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

[Lady_Silvermoon]

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.


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.


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.

The FF14 universe explains that a person is made up of three types of aether, soul aether, memory aether and physical aether. When the memory aether is extracted from the soul aether it is sent to Living Memory. How is an Omicron a person if an Endless isn't? The Endless have thoughts, feels, desires and if it's all just a programmed based on what it thinks the person might want, then it's a janky program as it's making Cahciua act towards its own destruction when one of it's imperatives is to preserve itself. If your argument is that it's not your thoughts, feelings, desires and memories that make you you, but your soul, I'll remind you, the Alexandrians are still using souls as a form of currency, so I hope that's not the part of the person that counts as the actual person.

Personally I think the part of the person that loves their fuzzy bunbun and plans revolutions is the part of the person that's an actual person, rather than the part with no memories, no feelings, no thoughts and can work as a coin in a pinch.

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.

But we're wiping out her people to lower her morale. No one to save, no imperative to save them. They can sit on the servers for hundreds of years if necessary. AND they have VR. It makes more sense for them to exist in a VR world on the servers rather than expend life aether giving them physical bodies.

[ClayyLmao]

The FF14 universe explains that a person is made up of three types of aether, soul aether, memory aether and physical aether. When the memory aether is extracted from the soul aether it is sent to Living Memory. How is an Omicron a person if an Endless isn't? The Endless have thoughts, feels, desires and if it's all just a programmed based on what it thinks the person might want, then it's a janky program as it's making Cahciua act towards its own destruction when one of it's imperatives is to preserve itself. If your argument is that it's not your thoughts, feelings, desires and memories that make you you, but your soul, I'll remind you, the Alexandrians are still using souls as a form of currency, so I hope that's not the part of the person that counts as the actual person.

Personally I think the part of the person that loves their fuzzy bunbun and plans revolutions is the part of the person that's an actual person, rather than the part with no memories, no feelings, no thoughts and can work as a coin in a pinch.

I don't think it's a Janky program, I think it's that the program gives the Endless free will to follow the desires that they had during life. So obviously Cahciua, someone who opposed the concept, would still be working towards that end, even as a simulation. Sphene-bot cared so much about her subjects that it wouldn't cross her mind to limit their will.

The thing about living things being made up of the Three Aethers is that the Omicrons are still made up of, arguably, those three types of Aether. They didn't just have their souls inserted into robots, they were originally a biological species that, in order to fight of being conquered, augmented themselves further and further robotically until they became a mechanical lifeform instead. They are still made up of at least two forms of Aether, memory and soul. Whether or not they still posses physical aether is a toss up, but they're still their original selves. The Endless are only made up of one of those three, Memory. They are not a full person anymore. They are a computer program. An AI trained off of the memories of the dead. If I were to go into Character.ai right now and program a chatbot off of the entire life of my deceased mother, would that chatbot be alive? It would have all the same capacities that the Endless do. Would I then be committing murder if I were to delete that chatbot? Would it be an evil action?

[Soxxx]

I don't think it's a Janky program, I think it's that the program gives the Endless free will to follow the desires that they had during life. So obviously Cahciua, someone who opposed the concept, would still be working towards that end, even as a simulation. Sphene-bot cared so much about her subjects that it wouldn't cross her mind to limit their will.

The thing about living things being made up of the Three Aethers is that the Omicrons are still made up of, arguably, those three types of Aether. They didn't just have their souls inserted into robots, they were originally a biological species that, in order to fight of being conquered, augmented themselves further and further robotically until they became a mechanical lifeform instead. They are still made up of at least two forms of Aether, memory and soul. Whether or not they still posses physical aether is a toss up, but they're still their original selves. The Endless are only made up of one of those three, Memory. They are not a full person anymore. They are a computer program. An AI trained off of the memories of the dead. If I were to go into Character.ai right now and program a chatbot off of the entire life of my deceased mother, would that chatbot be alive? It would have all the same capacities that the Endless do. Would I then be committing murder if I were to delete that chatbot? Would it be an evil action?

