Questionable ethics - Living Memory

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Originally Posted by celfhelp

she did try to peacefully resolve the issue, albeit briefly, and double albeit not in the most effective way

she asked wuk lamat (and by extension, us) to become alexandrian citizens, which would have resolved the issue without mass destruction, because a continent worth of natural death supplies far more 'empty souls' than just the kingdom of alexandria. obviously this isn't a rational or good solution, but it was a passive one

i also disagree that we just "chose to defend ourselves" by erasing an entire kingdom of people.

imo we overcorrected, because nothing was stopping us from going straight to sphene at the meso terminal and confronting her. we didn't have to turn everything off before hand, and the reason we DID do that ended up being completely irrelevant and useless. we 'killed' her people in an effort to demoralize her and it didn't. she wasn't even aware of it (frankly this is probably more 'oopsie' from the writers than it is something to dig into)

we could've just as easily "killed" sphene, taken the key, and left alexandria to naturally fade away, but instead we played God and sped up the process

do i personally think there's much of a difference? yes and no, but i'm just posturing on this side for the sake of discussion

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She was only asking us. Not our peoples, nations,etc. Us as individuals, so she wouldn't have to fight us. That's all. She was still going to attack tulliyolal.

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Originally Posted by LuciferMournstar

Hunters in the bubble can no longer use souls, they will die trying to stop the monsters in that Lighting destroyed world.

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...but that bubble is literally part of our world now. And the time has been synced at this point, too. We can literally get in and out of the bubble (and so can the citizens of S9/HF).

There is no reason why we cannot trade with them, help them, equip them with other tools or why they can't leave the bubble temporarily and hunt normal game.

Also, the idea that human hunters are the only means by which they can hunt is flawed imo. They literally have robots and space ships and now that Zoraal Ja is gone they have no further purpose. Why would an advanced civilisation with a huge cyber military force that exceeds anything Tural has to offer (we need a goddamn dragon to take them down) not be able to employ these things as tools to hunt or keep normal monsters at bay within the bubble?
Hop on one of those flying bikes and hunt beasts from above. Hell, put a robot on those flying bikes and let them do the hunting for you.

They can exist just fine without extra souls just like everybody else on Eitherys. They do not need extra souls to live and breathe, it's an insurance against very specific causes of death (not even natural causes) that no other culture has and yet every other culture on this planet is doing fine.
And they can easily circumvent these cases of unnatural death with other technical solutions. They can just not face tank a beast's tank buster anymore as a pugilist and get away unscathed.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

She was only asking us. Not our peoples, nations,etc. Us as individuals, so she wouldn't have to fight us. That's all. She was still going to attack tulliyolal.

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that's a fair, and probably more accurate, interpretation, at the time it just didn't register as that because no one seemed to react with that in mind. haha

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Originally Posted by Caitlinzulu

I would rather not have huge moral issues in my relaxation game. Its just a game, there is no way any of us would do things rl that we choose or do ingame.

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Only slightly on-topic, but you picked a terrible game for this, sorry.
XIV's story has always touched on dark and morally gray topics.
Even the WoL has been forced to side with "lesser evils" at times (like letting Lolorito get away with a bunch of terrible stuff for the benefit of the Ala Mhigans, or cooperating with Gaius who has a history of conquest, etc etc).
DT being this happy-go-lucky place where all strife is resolved with 10 minutes of talk-no-jutsu and even the cruelest people can magically become good-doers is an exception, not the rule, as far as XIV goes.

The game goes out of its way to inform you that the endless don't have souls. They are approximations of the memories of people who once used to be alive. It's no more a moral quandary than deleting a photo off your hard drive. A photo that wants to start a war and kill everyone to maintain itself, no less.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

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If their guns and ships worked like you say, why did they use Hunters with Beast Souls and regulators to begin with? Why waste the precious souls needed to keep Living Memory going on Hunters, if they didn't need to? Electrope may work for a while outside in Tuliloyol, but it was specifically said it converts LIGHTNING energy and needs quite a bit. Plus, what would be the point of the continued use of Electrope, when it's no longer needed because the source isn't assailed by massive amounts of lightning energy? What purpose would regulators serve without souls? Absolutely none.

I admire your continued nativity, I'll give you that. You really do try to look on the bright side (no pun intended), but life and the world can be cruel.

I fail to see the moral issue some people seem to have with this zone. Sphene also at this point essentially declared war on every other shard, viewing living souls as commodities for her artificial constructs.

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Originally Posted by LuciferMournstar

Yeah, Alexandria still exist in Heritage Found and Solution 9, but they are doomed for good now. We are going to wipe them out too. Their regulators no longer will have souls supplied to them, so everything in the "bubble" is doomed. Hunters in the bubble can no longer use souls, they will die trying to stop the monsters in that Lighting destroyed world. Which means eventually all of Heritage Found, Solution 9, and Living Memory will be overrun and uninhabitable. Also, we're going to put a stop to the use of Beast Souls. We're wiping out their entire culture, way of life, and any hope of continuing. They have one recourse : Abandon their culture, their home, and move to the source. Eletrope won't have use in the source without the abundance of Lightning Eather, so that'll be forgotten too.

