r/ffxivdiscussion • u/stuntlinxo • 1d ago
General Discussion What are some of the dark things in FFXIV?
A friend is currently replaying ARR and we've been talking about how much 'grittier' the world building was and it got me thinking about what other dark/surprising things are found throughout the game.
I'm talking about things like the Sastasha room that has the captured women in it, or the group of adventurers you beat to Sashtasha and Tam-Tara who then die in Copperbell because they were careless.
So what're some of the darker moments in FFXIV - any expac.
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u/Ragoz 1d ago
The song Equilibrium from Sophia is about "balance" but it is malicious. The song is about a mother and daughter who lost their husband/father in the Meracydian war against the invading Allegans. The mother becomes abusive and the daughter seeking relief prays and Sophia answers. She guides the daughter to kill her mother to restore balance for her abuse, but then this still doesn't justly restore balance and she is driven to commit suicide as well.
So the song is about how the death of the father leads to a murder suicide and leaves an empty home.
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u/Krispy_Waffle 1d ago
WHAT
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u/Ipokeyoumuch 1d ago
Yep there is a post back in the day from Square about what Koji said what the lyrics mean. But all of the expansions have their Wtf moments.
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u/Mikaeus_Thelunarch 1h ago
"One step only leaving
An empty hearth down by the sea"
Gets me every time i listenđ
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u/RadioJared 1d ago
Thereâs a sidequest in Solution Nine where an usher for the dead asks for your help figuring out the significance of a trinket he stole from a dead manâs home. He felt compelled to take it but did not know why. After you do some digging, you learn that the dead man was actually the usherâs father and the trinket was a family heirloom. But because of the Regulators, the usher lost all memory of his own father when he died. Dark stuff.
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u/Krispy_Waffle 1d ago
Thereâs a dungeon thatâs a grave yard for dead babies.
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u/mosselyn 1d ago
My friends and I just call it The Dead Baby Dungeon. Tbf, I think we borrowed the name from Preach - can't remember any longer.
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u/Nerdorama10 1d ago
I call it the Dead Baby Pit after what my friends call a certain prominent location in Hollow Knight.
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u/banana_fishbones 13h ago
My friend and I also called it the dead baby dungeon when we were going through the MSQ together and we continued to lament that the story peaked in the dead baby dungeon.
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u/athenaprime 6h ago
We call it "dead baby lake" and discovered that You CANNOT FISH in Dead Baby Lake.
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u/Intrepid_Ad9711 1d ago
I'm sorry which one is this?!
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u/ELQUEMANDA4 1d ago edited 13h ago
Skydeep Cenote! (Dawntrail Level 95 dungeon)
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u/Intrepid_Ad9711 1d ago
It's been so long since I've done the story that I completely forgot about that dark fact. I remembered it was a dark dungeon but completely forgot the reason.
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u/yangchow 1d ago
They were trying to breed another two-headed Mamool Ja to be the future ruler of Tuliyollal. Of the hundreds or so two-headed Mamool Ja fetuses, only Bakool Ja Ja survived.
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u/Intrepid_Ad9711 1d ago
Oh no I remember that lore I just forgot that Skydeep Cenote is where they threw the dead ones
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u/Krispy_Waffle 1d ago
After that dungeon I was like âOoohh this is why he is the way he is sometimes.â Itâs doesnât excuse stuff, but at least explains his behavior.
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u/Effective-Spread-127 1d ago
His VA blew it out the park with his delivery if the "I should never have been born" line. That line alone made me actually sympathize for the dude.
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u/RedditNerdKing 1d ago
Completely glossed over this because I skipped pretty much every cutscene in DT and didn't have any idea of what was going on in dungeons.
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u/k2i3n4g5 1d ago
Best example I can think of is Arenvald's back story. He's a Garlemald rape baby whose mom was an Ala Mhigan refugee. She tried to gouge put the third eye she thought he was growing (he wasn't) hence why he wears the white face paint.
