We Haven't Been Heroes In A Long Time

[OMGJesuis66]

I mean, Vyrerus is kinda right. Ascians and Venat are both evil and ready to commit a genocide but for some reason Venat is portrayed as an hero when doing it. The issue is not what happened in the ancient history, the issues is the game being bad at telling morally gray story.

Both Venat and Emmet are willing to kill thousands of souls just to stall the end of time and hope they can find a solution during that time.

In fact, the story did a better job at doing moral lesson in SHB when we had no idea on what is the End of time or how it work. Ascians being ready to sacrifice every lives in the shard was way harder to justify whitout knowing the end of time was still ongoing and that Zodiark was still holding it back AND that Venat creating the shard didn't solve anything by itself.

Again, the issue is not that ''Ascians were the good guy'' no they weren't, But Neither is Venat so why is she portrayed in a heroic way? Why does the Scions and WoL ''team'' get a pass when it time to unquestionably commit genocide but it suddenly innaceptable when the ''evil guys'' do it. It just make the message the game trying to pass trougth it story less believable.

This perspective will always be the most comical one that this community has. Holy guacamole.

[Magikazam]

This perspective will always be the most comical one that this community has. Holy guacamole.

The perspective that Genocide is bad?

[Nestama]

I think we're past that point.....not sure there's anything left to raise at this point

It's just a little thoroughly beaten! It's still good, it's still good!

[Voidmage]

snip

What people always forget is that the WoL fights for THEIR world first and foremost.
That world was a result of Venats actions. No matter what those were it resulted in the world right now and we fight for it.
The unsundered world isn’t our home and we are not Azem. The WoL is their own person in a sundered world.
The whole sundering act is not deeply criticized because it resulted in the world here and now, their world and because it can’t be changed either way while the rejoinings can still be stopped.

Just because the creation of a world had a dark past doesn’t make that world a mistake.

Living memory was actively risking other worlds and life.
Yes the story brushes over it too quick but it’s never implied to not be a sad thing.
If anything is to be criticized it’s that the credits don’t even mention that anymore.

The Asciens were crackling villains. They didn’t do all that stuff because of the goodness of their heart. Most of them made no secret of enjoying it.
Emet Selch is the only one who was implied to be burdened by it and even then he was willing to sacrifice all those living beings in the end.
Venat regretted it and in the end she pays for it with her very soul while the others can be reborn.

That whole discussion has been talked to death in the EW threads.

[Yumarox]

Did everyone forget that to keep the Endless going they need to feed more souls into it? Perhaps this is the story's fault for not having enough kicking-the-dog moments but the plan was to consume one world to keep another going.

Maybe these debates would not have happened if they destroyed G'raha Tia's soul first as a proof of concept.

[CVXIV]

Survival at all costs?

The cost is another individual's soul.
When a person dies they are then forgotten by anyone that knew them, which is supposed to be seen as a mercy but all it does is make them blind to the reality of what is going on.

These memories are given form in a slowly decaying world that cannot be sustained, evident by the fact that it takes a very long time for the memories of a person to take shape, which is the entire reason why conquest was decided so that more souls could be harvested.

It is a perversion to the natural cycle of life and death, which they emphasize several times during the later part of the MSQ.

Not to mention that the Endless are not even entirely comprised of Alexandrians, but people taken from the source as well.

Sphene helped launch the attack on Tural, taking many of its citizens then aiding in the assault on Tuliyolal which led to the deaths of so many people. She isn't some benevolent ruler in the slightest and had to be stopped otherwise all life would cease to exist.

I also want to mention that I am pretty sure that the endless are not gone completely but simply returned to the lifestream, and I believe Erenville makes the comment about seeing his mom again one day to tell her of all his travels which wouldn't be possible if she were erased completely.

[Astrus]

[...]
Again, the issue is not that ''Ascians were the good guy'' no they weren't, But Neither is Venat so why is she portrayed in a heroic way? Why does the Scions and WoL ''team'' get a pass when it time to unquestionably commit genocide but it suddenly innaceptable when the ''evil guys'' do it.[...]

Because that is the way the story is written.
Good and evil, heroes and villains have always been a matter of perspective and the perspective of a non-interactive story told through the singular viewpoint of its protagonist tends to be static. The WoL has been thoroughly tempered by the story and the story wants us to be heroes so heroes we are.
With the work DTs writing has done to eliminate any notion of the WoL possibly having misgivings about anything that is supposed to happen in the MSQ I wouldn't hold my breath on the story ever acknowledging that maybe not everything we do is good. Unless they decide to change beats for an expansion and everything we did was evil, no questions asked.