There is no "happy ending" to this story. Alexandria is dying, and in about 100 years or so, will fade into obscurity and distant memory. If it takes even that long.

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That's not really so. Life is difficult in Alexandria, but just because it's difficult doesn't mean it's doomed. They don't have a choice about 'moving to the Source'--they're already 'here'. Yeah, they'll eventually have to learn to live without backup souls to rely on, since Zoraal Ja ate so many of them. That's not exactly a civilization-ending catastrophe. But since they are on the Source already, and the bubble has been breached, that means Alexandria can establish trade with the rest of the Source, can learn new ways to deal with their issues. I'd not be at all surprised to learn that Alexandrians going forward are born with Source-dense souls, since they are now of the Source. They don't have to move anywhere if they don't want to. Electrope is still going to be useful since the bubble (that exists on the Source) still has insane amounts of lightning aether in it, and electrope now exists on the Source, in Yysalani. They'll have to adapt, but now they have a way out of their original destructive cycle. Remember--before Alexandria got fused with the Source, every Alexandrian that died was made an Endless, and the Endless consume souls. So there would always be an increasing number of Endless and a dwindling supply of souls. That is no longer the case. Alexandria *was* doomed. Now it's not.

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Originally Posted by Loggos

...but that bubble is literally part of our world now. And the time has been synced at this point, too. We can literally get in and out of the bubble (and so can the citizens of S9/HF).

There is no reason why we cannot trade with them, help them, equip them with other tools or why they can't leave the bubble temporarily and hunt normal game.

Also, the idea that human hunters are the only means by which they can hunt is flawed imo. They literally have robots and space ships and now that Zoraal Ja is gone they have no further purpose. Why would an advanced civilisation with a huge cyber military force that exceeds anything Tural has to offer (we need a goddamn dragon to take them down) not be able to employ these things as tools to hunt or keep normal monsters at bay within the bubble?
Hop on one of those flying bikes and hunt beasts from above. Hell, put a robot on those flying bikes and let them do the hunting for you.

They can exist just fine without extra souls just like everybody else on Eitherys. They do not need extra souls to live and breathe, it's an insurance against very specific causes of death (not even natural causes) that no other culture has and yet every other culture on this planet is doing fine.
And they can easily circumvent these cases of unnatural death with other technical solutions. They can just not face tank a beast's tank buster anymore as a pugilist and get away unscathed.

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"They have no further purpose". Did you think Zoraal Ja was just having them standing around, doing nothing for 30 years till he could merge with the Source? Obviously not. They were were used, and they weren't enough, hence the Hunters.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

She was only asking us. Not our peoples, nations,etc. Us as individuals, so she wouldn't have to fight us. That's all. She was still going to attack tulliyolal.

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I agree and in addition, I also don't think it would actually help Living Memory if Tuliyollal became Alexandrian because the souls of the Alexandrian people already seem to be (more or less) fully in use for their regulator system. They don't seem to have (enough) of them to spare to power Living Memory sustainably. So just increasing the Alexandrian people would probably not actually increase its surplus energy (at least not long term) because, assuming that many would probably also end up using regulators like most of the Turali's who got absorbed into the electro bubble - even if it's just newer generations/generations yet to be born, the life force demand for their normal regulator system would eventually increase more or less proportionally as well.

So in the long run Spehne needs to kill people to generate this surplus of life force. Her own society cannot generate it so she cannot offer all of Tuliyollal/Tural to become Alexandrians because it would actively undermine her goal.

(Also, I don't think it's very "peaceful" to say "give up your whole nation and way of life and succumb to us, otherwise we'll have to harvest you". That is just colonialisation/conquest, no matter how regretful Sphene is or how nicely she asks.)

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

Only slightly on-topic, but you picked a terrible game for this, sorry.
XIV's story has always touched on dark and morally gray topics.
Even the WoL has been forced to side with "lesser evils" at times (like letting Lolorito get away with a bunch of terrible stuff for the benefit of the Ala Mhigans, or cooperating with Gaius who has a history of conquest, etc etc).
DT being this happy-go-lucky place where all strife is resolved with 10 minutes of talk-no-jutsu and even the cruelest people can magically become good-doers is an exception, not the rule, as far as XIV goes.

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The talk no jutsu only really worked on Balool Ja Ja as far as major antagonists go. We still had to kill the giant monster Valigarmanda, and couldnot reason with Zarool Ja or Sphene. Though I do think Bakool went form 'freeing Valigarmanda to get ahead in the contest' to 'good guy' a little too quickly and cleanly, he's the only major antagonist in the expansion this worked for. And Tuliloyol was saved by the nation rallying together and bringing in outside allies to repel the second attack rather than convincing anyone to stand down. It's really only minor obstacles that we peace and friendship our way through other than Bakool who was a persistent antagonist throughout the first four levels.

I do agree with your point about doing morally questionable things though. In SB we sided with actual pirates because they're anti Empire. Pirates who make their living by extorting protection money out of people passing by and doing bad things to them if they refuse. Then we used the Xaela's traditions to drag them into a war they had no investment in until after we won the actual contest and Grynwaht antagonized them by coming into the Steppe to chase US down etc.

