Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Bibine_Bine]

Which is why we also went in and exterminated all the Garleans to the last man, woman, and child, right?

I'd really love for you to direct me to the moment in the MSQ where we murdered innocent Garlean citizens and children.

Which is why when confronting the Telophoroi, we did our best to kill as many of them as possible rather than minimizing fatalities, right?

The Telophoroi were the aggressors. They were trying to kill all of us, we stopped them. It's pretty cut and dry there.

We're told the only way to stop Sphene is to shut down the Meso Terminal by Cahciua, who has been withholding information to railroad us into her own objectives from the second she finds us. Even assuming Cahciua is being honest despite that pattern of behavior, there was no way to extract Azem's paperweight from the terminal without shutting it down wholesale? There was no way to terminate Sphene's program, rather than the system as a whole? None of those options are explored by the Scions, who at every opportunity have endeavored to find another way that prioritizes their ethics over expedience.

It is literally stated that the Meso Terminal is connected to everything else in Living Memory. Even if there might have been another way, we have no time to figure that out because Sphene is about to become an emotionless digital construct hell-bent on exterminating every world she can get her hands on to sustain the Endless. I'm not even going to get into questioning Cahciua's honesty or possible ulterior motives because that seems like an entirely pointless and speculative conversation.

Even assuming the story properly explored these questions, why would the Scions feel good about what they had to do? It was kill or be killed, to be sure, but the Endless themselves harbored no enmity. They didn't have agency in the actions of their regent. So why would you pin her actions on them?

No one is pinning Sphene's actions on the endless. It's more that the Endless were required to justify her actions, and with them gone she no longer has any justification.

[AlysCamoa]

I'd really love for you to direct me to the moment in the MSQ where we murdered innocent Garlean citizens and children.

I see somebody has a strong grasp of rhetorical questions. We (the Scions) didn't do any of those things, precisely because we're capable of differentiating the actions of a state from the actions of its constituent citizens. So killing the Endless merely because Sphene did something makes no sense, given those previous cases.

But, we're forced to do so anyway because the (poorly written) story says we have no time to do anything else (despite Cahciua's plan specifically intending to speed up the thing we're trying to stop). Okay, so be it. Why do we feel good that we had to choose expedience over ethics? Why are we having a sing-along ending?