Questionable ethics - Living Memory

THE MENTAL GYMNASTICS, OMFG.

The Sundered is now the same as the Endless. Wow. That's baffling.
Absolutely baffling. People then want to blame the writers because of their rationalizations, which make absolutely no sense. Mmk.

Swear to god, SE mistake with the FFXIV storyline was making the WoL be Azem and this whole debacle about the Ancients, it backfired so hard to the point of people genuine believe the Ancients are right and they just fully embrace all the twisted logic from them in order to uphold arguments to future story points. Yeesh.

Congratulations, you realized the plot of the zone.

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Originally Posted by Kiarin

We don't hold any authority in Sphene's kingdom and don't have the right to wander around switching off parts of her realm as we please. The only reason why we do it is because one of the Endless asked for it, but she doesn't have the right to make the decision for all of them either.

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Also the fact that Sphene was going to consume our world's aether to sustain the Endless. That's...kind of an important detail. Remember that shutting down the Meso Terminal would have switched them off in the end, anyway.

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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.

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Because crossing the rift is considered impossible. Sphene DID take the key with her, and the Living Memory is not entirely bereft of security. It IS very much a security by obscurity situation--which is a fallacy in and of itself--but to say the terminals were out in the open for anyone to shut down is erroneous.

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Originally Posted by Kiarin

Why we do even have to erase them instead of just shutting the system down?

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It's explicitly stated that shutting down the terminal erases them. It probably works similar to RAM on a PC. Once you stop providing power, the data is lost.


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?

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Originally Posted by Kiarin

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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Because she said her people. There are still plenty of living, breathing subjects of Alexandria in Everkeep, and Heritage Found, come to think of it.,

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Originally Posted by Kiarin

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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There's some flaws in Living Memory's writing, but I think it comes more from the poor handling of urgency at the very beginning, that sets up the whole premise of the zone, rather than the zone story itself.

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Originally Posted by OMGJesuis66

Swear to god, SE mistake with the FFXIV storyline was making the WoL be Azem and this whole debacle about the Ancients, it backfired so hard to the point of people genuine believe the Ancients are right and they just fully embrace all the twisted logic from them in order to uphold arguments to future story points. Yeesh.

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It's not even that. It's that the morals of DT contradict the morals of ShB. If the Sundered had the right to live even though they aren't life as recognized by Emet-Selch, then why don't the Endless even if they aren't life as recognized by Cahcuia? We're acting like Ascians, down to playing with our food before the kill. There is no functional change in what happens in DT if we just sit in lawn chairs and wait for Sphene to finish reformatting so we can kill her. Everything shuts down anyway. But instead we're playing with these people right before wiping them from existence. It's sick.

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Originally Posted by Basteala

*snip*

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Given they will be destroyed anyway, there is absolutely no reason to do what we did. There is no benefit to it besides it was fun for the characters. They throw in some bull about "you live as long as you're remembered" but that doesn't extend to the guy I bought popcorn from one time. I'm sure that applies to the people you actually know and think about.

That only works if Sphene didn't see us there before starting the reformatting. Not only does she know we're there, living people used to be in Living Memory and the ziplines actually still have security.

The problem in the writing is it prioritizes the emotions it wants you to feel over what makes logical sense or how real people would behave in that situation. If my mom's memories are in a virtual world and what I'm about to do next shuts down that world, we're spending the whole time Sphene is reformatting looking for a USB stick. No joke. I'm not consigning my mom's memories to oblivion due to some vague "everything that lives must die." For one, she did die, that's why she's here. And her soul is being reincarnated, what's in Living Memory is what the universe throws away and while her memories might not be of value to nature or the star, they'd be of value to me.

Imagine if Erenville could take his mom with him on his adventures. He's only 25. He has centuries more life left where he'll never speak to his mom again. And what about Krile? There was still so much her e-parents could have told her. Even if they were "just" information, they were valuable information. Information worth at least attempting to save.

Usually when people die in the FF14 universe, their force ghosts are sitting in the afterlife, they can watch people on the star doing stuff, make commentary, maybe pop in and do us a favor. They can still interact with and impact the world. Emet-Selch and Hyth helped save the universe after they died. That's not possible with the Endless because we shut them down without a second thought. We dissipated the part of them that hangs out in the afterlife and narrates.