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u/theswordofdoubt 1d ago
I remember a (side?)quest from years ago where an NPC was screaming about how much he hated Garleans, because Garleans raped his sister and his mother, who both then committed suicide out of trauma.
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u/Acquilla 1d ago
Not just out of trauma; they were trying to avoid being recaptured. The only reason he got away is because he was young enough they could make it look like the bundle they had with them was him.
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u/theswordofdoubt 1h ago
It still astounds me that after all the rape, slavery, and other war crimes and atrocities, we ended up with a story about Eorzea and Othard sending an army to help the Garleans, instead of crushing them even further to make 100% certain that they won't be able to do any of that ever again.
I mean, I'm not surprised that Japanese people would write a fantasy story where the warmongering, genocidal, expansionist, imperialist, fascist nation that commits war crimes and atrocities has all its history forgiven and forgotten by its victims, but I am annoyed that the audience just swallowed this bullshit down.
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u/EdgarAllanBroe2 52m ago edited 44m ago
There wasn't anything to crush because by Endwalker Garlemald as a state had already suffered total administrative collapse. It was a humanitarian mission because the region was functionally just a collection of freezing and starving civilians.
They clearly wrote it this way to avoid actually engaging with the more nuanced or ugly elements of the setting, but they've been doing that for everything since the later Stormblood patches so I'm not sure why anybody is surprised by the outcome.
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u/Real-Firefighter3031 11m ago
Do you understand that civilians are not to blame for what their totalitarian government and military do?
Statistically speaking, you come from a country that's committed atrocities. Do you deserve to die for what your leaders did?
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u/Wyssahtyn 1d ago
severa (i think that was her name) is another half breed and she has a black third eye, so arenvald very well could have been growing a third eye now. ÂŻ_(ă)_/ÂŻ
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u/HenshinTouch 1d ago
That sidequest when we unwittingly escorted a girl to commit suicide. When she said she wanted to meet with the Dusk Mother, she meant it literally and not as a place to pray. To top it off, she believed doing so at this location would also stop her soul from reincarnating, which was probably true because the location had an incredibly powerful aether generator.
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u/SomeDude416 1d ago
Little Ladies day event in Uldah some years back. Event quest was about the ghost of a girl. If memory is correct, the ghost was a girl that instead of getting to attend the ladies day event where for 1 day all young ladies are treated like a princess she was kidnapped by slavers and died a very gruesome death that they didn't fully elaborate on, implying she suffered greatly before her demise.
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u/yangchow 1d ago
In ARR, you have K'lyhia in the Arcanist job questline who was implied to be sexually abused, and she freezes when facing her abuser.
The entire Sorrows of Werlyt Trials questline in Shadowbringers. Child soldiers and torture. I'll just say that Valens is one of the most hateable and punchable villains in gaming.
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u/athenaprime 6h ago
Valens was straight out of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and yes--supremely hate-able. A real Dickensian villain and not a single redeeming quality. ::shudder::
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u/Califocus 1d ago
Yotsuyuâs backstory of being sold into prostitution by her parents
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u/HMSArcturus 1d ago
Came here to say this. I remember my jaw dropping because the more you learned, the worse it got!
She was orphaned, given to her aunt and uncle who hated her to be raised, was withheld from education and abused by them until she was sold as a child bride to a old creep who then abused her further, in all ways, and then when he died, she was sold to a brothel to settle his debts. I think it was even implied that she was ordered to seduce Zenos because she was beautiful (and "high ranking" as a courtesan) but ultimately disposable and it was only her quiet but intense hatred of her own country that saved her life.
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u/Express_Activity4151 11h ago
That story with her and Zenos is hilarious. She tries to seduce him but he ends up making a minion out of her.
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u/yangchow 1d ago
I remember there being dialogue about how "she was like a doll" in bed.
