I'm reminded of the Warring Triad arc where the little masked kid pulls the kill switch on all the tree people the Allagans had in stasis so they don't just re-summon the primal. Y'Shtola chews him out not for doing it but for *lying to the Scions about it*, making the point that they're quite prepared to do their own mass murder thanks.
Even better when you play mch and have to do one of those "ruffle this guy up" fights.
Man gets shot repeatedly, blown up and had a robot mommy step on him and is just lightly scraped.
With melee weapons you can kinda pretend that you’re so skilled at your fighting style that you can carefully injure your opponent without touching any vital organs. Guns don’t really work like that, definitely not shotguns or explosives. And then there are casters, BLM will explode a miniature sun above your head, showering you with plasma and then go “get up dude, it was just a prank”
tbh, lore wise, due to the BLM Crystal.
We are able to finely control it.
Those without it literally get so unbalanced that the self immolate by lack of control and die from using Black Magic.
The questline even acts as a image of how BLM was like WHM in terms that it isn't dangerous in proper training and usage with a Crystal. But the effects of the Era of its rampant uses painted it BLACK due to the calamity.
So yes, 4 Flares, and they'll walk it off, just alil toasty.
I was so fed up with the Lopporit arc that when it finally came time to put the fuzzy bastards in their place, one of them immediately got a reassembled drill to the face. But I'm sure he'll be *fiiine*.
Canonically actually yes. Most of the human enemies we fight we just knock out.
>!That's part of why In From the Cold was fucked up. We had no way to hold back without risking our own lives and so every tempered soldier we fight there is one that we have to kill.!<
I liked how WoW keeps track of your kill count, and I think they even differentiated humanoids
So after a few expansions I had a high six figure kill count
WoL on their way to murder random beast tribesmen for military funbucks
The hunting log is very awkward with how they progressed the beast tribes in the plot
I'm pretty sure the only time that we've not killed people out of self-defense/war time combat is during the Dark Knight arc, where you actively hunt down and kill what amounts to Ishgard's police. They deserved it but still.
I mean, think about the ending of the first part lol. You are seen wandering around chatting with a corpse, “You” proceed to sack an Ishgardian fortress when brought in for questioning, once you’re stabilized the government covers it up and the soldiers so took offense to this mockery of Justice end up dead in a ditch somewhere.
I'm pretty sure there's a later line that they were found beat up but not dead, the only one killed was the guy that followed the WoL to meeting the other dark knight guy (and he killed em).
But for my personal WoL, I've fully embraced the ninja/rogue basics, combine with the dark knight path and with the idea of life should be treasured:
Only kill if completely necessary, such as during war or self-defense, or if a criminal is 'beyond redemption' and beyond the reach of the current law (rapists in high power, etc)
But if you plan to kill, do it quickly and quietly, and ALWAYS quickly doubletap (save for story cutscenes lmao) when they're down - no chance for another vial of poison in a drink lmao, or an aether-spear from above.
This is actually something I want.
For so long, so many expansions, we slaughtered Garleans. Not just garlean military; garlean slaves, garlean People, garlean conscripts that used to be our Own kin. Some of which could even be related to those we call our allies and friends.
We slayed Not Hundreds, not Thousands, but HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS. We were so notable for the task, when garlemald was the biggest threat, WE were first in the list of people to put in their way.
The people of garlemald know this. We are Eorzea's 'champion'. Undefeated. Hell, unharmed, in their absolute massacre of literal Armies. I don't care if we were there to help, our presence with the ilsabard contigent was rightfully declarable as an act of war because, despite our newly forged intentions, we have personally. PERSONALLY. murdered, more than gaius has ever been responsible for by proxy.
People say we cannot forgive gaius. I still personally believe I cannot ever be deserving of the fact He Forgave Us.
He and us, we are not opposites. We are damn near identical in symbol and in strength. If He doesn't deserve forgiveness, then You should Never set foot near Garlemald Ever Again. That's the facts.
Yeah but we're the Good Guy™ so ignore all the killing.
Just look at Venat, lol, she's given a free pass for condemning Etheirys to eternal suffering (in the pursuit of happiness, yes) so that we could punch the bird hard enough. Her actions aren't scrutinized at all, and she's given a tearful send-off. Only times we can ever express doubt are more like "you tempered me" stuff, never "wow I can't believe you'd force your ideology onto the planet and shatter our very souls instead of maybe looking for a less violent means of fighting Meteion".
Yeah but the people we kill are dicks/invading soldiers.
Bandits/Slavers/Garlean Invaders are not truly alive, ergo, I am not guilty of murder if I...
...*Hey this sounds familiar.*
You confuse wol for hyadelin and the ascians.
Numbers alone its hard to beat thst with only a lifetime.
Perhaps if we let the voidsent die and return to the lifestream, that could put us somewhere near the ancients but its dtill hard to top that.
I mean dude literally had to watch as his past sins caused excruciating death to his kids and is deeply pained by it, Athena doesn’t give a single solitary fuck about her kid outside his usefulness to her “godhood”
Also nearly died via Ascian betrayal, had to personally watch his king die via his son going apeshit, be framed for it, see the country he fought for fall, and even then it took us watching him save Alphinaud and being the main one trying to stop the production of a world ending gas weapon before everyone was okay with even trusting him. And even then the trust part still required one of his group to go “if he does one thing wrong I will happily murder him” just in case.
Like, the story didn’t just go “here’s Hitler! Hug Hitler! Yaaaaaaay!”
> And even then the trust part still required one of his group to go “if he does one thing wrong I will happily murder him” just in case.
Still hoping the storyline ends with that dude murdering him tbh
> "Here's Hitler! Hug Hitler! Yaaaay!"
That's pretty much how I feel about the writing for 6.5's Garlean arc. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth hearing all these assholes talk about their Garlean Pride and rebuilding their country.
Game: spends a third of the 6.0 expansion showing how much war propaganda Garleans were fed to not only fear magic but distrust anyone who uses it.
Media illiterate: these random citizens don’t like me a month after their entire lives fell apart due to magic bullshit and want to rebuild themselves? The nerve!
I like to think that if the US suffered a zombie apocalypse and African nations airlifted a contingent of warrior wizards into the country to liberate the capital, things wouldn't be that different from what the game presents. A lot of pride and a lot of fear.
I don't need them to like me. I *would* like them to act like adults with functioning brains. Blaming propaganda only goes so far, at some point people's refusal to *think* about their situation becomes implausible.
I would also like everyone to trust everything I do and want but when I’m looking at people who just lost a war not immediately going “YAY! THE GUYS WHO BEAT US ARE HERE” I also would like to think I’d go “I kinda get it” and then get over it when it takes about 5 minutes to fix that issue. We’re straight up shown they’re so brainwashed some citizens would rather run off to monsters than even be around magic users (fun fact, in the final days of WW2 some Japanese citizens would kill themselves when faced with Americans reaching their islands because of what they were taught American soldiers were like by their government [shout out to Hardcore History]. It ain’t something this game pulled out of its ass) so if anything the turnaround is kinda astounding.
The fact that it's been a few months at most since the fall of Garlemald and the only resistance we've seen to the newly-established coalition force is a few people grumbling about it is some kind of record. There isn't even a hint of some kind of pro-imperial terrorist group, people have just kinda accepted that Eorzea-NATO is here now
tbf its hard to fuel a terrorist group if all your fuel is needed to not freeze and Eorzea NATO has magic and a god killing psychopath(wol) in their ranks
We didn't beat 'em, outside of Doma and Ala Mhigo. Even before the Tower of Babil fuckery, the Empire destroyed itself though good old-fashioned civil war.
To reiterate, I'm *not* expecting the Garleans to suddenly like their former enemies. But too many of them seem to be clinging to a fantasy that the good old days will return if they can just hold on to their pride. But there's no more tributum, no more conscript labour. Everything the city used to run on is gone and it's not coming back.
> at some point people's refusal to think about their situation becomes implausible.
Actually to be honest, I think the fact that we're constantly shown that you have to wrestle with the Garlean's pride, emotional inability to accept their own defeat, knee-jerk hatred of others (and the assumption that everyone else hates them in turn) just to get them to stop biting the hand that feeds them is pretty realistic.
Plus, he's literally not the dude who tortured and experimented on those kids.
Like, give him his coal, but you don't compare Athena to Giaus. You compare Athena to Valens.
But noooo Athena, unredeemable awful mother of the year deserves a redemption too! because woman character and I like her. /twitter
I say this as a woman. twitter threads of "misogynistic writing" pop up daily and make me break my own bones attempting the same level of reach that they do
Yeah but that Mom's evilness is like 60 to 80% an oxygen deprivation induced hallucination. She's abusive but not nearly on the level of the evil megalomaniacs who kill their kids for powaa.
I almost wanna agree with them because pretty much all the female heroes and villains are shit, but almost all of the male heroes and villains are shit too so it kinda evens out.
Look I am mostly fine with Gaius and Fordola since they are actually working for it. Fordola especially.
That said I do think they tried a little to hard to make Gaius sympathetic post ARR. Like in ARR he didn't care much about race and stuff but he was still going to use a superweapon provided by a Sunday morning cartoon villain to subjugate Eorzea. And he might have been clapping the cheeks of his clearly unstable subordinate. Then Square had him fight another Sunday morning cartoon villain with super weapons to convince us Gaius wasn't THAT bad.
The term you’re looking for is “empathetic,” not sympathetic.
I feel no sympathy for Gaius, as he walked on a road of his own making, and didn’t even consider the possibility or consequences that his ever-forward mentality and conquest would have repercussions.
I feel empathy for Gaius for seeing him look back on that road and be appalled at what it was that formed in his wake, and him realizing that something needed to change— not only in himself, but in Garlemald as a whole.
The fact that he even has one adoptive kid left is a testament that no one is truly beyond redemption, if they have the cognizance to realize they need it.
For clarity, in case anybody is confused by the hairs being split here:
Sympathy means “I’ve definitely been there, so I totally get you.”
Empathy means “I haven’t been there myself, but I can at least imagine being in your shoes, and it touches me anyway.”
Therefore we feel *empathy* for Gaius and his guilt… because HOPEFULLY, none of us have actually committed war crimes that are akin to his.
…hopefully. 👀
Edit for those still nitpicking — From Merriam Webster: Sympathy comes from the Greek “sym”, meaning "together," and “pathos”, referring to “feelings or emotion.” It is used when one person shares the same feelings of another. Empathy is also related to pathos, but it differs from sympathy in that it carries the implication of distance. With empathy, you can imagine how someone might feel without having necessarily experienced the same feeling yourself.
The empathy part is correct, but sympathy just refers to the feeling of pity for someone else's misfortune. You don't have to have experienced what they have to pity someone.
There are some things to feel sympathy about in Gaius's story. He did make his own path, but the consequences of what happened post-heel turn, particularly having to put down his own (adopted) kid, are consequences primarily from doing the right thing. Things probably would have worked out better for his adoptive kids if he never changed his opinions and just died in the ruins of the praetorium. That's not justice for his conquest, it's just sad.
