The clones of Emet.

[Katie_Kitty]

Pretty sure the devs themselves have said they don’t explicitly label many people as evil or good in the story. They specify the ShB story is a matter of perspective. Both sides aren’t good both sides aren’t bad.

That's pretty obviously BS though. The ascian morality is pretty black-and-white, they are irredeemably evil. I don't personally agree that there's any grey area here at all. Ascians want to actively engage in genocide, and that's bad (regardless of motivation).

[KizuyaKatogami]

That's pretty obviously BS though. The ascian morality is pretty black-and-white, they are irredeemably evil. I don't personally agree that there's any grey area here at all. Ascians want to actively engage in genocide, and that's bad (regardless of motivation).

You’re free to believe that in your headcanon, but if the devs and writers themselves have said it, i’m inclined to believe it. It’s also a theme that’s very prevalent in past ff’s as well. It isn’t as simple as them just wanting to commit genocide for the sake of it anyhow but i know some people need to simplify things so they’re easier to understand. Irregardless though, even the protags have engaged in mass murder.Limsa with the kobolds, Uldah with the zombification of another city state, WoL and all the creatures he kills etc.

[MikkoAkure]

You’re free to believe that in your headcanon, but if the devs and writers themselves have said it, i’m inclined to believe it. It’s also a theme that’s very prevalent in past ff’s as well. It isn’t as simple as them just wanting to commit genocide for the sake of it anyhow but i know some people need to simplify things so they’re easier to understand. Irregardless though, even the protags have engaged in mass murder.Limsa with the kobolds, Uldah with the zombification of another city state, WoL and all the creatures he kills etc.

None of those things you listed were considered good things by characters in-game. Meanwhile, Emet-Selch walks around the First wearing the body of a random innocent he found and possessed and then mutated their body to look how he wants himself to be presented.

You're also missing the fact that Banri Oda, the story creator, had said that while we have been made to understand the Ascians' motivations and that good and evil are relative, we only have their side of the story and haven't heard Hydaelyn's yet.

To the Ascians, we're the bad ones standing in the way of bringing their loved ones and their society back. But we're not the Ascians and their goal is achieved by wiping us out as well as our own society. WoL hesitated when asked if they wouldn't do the same thing were they in their shoes, but the fact remains that we're fighting for our survival against beings that don't consider us to be worthwhile and float while doing evil laughs as things blow up around them. While we may understand their motivations to the point that we can empathize with them, that does not mean that their actions are condoned nor does it change the fact that we're on the wrong side of the fence as it were.

Its kinda scary how many people are ready to abandon Crystal Mom and join the edgelord legal defense team just because Foxy Grandpa made us sad, and we haven't even heard her perspective of events yet.

[Katie_Kitty]

You’re free to believe that in your headcanon, but if the devs and writers themselves have said it, i’m inclined to believe it. It’s also a theme that’s very prevalent in past ff’s as well. It isn’t as simple as them just wanting to commit genocide for the sake of it anyhow but i know some people need to simplify things so they’re easier to understand. Irregardless though, even the protags have engaged in mass murder.Limsa with the kobolds, Uldah with the zombification of another city state, WoL and all the creatures he kills etc.

Fortunately, I'm a human being with a working brain who is able to make moral judgements on my own. And my judgement is that the ascians are simply evil. They represent an existential threat to millions of innocent people and their only reason for doing it is because they're homesick.

Yes. Emet's story is sad. I sympathize with him, don't get me wrong! But he's completely in the wrong here, is engaging in simply evil destructive behavior that cannot be justified, and furthermore has the audacity to try to rationalize it with his "you're not really alive" BS. It doesn't fly with me, nope. It's evil.

[KizuyaKatogami]

None of those things you listed were considered good things by characters in-game. Meanwhile, Emet-Selch walks around the First wearing the body of a random innocent he found and possessed and then mutated their body to look how he wants himself to be presented.

You're also missing the fact that Banri Oda, the story creator, had said that while we have been made to understand the Ascians' motivations and that good and evil are relative, we only have their side of the story and haven't heard Hydaelyn's yet.

To the Ascians, we're the bad ones standing in the way of bringing their loved ones and their society back. But we're not the Ascians and their goal is achieved by wiping us out as well as our own society. WoL hesitated when asked if they wouldn't do the same thing were they in their shoes, but the fact remains that we're fighting for our survival against beings that don't consider us to be worthwhile and float while doing evil laughs as things blow up around them. While we may understand their motivations to the point that we can empathize with them, that does not mean that their actions are condoned nor does it change the fact that we're on the wrong side of the fence as it were.

Its kinda scary how many people are ready to abandon Crystal Mom and join the edgelord legal defense team just because Foxy Grandpa made us sad, and we haven't even heard her perspective of events yet.

The scary part imo is how quick people are to ally with a being who first people didn’t even thing the primal aspect applied to because she must be perfect. I abandoned her a long time ago when we learned she sundered the world. However i don’t necessarily resent her. It’s moreso Venat that i find to be particularly suspicious and don’t trust at all. Personally i agree with the ascian plight more than the sundered one.Apparently according to interviews too that’s what the writers intend. For people to take different sides and agree with different ideals.Those issues i brought up are another matter of perspective though and require context to understand.

[Veloran]

Ascians want to actively engage in genocide, and that's bad (regardless of motivation).

Technically by killing Emet-Selch and Elidibus WoL also did a genocide.