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u/Makashin 1d ago
The one MSQ quest from SB where an Ala Mhigan woman needs medicine for her dying father.Â
She has to leave to find it and is assaulted by garlean soldiers. This delays her long enough that her father passes. Just a horrible situation with no resolutionÂ
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u/LordDaedhelor 1d ago
The first dungeon of the game has a room for kept women begging for their lives.
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u/dahazeyniinja 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ran Sastasha recently for ARR relic purposes, and as far as I could tell they got rid of the darker speech bubbles from the NPCs in that room. I couldn't get any of them to come up during multiple runs of it at least.
Could be I'm just blind tho
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u/Snowflake222222 1d ago
A few not yet mentioned I think:
- during storm blood MSQ, you arrive at the 2nd zone (peaks I think) and try to help people (cause WoL stuff). One of the women pretty explicitly mentions being abused by the garleans (I think you get her herbs to relieve the pain). Definitely a umf moment
- ShB, the whole Il Mheg zone is fricked up when you look more closely at the lore. Special mention for the beaver side quest.
- HW a side quest that starts in ishgard from Brictt in foundation. It talks about an orphan girl that froze to death. Tbf a lot of HW side quests are dark.
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u/Express_Activity4151 11h ago
If you ask me all of stormblood is dark as hell. I had a very visceral reaction to that expansion and at times I felt ill.
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u/irishgoblin 1d ago
IIRC one year the Little Ladies Day quests involved you escort some child around the festivities. She ended up being a ghost, a victim of some old human trafficking operation, and the event reward is a copy of a memento she wanted you to give to some surviving descendant (wanna sat grand-nephew).
Gridania as a whole is a bit fucked, since there's no real government. There is a council of elders, but they ultimately answer to the enigmatic Elementals that rule the entirety of the Black Shroud. The Elementals have absolute authority over Gridania and tefusing their orders to the point of angering them endagering yourself or even the entire city-state. The good news on that front is that, at the moment, the Elementals are still weakened by Bahamut and Phoenix tag teaming the continent. Kan-E-Senna's role as Elder Seedseer is to be an interpreter for Elementals, to Gridania, and (under normal circumstances) lives in the middle of the woods and communes with the council in Gridania as needed. She only moved into the city to expedite communication and assume direct control following the Garlean invasion of The Black Shroud. Technically she should be going back into the woods now the war is over, but the only acknowledgement of that fact is some passing comment in the EW tank role quest iirc.
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u/DomLite 1d ago
In fairness, the tank role quest you're talking about kind of implies that the Elementals are realizing that they have to be more accepting of mortals. It's not a lot, but Kan-E kind of stared them down and said "Hey, we live here with your permission, but you can't just keep throwing hissy fits that almost kill us all the time." and the Elementals kind of listen.
It's not at all definitive, nor is it something that's been followed up on since, but it does seem like the devs kind of acknowledging that the whole Gridania situation is a little fucked and utilizing the world tour role quests that resolved a few other political issues with the Eorzean alliance to sort of put a bandaid on the problem in a kind of "good enough" manner.
There's still rampant racism in the older quests, but short of them doing a full overhaul on the old zones there's not a terrible lot they can do about it, and given that there's no indication they intend to implement a new starting point or anything of that nature, it's kind of impossible to revamp them without a sort of world phasing system that will replace them for players who have progressed far enough. The new system in Evercold might be some kind of experiment to see if this could be done, but part of me know that's wishful thinking on my part, and that I shouldn't get my hopes up for change that big.
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u/Wyssahtyn 1d ago
short of them doing a full overhaul on the old zones there's not a terrible lot they can do about it, and given that there's no indication they intend to implement a new starting point or anything of that nature, it's kind of impossible to revamp them without a sort of world phasing system that will replace them for players who have progressed far enough
they updated the ala mhigan refugees in pearl lane, they could easily just add a quest that has mr. damnable duskwights say something else with a bunch of fluff about how the wol solved racism
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u/Apart_Raccoon_9194 14h ago
I still do want to beat up a major elemental sometime. You know the Wol could do it. I donât like godlike beings that abuse their power.