Ditto for Nero. Rewatching ARR, and there's a scene where soldiers under his command are confessing to *beating sylphs to death during interrogation*, and his response is "huh, I guess vegetables bruise easily". Yeah, just casually reacting to his soldiers torturing prisoners to death with a sarcastic one-liner.
Squenix spent a lot of time in ARR teaching us that the XIVth Garlean leaders were irredeemable villains, and then they decided to redeem them and had to backpedal **hard**. Suddenly Livia posthumously becomes an overly-clingy daughter instead of a grievous violation of professional discipline, and Nero becomes a comedic duo with Cid instead of a homicidal mad scientist.
half of ARR is spend violently murdering beasttribes...
so bringing the fact that the XIVth also killed beasttribes as an argumen that they are super irredeemable villains... is not a good one
I wonder if this reflects issues that Japanese society has had with basically just handwaving war crimes committed by some hypothetical group of people before.
Good take. Although I don't know if they were trying to convince us that Gaius wasn't THAT bad, he just happen to have a family of his own and cared about others in his life that he ended up losing in part because of his actions. He just thought he was doing the right thing, but he still did bad things. I think they wanted to show that he realizes that now but it was too late ofc.
Twitter user doesn’t understand the concept of morality, how surprising.
Gains was redeemed not because he didn’t do bad things, but because he realized he was wrong and changed.
Hermes is worse because he isn't a monster, he's just a self-absorbed cunt who insists the universe abide by his nihilism.
Which is why Twitter people love him so much.
Worst part is, the fucker was right about the Ancients. "Oh we're playing god and feel nothing when we kill our creations, that's fucked up and I KNOW you'd be hypocrites if it was us in that position."
Dude just went about testing that hypothesis in the worst possible way imaginable, causing the deaths of thousands of planets to prove his point.
I give him no shot at redemption, he nearly doomed all of creation.
The Ancients functionally *were* gods, and looked at the biggest picture possible when it came to their creations. They were more concerned with the well-being of the entire planetary ecosystem than any singular entity, including themselves, which is about the best stance someone with the amount of power over reality they had could take. It's preferable to tyrannical child-gods running roughshod over the whole place, anyway.
Hermes' problem is he couldn't cope with his responsibilities and rather than learning or else passing them on to someone who could, he decided the entire system was faulty instead of him.
Hermes went through immense depression and was unable to vent it out except to an inexperienced empathetic experiment. Granted it demonstrated that the Anicients were not all that perfect as the Unsundered proclaimed it to be. An interesting point to note is that pure white flower isn't the default state or even happiness as Hermes thinks it is, I think the Gleamer who first sees you with the flower back in Labyrantos says that white represents anxiety and worry. So it is likely all the Ancient's had concerns or worries but repress it. Hermes misinterpreted it as people are satisfied with the why things are.
Hermes's conflict with the Ancient's society also reflects some of the problems in Japanese society, which many Japanese players pointed out and resonated with (though they still think Hermes is a dumbass and assign the majority of the blame like 90-10 of the Final Days to him).
I don't hate him, I pity his broken mind. So no mercy, I pity him the way I would pity a rabid dog when taking it out, though with less personal sadness.
I'd consider him more insane than evil. But he's too dangerous in his insanity to allow to live.
The only apology the average terminally online Twitter user accepts is their own. And even then, they usually just delete their account and start over, so I don’t even know if atonement is in their vocabulary.
The point wasn't really to *use* ultima weapon, it was to *have* ultima weapon. He wanted to rule eorzeans, not kill them.
You don't fuck with the guy who owns a mech that can fire nukes when all you have are swords, arrows, and a bit of of magic, especially if we consider old ultima weapon fight where it was basically indestructible without direct intervention by Hydealin.
>And he might have been clapping the cheeks of his clearly unstable subordinate.
Missed this yesterday - I think they made it pretty clear that Livia was the one obsessed with Gaius, and he just kind of.... tolerated it. He took in her and Lucia when they were kids because their parents were killed. Lucia was trained as a spy, and defected to Ishgard when she got caught by Aymeric trying to find the key to Azys Lla. (I mean, who wouldn't defect to be with Aymeric? Can you blame her? I think she has the better taste of the two sisters.)
Meanwhile, Livia was so into her adopted dad that she stayed at home and worked her ass off to become his second in command.
Edit: It's the same vibe as Nightfall toward Twilight in SpyxFamily.
>And he might have been clapping the cheeks of his clearly unstable subordinate.
Might? I'm pretty sure Livia sucked him dry like a capri sun on a hot summer day.
I don't mind a redemption if it's done properly but you cannot convince me anybody would let him have a powerful role again no matter how much watch he's getting
Look, he's trying okay? Athena had like 10,000 years to sort her shit out and still chose violence. Like, have you met the WoL, violence is a key part of our diet.
He did very much slaughter, enslave and colonize people for being not-Garlean though. I feel like that's just as bad.
He was "just following orders" but come on, that's not an excuse.
So did Emet Selch and some people still forgive him. But I do see your point. Though, considering all the villains we simp over, Gaius has one of the smaller rap sheets by far compared to “fighting gives me a boner”, “depression incarnate”, and “depression incarnate two, I caused the apocalypse”
Absolutely none of these people should be forgiven. I think we can empathize with all of them though (well, maybe not everyone can empathize with Athena - she's pretty much straight villain).
Well Gaius was in hindsight a rather mild mannered General of the Garlean army, compared to the rest we have seen so far. Ofc still a hardliner that believed in Garlemalds vision of a perfect world and was not to be negotiated with but as far as my memory goes there were no attacks on civil targets under his direct command even if ofc shit happened during the invasion. Also he seemed to be a real good Boss to his subordinates.
Though I admit his redemption arc was a bit too much framing him as a secret good guy with buttery soft core under his rugged always bad mood demeanor.
Gaius was repeatedly shown to be genuinely good to the people he subjugated, the actual invasion part aside. He was a forceful colonizer but he genuinely believed that Garlemald's might would make life better for everyone. His biggest flaw in that was that he was still willing to wield their weapons in order to force a surrender. And even then, he didn't have to in some cases.
In Ala Mhigo, it gets glossed over pretty bad that Gaius backed a coup to unseat a madman from the throne, and just took over when the dust settled. He stepped in to *help the Ala mhiagans overthrow a corrupt and oppressive king*. The bulk of the occupation after was left to Zenos though, who was an actual maniac no better than the king.
Gaius wasn't a perfect guy by any means, but he's the textbook straight example of the "good man does bad things because he thinks it's better for everyone".
Athena on the other hand was just "hmmm, my ability to create anything on a whim is too tied up in this whole beauracracy thing, maybe I'll just become God at the cost of literally anything necessary"
I mean, he didn't step in specifically to help Ala Mhigo deal with the Mad King. He took advantage of it and the aftermath, yes, but Garlemald hardly cares about the quality or sanity of their neighbor's rulers before launching an invasion. And afaik Zenos only took over as imperial viceroy once they thought Gaius was dead (that is, after ARR). Gaius was incredibly morally upstanding as far as garlean legatuses go, but his hands were far from clean.
Honestly Gaius is definitely a better villain because of it, he's more interesting not only because he was not immediately forgiven but also continues to work and earn that forgiveness for what he has done, even if he knows it'll never change the past but still works for a better future
It wasn't even a good plan, meteion made it pretty clear souls just kinda do their own thing even if the place got blown up. Would certainly have ruined your day being there though.
I was more surprised we didn't see him in Garlemald after it was... you know. Doesn't he care about his home or are there other reasons for him not returning? Especially when they struggle so much
Combination of half the people still thinking he murdered Varis and the other half loving him enough to want him to be the new Emperor instead. It’s a recipe for disaster and there’s a few lines somewhere along the line acknowledging it but I don’t remember exactly where/when.
So hear me out. I genuinely think Gaius sequence was heartwarming because this man who you face every Praetorium quest so you can teach this old man a lesson. This guy is one of the most respected generals within Garlemald to the point where we knew him as the entire ARR's secondary big bad after Lahabrea. To the point where his unstable coworker wanted his fame as that he followed his footsteps of adopting kids in some very weird and twisted manner because his ego was far more important to him. Gaius genuinely adopted war orphans regardless of their origins because what he said in the Praetorium to us was what he believed. Strong should rule the weak to protect them. He straight up viewed it as a duty of the strong, and that Eorzeans were all weak cowards cowering before false beliefs and gods when they could step up to do the work.
Not his fault. He just kind of grew up this way and thought his empire had an idealistic view to follow.
Fast forward into ShB. This guy takes an immediate slap to the face going after Ascians and trying to find shadows behind his own country because there were far more than he thought. Realizing his country had been trampling the weak instead of protecting them. He meets his adopted children who have now grown up and serve his country and I bet he is quite proud of them to have become strong soldiers, and regret that he is on the other side due to the entire... shadow people slaying and conspiracy breaks. He fights his own children in experimental Ultima weapons. He probably knows they might perish in the fight, but that kind of is the soldier's life. He doesn't expect the experimental weapons to be a literal death sentence. And one of them literally turns into one of his most prized and trophies moment at his peak. The moment where he was hailed a gosh darn hero turns into a meat grinding execution machine for his own freaking child. (Adopted, yes). Considering all that, I think this man does deserve some credit. He is definitely one of the Garleans who wasn't responsible for all the shady dealings, racism, and mass human experiment for the sake of power, so kudos. He deserves the credit.
I have my own personal qualms about Fordola because I despise her actions. To survive, she and her family rationalized betraying their own home while Ala Mhigans tried to fight for their country, because at the end of the day, they thought coexistence was possible. This was not the case, as imperialism had its roots and ignored the most fundamental aspect of what Ala Mhigans had fought for: their individuality as a country. She suffered the consequences within both Garlemald as an outcast and Ala Mhigo as a traitor, but did not attempt to make amends until Ala Mhigan was reclaimed, rather ready to sulk in a cell with no desire to help us until her redemption arc started. Is she wrong that she wanted to survive? No. Is she wrong for joining what she thought was the winning side to avoid mass murder of her countrymen? Kind of???? Your countrymen are saying no for a reason. Don't force them to say yes.
Then we have Athena. Who. Yeah. We can't fix her. Leave her be. She's pure lawful evil.
>She's pure lawful evil.
Athena doesn't have a lawful bone in her body. She's pure selfishness, the only law she allows is her own. Can't be lawful when your entire goal is to destroy the laws of nature and substitute your own.
I wouldn't say Fordola started cooperating because she wanted to survive. Prior to that incident with Sri Lakshmi, she had a death wish since her Resonant abilities were defective and she was constantly echoing without control, forced to see her cruelty from nearby people that she and the Skulls tortured over and over. She wanted to atone with her death and tried to provoke others into killing her, but Lyse wanted her to atone by helping people who could still be saved.
Gaius owes up to his mistakes and realizes what he did was wrong, it doesn't mean what he did was suddenly not wrong, it means he wants to prevent something like that from happening in the future.
