Alphascape's Bittersweet Ending (Spoilers!)

I've asked this in a thread but I wanted to ask it generally: was anyone really disappointed that Omega died? Right as it understood what it was missing, after Cid had explained it, Omega just dies.

I was really hoping that the toy Omega had at least some of the originator's programming, but alas, I guess not. Alpha's ending was great, but overall it felt real bittersweet. I was counting on Omega and Alpha to go on sick adventures and understand what it felt to have your own soul and all that stuff.

Can someone throw in a question about this in the next live letter or whenever we get to ask the devs this, on if Omega is truly dead/can come back? I'm not expecting it to since in Final Fantasy, dissolving into ether = permanent death, but...

Omega just wanted to go home :(

Nah, I knew this ending was coming as soon as the raid started. The only thing that did surprised me was the SE didn't take the cheap way out and kill off Alpha.

If anything, I more saw it as Omega giving up. It was focused on getting strong for combat for so long that it never bothered to conciser that what would make it strong for combat wouldn't necessarily make it strong for the journey back home. Assuming it could find home that is. It's memory banks of where home is were damaged. Once it finally figures out what gives us strength in combat, it finds out that what that thing is would make it weaker when it finally tried to go back home. Since it can never get what it wants, it finally lets itself rest for good.

I was actually pretty happy about it to be honest. Omega's homeworld was making war on Middy's homeworld. The last thing Hydaelyn needs is Omega making it back home and everyone on it's home world finding out about Hydaelyn. Who knows what they'd do at that point. Better for Omega to be lost to that world forever.

Omega's overall character arc reminds me too much of Yotsuyu's to be all that interesting. Only in Omega's case, it's both less and more tragic. Less tragic since Omega is nothing more then a robot; for all of the raid except maybe the last cutsecene, there's no person there for me to feel sorry for. On the other hand, it's a touch more tragic since Omega really didn't know better and wasn't crazy the way Yotsuyu was. So there's a lot less moral ambiguity all the way 'round. I probably would have found this story more compelling if had happened either in 3.0 or 5.0. Putting it in 4.0 where we've already got a Death Equals Redemption plot in the MSQ... well, my emotional response to such a plot has already been completely drained. It was too predictable for me to want to get attached to any of the characters that had very little chance of surviving the raid.

Finding out Alpha was not going to be killed off by the time O12 started made me instantly more attached to him then Omega.

I think it could have been interesting if some part of Omega made it into the toy and went off with Alpha to find a new purpose and learn what Alpha did, but ultimately I was fine with this ending.

I liked the ending...

And the excellent music that played for Alpha on his journeys at the end. Brilliant that we got the scroll as a reward.

Omega in retrospect is the sad story of an AI-like being who kept using logic and analytical experimentation to try and figure out emotions, infinite determination and ultimately, the selfish love for those one would protect.

I think it's actually good that Omega didn't survive.
Cid stated that even if Omega succeeds in getting the thing that makes WoL so powerful, it won't help it make the journey back home. At that point, Omega's fate is sealed. There's no reason for it to stay alive after that.

But there's still a tiny, tiny hope remaining: since Omega managed to transmit a message in its dying moment to an Ironworks' terminal, who knows if there are other things it transmitted to some other machines. There's probably a chance (almost zero, but still...) that it managed to transmit its newfound soul to the OMG minion.

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Originally Posted by NoblePigeon

I was really hoping that the toy Omega had at least some of the originator's programming, but alas, I guess not.

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Why do you "guess not"? Did something make you change your mind after having the idea?

It's moving on its own, not simply following - it comes up to you of its own accord in Rhalgr's Reach, and when it's accompanying Alpha you see it run into a cave by itself and get chased out by a monster, while Alpha stands and watches. (So not only acting alone, but able to recognise things and respond to danger.)

I think it's entirely possible - even likely - that it really is Omega.

