Thread: 3.5/4.0 Speculation & Discussion (Spoilers)

The other thing is, most of our experience with Garlemald has been with its military culture, typically not the nicest aspect of any given nation. Now, Garlemald is a military dictatorship, so certain things can probably be safely extrapolated to apply to the broader culture beyond that. What we DON'T know is how things are for the average Garlean citizen.

Typically, dictatorships like Garlemald subsist on nationalistic sentiment in its people fueled by perceived greatness relative to the rest of the world. Conquest and military power is one aspect of gaining that, but people at home also need to be living good lives. Now, tellingly, a LOT of the Garlean military seems to consist of conscripts from conquered territories. This sucks for those living under Garlean control, but is likely paying off big time for Garlemald on the home front; the war economy keeps rolling, the cost of life that feeds it isn't felt in any especially acute way by people living in Garlemald proper, and a tight hold is maintained on propaganda, likely keeping what Garlemald is doing to the people of other nations completely hidden from any would-be rights activists at home.

As such, while I sincerely doubt that Garlemald-as-an-Imperial-power is something we'll ever be expected to sympathize with, the actual people living within it are likely to be fairly normal and average and probably living pretty good lives as the primary citizens of a world power that owns a solid third of the planet; with that in mind, it would be plenty easy to portray a war on and dismantling of Garlemald as something that's not all sunshine and rainbows for everybody involved. Those peoples' happiness is at the expense of conquered territories, of course - and like you mention, Alacran, we haven't been given much (if any) reason to believe that life within those territories is anything but awful - but it's still a stable and safe society for them. Do they deserve the suffering that would likely come from the total destruction of their home?

And while much of the above applies more to a 5.0-6.0 scenario, when it comes to Ala Mhigo, there have already been hints that the generation living there now may not view a liberation as a good thing. It's that aspect that intrigues me most. The refugees have had their own children, after all, and we've seen what the fervor surrounding the retaking of their home has wrought in them; thus, we have a split generation of those who grew up wholly under Imperial occupation and those who grew up in poverty hearing of the life stolen from them and theirs. There's also been a lot of emphasis put on Zenos and how bad a dude he is, which throws him into direct contrast with Gaius; perhaps a major point of contention with those within Ala Mhigo will be what to do once he's deposed.

Now, knowing this game, we'll likely get something pretty straightforward in the end (and even in the case of war with Garlemald, we'll probably endeavour to Find A Better Way). But shades of grey have certainly been hinted at and it's not difficult to see how they may be generated, or the game might generate sympathy even when a mostly unequivocally Bad News Bears power like Garlemald is involved.