Dawntrail's Final Zones destroy everything the story has built.

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Originally Posted by AmorfaVex

You cant kill something that isnt alive.

They were the memories of the dead saved in a computer program. They killed other people to fuel their afterlife.

By your logic we should have let the Nazi's continue with their concentration camps to fuel their war machine.

This thread is ridiculous and an obvious troll job.

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We had no problem bringing back a dead man who was our friend and transferring their memory into another body. All I ask is for the story to acknowledge the discrepancy in any way.

That wasn't my point. My point is she is harvesting souls. My other point is she only cares about some of them. She knows that her decisions will make it impossible for some people to gain more souls and her answer is "git gud". Because of this I don't view her as caring about her people much and really just caring about her mission.

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Originally Posted by Aulainn

We had no problem bringing back a dead man who was our friend and transferring their memory into another body. All I ask is for the story to acknowledge the discrepancy in any way.

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I wouldn't say its the same because it was a one-off thing where we transferred the soul of someone from the future back into to his own past self that froze himself in time in the exact same manner we restored the consciousnesses of the rest of the Scions who were in a coma. His existence is also self-sustaining since he's a normal person who requires normal food and without Crystal Tower corruption/interference will later die a natural death.

The Alexandrians in contrast decided to completely deny the normal process of life and death for an entire civilization by preventing souls from reaching the Lifestream and mechanically extracting memory from the soul to shove into a computer until the computer randomly decided they get to walk around Living Memory and then it stitches their memory aether to someone else's soul. It also required plundering the souls of other people against their will to perpetuate it. We could have found another power source but I personally find the entire idea utterly vile and in the meantime the residents would fade and warp the entire area like what happened to the Deadwalk.

Honestly, I'm just putting DT's msq out of mind at this point. Hopefully things improve going forward.

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Originally Posted by Gortys

As other have stated, they are still allowing Solution 9 and HF to continue repurposing the souls of others and, according to Sphene, these are her people too.

What Sphene was doing (and her people) was no different than what Meteion did in EW. She has stated she wants to harvest souls and that is her purpose. And that one guy who lost his job because of her? She tells him "QQ more" and to pull himself up by his boot straps LOL. She just cares so much about her people, right? But again, the reality is the only reason they are letting S9 and HF continue is to introduce Beastmaster. I'm sure of it since they felt the need to demonstrate the use of beast souls to fight. Our characters say we don't think this is right, but then at the end it's allowed to continue? It's so disappointing that they did this story and allowed these people to continue just to introduce another meme job. Since I know it's not deeper than that to the writers, I can't take it seriously at all.

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Um....yes. Yes it is.

Hmm absolutely not. That said the writing was mediocre in some parts and I definitely got stuff putting me off, like to me Namikka shouldn't have aged because when the region she was in got fused under the dome, there was already the door built by Zoraal Ja synchronizing the flow of time between the two worlds.

And much like every expacs you get posts on these forums, people saying how for them the new MSQ doesn't exist etc...
I just think that a good chunk people gathering here are not happy with ig stuffs (100% fair) but then they feed one another their confirmation bias and end up thinking that their view is shared by most of the community lol.

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Originally Posted by Gortys

My other point is she only cares about some of them.

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She cares about preserving everyone, this is the whole point of her character. However, she doesn't care whether you are residing in Heritage Found Solution Nine or Living memory. It appears she doesn't care because she doesn't view his loss of souls a bad thing, he just moves somewhere else, so why does it matter?

It only appears she doesn't care because her reasoning doesn't match ours.

I really liked the creative choice to leave the zone dead. The point of the story was letting go, which seems to have gone over a lot of people's heads.

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Originally Posted by Willemdarke

This level of genocide is simply disgusting. And why? Because 2 or 3 Endless wanted to die? Setting aside the moral debate of assisted euthanasia, the vast majority of Endless never agreed to this, or even knew it was happening.

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Well they can't be euthanized because they're already dead. The Endless are AI constructs created from memories. They are computer data and nothing more. Wiping those terminals is closer to deleting an Excel spreadsheet than "genocide."

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Originally Posted by Willemdarke

Why didn't we simply let the Endless live and die of "old age", when their aether ran out?????

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Because Sphene's prime directive was to keep her fake AI people sustained with souls at any cost. She was going to consume every reflection of actual living people until they were all wiped out.

Sphene wanted to devour entire worlds to sustain her people for as long as possible.

We wanted to stop Sphene.

The only way to stop Sphene was to shut off the Meso Terminal.

Shutting off the Meso Terminal also kills all the Endless.

That's why we don't let the Endless live and die of old age.

Not that complex for people who were paying attention.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

I really liked the creative choice to leave the zone dead. The point of the story was letting go, which seems to have gone over a lot of people's heads.




Well they can't be euthanized because they're already dead. The Endless are AI constructs created from memories. They are computer data and nothing more. Wiping those terminals is closer to deleting an Excel spreadsheet than "genocide."



