The missing mood in the existential horror of the last zone of the game (spoilers)

[HighlanderClone]

I completely agree with you.

I think a lot of people are missing the point.

What is a life? What is living? What is a person?

Is a person living in a simulation a person? Oh, but someone would say: "they have no free will, so they are not a person". After all, perhaps the actions that Cachuia takes are not of her own volition but "simulated". But modern neuroscience increasingly leans towards the idea that we as humans also don't have free will. https://www.theatlantic.com/books/ar...rmined/675885/

What differentiates between us and the Endless? We have a soul? But what is the point of a soul if memories behave just as a real person with a soul would?

In what ways is the ontology of the Endless actually meaningfully different from that of us?

Their emotions arise because they are created to act that way? Aren't humans wired to have emotional responses to various stimuli the way we are programmed to?

How exactly are the two different?

The MSQ never even bothers to explain. It relies on you simply accepting that "disrupting the natural order is wrong."

What this means is that the writers want us to take on faith that it is wrong to live purely as a memory. Because it's a priori unnatural. Maybe this is satisfying to people who just unquestionably accept the slop that SE puts out, but not me.

You know, a single Black Mirror episode tackles these issues with more nuance and depth in just an hour than 50 hours of Dawntrail MSQ.

[Silver-Strider]

Wait, wait, wait.

I was supposed to feel something for the Endless? The whole 2nd half of the plot left me so numb that when Operation Blood was ordered, I was in full support of it. I couldn't hit those terminals fast enough in the final zone either.

[LittleArrow]

I couldn't disagree more with some of these responses. The reason why is because the narrative is at odds with the characters is at odds with the results. We're literally doing what Emet-Selch wanted to do. We're literally going into a world to kill everyone so that we may live. We're told to dehumanize these characters to feel better about it. This is wrong! Emet-Selch of all people had merit in his justification and yet we told him he was wrong, because yeah, genocide is wrong. The characters discuss amongst themselves how awful doing this is, then onto the next terminal! Oh and you're a hero for doing this!! Woo!! Celebration!! Cringey smile song activated!

We've dealt with pain and loss, sacrifice and gain. We've seen entire towns and squadrons obliterated from Garleans to resistance fighters to innocent citizens. Never was it handled as confusing, mixed, and without any sort of balance as this. Nor was your WoL the direct cause of it, and for good reason. If I'm going to have to obliterate an entire people, I would never agree to it. There are obvious plotholes that I had expected this game to explore - like the fact these facsimiles only require these vast amounts of aether to manifest. No backup, no let's incorporate them into our lifestream. No. Just shut it down because we're big boys and girls we have to make hard decisions - OH lava! It's fake let's go eat ice cream! Even with the ancients they went back to the lifestream to be made again. There was a resolution there. There is no resolution here, it's just awful.

I'm sorry, I hate this expansion. I'm a 1.x supporter. I've been here through the worst this game had. I watched Yoshida cry so many times I could count it on one hand, and even though that's not a lot it's still weird he's cried that much but w/e, I was there and supported him, and honestly cried with him. I'm absolutely emotionally invested in its success and failures.

Never has this game ever made me personally feel more let down than this. This last zone and the horrible emotional whiplash of being involved with a mass genocide of people, be it they're like our characters on the source or not, has sullied my character permanently.

If I knew this was the story, I wouldn't have bought this expansion or at least waited until the first patch to see what they were going to do with the story. It's shameful, imo.

[Titor]

We spent a good portion of endwalker restoring ultima Thule, with new beings being created there off memories. They were treated like people, developed a new culture and living area, and a few even came to visit us on the source. The whole point was that no matter their circumstances or means of existing, they were real.

The end of dawntrails msq is complete opposite of that... the whole time I was like, let's just bring in alllll that excess energy from ultima Thule somehow from all the dead civilization. There's a lot of life force out there doing nothing. Remember that big egg soul dynamis gathering thing endsinger had...?

It's so conflicting

[Bright-Flower]

I don't think this is quite the same as what the Ascians were doing.

The Ascians wanted to kill the present world to restore their world of old. But at lest this was potentially viable, barring the fact that Emet himself admits they never would have made it to Ultima Thule to confront Meteion with their methods.

The fact of the matter is, Living Memory is unsustainable. It is not viable in the long term. Sphene can only keep it going by killing our world and draining its life energy. And then she'd eventually have to go to the next and the next, butchering world after world as her afterlife of Endless continues to swell out of control. Emet vs Scions was Emet wanting to kill the present to revive his past. This is wanting to kill the world to keep the unsustainable ghost machine running. Regardless of whether the Endless themselves were going against nature or 'should' or 'should not' exist in general, this system had to go. Alexandria was coming to US wanting to devour the Source's life source. Emet-Selch was, in a sense, a foil to Thancred who had to let go of Minfilia, the old, and learn to fully embrace Rhyne, the present. Here, Sphene is a dark reflection of Wuk Lamat, someone whose love for her people drives her not to heroism and reaching out, but to monstrous, unsustainable acts out of love.

