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jokes posted:Like 8 pages ago they talked about how Zodiark and Hydaelyn aren’t evil and that got me thinking. Who actually is evil in FFXIV? Gaius is/was a misguided fascist making amends, he’s close. Zenos is so aloof the concept of villainy doesn’t even enter his brain, enough he might not be considered an actual person. Nidhogg is also a misguided dude, but is seeking revenge against innocents for a justifiably heinous sleight. Even the progenitors of Ishgard who stole the dragons’ eyes probably had a solid, justifiable, and understandable reason to be assholes. Probably something about a Cold War with dragons if their alliance ever shifted so they needed to be prepared. Gaius? Willing and preparing to genocide beast tribes. Evil. Zenos? Just basic evil. Comically so. Nidhogg? Attempting to genocide an entire civilization in retaliation for something that happened hundreds of generations prior. Evil. King Thordan the First and his knights? Murdered a friend and ally out of cold blood and for power. Evil. Orcs and Ostriches fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Sep 14, 2020 |
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Sep 14, 2020 16:01
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Actual Evil Villains In FFXIV (potentially incomplete list): All Ascians (motivation besides megalomania doesn't excuse evil actions) Most primals (exceptions going to Ramuh, Alexander, Hydaelyn, Zodiark, Eureka; Eurekan weapons besides Odin get a pass by virtue of 'not enough info') Gaius (became less bad later, but was an unrepentant fascist when he was a villain) All Gaius' lieutenants Bahamut/Nael Nidhogg (though you could argue different treatment due to timescale and have legitimacy) Archbishop Thordan, most if not all of the Heavens' Ward Quickthinx Allthoughts Regula van Hydrus Diabolos Zenos (stupidity and low aims don't excuse villainy) Varis Yotsuyu (emotional excuses not accepted) Vauthry Valens van Varro Most job questlines throw in one or two and I can't count them all The Syndicate, both individual members and as a whole concept
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Sep 14, 2020 16:05
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jokes posted:Like 8 pages ago they talked about how Zodiark and Hydaelyn aren’t evil and that got me thinking. Who actually is evil in FFXIV? Gaius is/was a misguided fascist making amends, he’s close. Zenos is so aloof the concept of villainy doesn’t even enter his brain, enough he might not be considered an actual person. Nidhogg is also a misguided dude, but is seeking revenge against innocents for a justifiably heinous sleight. Even the progenitors of Ishgard who stole the dragons’ eyes probably had a solid, justifiable, and understandable reason to be assholes. Probably something about a Cold War with dragons if their alliance ever shifted so they needed to be prepared. It's almost like the concepts of "good and evil" are all a matter of perspective. Good thing they didn't happen to just release a patch that brings up that very point.
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Sep 14, 2020 16:10
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^^^ Yeah that's my point. A lot of FF villains are just evil-evil, like Kefka. But FFXIV throws some nuance in, and makes it harder to say "bad guy" without an asterisk, which is dope. They're all evil in some way, but so is literally everyone in FFXIV in some fashion. It's a cool aspect of the plot of this video game. Makes it seem more human. Didn't Gaius rescue and care for those orphans? I mean he's probably the closest to true evil because he's unrepentant about his conquering/warcrimes so far, it seems. I imagine they're gonna try to redeem him. Zenos, I don't think, was ever able to be anything other than a weapon because of his origin, so on some level he's not immoral, he's amoral. He's not actively seeking to do sadistic things, he just doesn't/can't care. He's more like a tiger than a person and that's probably by design. I don't know if you can call Zenos evil in the way that, like, Gaius is evil. Nidhogg wasn't always evil, he was betrayed and took his justifiable retribution way too far. Thordan and his knights abandoned basic morality/friendship in an attempt at "power" or whatever which is also seemingly truly evil, but we don't know their true motivations-- people forgive people who do horrific poo poo if it's for the right reasons, and if they were concerned the dragons would one day gently caress them up and decided to pre-empt them, it's not exactly the same as "we are just racist towards dragons" or some other more honestly racist thing. I thought the point of the Dragonsong War was that both sides weren't really at fault for the current state of affairs and, on some level, were both the bad guys and the good guys. The descendents of Thordan, etc., were blameless for their lot (maybe not King Pope and the Temple Knights) but Thordan et al almost certainly wasn't blameless. I guess I'm just saying that they kinda seem to present the bad guys in FFXIV with enough nuance that they don't really have a clear-cut "this dude is fully evil" as Zenos is more a force of nature. Even Zodiark isn't evil, he's just an antithesis. jokes fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Sep 14, 2020 |
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Sep 14, 2020 16:14
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Niddhogg is definitely evil even if he was wronged a thousand years ago
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Sep 14, 2020 16:17
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It also depends whether by evil you mean people who do bad things for bad reasons, like most of the antagonists in the game, or people who knowingly and willfully evil acts for the sheer pleasure of doing so which would be a vanishingly small list because even in fantasy fiction very most people have some kind of rationale for why their cause is just which would make them not 'evil'
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Sep 14, 2020 16:17
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from my point of view the scions are evil!!! - elidibus skywalker
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Sep 14, 2020 16:18
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Countblanc posted:Niddhogg is definitely evil even if he was wronged a thousand years ago Which is more a question of relative morality because to him he was betrayed yesterday. Midgardsormr was like "I mean, yeah, but also gently caress that dude" which resolved that question I guess.