And the argument that we had to because they need something from us that would harm us doesn't work because that's true for any conflict. If we wipe out the Mamool Ja then they can't attack the Xbr'aal for their land anymore. If we wiped out the Garleans then they can't drop moons on people. Wiping out an entire population pretty much solves any conflict with any group. So why do we bother looking for other ways in those situations? We could just wipe them out and declare "we had no choice."

Also, for the people who believe Venat "had no choice" but to sunder the world because otherwise the Ancients would have died out, but also believe death is a natural part of life, how do you reconcile it being acceptable to mutilate an entire race to avoid it's possible end, with it's wrong to not accept the end?

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

There was no chance to question or try. Sphene was going to commit genocide from the moment we met her. When finally did find out the plan, she just goes full throttle with it giving us no chance to reason with her. Sphene is %100 to blame for the memories of her people getting wiped out. She put us in that position and left no way out.

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Let’s be honest here we as the main character get told from sphene “yeah I want these souls so I let the king start the war” into we help you save your people and then we let sphene casually stroll in and take the shardfusion mcguffin straight from the middle of all scions. Like good lord are we so absolutely useless.

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Originally Posted by OMGJesuis66

THE MENTAL GYMNASTICS, OMFG.

The Sundered is now the same as the Endless. Wow. That's baffling.
Absolutely baffling. People then want to blame the writers because of their rationalizations, which make absolutely no sense. Mmk.

Swear to god, SE mistake with the FFXIV storyline was making the WoL be Azem and this whole debacle about the Ancients, it backfired so hard to the point of people genuine believe the Ancients are right and they just fully embrace all the twisted logic from them in order to uphold arguments to future story points. Yeesh.

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I mean they aren’t fully 100 % sundered but if you go by how they react and act. They feel, think, hear, love and have the memories when they were alive. Effectively they do live on burrowed stolen human soul energy but they are still capable of emotions and even find long lost family member, friends or even lovers and partners (or your own child after you gave it into the care of a random person from the other side of a portal) lost from before death and maybe even unfair situations like a deadly illness in the childhood ripping apart people that love each other.

The line between uncaring machine gif and actual human emotions is pretty narrow in this case.

And I can understand both sides in this debate because even the writers do try to play both sites.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

It's not even that. It's that the morals of DT contradict the morals of ShB. If the Sundered had the right to live even though they aren't life as recognized by Emet-Selch, then why don't the Endless even if they aren't life as recognized by Cahcuia? We're acting like Ascians, down to playing with our food before the kill. There is no functional change in what happens in DT if we just sit in lawn chairs and wait for Sphene to finish reformatting so we can kill her. Everything shuts down anyway. But instead we're playing with these people right before wiping them from existence. It's sick.

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No. It doesn't. Because that is a false symmetry and twisted logic. We are not acting like Emet-Selch. The Sundered are living beings, of flesh and bone, they are born, they grow up, and die. They are a completely functional new form of life. The Endless, are not. An Endless cannot be born. An Endless cannot die. An Endless cannot eat. An Endless cannot drink. They have no biological or moral functions beyond what the data of the terminals processed to give them a form and a sense of self-awareness and free will. They are, simply put, a ghosts unable to move on to the afterlife, because they have this 'afterlife' built to them at the cost of the living.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

Usually when people die in the FF14 universe, their force ghosts are sitting in the afterlife, they can watch people on the star doing stuff, make commentary, maybe pop in and do us a favor. They can still interact with and impact the world. Emet-Selch and Hyth helped save the universe after they died. That's not possible with the Endless because we shut them down without a second thought. We dissipated the part of them that hangs out in the afterlife and narrates.

Also, for the people who believe Venat "had no choice" but to sunder the world because otherwise the Ancients would have died out, but also believe death is a natural part of life, how do you reconcile it being acceptable to mutilate an entire race to avoid it's possible end, with it's wrong to not accept the end?

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There we go, 'VENAT BAD'. This idolatry towards the Ancients proved my point. Again, the people in Living Memory are akin to an afterlife in the Aetherial Sea. Not only they are disconnected from it, but they are also disconnected from the outside world and NO ONE from the living world can remember them. It is a forgotten mausoleum that devours life to sustain false life, there is no actual logic to sustain the argument that 'we did a bad thing'. We didn't. We helped spirits to find their rest. If you want to genuinely make this argument now, why are not making the same argument of how sick it was that by defeating Emet and Elidibus, we stopped all possibilities of rejoining, thus condemning thousands of souls inside Zodiark to never be reborn and to be erased? Oh yeah, and we also kill Zodiark afterward. Man, what a tragedy right? Clearly a genocide.

