Quote Originally Posted by Absimiliard View Post
Just as a note; things depicted in the NieR Re[in]carnation crossover event are canon, whether or not posters want to acknowledge it. The sundered were clearly shown to have lost not only their sense of self, but even basic skills like communication. Notably, the Unsundered - or Ascians, as they would later come to be called - could not communicate with the first of the sundered in any shape, way, or form. Given the ancients (and anyone with an Echo, I might add) could communicate with anything that has a soul, this gives us a fairly good idea as to the state the Sundering actually left people in. They had nothing.
The first of the Sundered might’ve been reduced but they also had enough memory and coherence to make cave paintings of Amaurot as well as the actual Sundering with representations of Zodiark and Hydaelyn. I don’t think they were formless ghosts or drones for generations until people slowly reconstituted themselves like the End of Evangelion.