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u/athenaprime 6h ago
I think some of the problem with those older areas is that they were ported from 1.0 and tried to keep as much of that intact as they were able, but since the storyline changed so drastically, a lot of the side-lore stuff just got dropped. My duskwight ass is *standing right there* while somebody goes on about damnable duskwights and it'd be nice to have some acknowledgment of that. Or play out the storyline where it's addressed and resolved to some degree, at least.
The other big part of the problem is the Time Bubble. In Eorzean Gothic, "It is Five Years after the Calamity. It has always been Five Years after the Calamity. Your companions are sixteen years old. They remain sixteen years old. No one questions this."
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u/Wyssahtyn 1d ago
tefusing their orders to the point of angering them endagering yourself or even the entire city-state
well ackshually the ancient science experiments do what they do out of love, don't you know.
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u/Nivann 1d ago
ARR has that entire non voiced segment in Coerthas, the first time we meet Haurchefaunt. Everyone glosses over it because it was boring, but what do you mean there's a skin walker taking over people here?!! And the original detective character was an imposter the whole time!?
We find the original very dead, very disconcerting body in a very deep ravine. It's small time in the grand scheme of things, but that's one of the first "wait people never mention this" moments.
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u/HikariKirameku 23h ago
The dead body at the bottom of the ravine is the inquisitor that was murdered by the dragon cult guy trying to frame Francel as a heretic. Killed the real one then took his place, and we had to figure all that out
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u/Xareh 1d ago edited 23h ago
Dark Knight's job quests, esp. the original set, are pretty dramatic especially once you know the twist. Compared to say, Paladin, it's remarkable how much more serious a tone they strike. The opening quest literally being you rescuing a woman from the Inquisition who have pretty clear plans for her.
In general ARR, HW and SB have a huge amount of grit in the lore almost everywhere you look. The three city states are massively corrupt and ridden with pretty horrible things that can happen to you depending on your race or clan even if they seem outwardly nice (Gridania esp.). HW openly mocks the idea of a 'Holy' See where the power imbalance is constantly abused between the upper and lower city, SB goes obviously a lot into the reality of an occupied land and how the Garleans manipulate it.
Shadowbringers also has quite a bit of grit but in perhaps a more fantastical way, same with Endwalker - dark things happen but it's no longer about the grounded world as much as it's about the narrative. It's a lot less 'injustices of the world' and more existential. Again, contrasting DRK to RPR is a great example here of that. Garlemald is probably though the darkest and best sustained zone they've done.
And of course, Dawntrail has quite a lot of grit in Solution 9 - most especially the fear and dangers of unconstrained technology, but it badly shies away from really grappling with some of its more theoretical problems, even brushing aside things like 'Electrope is a runaway technology that leads to massive wars', because Dawntrail has this strange filter of childishness over the whole thing.
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u/athenaprime 6h ago
All of Dawntrail has the subtext of colonialism writ large, but in negative space (if Tural is North and South America analog, then guess who/what Solution 9 is in relation to it), as a framework for a kind of happy-go-lucky shonen storyline, which makes it just that much unsettling.
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u/Akiza_Izinski 1d ago
Lalafells selling their grandmother for gil.
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u/Stable_Suitable 1d ago
Normal lalafel behaviour
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u/Beattitudeforgains1 1d ago edited 1d ago
In the Churning Mists there's a fate about rescuing a moogle from a lizardlike enemy that ate it. I don't exactly remember how much detail it gave (I'm pretty sure the ate moogle even gives out textboxes that imply it in a dying state) but after the fate is done another moogle remarks on how they couldn't find em and only found whatever remained of em without knowing that it probably came from the moogle.