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Originally Posted by Mortex

I mean they aren’t fully 100 % sundered but if you go by how they react and act. They feel, think, hear, love and have the memories when they were alive. Effectively they do live on burrowed stolen human soul energy but they are still capable of emotions and even find long lost family member, friends or even lovers and partners (or your own child after you gave it into the care of a random person from the other side of a portal) lost from before death and maybe even unfair situations like a deadly illness in the childhood ripping apart people that love each other.

The line between uncaring machine gif and actual human emotions is pretty narrow in this case.

And I can understand both sides in this debate because even the writers do try to play both sites.

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Yes. Ghosts with 'unfinished business'.
They are not people, they were people. Therefore, they are not Sundered. At best, if they lived in our world, they would be considered an Ashkin.
Like many ghosts we see in the world and kill without hesitation.
That's the whole point, they are not alive, it isn't a moral debate about 'what is alive and what isn't', it is almost set in stone that none of those people are alive.
We are just assisting them to have a peaceful passing, that's all. Not, murdering them, as many try to claim.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

Usually when people die in the FF14 universe, their force ghosts are sitting in the afterlife, they can watch people on the star doing stuff, make commentary, maybe pop in and do us a favor. They can still interact with and impact the world. Emet-Selch and Hyth helped save the universe after they died. That's not possible with the Endless because we shut them down without a second thought. We dissipated the part of them that hangs out in the afterlife and narrates.

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Not true.

Normally when people die in the FFXIV universe, they go to the Lifestream where their memory aether is washed off their soul before their soul is reused and born again. They're not watching anything and certainly not interacting with anyone.

You really can't compare the normal process to what happens with Emet-Selch, who spent 12,000 years as a ghost and before that was an Ancient tasked with overseeing the Underworld (Lifestream) itself. After the events of EW MSQ are dealt with, he finally allows his spirit to go back to the Lifestream to go through the normal process. That's not something most people can do and I have no idea where you got the idea that it was possible for more mundane people.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

And the argument that we had to because they need something from us that would harm us doesn't work because that's true for any conflict. If we wipe out the Mamool Ja then they can't attack the Xbr'aal for their land anymore. If we wiped out the Garleans then they can't drop moons on people. Wiping out an entire population pretty much solves any conflict with any group. So why do we bother looking for other ways in those situations? We could just wipe them out and declare "we had no choice."

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The difference is that the Endless are already dead.

You can't compare civilizations of living, breathing people with a collection of simulacra made from dead peoples' memories. And besides, multiple Endless are OK with their passing, one actively pursues it, another doesn't care either way, and another expresses disgust at the idea of continuing at the cost of living people.

The actual civilization of Alexandria is still there and is thriving. No culture is erased, no living people are wiped out. Just the over-complicated graveyard that no one even knows exists beyond the fact there's a "cloud".

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Not true.

Normally when people die in the FFXIV universe, they go to the Lifestream where their memory aether is washed off their soul before their soul is reused and born again. They're not watching anything and certainly not interacting with anyone.

You really can't compare the normal process to what happens with Emet-Selch, who spent 12,000 years as a ghost and before that was an Ancient tasked with overseeing the Underworld (Lifestream) itself. After the events of EW MSQ are dealt with, he finally allows his spirit to go back to the Lifestream to go through the normal process. That's not something most people can do and I have no idea where you got the idea that it was possible for more mundane people.

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We walked down there. We fought old foes. We interacted with Minfilia, Papalymo, Hauchefant, Yasale. They were more faded than the people with more unresolved issues like Asahi, but they were very much down there chillaxing and able to view the living world because Emet-Selch narrates EW and Asahi was big mad about Amon parading around in his body and betraying Zenos. So while yes, they break down in the aetherial sea, they do so slowly. Slowly enough to reconnect with their loved ones before fading away. Or at least it very much seems so from what I've seen. It looks like the souls in the aetherial sea are still self-aware and active. Active enough to both fight us and protect us.