Because Sphene's prime directive was to keep her fake AI people sustained with souls at any cost. She was going to consume every reflection of actual living people until they were all wiped out.

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There's a portion of the fanbase absolutely obsessed with the term genocide and using it to trigger people /deface the term.

It's better to ignore them.

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Originally Posted by CerusSerenade

Sphene wanted to devour entire worlds to sustain her people for as long as possible.

We wanted to stop Sphene.

The only way to stop Sphene was to shut off the Meso Terminal.

Shutting off the Meso Terminal also kills all the Endless.

That's why we don't let the Endless live and die of old age.

Not that complex for people who were paying attention.

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You can still understand all of that and think it's a pile of shit you know ? We didn't get this infos from a source that is 100% reliable, hence we should not be taking it at face value. That's as simple as that. I don't care it's coming from the characters that are on our side, they still could be wrong after all. We didn't have any proof of all of that, just their word and I'm sorry it's not enough to comvince me especially when the actual events directly contradict what we've been told.

And btw, you don't need to be a child that can't engage in debate by strawmaning the opposition and acting like they understand nothing.

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Originally Posted by Ozmandis

You can still understand all of that and think it's a pile of shit you know ? We didn't get this infos from a source that is 100% reliable, hence we should not be taking it at face value. That's as simple as that. I don't care it's coming from the characters that are on our side, they still could be wrong after all. We didn't have any proof of all of that, just their word and I'm sorry it's not enough to comvince me especially when the actual events directly contradict what we've been told.

And btw, you don't need to be a child that can't engage in debate by strawmaning the opposition and acting like they understand nothing.

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So the centuries+ year old AI with access to all the finest minds of their age who created the technology they're using isn't reliable?

Yeah no, you're just being contrarian.

Also, learn what "strawmanning" is because that's not what I did in what you quoted. Best not use words and terms you don't know the meaning of.

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Originally Posted by Arzalis

You didn't really answer my question. How can something that's not alive be genocidal? A machine doesn't have any concept of such a thing. I think you really need to pick one argument and stick to it because your arguments aren't compatible.

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Genocide is the deliberate destruction of a nation or people. Why would something have to be alive to do that? Your constant attempts to shift the goalposts aren't actually changing the argument at all.

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Also, calling them all complicit is odd. No matter what country you live in IRL, it has undoubtedly been responsible for some manner of atrocity in it's history. Are you complicit in that because you directly or indirectly benefit from being a citizen of that country?

It's generally accepted that citizens under a nation, state, sovereign, whatever aren't intrinsically complicit with any acts the ruling body or system they live under commit, doubly so in situations where they seemingly don't have much of a choice in the matter. The Endless we see in the final zone weren't going around killing people and taking their souls, so I'd say your argument falls flat here as well.

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Their entire society is built around consuming souls the way we'd go through a set of clothes. They talk about it openly, most of them clearly don't consider it a big deal, aside from the Oblivion rebels and Krile's parents. Either they're programs copying memories and can't actually form another opinion, or they're knowingly complicit and accept it as just the way things are. So, again, my argument is still exactly the same as it always has been.

And I for one don't really benefit from my country's atrocities, nor do I condone or participate in them. So that really doesn't help your case.

In any case, we're clearly going in circles here.

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Originally Posted by CerusSerenade

So the centuries+ year old AI with access to all the finest minds of their age who created the technology they're using isn't reliable?

Yeah no, you're just being contrarian.

Also, learn what "strawmanning" is because that's not what I did in what you quoted. Best not use words and terms you don't know the meaning of.

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The ascians did not a find a solution to the final days despite being even more advanced for all I know.

Plus, this "finest minds" are not able to cure aetherial imbalance or tempering, something we can very much do so.....

So many here who give off the impression that they didnt even play the MSQ, despite spouting words from the MSQ. (its like theyre using Buzzwords. or trying to denigrate others to World Killers cause they cant prove what they dont know.)

Before DT, i wouldnt call Alexandria, Cyberpunk at all, and Honestly. i still fn wouldnt.
BUT it did take some huge concepts of it.
Those Who Played Cyberpunk2077 would have some inclinations and ideas of what is going on in Alexandria.
AND WHY THEY ARE NOT LIVING, Not ever since they died completely the first time.

What The People Of the (Un)"Living World", <the whole name of it, is a mockery of itself. which many do not get.> are. Are just Engrams, Save Files.
and people are thinking that Memories are like Souls? They are not. it has been from the start of the game and recent times that you can get your memory manipulated and covered over by aether. Be it a Machine or a Cataclysmic event in which the Phoenix Prevails.

To Return a Person to who they are, you need their Original Memory, and their Soul in order to be able to succesfully implant them into a body. (and then for that body to have good acceptance of it. Hence why with the Exarch, there was only a risk of rejection if his Younger Self didnt accept him. Which The both seemingly embraced.) Which leads to the scions just waking up with ease as its their own memories and souls rising in their own bodies.

