Zodiark's Codex entry what do we think about it?

[Cleretic]

Once again, Cleretic, we're talking about the writing choices, not which character or faction you side with more because something something fantasy reasons. It doesn't ultimately matter, nor is anyone actually arguing, about who was ultimately "more wrong" in this entirely made up conflict. You're shadowboxing again. We're talking about the writing being fundamentally wrong, if you want to put it that way, for putting forth a situation and a framework in which we're expected to nod along with one genocide or the other, and consider the act of "deliberate annihilation of a race of people," if you like, a necessary evil committed by a character we're ultimately meant to see as tragically heroic. Take your pick as to which one, or all, if you really want.

It's the writing hemming and hawing and kicking up dust, seeing the gross rationalizing of a mass atrocity that's otherwise universally condemned in its own narrative, as acceptable in their feel-good quest to make Everyone Likable, as opposed to, you know, "genocide is always wrong."

I'm realizing that I might be more okay with this because I've had experience with the Shin Megami Tensei series, and realizing that this is essentially their attempt to do similar in a different framework.

Like in mainline Shin Megami Tensei games, I think the intention is to use that mythological context to essentially blow out the scale of a personal quandry to the absolute maximum. And I think that works really well when SMT does it for two reasons:

1. When the scale is so far beyond what a human would be capable of, human scales of justice and morality no longer apply. I like bringing up the flood in the story of Noah for this; it's hard to call him guilty of any human crime for that, so the questions then change and become more conceptual.

And 2. Going that big questions the extremes of a human level of morality. You might generally believe in law and order as far as an average human being can affect that, but how far does that go before you draw the line and stop being comfortable? (Genuinely, Strange Journey's Law path was a bit of a revelation for me there, although I wouldn't exactly call it a masterpiece.)

I definitely feel like that's what they're trying to go for with the Zodiark-Hydaelyn conflict, although the nature of the game and story means they can't center it as much--both in terms of 'it came up several expansions into a story so it can't be the main crux of things', and 'the nature of the game itself means we can't let the player make this decision'. Still, I think it's a laudable effort and mostly gets across the goal and intention, even if it's not perfect. And even then, 'improving' it as a reader would be very difficult, because you have to both keep an even hand and also not 'soften' either side too much; this sort of story doesn't work if the choice is easy. (Which incidentally is why most SMT Neutral endings suck.)

Funnily enough, it's not that I 'don't care about the weird writing choices': it's that I liked them. Although it's probably a bit ironic that I really liked that part but hated Fake Amaurot and Elpis as story sections.