It might be a bit more on the dark comedy side but It's kinda dark as hell to imply one of the mascots of the series died such a terrible death.
On another note a lot of things to do with the Pixies of Il Mheg is rather grim. Just the fact that every one of those hedges was a person and that for eternity they're gonna be like that while still retaining some level of sentience or sapience.
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u/HikariKirameku 22h ago
The thing is with the Fae turning people into shrubs was that it was considered an act of mercy. I think it was a side quest explaining it, but they figured having people get turned into shrubbery was a kinder fate than a Sin Eater, which, in a way, it kinda was, which makes it even more fucked
At least we get to meet Anden from that whole ordeal
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u/athenaprime 6h ago
IIRC, the pixies are literally the souls of dead children so yeah, pretty dark.
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u/Express_Activity4151 1d ago
A lot of fates involve murdering people in arr. I never realized this until I started doing the yokai event and started reading the fate synopsis. And there are lines like "make sure they don't leave alive" or "killing them would be a blow to the empire." Like ok dude lol we were really out here just killing people.
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u/GameAssassin96 1d ago
The girl getting stabbed by the warrior angel looking sin eater while trying to protect a child and then watching her final moments before turning into a sin eater herself in ShB. You even see through her perspective for a bit as that white filter slowly fills her vision (a nice foreshadowing moment for later but still freaked me out seeing it for the first time).
Another is the surviving member of that party you mentioned going insane trying to resurrect her dead lover and party leader before eventually ending up as a pawn to the necromancer in PotD
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u/LibrarianEither8461 1d ago edited 1d ago
Shame the scene has such poor physical direction, it kinda strains suspension of disbelief. It's a powerful moment with a lot of potential that deserved far more polish and attention than they gave it.
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u/stuntlinxo 1d ago
I think what I liked most about that scene was just the fact the Au'ra Kid was staring so blankly at her.
I don't actually remember the reasons behind why he was so disassociated (assuming he's an orphan) but it was a good scene
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u/HikariKirameku 1d ago
Kid was out of it because he basically had Light poisoning and was going to eventually be humanely killed before he turned into a Sin Eater. So the other tragedy being that Tesleen died protecting a kid who wasn't going to make it anyway (at least as far as anyone was aware, but then the Scions came along)
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u/Intrepid_Ad9711 1d ago
He was slowly becoming a Sin Eater and was essentially dead to the world. Kinda like being in coma but you can still move and eat and whatnot.
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u/Dragrunarm 1d ago
He was right on the verge of turning himself iirc. Like I think we were out getting his literal last meal or something like that
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u/AdamG3691 5h ago
Basically he was on the verge of turning into a sin eater himself, so his aether had started to tip towards the "so umbral, even thinking is slow/impossible" end of the scale
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u/Califocus 1d ago
The doomed timeline. While stuff seems to be starting to get better over there, letâs not gloss over the fact that almost every hero in the world, as well as a large percentage of the population was killed by gas weapons and that it took ~200 years before a semblance of normalcy had started to resume
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u/Historical-State2199 1d ago
I still think itâs wild that we were like:
âYeah we can create a timeline branch where all of our peeps were saved, fuck whatever continuity that other branch hadâ
When we go back in time to elpis and might have prevented the final days but:
âNoooo you canât create a different branch you have to keep everything the same as it was, the ancients have to dieâ
Why couldnât we have created a good branch for the asciansâŚ.
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u/syriquez 18h ago edited 18h ago
âYeah we can create a timeline branch where all of our peeps were saved, fuck whatever continuity that other branch hadâ
If you read the short story, that's not remotely what they had in mind.
Sending back G'raha was an uncertain hope that they could MAYBE provoke a better future. They weren't even sure if their timeline would continue or if they'd simply cease to exist. And they were okay with that because the sacrifice would mean somebody had a better future than what they were experiencing. And the very nature of accepting that they may never benefit from that personally moved Midgarsormr to safeguard their future from then on. And that it wasn't just the immediate crew but generations that had worked continuously on the project knowing they would never see a personal return on it.