It's like reading a book or watching a movie, by the time you experience the story you are a passive observer. You may interpret the story any which way you like but the story is static, it is never going to bend and acknowledge your interpretation. Even in the past when we had some dissenting dialogue options that were actually acknowledged in context they never made a difference, they never caused the narrative to branch.
Plot is the one way the story is going to resolve and if plot dictates that setting an orphanage on fire is a necessary act of good then that is the only way the story will move forward.

People will inevitably disagree with the way a story is told, in our case that's how we get heaps and heaps of feedback threads even on well-received expansions and fluctuating subscriber counts.
That feedback may reach the creators and may cause them to change things in the sequel stories, in a particularly bad case it may cause them to retcon things but the story as told is generally going to stay the way it is.

Did everyone forget that to keep the Endless going they need to feed more souls into it? Perhaps this is the story's fault for not having enough kicking-the-dog moments but the plan was to consume one world to keep another going.

Maybe these debates would not have happened if they destroyed G'raha Tia's soul first as a proof of concept.

This may be something that was lost in translation, I play with the German localization, but the story made it pretty clear that it wasn't even a choice between a multiverse where all worlds die so one people might live or one where one people dies so all other worlds might live but a choice where either all worlds die so one people guaranteed to go extinct eventually can temporarily push off the inevitable or one people on a set course to extinction dies now so everyone else may continue living into an uncharted future.
And that is assuming what we did in Living Memory actually deleted all the Endless and didn't just leave them in cold storage until they run out of energy but plot certainly was willing to accept the notion of killing them all so arguing semantics may be besides the point.

[Pantheouns]

Not gonna lie, this is a pretty bad take.

Someone in this thread already broke down the sections and replied with what I was thinking so that doesn't need to be done again...

but how do you come to the point that fighting for survival, and being the only one capable of doing it doesn't make you a hero?

Sure people die and sometimes innocent lives are lost but that doesn't make going to the ends of the universe and traveling through time to save your home world, not heroic.

To each their own I guess

[Carin-Eri]

Although it is only really applicable to the point of the end of 6.0, but Zenos pretty much summarised how the Warrior of Light was generally viewed:

- "You mean to return. To the world where you are hailed as a hero.
Hear me then. Not as a hero, but as simply...you."

- "You value life. You do not burn yours save for reasons you deem worthy. Reasons such as those which brought you here. The salvation of a world and its people. The motives of a hero true"

And the entire 'choice' exchange with him - if you pick "Think what you will. But I'm not letting you leave this place" he calls us out for "playing the hero" (i.e. maintaining the perception others have of the WoL) rather than being true to ourselves.

So, at that point at least, it seems that everyone else (at least those who knew what we'd done) views the Warrior of Light as a hero even if the WoL him/herself doesn't. And in my mind, one of the points of that ending was that the WoL probably WAS a hero - not through choice, but through necessity.

[Magikazam]

What people always forget is that the WoL fights for THEIR world first and foremost.
That world was a result of Venats actions. No matter what those were it resulted in the world right now and we fight for it.
The unsundered world isn’t our home and we are not Azem. The WoL is their own person in a sundered world.
The whole sundering act is not deeply criticized because it resulted in the world here and now, their world and because it can’t be changed either way while the rejoinings can still be stopped.

Idk why you bring that up since I never implied or said we should fight for the other side, My point here is that Both Venat and the Ascians had a plan to stop the end day, the first part of that plan involve doing a genocide, they both hope that after doing that, their plan will work sucessfuly, despite having no proof it will work in the end. We rightfully declare that the Ascians are evil and that killing every souls in all the shards is morally wrong, even if they do it to bring back people who themselves got killed in a genocide. Then we got Venat who killed all the ancients and she get portrayed as a Hero. Do you see the issue here? There a double standard and that my issues. I don't want to side with Ascians, I just don't want the lore to portrait Venat as a good person.

The Asciens were crackling villains. They didn’t do all that stuff because of the goodness of their heart.

They did all of this in the hope to bring their people, who have been killed by Venat, back, peoples that were innocent. It not like they where evil for the sake of it. Just like how Venat killed all the Ancients with the goal of creating new life. She didn't kill them just for the sake of doing so.

Again, the issue here is that when we rightfully claim that the Ascians have gone to far in their quest to bring people back, we cheer on Venat and put her on a Pedestal for doing the same thing. Emmet being racist or Lahabrea being commicaly evil don't make Venat a good person