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Sep 14, 2020 16:19
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jokes posted:Which is more a question of relative morality because to him he was betrayed yesterday. Midgardsormr was like "I mean, yeah, but also gently caress that dude" which resolved that question I guess. Yeah, this is why I count Nidhogg but wouldn't argue if someone else didn't. On his timescale he's still pissed, like, a week after being hosed over really hard. And Hraesvelgr is still depressed the week his girlfriend died.
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Sep 14, 2020 16:23
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I don't think anyone in game is evil just for the enjoyment of it, except maybe Zenos. But other than him, the other characters have motivations, and hell, even positive qualities. But promoting genocide and the like I think still fully puts one into the evil circle. Maybe the other Garleans don't mind due to their perspective? But I'm pretty confident in saying nah, that's evil. There's no grey area there. jokes posted:Which is more a question of relative morality because to him he was betrayed yesterday. Midgardsormr was like "I mean, yeah, but also gently caress that dude" which resolved that question I guess. Even then, he's punishing people only tangentially related to the initial crime. If he murdered a generation of Ishgardians and hosed off? Justice was served I guess. Instead he's still out there waging war on people that don't even know the crime that was committed. Just because Nidhogg lives so much longer, and still carries that grief, in no way excuses him from murdering more people completely innocent in the situation.
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Sep 14, 2020 16:24
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Yeah Nidhogg didn't want justice, he wanted revenge, yea unto the last generation. When you deliberately drag out a war you can win just to make your enemies suffering longer and more painful, that puts you squarely into the "black hats and skull decorations" side of things.
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Sep 14, 2020 16:32
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Even with the relative timescale thing Nidhogg is actually fully aware the Ishgardians of today aren't actually guilty or aware of their supposed crime. Then even though he could easily kill them all if he wanted, he strategically plans to create the most destruction possible while still letting the society survive to birth new bodies for him to kill later.
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Sep 14, 2020 16:34
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Gruckles posted:Even with the relative timescale thing Nidhogg is actually fully aware the Ishgardians of today aren't actually guilty or aware of their supposed crime. Then even though he could easily kill them all if he wanted, he strategically plans to create the most destruction possible while still letting the society survive to birth new bodies for him to kill later. I haven't played HW in a while, did he concede that he knows modern Ishgardians are blameless or was he full on crazy pants and couldn't distinguish between the two? If it's the latter, he's basically torturing the guy who tried to kill him and his family, which is hosed up but also, ya know, kiiiiiinda understandable? In a hosed up sense? jokes fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Sep 14, 2020 |
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Sep 14, 2020 16:36
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Besides, after a certain point I don't care anymore whether or not Nidhogg's sense of time is different than ours. You don't live in a vacuum, to some degree you're going to have to try to get to grips on how the different civilizations around you work, and it makes you a legitimate bad guy if you ignore those differences to the point where you're making war on people whose grandparents hadn't been born when the crime was committed.
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Sep 14, 2020 16:55
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jokes posted:
It's been a thing from the beginning that Gaius took in and looked after War Orphans, and that he was explicitly a dyed in the wool believer that, no, Garlemald was doing a good thing. Like he genuinely believes that he's doing a 'good thing' by taking over Ala Mhigo, replacing their culture with Garlean culture and 'taming the land'. Keeping in mind his proposal for the Skulls was entirely a way for Ala Mhigan children to be more accepted by the Garleans and he believed it would help to ease the cultural dominance. He's WRONG, explicitly, and a whole bunch of everything that's been around since he revealed he's actually a hot granddad is to hammer in how wrong he is and how badly he's hosed up so many lives. Remember that the greatest evil is committed often not by those who are evil for the sake of it, but those convinced they're doing evil for "Your sake" and that's what made Gaius so frightening. Unlike Zenos, who doesn't give a poo poo and just wants to indulge in his murder boner, Gaius truly brought into the hype. It's also why even now the WoL is not 'friendly' to Gaius, their response is, at best, a tense "For now, I'll endure your existence."