(No risks of the body affecting them negatively as it is in lore with Ascians, or with other entities. and if its vacant like with Solus's Clones, Free to take and tailor to his whims.)
as others have stated, with the omicron and other Evolved/Transformed/Built Lifeforms, they changed and became that. (if anything, the Omicron sounded just like how Cyberpunk would be to the Extreme. Dalek you might say, but not really, as their goals where from a false notion to dominate first. rather than out of malice or straight hate.) But they never went on existing after their death, and return to their own Aetherial Seas.

IS TO SAY: to implant in a body, to Live. or simply change and evolve into different paths. you need your Memories and Soul Intatct.
Once both are gone, damaged, youre either a Empty Mind but living body. (sounds like quite abit of characters we know of. when they passed out, though their corporeal Aether/Ether was clearly left behind. or Galool Ja Ja<Resolve> who Held both his and <Reason>'s Souls.)

So what are the People of Alexandria Really? (if we take what we know of previous expansions and what we are told)

YOU KNOW THEY ARE ONLY MEMORY
THE SOULS TAKEN ARE ONLY THERE TO PROVIDE A FACSIMILE of the Living. (Like the Scions of the First, but actually dead. not free of a Corporeal, where they can easily go back into in with some assistance. they have no body. and the memories are no longer in a shape or INTACT for a body.) (the Talk of Alternate bodies has no place in the conversation, as its bringing different topics when talking about what They are. but that can be talked later, when it comes to what could we done for them? Which is nothing, cause we had no FN agency.)

Like i stated earlier, Those who Played Cyberpunk 2077 will know exactly what this is all like.
This is Practically "SoulKiller" in Final Fantasy. and as those who played the game, and know the alternate fates of our "Valentino Brother". If you happen to see him, its just a program pretending to be him. (Just like it is for all others in that universe who "Secure Your Soul". When a Full Copy Requires Death.)

The Endless of Alexandria are nothing other than Engrams/SaveFiles/MemoryData. That LIVELINESS that you see from some of them. Like Cahciua, or Sphene, and all others.
What do you think those people would react when they are booted up again? They Remember their Previous Iterations, Deaths, and all that they care to know as Endless Cause their Savefiles Get Updated.
(hence the Endless that got Engaged with his Lover, was even able to understand and tell the Main Party of how they are all randomly generated at different times from their memory. and why he didnt want to risk getting his ring and be taken apart by the souls of Mobs. and not be with his lover.)

The Large majority of the idle, not dialog related ones, have made their peace, and looped like NPC's (that they are, but in universe) they've become.
They've been ready to move on for a long time, with nothing to do, but to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Until it all shuts down, falls apart, or til the Resources run out. You can see the Hollow(ness) Eyes <no, not our MC Eyes. jk jk> out of some of the Endless who just end up repeating the same thing. like one milalla who was going on about a specific food in one area and only cared about that.

So weve come to some terms that they arent still living. their memories arent even in conventional means to put back into a body. (as much as some of youre falsely claiming that it can prove they still live.) and that these Datafiles have updated to a point where they dont even move on past a few things they care about, like the NPCs they actually are.

While Special Endless like Cahciua and Sphene have their reasons to be who they are. Eren's Mother for Example, still was only there for at most 30yrs, and at minimum 0. (She still held the drive to explore as she did in life. which likely threw Eren way off. She was a Explorer, and as the story tells us, that drive inevitably drove her to break into the system. and enter back into the physical world, while controlling a drone. But not as a living person. but as a Machine that knows its origin, and knows it cant truly live as before. a Savefile/Engram/MemoryData trapped in a GILDEN CAGE, Unable to escape. But chose to do what must be done, and would of done regardless of the stakes to the rest of the Shards/Source, or Universe. Hence Oblivions Purpose. and change of direction.)

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The real issues are just the way we as the MC are written.
We likely could of found a way to save them, but every single time.
We where interrupted. If they wanted to tell a story where we had to Shut Them Down.
They probably could of cooked it longer, but none of us can really tell why it had to go down like this.

In Cyberpunk2077, the Engrams are stored in Arasaka Tower.(while Arasaka planned to use the memories of the rich and powerful, intelligent and strong. to take over the world.) The way the second half of Dawntrail didnt give us much reason to choose another way.

(the times one could of spoken to sphene and done the trope of outsmarting/reasoning with a machine and coding, her Savefile <that had been endlessly updated throughout 100's of years.> are many, many many many, many. More so, when Zoraal Ja, believing knew a single thing, interrupted the conversation. if she was still alive Centuries of years later. thats basically isolating and gaslighting. Though its a Machine that acts like the queen used to. "Who's Weakness earned her the adoration of her kingdom so much. that they wished to bring her back. Despite the fact it wasnt even fully her." Preserved Memory/Engram with a Coding Monkey on its back.)

