We Haven't Been Heroes In A Long Time

[Vyrerus]

For roughly about five years. I guess I can thank Dawntrail for one thing, and that thing was making it a pattern for the Warrior of Light to not be doing heroism in the grand scheme of things. We are killers, nothing less.

Shadowbringers was the mark of many things for FFXIV. A grand shift into gaining wide acclaim. Lightning in a bottle. A story of a profound and grey villain who was actually just a good man shoved soundly to the very brink, having had to watch everyone he loved watch everyone they loved die in torturous manner.

In prior storylines we had fought for the sake of nations, for the sake of others to not be ruled by despots. But in Shadowbringers we were called away across the wound in the world to one of its butchered limbs in an effort to not heal the world, but to maintain the status quo by an "erudite" sage several hundreds years far from the future.

This had several layers telling us we weren't heroes. You should be aware of them by now, but the layers being... The Sage was from a future where we had lost in spite of our best efforts, because we were ultimately just unnatural echoes fighting against the original inhabitants of the wounded world they were trying to remedy. To spite this outcome, The Sage and his cohorts spent a couple hundred years and several generations of their progeny developing time travel. Willingly they sacrificed their own present and future for the past that might be, spitting in the face of fate. One wonders how they might have fixed their own timeline, had they but lifted their hands to that task, instead of to time travel. And so the Warrior of Light was called across the wound, the dimensional gap, to The First by this time traveler to erase a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, along with all his struggles and sacrifices.

It isn't heroism to fight for bitter survival. It is barbarity. It is to become an animal.

Yet, we were implored not to judge this aspect of Shadowbringers on its face, for there was another side to the tale we had yet to hear. We were to hear it in Endwalker. It was the retort from Hydaelyn. A whimpering lie dressed to the nines. The age old herald of every villain that's ever floated amidst the pages of a story, "I did what I did for the greater good. There was no other way." And people ate it up. And the Warrior of Light was spirited off to ONE edge of the cosmos, three dimensional space being what it is, and there corrected a mistake made by a man of Etheirys and endorsed by "our mother."

In the prior story, where we abandoned all morality and heroism to fight for bitter survival, where the "jet black" villain begged of us to be strong enough to find another way forward, the return that's to sway us to believe what we did was righteous was a platitude from one of the greatest murderers in the setting. A woman who willfully sacrificed and destroyed everyone and everything she ever loved (though nothing about her character indicates that she actually knows what love is).

And so we stepped away from that grandiose tale. It had gone as far as it could go, that's what Ultima Thule's metanarrative drive was, after all. And we come down to "earthly" stakes of planting a favorable ruler who will keep the peace. Only to, of course, encounter part of a world lost in a Rejoining, just one fiber that escaped its fated demise. A fiber bearing a remnant of a people that had somehow fled onto that twelfth shard so long ago, in spite of that shard having been consumed three calamities earlier from the calamity that caused them to flee across the wound. But I suppose time travel was already running rampant in the setting, so who's to say what makes sense now, anyway?

Far from my point, we encounter this bastion of survivors. This last bastion of strugglers. Who've lived a thousand, thousand of our lifetimes crammed into the spatially dilated confines of Solution Nine and the twelve other sectors of Alexandria's spatial-temporal bunker.

And we tell them their way of living is wrong. We tell them that survival at all costs is wrong. We fight them, telling their leader that we're resolved to face them the same way we faced that good man on The First. And we do. We deem them our lessers and we kill everyone in their civilization that no longer possesses a body of flesh.

The last time the Warrior of Light was a hero was in Stormblood. And even back then, they had so much innocent blood on their hands.

We are due a comeuppance, but unfortunately history is written by the victors and we never truly lose.

[Mcg55ss]

gotta crack a few eggs to make a omelet....

[Boblawblah]

[Ascended_Demon]

Idk man I think we did the world a service by giving a certain someone the death they wanted. Means they won't be walking around making everyone miserable because they haven't had their weekly play date with you.

It's Zenos, I'm talking about Zenos.

[Enkidoh]

Uggh, and there I thought with all the whinning about DT's story we had actually moved passed the 'EW's story/Venat sucks!' idea. Some things just won't stay dead I guess.

[NegativeS]

Spoilers for ShB, EW, DT in this reply...

This had several layers telling us we weren't heroes. You should be aware of them by now, but the layers being... The Sage was from a future where we had lost in spite of our best efforts, because we were ultimately just unnatural echoes fighting against the original inhabitants of the wounded world they were trying to remedy. To spite this outcome, The Sage and his cohorts spent a couple hundred years and several generations of their progeny developing time travel. Willingly they sacrificed their own present and future for the past that might be, spitting in the face of fate. One wonders how they might have fixed their own timeline, had they but lifted their hands to that task, instead of to time travel.

The Exarch emerged from the Crystal Tower to see that the Eighth Umbral Calamity had utterly destroyed the world, ruined every existing nation, turned life for everyone in the Source into a fight for survival. He, along with the surviving Ironworks dudes, were the only ones left capable of knowing how to stop the world from literally ending, and that just happened to be traveling back in time.