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Originally Posted by LuciferMournstar

"They have no further purpose". Did you think Zoraal Ja was just having them standing around, doing nothing for 30 years till he could merge with the Source? Obviously not. They were were used, and they weren't enough, hence the Hunters.

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You misunderstood me.

His military has no further purpose now that he is gone. We have obviously seen some robots patroling Heritage Found but Alexandria has a full cyber space force. Literal ships flying in the sky that are strong enough to conquer Tural. If you have that much power, again power to conquer not just a continent but the entire world (which was his goal), you just cannot tell me that for some reason, now that he is gone, that power cannot be redirected to fight normal monsters in your local area.

His military cannot simultaneously have enough robots/figters/force to conquer the world but not enough to deal with monsters.

Also, as I said above, there are more options for Alexandrians now. They are part of Tural at this point. We can forge alliances, establish trade etc. Guraal Ja 2.0 is their ruler and has direct ties to Wuk, who is hellbent on peace and harmony. There is just no implication that the Alexandrians are done for.

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Originally Posted by Loggos

(Also, I don't think it's very "peaceful" to say "give up your whole nation and way of life and succumb to us, otherwise we'll have to harvest you". That is just colonialisation/conquest, no matter how regretful Sphene is or how nicely she asks.)

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it's more peaceful than slaughter. plenty of cultures/peoples survive today because colonialism/conquest of all brands and sources wasn't flatout slaughter (most of the time)

don't get me wrong, she was always going to go the slaughter route because the story demanded it. granted Preservation disappeared but you'd think that they could've found an alternative fuel source if they just committed to finding it. would've personally enjoyed exploring that route more, but it'd probably make for a horribly boring video game main story. haha

I don’t see how any of this is a moral issue on our part. The Endless barely qualify as existing. They certainly aren’t alive in any meaningful capacity. And their continued existence was going to be at the expense of everyone on the Source.

It’s not like we barged into a stable world that was just minding its own business and screwed things up for the people living there. Someone from an unstable and dying world invaded ours and declared war so they could continue to sustain the projections of people who didn’t really exist anymore. The only questionable ethics lie with Sphene and her interpretation of her programming.

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Originally Posted by Loggos

You misunderstood me.

His military has no further purpose now that he is gone. We have obviously seen some robots patroling Heritage Found but Alexandria has a full cyber space force. Literal ships flying in the sky that are strong enough to conquer Tural. If you have that much power, again power to conquer not just a continent but the entire world (which was his goal), you just cannot tell me that for some reason, now that he is gone, that power cannot be redirected to fight normal monsters in your local area.

His military cannot simultaneously have enough robots/figters/force to conquer the world but not enough to deal with monsters.

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You're forgetting, Zoraal Ja was OVERLY arrogant, and thought very little of Tural and the Source overall. He might have THOUGHT his military was that powerful, but it really wasn't. He more than likely thought his military, being strong enough to keep things kind of safe in the Lightning Hellscape meant is was superior. His pride and his ego lead him to think otherwise.

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Originally Posted by celfhelp

it's more peaceful than slaughter. plenty of cultures/peoples survive today because colonialism/conquest of all brands and sources wasn't flatout slaughter (most of the time)

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I'd say more "peaceful" but not actually peaceful. I didn't intend to say it was as bad as slaugher so technically I agree. I just mean that it would still be incredibly immoral by Sphene (if she were to offer Tural to become Alexandrians, which I don't think she was actually implying, as said above) to put the gun on a whole continent's chest and say "succumb or die". (I'm also not sure I agree with "cultures survived because of colonialism/conquest" because if they hadn't been colonised in the first place...but this is another can of worms and I don't want to open up a debate on this any further, so I'll stop here.)

Regarding Sphene, the only point I was trying to make with that quoted part is that none of her actions or (theoretical) intentions (assuming for the sake of the argument she was offering Tural to join her kingdom) were actually peaceful, so her offer is not a display of her "good" character is all.

I agree on exploring different solutions but I think this is a separate point because she could also have explored these things with us without (theoretically) asking Tural to become Alexandrian.

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Originally Posted by LuciferMournstar

Yeah, Alexandria still exist in Heritage Found and Solution 9, but they are doomed for good now. We are going to wipe them out too. Their regulators no longer will have souls supplied to them, so everything in the "bubble" is doomed. Hunters in the bubble can no longer use souls, they will die trying to stop the monsters in that Lighting destroyed world. Which means eventually all of Heritage Found, Solution 9, and Living Memory will be overrun and uninhabitable. Also, we're going to put a stop to the use of Beast Souls. We're wiping out their entire culture, way of life, and any hope of continuing. They have one recourse : Abandon their culture, their home, and move to the source. Eletrope won't have use in the source without the abundance of Lightning Eather, so that'll be forgotten too.

There is no "happy ending" to this story. Alexandria is dying, and in about 100 years or so, will fade into obscurity and distant memory. If it takes even that long.