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Sep 14, 2020 17:03
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Onmi posted:It's been a thing from the beginning that Gaius took in and looked after War Orphans, and that he was explicitly a dyed in the wool believer that, no, Garlemald was doing a good thing. Like he genuinely believes that he's doing a 'good thing' by taking over Ala Mhigo, replacing their culture with Garlean culture and 'taming the land'. Keeping in mind his proposal for the Skulls was entirely a way for Ala Mhigan children to be more accepted by the Garleans and he believed it would help to ease the cultural dominance. Hot Granddad seems to be a common honorific in FFXIV. I really feel they're going to try to redeem the fascist. I maintain Gaius is closest to true evil, partly because he's pretty believable compared to all the other far more fantastical/alien villains. Yotsuyu was next up, who ended up just being sadder than anything else.
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Sep 14, 2020 17:19
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Everyone's hot in Eorzea, though. Were there even any fat people before Shadowbringers brought us Vauthry and the delightful Dulia-Chai? And they're from the First, they're not even Eorzeans.
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Sep 14, 2020 17:25
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Yotsuyu was evil, and sad, and in the end somewhat sympathetic. Though everyone, including her (especially her), knew that she deserved to die for what she did, trauma or no. Her brief experiences as Tsuyu just hammered that point home for herself. It's hard not to realize what an utter monster you've been when you're burdened with the knowledge that when you were at your most helpless, your enemies still showed you mercy, and during that time you appreciated and cared for them in turn. For her entire adult life she'd been lashing out, armed with resources given to her by a bored sociopath who wanted to cultivate her trauma and suffering into finely honed atrocity. It was at the end she realized she was lashing out at the wrong people and by that point it was far too late. I appreciate that she decided to go out in the most extra way possible, giving the godslayer a fabulous primal fight while also taking her little shithead brother with her.
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Sep 14, 2020 17:32
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jokes posted:Hot Granddad seems to be a common honorific in FFXIV. I really feel they're going to try to redeem the fascist. My hope with Gaius is that, since he's core to a Gundam storyline, they go full Gundam in their treatment of him. Gundam holds no love for earnest fascists. You can fight in the fascist army without believing in their cause and be redeemable, but if you honestly believe in that then all you deserve is death. And I feel like the Weapon arc ending with that would work.
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Sep 14, 2020 17:33
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When I was playing through the Yotsuyu arc I didn't particularly enjoy it, my sympathy for her was nearly nonexistent and I was uncomfortable seeing her diminished and incapable of providing the catharsis I'd wanted from seeing her struck down. But the ending of her arc affected me more than I'd expected it to. And I've since had time to think on it and reassess how I felt about how that story played out, and how I felt about Yotsuyu's story. I still feel she deserved to die, but I accept that she got to choose how to end it and appreciate that she chose well. I do think she should never have had to suffer how she did and that the creation of the Witch of Doma was a tragedy that should never have happened. Her small redemption at the end was not going to save her life, nor was it enough to. But I think it was a small step on the long journey towards saving her soul and healing Doma's.
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Sep 14, 2020 17:44
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Cleretic posted:My hope with Gaius is that, since he's core to a Gundam storyline, they go full Gundam in their treatment of him. Gaius has to live to see everything he loved and cared about be destroyed before his eyes. He'll get to live, he'll get to live to watch the children he cared about die, his country be shattered beyond recognition, everything that was 'Garlemald' that he fought with honor for, to be destroyed. He already had his sense of accomplishment shattered by Lahabrea, and really... is there any greater embarrassment, than having it be Lahabrea who manipulated you?
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Sep 14, 2020 17:52
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Onmi posted:Gaius has to live to see everything he loved and cared about be destroyed before his eyes. He'll get to live, he'll get to live to watch the children he cared about die, his country be shattered beyond recognition, everything that was 'Garlemald' that he fought with honor for, to be destroyed. He already had his sense of accomplishment shattered by Lahabrea, and really... is there any greater embarrassment, than having it be Lahabrea who manipulated you? Such devastation...
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Sep 14, 2020 17:54
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Onmi posted:Gaius has to live to see everything he loved and cared about be destroyed before his eyes. He'll get to live, he'll get to live to watch the children he cared about die, his country be shattered beyond recognition, everything that was 'Garlemald' that he fought with honor for, to be destroyed. He already had his sense of accomplishment shattered by Lahabrea, and really... is there any greater embarrassment, than having it be Lahabrea who manipulated you? Does Gaius know that the entire empire was ground up designed by an ascian? I can't wait to see his reaction to that reveal.
