SPOILER Moral Ambiguity Doesn’t Work in Wynn

Reposting this from Discord:

Ever since 1.20 released, there has been a lot of talk of whether or not Orphion and the Light in general is amoral. And while some CT defend that Orphion is amoral and morally similar to the Darkness, this just falls flat in the game for the following:

1) The Light is a natural part of Gavel, whereas the Darkness and Corruption and portrayed as being unnatural. Part of it is that we never see Gavel before the Light showed up and it’s assumed the Light has been in Gavel since time immemorial. The biggest part is that without the Light, Gavel as a whole suffers and entire ecosystems break down. Even the Portal in Wynn was caused by the Light being thrown out of balance. While light emissaries might kill innocent creatures occasionally, we can be a bit lenient on them since the Light Forest is being constantly attacked by parasites and without them, all of the wildlife and people would be worse off like in the Kander Forest. And at least the native inhabitants of Gavel can coexist and even thrive in the Light; the same can’t be said for the Olm in the SE when the Darkness came.

2) Outside of Taproot, Orphion never actually asks us to do anything morally gray. Which does not even count since that scene was just a vision with no real consequences. Speaking of no consequences, the whole An Iron Heart quest line is also guilty of that, and it being roped into the RoL quest line helps neither. Throughout An Iron Heart and its related secret discoveries, Urelix is clearly evil (kidnapping people, beating the mayor to intimidate him, bribing people, choosing his option gives “Shameful Greaves”), and yet the game wants you to also think it’s a trolley problem if you turn him in. Yet if you actually do, then nothing happens. So the whole, “without the golems, people will die!” argument was crap to begin with.

Hence the RoL feels similar because at the end of the day, we still unconditionally follow Orphion to fight for the Light and the Darkness has absolutely zero redeeming qualities. So why even bother with attempting to be morally ambiguous if it just defaults to “Light good, Dark bad” anyway?

Oh yeah, and the Darkness representing literal eldritch monsters with giant black spikes doesn’t give a good look either compared to the Light.

I also bring all of this up because it feels like a missed opportunity to be morally ambiguous when Gavel got revamped in 1.20. As in the Light would also be causing negative effects on Gavel, like invasive species from the RoL destroying the ecosystem similar to the Decay. But unlike the Darkness, Orphion also uses deception to spread his influence. You could have Orphion betray the player when it’s convenient for him for example. You could also have the Elves still worship him, just that they don’t care about the negative side effects of the Light on Gavel’s other inhabitants. For example, the orcs would be still be driven out of the forests due to the aforementioned invasive species from the RoL, but the Elves don’t care because they’re racist against them and most don’t see their suffering by being secluded in Aldorei Valley.

It would have also been a great arc for Lari to realize that Orphion never cared about her or anyone else, and works to undo her prejudices and the harm caused by her actions in the name of Orphion. Or at least better than her being a dipshit imo.

It would have also fixed the Elves being dumb too by them causing harm through their religious zeal by doing what Orphion says rather than misinterpreting what he said.

Having said all of that, I think it’s far too late to revamp RoL again for this. I would rather have the War of the Realms be just fully black and white if they really wanted to make changes. However, I do think this should serve as a cautionary tale so Fruma doesn’t end up the same way.

TL;DR The game doesn’t handle moral ambiguity well because it isn’t simply impactful. While Orphion and the Dern Beast only care about expanding their domain, Orphion is still not amoral because he never actually does anything amoral and his alternative (the Darkness) is light years worse than him in nearly every way for the overworld. Hence moving forward the game should be more mindful about introducing moral ambiguity to begin with.

 

"bUT oRpHIoN iS aMorAl!!!111!!" - wynn ct
bro guys i am begging you to understand
just bc you say that a certain lore thing is true does NOT mean that it is true ingame, if it is never communicated effectively to the players through lore or gameplay

 

To throw them a bone, there are direct comments from Orphion that he doesn’t strictly adhere to morality. It’s just that gets diluted from everything else indicating otherwise. Also keep in mind that Orphion saying you need to be able to kill in his name comes from the context of Lari being a dipshit by repeatedly refusing to kill eldritch parasites that are trying to kill her.

So imo it’s not like Orphion would have you kill babies; he just wants you to not to repeat Lari’s mistakes and have common sense.

 

Realistically Orphion’s just utilitarian, which is perhaps the most objectively secularly moral philosophy

 

true true

________________________________

he *should* be!

 

The Dr. Urelix "choice" in RoL has always felt really forced to me. I think that moral ambiguity is always better when it's shown, not told. I'd personally reframe it as a question of "what was the right thing to do there?" instead of "this is what Orphion says you should do" to make the player question their choices. Talk about the consequences of both actions and don't paint either as being better, just imply that the "good" option may not have been the best choice. Honestly I think the best possible thing you can do to provoke that feeling is to very explicitly say that they aren't passing judgement on your actions, and that they also aren't sure of the correct answer. This would tell the player that it isn't as simple as "the right choice" and "the wrong choice" like it is now. That may not exactly fit the narrative as it is right now but it's far more compelling for the player.

