it is a story of light vs dark but neither side is necessarily good or evil. multiple times in the story we will hear someone call the cabal and hive as "evil’’ or ‘‘monsters’’. these species are societies made up of trillions of individuals who are completely sentient just like humans but most of the time the vanguard will tell guardians to show no mercy and to kill with no hesitation. shiro 4 refers to them as cattle to slaughter in kill patrols.
one example of this extreme black and white view is in the savathuns song strike. after the ghost realizes that the hive were converting guardians to crystals to summon the shrieker he reacts by saying this ‘‘so many lives wasted the hive truly are monsters’’ there were about 9 guardians who directly invaded hive territory fully armed who possibly killed hundreds of hive. but the ghost doesn’t value their lives and thinks that human lives are the only ones that matter and everyone else is below them by saying this he is no different from the hive.
the city intends to completely exterminate all their enemies and are committed to genocide the biggest proof of this is their targeting of prime servitors. if you don’t know prime servitors are a houses main source of ether destroying them will cut the flow of ether and starves the population of said house to death not just soldiers but entire families including women and children this ensures that no more fallen remain to fight by committing genocide. this is why they protect servitors with fanatical devotion and we rarely ever see prime servitors actively attack the city. and you get praised and are called a ‘‘hero’’ for causing mass suffering.
dredgen yor is another example other than destroying palamon he rarely ever killed an innocent. in most of his stories he is either killing fully armed guardians or bandits neither are innocent. his ghost calls him a murderer but yor says he was always a murderer which is true in the end he was trying to prove a point although betraying your own people is evil.
the last point i have is skolas. skolas was a true hero as his intentions were always good he wanted to unite his people to stop fighting each other and instead fighting their true enemies although his means were questionable he did what he had to in the situation infact the last thing he did before dying was nothing less then noble he warned his greatest enemy the queen of the much bigger threat which he found with his time with the vex namely oryx, he gave them a chance to survive.
many people call the hive evil the hive don’t kill for the sake of killing, they kill to survive i like to compare them to lions. nobody blames a lion for killing a deer its just trying to survive its the same for the hive. we see in the books of sorrow that the hive clearly don’t enjoy genocide multiple times oryx laments the amount of suffering he caused but came to accept the fact that he does not have much of a choice he gives his enemies a fair chance to fight back. we never see the city take prisoners they don’t even have a prison they don’t leave survivors but can you blame them they are a victim like everyone else victims to war. the true enemies are not the hive or cabal the true enemies are the worms and the traveler higher powers who use everyone else as slave armies to fight for their cause.
the real reason ghaul was not chosen is not because he did bad things it’s because he did not completely wipe out humanity. the traveler wanted to see if ghaul was stronger and more capable to defend it than it’s previous guardians all ghaul had to do was continue to hunt down and eradicate the guardians but he thought they were broken and could not rise back up, hence why after the attack the only time we fight the red legion was when we directly attacked them in firebase hades. this is why the traveler woke up and killed ghaul after you defeated him you proved you were stronger in the end all ghaul had to do was what he was best at doing war. the true enemy is the light and the darkness. i rest my case.