Awfully weak story... or is it? [WARNING:SPOILERS]

[Astarica]

I think it's silly to attempt to view the actions of the Garlean Empire with a real life perspective. Even in the World Wars, you're not talking about an existential conflict where the other side is trying to wipe you off the face of the planet. Eorzea is constantly in such a battle against many of the Beastman tribes, and no doubt the Garlean Empire is also aware of the threat the Beastman tribes present. If you're fighting a foe that is clearly comparable to you in overall strength, arguably more advanced in some ways (Cobalt, the highest grade of metal, comes from the Kobolds as per the crafting quest), and have a divine power that seems to be far easier to invoke then your own Gods (Primals sure seem to show up far more often than the Twelve), you ought to be worried about your survival and not take any chances.

It's actually far more bizarre that anybody would attempt to make peace with the Beastman tribes, and even more bizarre that various Eorzean factions haven't been completely wiped out by a primal yet. And since the Primals gets more followers via tempering, there's nothing wrong with the 'purge the weak' attitude the Empire have, because if you don't purge them, you'd be fighting against them when they get tempered by a Primal. When you consider a Primal's strength is directly tied to how many followers it have, it's basically asking for genocide. Remember, the Beastman tribes are very strong themselves, so it's not like you have the luxury of playing safe because due to tempering, any small change in balance can quickly result in a complete steamroll for the Primals. In fact even the Warrior of Light does this when he finally realizes that he's not beating Garuda without killing the followers first, and you'd think that'd be elementary tactic against the Beastman tribes, except it is not.

If you're the Garlean Empire, you probably view Eorzeans as a bunch of idiots that's about one disaster away from becoming the thralls of a Primal. Gaius shows considerable restrain to even negotiate with a bunch of morons that are likely to become servants of a Primal as opposed to actually do anything useful against Primals.

[KraggyKor]

After taking some time to digest the story of FFXIV:ARR and confirming its weaknesses

Basing an entire 'conspiracy theory' (which is what you end up with at the end of your wall of text) based on your own PERSONAL view is, I suggest, crass.

[Felis]

Either way, countries absorbed by the Garlean Empire are indoctrinated to ensure pacification and compliance. That alone is an evil act.

And the men where send to another countries as new soldiers, so there would not be enough men for a big resistance movement.
Once eaten by the empire, always part of the empire.

And it was peacefull in Eorzea, before Garlemald began to conquer the world.
I think even the beast tribes only started with summoning the primals after Ala Migho got conquerred.


And there is still this CS which speak against Gaius: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGUa2qBOAE0
How can he shoot on our companion?

[lololink]

Indoctrination can help to quell the masses. Oh, that's something they did! I don't recall the gunarm guy killing the underling... I must have skipped that CS or saw it late one night while playing. Either way, countries absorbed by the Garlean Empire are indoctrinated to ensure pacification and compliance. That alone is an evil act. Either way, you are still skipping over what happened in Ala Mhiga after they invaded that country.

it's Sas Junius ( the white one ) that killed an underling.

Yes it's bad to invade country and endoctrinate but by doing this they can bring peace in the world, because with no countries there is no war.


It's a really immoral way to bring peace but it can work, except that the empire will be in a civil war at the death of the emperor because there is no heir, so the legatus will surely fight each others.

[Blarp]

It was easily the worst Final Fantasy story I've played through. It's just so damn generic and so heavily padded by, "Go prove yourself" type of stuff. I stopped caring about all the characters and their troubles around Costa del Sol when I was made to fetch dinner so I could be trusted to kill Titan. Killing Ifrit and battling through several dungeons isn't good enough? Or is the story so flimsy that without all the padding it would end too quickly? Not a single character I'm supposed to have an attachment to is likable or interesting in any way and almost all of them are completely incompetent and have the personality of a red brick. The one chance they had to keep me interested was with Thancred and they completely puss'd out and blew it. To top it off the English voice acting is ATROCIOUS! I feel bad saying that because real people worked on it and probably did their best, but it's pretty terrible. I expected way more coming from Final Fantasy. Hell, even the early Final Fantasies like 3 had more charm and cohesion than this mess does.

Right now I'm supposed to do Praetorium, but my experience with the previous instance was so awful that I really have no desire to even finish the story. I try my best to be pleasant even when things go very poorly in an instance because at the end of the day nobody deserves to be treated like dirt when they screw up in a video game. Everybody was so impatient and refused to explain a damn thing and basically just dragged me through the instance. Watching cutscenes is like some cardinal sin that will get you reamed. At one point we wiped and the blame game started and the elitist douche attitudes prevailed. If this is the XIV endgame community, then I am done. I've never even seen such vitriol and rudeness doing LFR in WoW. I get it, the Internet Dickwad theory and whatnot, but I wasn't expecting it to be so true in this game.