let me join the garlean empire

[foussi]

Joining the garlean empire.....


No <3

[MirronTulaxia]

I agree with Maxima (he seems to be more towards peace) but no I would not want Gaius anywhere near a powerful position..that guy would have blown up Eorzea with Ultima if we had not stopped him..who knows if he does not suddenly change his view again if it fits him.

Honestly I’m not sure his view has changed, just his circumstances. He’s out targeting Ascians and such after all, but eventually that’ll be done. Who knows what he will do after. Given he’s the XIVth legatus I feel it will be important to XIV as a whole.

[Shougun]

Yes, it does it's own thing. But when it DOES incorporate elements from other FF games it has a clearly established interest in importing those elements fairly straight.

Sure, but that doens't mean it's a recolor of other FF. It can take something and build on it (building can include reconstruction). They don't have to of course, and sometimes that can make people upset if they do. Like lets take SMN or BRD as examples where they mixed it up and that made some people upset. (SMN being a personal example since I wasn't a fan of the new vision of SMN that used the new lore to fit in the world space, but they've changed that so eeeey lol- I like it a lot more now).

So sure, but also no lol. I hope you can agree that they entirely can use old stuff and keep it the same, but they can also totally use old stuff and make it new. That's something they've done both ways. So if you see it's likely they'll do something again because they've done it before, sure, but if you say they HAVE TO DO IT- then no, no they don't.

Especially since Yoshida is a contrarian and if a bunch of people tell him he has to do something I think you're just going to increase your chance he shows that he doesn't lol.

1. I mean, I wouldn't say Exdeath is evil for evil's sake either though. That's kind of my point. I'm disagreeing with the fundamental divide you're placing between the two. Evil isn't just nature, it's nurture too.

2. The "single authority" is the big issue, yes. And again why the EU isn't one. It's a lot of power concentrated in a small location, and in all instances of something being called an Empire it's forcibly taken. I suppose you could theoretically have huge countries completely cede all power to a lone individual voluntarily but that seems to stretch belief a bit. As for whether people would do it voluntarily I believe people help each other all the time.

3. Empires inevitably are bad though again. If you have an entire continent under one person's power that... really, again, isn't a voluntary thing. The closest we've had to that would be Cocoon and Spira, both of which didn't really have rebels but were doing it through religious and social control, so it just looked nice on the surface. As for the rest again I don't really find them to have any less depth than Emet.

4. Is it? The Garleans have been maintaining that control via... violent conquest and dealing with insurrections brutally. Like... the technology doesn't help them except make it easier to put people down.

5. I mean, we didn't kill Ysayle. Eden arc has us literally summoning multiple Primals too. The issue isn't "summon Primal = execution", it's "summon Primal = tempered = lose all sense of reason = execution", because once tempered they can't be reasoned with in any way. And the issue isn't if someone did summon a Primal, it's that they can summon a Primal at all that leads to the Garleans killing them. Gaius didn't want Meteor not because he thought Beastmen should be spared, but because it was a waste of potential resources to use, which is the key difference there. He still had every intent to take everyone over and rule them, it really isn't meaningfully different. It's just classic "rule over all" versus "destroy all" villain stuff. And like I said, it isn't "kill all Garleans" it's "dismantle the Empire". Though this is also not really addressing again that the Empire wants to kill anyone who can summon, not anyone who does summon. It's why they try to commit genocide on Beastmen, and why again the reveal of "anyone can summon" is kind of a worrisome thing for the Eorzeans (and a big difference in terms of policy, as even knowing for instance the Sylphs can summon the Gridanians (the most xenophobic of the city states) still works with them). Lastly Gaius should know we beat Primals, as we beat three of them up to that point and in the past the Eorzeans had bested Primals before, so clearly it wasn't some sort of noble "protect the weak Eorzeans because they can't handle Primals" thing, nor was it about power, in the end we bested him, in his weapon, but he still saw us flawed in belief. That's where the issue lay, and ultimately why there wasn't any recourse except fighting him off.

