Dawntrail's Final Zones destroy everything the story has built.

[Urielparadox]

I think you missed some clear points, and while other people have pointed them out to you. You have ignored or still not understood them. So lets try a different way

AI sphene was overwriting endless sphene, who after their time with us was fighting to not kill others to keep the endless alive by then end of it, even asking for our help once convinced that it was wrong. AI sphene said that endless sphene was too weak cause they no longer were putting the endless over the lives of others. In order to try and stop AI sphene from overwriting real sphene, and take a way and weaken sphene was to turn off the towers. Without turning them off AI sphene would be able to use the computing powers and access to the soul stored. The same things that were storing the rest of the dead souls.

Without getting into the moral argument of AI, The endless aren't even AI. The main point of every section was essentially unlocking the memories of the npc's we met. Once their memories were restored they asked to be turned off. Because they were mere facsimiles of themselves and not real. Every section we met npc's who had heavily altered and controlled memories. They were not real versions of them selves, they were stuck in loops created by the system. They weren't even AI at this point they were merely programs. They would not have had a peaceful natural expiration because the coding would not have allowed for them to know this. Their memories were altered to the point that anything "bad" was removed. The idea that they were consuming other lives to keep themselves sustained was absolutely appalling to every endless that had their memories "restored".

This is also different from the previous expansions argument which was, our souls were divided up into fractions creating whole new people in the process. To the Ascians, rejoining them was restoring people to their "whole selves" and not murder because the souls weren't dieing or going away, they were just rejoining. Because if were simply looking at souls and not people. No one was actually dieing. Also Emet put us on this path here, telling us to go here, most likely knowing we would have to go through this. That was what made their story so compelling is because we could understand their motives and feel for them. They just wanted their friends back, which was possible. however this would result in killing every new person that had been created thay had become a person and lived a life they chose. Which is what we Showed Emet in the end. These weren't new people. They couldn't build lives of their own that existed outside the programming they were given, where as AI that has become sentient is capable of making these decisions.

Even if you still want consider the endless alive and people. We made the exact decision we made at the end of Endwalker. In order to save the lives of many, we had to put a stop to the few.

[Rolder50]

That boy is a clone until the game presents me with 1 other mamool ja with a regulator.

The clone idea is much better then my idea, which was mainly sphene and some advanced robot technology

[Lersayil]

That boy is a clone until the game presents me with 1 other mamool ja with a regulator.

Hopefully they don't go down that lane. It would mean that Sphene had access to cloning technology additionally to the perfect soul and memory manipulating tech, and somehow was unable to formulate a better plan than the one she rolled with...

[Roda]

Hopefully they don't go down that lane. It would mean that Sphene had access to cloning technology additionally to the perfect soul and memory manipulating tech, and somehow was unable to formulate a better plan than the one she rolled with...

I meeaannn.. he could've been a prototype for the solution that didn't pan out because the clones then made their own souls instead of being husks for the endless to possess. (I don't even think meet selch's clones were husks as I don't think he had any issue with stealing someone's body like that)

[Somnolence]

The entire Endless story was rushed and not properly explored.

I see some say they were just AIs. This does not seem the case since souls are needed to sustain them.

In general, the way I understood Alexandrian tech is using a soul with stripped memories and putting somebodies memories on top of it.

Endless also are using souls and have memories on top of them, no?

The only similar situation to this is how sundered ascians work. The sundered soul receives original ascian memories and awakens as original persona with ancient powers. Memories are lost during reincarnation so Emet Selch doodads, which were made during Amaurot times, contains copies of the memories so I guess the principle is similar?

Alas, none of this is properly explored. Partially because the story is some sort of FF9 ripoff? Did not play other FF games so cannot tell how much exactly was copied. But IMO all stories based on other games do not fit as neatly as FFXIV original stories.

[Shialan]

You really fail to see the bigger picture, instead of trying to figure out a solution like G'rahas, for example artificial bodies or SOMETHING, you decided to snuff out the potential lives of billions. I want you to remember, we shut those machines down only because "then Sphene will have no reason to merge worlds" not because we needed to.

