Can you give examples? I read your book and played the games so to speak and the "empires" do seem like the major "bad guys" in the world of Elemental. At the very least I have not gotten an indication that a fallen and non fallen person can truely get along without some ulterior motives... like Nym for example.

I think the point is that these factions are supposed to be philosophically divergent and not specifically morally divergent. The general notion in most western cultures is that two opposing philosophical positions can be represented as good and bad/evil with the focal philosophical position representing the good and the outer position as bad or evil. One might look at the philosophical distinctions of the Empire and Kingdoms as being fundamentally similar to the industrial v. agrarian distinctions seen in the early 19th century or the Athenian v. Spartan distinctions in the 5th Century BC before the Peloponnesian War.

I also read the book, and it points both in favor of the bad guys theme and not.

The Fallen are people, we could see that from the legends of Imperium and Calebethon, but they are always pictured as the bad too. They invade, they murder, and most likely do other unspeakable things too. I don't mean to say that humans were much better, with Calis being treated as he was, the king being completely mad, etc. But it would be interesting from reading something from the Fallen's point of view, because Nym didn't help the cause...

And don't get me started on why do they want a dead wasteland to live in... if they were really twisted humans, one would expect them to keep some of their cualities... like, I don't know... eating something aside from mushrooms? Having a landscape that doesn't look like the end of the world daily? I can assume it's just a preference of them, weird as it is, so I'll shut up.

It would be cool if each faction developed into good or bad as the game progressed, like in GalCiv, but not just due to random events. Somewhat like Civilization, I have had Ghandi attack me without reason O.o

I do hope the line good-bad line blurs in FE as Brad said.

It's mostly due to visual presentation that players come to the conclusion of good vs evil.  Why not change the ashy dark land to a different color like a yellow plain?  It's all so cliche.

in my eyes good or bad if u wipe another race off the map do u do it in self defence or do u do out of bein evil ?ether way u are in one way or another u are committing genocide lol the game to me seems like it is geared to each race fighting for survival in a dieing world good and evil is ur choice.

I agree --^^  And consider another mixing of 'good and evel.'  The nazis had a famous Christian scholar, one of the founders of the reformation, as their guiding 'saint.'  They chose his birthday to stage their nationwide attack on Jewish stores, the 'night of broken glass.'   This founder of the Protestant Reformation wrote in his book about Jews, that Jews are detestable vermin, and all should be killed, their synagogues should be burned... etc.   The nazis loved this and enshrined Martin Luther as their patron Saint.  Nazis used Luther's later writings to justify their brutality.  Sadly, they were not mis interpreting what Luther wrote.  So, I agree with the above quote, on a whole other level - good and evil are often 'mixed' together..  

All that philosophical mumbo jumbo apart, I'll still take an evil fallen enchantress over a pristine angel any day.

They are a lot more fun, and require little or no time educating...

Obviously your point of view didn't make it into your game.  For *most* people...

Death magic, domination, slavery, portrayal of Fallen landscape, etc. = EVIL.

Life magic, Beacon of Hope, renewal of the land, etc = GOOD.

Oversimplification?  YES.  Portrayed as such in the game?  YES again.

I think this is an important point. The terrain changes very much imply that tolkeinesque "good vs. irretrievably and forever evil" dynamic that is very popular in the fantasy genre. People do love that stuff but if it doesn't fit the fiction you need something different. 

To get away from that you need more subtle differences. A human needs to plausably imagine why a different human would want to live there. The land needs to look productive in some way.

Not to sound like a lore apologist, but maybe the empire folks have a different mind set than kingdom.

Maybe they eat horses and don't like to ride them because of it.

Maybe they don't find the horse ferocious enough or tough enough compared to the warg.

Pretty thin, I admit, but not as much as some other rationalizations I have read here.

Some of these things could be easily resolved by a small change to the description.

Not likely to happen, but how about allowing the opposing factions to use the other's mount with a penalty.

I may be the only one who believes this, but I wish Elemental's backstory were less intrusive and that the factions were good and evil simpliciter.
I enjoy fantasy games because they provide an escape from the rationalizing that accompanies everyday decisions. Destroy the magical item or take it for yourself? Do it for the sake of being good/evil.