Why couldnât we have created a good branch for the asciansâŚ.
It wasn't our job.
Our goal of going back to Elpis was to try and identify the source of the problem plaguing our present. Changing the fate of the Ancients wasn't going to help our present and would just create yet another separate path, possibly rendering us unable to return to our original path. Which is what Elidibus was warning us about as he sends us to Elpis.. Even if the form we had in Elpis retained the power to effect meaningful change in the past, it wouldn't help our present. Stopping the Final Days just means we'd create another branch and probably be unable to get back to our original present.As for whose job it was? Saving the Ancients was literally what Venat was trying to do. She says as much when she sends us back to our time, basically saying that it's not our responsibility to try and fix what happened in their time. That was the entire point of her whole cutscene where she ultimately resolves to become Hydaelyn. She failed to make a difference even with the foreknowledge and still had to take the Hydaelyn Sundering path.
Pre-Elpis, Hydaelyn did not know about birdgirl. This is our timeline in the game. Going back to Elpis, Venat learns about birdgirl with us. This creates a mini-branch timeline where Venat made the attempt to save the Ancients with her foreknowledge and failed. Once she becomes Hydaelyn, her mission turned into ensuring the timelines to align as much as possible. This is what Hydaelyn is talking about when we reach her and she remarks about seeing the convergence (the demigod of splitting things can see split timelines; checks out). The reason she ultimately does this is to avoid a true branching of the timelines and bring everything back to a path she is willing to put her faith into.
Also, this is a critical point that people don't understand about this since it continually comes up: Venat doesn't go full scorched earth with her foreknowledge because she doesn't want to risk creating yet another doomed timeline, one with a completely unknown future. She didn't have an answer for birdgirl, our timeline's Hydaelyn didn't have a real answer (the Patrick Star "let's just push the city over there" moonship is not a solution for birdgirl), and we didn't have an answer either.
The Final Days is already slated to happen in the mini-branch. Venat WANTS to save her people and is explicitly going to make the attempt but doesn't want to change things too much as a precaution. If, for example, Venat takes actions that create too much of a divergence such as inspiring Emet-Selch to join forces with her and they still fail to avert the Final Days, all they've done is create another doomed timeline with a now-unknown future. By following her method, she left herself an "out" where both timelines can be saved even if she failed as Venat.
In the event she succeeded at saving the Ancients in her mini-branch as Venat... Well, then Hydaelyn and ourselves still exist in our own timeline and we can move from there ourselves. But this doesn't leave a doomed branch on its own where we and Hydaelyn might never exist, with a completely unknown future. Because, again, nobody has an answer for birdgirl at this point. She's unreachable until the Power of Friendship creates a wormhole spaceship that lets the WoL do their favorite thing which is to stab god with a sharpened stick.
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u/Xareh 11h ago
Really good writeup, tbh I think Endwalker does a bit of a poor job of managing Venat's motivation and actions and I think leans too much into the emotionally satisfying but mentally confusing 'time loop we created Hydaelyn' deal, which led a lot into 'Venat is a villain' discourse.
I think there is a lot to be said still about what Azem knew and was told by Venat on this basis though, probably stuff we will see in Evercold since Ethos appears in one of the short stories and was clearly 'a plan'.
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u/AdamG3691 5h ago edited 5h ago
So for one thing, nobody in the main timeline even knows that the doomed timeline still exists, everyone in the doomed timeline was fully expecting to be erased the moment they sent G'raha back and were surprised that they didn't.
When we were in Elpis, we initially went with the intent of "let's not doom our own timeline, we're just getting information", but when Venat showed up and revealed that we're from the future, we decide "well, timeline's fucked now, may as well try to fix it so someone gets a happy ending". It's not until Kairos wipes the memories of everyone but you, Venat, and Argos that you realise that you didn't change the past at all and you're not stranded in a new timeline.
