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Which side is more moral to you: Hoshido or Nohr?


Erik-a
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Hoshido is the most moral of the two. Fates barely even touches on any reason for Nohr to invade in favor of trying to make you so attached to your siblings that you forget that you were actually kidnapped and are attacking a kingdom of innocent people for basically no reason and murdering what you believe is your blood related family that just want you to come back home.

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1 minute ago, Modamy said:

Hoshido is the most moral of the two. Fates barely even touches on any reason for Nohr to invade in favor of trying to make you so attached to your siblings that you forget that you were actually kidnapped and are attacking a kingdom of innocent people for basically no reason and murdering what you believe is your blood related family that just want you to come back home.

Now, that I think about it, you're right.

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10 minutes ago, Modamy said:

Hoshido is the most moral of the two. Fates barely even touches on any reason for Nohr to invade in favor of trying to make you so attached to your siblings that you forget that you were actually kidnapped and are attacking a kingdom of innocent people for basically no reason and murdering what you believe is your blood related family that just want you to come back home.

That was kind of the point though wasn't it?

 

I mean isn't one of the game's taglines; Justice or Loyalty?

 

Where Conquest screws up imo is in trying to paint Corrin as a tragic hero when they're just selfish.

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2 minutes ago, Erik-a said:

Maybe I'm overthinking the games.

Probably. Hoshido didn't:
-give psychopaths like Hans, Iago and Peri free reign
-send hordes of faceless to attack and massacre villages (like Mozu's)
-lead the other's leader into a trap under guise of peaceful discussion to assassinate him and kidnap Corrin
-subjugate a tribe and keep the leader's offspring as captives
-put down rebellions and then execute all as an example (I don't think anyone in Hoshido wanted to rebel against the leader)
-keep a member of the royal family locked up most of their life
-use said member for a suicide mission without telling them it was a suicide mission
Only thing I can think of Hoshido did that was questionable was kidnapping Azura. Even that pales in comparison to Nohr's lightest transgressions.
End of the day, you can say "Well Nohr did all that because it was Garon under Anankos control". But it doesn't excuse the countless servants "just following orders".
It's a shame. I really like a lot of the Nohrian characters. But when it comes down to the kingdom itself, they utterly failed to give it redeeming reasons for any of it's actions.
"It's always dark in Nohr and we don't have Hoshido's resources" doesn't cut it. Nohr has it's own obvious resources and industries. Trade deals could have been used instead of outright war.
Anyway, that's just my take.

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4 minutes ago, Corrin_Kamui said:

That was kind of the point though wasn't it?

 

I mean isn't one of the game's taglines; Justice or Loyalty?

 

Where Conquest screws up imo is in trying to paint Corrin as a tragic hero when they're just selfish.

Yeah, you're right. If Conquest didn't try so hard to say Corrin is the real victim in this story and constantly talk about how much it hurts HIM to fight and kill his Hoshidan siblings the story would be a little better. I mean, it wouldn't change the fact that Nohr is invading another country rather than using diplomacy to get what they need so Nohr would still end up on the moral low ground.

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2 minutes ago, Modamy said:

Yeah, you're right. If Conquest didn't try so hard to say Corrin is the real victim in this story and constantly talk about how much it hurts HIM to fight and kill his Hoshidan siblings the story would be a little better. I mean, it wouldn't change the fact that Nohr is invading another country rather than using diplomacy to get what they need so Nohr would still end up on the moral low ground.

Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with Nohr being the villains but Conquest tries to have it both ways and it just doesn't work.

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35 minutes ago, Corrin_Kamui said:

Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with Nohr being the villains but Conquest tries to have it both ways and it just doesn't work.

That's a good point actually.  If you're gonna be a villain, why not go all out?  You might as well . . .  EMBRACE THE DARK.

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6 minutes ago, anniec8711 said:

That's a good point actually.  If you're gonna be a villain, why not go all out?  You might as well . . .  EMBRACE THE DARK.

I'd rather reach through the White Light and Embrace The Brand New Day.

 

#proudHoshidanscum

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The only morally questionable elements of Hoshido as a whole rest entirely within the hearts and minds of two - maybe three - characters, and even then that's mostly a result of atrocities the Kingdom of Nohr had committed.  And maybe some of the actions committed by Hoshido in Conquest - such as stirring up trouble in Cyrkensia so that they could assassinate Garon, or attacking the Nohrian royals when one of them is sick - or maybe the counter-kidnapping of Azura, but all of that pales in comparison to what the King of Nohr has done.