I thought the wind up toy following Alpha at the end is Omega ...>.>;; it moved on it's own and it chose to follow Alpha, it reacted to danger during the final cut scenes instead of blindly following commands, I think others may not have realized there is a bit of Omega in it but Alpha did? Hence insisting to take the wind up toy with him. At least that's the angle I'd rather buy into than Omega just died.

To me it was open to the player. If you want to believe Omega died there, go ahead. If you want to believe Omega is on adventure with Alpha, sure! I'm personally going with the second.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

It's moving on its own, not simply following - it comes up to you of its own accord in Rhalgr's Reach, and when it's accompanying Alpha you see it run into a cave by itself and get chased out by a monster, while Alpha stands and watches. (So not only acting alone, but able to recognise things and respond to danger.)

I think it's entirely possible - even likely - that it really is Omega.

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I considered it as a toy at the beginning but after cave scene I too started to believe that it is Omega. I will stick with that idea until / if it will be proven otherwise. I really like it that way and it even make sense :)

I'd be more open to believing OMG has something of Omega in it if Wedge wasn't involved in making it. This is the third project he's worked on that shows signs of being semi-sentient (Maggie, the magitek reaper and the Accompaniment Node are the other two).

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Originally Posted by CodingSession

I think it's actually good that Omega didn't survive.
Cid stated that even if Omega succeeds in getting the thing that makes WoL so powerful, it won't help it make the journey back home. At that point, Omega's fate is sealed. There's no reason for it to stay alive after that.

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While I agree that it's likely Omega is dead, I would point out that "there's no reason for it to stay alive after that" is going against the whole point of Alpha's story in the Omega raids, and Alphascape in particular, which is that one can always find a new purpose of one's own, by one's own choice. I would have actually given fair odds that the story would have ended up with Omega learning this lesson as well and joining Alpha on his adventures of curiosity and discovery, but I admit it might be a bit too neatly wrapped up for most.

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

I'd be more open to believing OMG has something of Omega in it if Wedge wasn't involved in making it. This is the third project he's worked on that shows signs of being semi-sentient (Maggie, the magitek reaper and the Accompaniment Node are the other two).

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Wedge doesn’t build sentinent robots, he just gets emotionally attached to them. :D

Maggie’s sentience came from the mammet core they’d installed to replace a broken part. Wedge was just the first one to think of treating her as such.

And “Gillie” the guidance node was, if I remember correctly, not even definitely sentient? But possibly the Allagan equivalent of something like Siri. He just got it working again, and took it as having a genuine personality.

If anything, it could be taken as a sign that the OMG *wasn’t* previously showing signs of sentience, or we’d have probably witnessed a tearful “goodbye Ommi, be a good boy for Alpha”...

I was touched by the Omega story, as well. The whole revelation that everything Omega strove for was simply because it just really, really wanted to go home choked me up a bit. I did feel like Omega's death was taking the narratively easy way out: the machine was super dangerous, and even if it seemed to have turned over a new leaf and was open to the idea that it could pursue goals outside of its programming, that in no way implies that it's developed any kind of trustworthy sense of morality. Narrative resources would have to be implemented to explain why Cid and the WoL are allowing the reformed(?) Omega to run around free - and if they aren't what they're doing to corral it.

I, personally, choose to believe that Omega DID transfer some speck of itself into the OMG, and made every effort to conceal this from Cid and the others, just so that it could make use of the hard-won perspective it had gained just before it died. That it's choosing to passively observe Alpha, and to see for itself just how such a weak creature is paradoxically so strong. I do not, however, believe this is what the writers intended, nor do I expect to ever see any follow-up developments even if they did.

Totally inside OMG, but...

Omega also never considered another critical point. Even if it was able to find its way home again, the chances of it still being there are slim. Omega landed on Hydaelyn far before the Allag were around and the journey was also really long. We are easily talking about at least 10,000 years since it left home. That's more than enough time to collapse multiple civilizations, even the mightiest ones. Even if they were still around, they would have developed to the point Omega would be long obsolete. Of course, this factor was unlikely to be programmed in its directives anyway.

