Are <5.0 main villain> fanboys also supportive of <6.1-6.5 main villain>? *SPOILERS*

[Iscah]

Pretty sure people are talking about "Golbez" (Durante), not Contramemoria-era Golbez. They're two different people.

I wish they'd thrown in some kind of remark that Golbez is just a title or "stage name" and not really the other guy's name either.

We could call the other one Theodor, anyway.

[4clubbedace]

people keep equating "emet/the ascians had a empathic goal" with "the ascians were right"

those are two different statments that convey two different things.

Golbez is also in "has an empathic goal", ironic that he would have helped the ascians since the goals are one and the same, (doubel so that the ascians are at fault for it)

[DreadCrow]

what about Gaia, is it ok that she is just as guilty and culpable as emit or any other ascian and yet because she forgot all the people she murdered she is off the hook?
what about Fordola, just cause she had a sad backstory doesn't excuse her actions..
crap even Estinien was a crazed lunatic through the lancer quest line, but hey he was nice to that spoiled kid that got firewood once so all is forgiven i guess..

this entire game is full of this crap, its anime troupe that villains become alleys after defeated..
and not to mention we can be 10000000000% ok with a fake genocide in a video game because no one actually died regardless of how emotionally delusional it made you.

Gaia is innocent, considering she's more or less the reincarnation of her ascion self with no memories of what she did in the past life.

Fordola is actively working towards being a better person and since she has a form of the Echo and more or less hear the thoughts of those around her will forever understand the weight of her sins.

Estinien was certainly being driven insane by the Eye, as Nidhogg's rage was fueling his own, but it's also important to remember that he wasn't going around murdering random dragons because he could. He was actively fighting Nidhogg's brood. While dragons were victims of Ishgardian deceit ages ago, the people who are alive today are ignorant of truth and actively being lied to... But that doesn't matter to the dragons. They are killing the Ishgardians of today because Ishgardians of yesterday did something bad. And like Fordola, he's been actively trying to redeem himself since the events of Heavesward.

Being "10000000000% ok" with fictional genocide is technically "fine" as it doesn't actively hurt people, but it still feels like sort of a weird take to have. Especially if you're defending fictional genocide with the exact same language people use to justify real genocide. Like, it doesn't mean you're cool with people really getting killed, but I feel it takes a lack of self-awareness to not realize why some people think it feels kind of squicky.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Are Emet-Selch fanboys also supportive of Golbez? After all, they both only wanted salvation for their people and have labored for millenia to achieve it.

Emet-Selch was trying to restore his people who had been murdered, mutilated and run through a torture machine to "grow strong." I can very much understand why plan A would be to slap everything that was torn apart back together. If someone steals something from you, gives it to their kid, are you no longer allowed to take it back because the kid wasn't the thief? I didn't think Goldbez was evil for his plan. I just thought there was a better way. Why send everyone to the lifestream if we can restore the shard? Lets save everyone. His situation wasn't morally complex. He was just desperate and needed a better plan.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Do you count as an Emet-Selch fanboy if you like him as a villain too? Cause that's I think most Emet fanboys.

I like Golbez. He's stupid, he's tragic, he's evil, but in the end he found the right path again cause Zero was willing to give him a chance in light of his past and failure and in light of herself too. I like Emet more, because he was more of a guy.

I don't view Emet-Selch as a villain. I view him as an antagonist. I don't blame the wolf for eating the hare and I don't blame the hare for running even if it means the wolf will starve. We are made of the parts of his people. It was a case of survival of the fittest. Nature can be cruel (or Venat as I later discovered).

If only we had time travel and alternate timelines so that both groups could have lived...oh wait...

[Cleretic]

If only we had time travel and alternate timelines so that both groups could have lived...oh wait...

So, let me slap down the primer of how FFXIV time travel works. Definitive mechanical explanations don't really exist, because Alexander (or the Tycoon) is the only one who'd know and isn't talking, but we have two different potential results:

1. Stable time loop; the person/thing that goes back always went back, and did whatever resulted in the timeline they originally came from. This happened in Alexander (twice), and with us in Elpis.Because it's all still the same timeline, traveling back to the original point is possible.

2. Divergent timeline; the person/thing that goes back creates an entirely new timeline, with their old one being orphaned. This happened in Shadowbringers, with the Crystal Exarch. Their previous timeline appears to continue existing, but there's no longer a way to access it from the now-prime timeline.