Youd have the memories, but at some point, youd have to let them go as well. Even if the Endless were able to be saved or transfered to another storage device.
Theyd still want to find a way out. To end the Cage theyre in. Even if they are kept in a compact way that didnt cost Aether/Ether/Souls. Thatd just be a mirror of Arasaka where Silverhand states just being in a dark limbo for who knows how long. (if you truly even believed they are alive, you wouldnt prolong them either.)

whatever morality over the story, you will still end up deleting the engrams. (cause its what they wanted, cause you think youre sparing the code "Pain", or no one can conceivably afford the price regardless.)

and unlike in Cyberpunk 2077, they don't got a Giant Net or Blackwall to escape to.

I suppose you could apply the term genocide to aritifial intelligence based life etc. But I don't think the term applies here. We're not destroying the people or nation of Alexandria. We're unplugging their unsustainable afterlife that needs to feed off of other worlds to keep running. Solution 9/Heritage Found are still right there safe and sound. And we bear no ill will towards them. And even Living Memory we wouldn't be going after if not for the cost of letting it continue to exist. Just as destroying Mikoshi in Cyberpunk 2077 isn't genocide either.

You can say whatever you want and it can still be ignorant. What happened isn't a genocide, period end of story.

Quoting, engaging with people who pluck two or three words out of a concept and act like historians or experts is folly.

And frankly that's seemingly all that cabal of users do, repeat every expansion "wow genocide" to see who will indulge. The solution is, don't

boy oh boy am I tired of people misusing the term "genocide" and watering it down so much. I do agree with OP in that the final zone sucked, but apparently for very different reasons. The storytelling (as frustrating as it was in many parts), still made it clear that the Endless are not living, real people by the standards set in the world of FFXIV. They have no souls. They are like if an advanced AI was allowed to data scrape your brain and all your social media posts and make a bot out of it. They have no self-preservation instinct. They have no physical bodies, just condensed aether. They cannot reproduce and create new life. They are bots going about an endless loop of preprogrammed enjoyment. I wish the zone had leaned more into the horror aspect of this AT ALL, because it's a compelling thing to explore, but instead they just tried to get me to feel bad for a bunch of simulations. I felt absolutely nothing for them. After the masterful way ShB and EW got me to care about this world and its characters, DT made me not care at all. It's like they tried to combine Emet-Selch and Meteion into Sphene, without any care or awareness of what made those characters at all interesting or compelling.

Mostly I just think it's annoying we have to leave the zone dead and ugly. I'm all for deleting the Endless, but maaaan, they're not even gonna let me go back and gpose in zone 6 without opening up a NG+ file? That just sucks from a gameplay perspective. Why make a zone that is actively so ugly and unpleasant to do content in?

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Originally Posted by Arzalis

This is what the game wants us to believe and we're told, yes. People here are paying attention. The way everything is written and what you actually do in the final zone presents the opposite of what we're being told, though. That's ultimately the issue.

I do understand what the writers intended, but they failed at actually, well... writing it that way. ...

...I agree with what's been said about it just being very very poor writing. It's just crazy to me that they basically gloss over this despite beating you over the head with what they want you to think for most of the expansion before this.

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I get what you are saying, and yes, this was a massive writing failure.

After making it clear they are just simulacrum based on the memories of dead people, making it clear they literally have no souls and most likely their soul has been inserted into someones pez dispenser and long since eaten, and even having the endless themselves tell you Sphene has a hard coded SOP she can't defy and they want to be turned off.... The writers still stupidly try to make me feel an emotional connection with them and think of them as people. The problem is I just went through an entire zone story and a dungeon that made it blatantly clear... they aren't people, they have no souls, they are just simulations powered by ether stolen from actual living people. So as much as they were written to act like people and pull my heart strings, to me, they were no more genuine than a ChatGPT based conversation bot.

The only thing I like about the final zone is the mirror it serves as for Ultima Thule. You are returning both places to their natural state. One was just a natural state of "weird, but actually does have life" and was being "forced" dead by the end singer. The other was "looks alive, but no, it's dead Jim" and being forced to look alive by ChatGPT.

An extra possible plot hole to add to the pile.

What happened to Erenville's mom when we turned off Endless? Did the soul that was used returned to Aetherial Sea?

We know that when the soul returns there, it regains all memories. It can undo memory alteration since it undid Emet Selch and Hydlodaeus memory wipe. If so, the soul that was used for the Endless regained original memories, and now has implanted memories on top.

While the real soul from which memories were taken has no clue about what happened after its death whatsoever.

In other words, the Endless really did not do anything after death, did not meet relatives or dealt with unresolved issues, all this process did just dumped some fake memories on unrelated souls.

They're not even alive... They're memories given form. Nothing more.

I would argue that if an entity can think for itself and form opinions and create new memories, that makes it no different from any other sapient being, regardless of whether the underlying hardware is flesh or electrope or aether.