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Sep 14, 2020 17:56
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I can't see Gaius as anything but the main villain for 6.0. He'll probably rally a bunch of Garlean resistance to Zenos and contribute to us defeating him in 5.4 and .5 and then 6.0 will basically be Char's Counterattack. e: I bet there will be a scene where the Duskwight dude heroically sacrifices himself to save Gaius in the middle of some epic battle or something just to twist the knife before it's revealed that he's still a fantasy nazi. Chillgamesh fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Sep 14, 2020 |
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Sep 14, 2020 18:02
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Chillgamesh posted:I can't see Gaius as anything but the main villain for 6.0. He'll probably rally a bunch of Garlean resistance to Zenos and contribute to us defeating him in 5.4 and .5 and then 6.0 will basically be Char's Counterattack. I could see either this OR Zenos-brand Garlemald is something Gaius hates enough that he thinks he should become Emperor and in the process of trying to "save" Garlemald destroys Garlemald completely, in a poetic twist. Garlemald, from its inception, has been doomed and the question has always been whether or not it takes Eorzea with it. RIP about Ivalice both existing and getting mostly destroyed in FFXIV though. I fuckin' love Ivalice poo poo.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:08
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Phenotype posted:Everyone's hot in Eorzea, though. Were there even any fat people before Shadowbringers brought us Vauthry and the delightful Dulia-Chai? And they're from the First, they're not even Eorzeans. depends on if fat chocobo is cannon or not, otherwise people on the source cannot get fat
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Sep 14, 2020 18:09
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and if that's true maybe there's a shard where everyone is only fat
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Sep 14, 2020 18:10
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AstrialJam posted:Does Gaius know that the entire empire was ground up designed by an ascian? I can't wait to see his reaction to that reveal. Not yet, but he almost assuredly will. Chillgamesh posted:I can't see Gaius as anything but the main villain for 6.0. He'll probably rally a bunch of Garlean resistance to Zenos and contribute to us defeating him in 5.4 and .5 and then 6.0 will basically be Char's Counterattack. I highly doubt it. For one, we're talking about someone suffering the long humiliation of knowing that his entire life is in fact, a lie. And he has very little to Char's Counterattack about. The fear of Primal Summoning is far and away from the forefront of the minds of anyone. If anything, to further summent his suffering, The Garlean Empire is going to start summoning Primals, shattering what last remaining belief he had in his homeland, as they betray the last vestiges of what he stood for. EDIT: To get supremely nerdy about things I barely understand. I think he's more likely to be Damar or Garak than Gul Dukat.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:12
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Onmi posted:I highly doubt it. For one, we're talking about someone suffering the long humiliation of knowing that his entire life is in fact, a lie. And he has very little to Char's Counterattack about. The fear of Primal Summoning is far and away from the forefront of the minds of anyone. If anything, to further summent his suffering, The Garlean Empire is going to start summoning Primals, shattering what last remaining belief he had in his homeland, as they betray the last vestiges of what he stood for. I'm expecting him to straight up commit suicide at this point, the way the Weapon quests are going.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:16
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Onmi posted:Not yet, but he almost assuredly will. If that elf turns out to be a doctor and Gaius retires as a catty tailor, I'm sold.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:17
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jokes posted:I haven't played HW in a while, did he concede that he knows modern Ishgardians are blameless or was he full on crazy pants and couldn't distinguish between the two? If it's the latter, he's basically torturing the guy who tried to kill him and his family, which is hosed up but also, ya know, kiiiiiinda understandable? In a hosed up sense?  Nidhogg was PLANNING on visiting his vengeance on people yet to be born from the first. Hraesvelgr even states that he believed his brother had irrevocably gone mad at the beginning, and that was actually part of the reason he gave his eye over - because he blamed mortals for driving reason from Nidhogg (in addition to murdering his sister). Despite the repeated reminders of dragon's time perception, dragons also repeatedly demonstrate that they are fully aware of time's passage. A number of dragons, including Vidofnir, mention that it's been a long time (to them!) since they were allied with the Ishgardians. Midgardsormr, oldest of them all, lightly prods Tiamat about it maybe having been long enough to begin to forgive herself. She won't, of course, and I don't think he expected otherwise, but I think if the progenitor can believe in the concept of moving on, it's not meant to be beyond his children, either. Nidhogg is kind of a similar situation to Yotsuyu, really. Both broken by trauma, becoming monsters by their desires to inflict punishment far beyond the province of justice.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:18
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Gaius isn't going to turn, both due to the logistical issue of him being a primary character in the Weapon questline (and they've been doing their damndest to avoid another Estinien situation), and due to him having no real reason to. The whole point of the Weapons questline is him realizing that his unthinking pursuit of nationalistic and militaristic virtue - values that he instilled in his foster children - has led to the transfiguration of his sons and daughters into actual monsters. Him pounding his fists on the rocks of Terncliff is the inflection point where he realizes that all the things he thought were good and just in the world were damnably wrong.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:22