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We didn't doom the people of Heritage Found and Solution 9 and we have no plans on wiping them out. Extra souls only save them from sudden death. Getting old is still an inevitability (as we saw was the case with Namikka) and children can still be born. Even if they eventually run out of extra souls, they can still continue on living just like the rest of society, they just cannot be careless anymore with their one life.

I mean there's good reason the endless should have, y'know, ended. It doesn't mean it had to feel good to do it.

Left unhindered, Sphene would have consumed each reflection until there was nothing left to sustain the endless. Many endless didn't seem to really be cool with the idea of mass death being caused to keep them going when they've already died.

Well in short you get the ability to turn off Skynet before it become a reality it is also a punch in the face to the direction of where AI is going as well the entire concept that we live more on out smartphones in a virtual world where you are an actual victim of misinformation and brainwashing, because it is what is happening right now and big companies and groups in the real would with malicious intend, is using this media to polarize people in general in a way they believe what the smartphone say but forget there is an option to look in other places unless trapped with an algoritme.

Like the pit-fighter in the cutscene, who is having mental breakdown as got no more souls to feed on in a figure of speech.

In general alot of people have problems to grasp that and or lack the ability to analyze the content and deeper meaning with the story, as it is also a mockery of what is happen right now in the real world, and not just in your local country or only within your borders.

Currently big parts of the world is moving into not asking questions and just being a slave of social media.

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Originally Posted by LuciferMournstar

If their guns and ships worked like you say, why did they use Hunters with Beast Souls and regulators to begin with? Why waste the precious souls needed to keep Living Memory going on Hunters, if they didn't need to? Electrope may work for a while outside in Tuliloyol, but it was specifically said it converts LIGHTNING energy and needs quite a bit. Plus, what would be the point of the continued use of Electrope, when it's no longer needed because the source isn't assailed by massive amounts of lightning energy? What purpose would regulators serve without souls? Absolutely none.

I admire your continued nativity, I'll give you that. You really do try to look on the bright side (no pun intended), but life and the world can be cruel.

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Why use hunters and beast souls when they have a robot army and airships? I don't know. Maybe it's lazy world building. Maybe Zooral Ja was just a bad ruler and didn't care about such issues when he was focused on conquest. Either way he's gone now, but they still have that technology.

Technology that was working just fine outside of the dome. At best you could argue that 'maybe' they have to go back to Heritage Found to recharge or something, but we haven't seen that actually happen. In both attacks against the capital their guns and robots and airships worked just fine despite being away from the lightning dome.

'The Source' is not assailed by lightning but Heritage Found definitely is. Electrope will continue to be useful there for as long as the region is heavily lightning aspected, and there's no hint of that going away. No suggestion in the story that Electrope or Electrope technology is going away. And even if it did, that would be a consequence of them fusing themselves to the Source, not us destroying their culture.

You're looking at this for what you think 'should' from your perspective be a realistic outcome, but that's not the reality the game is presenting us. You're not being realistic here you're trying to impose doom and gloom onto a story that's telling us these people are fine for now.

The memories are not real people.
They're AI chatbots using your grandma's voice recordings.
And they require the power of souls from actual living people to power these AI chatbots.

Which, are not even used by the actual living people. Because somehow there is no hypocrisy in deleting someone's memories from your brain once they die. Even in this culture of "you don't truly die unless you're no longer remembered"?

"questionable ethics", yeah right.
Will you be the first to sacrifice yourself so someone else can listen to an AI interpretation of their dead grandma?

If they had this culture, this system, but it was stable and self-sustaining without the need to endlessly consume souls of the living to power this system, it would just be another culture. It's weird, but they can do whatever, it doesn't affect people outside of that culture.
... but the moment that they required the souls of the living and had to kill the living people from outside of their culture, and we had to make a hard call between the memories or the actual alive people across all shards + Source... is when they lost all sympathy and had to go.

I've seen this argument a lot in the last week or so, and I don't really understand how it is a moral dilemma. Could there have been an alternative solution? Perhaps, but we weren't afforded the time to deliberate and come up with one.

Not only this, but Sphene isn't innocent either, as she was complicit in the attack on Tuliyollal, which harvested souls, and not only that, she took over a large part of the land of Tural and essentially took its citizenry.

Many times, the party tried to reason with her and find an alternative, but she refused and maintained her objective of harvesting souls from other shards until nothing remained.

We had to make a choice, and we did.

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Originally Posted by celfhelp

she did try to peacefully resolve the issue, albeit briefly, and double albeit not in the most effective way

she asked wuk lamat (and by extension, us) to become alexandrian citizens, which would have resolved the issue without mass destruction, because a continent worth of natural death supplies far more 'empty souls' than just the kingdom of alexandria. obviously this isn't a rational or good solution, but it was a passive one

i also disagree that we just "chose to defend ourselves" by erasing an entire kingdom of people.

imo we overcorrected, because nothing was stopping us from going straight to sphene at the meso terminal and confronting her. we didn't have to turn everything off before hand, and the reason we DID do that ended up being completely irrelevant and useless. we 'killed' her people in an effort to demoralize her and it didn't. she wasn't even aware of it (frankly this is probably more 'oopsie' from the writers than it is something to dig into). hell, had we gone straight for the terminal she probably would've been far weaker an adversary

we could've just as easily "killed" sphene, taken the key, and left alexandria to naturally fade away, but instead we played God and sped up the process

do i personally think there's much of a difference? yes and no, but i'm just posturing on this side for the sake of discussion

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We didn't erase an entire kingdom. We shut down the memory archive of Endless. The Alexandrians are moving forward and living their lives in Solution 9 and Heritage Found.