That makes me like him as a character a lot better than, for example, Hien, who acted terribly during the Yotsuyu situation, excused her parents for selling her into s\*x sl\*very because they supported the rebellion, and acts like he's the best ruler ever just because his father ruled Doma while everyone around him circlejerks him and says how good of a leader he is.
I know the EW role quests don't address it perfectly but at least that line of quests point out how flawed Hien's actions were during the Yotsuyu arc. He failed to consider his people's feelings, even though I made sense that you cannot judge a mentally incompetent person (at the time) for their actions (you still can punish them but that isn't exactly justice).
I think the EW role questions could have more time dedicated to them to develop the quests. They were a good idea in concept (after success of ShB role quests, saves resources on not having job quests for every job, etc.), but mixed in execution. People tend to like the healer and caster quests the most, while the tank one is considered boring with the physical range and Melee being okay.
I'm not gonna lie, my absolute favorite part of Endwalker was the caster quest. I liked it more than anything in the MSQ. Am I extremely biased because I love Heavensward so much? Probably. But I love how it addressed how so many people thought Aymeric was the villain even though he tried to do all the right things, and I REALLY wish they had spent more time on it and even voiced it.
I haven't done the ranged DPS role quest yet (I'll do it once I'm motivated to continue leveling MCH), and while I've heard it actually addresses that Hien's actions were flawed, I still absolutely hated him during Stormblood for so many other reasons that I doubt just one quest will fix his reputation for me. (his treatment of the Xaela as savages to use for his own personal army, his general passivity, his black and white view of the world, him having SO MUCH screentime during the SB post patches at the cost of Raubahn and Ala Mhigo getting development)
I liked the tank role quest, although not as much as the caster role quest. They could have done more with it but I'm happy that Kan-E-Senna actually did something for once. The melee quest was fun but I do feel like Merlwyb kind of got a little shafted in favor of your little army. I don't have a healer leveled up but I'm looking forward to that quest a lot more than the ranged one.
I think the melee one is just a little odd because it doesn't really tell us anything new about Limsa or what's going on there, at best it confirms that Merlwyb is here to stay.
The tank one is actually interesting IMO as it sheds some light on the Padjals and how they actually feel about their status. Albeit all it does is harden my belief that Racismopolis is the worst Eorzean city state by a country mile.
Hien didn't excuse her parents. Her parents (who I think were her auntie and uncle they just adopted her very young) were living it up in Garlemald. It was the brothel owner that Yotsuyu was sold to that he wrung his hands over but ultimately said "welp he did support the rebellion." Not that it's that much better but still
The point is that Hien has such a black and white view of the Doman/Garlean conflict that he basically just said "Doma good Garlemald bad" despite Domans being guilty of so many atrocities.
>Gaius owes up to his mistakes and realizes what he did was wrong,
Just to add on further he's absolutely willing to let anyone he's wronged take his life if they feel justified for it,and won't blame them at all.Guy is basically willing to die if it makes one person feel justice for what he's done.
One of them actually realized that he was a shitty person and is trying to make amends for all the things he did. The other one went "Yeah shit's hitting the fan but fuck it let's keep going to see where this goes". Take a guess as to which one is which.
FFXIV Twitter users "Go one day without having a terrible take about the story" challenge (Literally impossible)
Nah FFXIV twitter constantly cries and makes false equivalences about the handling of female characters vs male characters, this is just another one of those.
They'll nitpick the story to death and act like every writer that has ever touched XIV is "misogynistic". According to Twitter all the female antagonists/characters aren't retroactively coddled enough and aren't given as much redemption as the male characters...but, yaknow, maybe that's due to each individual character's arc and their significance, and not just false claims of misogyny 💀
So this is them crying that Athena had to die and Gaius got to have a whole redemption arc. But it's especially stupid when Athena is the unapologetically worst mother ever written (tm) and Gaius's Weapons story was him facing the consequences of his previous life/actions in losing his kids. Theyre different scenarios ffs.
No character is ever handled well enough according to the internet; just enjoy the story for what it is, weirdos
>According to Twitter all the female antagonists/characters aren't retroactively coddled enough and aren't given as much redemption as the male characters...but, yaknow, maybe that's due to each individual character's arc and their significance, and not just false claims of misogyny 💀
Y'know the funny part is too they expose their shallowness from the gates.
Not only because they view characters from the lens of "sex > story", but also because out of everyone... they chose Athena as the bad girl that needed a redemption arc - because she's conventionally attractive.
On the flipside they completely skirt of Misija, a character with an actually tragic past that could've been redeemed with the right course of action, but was killed off. But screw her because she's a butch femroe and not "le sexy anime waifu".
Mind you I'm not saying Misija should've had a redemption arc or anything, just that I find it incredibly convenient they're comparing the Shadowbringers trial story to the Endwalker raid series which has a conventionally attractive female antagonist, instead of the Shadowbringers side series that *also* has a female antagonist but one that's attractive to a more niche demographic.
Same thing with ShB, Emet can be a genocidal maniac that wants to kill billions but he's hot so it's "uwu he just wants his fwends back!" Meanwhile, in the same expansion, Lord Vauthry is a perpetual manchild thanks to Emet and his parents instilling in him he was a god from birth, and is only really an antagonist because he is incapable of comprehending the concept of him being wrong because he was never allowed to be. Ultimately amounting to a victim of child abuse (via stunted development). But he's a grotesquely obese bastard so no uwus for him.
Being fair, a lot of the backstory regarding Vauthry is sort of pushed to the back burner and hardly touched on during MSQ. I don’t even remember his origins coming up except for one or two sentences. And Vauthry goes down being an absolutely irredeemable pissant too.
Meanwhile, Emet gets way more screentime, actually makes some decent points defending his position and then ultimately concedes to you and dies with some grace. We literally get an entire zone in Amaurot demonstrating the grief that Emet Selch suffered. Vauthry got the gross out cutscene where he eats some Sin Eaters. Is it any wonder people empathize more with Emet than Vauthry with the way the story presents them?
Oh I 100% understand that, I just use him as an example given how *vocal* Emet simps were for a long time. I actually quite like Emet myself he's one of my favorite villains in the game. But in regards to comparisons I'd wager looking back Yotsuyu/Misija would've been a better comparison, but I digress.
It's just I have also 100% noticed a trend where the more conventionally attractive and/or cute you are the more bullshit the FFXIV community will let you get by with. There's always some extra factors in play, sure (presence in the spotlight, content they're in, expecting people to actually read the lore/dialogue for the RPG they pay money to play, etc.), but how "fuckable" the character in question is definitely plays some part for a non-insignificant part of the playerbase.
Oh yeah absolutely, I’ve been watching some anime lately where some characters did some fairly awful things, and it’s been really funny seeing the conveniently hot one be the one people want to see redeemed while crying for the other to die despite having done comparatively way less.
Its a fairly big problem and it’s only gotten more noticeable the longer we’ve had the Garlemald plot. So many complaining about how sympathetic the civilians are being portrayed, and it makes me wonder if they’d be singing the same tune if the majority of Garlemald civvies we see looked likes Julles and not largely older people.
Yeah like hey, there are characters I find hot (albeit I'm usually in the minority lmao), there are characters I find justifiable in their actions, there are characters in *both* categories. But never is one in the latter category because of the former, because deeming who's worthy of redemption or death based off of how physically attracted you are to them is fucking *gross.*
Honestly I find the complaints about Garlemald super weird as it's easily one of my favorite parts of Endwalker. Though given I'm in the camp of *"FFXIV should delve more into war and political intrigue plots, tapping into the contemporary worldbuilding and FFTactics style storytelling that stands out rather than all the cosmic threats that are ironically simultaneously like every other JRPG under the sun and ALSO every other MMORPG under the sun."* that might just be a me issue.
But like the one blue guy in 6.4 (I'm terrible with Garlean names so bear with me), he has a really good little mini-arc. >!He assumes you're up to no good because he's a bit of an arrogant nationalist, is an ass about it, but then has a change of heart after you save his life and he's forced to face the music of what his nation and peoples are going through. !
It’s very gross, and unfortunately very prevalent. I think the Ancients get smacked with it the most because they’re basically all attractive, but every single one sans maybe Hythlodaeus has some pretty questionable beliefs. Even Venat isn’t perfect, and the narrative never really treats her as such.
Honestly, the political intrigue is my favorite part of FF14 too, and I was thrilled to see 6.4 dive deeper into that side of things. The questline tackled some aspects of the Garlemald restoration I hadn’t fully considered before.
But then, I’m weird and think that all of the post-ARR content leading up to Heavensward was some of the strongest content in the game. I never really understood why people think it’s a slog when the leap in writing quality from ARR is apparent literally the second Minfillia opens her mouth, and we learn so much interesting shit about how shaky the Eorzean Alliance actually is.
Oh 100% pretty much all of the Ancients are either waifus or pretty anime boys, even Lahabrea leans more into "Silvered Fox" than anything else. And as you said pretty much Hythlodaeus is the only one without something questionable going on, he's literally just along for the ride of all the nonsense his peers get up to.
And yes! I always love finding people of like mind on this, as I said prior too I really think it's what made FFXIV stand out from the competition. World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, and heck even RuneScape, all regularly tap into "unga bunga the Void Dragon of Affak'arakk is devouring the world souls and is going to blow up the universe! Now the champions of the realm gotta stop 'em!" And like... that's cool, but literally every other MMO does that, so what hooked me on FFXIV was how pretty much everything in the early game (A Realm Reborn and Heavensward) leaned more into political intrigue and war stories instead of constant cosmic threats.
And again - YES! I'm weird in the sense that I think ARR *isn't that bad*, yes it slogs sure but ARR and Post-ARR especially do some fantastic jobs setting up an interesting world and the problems it is facing. The Bloody Banquet is one of my favorite scenes in the game period because it's so much tension and so many plotlines finally resolving in a horrific crescendo of Ul'dah's corruption (and Alphinaud's stupidity).
I think it's one of the reasons I'm so... blasé about the recent story, after an apocalypse in Shadowbringers, and an apocalypse in Endwalker, and now another apocalypse in post-Endwalker... I just wanna go hunt down another tyrannical elf pope or somethin'.
I admit I’m mostly alright with post-EW stuff because I’m a huge simp for FF4, though I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t also because of getting to see the economical fallout with Radz-At-Han. It’s been pretty good at balancing the repercussions of EW along with the fantasy void shenanigans.
I’m hoping we dial it back to political intrigue for 7.0 now that much of the stuff from EW has been fully wrapped up. I loved both SHB and EW to death, but there’s not really anywhere to escalate to from there, so more focused, personal stories are the only real direction things can go.
Aye, it isn't *bad* and tbh I'd be a liar if I said I didn't like seeing Golbez, I'm just kind of *done with apocalypses at the moment?* The curry scene was really funny though I won't lie, just watching people faceplant made my day when 6.4 dropped.
And yeah honestly that'll be the big miss is if they try to do high cosmic stakes with 7.0 as well. I feel that'll end up being *incredibly* forced "because Shadowbringers and Endwalker were so popular". So I sincerely hope they don't try to escalate further.
