Do you feel empathy towards the Warriors of Darkness?

[SeriousPan]

I've just been thinking about this a bit since the Live Letter. They talked about how Shadowbringers will allow you to retrace the steps of their party in The First. But I have to say I'm really not all that invested in them to find that interesting. Has anyone else felt the same?

I find it hard to empathize or feel sympathy for the characters. I mean, look at how they acted in the cutscenes. I remember how Arbert ordered J'rhoomale to shoot down our scion ally without any remorse or hint of care. They relished in it, even. They set out to murder us for their own gain, whilst speaking nothing but trash to us might I add.

Sure they have their own world and problems but I feel like there's some strange leap I'm meant to take to go from wanting them dead to wanting to see their story and care about them. I'm concerned that I've missed/forgotten some huge redemption on their part in the story.

[Bright-Flower]

I liked them in 3.4, if I had played the HW patches back to back I suspect I may have this same issue. This is a bit of a trope unfortunately where they initially introduce a character as sadistic but then things turn on a dime when they need to be sympathetic.

But ultimately yes, 3.4 did turn it around for me. Their desperation and anger at the world after doing everything right, saving their world time and time again, only for it to be damned from another source, and their anger at Hydalyn apparantly ignoring them up until we do the crystal thing etc.

Still, I would have preferred job stories over these role stories. I was really hoping SE might give PLD a good story for once, but I guess we'll be following around the WODs instead.

[RyuuSkyez]

I've just been thinking about this a bit since the Live Letter. They talked about how Shadowbringers will allow you to retrace the steps of their party in The First. But I have to say I'm really not all that invested in them to find that interesting. Has anyone else felt the same?

I find it hard to empathize or feel sympathy for the characters. I mean, look at how they acted in the cutscenes. I remember how Arbert ordered J'rhoomale to shoot down our scion ally without any remorse or hint of care. They relished in it, even. They set out to murder us for their own gain, whilst speaking nothing but trash to us might I add.

Sure they have their own world and problems but I feel like there's some strange leap I'm meant to take to go from wanting them dead to wanting to see their story and care about them. I'm concerned that I've missed/forgotten some huge redemption on their part in the story.

From what I remember the Warriors of Darkness weren't always bad individuals, they were like us the warriors of Light but something happened and they ended up becoming Warriors of Darkness that did things only to better their own situations. I would be invested in their story and trying to figure out why they are the way they are now, Its more of a mystery story than one of empathy.

[Gula]

I feel like their story could have been told better. After reading through the lore books, I had a deeper empathy for the other warriors of light who failed or likely have it worse than ours. But just going off the in game, not as much.

[ChaoticCrimson]

To be fair, their arc did seem a bit rushed. But I suppose I can see how they could have gotten to the way they were when we first meet them, given how much they'd lost and how much they sacrificed to protect what little they had left. It is pretty tragic when you consider that. Doesn't mean what they did was right, but still...

[myahele]

I wish they had better characterization throughout HW, instead we see the WoD with an evil smirk until they tell us their side of the story.

Despite that, I can still sorry for them. They did everything right, they did what Hydaelyn wanted them to do and it ended up causing a Flood of Light that's slowly destroying their world.

I thought there would have been discussions amongst the Scions et al if defeating all the Primals and Garlemald is a good thing or maybe let some of them go and do their thing for the sake of balance and to prevent what happened to the 1st to happen to the Source ... but it was never addressed. Now it looks like a Flood is imminent.

I'm really looking forward to see their story in ShB.

[Kemiko]

I think our sympathy for them was supposed to be one of foreshadowing our fate. They were Warriors of Light exactly as we are and succeeded in everything that we have, which only led to the fate of their star which brought them to ours.

Despite the knowledge they've given us and the evidence that our star was following the same path, we did nothing to try to alleviate such a massive concern. Basically, unless I misunderstood - we are who they were and they are who we become. Though hopefully we won't get our butts handed to us by some other Warriors of Light on another star when we're trying to save or restore our broken one.

[DrWho2010]

i mean i feel for them becuase Elidibus lead them astray just to serve his own ends. once you do the role quests in 5.0 i'm sure our opinions will change. I just really wanna see how thirsty the lala WHM (i forget her name) is for Arbert hahaha.

[Kalise]

I don't really empathize with the WoD.

Not given that their answer to their world being in trouble, was to go fudge up another world and kill countless people. That ain't WoL behaviour.

Like, yes, it sucks that they were doing everything right and it ended up causing their worlds destruction. I can understand their frustration and despair at that reality.

But, deciding to go and cause the deaths of a ton of other people because apparently the souls of the people on your world are worth more than the lives of people on another world (Since, either way, everyone on the First would have died. Either through the Flood of Light or the Rejoining of the First. Just that with the latter, people could enter the lifestream)

Now, according to the next expansion, there is supposedly a way to actually save their world anyway, making the potential deaths they were trying to cause not necessary to not only save the souls of the people on the First, but also their LIVES too. Making it kind of seem like the WoD's didn't really look into every option available before deciding "Lets go mess up the Source!" under instruction of an Ascian...

[Bright-Flower]

Well there was no hint of a way to save the First until Minfilia as the emmisary of Hydalyn went off to the First at the end of 3.4. We don't know what happened but given Shadowbringer's plot we can assume not everything went well.

We don't actually know if however we end up saving the First was an option they would have had and could have feasibly found on their own. We'll have to wait for 5.0.