So, did we decide to turn them off before or after we got told what Sphene was going to do?

[MikkoAkure]

These people all had lives before they were Endless.

What is left is an overly complicated graveyard that requires living aether to embody memories of the deceased into humanoid shape. 9/10ths of the population isn't even there because of aether shortages, an NPC mentions that the buildings stand empty, and they seem to know about aether shortages and ambivalent as to whether or not they will continue to exist. Much of what we see are facades, the infrastructure is crumbling, and the people in the know said there's no alternative energy source for what the place needs.

The system requires the deaths of countless in order to power that of the "living" dead. It's Emet-Selch all over again. Even if it didn't require killing people on other worlds to keep up, I don't know if it's morally right to keep it going anyway. The dead should be laid to rest, not linger on indefinitely in Disney World. I really struggle to see why people have a problem with shutting it all down.

[Mikey_R]

It's not sufficient to convince the player to simply tell them "it's not possible". We should be shown/explained why it is not possible.

We were told exactly why it wasn't possible. As more Endless are created, you require more and more energy. Energy isn't infinite, there is only so much that can go around.

Now, I use the word energy here for a good reason. The system might have started out using souls to power it, we might have changed it to require Aether or Dynamis, maybe both. It doesn't matter, at some point, it will end.

We also have not met a technological civilisation that wanted to keep all their dead alive for all eternity, so no, we haven't met a civilisation that could do it no problems.

We also don't know whether they have been erased from existence or just put back on the 'hard drive'. Their memories might still be there they just aren't consuming Aether anymore. Which is a much better situation than draining vast amounts of Aether to make arcane entities which act human.

[Aurumis]

They werent a race, they were memories stored in a database.

If it was simply that, in and of itself, I MIGHT sympathize.

But no, it went further than that. A computer that killed living beings and harvested its souls to sustain itself.

Sorry, that was an abomination. My only regret is not blowing the damn place to smithereens.

Exactly this!! You can't compare that to real people. And they are EATING other's people live's for a selfish desire of continuing existing when they are already DEAD. Meanwhile the rest of the worlds have only ONE opportunity to live. Fuck Alexandrians, unplug them all.

[LittleArrow]

OP, you have every right to feel that way. I felt very similar. Despite what anyone says the story is at odds with itself. If they weren't alive and not people and we shouldn't feel guilty then every string of sad music, every tear jerking scene written to make you cry and feel loss was a waste of writing and shouldn't have been there. The story does want you to feel conflict b/c emotional investment but also doesn't want you to think you're doing exactly what the emotional investment implies what you're doing - which is geonciding an entire generational planet of people.

Also, let's just forget Ultima Thule and the entirety of that area. Oh but it's different! Oh but it's not! Those people are memories come to life due to dynamis. The people in Living Memory are memories come to life through aether. It's the same thing.

If the writers did a good job, they would've written the endless to have ques they're just AI or stalled memories that cannot create new thoughts / ideas - but of course that would've taken the story in a different direction that would've had to earned your sympathies.

Oh but Sphene is programmed! Yeah so what? She's a different Sphene. Of course she's not the original queen, she even chuckles bitterly when it's called out by a NPC she isn't the real queen. She knows she's not. You know... self-aware.

It's a mess. I skipped massive sections because honestly if I had watched it, I wouldn't be able to look at my WoL the same again. Hopefully, they will address it and possibly find a way to save these people in post patches, but it doesn't change the awful writing that's there.

Also, resorting to deleting generations of people to defeat the baddie was such a stupid idea. It didn't change anything in the story - WE STILL HAVE TO FIGHT HER. Supposedly deleting people was supposed to convince the queen, that already said nothing would change her course, to stop what she was doing. In fact, deleting those memories actually sped up the process b/c she was trying to save the ones that we hadn't gotten to.

Yet in the end the result was the same with or without the deletion. We had to wait for a vulnerable calculation time that didn't depend on the deletion - it was going to happen b/c she was going to be distracted. Please - please correct me in this if I misread or missed something, because that's just salt in the wound and I already hate this story as it is.