Keep in mind, in the Exarch's timeline, we were dead as hell. We died in the Eighth Calamity. The only way he could have thought to save the world is to bring us back, in the only way that was within his power. Without us, the Ascians would have certainly won and rejoined every world, and Etheirys would belong to Zodiark forevermore.

And so the Warrior of Light was called across the wound, the dimensional gap, to The First by this time traveler to erase a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, along with all his struggles and sacrifices.

Oh yeah, that man with the weight of the world on his shoulders who also conveniently masterminded a tyrannical warmongering empire that has tormented our home for decades, and has committed multiple acts of mundicide due to his having been tempered by the Daddy of all Primals that was confirmed to eat babies. That's definitely the good guy, yup.

The age old herald of every villain that's ever floated amidst the pages of a story, "I did what I did for the greater good. There was no other way." And people ate it up. And the Warrior of Light was spirited off to ONE edge of the cosmos, three dimensional space being what it is, and there corrected a mistake made by a man of Etheirys and endorsed by "our mother."

The alternative to her doing what she did was the people of Etheirys being enslaved by Zodiark. The process of sundering the world and the subsequent rejoinings drained her of her power, so she had to look to heroes--us--to save the world in her stead.

In the prior story, where we abandoned all morality and heroism to fight for bitter survival, where the "jet black" villain begged of us to be strong enough to find another way forward, the return that's to sway us to believe what we did was righteous was a platitude from one of the greatest murderers in the setting. A woman who willfully sacrificed and destroyed everyone and everything she ever loved (though nothing about her character indicates that she actually knows what love is).

Again, being tempered by Grandfather Zodiark kind of turned Mr. Selch into a genocidal maniac. He has killed untold people, off screen, to further his goals of rejoining all worlds to the Source. He tells us this to our face.

And so we stepped away from that grandiose tale. It had gone as far as it could go, that's what Ultima Thule's metanarrative drive was, after all. And we come down to "earthly" stakes of planting a favorable ruler who will keep the peace. Only to, of course, encounter part of a world lost in a Rejoining, just one fiber that escaped its fated demise. A fiber bearing a remnant of a people that had somehow fled onto that twelfth shard so long ago, in spite of that shard having been consumed three calamities earlier from the calamity that caused them to flee across the wound. But I suppose time travel was already running rampant in the setting, so who's to say what makes sense now, anyway?

Far from my point, we encounter this bastion of survivors. This last bastion of strugglers. Who've lived a thousand, thousand of our lifetimes crammed into the spatially dilated confines of Solution Nine and the twelve other sectors of Alexandria's spatial-temporal bunker.

And we tell them their way of living is wrong. We tell them that survival at all costs is wrong. We fight them, telling their leader that we're resolved to face them the same way we faced that good man on The First. And we do. We deem them our lessers and we kill everyone in their civilization that no longer possesses a body of flesh.

This particular narrative is easily disproven by actually reading the quest text.

We know that Living Memory relies on the Meso Terminal to function. Meso Terminal is Sphene. We need to shut off Sphene to prevent her from committing genocide. This has the side effect of also shutting off all of Living Memory. We don't 'kill' the Endless for funsies, we do it because the alternative is the death of all non-Alexandrian life.

There is no nation when it comes to current Alexandria. No rulers, no government, nothing. It's a rogue AI, hellbent on carrying out an objective. If Skynet said it was killing humanity to make room for a parking lot for a robot retiring home, would you sympathize? Was General Zod in the right attempting to destroy Earth to create another Krypton?

[Jojoya]

Battles and the need for survival change perception depending on what side you're on.

The heroes of one faction are generally going to be seen as villains by the enemy.

The villains to one faction are likely to be seen as the heroes of their enemy.

Now seriously, we're playing a game where the story and lore are 100% works of fiction. The characters are created by the writers to fill certain roles within the story. Sometimes writers will leave it open to interpretation as to who is a hero and who is a villain but that is not the case for FFXIV. They have told us that the WoL is the hero and champion of Eorzea many times.

Don't overthink things. Just accept that is what the writers intend regardless of whether you want it differently. If that makes you uncomfortable, try going outside to touch grass and take a peek at what's happening the real world. That's a far better place to expound upon morality than a forum for a game that is completely fictional.

[Kaurhz]

I mean...

You will always be a villain in someone else's story. Just as there are 'heroes' that are also villains in our story.

We have always been a villain in someone else's story, without exception

Welcome to moral relativism.

[Mapleine]

Don't ask for this.

People whined that we hadn't smiled in awhile and it got us the worst song in FF history. "Ride This Chocobo" is now a forgivable offense in retrospect.

[Dorito_Burrito]

snip

You seriously need to get over the Ancients. We're not getting an alternate timeline where they live because the current one makes you sad. What happened is (literal) ancient history.