[MikkoAkure]

The scary part imo is how quick people are to ally with a being who first people didn’t even thing the primal aspect applied to because she must be perfect. I abandoned her a long time ago when we learned she sundered the world. However i don’t necessarily resent her. It’s moreso Venat that i find to be particularly suspicious and don’t trust at all. Personally i agree with the ascian plight more than the sundered one.Apparently according to interviews too that’s what the writers intend. For people to take different sides and agree with different ideals.Those issues i brought up are another matter of perspective though and require context to understand.

I don't see where Yoshi-P or Banri Oda said that the writers intended for some of us to agree more with the Ascians. Yoshi-P said that he wanted people to enjoy the game one way or another in the context of thinking more about themselves and society rather than good vs evil, not whether or not you should be full on staning for the Ascians. They also said:

"But I didn’t necessarily feel that Emet-Selch was a friendly Villain, even though he was closer to the Warriors of Light. He always kept the Ascian code as his standard. He was always looking if the Warriors of Light would do what he wanted. So that is why he seemed more friendly. He has is own justice and his own standard."

"The Shadowbringers storyline touched upon the core of FFXIV, which means we need players to understand who the Ascians are, how they are motivated, what their mission is, and why the Warrior of Light needs to fight them."

"If you just think about it without Emet-Selch’s humanised side, the Ascians have done these atrocious things seven times now, sacrificing so many lives. But the players are saying ‘we’re so sad, we want him back.’ That said, we haven’t heard what Hydalen has to say, because they’re two sides of the same coin, so we have to tell something about that as well."

Technically by killing Emet-Selch and Elidibus WoL also did a genocide.

Technically, as disembodied spirits, they're already dead. We just did a bit of ghostbusting.

[Veloran]

They also said:

In FFXIV, the story progresses without explicit boundaries defining good or evil due in part to my own tastes and preferences in storytelling. History is typically defined by the winners, and in these cases, it is the loser who is consistently depicted as evil.

However, each side had something that they stood for, and the definition of good and evil shifted depending on the times, peoples’ values, education, and laws. I try to picture what would people believe despite such circumstances, or how people find hope in the face of inevitable despair.

Personally, I don’t wish for players to feel a certain way as they play through the story. I say this because I believe people should have freedom in that aspect. I hope our players enjoy Endwalker!

Even in modern-day life, people already hold different views on where to draw the line between good and evil. The same can be said when you look back on history, in which the claims of those who emerged victorious were deemed to be right, whereas those who lost were wrong. However, with developments in culture and education, everyone knows that the world doesn’t work in a simple “good is right and evil is wrong” sort of way—I believe the world of Shadowbringers is a representation of that very idea.

They also explicitly said that there is no good or evil between Hydaelyn and Zodiark.

Technically, as disembodied spirits, they're already dead. We just did a bit of ghostbusting.

Pretty sure that's not how it works, unless you don't mind all the Scions on the First being murdered because they're just ghosts.

[GoldStarz]

You’re free to believe that in your headcanon, but if the devs and writers themselves have said it, i’m inclined to believe it. It’s also a theme that’s very prevalent in past ff’s as well. It isn’t as simple as them just wanting to commit genocide for the sake of it anyhow but i know some people need to simplify things so they’re easier to understand. Irregardless though, even the protags have engaged in mass murder.Limsa with the kobolds, Uldah with the zombification of another city state, WoL and all the creatures he kills etc.

Why does it feel like you're only talking point is "but the heroes did some bad stuff, too" whenever the Garleans and Ascians actions are brought up? As if it isn't just some extremely blatant false equivalence or people aren't actively sorry and trying to make reparations for things they did?

The Ascians want to commit genocide for completely selfish reasons. Those reasons are understandable and you can empathize with them, but it does not make what they want to any less horrible or what they've done any more excusable.

Technically by killing Emet-Selch and Elidibus WoL also did a genocide.

Genocide has to be done with the intent of killing a race of peoples, WoL hasn't even technically committed genocide by killing the Ascians.

[MikkoAkure]

They also explicitly said that there is no good or evil between Hydaelyn and Zodiark.

Like I had said before, "good" and "evil" is relative, but even then our existence depends on defeating the Ascians since our goals are contradictory. You can fully understand and empathize with why they want to do it, but it doesn't change the fact that for their goal to be realized, our world needs to end. You're delusional if you think that the end result of all of Shadowbringers is that we're going to change our minds on the whole thing and make all the calamities happen because we feel bad. I'm still waiting for Hydaelyn's point of view before I make any judgements on anything. I'm not defending her outright, but I am saying that we need the full picture before we come to conclusions.

If this were a court trial, we wouldn't suddenly decide to convict and sentence Crystal Mom without hearing a statement from the defense just because the lawyers for Deadbeat Dad made us feel sad.

Sure, Hydaelyn didn't tell us much at all at first, but we weren't really in a position to doubt anything since we were in constant mortal peril from the Ascians. In ShB had a chance to breath and hear their side out and understand why they want to kill all humans, but we still ended up defeating the last 2 Ascians who cared. It's just that we felt bad about it.

Pretty sure that's not how it works, unless you don't mind all the Scions on the First being murdered because they're just ghosts.

The Scions still had bodies on the Source. The Ascians are disembodied souls that depend on possessing the bodies of the dead (sundered) or the living (unsundered) in order to manifest in our world. When the body they're possessing is destroyed, they "harness the power of the Crystal of Darkness to find sanctuary in a space that lies twixt corporeal and aetherial" instead of slipping out into the Lifestream like everything else that dies. Sounds like a ghost to me.