While I don't consider the memory constructs of Living Memory to be the true people, whose souls were robbed from them and used as fuel, that they are based on. I would argue shutting them down is a far better outcome then letting the place slowly run out of energy and turn off on its own, not that this was the WOL's purpose in doing so.

We didn't play God. Again, we took action to stop an entity that was unrelentingly going to destroy everything, including our world. The actions we took were described to us as being beneficial in hopefully not having to come to blows with Sphene at the critical moment. That just didn't end up being the case and we had to defeat Sphene regardless due to her programming. I might not agree with a kid like Gajool Ja ruling the Alexandrians, but now they have a chance to rebuild their lives in a way that won't destroy every other world in existence.

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Originally Posted by LuciferMournstar

If their guns and ships worked like you say, why did they use Hunters with Beast Souls and regulators to begin with? Why waste the precious souls needed to keep Living Memory going on Hunters, if they didn't need to? Electrope may work for a while outside in Tuliloyol, but it was specifically said it converts LIGHTNING energy and needs quite a bit. Plus, what would be the point of the continued use of Electrope, when it's no longer needed because the source isn't assailed by massive amounts of lightning energy? What purpose would regulators serve without souls? Absolutely none.

I admire your continued nativity, I'll give you that. You really do try to look on the bright side (no pun intended), but life and the world can be cruel.

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From what I remember, the MCH fanny pack works by taking in the ambient aether and converting it to lightning, which is how they fabricate machines and turn guns into railguns. If the Alexandrians are willing to work with Skysteel or the Ironworks, they could probably preserve a small amount of their technology and culture after immigrating to the Source. The problem with this is that it's a complete retread of what happened to the Garleans, only the alternative to being assimilated is oblivion because Nero's group is already setting up shop on the moon.

Mao curious. Mao impression is that everything was simulation created by big gold blocky machine. Why nots just blow ups machine itself? Mao big fan of "kill its with fires".

We turned off a holodeck.

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Originally Posted by Kiarin

Note 1: if Endless are your precious citizens, dear Sphene, why the heck didn't you try to protect them? Put at least some guards around monoliths, you know? Especially considering that you saw and knew that we, hostile forces, have arrived into Living Memory.

Why we do even have to erase them instead of just shutting the system down? We know that only 1/10 of Endless are online, so that means they can be kept archived offline for no or much less energy. We could just put them all offline temporarily, without erasing the data itself, and take any amount of time to search for the solution of their problem. If we could fetch huge amounts of aether from 1st to 13th, we have all chances to reconfigure Sphene's system somehow. Maybe feed it the souls of voisent, lol, since they all want to die anyway. Perfect combo.

Note 2: when the fight with Robo-Sphene starts and she talks again about protecting her precious Endless, why couldn't anyone tell her - sorry, lady, we just erased all of them, so you don't have the reason to fight anymore?

Now, one could counterargument that we are effectively at war with Sphene's nation and we make harsh decisions in extreme circumstances. But erasing Endless doesn't serve to diminish Sphene's battle power. We are just targeting civilians, which is a warcrime - at least from Sphene's point of view.

Summary. I have a feeling that thay wanted no matter to implement the art decision of shutting down the beatiful realm, because they knew it would have emotional impact. But in doing so, they hammered the whole plot logic into a very questionable, to say the least, writing.

What do you think?

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1: They explicitly explained that while Sphene was preparing for Interdimensional Fusion they couldn't easily stop, let alone suspend the process. They also explain that shutting down the terminals is the same as erasing the Endless, and even if we didn't, shutting down the Meso terminal would have the same effect in the end. You weren't paying attention.

2: There were still those in the Meso Terminal and the living citizens in Solution Nine. She doesn't care about JUST the Endless, but ALL her citizens.

The amount of people claiming the Endless are at all equivalent to LLMs, that the Scions tried to meaningfully persuade Sphene away from her cause, or that we shut down the terminals for any purpose other than to destroy the Endless while ignoring Sphene really speaks to the amount of cutscene skipping this expansion encourages.

At the end of the day, we did do something horrible. We played out Emet's example of moral relativism to a T. In the scenario we were given by the story, there really was no other option: we're gaslit into going along with Cahciua's plan (and Wuk's general stupidity) instead of doing anything even slightly more intelligent, so turning off the terminals to save the souls of the star is our only choice. So be it. That doesn't mean the Scions shouldn't feel horrible about doing so. Yet somehow Erenville is the only one who offers any meaningful introspection about the gravity of this plan. The rest of the group leaves Living Memory as a dead husk while smiling and laughing on their way back to Tuliyollal while a Disney sing-along plays. That's absurd. It's a complete travesty of how they've characterized this group, even within the trainwreck of Dawntrail itself.

