A game for 4 year olds

[Thenightvortex]

Speaking for myself, I can say that if Endwalker went the direction of Aveyond's rewrite fanfiction (although I'm not sure 'fan' is the right term in this context), I probably wouldn't have even finished it. That story was so full of... at best highly questionable viewpoints and ideas, at worst diverging into being hateful and concerning. I do not want to experience that sort of story, which is why a list of my favorite stories likely has very little overlap with theirs. And a big part of why I play FFXIV is that its story has never been anywhere near that hateful on any level; if Endwalker suddenly diverged into the likes of Aveyond's rewrite, it would've felt like a betrayal of all that had come before.

Not everyone hateplays a game; generally speaking, that's not fun for most people. Even less people continue hateplaying and wallowing in being that negative around the game's community for nearly an entire year afterwards. most people move on and find other things to do with their life!



If I'm allowed a moment to armchair speculate: I actually think that might be because you're more motivated by the character stories of the game rather than the grander and more societal ones. I love Endwalker's ending, but a lot of Ultima Thule was more about grappling with ideas than people, which doesn't always land for people. But for those who are more motivated by more direct character journeys and interactions, Zenos is the finale rather than the coda; one final culmination of a character journey before the credits roll. (Being essentially a representative of previous expansions as The Last Son Of Galvus probably helps with that too.)

What kind of viewpoints and ideas are you talking about? Anything worse that the narrative of Endwalker supporting genocide? I read the rewrite and I didn’t find anything nearly as egregious.

[Cleretic]

What kind of viewpoints and ideas are you talking about? Anything worse that the narrative of Endwalker supporting genocide? I read the rewrite and I didn’t find anything nearly as egregious.

If you immediately pitch Endwalker as having a message of 'supporting genocide', we're not going to have a productive and informative discussion here, and I have better things to do with my time than try.

[jameseoakes]

If you immediately pitch Endwalker as having a message of 'supporting genocide', we're not going to have a productive and informative discussion here, and I have better things to do with my time than try.

But that is the plot of Endwalker, the Venat outright betrays and exterminates her own people with one of the ingame reasons being outright eugenics or for not dealing with grief the way that Venat decides they should.

[KariTheFox]

What kind of viewpoints and ideas are you talking about? Anything worse that the narrative of Endwalker supporting genocide? I read the rewrite and I didn’t find anything nearly as egregious.

If I remember correctly, probably the part where the rightful heir of Garlean Throne sets up a soapbox, pulls out a megaphone and talks about how democracy is bad actually, and some people would actually be better off as vassal states of the Garlean Empire because they're just too violent and unruly to govern themselves. So, y'know, rhetoric that resembles actually real life justifications for genocide.

More egregious than the mythological genocide of a race of godlike supermen with no real life analogue through a process anti-apotheosis as a story to explain why there is suffering in the world, I'd say.

[Thenightvortex]

If I remember correctly, probably the part where the rightful heir of Garlean Throne sets up a soapbox, pulls out a megaphone and talks about how democracy is bad actually, and some people would actually be better off as vassal states of the Garlean Empire because they're just too violent and unruly to govern themselves. So, y'know, rhetoric that resembles actually real life justifications for genocide.

Democracy isn’t beyond criticism and not all fictional states have to be made democratic. Keeping Empire as is allows to have more variety in the story and is imo a good choice instead of completely wrecking it or making another bland democratic state by Alphinaud’s hand.

More egregious than the mythological genocide of a race of godlike supermen with no real life analogue through a process anti-apotheosis as a story to explain why there is suffering in the world, I'd say.

Nah miss me with the mythological stuff. The only thing that makes it fictionalized is the fact that their souls lived on to reincarnate, the process itself is a full on extermination. If a nuke was falling down on the ground before you, I don’t think your first reaction would be to gasp and say “wow, what a mythopoetic act of apotheosis this is”.

For a game intended for 4 years old, we circle back to genocide discussion pretty often.

The more I think about it, the more I have the impression that Endwalker is a kids book written by a psychopath.

[Cleretic]

Nah miss me with the mythological stuff. The only thing that makes it fictionalized is the fact that their souls lived on to reincarnate, the process itself is a full on extermination. If a nuke was falling down on the ground before you, I don’t think your first reaction would be to gasp and say “wow, what a mythopoetic act of apotheosis this is”.

No, the thing that makes it fictionalized is that it's a complete bag of fantastical nonsense that doesn't resemble any act that's ever happened in human history.

I've stopped comparing acts by Hydaelyn or the Ascians as genocide, because to do so would be to take away from the serious nature of genocide as a concept; it does not deserve to be thrown around to refer to fantastical fictional concepts like the Sundering, a worldwide flood, or even a Rejoining; not to mention, pinning that badge on those story beats is very clearly against the spirit of what the game is trying to do with all of those story beats. The term 'genocide' should reasonably only be brought up when referring to things that actually resemble real-world acts that have been called such, of which FFXIV is not free of, so we should probably save that term for when it's more apropos.


Incidentally, have you been doing the quests that you started this thread to talk about? Because I have, and I find it more interesting than this derail, so let's get back to it.



Gonna spoiler-tag this out of courtesy for the people who haven't yet done it, which I suspect the most talkative people here might not have!

'Robots learn they have feelings' is not exactly a new concept even in this game, but I'm a sucker for it. And I like that a not insignificant part of the quest is about Jammingway having to meet N-7000 where it's at, rather than entirely N-7000 being the one doing the growing.

Interesting that the Nibirun still haven't been resolved; the Bloodsworn capstone is rarely used for story development, so maybe they're beeing held back for another quest. Perhaps the allied tribe quest?

