Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Papayatar]

That said, none of the reasons they bring up for terminating their existence felt terribly convincing to me aside from the "sustained by living aether" bit...and I question why they were even designed with that specifications in the first place.

Honestly I wish the story went into why they specifically chose the Living Memory method. Is there some plot left on the cutting room floor where LM was supposed to be accesible to living people and actually make sense with the side theme of “you live technically live forever if you’re remembered by others”?

Cuz looking at it closely, what was the point of maintaining LM? The people there were erased from the memory of anyone wearing a regulator and they use up extra resources(souls) for S9 1UP system.

They needed the human souls for physical bodies, but why did the memories need to be given a physical form? If I squint I could maybe see maintaining this system of the LM people were only the initial Alexandrians who adopted the system. Then Sphene could play, I don’t want my people to be forgotten song. But she was adding new people everyday and putting a strain on resources cuz of “reasons”.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Honestly I wish the story went into why they specifically chose the Living Memory method. Is there some plot left on the cutting room floor where LM was supposed to be accesible to living people and actually make sense with the side theme of “you live technically live forever if you’re remembered by others”?

Cuz looking at it closely, what was the point of maintaining LM? The people there were erased from the memory of anyone wearing a regulator and they use up extra resources(souls) for S9 1UP system.

They needed the human souls for physical bodies, but why did the memories need to be given a physical form? If I squint I could maybe see maintaining this system of the LM people were only the initial Alexandrians who adopted the system. Then Sphene could play, I don’t want my people to be forgotten song. But she was adding new people everyday and putting a strain on resources cuz of “reasons”.

Whoever wrote this prioritized emotion over logic. They wanted people to feel certain things at certain times and didn't care if it made sense. But all I could think about was how little sense any of this made. There are already better ways of preserving people in the world of the game. Separating soul from memory then needing lifeforce is moronic given souls are eternal. If they are just AI, why erase everyone's memory of them? Who are they walking around for? It just all makes no sense.

[Carolingian]

indeed, who knew half the playerbase were a bunch of geordi la forge's falling in love with the holograms

Good Star Trek reference but it's more like being Tasha Yar and having a special bond with Data. Or being Picard and arguing that Data is in fact sentient (with the main argument being that Data is intelligent and self-aware).

[SnowVix]

Well, now the Warrior of light is a Genocider of Alexanderia, we killed creatures who could "Think, hear and feel".
the WoL's excuse? they had no aether so they weren't real, is that valid? maybe we should ask Emet-Selch he said

"To live in ignorance is a form of bliss, is it not? Just as it is for the likes of you. The powerless, the feeble, the weak... None of you belong here. My world is one of high magic. A place where lives burn brighter than a thousand suns... Not that any of you would comprehend such a thing. Your souls are fragmented, your aether thin and weak. You are broken. Ineffective, useless, an affront to my very existence."


I'd also like to direct you to a Topic made by Dave Fishnomer touching this exact issue.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...poilers-inside

"I didn't actually pay attention to the story."

For the millionth time, Living Memory had to be shut down to stop Sphene from going to multiple shards and harvesting souls to keep powering it. Sphene was going to commit omnicide to maintain it, because after everyone was harvested, there would be nothing left and Living Memory would grind to a halt anyway.

[Ultran]

They always tried to present her and the Endless as a threat to every shard, yet the only time we see them invading they are defeated within less then an hour after one nation preparing itself for maybe a week? I always found it very weird that they were shown as being so weak and incapable of conquering anything substancial. If they had opened a connection to the First or the 13th, the Voidsent or the remaining Sineaters might have eaten them all.

I have less an issue that we had to resort to genocide to stop her but if we have to pull that ultimate card then maybe present the enemy as something competent and really threatening, not someone who failed 10 minutes ago to invade a barely prepared single nation. With the Ascian we knew they had to be stopped at all cost. With Meteion we knew we had to stop her, no matter what, but for the Endless we could not find some minutes to even think about an alternativ? The WoL forgave Meteion and tried to free her from her evil, although she had murdered whole planets worth of people. After she "helped" whole planets to pick the path of despair? As far as we as the WoL is concerned, the only dangerous true Endless we ever encountered is Cahciua.

Although it would be quite the plottwist if it is revealed that she was the crazy one that just wanted to commit suicide, but did not want to die alone.

