Warrior of Light: A Mindless Killer

[Zetsumei_Tsunarashi]

The game's narrative would have us believe that we fight on the side of righteousness and justice in the name of Hydaelyn. However, we all know the story of the warriors of darkness, and how they came to realize that their mindless obedience of Hydaelyn on their world eventually led to it's destruction.

Through doing the various sidequests in Stormblood, I find myself questioning more and more the morality of what it is that we're doing as the Warrior of Light.

To name a couple examples, a quest in ruby sea would have us collect gold trinkets that have been placed in bird nests and deliver them to our client. When we approach the nest to search for the trinkets, a mother bird appears to defend her eggs. Without question we slay the mother bird despite finding nothing in the nest, and leave the eggs defenseless. We repeat this multiple times on different nests until we collect the trinkets the client is looking for.

Another quest in the peaks describes how the children of the village were all forced to join the Garlean army against their will. It occurred to me how often we just mindlessly kill Garlean soldiers and I wondered how many of those soldiers were forced into service against their will. How many innocents have we slain in pursuit of our cause ?

If you really think about it, there are countless examples in-game where we are forced to perform acts of questionable morality. Can we really honestly say that the warrior of light fights on the side of good ? Are we just Hydaelyn's mindless assassin without any sense of morality of our own ? Do the things we do really help to better the people's lives ? Are we really worthy of so much praise ?

Are we just repeating the mistakes of the warriors of darkness ?

As a side note, I wonder if the game's writers are aware of these discrepancies in our character's moral compass. Is it intentional that they make us do these things, or are they just writing these questlines without realizing the implications. Is there a larger narrative at work here ? Personally I think the answer is yes. I've long suspected ever since the incident with minfillia that Hydaelyn might not necessarily be our friend. Her handling of the warriors of darkness also is questionable imo. Did she really restore their world and send them back to it ? Or did she simply annihilate them because they had gotten too close to the truth ?