Problematic notion about Zone 5 & 6 story bits.

[Lurina]

It's possible that they were actively trying to avoid the current popular discourse around it, but it's also possible that they just didn't think a more nuanced story would so neatly fit into just a zone and a half -- but still felt it was a story they wanted to tell anyway. Probably a little of both, if I were to guess.

I agree that a little more time and space given for this narrative to breathe couldn't have hurt it, but it is what it is in the end. I'm more confused (and this is a tangential response to other posts I've seen, not you, for the record), given that what we got is so heavy-handed, that the discourse is so much about the so-called moral quandary of the central conflict, and not more about its lack of nuance. Not to say that I haven't seen a lot of the latter too, but so much more of the conversation is hung up on arguing whether or not it was a genocide, or simply whether or not it was wrong. And I would never tell someone they're wrong for how a story makes them feel, but the answer to that particular question, dictated by the facts as presented to us by the text (and the subtext, for that matter, as little of it there was room for), is actually very cut and dry.

People get worked up about this sort of thing when the tone of the story differs wildly from the actual events, because it turns an in-universe discomfort into an out-of-game discomfort where you can't help but wonder about the intentions of the writer. If they wanted to avoid discourse, the solution wasn't to try and sand every hard edge off the scenario until it all felt strange and artificial, but to embrace and display self-awareness about the weight of the situation and its complexity. Living Memory raises questions it seems completely uninterested in engaging with. What constitutes a person? Is it ever okay to kill the innocent for the greater good, and can someone who does so really be considered a hero, even if it is? Is there some inherent value to "natural life", or is the amount of people who are happy all that matters? When is it appropriate to fight for someone to the absolute bitter end, and when is it appropriate to grieve and let them go?

Dawntrail feels incurious about all of these, either assuming an answer without exploration or not bothering to answer at all. All depth is stripped away in service of being able to end on an upbeat tone and a simple message about being willing to pass things on to the next generation. I feel patronized.

At its core it's the same problem as the Sundering plot in Endwalker - a potentially powerful story is so undermined by its unwillingness to seriously confront the player or its own ideas in any way that it becomes a cheap tearjerker that's uncomfortable when you give it critical thought. But unlike Endwalker, which only felt frustratingly incomplete in its introspection, its so excessive in doing this that the situation loses any sense of reality and becomes hard to take seriously at all. The fact that they keep returning to this kind of story (right down to the Amaurot-esque imagery of Living Memory and the final dungeon where you run through the memories of a dying civilization...) while seemingly having nothing new to say is just dire.

I really didn't feel emotionally invested in this part of the story. With Emet and Amaurot, you could feel his investment in the conflict even when you were at odds with his beliefs. With Sphene, it just felt disconnected. I thought that her moment with Robot Otis in S9 was compelling, because she had just reconnected with someone precious to her briefly only to lose him again permanently, his machine model being an early precursor of the Endless. The execution felt slightly off, but I felt that Hiroi was on to something there.

But then we encounter Otis again in LM and Sphene has no involvement with his story. These are all her 'precious subjects', yet there's no reaction as Lamaty'i and company run around freeing up disk space on LM's cloud storage. I wasn't left with the feeling that Sphene knew who any of these people actually were, or that she even recognized that she was losing them. Her complete absence throughout the zone makes her feel indifferent to the whole thing.

I understand what they were doing on a conceptual level, and they could have easily made this area heart-wrenching if we saw Sphene's connection to the zones that we were shutting down. But the execution was just so insipid that I just couldn't feel any stake in the matter. We just followed around and watched as the lights went out in an abandoned theme park.

I agree. Sphene being so completely cut off from the situation was a major part of what made it feel so empty. There's no serious pushback on the Endless at all, neither in an emotional or intellectual sense, and you're left feeling like even the story itself doesn't care.