6. If he would have done what he did then he was just as unreasonable before being tempered as after, so that honestly doesn't change anything. Security vs freedom is certainly something to debate, but not really related to most of this. They aren't superior to us in might (every clash of Ascians versus us ends in the Ascians being beaten, even when Hades powered up with the dead and went pseudo-Primal he wasn't able to win), and he isn't doing it to survive. He's doing it to erase sacrifices willingly made, because he wants to have his cake and eat it too. That's not noble, that's childish. As for emotional differences I don't think we can say, but again intellectual we can. We did things the Ascians didn't predict. We constantly do things the Ascians can't count on. If they are stronger than us, smarter than us, then that's simply bad writing. That Hades has a warped perspective, something we know from his being tempered? Then it makes sense.

7. I would still call him full evil, not dark grey, because there isn't anything grey about "killing billions of innocents for the sake of a small group". As for if humans would volunteer, again, I think you underestimate them. Honestly we have no idea if it even was given Hades is, again, a very biased source.

8. Again, the Eorzeans have successfully fought off Primals. If Gaius wanted to help he could have offered an alliance. He could have exchanged tech. He could have done any number of possible actions. He wanted Eorzea for the Garlean Empire. Stopping Primals is their justification for their actions, but it's not their primary motivation in what they do. Their actions are literally designed to create more desperate people to summon more Primals, that's how the Empire was designed. If you want to stop people from summoning Primals putting them between a rock and a hard place isn't the method. As for the Empire the issue is, again, the Empire as a whole, regardless of any individual components, is still doing certain things. It's quite justified to say the government as a whole is flawed without saying that means every individual in it is, which again is not something I have been saying.

9. I mean, I wouldn't call it an empire then. If every individual state within that group has representation and they have some degree of autonomy that isn't an empire, that's a federation again. And it isn't evil because previous games did it, there are very good reasons empires are evil which I already went over, and you really can't have anything that can accurately be called an empire without that. With regards to the city states messing up I wouldn't say the city states are the same as the Scions, so them being grayer is kind of moot.

1. Ex Death is a collection of evil spirits sealed in a tree made manifest- he's a demon of evil. How are you arguing he's not evil for evil sake? His nature is evil, like literally he's evil incarnate.

2. Certainly seems the issue is that you feel taking land is bad, and I wouldn't say it's the most peaceful option but I think it's a nature of life in historical context (and that there are many examples where being under an empire led to many increases in the development of your area, leading to a better life than previously possible). Even outside of empire situations we still regularly work to take power to secure our own interests (US, China, etc, etc- not saying it's always one direction relationships but neither are all empires, who've often offered things that wouldn't be readily be attainable otherwise). I find it unlikely to suggest some non-utopian society that wouldn't do that, at least while there is power to grab and not great powers cementing a relationship like we have now. Not saying your idea for peace is bad, just think it sounds like a Utopian thing (which would again come back around to I'm encouraging gray over white and black, so say for example Ul'dah is a freaking mess and it has multi-point structure to it's government through the syndicate and the Sultana lol).

Or Limsa with it's competition (called Trident, it's a multi-pronged race) to become admiral, who happens to have sweeping powers for 7 years, give or take a few if an admiral decides to stretch it out cause they can, making large changes to the nation, 'city-state', during that time, which seems a lot like another form of government you're against (sweeping powers, one person, combative and sailing might makes the winner, stealing, etc)- especially when setting a back drop of history to it (+ with competition yet what is in effect a king / queen). Is Limsa evil? Because of the current leadership they're not supposed to steal except from Garleans (privateering), which is good lol, but that's only very recent history- and due to their government structure could easily change at the next winner of the competition (unless she forces a change in the structure itself). If I had to choose a Persian like government structure (during their empire) or just being constantly stolen from Limsans, or even being part of Limsan's political structure where it seems to welcome a bit of chaos (even when they have rules it's said they see rules as more like guidelines), I'd be like god please Persians come bring me some taxes to pay, infrastructure, technology, stability, extra culture, and protection.

Technically speaking if you go by wiki (and some other sources) Thalassocracy, what Limsa is, is an empire at sea- so yeah . Just happens for the moment they've a peaceful ruler. Noting the word can be used to refer to naval supremacy, of course- but that's not a statement on structure and just military and or commercial status. So it would be less of a stretch to suggest a leader with final authority (as is the admiral position) and those 'under' them exhibit symptoms of an empire like structure, especially when they have historically gone about imposing themselves on others, and when referencing a word that also describes sea based empires is united in the same sentence as discussing the governmental structure of the place. (In game excerpt says Limsa is as a traditional thalassocracy, and then goes on to discuss the ruler- context here heavily leans to reading the word as it has traditionally been used as it is in context of government structure and in context of a sole leading ruler).

