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

[Tethan]

I think it's honestly a waste of time to argue such semantics when ya'll are clearly putting more thought into this than the writers ever did.

They tried to tackle a rather difficult and contentious philosophical topic and failed, end of story.

[Loggos]

I think it's honestly a waste of time to argue such semantics when ya'll are clearly putting more thought into this than the writers ever did.

They tried to tackle a rather difficult and contentious philosophical topic and failed, end of story.

Yeah I can wholeheartedly agree with this.

[Lersayil]

I think it's honestly a waste of time to argue such semantics when ya'll are clearly putting more thought into this than the writers ever did.

They tried to tackle a rather difficult and contentious philosophical topic and failed, end of story.

Probably true... and that just makes me sad on a whole new level.

[AlysCamoa]

I think it's honestly a waste of time to argue such semantics when ya'll are clearly putting more thought into this than the writers ever did.

They tried to tackle a rather difficult and contentious philosophical topic and failed, end of story.

Everything I could say really gets summed up here.

We can speculate that the Living Memories were some copy dreamed up by a computer, because they don't give us schematics as to how the memories are then taken out of storage and re-attached to aether; but we know from the regular lifestream process that the memories are usually peeled off and fade away. We have no reason to believe it doesn't press that back on to a blank slate soul, just the same as it does with people still 'alive' but using regulators. The story doesn't get that far. It tells us this is our decision and how we should feel about it. Don't think, don't feel, don't hear, just do.

Hell, by the insane fridge logic of Hiroi, everyone in S9 who ever died and was revived with a regulator is just as much a facsimile as the people of Living Memory. It's an insane leap to take without putting the time and effort to properly develop the scenario. To actually have us arrive at the point where we can throw our hands up, decide killing off the whole place is the only option for our survival, and then waltz home and throw a giant party with smiles on our faces for an extinction well done.

It's a great theme. Hiroi is just a hack trying to explore it again after we already did it with Emet in Shadowbringers (and Emet's Aumaurot didn't even have the same moral quandaries, since it was only his memories that made his shades, not the memories of the shades themselves). Just like Hiroi decided to revisit the 'Alphinaud makes friends' plot of post-ARR but in a much more sloppy manner.

[Boblawblah]

I think it's honestly a waste of time to argue such semantics when ya'll are clearly putting more thought into this than the writers ever did.

They tried to tackle a rather difficult and contentious philosophical topic and failed, end of story.

cute bunny boi is right.

[Soxxx]

Tagging along here to say that I couldn't agree more with this post, thank you for making it. This sums up why the final area was the worst part of the expansion for me. They ask a lot of hard questions about souls and life, never bother to answer them, and then they really just drop one line saying "don't worry this is morally okay" and expect us to just run with it. I felt horrible going through it the whole time.

What I think you didn't quite cover though was the real kicker for me. Cahciua states that the reason we're killing all of the Endless is so that Sphene won't have any reason to kill people for souls anymore, which will therefore stop her conquest. That's technically the whole reason we even decided to on this specific solution, not just that they're unsustainable. The problem then, is that killing all of the Endless did not, stop Sphene's desire to kill for her people. In fact, we don't even bother mentioning what we did to her, nor does she mention at any point that she knows they're dead. The fact that we killed them all never comes up again, and we fight and defeat Sphene regardless. So the very basis for us effectively massacring arguably living people is actually totally meaningless in the end, which not only feels horrible to me when I went through it, but it also wound up feeling like a fundamental waste of 6 hours of questing that had no impact on anything at all. Like, why didn't we just go directly to Sphene, beat her up, and then leave the Endless to run down the supply of souls they already have until they pass away?

There's also the fact that after we decide to kill them all, we immediately decide to go spend 6 hours getting to know them and getting to see just how human lively and grateful they mostly all are to be alive, with killing them hanging over our heads... It just felt emotionally insane to me.

That being said, I do understand what they were going for, especially since it was really just a mirror of Ultima Thule. I feel like there should've been a lot more emphasis from the get-go and the entire way through on them accepting death and being trapped, like Cahciua. Freeing her from the Living Memory was totally fine because she wanted to leave, but everyone else seemed kind of happy to be there. That, or the Endless should have not actually had a soul of their own, like AI or androids or something similar to those spectres in Amaurot, that basically just creates hollow shells that mimic the memories of real people as close as possible, but the technology used to do so simply uses souls to power itself for whatever reason without actually creating what are functionally real people. In fact, I feel like that's honestly what the writers were actually going for and wanted, but they made a huge mess of this weird deal with souls and memories and just never bothered to really answer any of questions of "are these real people?" properly, and in my opinion that's the real root of this whole problem.

So much of this could have been avoided if someone just read the writing back and asked, "Why?"

[OdinelStarrei]

Tagging along here to say that I couldn't agree more with this post, thank you for making it. This sums up why the final area was the worst part of the expansion for me. They ask a lot of hard questions about souls and life, never bother to answer them, and then they really just drop one line saying "don't worry this is morally okay" and expect us to just run with it. I felt horrible going through it the whole time.