Hiroi thought he was a good enough writer to handle these themes. He absolutely was not, and should be sent to an even deeper pit in CBU3 than Oda was.

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Originally Posted by AlysCamoa

The amount of people claiming the Endless are at all equivalent to LLMs, that the Scions tried to meaningfully persuade Sphene away from her cause, or that we shut down the terminals for any purpose other than to destroy the Endless while ignoring Sphene really speaks to the amount of cutscene skipping this expansion encourages.

At the end of the day, we did do something horrible. We played out Emet's example of moral relativism to a T. In the scenario we were given by the story, there really was no other option: we're gaslit into going along with Cahciua's plan (and Wuk's general stupidity) instead of doing anything even slightly more intelligent, so turning off the terminals to save the souls of the star is our only choice. So be it. That doesn't mean the Scions shouldn't feel horrible about doing so. Yet somehow Erenville is the only one who offers any meaningful introspection about the gravity of this plan. The rest of the group leaves Living Memory as a dead husk while smiling and laughing on their way back to Tuliyollal while a Disney sing-along plays. That's absurd. It's a complete travesty of how they've characterized this group, even within the trainwreck of Dawntrail itself.

Hiroi thought he was a good enough writer to handle these themes. He absolutely was not, and should be sent to an even deeper pit in CBU3 than Oda was.

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Drivel.

Sphene was the aggressor, explicitly saying she would become a devourer of worlds and kill all life on all the remaining shards just to extend the life of her people. The only way to stop her was to shut down the Meso Terminal, which would also terminate all the other Endless.

You're calling self-defense to genocide a crime.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

Why use hunters and beast souls when they have a robot army and airships? I don't know. Maybe it's lazy world building. Maybe Zooral Ja was just a bad ruler and didn't care about such issues when he was focused on conquest.

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We're told that hunters are used for problems that aren't major enough to call in the military. Also that Zoraal Ja was a total warmonger and wouldn't divert resources for it anyway. As for using the beast souls, they didn't think any more of them than they would of picking up a gun. It's literally an entertainment industry in the Arcadion. Consuming souls is just how their society worked.

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Originally Posted by Kiarin

Note 1: if Endless are your precious citizens, dear Sphene, why the heck didn't you try to protect them? Put at least some guards around monoliths, you know? Especially considering that you saw and knew that we, hostile forces, have arrived into Living Memory.

Why we do even have to erase them instead of just shutting the system down? We know that only 1/10 of Endless are online, so that means they can be kept archived offline for no or much less energy. We could just put them all offline temporarily, without erasing the data itself, and take any amount of time to search for the solution of their problem. If we could fetch huge amounts of aether from 1st to 13th, we have all chances to reconfigure Sphene's system somehow. Maybe feed it the souls of voisent, lol, since they all want to die anyway. Perfect combo.

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The problem with this is the entire reason we have to erase them completely is because we have to eliminate Sphene's whole reason for continuing on her current course. If there's no more Endless, she no longer has a reason to commit mass genocide.

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Originally Posted by Kiarin

Note 2: when the fight with Robo-Sphene starts and she talks again about protecting her precious Endless, why couldn't anyone tell her - sorry, lady, we just erased all of them, so you don't have the reason to fight anymore?

Now, one could counterargument that we are effectively at war with Sphene's nation and we make harsh decisions in extreme circumstances. But erasing Endless doesn't serve to diminish Sphene's battle power. We are just targeting civilians, which is a warcrime - at least from Sphene's point of view.

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At that point we'd been too late, and Sphene had already begun the reconfiguration process. Telling her then that all of the Endless are gone wouldn't have achieved anything.

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Originally Posted by Mnemy

This also bring to mind one of the things that really fucked me up cus it conflicts so much with lot of shit that we fought Emet for.

Cahcuia's "Dont feel bad about shutting them down they are not alive" vs Emet's "I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you." Really took the cake for my disbelief in this expac.

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Not the same. In Emet's case it was more a matter of opinion. We are diminished, fractured versions of what once was, but we are still living beings with souls. His reasoning was more that we are so inferior to what we once were that he doesn't consider us people, more akin to mere animals because of how much we pale in comparison to our "perfect" ancient selves. In the Endless's case, they are literally not living. They don't have souls. They're more like a captured moment in time, like a picture or a story. The only difference being that they require killing real, living people to maintain that captured memory.

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Originally Posted by CerusSerenade

Drivel.

Sphene was the aggressor, explicitly saying she would become a devourer of worlds and kill all life on all the remaining shards just to extend the life of her people. The only way to stop her was to shut down the Meso Terminal, which would also terminate all the other Endless.

You're calling self-defense to genocide a crime.

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Which is why we also went in and exterminated all the Garleans to the last man, woman, and child, right? Which is why when confronting the Telophoroi, we did our best to kill as many of them as possible rather than minimizing fatalities, right?

We're told the only way to stop Sphene is to shut down the Meso Terminal by Cahciua, who has been withholding information to railroad us into her own objectives from the second she finds us. Even assuming Cahciua is being honest despite that pattern of behavior, there was no way to extract Azem's paperweight from the terminal without shutting it down wholesale? There was no way to terminate Sphene's program, rather than the system as a whole? None of those options are explored by the Scions, who at every opportunity have endeavored to find another way that prioritizes their ethics over expedience.