If you do not partake in the Diplomatic possibilities available in the game that leaves but 2 choices. Conquer or be Conquered. Now I don't see how, even if it were 2 pristine Angel factions doing the fighting, one will always consider the other Evil, because they are the ones getting conquered, and as such consider themselves the Good guys/gals.

This whole topic is so sourly "deja vu" it tortures my senses to read it "ALL" again. Somewhere in here (like 2 years ago), probably before some pre-forum wipe, a discussion like this transpired exactly, hell the OP may have been in that one as well, and look what we ended up with?

It seems very strange that now we get word that possibly, those things we sought back in EoW early early days, will be made available like we wanted then? A lot of new Empire Art be forthcoming one would guess.

And what happens if the EF story does not water down the whole Good/Evil thing enough? Do we wait another 2 years? There seems no really good reason to throw out ALL the existing Lore now. What, "beige flavored" Empires? (come on)

Good vs Evil, Light vs Dark whatever already. Can someone just decide that one faction killing off another to meet some unknown end game plan, of thier own making,does not constitute either being Good or Evil and neither hides nor enlightens either side already...

Besides, make friends with the Empires/Kingdoms, pay their stupid tribute demands, and just do the whole "Group Hug" thing. Then every one wins and there is no Dark/Light Good/Evil BS to worry about. Just because when the Empires had their Colors done and came out all Earthy, doesn't mean they are Evil, that's just crazy talk. LOL

Everyone is the hero of their own story.

Yeah I agree with this. Im tired of all that "ooh they are all shades of grey", Its becoming cliche its so overused. I want the bad guys to be bad, and be deliciously evil at that. Then when you play your own custom civ, you can ally up with the good guys or the bad guys depending on how you want to play that game. Galciv 2 handled this perfectly.

Incidentally, we want more differentiation between factions, not less. They are already sufficiently bland and indistinguishable, if you arent going to have non-human races, you need to make the factions polar opposites to at least make them feel a bit different even if they all look the same...

So you want factions with no context or character beyond being caricatures of good and evil? While this does save you quite a bit of thinking (that, I agree, can be painful sometimes), it doesn't make for a very interesting gameplay experience.

Also, how is this any different than what we have now?

I think the problem is the game strayed from the core concept Brad laid out initially:

The Kingdoms were about collectivism in general, whereas the Empires were about individualism.  You can have good and evil within both those concepts.

You could easily have good/partly good/netural/partly evil/pure evil for both, and use the base 10 factions for that.

I think the Empires are far more industrial and also would not hesitate to destroy the land for their own purposes. I don't think this necessarily makes them evil but they are a "the ends justifies the means" kind of faction I think. So perhaps it is the heavy industrialization and such which ruins the land.

My humble suggestion is that the Fallen don't want to destroy the land, they just alter it so that for the kingdoms it appears lifeless. For example the fruits become poisonous, shrubs become brambles, forests are gnarled and withered, basically everything becomes a corrupted and hostile version of itself. But that's the way Empires like it, that's how they feel at home. Their land is not actually dead, it's just a really bizarre ecosystem, which is incompatible with normal "Kingdom" stuff.

That's what I tell myself when I play at least, to help with immersion.

(Ya, the lava pools are actually some kind of strange water, where they can go fishing in)

Key thing to note there is that the lore is thus far presented entirely from the Kingdom perspective, thus when the Empires are attacking they're invading, murdering and looting; yet when the kingdoms attack they're merely liberating the land from tyranny.

 In terms of whether the Empires are actually evil it's not really clear. Landscape is a non-issue, all but one of the Empires are non-human, so what constitutes ideal conditions for them may well be a hostile environment for humans and vice versa. For all we know the Trogs are just as non-plussed at humans letting all those delicious rocks get covered in grass and mud as humans are at them living in a volcanic wasteland.

 In fact, if it comes to splitting hairs one could read into the idea that one side is exclusively human while the other isn't (with the exception of one faction widely held as traitors) to be plain old xenophobia and racism on the human's behalf. Could be the Empires are simply quiet live and let live types who were happy to try and pull their ancient culture out of the ruins when all these funny looking monkeys turned up and started stealing their land.

