Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[CVXIV]

The endless are essentially spirits that we help in moving on to the other side and return to the lifestream.
At least, that is the feeling I get from the side quests where some have a strong enough will to remain and see their duty through, it reminds me of ghosts.

Is what happens to them unfortunate? Yes, but there isn't much that can be done about it. What we know about them basically boils down to them needing the souls of the living to sustain themselves and continue as they are.

Sphene refused to listen to reason, to cooperate despite the many attempts to do so.
Instead of finding an alternative, she chose the drastic option to ensure her people would be safe.
We didn't have enough time to deliberate and come up with an alternative, and I know people will point to the gondola scene or the play, showing that we had enough time to do those activities.

However the story does show that yes, we do have the time for it. Could we have discussed what to do alternatively? Perhaps, but would we have been able to put any plan on action before Sphene does the dimensional merge?

Throughout discussions on this topic I've seen many alternative solutions that people bring up, but I don't see what we could have realistically done to remedy the situation. Otis is mentioned a lot, his robot self, that the endless could be put in bodies like that.

I agree, we could have, provided that Sphene cooperated and allowed us the time to do so. Electrope is a technology wholly unknown to us, it would take who knows how long to figure out how it works and how to transfer the endless to these bodies. Not to mention whether there exists enough materials for something of that scale.

Not only this, but the fact that when we arrive and help the man get his wedding ring, we are told that not everyone is able to become an endless right away which shows to me their system is already failing. It's why Sphene reached out to Zoraal Ja in the first place to collect more souls. Had the gate remained closed forever, what would have happened to them? We can see how part of living memory was already in disrepair, the inhabitants having turned into monsters due to the disconnection of interdimensional fusion.

I really don't see any other way we could have gone about this given how events unfolded during the story.

Sphene and the endless are both tragic characters, and I think it's okay to feel bad for them and what happens. I never said what I have about the subject to say that you shouldn't feel bad and disregard their feelings entirely, but that we really had no other choice.

We're told insistently that living memory isn't natural, that they are going against the natural cycle of death and rebirth and through our actions we are able to let them finally rest.

Living memory is a flawed system, a bandaid to a much larger wound.
I believe it is meant to resemble a paradise for the departed, allowing them to reconnect with their loved ones but unfortunately it was doomed to fail.

People love to quote Emet-selch, and honestly it's a little bit frustrating because the actions are not the same. He too is a tragic character that resorted to an untold number of deaths because he desperately clung to what he once had and wanted it all back. In the end though, despite his plans being foiled he seemed happy and content with the lives of those in the source and the other shards.

"Remember us, Remember that we once lived."
Is exactly what he tells us, and exactly what we'll do with the endless.

[WickedSensei]

I agree with this. I don't like that my character was involved in this..And just because the few people we talked to were ok with being deleted there are hundreds if not thousands of endless we never got their opinion if they wanted to be erased or not.

But as you said either way it wasn't our call to make. I enjoyed the zone and the themes in it but it was all just too easy for us, there should have been some resistance which gave us pause, and force us to justify what we are doing.

But the whole expansion, everything was just too easily resolved imo.

I hope that in the upcoming patches this is addressed.

[Carolingian]

And just because the few people we talked to were ok with being deleted there are hundreds if not thousands of endless we never got their opinion if they wanted to be erased or not.

But as you said either way it wasn't our call to make.

This seems to be becoming a trend and I don't like it. Normally people who make decisions that impact the lives of countless people in such a way would be seen as villains. But after Venat Cahciua is now the second person that we cheer on for making the decision that it's fine to just kill I don't know how many people just because they personally think that is the right thing to do. But they don't have the right to make decisions like that for others. And it's really frustrating that the game just handwaves this away and expects us to agree with those decisions just because one person said so.

The question what it means to be truly alive is one of the pillars of science-fiction. From Star Trek to Blade Runner to even Final Fantasy. FFIX, which Dawntrail is very much inspired by, uses Vivi for that purpose. FFXIV itself even has a storyline with the Vivi-inspired character Gigi that explores the very same question. Yet in Dawntrail all we get is "they don't have souls, they're just facsimiles so it's fine to kill them" and we're just supposed to accept that? It's just so ridiculously shallow and childish just like most of Dawntrail. Which is so frustrating because they could have done something really great with it. It's honestly embarrassing that the Hildibrand quests show more depth and complexity in the exploration of these kinds of themes than the whole of Dawntrail.

[MikkoAkure]

But as you said either way it wasn't our call to make.

It would be one thing if the Endless were an aspect of life that could live on their own independently. But they are people who have already lived once before and then died and were given an artificial afterlife separated from the living after being deleted from the memories of the living. On top of that, they are chained to terminals that manifest them into existence at the cost of living aether taken from others, willingly or not.