[RukoBoshi]

Gonna spoiler-tag this out of courtesy for the people who haven't yet done it, which I suspect the most talkative people here might not have!

'Robots learn they have feelings' is not exactly a new concept even in this game, but I'm a sucker for it. And I like that a not insignificant part of the quest is about Jammingway having to meet N-7000 where it's at, rather than entirely N-7000 being the one doing the growing.

Interesting that the Nibirun still haven't been resolved; the Bloodsworn capstone is rarely used for story development, so maybe they're beeing held back for another quest. Perhaps the allied tribe quest?

Will there even be an allied tribe questline in the future ? SHB didn't get one, so i was under the impression that they won't do these anymore.

[jameseoakes]

No, the thing that makes it fictionalized is that it's a complete bag of fantastical nonsense that doesn't resemble any act that's ever happened in human history.

I've stopped comparing acts by Hydaelyn or the Ascians as genocide, because to do so would be to take away from the serious nature of genocide as a concept; it does not deserve to be thrown around to refer to fantastical fictional concepts like the Sundering, a worldwide flood, or even a Rejoining; not to mention, pinning that badge on those story beats is very clearly against the spirit of what the game is trying to do with all of those story beats. The term 'genocide' should reasonably only be brought up when referring to things that actually resemble real-world acts that have been called such, of which FFXIV is not free of, so we should probably save that term for when it's more apropos.


Incidentally, have you been doing the quests that you started this thread to talk about? Because I have, and I find it more interesting than this derail, so let's get back to it.

If that goes against the plot of the game then it shouldn't have been what they wrote, they even do a scene where she condemns the ancients before succouring them for existence and I don't appreciate your gatekeeping, genocide seems a apt term where she exterminates a race and its' culture for having the wrong kind of biology and society

[Thenightvortex]

No, the thing that makes it fictionalized is that it's a complete bag of fantastical nonsense that doesn't resemble any act that's ever happened in human history.

I've stopped comparing acts by Hydaelyn or the Ascians as genocide, because to do so would be to take away from the serious nature of genocide as a concept; it does not deserve to be thrown around to refer to fantastical fictional concepts like the Sundering, a worldwide flood, or even a Rejoining; not to mention, pinning that badge on those story beats is very clearly against the spirit of what the game is trying to do with all of those story beats. The term 'genocide' should reasonably only be brought up when referring to things that actually resemble real-world acts that have been called such, of which FFXIV is not free of, so we should probably save that term for when it's more apropos.

No, a bag of fantastical nonsense does not negate the actual similarities. Just because you don’t want to process it does not make it so distant from the real-life events. Anyway, I agree that the term “genocide” should be used for events that actually resemble it, so let’s see.

“ In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.”

Pretty much all of this applies to Venat except transferring children. She acted with the intent to destroy and eliminate ancients because with reasoning that is very similar to eugenics as well, “they were born unable to interact with Dynamis and thus are imperfect”. The erasure of memory also meant annihilation of their culture, which is yet another common trait of genocide. It’s not hard to play the game if that’s what you wish to do.

[MikkoAkure]

Democracy isn’t beyond criticism and not all fictional states have to be made democratic. Keeping Empire as is allows to have more variety in the story and is imo a good choice instead of completely wrecking it or making another bland democratic state by Alphinaud’s hand.

Oh boy, here we go with the same old tired argument that Garlemald needs to stay an empire due to "variety".

Most states in the game are not democratic to begin with, and those that changed their governments each had a completely valid reason of doing so. Each had lost their entire ruling class and had recent histories of absolute monarchs becoming tyrants that ruined their countries.

Garlemald was a democratic republic for 600 years. The empire was specifically built by an outsider who had no love for the Garleans or Garlemald and it was intended to fall apart. They had two civil wars over the succession of the throne that destroyed the homeland and killed scores of Garleans. The Garleans ended up destroying their own empire by themselves without the need of rebels or revolution and that happened before Endwalker so the expansion can't be blamed for that. What point is there to keep an empire going when the capital city is a pile of rubble and every single time a leader dies, the legions fight each other and kill their own people?

Aveyond's fanfiction is poorly researched when it comes to the lore we know on Garlemald, which is to be expected of one who has Russian in the Cyrillic script in his signature representing Garlemald despite the fact that all the people, places, and objects named by Garleans are in Latin. His story has a pretty, blonde Grand Duchess (title that doesn't exist) become heir to the throne (women aren't allowed to, according to Garlean society), with a super special unique Russian/Hrothgar name instead of a Latin one (Svetlana) get locked away by Varis because she liked a non-Garlean before coming back and taking over the empire. The senate is portrayed by Aveyond as being evil and doing acts of terrorism against the general populace and assassinating nobles despite the fact that in the actual game they're a powerless and divided faction with different ideas and one of the factions themselves is purged by Varis. That little tidbit coming right after a preachy spiel about how "democracy is bad and the empire knows better for its people" and Alphinuad being laughed at for "pitching democracy" feels like bad writing and a giant over-correction based on the writer's views.

But sure, the denizens of Garlemald would be thrilled to have another Galvus on the throne because the past year has been AWESOME and the Garlean people will put their full-support behind their new empress, a Garlean woman pregnant with a baby from the leader of a recently rebelling province despite the fact that Garleans of all social strata refer to non-Garleans as "savages". The people should be happy that they're continuing their ancient, storied (60 years), tradition of having a ruler from the family that has tried to varying degrees of success to kill their own people three times before, but the fourth time must be the charm.