[Sililos]

We turned off the projector of memories.

They aren't alive. They can't interact with the real world.
They are ghosts of the past, in digital form.

They don't even have souls, those are stripped in the process, but the system that runs them requires souls to function.
It's not sustainable.

So we don't really see them as people or truly alive?

Damn they turned us into Emet Selch!

(It did need to be shut down though sadly)

[TheMightyMollusk]

They always tried to present her and the Endless as a threat to every shard, yet the only time we see them invading they are defeated within less then an hour after one nation preparing itself for maybe a week? I always found it very weird that they were shown as being so weak and incapable of conquering anything substancial. If they had opened a connection to the First or the 13th, the Voidsent or the remaining Sineaters might have eaten them all.

That was Zoraal Ja, who had no real concept of tactics beyond overwhelming numbers. Which didn't mean squat against a great wyrm. (I think we also all tend to forget just how powerful a great wyrm really is against people who haven't, yknow, killed two or three of them.) Once they lost the advantage of a surprise attack, they had no real advantage, so they weren't really any better than regular troops.

Meanwhile, Sphene planned to skip the invasion and go straight for the dimensional merge. It's like comparing a gang of thugs to just dropping a bomb.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

Are people really arguing the moral ethics of shutting down the Soul Sucker 9000?

[KageTokage]

Are people really arguing the moral ethics of shutting down the Soul Sucker 9000?

There is no question that it had to be done because the plot contrived itself to make it necessary.

It's more the lack of actual contemplation about that matter that came across as awkward to me because everyone is just totally on-board with it following Cahciua's insistence that there's no value to their existence (Which should be highly subjective depending on whether or not someone considers a soul or memories more integral to defining someone's existence.). You can't just say "These people are fake and don't matter", then do absolutely nothing to further convince the viewer of that, especially when it's stressed earlier in the MSQ that people do not truly die as long as they're remembered...which largely cannot happen for those in Living Memory due to the regulators, so we're effectively rendering them deader then dead in that respect.

They could have chosen to avoid that by not having them all be deleted permanently (And perhaps they could still end up doing that in the post-MSQ), but it all came across as rather tone-deaf...though it wouldn't be the first time considering my feelings on EW which similarly aimed to moralize and stir up emotions in a manner that was seemingly oblivious to various uncomfortable implications made in the process...

[OMGJesuis66]

-snip-

They won't ever add Side Content as mandatory again, or else they would've done so by making Eden mandatory.
The whole patch with Zeromus would make MUCH MORE SENSE if they brought Eden onto the 13th in order to clash Light X Darkness. The First Sin Eater, against the Primordial Darkness.
Plus, Eden can terraform the land, which would also start fixing the 13th.
Unukalhai (Heavenswater Warring Triad NPC) and Cylvia(Final Shadowbringers Role Quest), both DENIZENS of the 13th searching for a way to restore the 13th back to its former origin, as you reunite them post SHB Role Quests in the First, were not even mentioned in appearance over a whole year of Void Plots.

As canon as it may be, none of it will ever be brought into the main narrative, and yes. It creates plot holes in every single expansion. Therefore you really cannot make a base on that argument.

The principle of Dynamis is still vastly alien to us, but my understanding is simple: They do not follow the compositions required for a living being. If they are dead in the aetheric sense, why Dynamis make them 'alive and kicking'? They are dead, Ultima Thule displays only extinct and dead people. Even if you make a new place for them, it is just a limbo. I hardly even believe any denizen of Ultima Thule could ever dream of going away of it, or even trying to go to Eitherys. Conjecture, all of this sentence, but we have nothing to prove or disproof it.

And no, please, people need to stop with that quote. The Endless ARE NOT THE SAME AS THE SUNDERED. They are not alive, they do not have hopes or dreams, and they have processed data where they act according to a code of past memories, nothing more. If when alive, a person had the dream of being the best chef, naturally the Endless version would have the same 'dream'. It's their aspiration of when they are alive, something that influenced their memories and importance, but it is not the person. It cannot evolve beyond that, the best representation is a Ghost unable to move on because they have unfinished business. If people cannot accept that it's just AI, that is by far the best comparison to what an Endless is, and a Ghost ain't a person.