We do have some lines about how we shouldn't feel bad about ending these simulated memories but the characters don't treat them like that. Erenvile and Krile certainly don't dismiss them. Wuk Lamat wants to take the time to know and understand them before shutting them down. Erenvile's mother despite the comments on her own existence and wanting it to end, wants to have some last minute bonding with her son before she goes. The bonding between Krile and her parents is not presented as meaningless because 'it's not really them.' I feel like she's trying to console the characters more than the player.

What this really reminds me of is helping lost spirits to move on. That's the kind of vibe I get from the side quests there. We have to shut down this machine, to save not just our worlds but other reflections. But we can still be as humane and compassionate as the situation permits and ease their passing.

[Loggos]

Thank you for putting my frustration into words. I agree with many points.

5. Grand Arguments are not good for characters
I feel like the main reason Shadowbringers worked and was as successful as it was is that Shadowbringers is a story about people, it's trying to explore the characters as individuals in the face of the horrors surrounding them.

...

This expansion, on the other hand, is extremely moralistic. It's not trying to be a story about the characters,...

This is spot on and perfectly summarises why this whole expansion felt so off for me.
I think this is why Erenville stood out to some degree because unlike the Scions he still had something resembling a personality (though I think this impression was carried by him being a new character and us not having much to compare him to) and got a bit of a side arc. But in the end I feel like they also dropped the ball hard on him, esp. in the last zone. They built up this strong conflict only to tear that promising idea down for their moralising (and for a terrible joke - I cannot tell you how much I disliked the anti-climatic reveal of that micky mouse drone and the forced comedy that went along with it...)

But it's fine for Cahciua to be in the aetherial sea, of course. Extending her life on this planet, making her live forever here, in an artificial afterlife, is bad, but it's fine if she goes to the proper (tedious, boring, empty) afterlife and spends however long there until Erenville joins her. It's only us trying to improve on that that's bad, because it goes against nature or something.

I think this is the only thing I view a little differently. I share your general opinion on tech going against nature not being bad. And I also felt as if they were hinging too much on the nature fallacy of "Nature equals inherently good, everything unnatural that goes against it, is inherently worse".

But when it came to sustaining the endless there was at least a semblance of reason in my eyes because the idea of limited energy makes sense to me.

Long drivel under the cut.

I agree that a cycle of rebirth that postulates that no new souls are ever created doesn't sound logical.
But I can get behind the idea that the universe's energy is limited in some way and souls going back into the aetherial sea is part of this greater energy cycle (not to be confused with the rebirth cycle).
As in: there is no generation (or loss) of energy, only energy conversion.
(Or to use the infamous lion king metapher "When we die, we turn into grass, then the antelopes eat the grass, then we eat the antelopes, then Wuk Lamat falls into a cenote" etc.)

I completely agree with your other points about things being lore-inconsistent and all over the place (Meteion, Otis, Vieras etc. vs. endless/souls) so all in all that whole endless deal is still very contradictory.

But if we assume the endless make sense somehow (which I don't think they do) then they would break that energy cycle. Their excessive energy needs would mean the energy that is consumed whole would surpasses the energy that is generated/converted within the cycle.
We don't know if the aetherial sea really constitutes a limitless energy source or whether it is somehow part of that cycle. Meaning the energy needed for new souls (those that are created in addition to the old ones already in the rebirth cycle) would come from somewhere else but that "somewhere else" would also receive its energy back from another component in the cycle.

Also there is the issue of time. It sounded like the energy crisis was very urgent and they needed the energy asap as to not shut down. So any kind of solution that would require completely new scientific breakthroughs (such as harvesting enough energy from dead planets if that's possible or artificially converting general aether into life force - e.g. recreating the aetherial process of sustaining yourself via food) should
"realistically" speaking take a lot more time than they have.

I know FF14 has pulled the "highspeed breakthrough - oh my god, big calamity, suddenly we are finding all the answers and can actually build them with a match box and two clippers" trope many times already. But I never liked them doing that to begin with.
If they employed it at such a massive scale as it would be required for this kind of problem, then the solution would feel just as nonsensical to me as the game's current premise.

Anyways, sorry for picking apart this one point. I still strongly agree with the rest of your posts and definitely share your frustration.

Snip

Yeah, I completely agree with you. You put the energy problem into words perfectly.

[Loggos]

We're literally doing what Emet-Selch wanted to do. We're literally going into a world to kill everyone so that we may live. We're told to dehumanize these characters to feel better about it.

Ok I have to admit I strongly disagree with this one. I also thought the story was poop but it was not us who tried to Emet-Selch everyone, it was Sphene. She was an aggressor who tried to conquer new life. She came to our world with the intend to genocide everyone.
We were her victims and had to defend ourselves against her.
Emet didn't defend himself against us like we did against Sphene, we didn't act as aggressors against the Ascians. They attacked us like Sphene.