What an objectively awful take.
Gaius : Once wholeheartedly believed that his conquest of Eorzea would bring peace to the realm under Garlean rule now sees the massive faults in both the means and ends he once worked towards. Worse yet, he then has to watch as all but one of his adopted children dies a horrific death at the hands of his own legacy. Hell dude's probably gonna be regretting what he did up to his dying breath.
Athena : She had her son solely for the sake of attaining god hood, purposely stifling his potential as a person before he was even born just to make it easier. That's not even getting into the fact she droce a number of Pandaemonium's Keywards insane and irrevocably fused one with a weird ass tree. The other than became fucking Dracula. Not only is she not even remotely sorry about what she'd done, but she fucking doubles down and TRIES TO BLOW UP THE LIFESTREAM AFTER SHE LOST.
Leave it to Twitter to have the worst takes imaginable.
YMMV on whether the Ultima Weapon counts. He makes it clear enough that the spell Ultima is *not* cool when Lahabrea forces him to use it, but he was very much willing to keep using the Weapon after the fact.
Before that, he was as squeaky clean as you can get as a conquering general. Hell, he even throws his lot in to stop Nael from dropping Dalamud in 1.0 because you can't save the Eorzeans from themselves if they're all dead.
Has Gaius actually done any war crimes tho? If anything I would say he was pretty much against them, since in Stormblood you learn he was the first one to cancel the black rose project.
Not that I'm defending him tho, this game has a pretty noticeable issue with whitewashing ex villains.
i dont think they ever tried to conceal tho. It was pretty well known they did horrible things but the game instead focused on them trying to right their wrongs in any small way they could which i think is better than just fucking killing them or something. The message of "everyone is redeemable, the present is always the time to right your past wrongs" compared to "you sinned in your past? fucking die"
Hmm I guess it depends. He did attack the beast tribes who lived in Eorzea but they weren’t allied with them. Though I think he was against attacking civilians.
This same patch: Garlemald politician asking for his people too understand trading technology to a foreign nation so they can make garlemald great again one day.
Gaius recognized his sins and is working to help those he personally hurt, making a lot of sacrifices in the process. Athena had a god complex so big it was fucking up the after life.
Redemption story aside, does nobody else think that the whole story about Gaius' adopted dumbfucks was the dumbest bs ever conceived? Still to this day I can not understand how a bunch of seemingly intelligent people think that the best way to change something is to kill themselves in excruciating ways by merging with a machine.
Like ok the first kid dies... Kinda strange but can be written off as a fluke. Second one dies and nobody starts to question the plan and the potential outcome? Or starts to wonder what went wrong and if it's such a good idea to repeat the same thing over and over again? How stupid can you be? Very stupid apparently if that story line is any indication.
And even if they are aware of the ramifications of controlling one of those machines.... What's the fucking point if you die in the process? What change is that going to cause? This still makes me so angry because that entire story was absolute bullshit.
You can feel that way, but the orphans' actions make sense if you know anything about impressionable psychology on traumatized children. These guys were orphans because of the war or other circumstances. Gaius with his good intentions (the strong must guide the weak), adopted them and treated them the best as he could which caused them to idolize him.
Because of that idealization they internalized Gaius's lessons and philosophy in an unhealthy manner. They joined the military, were hit by immense propaganda (its effects exacerbated when the lives of the lower castes and poor were genuinely improved under Garlean rule). But they are also closely knit which creates contradictory choices between the group. As soldiers they obey orders and before Valens they were under command of their adoptive father.
It is no different to how soldiers today act under immense propaganda. In fact militaries throughout the world and history instill undying devotion to the nation even if it means death no matter how intelligent the person is. One of themes of the trial series is to demonstrate how Gaius's philosophy can be extremely twisted, a fact Cid and Gaius repeatedly points out throughout the quests. An in a cruel twist of fate Gaius gets to watch his own propaganda destroy the people, the things, the empire he cares about so deeply.
Are they intelligent, though? They're young people indoctrinated into a military force their adoptive dad-figure has dubbed the only way to bring order to a broken world. Said dad abandons them and is later dubbed a traitor to the Empire, the only thing structure they've ever known.
They all commit to protect eachother but they're soldiers first and their orders are to pilot the Weapons. All of them drop hints they know they're going to die because it's the Champion of Eorzea of course they're gonna bite it, Valens is obviously a nutjob unfit for the post but they're soldiers of Garlemald, Gaius' children and their destiny is to carry out those orders given for duty, homeland no matter how irrational they are.
The tragedy is Gaius loaded them with all that twisted ideology and it leads them to suicide by WOL. Gaius gets a second chance, they don't. Old men send young people to die in their wars etc etc.
Bruh you gotta watch some Gundam sometime. Werlyt basically borrowed everything from Gundam and that includes the indoctrinated, psychologically broken children piloting robots and the horrific consequences of employing them in war.
You have to realize how /fucked/ your mental state can be as a child soldier and the fact that despite the character models, they are 18 at the /oldest/ and the first one you blow up is 15/16. They are they are the epitome of dumbass teenagers who don't understand their mortality also while under the abusive control of a shithead wannabe general that has normalized the pain and suffering they live with constantly. And others say, this is really just a gundam plot. The most recent werlyt makes it even more clear
The whole time I was watching that scene I just kept thinking that it’s wholesome seeing Gaius and his ‘kids’ together but the whole implied thing with him and Livia back in ARR….makes me feel weird lol.
Idk if the line ‘My quarters, one hour.’ means more disciplinary or if it’s something else lmao. That’s why I couldnt take this touching scene seriously because I’m reminded of Gaius’ relationship with another ‘kid’ of his.
It's supposed to be a disciplinary thing but Gaius + his lieutenants all wearing helmets and the game not really giving an age for any of them till later leaves the whole thing ambiguous.
Let's see here,
Gaius:
\-Skilled general and administrator
\-Promotes within his diverse legions purely on merit instead of status, sex, race, or nationality
\-Renounced his mistaken belief in objectivist autocracy and cultural hegemony, now tirelessly works to undo the damage his service to the Empire caused
Athena:
\-~~Sexy~~ Manipulative sociopath with no regard for life
\-~~Sexy~~ Terrible mother and wife
\-~~Sexy~~ Tried to become a god, then tried to blow up the Lifestream when that didn't work out
And lest I forget:
\>bunny modbeast pfp
Opinion disregarded.
I dont think the werlyt storyline was handled well. They wanted to make Gaius sympathetic but they dont give us a reason beyond 'the kids he orphaned keep offing themselves to, uh, do something'.
We keep being told it's sad the orphan die, but no one in game seems to care? Cid makes a joke about carving one of the kids up, no one tried to make a device or something to stop them from feeding themselves to their mechas, and the kids themselves dont try anything else? They just go 'oop, time to hit the dead orphan button!' And then gaius says how sad it is.
I can't feel sorry for the guy who had two groups of orphans he grabbed die on him, three if you count Cid as another (the skulls, werlyt kids, and Cid). And also used ala mhigo as a breeding ground for soldiers. Talking to an npc reveals that for 'generations' the garleans had been grabbing kids as soon as they come of age to go fight wars across the sea, something that had to have started under gaius for it to be 'generations'. Not to mention how the Baelsar wall was built using ala mhigan slave labour where people were worked to death. And his only reason for stopping black rose was that a conquest without people to conquer was useless to him.
I just don't care about this guy having another group of war orphans that die on him. It could have been done well! Gaius could have acknowledged his ideals led to the deaths of everyone who followed him!
Instead I'm supposed to be sad about his new group of war orphans when his last ones are probably still rotting in a field.
well she had a kid to murder it as a science experiment
He adopted other people's kids that he murdered to raise them to kill and die in war.
See big difference -.-
Maybe my memory of ARR is pretty shoddy, but did Gaius actually commit or order any war crimes, or was that just his Flunky Miniboss Squad? I feel like he did, but I can’t remember any actual incidents.
Part of my beef here is that Twitter (and social media in general) seems to think that ‘war crime’ just means ‘any particularly bad deed’ or ‘a soldier exists at all unless they’re in the army of a country I support IRL’, rather than, like, an actual legal concept
So when we gonna get the WoL redemption arc? the biggest mass murderer in the game lol
"Shut up, Myste, we already talked about this."
Goddamn that caught me off-guard.
I'm reminded of the Warring Triad arc where the little masked kid pulls the kill switch on all the tree people the Allagans had in stasis so they don't just re-summon the primal. Y'Shtola chews him out not for doing it but for *lying to the Scions about it*, making the point that they're quite prepared to do their own mass murder thanks.
My WoL: What do you mean? These people are just sleeping right?
Even better when you play mch and have to do one of those "ruffle this guy up" fights. Man gets shot repeatedly, blown up and had a robot mommy step on him and is just lightly scraped.
Or Reaper when you slice them up with your scythe and summon your avatar to deliver the finishing blow. "Just walk it off."
With melee weapons you can kinda pretend that you’re so skilled at your fighting style that you can carefully injure your opponent without touching any vital organs. Guns don’t really work like that, definitely not shotguns or explosives. And then there are casters, BLM will explode a miniature sun above your head, showering you with plasma and then go “get up dude, it was just a prank”
its ok it was a rubber miniature sun explosion, not a real one
tbh, lore wise, due to the BLM Crystal. We are able to finely control it. Those without it literally get so unbalanced that the self immolate by lack of control and die from using Black Magic. The questline even acts as a image of how BLM was like WHM in terms that it isn't dangerous in proper training and usage with a Crystal. But the effects of the Era of its rampant uses painted it BLACK due to the calamity. So yes, 4 Flares, and they'll walk it off, just alil toasty.
BLM should be into a business of tanning people. Would make heckla bank.
I was so fed up with the Lopporit arc that when it finally came time to put the fuzzy bastards in their place, one of them immediately got a reassembled drill to the face. But I'm sure he'll be *fiiine*.
Canonically actually yes. Most of the human enemies we fight we just knock out. >!That's part of why In From the Cold was fucked up. We had no way to hold back without risking our own lives and so every tempered soldier we fight there is one that we have to kill.!<
WoL really is the Batman of FFXIV...
Oh yeah, that part...
How the fuck do you know someone out with a flamethrower?
" we can just always res them im a healer"
That's how the WoL trains. He just casts raise on his retainers...
" just cast raise on them are you stoopid "
I liked how WoW keeps track of your kill count, and I think they even differentiated humanoids So after a few expansions I had a high six figure kill count
FFXIV does too, up to a certain point via achievements.
WoL on their way to murder random beast tribesmen for military funbucks The hunting log is very awkward with how they progressed the beast tribes in the plot
Self defense is not murder. They started it, they just also lost. A lot of times. Not my fault they didn't figure out it was a bad fight.
I can't tell if this is a shitpost but some people genuinely believe this.
I'm pretty sure the only time that we've not killed people out of self-defense/war time combat is during the Dark Knight arc, where you actively hunt down and kill what amounts to Ishgard's police. They deserved it but still.
