/r/ffxivdiscussion: Has FFXIV had any major retcons or plot holes in the story?

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Do we even know if they had genes? These are not humans-- they are humanoids. If the game explains their constitution beyond form and soul, I am not aware of that. They were not turned into cockroaches, they were turned into what we would conventionally call humans. Someone mentioned when Alphinaud talks about genocide in game, but notice he's calling out the targeting of a group of humans.

Taking away magic or even the way lifespans decrease here are fictional concepts, so making it 1:1 with reality is (I suppose) an interesting ethical analysis. Ultimately though when you kill someone in reality, there's no mechanism to reconstitute them or commune with their souls. I'm not saying what happened isn't tragic, I'm just saying it isn't a genocide. There may be a word for it, but due to this being a fictional story about not humans, I am unsure what it would be. Moreover, the game is arguing it was inherent to survival. The Ancients don't even refer to their own massacres as genocide-- and I'm not talking about the initial voluntary participants. They had later plans to sacrifice lesser beings to Zodiark as well. I wouldn't exactly call that genocide either because it lacks any political or ethical context-- Zodiark needs fuel that's inherent to survival (from their perspective). So is sacrificing those lesser beings genocide? I am unsure.

Arguing their morals don't apply to us because their world is fictional seems like a huge dismissal of the point of fiction. I mean aren't we taking these situations out of our real world to examine them in a way that does not impact us personally? To see from a different perspective? After all, that's what upsets me so much about how Venat is treated, the game has sold people on the notion that sometimes inferior people need to die so that the strong may survive and if you think that moral won't carry over into the real world, again, I have to wonder have you never heard of fiction before? FF14 has always used it's tales to push moral philosophies, to make us think. What gets under my skin about EW is it made way too many people think it's okay to kill someone and take all their resources if you believe you can make better use of them. No. That's bad actually.

I limit my emotional and moral investment in stories, As it ruins the story for me if I dont.

FF14 used to be the game I played to relax. Then it suddenly decided my character's existence would be built on a billion human sacrifices and I'd just need to be okay with that. And I simply don't know how to be. I wish there was some explanation that meant I was misunderstanding the narrative and nothing I believe happened actually happened, but no, that does not seem to be the case. The case seems to be I just need to be cool with my existence being built on mass genocide.

[Eisi]

FF14 used to be the game I played to relax. Then it suddenly decided my character's existence would be built on a billion human sacrifices and I'd just need to be okay with that. And I simply don't know how to be. I wish there was some explanation that meant I was misunderstanding the narrative and nothing I believe happened actually happened, but no, that does not seem to be the case. The case seems to be I just need to be cool with my existence being built on mass genocide.

The solution is that obviously the writers didn't intend for there to be a genocide. Yes, Venat consciously decided that it was the best course of action without alternative, but that is because the writers wanted you to travel back in time, meet her, don't create an alternate timeline like G'raha, retain a conscious bond with Venat and have everything happen exactly the way it did. They wrote backwards from the conclusion. They put this story together in a minute and didn't think about the implications. That is the explanation. For god's sake there is a literal mind-wipe device machina'd into the plot just to somehow make the timeloop possible. This is clearly a rushed and carelessly put together mess of a storyline. Don't take it any more seriously than the writers did.