Finished the MSQ - Feels bad, pushed to do evil [Spoilers inside]

[Tsumdere]

I didn't say it wasn't a philosophical debate. It is. It's just such a simple one that there is no wrestling with it. They aren't alive. They are computer programs running the dead's memories over and over again ad infinitum. They aren't the souls of the people who died. The souls of the dead are sold to the citizens to be used to revive themselves when they die. They are purely the memories of the dead being forced to play out a happy life because the AI that contains Sphene's memories was programed to put the continuation of the simulation above all else. My WoL would happily shut down the simulation rather than go and start harvesting the souls of the billions of innocent lives in every reflection for the benefit of the tens of thousands in the simulation. It's not a debate. You either shut down the machine, or start throwing babies into the soul extracting wood chipper for Sphene.

Except the game doesn't present people that are any less than human. They show us people who have families, friends, jobs, dreams, critical thought, self-awareness, and emotions. They may be devoid of a physical body, but that doesn't make them less alive. Great care has been taken across the rest of the game to humanize things that aren't real. Look at Ultima Thule - the Omicron quests literally go over how being conscious and experiencing joy is enough to make you alive. The Endless aren't made of pure Dynamis like the Ultima Thule shades are, but isn't that a close enough parallel to make people stop and think for a second?

Automatically thinking of them of lesser and not worthy of trying for a second to save them is why it feels evil even if it was necessary. That's why the writing is lazy.

[BakoolJaJa]

It's just such a simple one that there is no wrestling with it.

It's a "simple" one, only because the writers didn't bother to flesh it out one single bit. I'm imagining right now what a terrible game Nier Replicant would have been if it just... deleted 80% of the game that is the exploration of what the replicants are and how the different characters feel about it. Then instead of discussions for years after the game's release, a successful sequel, anime, etc, everybody would have just said - "There's nothing to debate here, they're obviously not alive." and that would have been the end of the franchise.

Top writing. Exactly what we should be praising and hoping next expansions are like.

[Kaecilius]

They are computer programs running the dead's memories over and over again ad infinitum.

This is incorrect. The moment they show sentience and the ability to learn and change they are entirely new lifeforms based off a copy of the previous one. We can say that machines intelligences don't deserve the same moral consideration as flesh and blood beings, but we are also buddies with the Omicrons that might find that a bit problematic.

My WoL would happily shut down the simulation rather than go and start harvesting the souls of the billions of innocent lives in every reflection for the benefit of the tens of thousands in the simulation.

Sure, so did mine. We had to stop things from escalating. But once again, there is no weight given to what we're doing, because the narrative doesn't want us to even consider the possibility of moral nuance. They are wrong and unnatural, and we are right and the good guys.

[ClayyLmao]

-snip-

The game explains that they are computer programs infused with the memories of dead people. You were not paying attention if you think otherwise. They are lesser. They aren't alive. They are essentially dolls being controlled by the machine. This is explicitly stated. Omicrons are Synthetic Lifeforms. They're different enough that yes, I consider them to be alive where I don't consider a chatbot to be.

-snip-

You'll get no argument from me. This writing is awful. But as presented in the game, there is no moral greyness in this situation. You either unplug the machine that replays and extrapolates the memories of the dead or you start killing people for Sphene-bot. I'm not going to argue with what you or anyone else would've written into the story instead. That'd be like arguing that Dawntrail would've been better if Zenos came back and Zenos'd all over the place. It didn't happen, so it's irrelevant. And yeah, if you were even a semi talented writer you'd be able to do a better job than Hiroi did, and I'm sure you'd be able to write a properly thought provoking philosophical dilemma.

-snip-

You're right, it doesn't replay them, it extrapolates from them. They're still not alive. They're AI inside of a machine. The Omicrons are not a computer program, they're a synthetic lifeform. The Omicrons also don't suck the life force out of innocent people to sustain themselves. As far as your second point goes, read what I said above. I'm not going to debate your version of Dawntrail. With how things are presented in game, this wasn't an evil action, which is what the OP was insinuating.

[Bunyon]

The first half of DT should've gone by a lot faster so we can get introduced into the concepts being discussed here and have characters come up with more conclusions than asking a single time "Is there any other way?" and just being met with "No."

Would have been a great way to flesh out Krile's parents too and give her story some much needed weight.

[CaptainLagbeard]

It's almost like ShB, EW and DT were written by different people.