Also, having Orphion's followers paint him as morally grey is so out of place it completely kills a lot of the narrative for me. Have you ever, at any point in your life, heard someone talk about the god they follow and worship as being kinda just selfish?
"Hey, check out this god I worship."
"Why, is he loving and caring and goodness incarnate?"
"Nah, he's mostly just pretty okay."
"Pretty okay?"
"I mean he mostly looks out for himself, but he's decent."
If anyone brings up how morally grey he is, it should 100% be the enemy. Speaking of which, we never really get to talk with the enemy, or to see the other side of this. We're having this "morally grey" picture painted for us by his followers and himself.

Of course, that doesn't matter at all when the enemy is cartoonishly evil. The only enemy who really talks with us (well, with Lari) aside from Dullahan, who isn't an agent of the Darkness, is Bak'al. I'm not gonna get into the whole "link between corruption and darkness" thing, but he's basically the worst character you could use to paint a "morally grey" picture with. He's been shown as being evil for the sake of evil. His hobbies probably include kicking puppies and making babies cry.

If it was someone who we either didn't know, or we had been introduced to previously in these or other quests, who we knew to be an "ends justify the means" sort of person rather than evil for the fun of it, and they told us that Orphion was no better (and also gave a case for why the Dark Beast actually was), then that would really sell the idea of Orphion being morally grey and maybe even make us question who we should support

Here's two examples to show what I mean:
"Hi, I'm Orphion and I think you should do things that serve the greater good, even if that means choosing the lesser of two evils."
"Hi, I'm Bak'al, I really like tormenting and killing innocent people for the fun of it. I'd buddies with the dark version of Orphion and I want to invade and destroy/corrupt/conquer the world using whatever means necessary."

or:

"Hi, I'm Orphion, I am goodness incarnate. You should do whatever it takes to support the light, even if that means sacrificing innocents, without question of whether it is right or wrong."
"Hi, I'm <???>, I support the Dark Beast. Orphion isn't really the good guy, he just wants you to spread his influence. He doesn't care about the lives of mortals who support him, only his own power. He and the Dark Beast are no different, only the Dark Beast is winning. If the Dark Beast wins, that'll put an end to this war."

Also also, there's a pretty strong tonal difference between "I think you should sacrifice a small number for people for the greater good" and "I just care that I get more power" and while I actually really like the idea of Orphion fitting the second one, neither he nor anyone following him should ever even hint at that. Bak'al would and should. Dullahan should. If Bak'al gets replaced whoever replaced him should. But not an elf who apparently still supports him.

I really like the idea of the quest line, but a lot of the moral ambiguity felt really forced and ham-fisted. I think that it should receive a large rewrite, because it some of the most important and most interesting questlines in the game, but a lot of the emotional impact is taken out of it. I'd even rather have it just be a classic good vs. evil fight, where Orphion is all things good and the Dark Beast is all things bad.

I don't mean any of this as an attack on the CT or on Wynncraft in general, it's just some comments I'd like to make on what I think is something they could and should improve.

 

I've brought this up before. The CT (or Mad at least) seem to be broadly blind to this.

It's show, don't tell. What you say is true about the lore does not come off as such if nothing in game points to it, especially when your lore statements happen exclusively outside the actual game! Orphion does not come off as immoral/amoral at all! The only action of his that would be actually, unambiguously amoral is if he intended for the Guardian of the Forest to be cut down, but nothing in Aldorei's Secret shows this to be the case. As far as you can tell there, Orphion simply gave vague information to an Elf who interpreted it in a way that caused a thousand years of war in Wynn and the Silent Expanse.

Helping Orphion is never shown as being bad. When you're fighting in his Nexus, and then fighting him, it is explicitly for his benefit. Removing the Parasite from him has no negative consequences and his strengthening is purely beneficial for the restoration of Gavel. Orphion's entire aesthetic is beauty and goodness while the Dark Beast and Corruption are repeatedly shown as doing horrible thing after horrible thing after horrible thing, with most of the products being degenerate abominations overwhelmed with their respective powers.

Hollow Serenity explains directly to us that the presence of Light in people is Good and that the Parasites draining the Light causes all the horrible effects of Decay, which you've spent the last 20-30 levels seeing. The Light is necessary and has no apparent corruption attached to it; while the Darkness produces eldritch environments like the Toxic Wastes and Eyeball Forest, and the Corruption drags literal Hell out into the living world, the Light produces beautiful fairytale environments without issues at all.

