Quote Originally Posted by Gemina View Post
Truth be told, beings like the ancients or the Ea can't even begin to grasp onto the meaning of life the way we do.
I wouldn't look at it quite that way. I don't think their immortality (or rather, very long life span) was an obstacle to their steadfast resolve to prevent their own demise and the demise of their star. The ancients to me are closer to the dragons, in that both feature beings which are very long-lived and possess a host of fantastical powers and distinctly non-human traits, but nonetheless do share in some human aspects - certainly not quite human, but a mid-way to us in contrast to a more genuinely alien race like the Ea or Omicrons.

And I'd also argue they could very readily grasp this when confronted with premature demise, e.g. Elidibus in SoS:

This pain, this torment...is nothing! No more than must be suffered to deliver the world from its doom! No more than any of you malformed creatures have known!
Even should you lose all that is dear to you. Even should it cost you your life...
You bear the burden and fight on, kicking and screaming until your last breath is spent!
Emet-Selch himself only eventually decided to rest after 12k years, and only after he was satisfied the sundered remnants of his former friend were up to the task. Fandaniel even mocked both the sundered and unsundered for this attachment to life.

To make the point that they could end up in one of the Dead Ends, the game has to invoke the caricature world of the Plenty. True enough, they could end up that way given time (although as to whether it was inevitable is and will remain a matter of speculation.) But the ancients as we know them in any case are resolved to defend life as a concept and principle.

In their defense though, how would you handle knowing you would be around to witness the obliteration of our home world?
Agreed. And the ancients had an almost spiritual connection to the star, so to watch it die before their very eyes and beneath their feet, must've been traumatic in the extreme. Considering this would mean the cessation ultimately of even the cycle of life and death upon the star if taken to its conclusion. It was so badly damaged Zodiark had to restore it using many of them as fuel. Likewise, the dragons suffered watching their own star be despoiled, their ability to breed new life on their star taken from them, after enduring a senseless act of destruction that unravelled the raison d'etre of the very beings which administered it.