Coming up with new tech that leads to unnatural outcomes is all fine and good as long as it doesn't encroach on other people's right to live. But if you build something that inherently requires the continuous death of others to sustain itself then you have created a vampiristic system that exceeds the natural resources that exist and that Sphene has to share with everyone.
The endless in that scenario had at least already lived (vs. all the people living for the first time on Eytheris right now). They don't have any right to a prolonged life/eternal life at the cost of everyone else.

This also includes those who died prematurely in Alexandria. People in other reflections die prematurely too. Yet neither they nor Alexandrians have the right to extend their lives by stealing the lives of others.

Emet-Selch of all people had merit in his justification

I really disagree that Emet had merit in his justification but us defending ourselves against interdimensional invaders somehow has not. I thought the Ascians' fate was incredibly sad and I liked the Ancients and their civilisation but they didn't have the right to wipe out 14 worlds after theirs was gone.
(Edit: Sorry for making it sound like you thought Emet is right. I took it like you saying he was wrong but we could still understand his anguish/perspective somehow whereas our actions were wrong but in addition they didn't even warrant this type of understanding we could feel for Emet.)

[Mikey_R]

We spent a good portion of endwalker restoring ultima Thule, with new beings being created there off memories. They were treated like people, developed a new culture and living area, and a few even came to visit us on the source. The whole point was that no matter their circumstances or means of existing, they were real.

It is worth noting that there is a fundamental difference between the 'living' people of Ultima Thule and the rest of the known universe and that is the fact the being of Ultima Thule are created via Dynamis. This makes them distinct from all other life forms and we do not know how they are going to grow and develop. They also aren't out to destroy other world just to sustain them.

Which then brings into question your next paragraph. Why not just bring the excess energy from Ultima Thule? What excess energy? The place is created via Dynamis, which we know is a direct opposite of Aether. There is very little Aether there and certainly not enough to sustain living Memory, considering Sphene wanted to destroy a whole reflection to get enough.

As to whether the inhabitants of Living Memory are alive or not. That goes into a philosophical debate. However, consider this. Imagine, far into the future of our world, when someone dies, their memories could be stored in a database, which could then be projected onto the real world. Is this person alive? Because that is essentially all the residents of Living Memory are, projections that act based on memories of the departed. they know they aren't real, they express this themselves. They know whether they come to being is decided based on a machine to decide. Can you truly call that being alive?

[LittleArrow]

Ok I have to admit I strongly disagree with this one. I also thought the story was poop but it was not us who tried to Emet-Selch everyone, it was Sphene. She was an aggressor who tried to conquer new life. Like sorry, but she came to our world with the intend to genocide everyone.
We were her victims and had to defend ourselves against her.
Emet didn't defend himself against us like we did against Sphene, we didn't act as aggressors against the Ascians. They attacked us like Sphene.

Coming up with new tech that leads to unnatural outcomes is all fine and good as long as it doesn't encroach on other people's right to live. But if you build something that inherently requires the continuous death of others to sustain itself then you have created a vampiristic system that exceeds the natural resources that exist and that Sphene has to share with everyone.
The endless in that scenario had at least already lived (vs. all the people living for the first time on Eytheris right now). They don't have any right to a prolonged life/eternal life at the cost of everyone else.

This also includes those who died prematurely in Alexandria. People in other reflections die prematurely too. Yet neither they nor Alexandrians have the right to extend their lives by stealing the lives of others.




I really disagree that Emet had merit in his justification but us defending ourselves against interdimensional invaders somehow has not. I thought the Ascians' fate was incredibly sad and I liked the Ancients and their civilisation but they didn't have the right to wipe out 14 worlds after theirs was gone.

I don't think I did a great job with explaining myself. I do not agree with Emet-selch. It was genocide. He was a monster, but one I think we could all understand to some degree and still disagree with. What I'm saying is, deleting the entire memory database as an answer does not sit well with me in the slightest and in actuality disgusts me. We could've found a different way or at least attempted to. That is where the writing is lacking, to even acknowledge what's going to happen to these memories after they're gone. They live in us? Right so that's bs. Memories live MAYBE 2 or 3 generations if you're lucky. Not to mention it's hogwash when we're standing in front of these people and then going to delete them.

Emet-selch was wrong, and I still feel we're wrong too.

Like, it's literally a villain arc. Suffering is bad so just kill everyone. You're going to kill our world so we kill yours first so you won't need to kill ours anymore. It's stupid. It's really really stupid.

[Loggos]

I don't think you wanted to say Emet was right, don't worry. I didn't take the merit part as him being right, and instead like he was wrong but we could "understand his perspective" on some level. I presented that badly myself, my apologies.

But I still disagree with the first part I quoted, namely that we are like Emet-Selch. I still think that it is Sphene who is like Emet and we are fully in the right to defend ourselves against her. Even more so since her artificial afterlife is built on the premise of ruthlessly having to kill whole worlds to exist, so we are not just saving ourselves. We are inevitably also saving other reflections and planets.