Heck, while Conquest gives you the option to kill what is essentially a POW, you aren't allowed to do that in Birthright because "it's not the Hoshido way".  You even attempt to spare a Nohrian who kidnapped a neutral noble and tried to have you killed; if that doesn't place Hoshido on the highest of pedestals in this conflict, I don't know what would.

 

Though none of this is by any means a compliment.  In media that tries to portray morally grey conflicts, one mustn't create a utopia nation without giving it some serious issues, either morally or within the nation's workings itself.  Gaiden/Echoes - as many problems as it may have with its writing at times - did a much better job of painting such a conflict.  And of course Nohr needed more reasoning to side with them than simply family.

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17 minutes ago, anniec8711 said:

That's a good point actually.  If you're gonna be a villain, why not go all out?  You might as well . . .  EMBRACE THE DARK.

I personally think that would have been interesting. Conquest being Corrin's attempt to fix Nohr from the inside could have actually snowballed into his/her own corruption. I know there'd be people put off by that. But getting to play the villain for a change would have been different.

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6 hours ago, Mad-manakete said:

Probably. Hoshido didn't:
-give psychopaths like Hans, Iago and Peri free reign
-send hordes of faceless to attack and massacre villages (like Mozu's)
-lead the other's leader into a trap under guise of peaceful discussion to assassinate him and kidnap Corrin
-subjugate a tribe and keep the leader's offspring as captives
-put down rebellions and then execute all as an example (I don't think anyone in Hoshido wanted to rebel against the leader)
-keep a member of the royal family locked up most of their life
-use said member for a suicide mission without telling them it was a suicide mission
Only thing I can think of Hoshido did that was questionable was kidnapping Azura. Even that pales in comparison to Nohr's lightest transgressions.
End of the day, you can say "Well Nohr did all that because it was Garon under Anankos control". But it doesn't excuse the countless servants "just following orders".
It's a shame. I really like a lot of the Nohrian characters. But when it comes down to the kingdom itself, they utterly failed to give it redeeming reasons for any of it's actions.
"It's always dark in Nohr and we don't have Hoshido's resources" doesn't cut it. Nohr has it's own obvious resources and industries. Trade deals could have been used instead of outright war.
Anyway, that's just my take.

I was definitely overthinking on that one. 

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Can't say. They're both too cartoonish and underdeveloped for me make a judgement one way or another.

Nohr is the obvious target to dump on because of the events of Fates. But its not clear that Nohr as a country is evil, so much as Garon was evil and Nohr did evil things under his reign. (i.e. the difference between saying Hitler was an evil man, and Germany is an evil country)

And from what scarce information we have on Hoshido as a country and its ethics and politics...the Hoshidans aren't angels.

...They had their own expansionist, militaristic, and xenophobic tendencies
...They subjugated Mokushu
...They hunted the Kitsune Fox Laguz to near extinction, for their fur. 
...They do that whole thing where if a warrior shames himself in battle, he's expected to kill himself

Its basically Imperial Japan in a fantasy setting.  Imperial Japan was not a benevolent power. 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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8 hours ago, Erik-a said:

Maybe I'm overthinking the games.

Feel free to make your ideas known. More often than not, the fan revisions are better than the actual game. 

It's just that this particular question isn't debatable.

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Fates couldn't go more out of its way to paint Nohr as the bad guy. They're the aggressors, they conquer, they love killing, they seemingly have no problem('cept Scarlet) obeying Garon after he's been replaced with dragon spit that's been injected with lethal doses of pure evil, and Peri. Just Peri. They live in a nearly pure black wasteland where it's seemingly always night for crying out loud.

Hoshido, meanwhile, is a peaceful land full of peaceful people who just want peace, but have to fight back against the evil Nohr army.

Edited by Slumber
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9 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

The only morally questionable elements of Hoshido as a whole rest entirely within the hearts and minds of two - maybe three - characters, and even then that's mostly a result of atrocities the Kingdom of Nohr had committed.  And maybe some of the actions committed by Hoshido in Conquest - such as stirring up trouble in Cyrkensia so that they could assassinate Garon, or attacking the Nohrian royals when one of them is sick - or maybe the counter-kidnapping of Azura, but all of that pales in comparison to what the King of Nohr has done.

