Omicrons and The Endless (Do Endless Dream of Electric Sheep?)

[Fawkes]

To me a living being is something that has independent thought, consciousness, and actions. Humans are alive. Animals are alive. I believe eventually computers will be alive (as scary as that is to me). Using a cheesy example, in the context of their films I believe Wall-E and the Terminator to be alive. I think many people would be upset at the prospect of having to kill Wall-E because he is alive even if it was for the greater good.

Therein lies the problem of Living Memory. The writers didn't consider their own themes of living vs not living present in EW or that there is many, many people who hold similar sentiments to me. They didn't explain themselves or why it had to be that way - they simply told the player what to think and people are pushing back against it.

Ok, but animals/monsters are living beings but they make a distinction between beast souls and people souls. So now I wanna know where the line is, like do beast tribe races all have people souls? Some of them are less capable of speech and things, is that part of the metric? Or is it some more lore-involved answer where beings created by the ancients have beast souls and beings created from the ancients via the sundering have people souls? And then what about whole or partially rejoined souls, are they like another tier up, like people souls deluxe edition? If we bring Emet back and stuff him in the soul battery machine is it worth like 14 times as much soul juice as some regular old person in Tural?

[Tsumdere]

Ok, but animals/monsters are living beings but they make a distinction between beast souls and people souls. So now I wanna know where the line is, like do beast tribe races all have people souls? Some of them are less capable of speech and things, is that part of the metric? Or is it some more lore-involved answer where beings created by the ancients have beast souls and beings created from the ancients via the sundering have people souls? And then what about whole or partially rejoined souls, are they like another tier up, like people souls deluxe edition? If we bring Emet back and stuff him in the soul battery machine is it worth like 14 times as much soul juice as some regular old person in Tural?

Exactly. They slap in the word soul and expect everyone to be on the same page. There are cultures (many cultures in fact) who believe everything has a soul - including inanimate objects! For those that are unfamiliar look up animism.

Of course if the writers don't explain FFXIV's definition of soul there is going to be confusion, upset, and anger. For me, it's not even about having to kill the Endless to save the living but rather how callously they were deemed not worthy of living because of this nebulous "soul" and not the qualities of humans that make them human.

They certainly had no problem drilling into our brains about peace for Tural, but then kinda just skirt around not explaining something that really needs explanation. Or else they end up with what they have now which is an ending zone that is pretty fxxking distasteful in my opinion.