Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Wired-Lain]

How? Who among the group even knows how to do that? If it were possible, it would've come up. You can't just say that the story is bad because they didn't do a situation that you just made up. We don't even know if they could've done that.

Exactly. We don't know. Because the question is never raised and no attempts are made. Hence the dissatisfaction.

There is a reason for that out of character shift and why we're "not supposed to think about it too much", but it's IRL politics. Last time I tried to explain that, all that happened was I got called paranoid and crazy. Let's just say, they want you to "just accept the message and let it happen."

? Don't lump me in with whatever you're alluding to here but wont expressly say.

[Astronis]

"Institutionalized necromancy" is such a great way to put it. I felt such utter revulsion going through Living Memory, making it look like an even faker version of the Fakest Place on Earth(TM) was a perfect move. I don't think the devs *could* have made it worse for me by having it all in blood rituals and whatnot. It was WORSE than blood rituals, because at least those are done by hand!

[Ardeth]

Sphene is wrong no matter how she or rather the AI version of her wants it's wrong. For various reasons. Killing innocent people is wrong. Using their life force is wrong. I happily switched off every one of them. It didn't matter how many times the story tried to guilt trip me into reconsidering that choice. I still made it on my own. And I would absolutely do it again.

A lot of people like to quote Emet to justify it, completely neglecting that in that moment, he was also wrong.

We did the right thing.

[Alaray]

You kind of touch on the problem yourself. All these stories are meant to take place in the same universe, which should have a consistent set of laws/rules. Even if you want to approach a different theme or subject matter, as you're working in a per-established universe, you're constrained (or, well, you should

What you describe, with details clashing diegetically, is inevitable (and to be fair, the potential discrepancy here isn't congruent to the over-exaggerated "what if" scenario). It's in almost every story you can pick up, every world ever imagined: nothing is perfectly consistent, there is always an inconsistency somewhere. It is what it is, and for all I know, the Ultima Thule shades have something different at their core, but I don't need to really care if that is true or not true to understand what the Living Memory story is trying to communicate.

A rose at the Edge of the Universe is still rooted in a different soil, than a rose bloomed in the Unlost World.

And, I enjoy the stories of loss, death, acceptance, that are told. I have my complaints, but I dunno, I felt it was really obvious we're just helping would-be ghosts move onwards. That we're turning off the lights to another haphazard, memory of the past made into a false eden to show it for the graveyard it is and to accept that fact and not to be mired in the infatuation of "eternity".

[OMGJesuis66]

It’s funny that you call other people speed-readers while ignoring the game’s lore yourself. Classic.
Suggestion for you: go read the Unending Codex entry on souls that got added this very patch.
Also, consider whether Cahciua telling us something- immediately after requesting we do a horrific action that would never otherwise be considered- means her words are objective truth in-universe, or her own biased outlook.

Unrelated to you, I had a real good laugh reading a reply that says Endless don’t respond to stimuli. That’s a good one, gamers. Almost as good as ‘they’re copies’ or ‘they’re chatGPT’.

The lore entry about souls, as stipulated by the very own game for years is that we have two manners os Aether.

Corporeal and Incorporeal. The Souls, being Incorporeal and a being composed only of Incorporeal (Case in question) ARE GHOSTS. The very own Unending Codex proves the person you are making fun of is right, the Endless are simple ghosts of passing people, and as much as you may claim it was a horrible action, it was not. They act accordingly with their memories, they are capable of storing new memories as Endless, but those do not develop them beyond what they are. Those 'dreams, hopes, and aspirations' are unresolved matters. To which, even the Unending Codex, states that Incorporeal beings cling to memory and emotions, having unresolved matters means they can turn into actual harmful beings (Hello, Deadwalk).

By shutting down this place, we are putting many ghosts to rest, it is a moral act to do. We also resolve matters of those unable to move on so they find comfort and feel capable of passing on and resting as we carry their legacy.

[AlysCamoa]

The lore entry about souls, as stipulated by the very own game for years is that we have two manners os Aether.

Corporeal and Incorporeal. The Souls, being Incorporeal and a being composed only of Incorporeal (Case in question) ARE GHOSTS. The very own Unending Codex proves the person you are making fun of is right, the Endless are simple ghosts of passing people, and as much as you may claim it was a horrible action, it was not. They act accordingly with their memories, they are capable of storing new memories as Endless, but those do not develop them beyond what they are. Those 'dreams, hopes, and aspirations' are unresolved matters. To which, even the Unending Codex, states that Incorporeal beings cling to memory and emotions, having unresolved matters means they can turn into actual harmful beings (Hello, Deadwalk).