Suggestion: Lean into the fairytale aesthetic. Choke the player in fairytales. Have the Light Forest have a fairytale quest or two that is just. Light. You are being bombarded by Light. Deviation from the story results in you being burned by the puppet angels. Free will is basically nonexistent. People are forced into the roles whether they like it or not and any deviation from the ivory order results in being obliterated. Throw a pile of Fae at the player. Make the Light Forest actively spreading like the Corruption it should parallel.

 

interesting
like a boring fairytale quest but anytime you try to deviate you notice suspicious things...

 

Make it the most obviously railroaded quest ever. And contrast it with some quest the level below in Cinfras or the Decay which gives you tons of options for how you want it to play out.

________________________________

The only options you get are fighting extremely powerful Light angels if you try to deviate.

 

You're directly quoting me. And yes, in game Orphion is amoral. There is no instance of him being anything but.
I didn't say it's perfect. I didn't say I don't think it should be improved. I don't appreciate you putting words in my mouth.

________________________________

That's intentional. It's not meant to be a choice.

________________________________

We do want to improve how it's told in game to make it clearer that neither are good or evil. We want to show more of the consequences of allowing Light to reign, as we have shown this far with Darkness and Corruption.

 

ok i think i understand the disconnect here
The CT assumes the players chain of logic is
URELIX IS BAD--->ORPHION SUPPORTS URELIX--->ORPHION IS MORALLY GREY
however the average player will read it as
ORPHION IS GOOD--->ORPHION SUPPORTS URELIX--->URELIX WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG
I think thats why the CT and the playerbase disagree on that scene so hard.

________________________________

you cant SEE that

look I went through ROL knowing a lot of the lore already from being on the forums a lot. It was mostly spoiled for me and I knew almost all of the War of the Realms stuff already when I began ROL 1.
There was no context I was missing. It seemed to me, as I played the actual quests, that orphion was being portrayed as Completely Good, but the one who always knows the greater good. He wants to kill the mayor which seems evil, but it seemed to me that Orphion was so great that he was able to discern the objectively good choice for the greater good, NOT that he is a selfish pragmatist

________________________________

sorry about that

 

They actually do. Orphion himself only ever talks about "his claim" and the light as suffering, and never the people of gavel. The guardian of the forest and he himself state that the light doesn't care about anything but action-- action that'll lead to its benefit. I won't pretend it's made super clear, because it's really not stated too well, but it is there.

 

thats true. But mentioning it once in the entire exposition dump is not ideal

 

Id also like to add part of why he seems to be a "good guy" is because he is the one who recruits you. He tells the narrative, and thus he presents himself as the one you should side with.
When you take a step back and look at Lari, you can kind of peel things back. He presented himself to her as a benevolent and wonderous god, and then when she failed to benefit him, he literally throws her away and replaces her with another viable candidate. It paints the picture that he only cared about Lari at all because she could be used as a pawn, and when she proved difficult, he cast her to the wayside. It's pretty fucked up, in all honesty!

 

I didn't mean the choice is forced, I meant that it feels very much like it is handholding the player through the rationalization of why its better, rather than letting them think about it themselves, then rubbing their face in it to make sure they got it. However it also heavily implies he's an extremely utilitarian, rather than simply self-serving (because in this instance both happen to involve the same choices). It doesn't sound selfish, just that he understands that sacrifices need to be made. While I'm not saying that it needs to start you on the line of thought that he is self-serving and may not have your best interests in mind, I think a choice that's less utilitarian or even him explaining it in a less utilitarian light would make players begin to wonder if he's really the "good guy" or just manipulative. I think would help paint his actions in a very different light.

At the same time, I really love the idea of him trying to act as the good guy, to manipulate you into serving him. If it was implied, either here or later on that he is deliberately trying to win you over with his talk about the greater good, and that he doesn't really believe any of it, I think that would work great. As it is though, it doesn't appear that that's actually the case, he earnestly believes that supporting the light is very much supporting the greater good, which is also interesting, but I think needs to be conveyed more.

Him abandoning Lari can easily be read as him just giving up because after a millennium she still doesn't listen or do what needs to be done, rather than him uncaringly switching his attention to someone who is more immediately beneficial. I think that making the player suspicious of his intentions early on would make them tend to lean towards the latter rather than the former.

________________________________

I really like that and I wish the quest leaned a little more heavily into that. It always felt more to me like he realized she wasn't doing what she had to and never would, rather than him realizing that he had the opportunity to get a more useful pawn

 

Lari being extremely incompetent is what killed this aspect. If she actually listened to what he said, but got betrayed anyway out of convenince, that would have been way more sus on Orphion's part than her just refusing to kill literally anything. The funniest part was that it wasn't like Orphion was asking her to kill a baby or a village or something. It was a gross parasite monster that wasn't native to the land that she knew would devastate it. Her refusing to do so got to the point where it wasn't even about morals, just plain stupidity. The same way refusing to kill a bear that's trying to kill you and your family if you don't kill it first.