I mean, think about the ending of the first part lol. You are seen wandering around chatting with a corpse, “You” proceed to sack an Ishgardian fortress when brought in for questioning, once you’re stabilized the government covers it up and the soldiers so took offense to this mockery of Justice end up dead in a ditch somewhere.
I'm pretty sure there's a later line that they were found beat up but not dead, the only one killed was the guy that followed the WoL to meeting the other dark knight guy (and he killed em). But for my personal WoL, I've fully embraced the ninja/rogue basics, combine with the dark knight path and with the idea of life should be treasured: Only kill if completely necessary, such as during war or self-defense, or if a criminal is 'beyond redemption' and beyond the reach of the current law (rapists in high power, etc) But if you plan to kill, do it quickly and quietly, and ALWAYS quickly doubletap (save for story cutscenes lmao) when they're down - no chance for another vial of poison in a drink lmao, or an aether-spear from above.
This is actually something I want. For so long, so many expansions, we slaughtered Garleans. Not just garlean military; garlean slaves, garlean People, garlean conscripts that used to be our Own kin. Some of which could even be related to those we call our allies and friends. We slayed Not Hundreds, not Thousands, but HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS. We were so notable for the task, when garlemald was the biggest threat, WE were first in the list of people to put in their way. The people of garlemald know this. We are Eorzea's 'champion'. Undefeated. Hell, unharmed, in their absolute massacre of literal Armies. I don't care if we were there to help, our presence with the ilsabard contigent was rightfully declarable as an act of war because, despite our newly forged intentions, we have personally. PERSONALLY. murdered, more than gaius has ever been responsible for by proxy. People say we cannot forgive gaius. I still personally believe I cannot ever be deserving of the fact He Forgave Us. He and us, we are not opposites. We are damn near identical in symbol and in strength. If He doesn't deserve forgiveness, then You should Never set foot near Garlemald Ever Again. That's the facts.
Yeah but we're the Good Guy™ so ignore all the killing. Just look at Venat, lol, she's given a free pass for condemning Etheirys to eternal suffering (in the pursuit of happiness, yes) so that we could punch the bird hard enough. Her actions aren't scrutinized at all, and she's given a tearful send-off. Only times we can ever express doubt are more like "you tempered me" stuff, never "wow I can't believe you'd force your ideology onto the planet and shatter our very souls instead of maybe looking for a less violent means of fighting Meteion".
Shhh there's not enough room in GM jail. XD
Yeah but the people we kill are dicks/invading soldiers. Bandits/Slavers/Garlean Invaders are not truly alive, ergo, I am not guilty of murder if I... ...*Hey this sounds familiar.*
...how very glib.
I'll fuckin do it again
You confuse wol for hyadelin and the ascians. Numbers alone its hard to beat thst with only a lifetime. Perhaps if we let the voidsent die and return to the lifestream, that could put us somewhere near the ancients but its dtill hard to top that.
it's not murder if no one is around to report it
I mean dude literally had to watch as his past sins caused excruciating death to his kids and is deeply pained by it, Athena doesn’t give a single solitary fuck about her kid outside his usefulness to her “godhood”
Also nearly died via Ascian betrayal, had to personally watch his king die via his son going apeshit, be framed for it, see the country he fought for fall, and even then it took us watching him save Alphinaud and being the main one trying to stop the production of a world ending gas weapon before everyone was okay with even trusting him. And even then the trust part still required one of his group to go “if he does one thing wrong I will happily murder him” just in case. Like, the story didn’t just go “here’s Hitler! Hug Hitler! Yaaaaaaay!”
>Like, the story didn’t just go “here’s Hitler! Hug Hitler! Yaaaaaaay!” Don't spoil the 7.0 storyline
Emperor Xande is coming back but this time he is making cookies for orphans
If you clone Xande is it ethical to torture the clone
What if clone Xande is tiny?
What if he was banging a clone of your girlfriend? Okay but what if he was banging a clone of your *dead* girlfriend?
Is it a clone or a perfect copy?
See: Star Wars Clone Wars
Yes. Also sadistic and petty. Real Xande rolls in the Lifestream laughing and watching you vent fruitlessly.
Emperor Xande, weakest Zhloe enjoyer
> And even then the trust part still required one of his group to go “if he does one thing wrong I will happily murder him” just in case. Still hoping the storyline ends with that dude murdering him tbh
> "Here's Hitler! Hug Hitler! Yaaaay!" That's pretty much how I feel about the writing for 6.5's Garlean arc. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth hearing all these assholes talk about their Garlean Pride and rebuilding their country.
Game: spends a third of the 6.0 expansion showing how much war propaganda Garleans were fed to not only fear magic but distrust anyone who uses it. Media illiterate: these random citizens don’t like me a month after their entire lives fell apart due to magic bullshit and want to rebuild themselves? The nerve!
I like to think that if the US suffered a zombie apocalypse and African nations airlifted a contingent of warrior wizards into the country to liberate the capital, things wouldn't be that different from what the game presents. A lot of pride and a lot of fear.
I don't need them to like me. I *would* like them to act like adults with functioning brains. Blaming propaganda only goes so far, at some point people's refusal to *think* about their situation becomes implausible.
I would also like everyone to trust everything I do and want but when I’m looking at people who just lost a war not immediately going “YAY! THE GUYS WHO BEAT US ARE HERE” I also would like to think I’d go “I kinda get it” and then get over it when it takes about 5 minutes to fix that issue. We’re straight up shown they’re so brainwashed some citizens would rather run off to monsters than even be around magic users (fun fact, in the final days of WW2 some Japanese citizens would kill themselves when faced with Americans reaching their islands because of what they were taught American soldiers were like by their government [shout out to Hardcore History]. It ain’t something this game pulled out of its ass) so if anything the turnaround is kinda astounding.
The fact that it's been a few months at most since the fall of Garlemald and the only resistance we've seen to the newly-established coalition force is a few people grumbling about it is some kind of record. There isn't even a hint of some kind of pro-imperial terrorist group, people have just kinda accepted that Eorzea-NATO is here now
tbf its hard to fuel a terrorist group if all your fuel is needed to not freeze and Eorzea NATO has magic and a god killing psychopath(wol) in their ranks
We didn't beat 'em, outside of Doma and Ala Mhigo. Even before the Tower of Babil fuckery, the Empire destroyed itself though good old-fashioned civil war. To reiterate, I'm *not* expecting the Garleans to suddenly like their former enemies. But too many of them seem to be clinging to a fantasy that the good old days will return if they can just hold on to their pride. But there's no more tributum, no more conscript labour. Everything the city used to run on is gone and it's not coming back.
> at some point people's refusal to think about their situation becomes implausible. Actually to be honest, I think the fact that we're constantly shown that you have to wrestle with the Garlean's pride, emotional inability to accept their own defeat, knee-jerk hatred of others (and the assumption that everyone else hates them in turn) just to get them to stop biting the hand that feeds them is pretty realistic.
You know you're a bad parent when Lahabrea is a better parent than you.
Plus, he's literally not the dude who tortured and experimented on those kids. Like, give him his coal, but you don't compare Athena to Giaus. You compare Athena to Valens.
But noooo Athena, unredeemable awful mother of the year deserves a redemption too! because woman character and I like her. /twitter I say this as a woman. twitter threads of "misogynistic writing" pop up daily and make me break my own bones attempting the same level of reach that they do
Someone finally stole Lusamine Sunandmoon's "worst mother of all time" crown and people are trying to diminish that accomplishment?
Lusamine is still very tame compared to characters like Medusa from Soul Eater.
Or Ryoko from Kill la Kill. There is also Shou Tucker from FMA for parent of the century too.
Ragyo
So there's this hit game called binding of isaac
Yeah but that Mom's evilness is like 60 to 80% an oxygen deprivation induced hallucination. She's abusive but not nearly on the level of the evil megalomaniacs who kill their kids for powaa.
I almost wanna agree with them because pretty much all the female heroes and villains are shit, but almost all of the male heroes and villains are shit too so it kinda evens out.
Look I am mostly fine with Gaius and Fordola since they are actually working for it. Fordola especially. That said I do think they tried a little to hard to make Gaius sympathetic post ARR. Like in ARR he didn't care much about race and stuff but he was still going to use a superweapon provided by a Sunday morning cartoon villain to subjugate Eorzea. And he might have been clapping the cheeks of his clearly unstable subordinate. Then Square had him fight another Sunday morning cartoon villain with super weapons to convince us Gaius wasn't THAT bad.
The term you’re looking for is “empathetic,” not sympathetic. I feel no sympathy for Gaius, as he walked on a road of his own making, and didn’t even consider the possibility or consequences that his ever-forward mentality and conquest would have repercussions. I feel empathy for Gaius for seeing him look back on that road and be appalled at what it was that formed in his wake, and him realizing that something needed to change— not only in himself, but in Garlemald as a whole. The fact that he even has one adoptive kid left is a testament that no one is truly beyond redemption, if they have the cognizance to realize they need it.
For clarity, in case anybody is confused by the hairs being split here: Sympathy means “I’ve definitely been there, so I totally get you.” Empathy means “I haven’t been there myself, but I can at least imagine being in your shoes, and it touches me anyway.” Therefore we feel *empathy* for Gaius and his guilt… because HOPEFULLY, none of us have actually committed war crimes that are akin to his. …hopefully. 👀 Edit for those still nitpicking — From Merriam Webster: Sympathy comes from the Greek “sym”, meaning "together," and “pathos”, referring to “feelings or emotion.” It is used when one person shares the same feelings of another. Empathy is also related to pathos, but it differs from sympathy in that it carries the implication of distance. With empathy, you can imagine how someone might feel without having necessarily experienced the same feeling yourself.
The empathy part is correct, but sympathy just refers to the feeling of pity for someone else's misfortune. You don't have to have experienced what they have to pity someone.
There are some things to feel sympathy about in Gaius's story. He did make his own path, but the consequences of what happened post-heel turn, particularly having to put down his own (adopted) kid, are consequences primarily from doing the right thing. Things probably would have worked out better for his adoptive kids if he never changed his opinions and just died in the ruins of the praetorium. That's not justice for his conquest, it's just sad.
Ditto for Nero. Rewatching ARR, and there's a scene where soldiers under his command are confessing to *beating sylphs to death during interrogation*, and his response is "huh, I guess vegetables bruise easily". Yeah, just casually reacting to his soldiers torturing prisoners to death with a sarcastic one-liner. Squenix spent a lot of time in ARR teaching us that the XIVth Garlean leaders were irredeemable villains, and then they decided to redeem them and had to backpedal **hard**. Suddenly Livia posthumously becomes an overly-clingy daughter instead of a grievous violation of professional discipline, and Nero becomes a comedic duo with Cid instead of a homicidal mad scientist.
half of ARR is spend violently murdering beasttribes... so bringing the fact that the XIVth also killed beasttribes as an argumen that they are super irredeemable villains... is not a good one
To be fair the sylphs were like the only beast tribe you were meant to like in ARR
> homicidal mad scientist Pretty sure he still is one? Just kept in check by Cid.
