FFXIV's story is threading on dangerous religious grounds

[SeverianLyonesse]

People still can't tell fantasy from real life and think that everything artists create is a direct message and reflection of their views?

Sorry, but snippy attempts at shutting down all analytical discourse really irk me.

1) All fiction is somewhat rooted in reality and our perception/understanding of it. It is impossible to totally separate fiction from reality, nor would I ever try to because escapism is lazy and parasitic to the greater social organism.

2) The FF series is no stranger to incorporating real-world issues into its writing, and FF XIV is probably the installment to date that does it the most. Any argument that FF XIV does *not* encourage players to think about such things as institutions, tribalism, colonialism, class-inequity, exceptionalism, authoritarianism and *especially* religion would necessarily have to be founded on profound ignorance and evasiveness.

[ArkenaeuxBelmont]

Sorry, but snippy attempts at shutting down all analytical discourse really irk me.

1) All fiction is somewhat rooted in reality and our perception/understanding of it. It is impossible to totally separate fiction from reality, nor would I ever try to because escapism is lazy and parasitic to the greater social organism.

2) The FF series is no stranger to incorporating real-world issues into its writing, and FF XIV is probably the installment to date that does it the most. Any argument that FF XIV does *not* encourage players to think about such things as institutions, tribalism, colonialism, class-inequity, exceptionalism, authoritarianism and *especially* religion would necessarily have to be founded on profound ignorance and evasiveness.

Or, you know, you could just play the game and enjoy yourself.

Not everyone has to look so deep as to find some super secret hidden meaning and agenda in things.

Chill out.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Or, you know, you could just play the game and enjoy yourself.

Not everyone has to look so deep as to find some super secret hidden meaning and agenda in things.

Chill out.

I agree.

But I also don't need to suffer people insisting that entertainment media cannot or should not have real-world meaning. It's a fiercely self-absorbed and anti-intellectual stance to take, not to mention just factually inaccurate.

People crap their two-second ideas onto these forums to defend their lazy, consumerist lifestyles. And the lifestyle itself is fine, totally their prerogative. But spreading misinformation and atrociously underthought, counterproductive heuristics to justify it doesn't help anyone other than to create the sort of toxic, no-thought "spout quippy soundbytes" discourse that produces BS threads like this in the first place.

[Caurcas]

I agree.

But I also don't need to suffer people insisting that entertainment media cannot or should not have real-world meaning. It's a fiercely self-absorbed and anti-intellectual stance to take, not to mention just factually inaccurate.

People crap their two-second ideas onto these forums to defend their lazy, consumerist lifestyles. And the lifestyle itself is fine, totally their prerogative. But spreading misinformation and atrociously underthought, counterproductive heuristics to justify it doesn't help anyone other than to create the sort of toxic, no-thought "spout quippy soundbytes" discourse that produces BS threads like this in the first place.

I too, enjoy vocabulary.