Even assuming the story properly explored these questions, why would the Scions feel good about what they had to do? It was kill or be killed, to be sure, but the Endless themselves harbored no enmity. They didn't have agency in the actions of their regent. So why would you pin her actions on them?

But I'm sure you'll say this is all drivel. I expect nothing more.

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Originally Posted by Mnemy

This also bring to mind one of the things that really fucked me up cus it conflicts so much with lot of shit that we fought Emet for.

Cahcuia's "Dont feel bad about shutting them down they are not alive" vs Emet's "I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you." Really took the cake for my disbelief in this expac.

If the scions in DT is written by Ishikawa THIS would be a big issue and a BIG ASS RED FLAG. The Scions would be aghast with this, Cahciua is saying they are not alive but we see it to be contradictory, There is a truth to Sphene's words that just because they're machines/programs doesnt mean they arent sentient. Even Cahciua proves this by having the sentience enough to HATE the fact that shes alive because of souls of other people. HECK EVEN THE FINAL BATTLE PROVES THIS BECAUSE WHEN WL ENTERED THE STAGE SPHENE HAS SENTIENCE AND EMOTIONS ENOUGH TO REACT AND PARTIALLY RESTORE HERSELF IN REACTION TO WL. And has everyone forgotten the Omicrons and Omega? Hello?? I would love for the game to explore the moral dilemma of this problem because it could've been so gut wrenching and excrutiatingly painful for us to shut them down if we explored this more instead of the token shoved down our throats gimmick to harvest tears from players.

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IMO the issue is not even there. These people aren't people, they are basicly Memory AI. So it not like we would be killing them. HOWEVER, with Omicron lore and just, Ultimat Thule, FFXIV already esthablised that Ai and memory fragment are considered alive and concious being in canon.

So we're in a spot where AI are sentient, but only when it convinient.


Also yea compared to the Ancient, they hardly make it seem like killing the Eternal is a ethic problem, we just do it and don't even try to find peacefull solution, wich you know, even Emet tried with us even to he don't even consider us alive.

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Originally Posted by AlysCamoa

Which is why we also went in and exterminated all the Garleans to the last man, woman, and child, right? Which is why when confronting the Telophoroi, we did our best to kill as many of them as possible rather than minimizing fatalities, right?

We're told the only way to stop Sphene is to shut down the Meso Terminal by Cahciua, who has been withholding information to railroad us into her own objectives from the second she finds us. Even assuming Cahciua is being honest despite that pattern of behavior, there was no way to extract Azem's paperweight from the terminal without shutting it down wholesale? There was no way to terminate Sphene's program, rather than the system as a whole? None of those options are explored by the Scions, who at every opportunity have endeavored to find another way that prioritizes their ethics over expedience.

Even assuming the story properly explored these questions, why would the Scions feel good about what they had to do? It was kill or be killed, to be sure, but the Endless themselves harbored no enmity. They didn't have agency in the actions of their regent. So why would you pin her actions on them?

But I'm sure you'll say this is all drivel. I expect nothing more.

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We didn't have to exterminate the Garleans to stop Zenos, we never wanted to.

We never wanted to put an end to the Endless, but we had to. There was no alternative. It was either that, or Sphene exterminates all life on the source and the remaining shards.

Just as with Emet-Selch and the Endless, we will not sacrifice the living for the dead.

Apples to damn Zebra Cakes.

Yes, your argument is drivel, it makes no sense and ignores obvious information in favor of your personal head-canon and delusion that Erenville's mom is some scheming antagonist who is misleading us the whole time despite being... Erenville's mom.

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Originally Posted by Magikazam

IMO the issue is not even there. These people aren't people, they are basicly Memory AI. So it not like we would be killing them. HOWEVER, with Omicron lore and just, Ultimat Thule, FFXIV already esthablised that Ai and memory fragment are considered alive and concious being in canon.

So we're in a spot where AI are sentient, but only when it convinient.

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I think the citizens of Ultima Thule are a bit different as they are creations of dynamis and don't require living aether to exist. They're also not threatening to make all life in the universe extinct.

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Originally Posted by Magikazam

Also yea compared to the Ancient, they hardly make it seem like killing the Eternal is a ethic problem, we just do it and don't even try to find peacefull solution, wich you know, even Emet tried with us even to he don't even consider us alive.

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Except we did. We tried several times, and Sphene was having none of it because her primary objective is to keep the Endless going no matter the cost.

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Originally Posted by AlysCamoa

Which is why we also went in and exterminated all the Garleans to the last man, woman, and child, right?

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I'd really love for you to direct me to the moment in the MSQ where we murdered innocent Garlean citizens and children.

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Which is why when confronting the Telophoroi, we did our best to kill as many of them as possible rather than minimizing fatalities, right?

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The Telophoroi were the aggressors. They were trying to kill all of us, we stopped them. It's pretty cut and dry there.

