Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[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?

[CuteBucket]

I think we can all agree that Living Memory and this last part of the MSQ sucked, it's all just disagreement on in the Endless were actually "alive" or not. I would posit that they are not, but that the writing is all over the place wants two contradictory things to be true at once: That the Endless do have real thoughts and feelings and sentience, thus making them more or less alive even without a soul, or that the Endless are nothing more than the digitized memories of dead people stuck to run around in endless loops at the "happiest time of their life" forever in this digital purgatory that needs so much energy to run its threatening the life of everyone across the Source and all the remaining Shards.

The writers will treat them one way one moment and another the next, entirely based on what that scene wants us as the audience to feel about them. They could have leaned into one side or the other and maybe this would have worked. But they tried to have it both ways and instead get this confusing, jumbled mess of a zone and theme. Oh, we can't just shut down the terminals, that's not SAD enough, we must ERASE all the data on them (even though by the looks of it we just turned it off and nothing else.) The Endless have no sense of self preservation, which is part of what leads me to believe they are not "alive" in any sense, because we just flat out tell some of them "yeah we're shutting this place down," and they don't act to preserve their "life" at all, they're just like "okay Here's a sidequest to fulfill my dream of being a great retail worker even in the afterlife so I'll disappear."

Honestly I felt worse about metaphorically burning the Library of Alexandria by deleting it and their museums than I did about any of the "people" there. It's all a mess though, that's for sure.

[Turtledeluxe]

I've never disputed that, in the context of the (poorly written) story, the Endless had to die. We (the player character and company) are under no obligation to become the cows on the dinnerplates of Endless. Even so, us having a big ol' laugh party and sing-along as we leave the city we've just scoured of life is absurdly out of character.

Cahciua being Erenville's mom doesn't suddenly make her immune to analysis of her character. From the moment we meet her, she holds back crucial information that informs us about the grand designs at play. In the end, that serves her agenda perfectly, while denying the Scions to try and find true compromise between the people of Alexandria and the rest of the world.



We did turn off the Meso terminals because we have an agenda to destroy the Endless. It's an agenda given to us by Cahciua, who withheld information from us the entire time we were with her. In fact, Cahciua's plan is explicitly stated to target the Endless in order to deprive Sphene of a reason to fight. We're destroying her people so that she no longer has a cause; to what end? Do we think she'll just forgive us for that? Then Hiroi, to his credit, goes on to say that doing this will make Sphene speed up dimensional fusion, which weakens the defenses of the Terminal. Alright, sure—processing faster requires more processing power. But in what other situations would the Scions choose the option that causes the villain's plan to actualize faster, rather than trying to find another solution? It doesn't even happen in this expansion. We wait for Bakool to try and attack us again after he takes Wuk's keystones. We wait for Zoraal to attack Tuliyollal again (still full of countless civilians) after the first time, electing instead to take a stroll around Sphene's farm. The only time we decide to be proactive is when it means the rapid and complete extermination of a new form of life we've just encountered (ignoring that they're not actually new, given the events of Ultima Thule).

What you are pointing out are writing flaws. The rest of it is you contradicting yourself in your first few sentences. You say

"We have an agenda to destroy the Endless...
Given to us by Cachiua...(not our agenda then)...
...to target the Endless to deprive Sphene of a reason to fight (i.e. this is the motive, we are not destroying the Endless because we have an issue with their identity or something against the Endless)

There's something going on where players like you just can't get beyond the "targeting them because" part. But the because matters. Because the ethics of it are literally decided by the intent behind it. Are we turning off the Meso Terminals because we hate them or because of their identity? No? Then it's not cruelty. Turning them off to stop a villain or to save other souls are both sufficient reasons that disqualify the act as anything cruel.

And yes, the aspect of the intention regarding demotivating Spene is ineffective. But that doesn't make it cruel. It means the writers just forgot about it because they literally did.

[elioaiko]

I don't really see the issue here.

Sphene is basically an AI created to protect her people at all costs. However, machines and AI don't understand moral concepts like a living being does.

To Sphene, the sacrifice of other worlds to fuel her people is the only choice and programmed to do so.

The Endless are all but just a looping snapshot of someone who was once alive. Like Cahciua said, they aren't really "alive".

Sphene's world is long gone and the program is just holding onto memories like the person is still alive.

Also wouldn't it be questionable ethics for someone to essentially cheat death (Regulators)? Knowing you can't really die, that creates a sense of recklessness and you just do whatever you want without thinking about your limits or safety since you'll just auto rez. Not to mention the auto rez is basically just eating up the aether/soul of someone long past.

They already mentioned this isn't he story that Sphene's plan is not sustainable. And it's not, because they will always need to take from other worlds. Using a finite resources with a growing population will just cause more shortages faster.