I knew from the beginning what Omega lacked was a heart / soul / whatever you wanna call it...

Kind of sad it ended the way it did, but I saw it comin' a mile away. At least Alpha gets a happy ending.

I want omega sexy to still be alive. We need someone to replace midgardsormr since he is going to be asleep forever now. Sometime later after the next expansion she can popup in one of the new side quests to save our butts from the next big bad raid targets. She is essentially a liquid terminator just mostly depowered so she programmed alpha to go off in search of new materials to reconstruct herself. And since she is having to do it with available tech she won't be as über powerful which will force her to evolve what she is lacking. And then right when we lest expect it she can pop up and be all look at me I'm all awesome and I'm here to join your team but then open up an arena so you can fight all sorts of wondrous battles in my new omega scape that's not evil but just for fun so we can learn more about being a fun adventurer and evolve even more because that's what an omega sexy would do!

So, I haven't done these quests yet, but I am interested in Omegas lore, etc.

Quick question though, isn't what happened to Omega similar to Gigi/Vivi in a way? From sentience to a "Toy."

Only asking because nothing more was done with Gigi, so I'm wondering if OMG will suffer the same fate, a minion forgotten by next patch by players and SE.

For everyone's consideration... What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Alpha's origin is, correct Jubs if Jubs is wrong... a creation of Omega. Yesh? Now personally Jubs don't find Omega to be "AI". It was quite simply a linear program, albeit an advanced and complicated one. But Alpha on the other hand....

Do consider another underlying foundation to the whole story arc. Parent and offspring. Middy and his brood. Cid and his father. Omega and Alpha (?). All ripe with death, total destruction of a culture/society/place/concepts/ideals, and rebirth at each and every angle.

The irony of the final battle depicting a Male and Female.... maybe it isn't irony at all. And out from the nothingness springs conscious Life...

Maybe one should ask, who is thanking Jubs at the end?

I wonder how many people would still feel sorry if Omega was in the form of a robot at the end and not the female human one. (I include myself in that too) I did feel a bit sad and I liked the ending to this raid (while I found the rest of the story pretty average) and I am just happy that Alpha survived this. Its showing imo that you dont need to kill of one of the good guys if the writing and the characters are good. I loved the struggle of Cid, I adore him and his workers and I find Nero to be a great addition to this.

I just wish that they would have such stories in all parts of the raids and not mostly just in the finale.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

I wonder how many people would still feel sorry if Omega was in the form of a robot at the end and not the female human one. (I include myself in that too) I did feel a bit sad and I liked the ending to this raid (while I found the rest of the story pretty average) and I am just happy that Alpha survived this. Its showing imo that you dont need to kill of one of the good guys if the writing and the characters are good. I loved the struggle of Cid, I adore him and his workers and I find Nero to be a great addition to this.

I just wish that they would have such stories in all parts of the raids and not mostly just in the finale.

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This may be the pessimist in me talking but I'm afraid even the male omega wouldn't have garnered much sympathy among the audience and this is solely waifu adoration and fanart at work. though... I felt bad for it before that, during the logs, and back when it was clear it didn't even remember where it came from, how it went on thst long journey and lost itself. I kinda want it to live on in the robot. its actions, threat assessment, movement...I want to believe its more than a elaborate toy, alive with alpha.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

I wonder how many people would still feel sorry if Omega was in the form of a robot at the end and not the female human one.

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*Raises hand*

Even before I knew Omega's underlying motivations, I felt sympathy for it. It was clearly an intelligent being, but was completely enslaved to its "gotta get stronger" programming. The revelations in 4.4, showing that it was able to harness that imperative in order to fulfill a personal desire ("gotta get stronger - so I can go home") just made the sympathy all the more poignant.

And yes, I think seeing Alpha nuzzling a collapsed giant cockroach robot would, if anything, be even more heart-wrenching than the scene we had. That even after all the abuse he'd suffered, Alpha could still muster up sympathy for its parent would be all the more striking if that parent was a monstrous machine in that scene.