[Limsa Lominsa is a traditional thalassocracy, with power lying in the hands of the ruling party and its leader, the Admiral. Its economy is driven by shipbuilding, fishing, and blacksmithing, but the majority of wealth comes from the lucrative shipping industry.]
(excerpt I'm referencing)

In the lore book it also has a diagram of power with Admiral at the top. Can talk about if they don't listen to those below then they might get challenged out via combat/another Trident, but so too are kings challenged out of office (often through death lol). And not all 'kings' / 'emperors' serve for life, in such the case of elective monarchies or other interesting variants of that. Which is all to we sort of already have an empire, a sea based one, that happens to be taken care of by a good ruler. Don't think it's evil. Limsa sort of like those illegal pirate websites that go legit lol, which I think is an example of what could happen to the Garleans.

3. When you read about the Aztec Empire, Persian Empire, Roman Empire, or whatever other empire, all you read is evil? They brought significant development, stability, and quality of life to those they ruled, and yes there was some cost but there are many references to people being happy to have an empire cover their back, bring them roads and other pieces of infrastructure that would be exceptionally unlikely to bring otherwise. In a historical context it seems a bit off to just label them all evil. A lot of good, and bad of course, can be levied towards an empire. Also noting technically an empire doesn't have to always conquer to get people to join as that happened quite a bit where they just be like "please take me in", of course once in you'd not get out so easily (but that's true for other organizations too).

4. Isn't that how we maintain control these days as well? Even under other government forms of insurrection is regularly warded off with extreme force, even the minor forms are usually heavily handled. I'm not saying it's good to destroy things, just seems like a regular function that isn't even unique to empires.

5. It is significantly meaningfully different from genocide to I want to make them part of the machine. He certainly saw us an uncivilized, but he wasn't, from what I read, thinking "aww yissss pure slavery baby" and was more like "join the superior nation and stop summoning nuclear weapons, I don't want to kill you (but I will if I have to, lol)". Still going to have to say no thanks, but I don't see Gaius as evil in that situation (still the villain of course). If someone was playing with nukes and I didn't trust them to handle their own I'd be concerned too (primals being easily equate-able to nukes, probably worse than nukes, not something you want people running around with, even optionally). Also important to note that not all the primals summoned on our side were because of the big mean Garleans. Limsa caused the kobolds and Sahagin to freak out as they were needing land to feed their own people (for farming) since their ships were destroyed.

6. We won because we were super charged on all that light warden stuff, which I would like to remind made us a walking -unstable- bomb. We could have flattened the entire town by farting wrong and going full warden. In the Independence Day movie when they kill the alien ship with the nuke that doesn't make humans stronger than the aliens. Ascians are stronger than us, especially when we have to resort to wild things like that. Noting that Lalafellbrehabro was weak due to all his body hopping, and the other Ascians have not been pure Ascians (only fragments). Ascians are stronger, and certainly when I said us I don't mean just WoL, I meant all of us as races (Garleans/Eorzeans etc). Strength doesn't mean one gets to live and the other die, but say that to the animals we harvest- they've brains and seem to have, at least some of them, a clear social structure yet we still go for it because yum. If Ascians are so mighty just at existing, and not even need some blessing from a mother to do it, then it might suggest they see us as animals. Intellectually I'd just say they have to be dumb sometimes so we can actually win, just a feature of having to be the bad guy lol. He's clearly smarter than us at many things, intelligence is usually better described as different types of intelligence but if we talk about technology or history then that hat would clearly go to him.