I don't see why being "alive" in a biological sense is required for something to be considered self-aware.

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Originally Posted by Singularity

I would argue that if an entity can think for itself and form opinions and create new memories, that makes it no different from any other sapient being, regardless of whether the underlying hardware is flesh or electrope or aether.

I don't see why being "alive" in a biological sense is required for something to be considered self-aware.

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Wouldn’t this mean everytime a Scholar summons a fairy they’re literally creating a living slave? I mean, they can think for themselves, store and retain memories / knowledge, and even refuse your commands (though maybe not past level 60 because then you can eat them lol). I’m not even sure they’re capable of speech, though I do remember something in the lore about them whispering so quietly nobody can make out what they say, so maybe that’s not quite accurate. But I still don’t get the sense that they’re ‘alive’ in the standard meaning of the word. They’re an aetherial construct like Carbuncles.

As a Scholar I’m not sure how I feel with the idea that I’ve been brutally murdering an innocent creature ever 120 seconds to get more Energy Drains lol. I hope they don’t carry grudges…

But basically I feel like in a world where aether can be used to create ‘creatures’ like fairies, it’s much harder to quantify what ‘real life’ is outside of living breathing physical things. I mean, is self-awareness enough to be considered ‘alive’ when your entire existence is contingent upon another person/entity that can end it at will?

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Originally Posted by Connor

Wouldn’t this mean everytime a Scholar summons a fairy they’re literally creating a living slave? I mean, they can think for themselves, store and retain memories / knowledge, and even refuse your commands (though maybe not past level 60 because then you can eat them lol). I’m not even sure they’re capable of speech, though I do remember something in the lore about them whispering so quietly nobody can make out what they say, so maybe that’s not quite accurate. But I still don’t get the sense that they’re ‘alive’ in the standard meaning of the word. They’re an aetherial construct like Carbuncles.

As a Scholar I’m not sure how I feel with the idea that I’ve been brutally murdering an innocent creature ever 120 seconds to get more Energy Drains lol. I hope they don’t carry grudges…

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You're not creating a new fairy every time you summon, but summoning the same one. Accordingly, you don't kill her when you use Dissipation but reuse the aether she's using to manifest at the moment. She's even been shown to manifest on her own IIRC so I guess she's aware even when not summoned.

The player character's fairy is named Lily, and I would hope (though I guess it's not confirmed) that she's a willing partner to her scholar.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Wouldn’t this mean everytime a Scholar summons a fairy they’re literally creating a living slave? I mean, they can think for themselves, store and retain memories / knowledge, and even refuse your commands (though maybe not past level 60 because then you can eat them lol). I’m not even sure they’re capable of speech, though I do remember something in the lore about them whispering so quietly nobody can make out what they say, so maybe that’s not quite accurate. But I still don’t get the sense that they’re ‘alive’ in the standard meaning of the word. They’re an aetherial construct like Carbuncles.

As a Scholar I’m not sure how I feel with the idea that I’ve been brutally murdering an innocent creature ever 120 seconds to get more Energy Drains lol. I hope they don’t carry grudges…

But basically I feel like in a world where aether can be used to create ‘creatures’ like fairies, it’s much harder to quantify what ‘real life’ is outside of living breathing physical things. I mean, is self-awareness enough to be considered ‘alive’ when your entire existence is contingent upon another person/entity that can end it at will?

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Honestly, the lore is extremely brutal to creatures that "don't have a soul". All of Elpis is basically the Ancients messing around creating and destroying life for fun and science, and only Hermes seems to have any sort of empathy or compassion for these creatures.

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Originally Posted by Somnolence

An extra possible plot hole to add to the pile.

What happened to Erenville's mom when we turned off Endless? Did the soul that was used returned to Aetherial Sea?

We know that when the soul returns there, it regains all memories. It can undo memory alteration since it undid Emet Selch and Hydlodaeus memory wipe. If so, the soul that was used for the Endless regained original memories, and now has implanted memories on top.

While the real soul from which memories were taken has no clue about what happened after its death whatsoever.

In other words, the Endless really did not do anything after death, did not meet relatives or dealt with unresolved issues, all this process did just dumped some fake memories on unrelated souls.

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Her AI avatar had no soul. The soul had long been since been used either to power LM's computer or to grant another person an additional life after accidental death.

What the MSQ didn't clarify is what happens to the cleansed souls once they're used. By being stripped of all memories then imprinted with the memories of the dead person they revive, does that soul become that second person? What if the soul is used solely as a power source for the computer - are they destroyed completely just as the souls of those who became Blasphemies were destroyed?

While the Aetherial Sea may give souls access to all memories of their previous life, I suspect those memories would still need to be imprinted on the soul in some way. Kairos seemed to overwrite memories as opposed to completely remove them. It seems to be similar to how we can delete files from a hard drive but someone with the proper knowledge can still retrieve and restore those files.

