Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
There's plenty of people who are fine with consequences happening to the protagonists, especially with how self righteous they end up getting at times.
I agree that there will be those people. I was responding to the statement on whether no consequence would be popular.

Incidentally, the original theme of the game - much like the Ivalice games - happened to be grit and realism. It was certainly the case back in ARR and HW. It just so happened that, like so many other things, a very vocal portion of the community learned that if they take to social media and complain very loudly, such things tend to be dialed back by the writers.

The game has also never been about 'good guys' and 'bad guys' according to the writers themselves. There's rare exceptions, such as Zenos, but pretty much every other major antagonist has been sympathetic in some manner with understandable goals.
I think there's a difference between someone being a bad guy and someone being a bad guy for reasons we can understand (or whatever word you want to use, if you get my meaning). I think none of the other antagonists are disqualified from being bad people just because of any sympathetic quality they may engender. The WoL can be sad while still killing them anyway because they are bad.