I have the irksome feeling that Omega's final moments were spent in female mode specifically to elicit sympathy from the player, but I prefer to firmly quash those feelings and insist to myself that the only reason Omega ends the final battle as female is because it started as male, and it's only fair to give both forms some screen time. :P

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

I have the irksome feeling that Omega's final moments were spent in female mode specifically to elicit sympathy from the player, but I prefer to firmly quash those feelings and insist to myself that the only reason Omega ends the final battle as female is because it started as male, and it's only fair to give both forms some screen time. :P

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Exactly my feelings on that scene. It turned into the male form to begin with, so that seems like its 'default' human form. And going from a powerful male character to a defeated female one just feels... it has awkward implications. Not just "weak female" but "you wouldn't feel as sorry for the male version".

Also I liked the male character design more. He seemed more unique. Female one was rather bland. (I honestly can't remember what her face looked like.)

I don't really consider either the 'default.' Yes it starts at as male, but swaps back and forth during the fight and in the second half has both bodies active at once. Omega itself isn't male or female. As for the dsigns I think I prefer the female one, partly because the male's hair is so goofy.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

I prefer to firmly quash those feelings and insist to myself that the only reason Omega ends the final battle as female is because it started as male, and it's only fair to give both forms some screen time. :P

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I agree with a lot of what you said--though I didn't feel much for Omega until after we beat it the first time and we hear its datalogs. I had grown accustomed to this weird mechanical beetle and it made me sad! However, on this particular point, I personally explain it less as "give both screen time!" as that the Omega-F form is... the final one it creates. It starts the fight as Omega-M and then decides to try a different gender for reasons, I guess. That was how I read it coming back as Omega-F at the end of the fight anyways. It was the most recent form created. (Can you imagine if the cutscene was dynamic and displayed whichever form was actually defeated last in your instance!? That'd be so neat! And so ... utterly useless since it'd only matter once!)

As for why it starts as a man rather than a woman... I feel like there's some weird Christianity thing going on here. Adam and Eve and all that. That the normal Omega in Savage uses skills with the appellation of Kyrios and Pantokrator later definitely feels like a nod.. and you know, the whole line about "I am the Alpha and the Omega" thing. It certainly doesn't help the misgivings had, but I can ... see what they were attempting, I guess.

Omega-M is almost assuredly based on the art of the WoL from the 1.0 Collecter's Edition box art. So Omega looking like him first is a confirmation that Omega is trying to become like us.

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

Omega-M is almost assuredly based on the art of the WoL from the 1.0 Collecter's Edition box art. So Omega looking like him first is a confirmation that Omega is trying to become like us.

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Well even without that connection to the art, that's pretty explicitly what Omega is trying to do in the story, mimicing out form in one last failed attempt to understand us and assimilate our strength, believing the secret must lay in our physiology. Kind of tragic that Omega misses the point even then and doesn't start to grasp it until death.

Yes, the datalogs were much more motionally strong and frankly the whole story was stronge in emotion than the female form scene. The fact that it was able to create everything, but literally unable to comprehend us becuase of the programming stopping it from advancing was distressing, each time it got close to understand what we were saying the limit of the program didn't allow it to mature

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

Omega-M is almost assuredly based on the art of the WoL from the 1.0 Collecter's Edition box art. So Omega looking like him first is a confirmation that Omega is trying to become like us.

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Yes, exactly! I knew I wasn't seeing things! I had mentioned to a few friends in-game that I really liked Omega-M's design and that he definitely reminded me of Amano's artwork on my 1.0 Collector's package.

https://i.imgur.com/w6kPZ1Y.jpg

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Originally Posted by CodingSession

But there's still a tiny, tiny hope remaining: since Omega managed to transmit a message in its dying moment to an Ironworks' terminal, who knows if there are other things it transmitted to some other machines. There's probably a chance (almost zero, but still...) that it managed to transmit its newfound soul to the OMG minion.

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Or Alpha, who seems to have obtained a soul now.