The Alexandrian process is supposed to completely remove the memories for storage in a separate container (the computer) as opposed to overwriting them. Would the Aetherial Sea still be able to retrieve and restore them considering they're no longer part of the soul?

I'm definitely not a fan of the second half of the MSQ but this whole "oh no, it's made me a murderer" complaint is silly. Nothing that was alive was killed because nothing in LM was alive except the group travelling from the Source.

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Originally Posted by Kaecilius

Honestly, the lore is extremely brutal to creatures that "don't have a soul". All of Elpis is basically the Ancients messing around creating and destroying life for fun and science, and only Hermes seems to have any sort of empathy or compassion for these creatures.

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I disagree. While that segment of story was fairly brutal, it was emphasized to show how the Ancients were flawed and not to validate their actions.

DT is doing the same thing through a different path. The Endless are not living. There is no creature - if you noticed there was no body left behind when the terminals were powered down. They simply disappeared because they did not actually exist. They were a simulation.

But the computer that was running their simulation was intent on killing actual living beings solely for the purpose of sustaining the simulation. It had no morals, good or bad, it was simply doing what it was programmed to do.

They weren't even real, Sphene wasn't the real Sphene, so it was really hard to have anykind of emotional attachment to anything in the second half. Not to mention Wuk Lamat trying to reason with what basically surmounts to being an AI program. Every emotional pang in the end just felt unearned aside from Krile's revelation, but even part of that wasn't real.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

I disagree. While that segment of story was fairly brutal, it was emphasized to show how the Ancients were flawed and not to validate their actions.

DT is doing the same thing through a different path. The Endless are not living. There is no creature - if you noticed there was no body left behind when the terminals were powered down. They simply disappeared because they did not actually exist. They were a simulation.

But the computer that was running their simulation was intent on killing actual living beings solely for the purpose of sustaining the simulation. It had no morals, good or bad, it was simply doing what it was programmed to do.

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Eh, the problem is that the simulation displayed sentience for the avatars. It's a machine intelligence, one that doesn't seem to have any overriding logic for anyone except Sphene.

If they were just silly puppets dancing on Living Memory's strings, the entire last zone attempts at emotional manipulation of the player are just wasted time. If they actually have sentience, we destroyed something unique in existence, even if it wasn't alive.

The real villain of zone 6 is the writing.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

What the MSQ didn't clarify is what happens to the cleansed souls once they're used. By being stripped of all memories then imprinted with the memories of the dead person they revive, does that soul become that second person? What if the soul is used solely as a power source for the computer - are they destroyed completely just as the souls of those who became Blasphemies were destroyed?

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A soul's aether can be used up like any other power source. Venat spent the last of her soul to fight us as Hydaelyn, and Zenos does it later at the end of Ultima Thule (he openly refers to it as "burning the candle of my life"). In both cases, the implication is that they're deader than dead, with not enough left to return to the aetherial sea and reincarnate. Whether that happens to the souls used up by the Endless is as yet unrevealed, but given that they need to keep taking more rather than relying on their own world's lifestream replenishing itself, it seems likely.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

A soul's aether can be used up like any other power source. Venat spent the last of her soul to fight us as Hydaelyn, and Zenos does it later at the end of Ultima Thule (he openly refers to it as "burning the candle of my life"). In both cases, the implication is that they're deader than dead, with not enough left to return to the aetherial sea and reincarnate. Whether that happens to the souls used up by the Endless is as yet unrevealed, but given that they need to keep taking more rather than relying on their own world's lifestream replenishing itself, it seems likely.

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That does make sense as to why they need to keep getting more. The Endless who were left adrift in what became the Deadwalk were said to have been cutoff from their aether supply and then became what we see there and if they had needed just the one soul I don’t think that would’ve happened. It was referred to as its own region so I’d imagine it had its own terminal like the others did.

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Originally Posted by Somnolence

An extra possible plot hole to add to the pile.

What happened to Erenville's mom when we turned off Endless? Did the soul that was used returned to Aetherial Sea?

We know that when the soul returns there, it regains all memories. It can undo memory alteration since it undid Emet Selch and Hydlodaeus memory wipe. If so, the soul that was used for the Endless regained original memories, and now has implanted memories on top.

While the real soul from which memories were taken has no clue about what happened after its death whatsoever.

In other words, the Endless really did not do anything after death, did not meet relatives or dealt with unresolved issues, all this process did just dumped some fake memories on unrelated souls.

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Because the souls they used have been arguably "deep cleaned" in their own factory version of the aetherial sea, there is no longer a person attached to the soul to be reasserted as the owner. If Origenics process wasn't more thorough than the aetherial sea's then people's personalities would change every five minutes as they used souls as powerups. So more than likely the people who were walking around in Living Memory returned to the aetherial sea for their current memories to be washed away in the usual process. While the 90% of them who didn't have souls to graft onto just dissipated immediately. Also, Erenville's mom should be in the aetherial sea on the shard we were on, so I have no idea why he expects to one day see her and speak to her again, even if she spent centuries trying not to be washed away by the aetherial sea just to wait for him, she's in the wrong aetherial sea...and her original soul is probably a coin somewhere in Everkeep. Not that which soul you have makes any different once they invented their own aetherial sea and have been swapping souls like hot cakes.