And tbh, the fact we're supposed to feel sympathy for Sphene when she on more than 1 occasion has betrayed us and made it clear that she will do anything to get she wants. I thought that after realizing that she was clearly using Zoraal Ja's insecurities to start a war to retrieve more souls would click that maybe she's not a good person if she's so upfront with her ideals and so-called solution.

The scions and WoL are not hypocrites because what's the alternative? Sphene has already said that harvesting souls from the living are the only way to sustain the Endless. It's either allow her to destroy worlds and eventually destroy themselves or do the correct thing and allow these people to move on. The story clearly tells us that holding onto those who are passed is not good. It's not healthy mentally, because you're not accepting reality. Death happens and even if it's not accidental, is a natural part of life. As much as we want to bring back those who we love, you're just using it as a crutch and that ends up hurting you and the ones still alive that do care.

[Toutatis]

They’re all dead already. It’s just memories and maintaining that abomination requires harvesting the living and would lead to the destruction of worlds until there is nothing left alive.

[Oizen]

I think the game fails to really deliver any moral consequence to this because the writing sucks

[ElHeggunte]

Basic literacy is dead. You can't really "genocide" something that isn't alive in the first place. If you were to create a prospering population in SimCity and then delete it, would that be genocide? That's basically what you guys are arguing. The main hiccup of course being that in this example, the computer running your simulated city is being powered by a regular blood sacrifice from your neighbors, and you keep having to kill them to keep the game going. If your remaining neighbors knocked down your door and forcefully shut down your computer, that would be self-defense, not something cruel they did just because they have some vague and baseless "agenda" against you.

The Endless had to go because Sphene was quite keen on wiping out the rest of Source and all of the Shards (which would be genocide) just to keep sustaining what was basically a glorified simulation.

[Jojoya]

Are you familiar with the science fiction Berserker universe created by Fred Saberhagen? If not, google it.

That is your Sphene and your Endless. Think about it.

I think the game fails to really deliver any moral consequence to this because the writing sucks

Or because it's a game played for fun and most people aren't interested in dealing with morals issues after a long day of dealing with moral issues in real life.

[AlysCamoa]

What you are pointing out are writing flaws. The rest of it is you contradicting yourself in your first few sentences. You say

"We have an agenda to destroy the Endless...
Given to us by Cachiua...(not our agenda then)...
...to target the Endless to deprive Sphene of a reason to fight (i.e. this is the motive, we are not destroying the Endless because we have an issue with their identity or something against the Endless)

There's something going on where players like you just can't get beyond the "targeting them because" part. But the because matters. Because the ethics of it are literally decided by the intent behind it. Are we turning off the Meso Terminals because we hate them or because of their identity? No? Then it's not cruelty. Turning them off to stop a villain or to save other souls are both sufficient reasons that disqualify the act as anything cruel.

And yes, the aspect of the intention regarding demotivating Spene is ineffective. But that doesn't make it cruel. It means the writers just forgot about it because they literally did.

"It's not cruel because the writers forgot you were doing something cruel" is truly one of the takes of all time. But no, I agree. It is not something that would keep general do-gooders like the Scions awake at night, knowing they intentionally targeted the hapless civilian population of their enemy in order to conduct a terror campaign against their opponent's morale. For sure. They'd laugh it up while Smile plays in the background. Maybe have some peace tacos while listening to Wuk talk about peace and happiness and peace? There's a 7.x scene idea for you, Hiroi.

Basic literacy is dead. You can't really "genocide" something that isn't alive in the first place. If you were to create a prospering population in SimCity and then delete it, would that be genocide? That's basically what you guys are arguing. The main hiccup of course being that in this example, the computer running your simulated city is being powered by a regular blood sacrifice from your neighbors, and you keep having to kill them to keep the game going. If your remaining neighbors knocked down your door and forcefully shut down your computer, that would be self-defense, not something cruel they did just because they have some vague and baseless "agenda" against you.

The Endless had to go because Sphene was quite keen on wiping out the rest of Source and all of the Shards (which would be genocide) just to keep sustaining what was basically a glorified simulation.

Basic literacy, the gamer says, while failing to recognize that the very literary work being discussed has had its in-universe definitions of things like 'sentience' and 'life' redefined several times as new forms of each are discovered.

[ElHeggunte]

Basic literacy, the gamer says, while failing to recognize that the very literary work being discussed has had its in-universe definitions of things like 'sentience' and 'life' redefined several times as new forms of each are discovered.

And that definition doesn't apply to the Endless, who are by all accounts just projected recordings of people who are long dead. They're just simulacrums, nothing more than cheap copies that Sphene's goal is to maintain at the expense of actual living people. I'm really not grasping how you think "life" or "sentience" apply to the Endless. If I taught ChatGPT things about me today and then I died tomorrow, would you consider it to be alive just because it regurgitate the things I taught it? It can pretend to be me all day long, but that doesn't make it me and that doesn't make it "alive" by any stretch.