What I think you didn't quite cover though was the real kicker for me. Cahciua states that the reason we're killing all of the Endless is so that Sphene won't have any reason to kill people for souls anymore, which will therefore stop her conquest. That's technically the whole reason we even decided to on this specific solution, not just that they're unsustainable. The problem then, is that killing all of the Endless did not, stop Sphene's desire to kill for her people. In fact, we don't even bother mentioning what we did to her, nor does she mention at any point that she knows they're dead. The fact that we killed them all never comes up again, and we fight and defeat Sphene regardless. So the very basis for us effectively massacring arguably living people is actually totally meaningless in the end, which not only feels horrible to me when I went through it, but it also wound up feeling like a fundamental waste of 6 hours of questing that had no impact on anything at all. Like, why didn't we just go directly to Sphene, beat her up, and then leave the Endless to run down the supply of souls they already have until they pass away?

There's also the fact that after we decide to kill them all, we immediately decide to go spend 6 hours getting to know them and getting to see just how human lively and grateful they mostly all are to be alive, with killing them hanging over our heads... It just felt emotionally insane to me.

That being said, I do understand what they were going for, especially since it was really just a mirror of Ultima Thule. I feel like there should've been a lot more emphasis from the get-go and the entire way through on them accepting death and being trapped, like Cahciua. Freeing her from the Living Memory was totally fine because she wanted to leave, but everyone else seemed kind of happy to be there. That, or the Endless should have not actually had a soul of their own, like AI or androids or something similar to those spectres in Amaurot, that basically just creates hollow shells that mimic the memories of real people as close as possible, but the technology used to do so simply uses souls to power itself for whatever reason without actually creating what are functionally real people. In fact, I feel like that's honestly what the writers were actually going for and wanted, but they made a huge mess of this weird deal with souls and memories and just never bothered to really answer any of questions of "are these real people?" properly, and in my opinion that's the real root of this whole problem.

So much of this could have been avoided if someone just read the writing back and asked, "Why?"

"Oh no, I've lost my wedding ring to my beloved! Right after we were lucky to be Endless at the same time!"

"Oh, you guys have weddings?" (I have already decided to kill you and your soon to be wife)

"Yes! I died young, and I never got the chance to purpose. She was heartbroken and never took another for as long as she lived, even though her memories were wiped. Now, I can make up for my mistake, and say the things I should said."

"That's absolutely tragic. I found your ring, here you go. " (I have already decided to kill you and your soon to be wife)

"Oh my god, thank you so much! Truly, you are such a great person to help me, even when our existence is endless. Here's some tickets for the ferry! I'm not going to waste another second keeping her waiting."

"No problem, wish you the best. G'raha, let's go."

"Oh, look, there they are waving at us. They're waving at the people who are about to literally delete their entire existence."

Did no one at SE find this ****** up while it was being written?

[HighlanderClone]

They tried to tackle a rather difficult and contentious philosophical topic and failed, end of story.

Not sure they even tried.

[arstoka]

I think it's honestly a waste of time to argue such semantics when ya'll are clearly putting more thought into this than the writers ever did.

They tried to tackle a rather difficult and contentious philosophical topic and failed, end of story.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Dapperino]

Holy shit thank you for this post. I sat at that first fucking terminal for hours before I was willing to progress the main story because of how cruel it made me feel. And then after that, after watching all the people vanish, all the color fade, all the life die, Cahciua goes "oh by the way some people might still be around unwilling to let go, you can help them if you want." And the first one I do is a quest that describes levin sickness and how we ALREADY know how to cure it but can't tell anyone in the game? And then the second quest there. Oh boy. That second quest.

A simple little thing, just a tour guide who wants to give one last tour before he vanishes into nothingness. He takes us to a couple places, and then, he hands us a coin and asks us to make a wish. Then he talks about how much he loved giving people tours. How happy he was being a tour guide in life that he eagerly jumped at the opportunity to act as a tour guide in death to ease the anxiety of new arrivals. Then he takes his own coin, and makes a wish that if he ever gets another chance at life, that he hopes he can use his tours as a chance to make more friends. And then he dies. An absolutely crushing scene that not only made me actually cry, but filled me with so much anger at how dismissive Krile and Graha were at this senseless, cruel loss of life. It took Krile from being one of my favorite characters in the entire game to being less than dirt in my eyes. The scene hit hard in the worst possible way. This wasn't an unavoidable tragedy, this was pure incompetence, an unwillingness to even explore other options that led to this.

How can any of this be rationalized as good? I hated the infantilization of Emet because he was a terrible person killing people because he considered them less than him, and therefore undeserving of life. Now we do the exact same to another group of people and I'm not supposed to be upset about this? Never before in a game have I been so incredibly disgusted by the mandatory action put before me that I just stopped playing. But I got so close here. If we can travel between shards and make fake atomos and open portals to the void there's no fucking shot we couldn't have let the Endless continue to exist. There had to be a way. But we didn't even fucking try.