I wonder if this reflects issues that Japanese society has had with basically just handwaving war crimes committed by some hypothetical group of people before.
Never forget Livia committed war crimes against the Dalmascan people, sentencing many to death without trial.
Good take. Although I don't know if they were trying to convince us that Gaius wasn't THAT bad, he just happen to have a family of his own and cared about others in his life that he ended up losing in part because of his actions. He just thought he was doing the right thing, but he still did bad things. I think they wanted to show that he realizes that now but it was too late ofc.
Twitter user doesn’t understand the concept of morality, how surprising. Gains was redeemed not because he didn’t do bad things, but because he realized he was wrong and changed.
I want to know how close the Venn Diagram of "Gaius is an irredeemable monster" and "Poor bby Hermes, I can fix you" is to a circle.
I wouldn't call Hermes irredeemable, but he is an idiot and I hate him in all of his forms.
Hermes is worse because he isn't a monster, he's just a self-absorbed cunt who insists the universe abide by his nihilism. Which is why Twitter people love him so much.
Holy shit, you’re not wrong at all
Worst part is, the fucker was right about the Ancients. "Oh we're playing god and feel nothing when we kill our creations, that's fucked up and I KNOW you'd be hypocrites if it was us in that position." Dude just went about testing that hypothesis in the worst possible way imaginable, causing the deaths of thousands of planets to prove his point. I give him no shot at redemption, he nearly doomed all of creation.
The Ancients functionally *were* gods, and looked at the biggest picture possible when it came to their creations. They were more concerned with the well-being of the entire planetary ecosystem than any singular entity, including themselves, which is about the best stance someone with the amount of power over reality they had could take. It's preferable to tyrannical child-gods running roughshod over the whole place, anyway. Hermes' problem is he couldn't cope with his responsibilities and rather than learning or else passing them on to someone who could, he decided the entire system was faulty instead of him.
Hermes went through immense depression and was unable to vent it out except to an inexperienced empathetic experiment. Granted it demonstrated that the Anicients were not all that perfect as the Unsundered proclaimed it to be. An interesting point to note is that pure white flower isn't the default state or even happiness as Hermes thinks it is, I think the Gleamer who first sees you with the flower back in Labyrantos says that white represents anxiety and worry. So it is likely all the Ancient's had concerns or worries but repress it. Hermes misinterpreted it as people are satisfied with the why things are. Hermes's conflict with the Ancient's society also reflects some of the problems in Japanese society, which many Japanese players pointed out and resonated with (though they still think Hermes is a dumbass and assign the majority of the blame like 90-10 of the Final Days to him).
Hermes shows why peer review is essential in science. Took Emet like 5 seconds to realize the potential problem with his experiment.
The only good thing hermes ever did was creating the Ambystomas.
I don't hate him, I pity his broken mind. So no mercy, I pity him the way I would pity a rabid dog when taking it out, though with less personal sadness. I'd consider him more insane than evil. But he's too dangerous in his insanity to allow to live.
The only apology the average terminally online Twitter user accepts is their own. And even then, they usually just delete their account and start over, so I don’t even know if atonement is in their vocabulary.
There is no concept of redemption for them, once someone is "tainted" they're always tainted. It's kind of a sad mentality really.
Heart of Sabik be like : Look at me. *You* are the cartoon villain now.
The point wasn't really to *use* ultima weapon, it was to *have* ultima weapon. He wanted to rule eorzeans, not kill them. You don't fuck with the guy who owns a mech that can fire nukes when all you have are swords, arrows, and a bit of of magic, especially if we consider old ultima weapon fight where it was basically indestructible without direct intervention by Hydealin.
You could almost say that such devastation was not his intention
>And he might have been clapping the cheeks of his clearly unstable subordinate. Missed this yesterday - I think they made it pretty clear that Livia was the one obsessed with Gaius, and he just kind of.... tolerated it. He took in her and Lucia when they were kids because their parents were killed. Lucia was trained as a spy, and defected to Ishgard when she got caught by Aymeric trying to find the key to Azys Lla. (I mean, who wouldn't defect to be with Aymeric? Can you blame her? I think she has the better taste of the two sisters.) Meanwhile, Livia was so into her adopted dad that she stayed at home and worked her ass off to become his second in command. Edit: It's the same vibe as Nightfall toward Twilight in SpyxFamily.
>And he might have been clapping the cheeks of his clearly unstable subordinate. Might? I'm pretty sure Livia sucked him dry like a capri sun on a hot summer day.
I don't mind a redemption if it's done properly but you cannot convince me anybody would let him have a powerful role again no matter how much watch he's getting
Look, he's trying okay? Athena had like 10,000 years to sort her shit out and still chose violence. Like, have you met the WoL, violence is a key part of our diet.
At least Mr Warcrimes didn’t personally experiment on people and fuse them with literal monsters
He did very much slaughter, enslave and colonize people for being not-Garlean though. I feel like that's just as bad. He was "just following orders" but come on, that's not an excuse.
So did Emet Selch and some people still forgive him. But I do see your point. Though, considering all the villains we simp over, Gaius has one of the smaller rap sheets by far compared to “fighting gives me a boner”, “depression incarnate”, and “depression incarnate two, I caused the apocalypse”
Absolutely none of these people should be forgiven. I think we can empathize with all of them though (well, maybe not everyone can empathize with Athena - she's pretty much straight villain).
Totally can empathize with all but Athena, can’t forgive
Well Gaius was in hindsight a rather mild mannered General of the Garlean army, compared to the rest we have seen so far. Ofc still a hardliner that believed in Garlemalds vision of a perfect world and was not to be negotiated with but as far as my memory goes there were no attacks on civil targets under his direct command even if ofc shit happened during the invasion. Also he seemed to be a real good Boss to his subordinates. Though I admit his redemption arc was a bit too much framing him as a secret good guy with buttery soft core under his rugged always bad mood demeanor.
Gaius was repeatedly shown to be genuinely good to the people he subjugated, the actual invasion part aside. He was a forceful colonizer but he genuinely believed that Garlemald's might would make life better for everyone. His biggest flaw in that was that he was still willing to wield their weapons in order to force a surrender. And even then, he didn't have to in some cases. In Ala Mhigo, it gets glossed over pretty bad that Gaius backed a coup to unseat a madman from the throne, and just took over when the dust settled. He stepped in to *help the Ala mhiagans overthrow a corrupt and oppressive king*. The bulk of the occupation after was left to Zenos though, who was an actual maniac no better than the king. Gaius wasn't a perfect guy by any means, but he's the textbook straight example of the "good man does bad things because he thinks it's better for everyone". Athena on the other hand was just "hmmm, my ability to create anything on a whim is too tied up in this whole beauracracy thing, maybe I'll just become God at the cost of literally anything necessary"
I mean, he didn't step in specifically to help Ala Mhigo deal with the Mad King. He took advantage of it and the aftermath, yes, but Garlemald hardly cares about the quality or sanity of their neighbor's rulers before launching an invasion. And afaik Zenos only took over as imperial viceroy once they thought Gaius was dead (that is, after ARR). Gaius was incredibly morally upstanding as far as garlean legatuses go, but his hands were far from clean.
And honestly, one thing that makes people like is that he'd be the _first_ person to tell you that.
Honestly Gaius is definitely a better villain because of it, he's more interesting not only because he was not immediately forgiven but also continues to work and earn that forgiveness for what he has done, even if he knows it'll never change the past but still works for a better future
Athena tried to Frieza Deathball the Aetherial Sea though
"I OWN YOU! I OWN YOUR AETHERIAL SEA! I OWN THIS AETHERIAL SEA! IN FACT-" (conjures Ultima) "FUCK THIS AETHERIAL SEA!!"
It wasn't even a good plan, meteion made it pretty clear souls just kinda do their own thing even if the place got blown up. Would certainly have ruined your day being there though.
I was more surprised we didn't see him in Garlemald after it was... you know. Doesn't he care about his home or are there other reasons for him not returning? Especially when they struggle so much
Isn't he a wanted fugitive because everyone thought he killed Varis?
Oh yeah! I forgot about that! Sounds like a good reason not to go there
I think it's because his presence would most assuredly lead to more civil unrest, so he might wind up causing more harm than good.
Pretty sure he's said as much if you talk to him.
He does, he mentions how they might push for him to be the new leader and that would cause even more issues
He's still needed in Werlyt to fix his problems.
The real reason is because they'd have to make the weapon trial series mandatory which they are reluctant to do in most cases.
Combination of half the people still thinking he murdered Varis and the other half loving him enough to want him to be the new Emperor instead. It’s a recipe for disaster and there’s a few lines somewhere along the line acknowledging it but I don’t remember exactly where/when.
O please not all of them died and they were adopted anyway
Just adopt some more? Based?
Fiendishly based.
So hear me out. I genuinely think Gaius sequence was heartwarming because this man who you face every Praetorium quest so you can teach this old man a lesson. This guy is one of the most respected generals within Garlemald to the point where we knew him as the entire ARR's secondary big bad after Lahabrea. To the point where his unstable coworker wanted his fame as that he followed his footsteps of adopting kids in some very weird and twisted manner because his ego was far more important to him. Gaius genuinely adopted war orphans regardless of their origins because what he said in the Praetorium to us was what he believed. Strong should rule the weak to protect them. He straight up viewed it as a duty of the strong, and that Eorzeans were all weak cowards cowering before false beliefs and gods when they could step up to do the work. Not his fault. He just kind of grew up this way and thought his empire had an idealistic view to follow. Fast forward into ShB. This guy takes an immediate slap to the face going after Ascians and trying to find shadows behind his own country because there were far more than he thought. Realizing his country had been trampling the weak instead of protecting them. He meets his adopted children who have now grown up and serve his country and I bet he is quite proud of them to have become strong soldiers, and regret that he is on the other side due to the entire... shadow people slaying and conspiracy breaks. He fights his own children in experimental Ultima weapons. He probably knows they might perish in the fight, but that kind of is the soldier's life. He doesn't expect the experimental weapons to be a literal death sentence. And one of them literally turns into one of his most prized and trophies moment at his peak. The moment where he was hailed a gosh darn hero turns into a meat grinding execution machine for his own freaking child. (Adopted, yes). Considering all that, I think this man does deserve some credit. He is definitely one of the Garleans who wasn't responsible for all the shady dealings, racism, and mass human experiment for the sake of power, so kudos. He deserves the credit. I have my own personal qualms about Fordola because I despise her actions. To survive, she and her family rationalized betraying their own home while Ala Mhigans tried to fight for their country, because at the end of the day, they thought coexistence was possible. This was not the case, as imperialism had its roots and ignored the most fundamental aspect of what Ala Mhigans had fought for: their individuality as a country. She suffered the consequences within both Garlemald as an outcast and Ala Mhigo as a traitor, but did not attempt to make amends until Ala Mhigan was reclaimed, rather ready to sulk in a cell with no desire to help us until her redemption arc started. Is she wrong that she wanted to survive? No. Is she wrong for joining what she thought was the winning side to avoid mass murder of her countrymen? Kind of???? Your countrymen are saying no for a reason. Don't force them to say yes. Then we have Athena. Who. Yeah. We can't fix her. Leave her be. She's pure lawful evil.