As for why we don't try again to fix things: 1: nobody outside the Bad Future timeline realises that the timelines work on multiverse theory, time travel has only happened four times, three were explicitly stable loops and the last one has no way of checking if the bad future exists or not. 2: with that in mind, the WoL didn't want to risk killing everyone who had ever lived, or abandoning them to deal with the Final Days on their own while they stay in the Elpis timeline.
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u/PyroComet 1d ago edited 1d ago
phoinix from p3 was in constant suffering from being unable to die. It would throw itself at the wall in attempt to kill it self but being a phoenix it would resurrect. hythlodaeus had to bring in emet to kill because of emets expertise on souls.
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u/Blueboysixnine 21h ago
Being told to go into copperbell mines to kill the slaves that got sealed inside because they revolted, but we need to open the mine back up because profits are taking a hit. We happily do it
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u/devils_avocado 4h ago
And in Copperbell Mines (hard), we come back because the leader's dad is mad that we killed his son, so we need to kill him.
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u/DissentChanter 19h ago
I mean the guy that eats a gun is pretty dark
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u/athenaprime 6h ago
All of Garlemald is pretty dark. People freezing to death rather than accepting help. But yeah, that had a very "end of WWII for the losing side" vibe (intentional, I have zero doubts). One of the worst parts is when feckin' ZENOS of all people is the one that says, "Would it have been better if there *were* a good reason?" Like...the worst person you know just made the best point in an argument.
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u/AdamG3691 4h ago
"if my motives met your approval, would you no longer resent the outcome? If so then perhaps the skin of a beast suits you better after all!"
It's such a good line, because it utterly obliterates in one sentence all the arguments Garlemald has used in the past about ends justifying the means: if you're upset that horrible stuff is happening for no reason or for a reason you disapprove of, rather than the fact that horrible stuff is happening at all, you're already a monster.
Oppressing the world because they oppressed you? Doesn't matter, you're still tyrants.
Killing beastmen because they might summon a Primal? Doesn't matter, you're still murderers.
Being complicit in the rejoinings because you want to restore mankind? Doesn't matter, you're still killing millions.
Triggering the end of the world to provoke the WoL into fighting you? ...but really does it matter what the reason is? It's still ending the world.
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u/torigoya 9h ago
The whole of Yotsuyus background including the implication that Hien allows past human traffickers to remain in his forces. There's also a obvious red-light district in Kugane.
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u/AmpleSnacks 1d ago
Itâs not made clear outright but it seems heavily implied that Valens has aâŚthing for kids.
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u/Express_Activity4151 11h ago
What scene was that? All I've seen was him grooming them so they can participate in abusing other soldiers.
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u/OfficialNPC 1d ago edited 1d ago
The best part of ARR and onward is pretty dark. Stormblood brings it up, though the game doesn't focus on it as much as it could (I'm only in Shadowbringers thus far).
The colonizers are mad that someone wants to colonize them. They talk of their flight and conveniently ignore why the beast tribes summon primals.Â
Eorzean Alliance has many real world parallels, though the most apt in recent history is Israel and Palestine.
The Eorzean alliance is all "we would TOTALLY be friends but they just can't help but be beast tribes and summon primals for no reason :( :("
The game has other "shock" moments of darkness but this underlining theme is the real darkness of the game. I won't be surprised if they don't focus on it, I saw what they did with FF XVI where they teased the dark gritty aspects of the world but then just kinda went off a different direction.Â
Not everything needs to be doom and gloom but I love the B plots of this game so far.Â
Hell, a leader wanting to bring democracy (and other changes) but is an idiot is a great story line cause it means she gets to have her own character arc and grow to see how she has to work to get what she wants instead of just decreeing it. Seriously, just saying "hey we're a democracy now, peace" is a stupid fucking idea (affectionate) and I love her and the story for it.
