want to observe" but the whole time he had plan. Emet is only hands off in the sense that he did the plotting behind your back.