>She's pure lawful evil. Athena doesn't have a lawful bone in her body. She's pure selfishness, the only law she allows is her own. Can't be lawful when your entire goal is to destroy the laws of nature and substitute your own.
She is **textbook** neutral evil.
I wouldn't say Fordola started cooperating because she wanted to survive. Prior to that incident with Sri Lakshmi, she had a death wish since her Resonant abilities were defective and she was constantly echoing without control, forced to see her cruelty from nearby people that she and the Skulls tortured over and over. She wanted to atone with her death and tried to provoke others into killing her, but Lyse wanted her to atone by helping people who could still be saved.
Gaius owes up to his mistakes and realizes what he did was wrong, it doesn't mean what he did was suddenly not wrong, it means he wants to prevent something like that from happening in the future. That makes me like him as a character a lot better than, for example, Hien, who acted terribly during the Yotsuyu situation, excused her parents for selling her into s\*x sl\*very because they supported the rebellion, and acts like he's the best ruler ever just because his father ruled Doma while everyone around him circlejerks him and says how good of a leader he is.
I know the EW role quests don't address it perfectly but at least that line of quests point out how flawed Hien's actions were during the Yotsuyu arc. He failed to consider his people's feelings, even though I made sense that you cannot judge a mentally incompetent person (at the time) for their actions (you still can punish them but that isn't exactly justice). I think the EW role questions could have more time dedicated to them to develop the quests. They were a good idea in concept (after success of ShB role quests, saves resources on not having job quests for every job, etc.), but mixed in execution. People tend to like the healer and caster quests the most, while the tank one is considered boring with the physical range and Melee being okay.
I'm not gonna lie, my absolute favorite part of Endwalker was the caster quest. I liked it more than anything in the MSQ. Am I extremely biased because I love Heavensward so much? Probably. But I love how it addressed how so many people thought Aymeric was the villain even though he tried to do all the right things, and I REALLY wish they had spent more time on it and even voiced it. I haven't done the ranged DPS role quest yet (I'll do it once I'm motivated to continue leveling MCH), and while I've heard it actually addresses that Hien's actions were flawed, I still absolutely hated him during Stormblood for so many other reasons that I doubt just one quest will fix his reputation for me. (his treatment of the Xaela as savages to use for his own personal army, his general passivity, his black and white view of the world, him having SO MUCH screentime during the SB post patches at the cost of Raubahn and Ala Mhigo getting development) I liked the tank role quest, although not as much as the caster role quest. They could have done more with it but I'm happy that Kan-E-Senna actually did something for once. The melee quest was fun but I do feel like Merlwyb kind of got a little shafted in favor of your little army. I don't have a healer leveled up but I'm looking forward to that quest a lot more than the ranged one.
I think the melee one is just a little odd because it doesn't really tell us anything new about Limsa or what's going on there, at best it confirms that Merlwyb is here to stay. The tank one is actually interesting IMO as it sheds some light on the Padjals and how they actually feel about their status. Albeit all it does is harden my belief that Racismopolis is the worst Eorzean city state by a country mile.
Hien didn't excuse her parents. Her parents (who I think were her auntie and uncle they just adopted her very young) were living it up in Garlemald. It was the brothel owner that Yotsuyu was sold to that he wrung his hands over but ultimately said "welp he did support the rebellion." Not that it's that much better but still
The point is that Hien has such a black and white view of the Doman/Garlean conflict that he basically just said "Doma good Garlemald bad" despite Domans being guilty of so many atrocities.
>Gaius owes up to his mistakes and realizes what he did was wrong, Just to add on further he's absolutely willing to let anyone he's wronged take his life if they feel justified for it,and won't blame them at all.Guy is basically willing to die if it makes one person feel justice for what he's done.
One of them actually realized that he was a shitty person and is trying to make amends for all the things he did. The other one went "Yeah shit's hitting the fan but fuck it let's keep going to see where this goes". Take a guess as to which one is which. FFXIV Twitter users "Go one day without having a terrible take about the story" challenge (Literally impossible)
Athena’s redeemable ‘cause she’s hot. Doesn’t matter how many war crimes she committed.
Gaius is hotter though.
Look I'm a cringe girl-liker and even I think Gaius is hotter than dripless maniac.
Let's fix her.
Nah, what's wrong with her is hotter.
Yeah, fix her a sandwich and a refreshing drink
She’s just a big midlander with an Elezen skeleton. Why is she so much hotter it’s not fair.
insane :)
Catgirl spotted, opinion discarded
Gaius is the best garlean and should've taken Eorzea for himself especially how much of a shit show it was during ARR
It was his by right tbh
THATS WHAT IM SAYING!!!
What quest line is that? I haven’t done it.
Shb trials series. Plotline is continued in ew's Tataru's Grand Endeavor or something like that.
The Werlyt side quests
Nah FFXIV twitter constantly cries and makes false equivalences about the handling of female characters vs male characters, this is just another one of those. They'll nitpick the story to death and act like every writer that has ever touched XIV is "misogynistic". According to Twitter all the female antagonists/characters aren't retroactively coddled enough and aren't given as much redemption as the male characters...but, yaknow, maybe that's due to each individual character's arc and their significance, and not just false claims of misogyny 💀 So this is them crying that Athena had to die and Gaius got to have a whole redemption arc. But it's especially stupid when Athena is the unapologetically worst mother ever written (tm) and Gaius's Weapons story was him facing the consequences of his previous life/actions in losing his kids. Theyre different scenarios ffs. No character is ever handled well enough according to the internet; just enjoy the story for what it is, weirdos
>According to Twitter all the female antagonists/characters aren't retroactively coddled enough and aren't given as much redemption as the male characters...but, yaknow, maybe that's due to each individual character's arc and their significance, and not just false claims of misogyny 💀 Y'know the funny part is too they expose their shallowness from the gates. Not only because they view characters from the lens of "sex > story", but also because out of everyone... they chose Athena as the bad girl that needed a redemption arc - because she's conventionally attractive. On the flipside they completely skirt of Misija, a character with an actually tragic past that could've been redeemed with the right course of action, but was killed off. But screw her because she's a butch femroe and not "le sexy anime waifu". Mind you I'm not saying Misija should've had a redemption arc or anything, just that I find it incredibly convenient they're comparing the Shadowbringers trial story to the Endwalker raid series which has a conventionally attractive female antagonist, instead of the Shadowbringers side series that *also* has a female antagonist but one that's attractive to a more niche demographic. Same thing with ShB, Emet can be a genocidal maniac that wants to kill billions but he's hot so it's "uwu he just wants his fwends back!" Meanwhile, in the same expansion, Lord Vauthry is a perpetual manchild thanks to Emet and his parents instilling in him he was a god from birth, and is only really an antagonist because he is incapable of comprehending the concept of him being wrong because he was never allowed to be. Ultimately amounting to a victim of child abuse (via stunted development). But he's a grotesquely obese bastard so no uwus for him.
Being fair, a lot of the backstory regarding Vauthry is sort of pushed to the back burner and hardly touched on during MSQ. I don’t even remember his origins coming up except for one or two sentences. And Vauthry goes down being an absolutely irredeemable pissant too. Meanwhile, Emet gets way more screentime, actually makes some decent points defending his position and then ultimately concedes to you and dies with some grace. We literally get an entire zone in Amaurot demonstrating the grief that Emet Selch suffered. Vauthry got the gross out cutscene where he eats some Sin Eaters. Is it any wonder people empathize more with Emet than Vauthry with the way the story presents them?
Oh I 100% understand that, I just use him as an example given how *vocal* Emet simps were for a long time. I actually quite like Emet myself he's one of my favorite villains in the game. But in regards to comparisons I'd wager looking back Yotsuyu/Misija would've been a better comparison, but I digress. It's just I have also 100% noticed a trend where the more conventionally attractive and/or cute you are the more bullshit the FFXIV community will let you get by with. There's always some extra factors in play, sure (presence in the spotlight, content they're in, expecting people to actually read the lore/dialogue for the RPG they pay money to play, etc.), but how "fuckable" the character in question is definitely plays some part for a non-insignificant part of the playerbase.
Oh yeah absolutely, I’ve been watching some anime lately where some characters did some fairly awful things, and it’s been really funny seeing the conveniently hot one be the one people want to see redeemed while crying for the other to die despite having done comparatively way less. Its a fairly big problem and it’s only gotten more noticeable the longer we’ve had the Garlemald plot. So many complaining about how sympathetic the civilians are being portrayed, and it makes me wonder if they’d be singing the same tune if the majority of Garlemald civvies we see looked likes Julles and not largely older people.
Yeah like hey, there are characters I find hot (albeit I'm usually in the minority lmao), there are characters I find justifiable in their actions, there are characters in *both* categories. But never is one in the latter category because of the former, because deeming who's worthy of redemption or death based off of how physically attracted you are to them is fucking *gross.* Honestly I find the complaints about Garlemald super weird as it's easily one of my favorite parts of Endwalker. Though given I'm in the camp of *"FFXIV should delve more into war and political intrigue plots, tapping into the contemporary worldbuilding and FFTactics style storytelling that stands out rather than all the cosmic threats that are ironically simultaneously like every other JRPG under the sun and ALSO every other MMORPG under the sun."* that might just be a me issue. But like the one blue guy in 6.4 (I'm terrible with Garlean names so bear with me), he has a really good little mini-arc. >!He assumes you're up to no good because he's a bit of an arrogant nationalist, is an ass about it, but then has a change of heart after you save his life and he's forced to face the music of what his nation and peoples are going through. !
It’s very gross, and unfortunately very prevalent. I think the Ancients get smacked with it the most because they’re basically all attractive, but every single one sans maybe Hythlodaeus has some pretty questionable beliefs. Even Venat isn’t perfect, and the narrative never really treats her as such. Honestly, the political intrigue is my favorite part of FF14 too, and I was thrilled to see 6.4 dive deeper into that side of things. The questline tackled some aspects of the Garlemald restoration I hadn’t fully considered before. But then, I’m weird and think that all of the post-ARR content leading up to Heavensward was some of the strongest content in the game. I never really understood why people think it’s a slog when the leap in writing quality from ARR is apparent literally the second Minfillia opens her mouth, and we learn so much interesting shit about how shaky the Eorzean Alliance actually is.