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We're told the only way to stop Sphene is to shut down the Meso Terminal by Cahciua, who has been withholding information to railroad us into her own objectives from the second she finds us. Even assuming Cahciua is being honest despite that pattern of behavior, there was no way to extract Azem's paperweight from the terminal without shutting it down wholesale? There was no way to terminate Sphene's program, rather than the system as a whole? None of those options are explored by the Scions, who at every opportunity have endeavored to find another way that prioritizes their ethics over expedience.

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It is literally stated that the Meso Terminal is connected to everything else in Living Memory. Even if there might have been another way, we have no time to figure that out because Sphene is about to become an emotionless digital construct hell-bent on exterminating every world she can get her hands on to sustain the Endless. I'm not even going to get into questioning Cahciua's honesty or possible ulterior motives because that seems like an entirely pointless and speculative conversation.

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Even assuming the story properly explored these questions, why would the Scions feel good about what they had to do? It was kill or be killed, to be sure, but the Endless themselves harbored no enmity. They didn't have agency in the actions of their regent. So why would you pin her actions on them?

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No one is pinning Sphene's actions on the endless. It's more that the Endless were required to justify her actions, and with them gone she no longer has any justification.

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Originally Posted by CerusSerenade

We didn't have to exterminate the Garleans to stop Zenos, we never wanted to.

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I've never disputed that, in the context of the (poorly written) story, the Endless had to die. We (the player character and company) are under no obligation to become the cows on the dinnerplates of Endless. Even so, us having a big ol' laugh party and sing-along as we leave the city we've just scoured of life is absurdly out of character.

Cahciua being Erenville's mom doesn't suddenly make her immune to analysis of her character. From the moment we meet her, she holds back crucial information that informs us about the grand designs at play. In the end, that serves her agenda perfectly, while denying the Scions to try and find true compromise between the people of Alexandria and the rest of the world.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

You're literally lying. We did not turn off the Meso Terminals because we had some kind of agenda to destroy the Endless ("while ignoring Sphene" is a particularly aggressive load of bs).

That's not to mention, Cahciua cites sacrificing living people as her motive. It would be unethical if she was targeting them because they are Endless.

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We did turn off the Meso terminals because we have an agenda to destroy the Endless. It's an agenda given to us by Cahciua, who withheld information from us the entire time we were with her. In fact, Cahciua's plan is explicitly stated to target the Endless in order to deprive Sphene of a reason to fight. We're destroying her people so that she no longer has a cause; to what end? Do we think she'll just forgive us for that? Then Hiroi, to his credit, goes on to say that doing this will make Sphene speed up dimensional fusion, which weakens the defenses of the Terminal. Alright, sure—processing faster requires more processing power. But in what other situations would the Scions choose the option that causes the villain's plan to actualize faster, rather than trying to find another solution? It doesn't even happen in this expansion. We wait for Bakool to try and attack us again after he takes Wuk's keystones. We wait for Zoraal to attack Tuliyollal again (still full of countless civilians) after the first time, electing instead to take a stroll around Sphene's farm. The only time we decide to be proactive is when it means the rapid and complete extermination of a new form of life we've just encountered (ignoring that they're not actually new, given the events of Ultima Thule).

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Originally Posted by Bibine_Bine

I'd really love for you to direct me to the moment in the MSQ where we murdered innocent Garlean citizens and children.

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I see somebody has a strong grasp of rhetorical questions. We (the Scions) didn't do any of those things, precisely because we're capable of differentiating the actions of a state from the actions of its constituent citizens. So killing the Endless merely because Sphene did something makes no sense, given those previous cases.

But, we're forced to do so anyway because the (poorly written) story says we have no time to do anything else (despite Cahciua's plan specifically intending to speed up the thing we're trying to stop). Okay, so be it. Why do we feel good that we had to choose expedience over ethics? Why are we having a sing-along ending?

I think we can all agree that Living Memory and this last part of the MSQ sucked, it's all just disagreement on in the Endless were actually "alive" or not. I would posit that they are not, but that the writing is all over the place wants two contradictory things to be true at once: That the Endless do have real thoughts and feelings and sentience, thus making them more or less alive even without a soul, or that the Endless are nothing more than the digitized memories of dead people stuck to run around in endless loops at the "happiest time of their life" forever in this digital purgatory that needs so much energy to run its threatening the life of everyone across the Source and all the remaining Shards.

The writers will treat them one way one moment and another the next, entirely based on what that scene wants us as the audience to feel about them. They could have leaned into one side or the other and maybe this would have worked. But they tried to have it both ways and instead get this confusing, jumbled mess of a zone and theme. Oh, we can't just shut down the terminals, that's not SAD enough, we must ERASE all the data on them (even though by the looks of it we just turned it off and nothing else.) The Endless have no sense of self preservation, which is part of what leads me to believe they are not "alive" in any sense, because we just flat out tell some of them "yeah we're shutting this place down," and they don't act to preserve their "life" at all, they're just like "okay :) Here's a sidequest to fulfill my dream of being a great retail worker even in the afterlife so I'll disappear."

Honestly I felt worse about metaphorically burning the Library of Alexandria by deleting it and their museums than I did about any of the "people" there. It's all a mess though, that's for sure.