[SPOILERS] Dawntrail should get an ARR-style retcon in the post-MSQ

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Originally Posted by Rin_Sato

Dawntrail is a parody and not meant to be taken seriously, we're still asleep on the boat on the way to Tural.

Did you really think the writers would mess up such a simple sci-fi concept after Shadowbringers and Endwalker? Surely you jest.

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The old writing team trained their replacements wrong, as a joke. They think bad stories are good.

I do not think Dawntrail needs a rewrite, I think they need to just move past the entire storyline, completely. Interdimensional key and all. For me the "story" died long ago and I am content to click sparkly nodes til all the zones are unlocked and I can do maps or gather in the new zones til I burn out.

The quote - story- unquote , for the last zone maybe last two zones had a cool premise but it is like they worked overtime to ensure it was delivered in the most foolish and cludgelord way they could concieve to do so. The last story trial did not deliver in any way near the same way Shadowbringers OR Endwalker did, and I felt like the last main xpac story trial of Endwalker was kind of bleh also, but at least the mechanics were cooler.

They need to just focus on ways to improve the game, instead experience. My suggestion is decouple MSQ progress from zone access. Maybe dont unlock the dungeons as all are pretty much story related, but at least let people see the world with their friends when they get the game. I do a lot of treasure hunting, and when I get a sprout in my FC and ask in FC if anyone wants to do maps, and the sprout is like ME , and I have to explain they need to progress the MSQ to get access to the zones, well that has always been a bummer to them. I post reports , very detailed reports in discord of who got what treasure gil, and crazy things that happened, these reports are popular with the crowd i run with, people have joined my fc from the reports and I love that.

Sorry to derail with that suggestion, but in light of the mess of Dawntrail story, I feel like this is a good reason to decouple zone access from msq progress.

How many times does this have to be repeated?

It does not matter one bit whether or not the Endless were sentient or not, real or not, etc. Discussions like that are a distraction.
What does matter is that their existence was unsustainable, and as a result it would either eat itself alive, or someone like Sphene would harvest souls from outside of their sphere of influence as fuel for the Endless to continue existing. The debate on sentience is a red herring. The cruelty they would inflict is what causes them to become an enemy and it simply becomes two entities fighting for survival. And at this point, we are simply morally 'more alive'. They already had a life, they died, and they should not get a second chance at life if it means that another person's soul has to be forcefully harvested for it. If you can just make this technology exist without having to slurp up all the aether, go right ahead. Until then, the technology is unsustainable and immoral.

This is such a simple concept. But you get stuck on whether or not they're real or not.
Let's say we give you what you want, and yes, they ARE real, and ARE sentient, and they ARE intentionally harvesting souls for their own selfish needs. Does that make it better? Would you sacrifice yourself so they can continue existing? Would you force others to just let themselves get harvested for them?

Get over it and use some critical thinking skills. Sphene and Alexandria were not "grey" in morality. They were deep dark black, with a mask of cooperation and well-wishing that you were believing and you were betrayed but you don't quite believe it, so you feel guilty at what happened at the end of Dawntrail.

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Originally Posted by Chiru_Kai

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You're right that sentience is a red herring, but not in the way you mean it. Sentience is only part of the problem that people mostly get hung up on. The issue is that everyone just nods their collective heads and agrees without any real hesitation. We spent half an expac coming up for an answer to Emet Selch's question, we could've spent more than 30 seconds before just agreeing. If in the end, we had to end them, that's fine, but we should've at least tried to figure something out -- even if it failed in the end. Why not at least talk to the Omicrons or Cid? The WoL has near infinite anima, we can teleport at anytime. All that time we spent running around talking to people we were inevitably going to turn off could've actually been used on something productive. Oh wait, we needed something to do in that last zone, so once again story took a backseat to the formula.

The issue is not sentience. The issue is bad writing and the story taking a backseat to the formula with the endless just being another example of how the game suffered because of it.

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Originally Posted by Chiru_Kai

Get over it and use some critical thinking skills

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Take your own advice, and actually read what's being written. Everyone who criticizes the last zone already fully understands this fact about the endless. The issue is not about whether or not erasing them was the solution, the issue is that the writer thought they could get away with glazing over the gravity of what's being done with a "lighthearted" tone. The endless are real or not real at the whims of whatever tone the writer wanted for a given scene.

Why didn't we spend longer on the question of whether they are truly living? Why did none of them want to stop us, especially the ones who only found happiness after death? Why was there no conflict whatsoever besides remarks of "this is kind of sad huh, oh well!" from our companions, relegated to optional dialogue as passive quest npcs. Why were we deliberately shown that the endless are thinking, emotional beings, capable of learning new information and growing, showing again and again that they are functional indistinguishable from living people?

Why were the Endless, who all came from a society that was practically built around the fear of death, suddenly just fine with being relegated to complete oblivion when we come to kill them in the afterlife they were promised? The answer is because the author wanted to have his cake and eat it too. "Oh [player], aren't you so sad because you have to erase these people and make Erenville and Krile have tearful goodbyes with their parents ? Don't worry, they aren't really that broken up about it, because I didn't want you to feel TOO bad :)"

Yes, it was necessary to erase the endless, because the author chose to write them that way. And yes, what we did was horrendous despite its apparent necessity. The tone and proceedings of Living Memory should have been informed by this, and instead it was a happy-go-lucky romp through disneyland, putting on plays and taking history quizzes, having a great time committing genocide. Oh and Erenville seems depressed, better completely ignore him and his suffering until the end of the zone so he can have his big moment with his mom.

The writing of the Endless is atrocious no matter what way you look at it. That is what people take issue with. You think we're struggling to grasp a "simple concept", but that's because the "simple" surface reading is the only thing you're grasping at all.

The Endless are not sentient. Some of them may be able to take independent action but at their core, they are memory data existing in a loop running on a computer that is powered by, and I cannot stress this enough, COSUMING THE SOULS OF LIVING BEINGS.

As more people die, more Endless are created, requiring more power, requiring more souls, so on and so forth. It is unsustainable exponential growth. Sphene would have burned the world and every reflection, and it would not have been enough.

The Endless represent the inability to let go, to accept death as part of life. Then you have the regulators, which remove the memories of someone that has died. Their whole system is designed to remove the pain of loss, but it also deprives them of the ability to grieve and to find happiness in those memories.

There is no moral discussion when it comes to deleting the Endless because there is only one realistic option, as painful as it may be for some. I will say that the only positive aspect of the Endless is that Erenville and Krile got some form of closure (poorly written though it was). But the average Alexandiran doesn't have that option.

It certainly wasnt handled elegantly.
Especialy considering the plan didnt even work at the end.
"Remove the Endless so Sphenes program to sustain it stops" didnt happen we still had the fight.
They could have chosen a different reason during the writing aswell, not that it even would have been a easy situation but they did write themself into this Situation.

At this point I just think anyone that genuine think Living Memory was a genocide and against the WoL lore is just posting bait. It's a bad take from day 01 and will remain being a bad take, together with vast non comprehension skills, and several mental gymnastics to "prove" their point.

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Originally Posted by OMGJesuis66

At this point I just think anyone that genuine think Living Memory was a genocide and against the WoL lore is just posting bait. It's a bad take from day 01 and will remain being a bad take, together with vast non comprehension skills, and several mental gymnastics to "prove" their point.

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Exactly.

Since we don't consider them to be truly alive, we should not feel any form guilt from ending their existence.

And of course I get as response the cringe Emet-Selch quote... Stg, the brainwash this community had for Emet and the Ancients fucked up all the future conversations about narrative. Really make me dislike all those arcs and characters even more.