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Originally Posted by Kaecilius

Honestly, the lore is extremely brutal to creatures that "don't have a soul". All of Elpis is basically the Ancients messing around creating and destroying life for fun and science, and only Hermes seems to have any sort of empathy or compassion for these creatures.

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The animals in Elpis have souls. After Hermes kills the beast, we watch it's soul return to the aetherial sea. He even talks about it's soul. DT has now confirmed their are both people souls and animal souls. It seems that everything on the star has souls except for familiars and elementals. But soul or not, I don't think we should mistreat sentient beings.

I wonder, how does a 'soul' get made? Is it just innate biological process?

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Originally Posted by Lousis

I wonder, how does a 'soul' get made? Is it just innate biological process?

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When something fits the definition of life, breathes, grows, reproduces, dies, etc, the star grants it a soul. Either a newly minted soul or a cleansed soul from the aetherial sea. Deciding what did and didn't get a soul was the last frontier in the Ancient's ability to create life which is what Athena was working on before she died.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

The animals in Elpis have souls. After Hermes kills the beast, we watch it's soul return to the aetherial sea. He even talks about it's soul. DT has now confirmed their are both people souls and animal souls. It seems that everything on the star has souls except for familiars and elementals. But soul or not, I don't think we should mistreat sentient beings.

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I believe the important part about the mistreatment of sentient beings is that Living Memory is in itself mistreating sentient beings on two fronts.

By keeping the memories of the deceased with residual Aether, keeps people from passing on to the Aetherial Sea as they are intended to go, so you're mistreating people's lives by having them live half lives where they can never die even if they wanted to.
Secondly much like how summoning Primals in the source absorbs the Aether of the star it negatively affects the living beings around it because that Aether that is normally recycled and equally distributed back can no longer do so.
This is why this reflection's attempt at assimilating other shards (not unlike a rejoining) is a fruitless effort, there will never be enough Aether to sustain all these people, there will be a constant strain on the living world until the whole thing collapses in on itself.

The idea of having the living die so that the dead of that shard can live on more borrowed time won't help anybody.

Now ultimately if Living Memory operated more like how the Ancients themselves would voluntarily pass on that would have been great. However it would appear as though these Endless don't have that capability. They have the Memories of the deceased but are not entirely the deceased. This probably explains why we can't taste the food in Living Memory... because it's all synthetic. To the Endless that popcorn or ice cream will taste like their favorite memory of such snacks but to the living they offer no nutritional value whatsoever.
I feel like 7.x story will continue to explore this realm's potential. I was surprised for example that we didn't make use of an alternative power source like Dynamis - but alas.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

The Alexandrians in contrast decided to completely deny the normal process of life and death for an entire civilization by preventing souls from reaching the Lifestream and mechanically extracting memory from the soul to shove into a computer until the computer randomly decided they get to walk around Living Memory and then it stitches their memory aether to someone else's soul. It also required plundering the souls of other people against their will to perpetuate it. We could have found another power source but I personally find the entire idea utterly vile and in the meantime the residents would fade and warp the entire area like what happened to the Deadwalk.

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This is a key point and I think the story isn't really confirming or denying it enough except with Cahciua's comments about it. They were separating the soul and the memories from those who died. Their souls did not go with them into Living Memory. They were repackaged into soul cells for someone else to use. Their memory only went to Living Memory. But if we refer back to what we learned in Endwalker, souls and memories are connected. Even if the original soul was used up by someone else and went to the aetherial sea, the memory did not. And it begs the question of where the true soul of the person lies. That, and the IX influence of the expansion, is why I agree with you that the were being prevented from being reborn into new lives that could make new memories. We had to free them to be able to rejoin the natural cycle of life and death, just like the characters had to destroy the Iifa Tree in IX so Gaian souls could return to the crystal and be reborn.

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Originally Posted by Nadda

I believe the important part about the mistreatment of sentient beings is that Living Memory is in itself mistreating sentient beings on two fronts.

By keeping the memories of the deceased with residual Aether, keeps people from passing on to the Aetherial Sea as they are intended to go, so you're mistreating people's lives by having them live half lives where they can never die even if they wanted to.
Secondly much like how summoning Primals in the source absorbs the Aether of the star it negatively affects the living beings around it because that Aether that is normally recycled and equally distributed back can no longer do so.
This is why this reflection's attempt at assimilating other shards (not unlike a rejoining) is a fruitless effort, there will never be enough Aether to sustain all these people, there will be a constant strain on the living world until the whole thing collapses in on itself.

