Garlean Playable Race (?)

[Theodric]

In response to the claim that I don't care about the game's lore I'd like to point out that a significant portion of my posts can be attributed to the lore forum...which is pretty much the only other forum around these parts where I lurk other than general discussion. I also frequently discuss the game's lore over Discord with other players.

Lauront has the right of it, though - there's way to make the inclusion of Pureblood Garleans work and even if it did involve some light tweaks here and there it wouldn't be any more jarring to me than some of the other potential supposedly 'outlandish' options such as male Viera.

It's an MMO. It's not going to be set in stone. The story and game is going to be tweaked and adjusted to make it more interesting over time. It's not going to constantly stay stagnant and never, ever have any twists or turns that might change things up.

It wasn't until recently that Tempering was thought to be incurable. Yet the circumstances changed as new lore came to light.

It wasn't until recently that male Viera were thought to never be present outside of their home and yet that is going to be changing as of Endwalker.

Their ability to cast magic or not is not the main issue though, they are the primary antagonists for the base game and one of the expansions. A good chunk of the story would come across as rather silly, at best, unless they changed chunks of it for Garlean characters, that's a rather large negative for a game that features its story as a big selling point.

I disagree. As per the reasoning outlined in this prior post:

A clear distinction is made between Pureblood Garleans who identify as Imperials and those who do not. We've also seen multiple Pureblood Garlean NPC's and conscripts defect and readily work with the Eorzean Alliance with little to no outright discrimination involved. Given that we already see the likes of Cid and Nero frequently save the day for Eorzea from as early as ARR and many more times beyond that point...I have my doubts that it's the red line that some people are painting it as.

The player character is already a special snowflake on many potential fronts. Many circumstances of which are roughly equal to the idea of being a Garlean Pureblood who just so happens to be able to be one of the few capable of wielding aether.

I get that some people are worried that they might be super popular and that there would be many of them throughout the game world as a result but I, personally, don't believe that the player character makeup needs to reflect the rarity of supposed lore restrictions.

We already know that not every Garlean is aligned with Garlemald and that has been the case from as early as ARR. In both the MSQ's and many side quests, the day is saved precisely due to the aid of a Pureblood Garlean.

I don't see how it'd be jarring for that to extend to the player character as well given that he - or she - can already be designed to be one of many different playable races or jobs.

The defector trope is also very common in JRPG's. The cast of FFVI didn't cast out Celes because she was formerly associated with the Empire in that game.

General Beatrix wasn't cast out for formerly being loyal to Queen Brahne in FFIX.

Larsa wasn't cast out for being aligned with the Empire in FFXII - because he was ultimately working to bring about peace.

Though in fairness, I can't expect people to have played every other Final Fantasy game in the series/be familiar with their story elements.

[MikkoAkure]

We already know that not every Garlean is aligned with Garlemald and that has been the case from as early as ARR. In both the MSQ's and many side quests, the day is saved precisely due to the aid of a Pureblood Garlean.

I don't see how it'd be jarring for that to extend to the player character as well given that he - or she - can already be designed to be one of many different playable races or jobs.

The defector trope is also very common in JRPG's. The cast of FFVI didn't cast out Celes because she was formerly associated with the Empire in that game.

General Beatrix wasn't cast out for formerly being loyal to Queen Brahne in FFIX.

Larsa wasn't cast out for being aligned with the Empire in FFXII - because he was ultimately working to bring about peace.

Though in fairness, I can't expect people to have played every other Final Fantasy game in the series/be familiar with their story elements.

We may know there are good Garleans out there, but the NPCs we meet won't and it makes 0 sense in context. I don't think they would add any context either. I highly doubt they'd take the time and care to add any special dialogue in the MSQ based on your race choice that's different than what presently exists. It would be jarring to be playing a Garlean while every NPC ignores your existence and goes on at length about how they brutalized their nations and you meet people who only exist because of violent interactions between pureblood Garleans and the locals. Also jarring would be walking around in the daylight without getting arrested or any character treating you with suspicion at all or Garlean soldiers attacking you on sight despite your 3rd eye. Yes the other new races have had some lore bending or handwaving but nothing to this magnitude.

Also, none of the examples you listed have a permanent physical trait that differentiates them from baseline humans. Garleans are instantly recognizable.

In the end, the biggest difference between male viera and Garleans is that there was a lot of vocal want for viera and a thread that has nearly 2k likes. People aren't clamoring to play Garleans except for you and the 2-3 others posting over and over. I've yet to see a compelling argument for why playable Garleans deserve to exist. At least male viera are making up for the missing gender of an existing race.