By shutting down this place, we are putting many ghosts to rest, it is a moral act to do. We also resolve matters of those unable to move on so they find comfort and feel capable of passing on and resting as we carry their legacy.

Oh good, somebody who read the entry. I'd like to know where you're getting the idea that the memories formed by the Endless do not develop them. In fact, we're demonstrated quite the opposite, several times, as the dozen or so characters we interact with there change merely by meeting us. The most glaring counter-point to your claim would be Cahciua, no? But I'm willing to entertain the idea this might be true—if you can cite the part of the story where the Endless do not develop based on new experiences.

[Eyrilona]

What you describe, with details clashing diegetically, is inevitable (and to be fair, the potential discrepancy here isn't congruent to the over-exaggerated "what if" scenario). It's in almost every story you can pick up, every world ever imagined: nothing is perfectly consistent, there is always an inconsistency somewhere. It is what it is, and for all I know, the Ultima Thule shades have something different at their core, but I don't need to really care if that is true or not true to understand what the Living Memory story is trying to communicate.

I think the key thing to observe here is, there is room for things to be different in different expansion to an extent. But not the fundamentals. You can't have a new Sherlock Holmes story where Sherlock is suddenly a bumbling fool constantly being rescued by his clever assistant Watson, even if the idea of a bumbling inspector with a competent helper can in its own right be good standalone story material. Those things do not make sense, you are going to get complaints from people who bought your story because it had promised a continuation of a story universe they know and love, and if you are not consistent with that, then you have sold your story on a false premise.

[Rowde]

I feel like this was already said in one of the prior topics, but...


One of the major issues is that the story we as the players were presented with actively contradicts itself. Through Cahcuia it tells us one thing, then shows us another through the MSQ and Side Quests across the zone. If the "people" in the zone are merely facsimiles, AI constructs, then why are we encouraged to engage with or "help" them at all? They shouldn't matter at that point. A lot of the naysayers like to present the scenario of turning off an electronic device, well... let me ask you this: Before you turn off your electronic devices do you first make sure they were happy with the tasks they completed today? Do you try to make sure your electronic devices are comfortable before you shut them down for the evening? Do you lay them down gently on a pillow?

While I'm sure there is a small percentage of the human population that take their electronic devices to bed for a cuddle, I would wager that most people do not. Most of us just click the shutdown icon and don't afford it anymore thought until we need to use it again. Yet the MSQ and Side Quests have us go through the zone and treat these "constructs" with dignity and respect to "help" them what? Turn off easier? Why? None of that should matter if they're not people... we never should have engaged with any of them and just merely walked straight to the terminal we needed to interact with to shut the system down.


Second, Cahcuia is an unreliable narrator at best, and if we do accept her explanation of the Endless at face value, then it renders most of the story characters' experiences in Living Memory meaningless and actively wastes our time as the players because all the heartfelt moments ultimately don't matter.

We, as the players, are expected to have an emotional reaction to Krile and Erenville having sendoffs with their respective parents... but did they though? Again, if we merely accept Cahcuia's explanation, that these were AI facsimiles merely presenting the "best" versions of the Endless, then nothing that they say can be trusted because they're just telling us what's needed to be said to be "happy." They're just drugs. I mean Krile is even worse if we go down that line of thinking, did she truly even "meet her parents" at all if they were fake AI constructs presenting their best selves and nothing they told us was reliable information? At least Erenville did know his mother outside the machine first, so he presumably has his own memories of her to gauge against the AI.


It's kinda funny, but this conversation/debate we're having here on the forums right now is literally the argument that 9S and 2B have about the Automatons, and by extension the Androids, in Neir: Automata. A game with a story that actively questions what is consciousness? What is life? What is existence? And ultimately arrives at the viewpoint that over time, maybe all these AI constructs have managed to evolve into something more. And while sure, normally I wouldn't think it wholly relevant to point at a different story and be like... look how they arrived at a different answer... conveniently Neir: Automata has a crossover with the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV expansion Shadowbringers, where we got to see the continuing adventures of the androids 9S and 2B as they continue to fight for their right to exist...

I don't know, I have my own thoughts/fanfic about how they could have better presented the MSQ and side quests to actually convince me that the people of Living Memory were merely AI constructs caught in an endless loop of nonexistence... but even then my issue would still probably be that they've shown us different results multiple times in the the same story. There were perhaps alternative solutions to the Endless, the problem is that many of those solutions are gated behind the Side Content of FFXIV, and much like how the battle system of this game seemingly has to be designed for the lowest common denominator... so too must the story, and that LCD seems to be the person that only does the MSQ and never engages with Side Content at all. Could we have talked to the Ea or Omicron in Ultima Thule? Maybe... but the relevant content where we affirmed their existence is gated behind having level 80 Gathering Jobs... which they can't guarantee that every player going through the MSQ will have.