7. I think we'll just have to pause on this one because I don't think you'll ever see the relationship of man vs animal and be apply that to something else. Animals clearly have some social structure, memory, fear of pain, desire for more than just food, at least some of them, yet we still kill them for our pleasure (food, and sometimes literally just their death is the pleasure). I'm not saying we've no right to fight for our life, like animals their's, but at least personally I could see him seeing us like animals- his people being able to overcome so much more than us with their insane powers (and us, the WoL, being some extreme exception to the rule of 'our' people, his people not being an extreme exception, they're regularly mightier). As I said before if tier 3 civilization came down we'd look pretty silly, made worse if a tier 3 civilization say came down when we were in the early cave days. Really fancy animals in comparison then (so like we see to most animals, they to us). We have some animals we make general exceptions to, like if they're going to go extinct, but we even say our environmental impact we slowly act and have lost a lot of species to anyways (some would go just because that's how nature is, but some are due to us). That's where I also said if for whatever reason we 'had' to kill all of an animal, even an intelligent one like monkeys or dolphins, we'd do it in a heart beat as a society in general and most of us would not be like "yeah just kill us, it's fine, monkey virus wins" (of course coming up with some silly scheme where we had to or else we all die would take some work lol, clearly we don't have to right now and so doing so would be not good- 'ideally' we keep our planet healthy and ourselves too). Even our exceptions tend to have their own exceptions like Japan and dolphins or whales. It'd be nice to be the aliens that go around peacefully, but seeing what we do to our own fairly intelligent species on our planet- I can easily see a situation where that flips against our benefit. Hope there are no mean aliens out there. . .

8. Ye thats why I said he's not a sweetheart lol. He could have worked with us. . . had some nice meeting, Gaius is significantly flawed of course but I don't see him as pure evil (Like Ex-Death is just evil lol, which is why I'm confused you even brought up nurture with him.. cause he's just made of evil spirits, like a devil of some sort). As mentioned before though not just the Garleans cause primals to exist, Limsa did it too (so even if the Garleans left us alone wouldn't stop us from having primal issues, and if we failed to handle it then Garleans would have to handle it because there is really no one else left past us the WoL). And internally it should be fair to say not everyone is thinking their purpose as a Garlean is to cause more primals and that they want to stop primals, like Gaius. Like mentioned before they have a serious internal issue though, Ascians and Zenos need to go.

9. Federation would be far more ideal but I was literally thinking Gaius (or whoever not Zenos / Ascian influenced) is emperor lol, has advisors but is still emperor (like ancient China or whatever other empire you'd use as example). There have been a few emperors in history that accomplished a lot and are remembered quite fondly, and of course there are many forms of government that are not empires that are the opposite and remembered very poorly. I don't think empires have to be thought of as evil, some of the best social equality of ancient times was during the control of an empire. We're going to disagree on that but it seems a shame for historical reasons and for a potential ideological view point of the game (which I'm not saying "go out and conquer people" but that I'd love for the game to allow a Garlean to defend themselves, example all the good they've accomplished, along with obviously all the terrible horrible things we're already aware of). When I say us I include city states so them being grayer is not moot, but if you see yourself not part of a city state then I can include them separately from the usage of the word us. Like I said Limsa played a heavy role in enraging kobolds and sahagain, instead of an olive branch we've got them separated out in their own area due to our racism (or city states if you refuse our includes them).

Which again isn't me saying they should 180 any scripts, just that they've clearly very obviously made a lot of effort into nuance of their story already, as you can examine from the history of our city states not being lily white, or that the Garleans have had a few chances to shine through all the muck they carry around, basically every part of this game has some to a strong level nuance- besides Zenos lol. Just seems like such a shame to say something has to be viewed through a certain light when history seems to be able to say something different on many occasions. Especially so when they've done so much work already on telling a story that's deeper than evil vs good, like to the extent I really hope Zodiark and Hydaleyn do not end up being simply evil spirit vs good spirit, not a heaven vs hell (ultimate evil vs ultimate good). Still can point out the terrible things of an empire, but there are good, like how they show in other different forms of government like terrible situations in Ul'dah and we're no empire- we're just full of corrupt money grubbers lol. You can have someone bring a lot of prosperity to the lands and still be a conqueror, not every emperor salts the lands they visit- not every feature of an empire is evil (or at least entirely so, a new, 'admiral', a new emperor, could do a lot for Garleans), it's gray, sometimes.

[Zeonx]

I want to play as garl also not because of anything except their height and they look better than highlander males where highlander males look like they are from the neanderthal period hahaha

[Lucy_Pyre]

i want to purge the eorzean filth with my very own rocket hammer

Hell, the Garleans could buy me with the rocket hammer alone. I'm not sure how I'd Fell Cleave something with a blunt hammer but I'm sure I can figure out a way to make it work.