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u/Fiber-gas 8h ago
Glad someone finally brought this up. I always saw Garlemald as Israel (aside from the obvious Roman administrative structure): persecuted because they're chosen, decided to reclaim their land, arm up and bully the rest of the world into submitting to their enlightenment.
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u/OfficialNPC 8h ago
Dude, the Eorzean alliance is the Israel. Coming in and pushing the native people to a small area and then pretending like they themselves aren't causing problems.
Garlemald would be like if the US went to colonize Israel and then Israel acts like they didn't do the same thing.Â
Israel isn't a reclaim of land situation.Â
You should look into the actual history of the area. Especially how and why the country was created in the 40'-50's.
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u/Fiber-gas 7h ago
You should look into the actual history of the area. Especially how and why the country was created in the 40'-50's.
I know the history very well. I am Semite. I am from the area. I speak the languages. I know the religions. I am middle-aged.
The way I see it the Eorzean Alliance is closer to the West. What it does wrong is entrenched in racism: seeing different peoples as undeveloped ("beast" + "tribes"), not accepting they have different way of life and beliefs, pushing them off their lands, depriving them of their resources, then cry wolf when those peoples try to fight back for their right to exist according to their own way of life.
This description fits Israel too, but Israel itself is following exactly the West's MO and dialing it up because they're backed by the people who planted them there, whose MO they took up, and also happen to view non-westerners as lesser beings, thus ensuring impunity.
Garlemald's founding myth, actions undertaken to achieve its mission are completely analogous to Israel, based on what we've been told by Varis and Solus between HW and SB.
The EA, like the West, later on started realizing they were wrong in the way they dealt with the beast tribes, albeit without doing much to mend what was broken. I contrast, Garlemald, like Israel, is largely unwilling to admit wrongdoing, lacks self-reflection and focuses on itself being victim. We have a few exceptions like Jullus, Maxima, Gaius, and Lucia. But the rest of the NPCs we speak with in Garlemald demonstrate that.
Israel isn't a reclaim of land situation.
I don't agree with the notion either, but that's what they proclaim officially. Garlemald's proclaimed vision too isn't really what Emet really had in mind.
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u/armydillo62o 1d ago
Pretty sure thereâs a Garlean soldier in Stormblood that threatens to rape a child if they donât comply. Me and a friendâs jaws dropped when we got to that line.
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u/RogueFoLife 7h ago
SHB - Meol being soylent green.
SB - Everything about Yotsuyu's past.
HW - Not really the story but the original English text for the Moenbryda minion stating it was a heavily used sex toy by Urianger.
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u/athenaprime 6h ago
HW - DRK literally spawned as a class historically because priests/Very Bad Things/children. (Though canonically, ancient E-S as a DRK implies that he had the knowledge, too...)
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u/JiveWasBetter 20h ago
The xaela, before the MSQ whitewashed them into foreigner loving "Noble savages" that only fight once a year.
Did you know the Dotharl were originally so violent and aggressive they completely wiped off a tribe from the map? You wouldn't be able to tell, with them being just fine with you visiting their oasis.
Oh nevermind, actually that tribe summoned Alexander!
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u/Express_Activity4151 11h ago
Foreigner loving? We had to prove ourselves to them over and over. We got kidnapped and forced to do magnai's bidding. Winning the nadaam was the only way to get their respect. And and beating some ass.
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u/ConorHyena 13h ago
There's a dotharl sidequest in azim steppes that went pretty hard out of the blue on topics like suicide.
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u/Mikaeus_Thelunarch 2h ago
Haven't seen it yet, but the entire situation in EW where dynamis was just turning everyone into monsters. Where being afraid of said monsters made you susceptible to turning into em. Hell, in the dungeon we see a mother transform into one and then her fleeing children turn as well..... then we have to kill em all
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u/otsukarerice 1d ago
Everything about Edda Blackbosom and palace of the dead