Heck, while Conquest gives you the option to kill what is essentially a POW, you aren't allowed to do that in Birthright because "it's not the Hoshido way".  You even attempt to spare a Nohrian who kidnapped a neutral noble and tried to have you killed; if that doesn't place Hoshido on the highest of pedestals in this conflict, I don't know what would.

 

Though none of this is by any means a compliment.  In media that tries to portray morally grey conflicts, one mustn't create a utopia nation without giving it some serious issues, either morally or within the nation's workings itself.  Gaiden/Echoes - as many problems as it may have with its writing at times - did a much better job of painting such a conflict.  And of course Nohr needed more reasoning to side with them than simply family.

I wouldn't say that. Hoshido is the most moral, but they really suck at foreign policy. Hoshido is a land that has everything. Nohr is a land with nothing. Hoshido refuses to share any resources with Nohr. The soft power that would have come from giving foreign aid on a regular basis would have been more than enough to keep the two from going to war if it wasn't for all the dragon nonsense. Hell, re-unification/ unification could have become a real possibility over time. Hoshido had a right to refuse giving aid to Nohr as a sovereign state, but it doesn't make them any less cruel for doing so. Isn't it implies that such an imbalance had been going on for a very long time, similar to the situation in Valentia?

Edited by NPR
Typooooo
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26 minutes ago, NPR said:

I wouldn't say that. Hoshido is the most moral, but they really suck at foreign policy. Hoshido is a land that has everything. Nohr is a land with nothing. Hoshido refuses to share any resources with Nohr. The soft power that would have come from giving foreign aid on a regular basis would have been more than enough to keep the two from going to war if it wasn't for all the dragon nonsense. Hell, re-unification/ unification could have become a real possibility over time. Hoshido had a right to refuse giving aid to Nohr as a sovereign state, but it doesn't make them any less cruel for doing so. Isn't it implied that such an imbalance had been going on for a very long time, similar to the situation in Valentia?

That could be true, but do we ever see it mentioned that Hoshido has refused to offer aid to Nohr before their conflicts began?

My point isn't that this didn't happen; it's that the writers don't focus on this stuff.  While Zofia's problems are a main focus for the conflict between it and Rigel, Hoshido's problems are, at best, flashed in front of you for a split second and then swept under the rug.  We know right away that Zofia's ruled by selfish kids who don't wanna share their candies, and that Rigel was raised in a hellish landscape that forced them to adopt the brutal methods they would later employ in their invasion; in Fates, however, we don't even know if there was ever any initial fault in either nation (aside from Garon/Anankos) for the conflicts that would later boil over between them.  When Garon was good... was Hoshido bad?  We don't know; they never tell us.  And such things are overshadowed by the abundant evil we see from Garon anyway.

I'll reword what I said in my initial sentence; the only 100% established elements of Hoshido that are morally questionable are the way certain characters act to the Nohrians, some Conquest actions, and Azura's kidnapping.  Everything else either can be justified enough to be warranted, can't really be attributed to the kingdom as a whole, or is too open-ended to be considered properly.

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26 minutes ago, Ertrick36 said:

That could be true, but do we ever see it mentioned that Hoshido has refused to offer aid to Nohr before their conflicts began?

My point isn't that this didn't happen; it's that the writers don't focus on this stuff.  While Zofia's problems are a main focus for the conflict between it and Rigel, Hoshido's problems are, at best, flashed in front of you for a split second and then swept under the rug.  We know right away that Zofia's ruled by selfish kids who don't wanna share their candies, and that Rigel was raised in a hellish landscape that forced them to adopt the brutal methods they would later employ in their invasion; in Fates, however, we don't even know if there was ever any initial fault in either nation (aside from Garon/Anankos) for the conflicts that would later boil over between them.  When Garon was good... was Hoshido bad?  We don't know; they never tell us.  And such things are overshadowed by the abundant evil we see from Garon anyway.

I'll reword what I said in my initial sentence; the only 100% established elements of Hoshido that are morally questionable are the way certain characters act to the Nohrians, some Conquest actions, and Azura's kidnapping.  Everything else either can be justified enough to be warranted, can't really be attributed to the kingdom as a whole, or is too open-ended to be considered properly.

That is fair. I am basing what I said off of a single throw away line in conquest anyway. It was so small I forgot what it is. I think Elise said something about it when they are all underneath the capital, but I could be wrong. I don't really care for the games that much because of how flimsy every aspect of the writing is, but I tried to justify the two sides argument in my head to make myself feel at least a BIT better about the game. >_>

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