Apologies for butting in here, but I think this is incorrect. At one point in the final area, Cahciua states "Even the aether I'm composed of may have come from the attack on Tuliyollal." (Exact quote, first or second quest in the area). She clearly isn't composed of their memory aether, so she's very explicitly stating that she in fact is composed, at least in part or in some way, of soul aether. This also makes it clear that the Endless aren't just consuming the soul aether as fuel, but it's a fundamental part of their composition. So my understanding was that they only thing they lacked was a physical body/physical aether, and this was a big part in me personally considering them to be alive, unless I've misinterpreted that?

[ClayyLmao]

Apologies for butting in here, but I think this is incorrect. At one point in the final area, Cahciua states "Even the aether I'm composed of may have come from the attack on Tuliyollal." She clearly isn't composed of their memory aether, so she's very explicitly stating that she in fact is composed, at least in part or in some way, of soul aether. This also makes it clear that the Endless aren't just consuming the soul aether as fuel, but it's a fundamental part of their composition. So my understanding was that they only thing they lacked was a physical body/physical aether, and this was a big part in me personally considering them to be alive, unless I've misinterpreted that?

If she isn't made out of Memory Aether but rather Soul Aether then that might explain why she's more... conscious than most others. But the game also says multiple times that it's the memories that make the Endless, and the souls are used as currency. It's also likely that during the attack on Tuliyollal the soldiers were collecting souls from the dead and bringing them back to the Everkeep to separate into Soul and Memory Aether. To be honest with how shoddy the writing is in the final act it's hard to parse what's valid and what isn't.

[Soxxx]

If she isn't made out of Memory Aether but rather Soul Aether then that might explain why she's more... conscious than most others. But the game also says multiple times that it's the memories that make the Endless, and the souls are used as currency. It's also likely that during the attack on Tuliyollal the soldiers were collecting souls from the dead and bringing them back to the Everkeep to separate into Soul and Memory Aether. To be honest with how shoddy the writing is in the final act it's hard to parse what's valid and what isn't.

I agree. At the end of the day, I feel that the writer largely expected the player to be on board with their exact thought process and reasoning without considering that people might have different ideas or questions than they wanted, which highlights why I think the expansion was so divisive. If you went along with things as intended, the expansion was probably fantastic. But the more you ask questions and for reasons behind things, we just keep running into this issue where they just didn't see the need to further explore or clarify some very crucial questions that wound up being very important to myself and apparently many others. There's a lot of other examples like this, but this is a big one that wound up ruining the final area for me personally.

[KadenLag]

I think it was fine, I think its left up to interpretation, your supposed to question the morality of it, much like the last expansion which did the same thing and you even view the entire world splitting in the same way.
If I made 50 clones of you, are they all alive? are they all their own person? If they are, is there any value in the original?
They also are endless because they consume other peoples souls, so either way your a "murderer" if you extend yourself like you mention, at the same time are you also not saving countless lives?
Plus the endless are not aware of loss or anything said because the system removes it from them, is this a good example of how to live? It even dictates other aspects of their lives. They are basically puppets to a machine. Each person will have their own views and I think each persons views are valid with no easy, correct answer.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

If she isn't made out of Memory Aether but rather Soul Aether then that might explain why she's more... conscious than most others.*snip*

Her body is made out of soul aether as is all of the people we interact there, while her mind is made out of memory aether. Did she really seem like more of a "person" than anyone else there? They all seemed like people to me. The only person we knew before they were uploaded was Wuk Lamat's mom and she seemed the same.