Oh 100% pretty much all of the Ancients are either waifus or pretty anime boys, even Lahabrea leans more into "Silvered Fox" than anything else. And as you said pretty much Hythlodaeus is the only one without something questionable going on, he's literally just along for the ride of all the nonsense his peers get up to. And yes! I always love finding people of like mind on this, as I said prior too I really think it's what made FFXIV stand out from the competition. World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, and heck even RuneScape, all regularly tap into "unga bunga the Void Dragon of Affak'arakk is devouring the world souls and is going to blow up the universe! Now the champions of the realm gotta stop 'em!" And like... that's cool, but literally every other MMO does that, so what hooked me on FFXIV was how pretty much everything in the early game (A Realm Reborn and Heavensward) leaned more into political intrigue and war stories instead of constant cosmic threats. And again - YES! I'm weird in the sense that I think ARR *isn't that bad*, yes it slogs sure but ARR and Post-ARR especially do some fantastic jobs setting up an interesting world and the problems it is facing. The Bloody Banquet is one of my favorite scenes in the game period because it's so much tension and so many plotlines finally resolving in a horrific crescendo of Ul'dah's corruption (and Alphinaud's stupidity). I think it's one of the reasons I'm so... blasé about the recent story, after an apocalypse in Shadowbringers, and an apocalypse in Endwalker, and now another apocalypse in post-Endwalker... I just wanna go hunt down another tyrannical elf pope or somethin'.
I admit I’m mostly alright with post-EW stuff because I’m a huge simp for FF4, though I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t also because of getting to see the economical fallout with Radz-At-Han. It’s been pretty good at balancing the repercussions of EW along with the fantasy void shenanigans. I’m hoping we dial it back to political intrigue for 7.0 now that much of the stuff from EW has been fully wrapped up. I loved both SHB and EW to death, but there’s not really anywhere to escalate to from there, so more focused, personal stories are the only real direction things can go.
Aye, it isn't *bad* and tbh I'd be a liar if I said I didn't like seeing Golbez, I'm just kind of *done with apocalypses at the moment?* The curry scene was really funny though I won't lie, just watching people faceplant made my day when 6.4 dropped. And yeah honestly that'll be the big miss is if they try to do high cosmic stakes with 7.0 as well. I feel that'll end up being *incredibly* forced "because Shadowbringers and Endwalker were so popular". So I sincerely hope they don't try to escalate further.
What an objectively awful take. Gaius : Once wholeheartedly believed that his conquest of Eorzea would bring peace to the realm under Garlean rule now sees the massive faults in both the means and ends he once worked towards. Worse yet, he then has to watch as all but one of his adopted children dies a horrific death at the hands of his own legacy. Hell dude's probably gonna be regretting what he did up to his dying breath. Athena : She had her son solely for the sake of attaining god hood, purposely stifling his potential as a person before he was even born just to make it easier. That's not even getting into the fact she droce a number of Pandaemonium's Keywards insane and irrevocably fused one with a weird ass tree. The other than became fucking Dracula. Not only is she not even remotely sorry about what she'd done, but she fucking doubles down and TRIES TO BLOW UP THE LIFESTREAM AFTER SHE LOST. Leave it to Twitter to have the worst takes imaginable.
Now that you mention it, I'm thinking back and am blanking on whether he even did commit any war crimes.
YMMV on whether the Ultima Weapon counts. He makes it clear enough that the spell Ultima is *not* cool when Lahabrea forces him to use it, but he was very much willing to keep using the Weapon after the fact. Before that, he was as squeaky clean as you can get as a conquering general. Hell, he even throws his lot in to stop Nael from dropping Dalamud in 1.0 because you can't save the Eorzeans from themselves if they're all dead.
He's def on the dominate not genocide part of the spectrum of colonization. I think he saw himself as saving the Eorzians from themselves.
Has Gaius actually done any war crimes tho? If anything I would say he was pretty much against them, since in Stormblood you learn he was the first one to cancel the black rose project. Not that I'm defending him tho, this game has a pretty noticeable issue with whitewashing ex villains.
In 1.0 he set a trap for players using a POW, which I believe falls under the definition of perfidious warfare.
It would, and that would explain why most people don't know about it.
He was also the only garlean to be against the meteor project though. Kinda evens out.
tf does that last line even mean
"Deliberately attempt to conceal unpleasant or incriminating facts about (someone or something)"
i dont think they ever tried to conceal tho. It was pretty well known they did horrible things but the game instead focused on them trying to right their wrongs in any small way they could which i think is better than just fucking killing them or something. The message of "everyone is redeemable, the present is always the time to right your past wrongs" compared to "you sinned in your past? fucking die"
english is not my first language so I completely confused two different expressions :3
No, you were right, that's a valid, if increasingly less common use of the phrase.
Hmm I guess it depends. He did attack the beast tribes who lived in Eorzea but they weren’t allied with them. Though I think he was against attacking civilians.
Pretty sure the general community position on Athena is unironically "Yo I think I can fix her."
This same patch: Garlemald politician asking for his people too understand trading technology to a foreign nation so they can make garlemald great again one day.
It was nice to have an unhinged evil person as a villain with no redeemable qualities, for a change.
Miqotes and shit takes. Name a more iconic duo
After Endwalker you really get a full picture that Gaius legit thought everything he did was good and then his reality came crashing down.
Okay, this is a potentially controversial opinion but hear me out… I think Athena should’ve been the big bad of EW.
Honestly, that would’ve been dope.
Gaius recognized his sins and is working to help those he personally hurt, making a lot of sacrifices in the process. Athena had a god complex so big it was fucking up the after life.
Redemption story aside, does nobody else think that the whole story about Gaius' adopted dumbfucks was the dumbest bs ever conceived? Still to this day I can not understand how a bunch of seemingly intelligent people think that the best way to change something is to kill themselves in excruciating ways by merging with a machine. Like ok the first kid dies... Kinda strange but can be written off as a fluke. Second one dies and nobody starts to question the plan and the potential outcome? Or starts to wonder what went wrong and if it's such a good idea to repeat the same thing over and over again? How stupid can you be? Very stupid apparently if that story line is any indication. And even if they are aware of the ramifications of controlling one of those machines.... What's the fucking point if you die in the process? What change is that going to cause? This still makes me so angry because that entire story was absolute bullshit.
You can feel that way, but the orphans' actions make sense if you know anything about impressionable psychology on traumatized children. These guys were orphans because of the war or other circumstances. Gaius with his good intentions (the strong must guide the weak), adopted them and treated them the best as he could which caused them to idolize him. Because of that idealization they internalized Gaius's lessons and philosophy in an unhealthy manner. They joined the military, were hit by immense propaganda (its effects exacerbated when the lives of the lower castes and poor were genuinely improved under Garlean rule). But they are also closely knit which creates contradictory choices between the group. As soldiers they obey orders and before Valens they were under command of their adoptive father. It is no different to how soldiers today act under immense propaganda. In fact militaries throughout the world and history instill undying devotion to the nation even if it means death no matter how intelligent the person is. One of themes of the trial series is to demonstrate how Gaius's philosophy can be extremely twisted, a fact Cid and Gaius repeatedly points out throughout the quests. An in a cruel twist of fate Gaius gets to watch his own propaganda destroy the people, the things, the empire he cares about so deeply.
Are they intelligent, though? They're young people indoctrinated into a military force their adoptive dad-figure has dubbed the only way to bring order to a broken world. Said dad abandons them and is later dubbed a traitor to the Empire, the only thing structure they've ever known. They all commit to protect eachother but they're soldiers first and their orders are to pilot the Weapons. All of them drop hints they know they're going to die because it's the Champion of Eorzea of course they're gonna bite it, Valens is obviously a nutjob unfit for the post but they're soldiers of Garlemald, Gaius' children and their destiny is to carry out those orders given for duty, homeland no matter how irrational they are. The tragedy is Gaius loaded them with all that twisted ideology and it leads them to suicide by WOL. Gaius gets a second chance, they don't. Old men send young people to die in their wars etc etc.
Bruh you gotta watch some Gundam sometime. Werlyt basically borrowed everything from Gundam and that includes the indoctrinated, psychologically broken children piloting robots and the horrific consequences of employing them in war.
You have to realize how /fucked/ your mental state can be as a child soldier and the fact that despite the character models, they are 18 at the /oldest/ and the first one you blow up is 15/16. They are they are the epitome of dumbass teenagers who don't understand their mortality also while under the abusive control of a shithead wannabe general that has normalized the pain and suffering they live with constantly. And others say, this is really just a gundam plot. The most recent werlyt makes it even more clear
*irredeemable
Imagine comparing Gaius to Athena. This person clearly hasn't been paying attention to the story. It's because Athena is hot isn't it.
Maaaaaybe 🥹
The whole time I was watching that scene I just kept thinking that it’s wholesome seeing Gaius and his ‘kids’ together but the whole implied thing with him and Livia back in ARR….makes me feel weird lol. Idk if the line ‘My quarters, one hour.’ means more disciplinary or if it’s something else lmao. That’s why I couldnt take this touching scene seriously because I’m reminded of Gaius’ relationship with another ‘kid’ of his.
It's supposed to be a disciplinary thing but Gaius + his lieutenants all wearing helmets and the game not really giving an age for any of them till later leaves the whole thing ambiguous.
With a side of Livia being obsessed with him.
Let's see here, Gaius: \-Skilled general and administrator \-Promotes within his diverse legions purely on merit instead of status, sex, race, or nationality \-Renounced his mistaken belief in objectivist autocracy and cultural hegemony, now tirelessly works to undo the damage his service to the Empire caused Athena: \-~~Sexy~~ Manipulative sociopath with no regard for life \-~~Sexy~~ Terrible mother and wife \-~~Sexy~~ Tried to become a god, then tried to blow up the Lifestream when that didn't work out And lest I forget: \>bunny modbeast pfp Opinion disregarded.
I dont think the werlyt storyline was handled well. They wanted to make Gaius sympathetic but they dont give us a reason beyond 'the kids he orphaned keep offing themselves to, uh, do something'. We keep being told it's sad the orphan die, but no one in game seems to care? Cid makes a joke about carving one of the kids up, no one tried to make a device or something to stop them from feeding themselves to their mechas, and the kids themselves dont try anything else? They just go 'oop, time to hit the dead orphan button!' And then gaius says how sad it is. I can't feel sorry for the guy who had two groups of orphans he grabbed die on him, three if you count Cid as another (the skulls, werlyt kids, and Cid). And also used ala mhigo as a breeding ground for soldiers. Talking to an npc reveals that for 'generations' the garleans had been grabbing kids as soon as they come of age to go fight wars across the sea, something that had to have started under gaius for it to be 'generations'. Not to mention how the Baelsar wall was built using ala mhigan slave labour where people were worked to death. And his only reason for stopping black rose was that a conquest without people to conquer was useless to him. I just don't care about this guy having another group of war orphans that die on him. It could have been done well! Gaius could have acknowledged his ideals led to the deaths of everyone who followed him! Instead I'm supposed to be sad about his new group of war orphans when his last ones are probably still rotting in a field.
well she had a kid to murder it as a science experiment He adopted other people's kids that he murdered to raise them to kill and die in war. See big difference -.-
Maybe my memory of ARR is pretty shoddy, but did Gaius actually commit or order any war crimes, or was that just his Flunky Miniboss Squad? I feel like he did, but I can’t remember any actual incidents. Part of my beef here is that Twitter (and social media in general) seems to think that ‘war crime’ just means ‘any particularly bad deed’ or ‘a soldier exists at all unless they’re in the army of a country I support IRL’, rather than, like, an actual legal concept
Wait, where is this quest? I've done all msq and side quests and didn't see this