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Onmi posted:I highly doubt it. For one, we're talking about someone suffering the long humiliation of knowing that his entire life is in fact, a lie. And he has very little to Char's Counterattack about. The fear of Primal Summoning is far and away from the forefront of the minds of anyone. If anything, to further summent his suffering, The Garlean Empire is going to start summoning Primals, shattering what last remaining belief he had in his homeland, as they betray the last vestiges of what he stood for. I honestly don't think anything has happened to shake Gaius's foundational ideology that Garlemald is good and that the strong should rule. In my view, his mindset is that he is currently watching misguided people lead his perfect empire into the gutter, and suffering blow after punishing blow as he watches his countrymen kill each other and his children die in the service of people without vision or Ascians without Garlemald's best interests at heart. The main evidence I present to support this is the 5.0 ending scene where Zenos kills Varis: Gaius is absolutely shocked and horrified. He cries out in utter anguish for Varis. He still believes in the Emperor and in Garlean supremacy even after finding out about the Ascians and Black Rose. He wants someone to take the reins and put Garlemald back on track, not to put an end to their imperial dominance. Vermain posted:Gaius isn't going to turn, both due to the logistical issue of him being a primary character in the Weapon questline (and they've been doing their damndest to avoid another Estinien situation), and due to him having no real reason to. The whole point of the Weapons questline is him realizing that his unthinking pursuit of nationalistic and militaristic virtue - values that he instilled in his foster children - has led to the transfiguration of his sons and daughters into actual monsters. Him pounding his fists on the rocks of Terncliff is the inflection point where he realizes that all the things he thought were good and just in the world were damnably wrong. .x Sidestories like raids and trial stories are explicitly and specifically happening between the expansions. You already have continuity errors with "How is Thancred on the first right now when I just saw him leave and there's no way to come back?" if you wait until finishing MSQ to start Eden.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:28
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Chillgamesh posted:Sidestories like raids and trial stories are explicitly and specifically happening between the expansions. You already have continuity errors with "How is Thancred on the first right now when I just saw him leave and there's no way to come back?" if you wait until finishing MSQ to start Eden. It's becoming more and more rare for them to have large continuity gaps since HW, since, even if you give the player fair warning, it's jarring to have characters pop in with a decidedly different role than whatever they've had in the story going forwards. I far more expect him to become the leader of whatever remnant of Garleans remains post-6.X, given that he's the only Garlean - aside from Maximus - given any major screentime who's been given character development to the effect of realizing the wrongness of their past actions and the need to correct both their own course and that of their nation.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:34
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FFXIV doesn't have many villains who are Evil in the sense of being fundamentally bad people. Even Gaius, evil in his actions and legacy, is ultimately a man with a powerful capacity for goodness who made bad decisions. Hell, the Ascians in general are this - they are not evil in the sense of absolute objects of repugnance, they are originally good people who made really bad decisions and did monstrous things. The difference is subtle but important, I think.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:41
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Zenos is evil though because he's a piece of poo poo through and through.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:47
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Eimi posted:Zenos is evil though because he's a piece of poo poo through and through. I don’t think he’s a person. He’s like a weird quasi-person who’s more Ascian science than human.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:49
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jokes posted:I don’t think he’s a person. He’s like a weird quasi-person who’s more Ascian science than human. Oh the game absolutely frames him as just a force of nature. I just loathe his existence and am really dreading next expansion.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:50
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Eimi posted:Zenos is evil though because he's a piece of poo poo through and through. In a warped sort of way, if we assume that the Amaurotines aren't just totally full of poo poo and the unsundered had senses and capacities sundered souls have dulled, I could totally see why Zenos is a solipsistic monster - he's got more unsundered essence in him than most folks around him. In a way, he is "more real" than the people surrounding him, if you buy the whole Sundered/Unsundered divide, and finds it difficult to consider anyone else around him as a full person who matters.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:53
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Zenos is a subtler, less ostentatious Weapon. He's a person who was "merged" with the pure, unfiltered essence of Garlean imperialism - the basest impulses of violence and dominance - and who came out the other end in a form only barely recognizable as human. The fact that he had his head filled with images of the end of the world since he was very young didn't help, but the outcome was more a consequence of his circumstances than his inherent character.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:57
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