The idea of having the living die so that the dead of that shard can live on more borrowed time won't help anybody.

Now ultimately if Living Memory operated more like how the Ancients themselves would voluntarily pass on that would have been great. However it would appear as though these Endless don't have that capability. They have the Memories of the deceased but are not entirely the deceased. This probably explains why we can't taste the food in Living Memory... because it's all synthetic. To the Endless that popcorn or ice cream will taste like their favorite memory of such snacks but to the living they offer no nutritional value whatsoever.
I feel like 7.x story will continue to explore this realm's potential. I was surprised for example that we didn't make use of an alternative power source like Dynamis - but alas.

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Yes, I understand why Living Memory in its current form is unsustainable. However, we've been in contact with a number of immortal species whose existence does not harm the environment. And while I agree that forcing people to exist against their will is wrong, I also believe erasing people from existence against their will is also wrong. Out of the handful of people we meet there, three express the desire to be erased. The man eager to marry his fiance after centuries probably could have used a few more days. Some even have unfinished business we have to resolve so they can dissipate. Some even express hopes for the future. They were not all ready and willing to be erased. And I don't think beings should be forced out of existence because it's what's "natural." All the people there wore regulators knowing what they were and what they did, so while I agree the people who want to be set free should be set free, it's unlikely the vast majority of these people are being held against their will given they had to agree to have their memories tampered with to even end up there.

The endless are not real living beings.
They don't really age
They are nothing more then a VERY advanced "AI" with dead peoples memories.
thats it.
You are NOT talking with the real people they are long dead just a bunch of AI that use residual Aether as Power lol

The whole place is "fake"

And we are Shuting it down to be able to save the actual LIVING people in our world that are ACTUALY ALIVE.
There was NO genocide here all we did is shut down all the AI nobody actualy died...

The people in solution 9 ARE ALIVE btw thos are real living people and WE ARE taking care of them.

jesus its not that deep.

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Originally Posted by Zordrage

They are nothing more then a VERY advanced "AI" with dead peoples memories.

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See, this does not make sense. Either souls are used for Endless and they are similar to the Solution 9 inhabitants - purified souls, imprinted with memories; or they are not souls and are full simulations.

In the latter, using soul aether as energy is pure story ass-pull, since other advanced civilizations like alagans and omicrons do not need soul aether to do the same, to run simulations. With existing FFXIV lore, soul is primary component of conscious beings, not memory. Then the entire Alexandria and Endless is just FF9, transplanted into this game without proper adaptation into existing lore.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

When something fits the definition of life, breathes, grows, reproduces, dies, etc, the star grants it a soul. Either a newly minted soul or a cleansed soul from the aetherial sea. Deciding what did and didn't get a soul was the last frontier in the Ancient's ability to create life which is what Athena was working on before she died.

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I wonder if that means the Lifestream is sentient......?

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Originally Posted by Zordrage

snip

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That's not very Forge Ahead of you. In fact, I daresay Emet would be proud.

Edit: Man, there are a LOT of Emets in here. So much 'You are not alive, therefore I kill you good' flying around in here. Also lol @ the reticence towards The Big G Word. Even if you downgrade it to mass slaughter the immorality of it all hardly lessens.

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Originally Posted by Zordrage

The endless are not real living beings.
They don't really age
They are nothing more then a VERY advanced "AI" with dead peoples memories.
thats it.
You are NOT talking with the real people they are long dead just a bunch of AI that use residual Aether as Power lol

The whole place is "fake"

And we are Shuting it down to be able to save the actual LIVING people in our world that are ACTUALY ALIVE.
There was NO genocide here all we did is shut down all the AI nobody actualy died...

The people in solution 9 ARE ALIVE btw thos are real living people and WE ARE taking care of them.

jesus its not that deep.

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Why did I dress up like a bunny to give AIs a happy memory? We see the memory aether of these people sent to Living Memory. We see the memory aether of these people dissipate when we shut down Living Memory. If they were just AI they'd be able to run on electric, they wouldn't need human souls.

So either these are people who I should be weeping for as I shut down each area or they are programs and I shouldn't care. The games tells me I shouldn't care, through Cahciua, who I shouldn't be obeying if she's just a mindless program. But then the game shows me by every possible metric that these are feeling, thinking people. They make plans, they have dreams, they have ambitions, they have desires, they are self-aware, they can ask me to kill them. Cahciua the AI should not be able to demand I shut down the servers. That's the most poorly programmed AI in history if it can create characters bent on it's own destruction.

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Originally Posted by MarianneviBrittania

I wonder if that means the Lifestream is sentient......?

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Zodiark was the Ancient's attempt to give the lifestream consciousness so that the star could save them. Hydaelyn was based off Zodiark's design, so it's safe to assume she was acting as the will of the star given Alpha got a soul for helping us and her familiars the Lopporits have souls when usually familiars don't get souls because they don't follow the laws of nature like eating, pooping, dying, etc.