Like Ryne... a lot of people loved the wholesome friendship between her and Gaia through the Eden Raid Series... but since that was technically side content that meant every time we went back to talk to Ryne on the First it was a massive bummer because it's assumed that she was still alone there with no friends except maybe Lyna to talk to as a caretaker... cause Gaia doesn't exist outside of Eden. Until they threw us all a bone and showed that Gaia at least exists in the MSQ now, regardless of the individual players status on Eden completion. And I think going forward that more of the side content should be considered canon and they should just do the comic book thing with an asterisk saying "if you'd like to know more please go play _______ content" so they can come up with more interesting solutions to problems that can incorporate and pull from all the other lore they've established over the years instead of just making up plot contrivances as to "why we can't do that doh!"

[OMGJesuis66]

Oh good, somebody who read the entry. I'd like to know where you're getting the idea that the memories formed by the Endless do not develop them. In fact, we're demonstrated quite the opposite, several times, as the dozen or so characters we interact with there change merely by meeting us. The most glaring counter-point to your claim would be Cahciua, no? But I'm willing to entertain the idea this might be true—if you can cite the part of the story where the Endless do not develop based on new experiences.

Actually, the counter-point to my argument is Sphene. Not Cahciua.
But Sphene is an anomaly in comparison, as to genuinely be able to enact under these new memories (recent ones), she had to erase past memories to get rid of her inhibition to perform her primary directive.
Any new memory an Endless receives is stored inside themselves, compiled, and still performed as the person would based on the data received out of them. That is what we say, not the other way around, those people do not develop as living ones.
We did not have enough exposition on Cahciua to argue she changed, for all principles, she didn't. As Erenville even argued in his hurtful rant how she was deciding things for everyone.
That was already a trait of her personality that complied with the memories, and since we are talking with Ghosts, it is important to keep in mind they live in the past and only by what they know.
And after new experiences quieted past grievances or any left out unfinished business, they feel at peace and capable of departing.

[Alaray]

I think the key thing to observe here is, there is room for things to be different in different expansion to an extent. But not the fundamentals. You can't have a new Sherlock Holmes story where Sherlock is suddenly a bumbling fool constantly being rescued by his clever assistant Watson, even if the idea of a bumbling inspector with a competent helper can in its own right be good standalone story material. Those things do not make sense, you are going to get complaints from people who bought your story because it had promised a continuation of a story universe they know and love, and if you are not consistent with that, then you have sold your story on a false premise.

That's an entire character, though? I disagree with this analogy, since it'd be more akin to G'raha suddenly being written as a cannibal than a potential oversight on even the reader's end here, since I don't necessarily agree with the postulation that there's a true inconsistency to begin with (just that I, personally, don't really care /that/ much even if there was)

Like, if I had to guess I would presume that what separates Endless from everything else marked as "Alive" is just the "soul" part of the equation. Endless don't have that. They're more like Primals, like Garuda, in the sense that they are memories projected outwards in a constructed facsimile. Or akin to Amaurot, which is the narrative parallel, which was another "Living Memory" in a manner of speaking. And the story is often extremely harsh to the concept of "Eternity". It never really puts prospects of being "eternal" in a positive light, usually it opts to look at the concept as: foolish, anathema to life itself, fruitless, a regression of Life in the context of apotheosis, or a Hell in Waiting for stylings of Salvation. Throw in the, Endless' case, that their supposed afterlife subsists off present temporal life, and that's the sort of point being reiterated again.

But, that's just with regards to the notion of an inconsistency. And, the framework and message of the story goes back to the original post I made with regards to how I perceived this specific storyline as not really... about killing beings that are alive, but instead, helping them pass on from the eternity they've been forced into by a false god that can't let go. And overall, I felt this theme to be very clear, very obvious, and I don't actually feel like there's a true inconsistency at least with how the fictional world denotes things. Could they have written a much lengthier, in depth narrative and explored the notion of "What does it mean, to be 'Alive'?" Sure, but they didn't, and had they in this section I don't think they'd have the time to develop that through to any satisfying direction. They chose to continue the parallels to older expansion stories, with Wuk Lamat predominately as the WoL proxy for the small parallels.

Arguing whether or not a fully fleshed out, choice making Artificial Intelligence is alive or not in like, the real world, or utilizing real world concepts to apply them to a fantasy world that inherently breaks them, is whatever to me -- I'm not interested in that kind of discussion, since I feel like it's a discussion better to have in the framework of the real world, and not a fictional one, and it's ultimately not really the point being made by the narrative.