Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

[KariTheFox]

Even so, regardless of what you yourself think of the parameters of the test, it was administered, from Emet-Selch's perspective, on the basis of good faith and a sincere hope that we would pass and that together, we could find another way. That is indisputable. So any claims of "oh, he never really looked for another way, he'd always had his mind made up, he just wanted an excuse to condemn us" are flat-out, black and white, incorrect. Emet-Selch - as further indicated by Elpis - if anything, was desperately looking for an excuse to stop.

He should have looked a little harder, then. I can think of plenty of good reasons for him to not keep rejoining worlds - like the lives of all the people in them.

[Brinne]

He should have looked a little harder, then. I can think of plenty of good reasons for him to not keep rejoining worlds - like the lives of all the people in them.

Yes, and to Emet-Selch's knowledge, stopping before he can be sure the Sundered are capable of protecting the star is not only failing his people, but also nearly guaranteeing the star's destruction at some point in the future. Because from his perspective, and to his belief, the Sundered were on the wrong path, and had demonstrated through their frailty, cruelty, and selfishness to each other that they were showing too much weakness to do what had to be done in the case of something like the Final Days.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Hint: a certain someone maybe should have looked a little harder for another way. I can think of plenty of good reasons for her to not Sunder the world - like the lives of all the people on it.

[Cleretic]

My opinion has always been that Emet was unjustified in committing genocide, just as Venat was in commiting genocide with the sundering. But her genocide sits okay with you, I suppose?

My view is that, in the Final Days of Amaurot--so basically, Elpis through to the Sundering--nobody was definitively in the moral wrong. Hermes was a dingus, but that's about it. From various perspectives they were all doing what they felt was right, all making as educated a decision as they could have. But it also has a facet of unreality about it all; we've got characters named after Greek gods for a reason, and it's because we're essentially looking at a creation myth playing out in front of us, I can't really declare anyone guilty of any real crime. It would be like putting the Judeo-Christian god on trial for flooding the world for forty days. On a moral level I would say that I'd be on Venat's side if I were in Amaurot in those days, because ultimately I'm an environmentalist, but the stakes are too absurd for me to truly take that point all too personally or to say that anyone is guilty of, really, any crime recognized in 2022 legal systems.

...at that point. Because in general concept I think it's completely understandable that the Rejoinings represent sort of a decline into villainy for the Ascians; it remains abstract, but across the Calamities we stop looking at a group trying to do their best, and eventually start looking at a group with far more blood on their hands than they could have ever saved, and with nothing more than superficial or inhumane reasons to defend themselves ('to me you're not people, so it's not murder if I kill you' may or may not have been meant when it was said, but it was definitely the genuine party line at some point). While the story didn't have any villains in the days of Amaurot, it did have some by the time we hit the days of Ul'Dah, Gridania and Limsa.

Especially because Emet-Selch took those abstract and unreal crimes and made them irredeemably real. Knowing that the Garlean Empire was an Ascian plot, as were all of their evils, which are based heavily on real-life atrocities of war that still have reverberations to this day, completely destroys for me the notion that Emet, and indeed any Ascians, could be sympathetic. The Sundering is abstract and fantastical, but a great number of the Garlean Empire's acts (particularly in Stormblood and its patches) are not, and tying the two scales together as Emet-does makes him too real an evil for me to accept him as just 'a man who had to make hard choices'. The Sundering is absurd fantasy genocide; the Garlean Empire has performed actual, UN-definition genocide. (As has Allag, which was apparently also him.)

It's complicated, and honestly Emet-Selch is a black spot in my entire enjoyment of the game because of that; I can enjoy both origin-myth-scale fantasy and down-to-earth war stories, but Emet-Selch is the exact wrong way to do both of them at the same time for me. As I've said before, I feel I land in Venat's court for genuine personal reasons, and if I completely extracted all characters and personalities from the events I would make the same choice. But at the same time, I can't say that my feelings about Emet-Selch don't factor into a full explanation of my views.

[redheadturk]

Your straw-Venat seems very impressive, but unfortunately the real Venat is a few feet to your left. Surrounded by just short of a dozen academics who had genuine reason to agree with her without the 'oh she's just surrendering all agency to time travel' excuse you're using to demean her agency, and who believed entirely in the cause.