The thing about living things being made up of the Three Aethers is that the Omicrons are still made up of, arguably, those three types of Aether. They didn't just have their souls inserted into robots, they were originally a biological species that, in order to fight of being conquered, augmented themselves further and further robotically until they became a mechanical lifeform instead. They are still made up of at least two forms of Aether, memory and soul. *snip*

I don't know if the Omicrons have souls. They needed G'raha because they said they long abandoned the part of themselves that allowed them to imagine, to have dreams. Omega explains that every omicron would come up with the exact same solution to a problem. How they are people, yet, the walking, talking, thinking, dreaming, desiring memories of people aren't is beyond me. They aren't just a program. We see the memory aether extracted from the souls and sent to Living Memory.

And while it could be argued that personality is what is stored in the soul since certain trails like adventurousness and high intelligence have been seen to be in common with different individuals that have had the same soul, when you get into the minutiae of what makes Cahciua, Cahciua, I'd argue it's whatever got sent to Living Memory. She tells us her hopes, her dreams, she expresses FOUR TIMES on her death walk how she wishes she had more time. She has wishes. Again, how are the Omicron people who struggle to dream or imagine or want for things, yet the Endless are not? If something is walking towards it death telling me how much it wishes it didn't have to die, then call me crazy, but that thing is probably alive. Fear of one's own end is an indicator of sentience. These people know who they are, where they are, what they are doing, they are self-aware.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I think it was fine, I think its left up to interpretation, your supposed to question the morality of it, much like the last expansion which did the same thing and you even view the entire world splitting in the same way.
If I made 50 clones of you, are they all alive? are they all their own person? If they are, is there any value in the original?
They also are endless because they consume other peoples souls, so either way your a "murderer" if you extend yourself like you mention, at the same time are you also not saving countless lives?
Plus the endless are not aware of loss or anything said because the system removes it from them, is this a good example of how to live? It even dictates other aspects of their lives. They are basically puppets to a machine. Each person will have their own views and I think each persons views are valid with no easy, correct answer.

It's actually way worse than that. The story answers the question directly. It tells you that no these aren't people and you shouldn't care about them. And then it spends an entire zone attempting to make you care about them. If these are mindless programs that I should be deleting without a second thought, why am I dressing as a bunny and acting in plays to give children happy memories that I am about to delete five minutes later?

The story tells you what to think, makes you act based on what it told you to think, then spends several hours attempting to make you feel like what it just insisted is true isn't true. We don't spend an entire area attempting to emotionally bond with the robot soldiers and there is a reason for that. None of the robots are off to the side proposing marriage to each other, or making art or attempting to cheer us up.

If Queen Sphene is just a malfunctioning program we need to take down, then what's all this "I need to talk to her, let her know I understand" crap about? Whether you think the Endless are people or not, we are treating them like people up til the moment we delete them. And the back and forth between the weepy eyes and ferris wheel rides feels psychotic.

[Aulainn]

They also are endless because they consume other peoples souls, so either way your a "murderer" if you extend yourself like you mention, at the same time are you also not saving countless lives?

Huh, so we really are no different from this genocidal AI Sphene, she too is saving countless lives by killing countless of yours.

Not helping the case for me.

[Loggos]

Huh, so we really are no different from this genocidal AI Sphene, she too is saving countless lives by killing countless of yours.

Not helping the case for me.

In the grand scheme of things Sphene will have to kill many many more people than we are erasing when we turn off the terminals. She needs the souls of an entire reflection to recharge living memory's energy temporarily. That energy will run out at some point, hence she'll have to consume another world. That energy will run out too and it'll go on and on like this. It's a moral dilemma because of course every life has value but we are talking about fantastical dimensions here. One side is essentially a black hole for entire worlds meaning an endless stream of dead worlds whereas our action is a one time action that sacrifices the endless. That in turn doesn't just save our own world but also every other world that would have fallen victim to Sphene in the future.
It's not an easy decision and I disagree with how SE handled the morality question but if we stick with what's canon (even though we can vividly criticise it and pick it apart) and "accept" that there was no other way to save the endless then it just had to be done and we are in no way like Sphene or Emet in that scenario.