[Kaecilius]

They're still not alive. They're AI inside of a machine.

I think that's where we don't see eye to eye. Not exploring this concept in further depth is wild to me coming from the studio that published Nier: Automata.

We could have even reached the same conclusion, but as it stands it feels that they are just saying "don't think too much about it, this is wrong and unnatural. Here's a final boss".

[ClayyLmao]

I think that's where we don't see eye to eye. Not exploring this concept in further depth is wild to me coming from the studio that published Nier: Automata.

We could have even reached the same conclusion, but as it stands it feels that they are just saying "don't think too much about it, this is wrong and unnatural. Here's a final boss".

You're so right. And if they had made a more compelling argument in game, we might be in agreement. But as it stands, with Erenville's mother who is an endless herself straight up saying that Sphene, who is also an endless, is just a computer program pursuing the desires of a dead woman through her memories, even explicitly asking "Is she doing what the real Sphene would have done?", I'm 99% sure they aren't alive, and it isn't an evil action. This was OP's original concern. No The WoL isn't evil for shutting down the computer, just like we aren't evil for stopping Emet from finishing the Rejoining.

We could argue the hypothetical of if they had written the story differently for years. And the debate on whether or not AI is alive is a philosophical dilemma for people MUCH smarter than me or you to have, and certainly not on the forums of an MMO.

[Loggos]

The more I think about the potential solutions we could have offered the more the logical inconsistency of the whole cloud thing bothers me. They really wrote themselves into a corner.

If synthetic life forms like the omicron can exist perfectly fine and sustain themselves via "normal" energy sources why do the memories in the cloud need this super duper special soul life force and nothing else works?
If we assume for a second they aren't real people (I disagree but let's just say for the sake of the argument) then why do non-sentient beings/not-real-people-facsimiles need soul life force? Why can the big super computer not be fed with aether? It would be an enormous amount yes, and that would be its own problem (see the whole conflict of primal summonings depleting the world of its aether).
But if you can create primals from aether or fly across the universe with aether then I have a hard time believing that a super computer that simulates non-sentient beings /not-real-people-facsimiles can somehow not be sustained by aether. Or dynamis. Or anything else. The unaxplained need for "life force" and the insistence of "it just has to be that bc I said so" is such a contrived plot point.

But even if the endless are sentient (which I agree with) then this still makes little sense because we have seen other soulless beings that can, again, exist perfectly well without needing to feed on other souls' life force. Meteion was fine. The omicron were fine (assuming they had no soul - I'm not sure about that tbh). So what makes sentient entities inside this one computer program so different? The reason is literally just "because the plot needs it".

Even more annoying is the point that normal souls don't run out of energy as long as their mortal vessel doesn't die. This either means souls lose no energy to begin with or the aether/energy that is used to maintain their mortal vessel (food aether for flesh, power sources for robots) can be converted into life force. So either the life force in a soul is so abundant that, given an immortal vessel in the physical realm, it can exist forever, which could also mean abundant energy for the endless.
Or the conversion of aether into life force is definitely possible. Which brings me back to the point of credibility. Soul transplants into robots were possible for the Alexandrians centuries ago, recreating the soul cleansing process of the natural afterlife was possible centuries ago, but recreating the process of converting aether into life force? This is where we draw the line. This is definitely not possible so we don't even need to try and solve that problem. Because we say so.

[Silver-Strider]

Or you could like... get rid of the parasitism, since in this case that is merely a consequence of Sphene having a very inefficient method of keeping the Endless going. Their dependence on outside energy and living aether is only something they are afflicted with due to one particular technological paradigm. We know the Omicrons did storing minds as data better, and we still have access to their civilization in Ultima Thule.

Your argument that what the game made us do was the only solution under those circumstances, is conceptually no different from saying that the only way to rid us of a curable affliction is to kill all the patients.

In what time? Sphene is on the verge of interdimension fusion and is erasing her kind personality to become a tyrant so that any other dimension she goes to will face the full force of her army. While the game doesn't exactly instill the feeling of urgency of the situation with how lax we are going to each terminal, there's realistically not a quick way to go to Ultima Thule, create an entire armada of new bodies for the Endless to transfer their memories into and come back to show Sphene it's possible.

The writing is awful in its entirety but within the confines of what we were given, there really wasn't a quick alternative to go and solve the problem either.