So, let's perhaps revise the argument's direction for you: the third sacrifice isn't 'substantial enough for Venat to object to'. It's 'substantial enough for at least eleven environmentally-conscious academics to object to'. Essentially; what level of sacrifice do you think would have been enough to set off a room full of people like the Watcher?

You're forgetting the fact that the sacrifice was irrelevant. Venat had made her decision prior to her confronting those strawman Ancients in the cutscene, and even if they had never come up with the plan for the third sacrifice she was gonna do what she was gonna do.

[Cleretic]

You're forgetting the fact that the sacrifice was irrelevant. Venat had made her decision prior to her confronting those strawman Ancients in the cutscene, and even if they had never come up with the plan for the third sacrifice she was gonna do what she was gonna do.

And you're forgetting that Venat had people alongside her, willing to go along with it. Educated people, who were not tricked, and one who even today stands by it. Again: if you think 'what sort of third sacrifice would be considered too much for Venat' is an invalid question, instead ask yourself 'what sort of third sacrifice would be considered too much for The Watcher'.

Or, if you're someone who likes the angle of putting yourself in the argument's shoes: if this were happening on Earth, what sort of non-human sacrifice would be enough to give you reason to pause and think? What level of non-human sacrifice, even if you were okay with it, would be big enough to make you go 'okay I can see why people would object to this'?

Whatever you land on, for either of those situations, that's the third sacrifice.

[tokinokanatae]

That doesn’t make sense to even ask. The level that we, as players, balk at is obvious, it’s the sacrifice of 75% of our own number from the very beginning. We would gladly nuke all pigs, dolphin, crows, and apes (or any other animal with unusual intelligence closer to our own) before even considering that level of sacrifice of our own.

You can’t compare, it’s fundamentally different.

[redheadturk]

To be quite honest, if genociding the monkey population on Earth would save our people, I would be completely ok with it. Survival of our species is paramount in my eyes, no matter what has to be sacrificed to secure that survival.

[tokinokanatae]

Like, not to double post, but you do understand that if the Final Days were upon humanity and we knew we could avert it with a mass sacrifice of generic “life”, WE’RE not first on the chopping block? Right?

The First Sacrifice: Animals we’re already used to killing for food.
The Second Sacrifice: Animals we don’t typically kill (companion animals)
The Third Sacrifice: Would not occur because humanity wouldn’t sacrifice themselves to bring back specific cows.

[Brinne]

It's hard not to read that line of thought as amounting to, essentially:

"So what do you think was the third sacrifice?"
"Whatever makes Venat justified."

[Cleretic]

That doesn’t make sense to even ask. The level that we, as players, balk at is obvious, it’s the sacrifice of 75% of our own number from the very beginning. We would gladly nuke all pigs, dolphin, crows, and apes (or any other animal with unusual intelligence closer to our own) before even considering that level of sacrifice of our own.

You can’t compare, it’s fundamentally different.

I don't think that's obvious at all. I would not be on board with that level of mass death of animals by any means, especially because those animals wouldn't really be consenting, unlike those first two sacrifices, and that a world that's without all those animals probably will not function as well. Especially when remembering that the third sacrifice isn't to save mankind; at that point both mankind and the planet is doing fine; you are ONLY acting to bring back the voluntary sacrifices.

The way you two are talking, no sacrifice is too big for that; you are willing to sacrifice the baseline functionality of the planet's ecosystem to bring these people back. After that point, you're bringing people back to a world that likely can't sustain. Is that okay to you? Is even that level of sacrifice so 'nothing' that you can't imagine people objecting to it?

It's hard not to read that line of thought as amounting to, essentially:

"So what do you think was the third sacrifice?"
"Whatever makes Venat justified."

Not quite. Again: for the story to work, all the third sacrifice needs to be is 'objectionably big', and I'm trying to get across that that is possible even if the sacrifices are not sentient lives. All the third sacrifice needs to be is substantial enough that educated people would believably object to it.

Apparently we've hit the theoretical maximum quite quickly; is the baseline sustainability of the ecosystem still a minor price to pay?