 It also seems to divide along magic lines. Empires seem to be more willing to use it, so you could also have an almost religious difference - Empires have a better affinity with magic and they see it as the only way to restore the world, conversely after the experiences humanity has had they see magic as something dangerous and to be feared, and blame it for killing the world. So naturally the two are at odds as they see the other as undoing all their efforts in the name of superstition.

I think the reason why the tropes are so useful, is that you can quickly and easily, upon a premade foundation, tell your own fantasy story. It might not win any prizes, but its yours, and thats whats fun about it. This is one thing that games can do that movies and books can't. When there's other fiction you have to deal with that you are less familiar with, it can get in the way of this process. Theres nothing wrong with a very thin backstory in a game, I think thats why people love MoM and AoW:SM. It's all the stuff you know and love, ready to act according your own imagination.

i think a gameplay focus is more useful than speculating on the nuances of a mythology that isn't really our to know. from a gameplay point of view, what does the separation of factions into empires and kingdoms, with different tech trees and visuals styles really ad? for me, the only useful part of the distinction is helping to encourage conflict through negative relations modifiers. it creates that "us and them" factor, and feeling of dread that middle earth has in sauron, or that the wheel of time has in the dark one.

that is important, and changing the game's mythology is a tough sell. but wouldn't that aspect be far better handled by a simple eastern or western "culture" stat for each civ? then leave the visual look and philosophy stuff as divergent paths through the tech tree. what are the separate tech trees really contributing at the moment beyond confusion and imbalance?

Indeed.
And pardon me, but I don´t need ideas of how I could interpret that what the game shows me to help with immersion.
Either the Empire spoils the land or it doesn´t.
If it doesn´t, just leave that aspect out of the game and replace it with a "guardian spell" that gives you the combat bonus that you get when fighting on your respective type of land.
If it does, this really should reflect in gameterms.

Don´t get me wrong, I kinda like that spoiling/replenishing theme.
It just doesn´t make much sense as it is now.
So either have it matter and integrate it better into gameplay, or rather leave it out entirely.

I mean, there would be so many cool ways to handle this.
First off we could assume that Kingdom vs. Empire is not about good vs. evil but about order vs. chaos.
This way we would have a duality without the moral implications associated with the former.

Then you could go and introduce life and death and/or order and chaos nodes (hasn´t something like this already been in the game at some time?) that would relate to the landscape around them.
You could use them to spoil the land around a death node or to replenish it around a life node, either profiting from the essence that was drained from the land by getting additional mana or crystal, or simply getting more food and material.
The respective ressources could be "harvested" from the node if it was in your possession.

This way you would have a real reason to spoil or replenish the land, and it would somehow make sense.
Just to give an example...
However, I´m not at all happy with how this is handled now.
Either I have an evil faction that is believably evil and a good one that is believably good, or I don´t need them at all.

Well, they've hired a writer explicitly for this purpose, so... I don't really know exactly what you're trying to say here, so I really don't know if I agree or disagree. I don't see how Order vs. Chaos is any different than invoking the standard Good vs. Evil fantasy tropes, but you say that you're not happy how it's being handled now, with which I agree. I'm sorry, I just don't agree that any standard fantasty evil faction is believable.

My point is that people are not simply good or evil. They sometimes do "good" or "evil" things.
For this to be believable, there has to be a reason to act accordingly.
If spoiling the landscape doesn´t give you anything, why should you do it? Just for flavour?
On the other hand, if there was some kind of reward for spoiling the landscape, it would be much more believable that there are people who would do this.

So my point doesn´t necessarilly have anything to do with removing the good/evil or law/chaos duality, primarily it´s about making this duality more feasible.
On the other hand you could, to stay with my example, of course leave this duality out of the game and let the player decide how to act; do I go down the path of spoiling the land or do I nourish it, or do I perhaps do both?

Yeah, agreed. Here we have people who corrupt the land in an obviously evil and twisted way. I can't possibly imagine why anybody would then conclude that these people are evil.