Oh yeah and the cherry on top was that she had MULTIPLE times to kill the parasite, even when her lover was in direct danger. Instead of making you feel bad for Lari, you wonder why Orphion didn't dump her hundreds of years sooner than he had.

 

Yeah. The fact that he's put up with her being useless for a thousand years detracts from that element. She's shown to have done virtually nothing at any point in the events leading up to his infestation, and her accomplishments since then really make me think that he would be willing to keep her in his service. While the timeframe in which you do these things is never specified, it is definitely meant to be considerably shorter than a hundred years. What she didn't manage to do in centuries, you accomplish in... days? Weeks? Maybe months? While it might be because you are more powerful, it's hard for me to believe Orphion couldn't find someone at least as powerful as Lari, and willing to do as he commanded during these hundreds of years. It makes Orphion feel way too patient and willing to work with her to make me think that he's just an opportunist or that he is trying only to advance his goals.

 

Definitely Lari is more powerful than you canonically. Not only is she 1000+ years old, but she can wield powerful light magic as seen in the cutscenes. She just refuses to fully utilize her powers. Even gameplay-wise, I don't think a level 60/70 something player could ever take down a raid boss by themselves.

 

I’m gonna bring up the light being “inherently good for gavel” with the counterpoint that gavel is the area in the physical world associated(maybe linked?) with the light. The darkness is destructive because it’s not usually there. We haven’t seen wherever darkness is linked to, it could very well suffer from decay(or something else along those lines) if light were to be introduced.

Spoiler: Final Fantasy 14 Spoilers, Specifically to Heavensward Patch Quest. I haven’t gotten to where this plot point is elaborated on which I assume they will do as it’s kinda a loose end

At the end of heavensward, we have a similar dilemma set out by the game. Light is portrayed as outright moral in this game since pretty much everything about it is from the embodiment of light, hydaelyn, who chose you as her warrior of light. At one point a group calling themselves the “warriors of darkness” appear, working willingly for the darkness, portrayed as evil. Later on it is revealed that they’re fighting for the darkness because their home world was destroyed by an abundance of light and that light is not good. Then they disappear to go fix it or something (I don’t remember I was in call with a friend further along and I kept making jokes about them being shadowbringers lmao). The point is: this is similar to Wynn in that they say “yeah the light is like, not always good or whatever” and then it’s not touched again for quite awhile(I assume it will be please don’t spoil me). The thing is, like Wynn, we don’t actually see why it’s bad, the player is just told this with no evidence and you’re just supposed to accept it. I assume this is gonna be elaborated on in the future but keep in mind this was the end of the game when it came out, and like wynncraft it’s not handled great. I left that section going “uh ok I guess that happened?” Unsure of whether I’m supposed to be critical of that information(this is an MMO with mass appeal, the writing so far involving light vs dark has been shaky at best and nonsensical-sounding at worst, thanks a realm reborn and I don’t know whether I’m supposed to be reading into this like it’s a literary piece or if it’s just the devs slapping you in the face because Mr game journalist is also playing this and cannot take a hint)


Completely unrelated side note: me and my friends have a theory that a realm reborn’s writing is secretly not absolutely terrible: it makes sense EXCLUSIVELY if you played 1.0; that would be why it never explains what anything is and your always like “oh THIS is that place/thing they were talking about ages ago this would have been nice to know beforehand”, like there’s quite a few things they just never tell you, like when they refer to things in the opening cutscene by name without you having known what they were called… unless you had played 1.0 in which they were actively plot relevant

Not sure if that ffxiv point is valid if you’ve played past where I am and know more about it please no spoilers just reply with “nuh uh” instead (I’m partway through the main bit of stormblood)

back to wynncraft, I can think of an example that backs up my point of light only being good for creatures of gavel: lutho

lutho citizens, being originally from wynn(or maybe humans of fruma) seem to be in a terrible state from the lutho obelisk. Sure it protects them and keeps out the darkness, but at what cost? The light’s influence there does not look like one of righteousness…

…obviously there’s a big issue with this idea and that’s the corruption but uhhh maybe that’s the exception since it’s formed from both interacting violently. Maybe twilight would be good for the wynn province if that concept is still canon(I kinda doubt it)

 

I feel like on terms of morality:

1. Light should be moral
2. Dern should be immoral
3. Corruption should be amoral

That being said, I am not opposed to the Light or Dern committing acts that are right/wrong. One action does not speak for the person as a whole. A bad person could do a good thing and still be a bad person. A good person could do a bad thing and still be a good person.