It's unclear what causes the two different events; most likely it's related to the scale/type of the change being made, because all the time-loop changes were very 'clean' in terms of leaving everything where it was, but we don't actually have any evidence. For all we know, it's controlled by the average temperature in Radz-at-Han across both time periods. So on an in-universe level, there's no way to control for this even if anyone wanted to, unless that anyone was Alexander (or the Tycoon).

Now, if you recall, we went to Elpis for a specific reason in a specific scenario: we were following up a lead in finding information, because in the face of the Final Days everyone was at a bit of a dead end on what to do. That meant that, while we were off having a chill-out tea time with Emet and Hyth in the past, everyone in the present was desperately performing damage control and waiting for us to come back with the info. In the long term, they needed us to formulate a solution, but remember that when we got back, people were kind of on the back foot; never mind the long term, I'm not even sure they had a short term left if we didn't come back.

Causing an alternate timeline doesn't create a best-of-both-worlds: it's one response to a Sophie's Choice, as suddenly we can't get back to the present that needs us, leaving them to die even if the ancient world lives (and as an aside, that's a big 'if'). By going back through causing a stable time loop, we make the other response: the ancient world still dies, but we can still save our own.

[Iscah]

If only we had time travel and alternate timelines so that both groups could have lived...oh wait...

There's time travel along a single timeline, and then there is jumping between different branches of a split timeline.

All instances of time travel that we have seen used in the game stem from Alexander's power, and so far as we have been shown, those powers have only performed the first type of time travel. Either it forms a clear loop on a single timeline (Alexander raids, Elpis time loop) or is only used for the first step of causing a split timeline, which is travelling backwards along a single timeline to transport the timeline-breaker from their original future to their past, at which point their own actions are what causes a split. The breaker – G'raha in our sole canon example – is carried into the new split and has no way back to their original timeline unless their time machine has the ability to jump from one branch to another, which has not been indicated as possible. G'raha seems to believe that the people he knew in the other future are utterly beyond his reach now.

If we somehow succeeded in changing events at Elpis to prevent the history we know, then we would likewise be swept into an alternate timeline with no guarantee of finding our way back to our original present. Neither would we actually have prevented the suffering of the Final Days, because that already happened in the past that led to our own existence, and would still happen in that timeline. Meanwhile the people we left behind in our own present would not be saved, because we might not return at all, or might return but not have witnessed the reason for the Final Days occurring.

If we do not bring news of the root cause of the Final Days to our present, then it is utterly doomed, everyone dies permanently because their souls get imprisoned by Meteion, and Emet-Selch's twelve thousand years of suffering have been for nothing.


The two potential story courses are...

If we only witness the events at Elpis (or unsuccessfully meddle):
- the ancients still go through the Final Days
- events up to the present happen, resulting in our character being alive
- we go to Elpis and return with a solution
- the present-day world is saved

Final outcome: could not help the ancients; could help present-day people.


If we broke the timeline:
- the ancients still go through the Final Days and Sundering in one branch of the timeline
- events up to the present happen
- we go to Elpis and do NOT return with a solution
- present-day world is doomed
- in another branch of the timeline, maybe we saved the ancients and they live happily ever after, or maybe a different crisis strikes and they're doomed anyway.

Final outcome: could not help the original ancients, could not help the present day, cannot guarantee that the other timeline won't just be a different variety of failure.

So in short, splitting the timeline does not prevent any suffering, while dooming people who could otherwise be saved.


In any case, my personal theory is that you can only break the timeline if you are already familiar with how things "should" happen. G'raha was armed with detailed knowledge of the event he was trying to stop; we did not have a single clue what to expect in Elpis.

[MikkoAkure]

That person is digging up old threads and spamming the forum as if it’s going to bring the Ancients back so it’s really not worth engaging them. They’ll tire themselves out eventually.

[Iscah]

That person is digging up old threads and spamming the forum as if it’s going to bring the Ancients back so it’s really not worth engaging them. They’ll tire themselves out eventually.

So I have gathered since writing my earlier post. If someone genuinely wants to talk and bumps up a thread on the subject, fine; bump up five while not coming back to responses and I'm going to start assuming they're not here to discuss in good faith. Particularly on this subject.

[RavLandslide]

I like Emet and I could understand where he was coming from, so I can kinda say the same about Durante. The guy's been tormented for 10k+ years of being made of dark-aspected aether, I can't imagine that does much good to your psyche.
I also find it rather fair that he can easily redeem himself, but that might be because I don't really know how many suffered under his plot, whereas with Emet we know he had supposedly been responsible for the death of millions.