It became our problem and our call to make when our world was invaded by Sphene with the intention of plundering the souls of our innocents to power her graveyard that the actual living Alexandrians barely knew existed. A lot of people seem to be oddly hung up on us deleting a bunch of people who already lived and died and are then returned to the natural cycle.

This is all on Sphene for making the decisions she took, not the WoL for having to shut the system down. Instead of accepting the situation of aether running out for the Endless, she couldn’t let go and took the drastic action of moving her entire people here and killing the locals. Instead of trying to find new solutions like a lot of people on the forums suggested WE make, SHE was the one with the time to figure something else out and in the end came up with what we got, obviously not anticipating the protagonist of an RPG being on the other side of the rift to protect their world. She and the innocent Endless ended up paying for that decision.

As well as that, now the living Alexandrians are forever separated from their world of origin and stuck somewhere else unknown to them.

[Alchemii]

The actual "moral" problem with the Living Memory has nothing to do with us shutting it down. It's the entire system itself. When someone dies their memories and all that get uploaded into the Living Memory so they can continue to "Live on" and people can come visit them and all that, but also those little techno dodads everyone's wearing then wipes their memories of the dead. Why? If they don't believe dying is that big of a deal because they'll just get uploaded into the Living Memory, then why wipe their memories of the person? In fact, why wipe their memories of the person at all? This is where things aren't making sense, why are they wiping peoples memories of the dead in the first place? None of it makes sense, and seems to directly contradict their stated philosophy of "living on forever so long as your remembered". With the way the Living Memory is designed the living could still come visit those that have passed on, except they don't cause they have no memory of them.

[CKNovel]

I agree with this. I don't like that my character was involved in this..And just because the few people we talked to were ok with being deleted there are hundreds if not thousands of endless we never got their opinion if they wanted to be erased or not.

But as you said either way it wasn't our call to make. I enjoyed the zone and the themes in it but it was all just too easy for us, there should have been some resistance which gave us pause, and force us to justify what we are doing.

You just unplugged your AI Grandma' mimicking your real Grandma who passed away, because Grandpa' couldn't afford the bills and started stealing vital money from the neighbours and family.
At one point it became so expansive he attacked people to sell their livers.

[CVXIV]

The actual "moral" problem with the Living Memory has nothing to do with us shutting it down. It's the entire system itself. When someone dies their memories and all that get uploaded into the Living Memory so they can continue to "Live on" and people can come visit them and all that, but also those little techno dodads everyone's wearing then wipes their memories of the dead. Why? If they don't believe dying is that big of a deal because they'll just get uploaded into the Living Memory, then why wipe their memories of the person? In fact, why wipe their memories of the person at all? This is where things aren't making sense, why are they wiping peoples memories of the dead in the first place? None of it makes sense, and seems to directly contradict their stated philosophy of "living on forever so long as your remembered". With the way the Living Memory is designed the living could still come visit those that have passed on, except they don't cause they have no memory of them.

This is another point I was going to bring up in my long post earlier but I decided against it. To my understanding, we are the first of the living to venture there or at least that's the impression I got when we were told not to give it away.

I don't think anyone really knows about Living Memory or the fact the Endless exist.
Living Memory I assume is purely for the Endless to live out as if they were still alive and reconnect with those they lost.
While the living continue on without knowing the pain of loss until it's their time to pass on and have their memories uploaded to the cloud, as they called it.

Because it doesn't make much sense to me to wipe their memories if they could potentially visit the Endless.

[AnotherPerson]

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.

If that's the case, FFXIV storytelling might as well be dead and any side plot might as well not exist since they can't add onto the story and world-building to the lore. I don't look forward to future expansions with this big of a plot hole in the storytelling aspect if they can't maintain a congruous narrative.

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.

Dynamis and [Life] Aether are effectively two separate energy sources and are unrelated to the psyche of a person itself. Dynamis is far more flexible because it can be whatever you want as long as you can influence and accumulate enough of it. The scions don't need to know how to use Dynamis to remake Ultima Thule. Neither did Meteion. That should speak volumes about how dynamic the energy source works. It's like a black box. You don't need to know how it works to use it. It just works. Limit Break is a manifestation of it. Healer LB3 and Tank LB3 are obvious examples. That's not the same as aether because we have to manually manipulate it to a certain way to get the desired output. Dynamis can be summarized as layman's creation magicks that gets better the more you have of it. Also Meteion basically used Dynamis to make 'life' exist, so... yeah, they're alive.

What constitutes your definition of being "alive"? That it has a corporeal form? That they only run on aether? Or by the definition of living - capacity for homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction? What is it that makes someone 'live'? To breathe air? To have a beating heart? What about the alien lifeforms before they were converted in Dynamis beings like the Omnicrons? What about the Ea, who shed their corporeal forms? The dragons clearly fulfills all these requirements to be considered alive, but are they considered not alive now that they're reconstituted with dynamis? What about the Voidsent and Zero? There's a lot of things that can be defined as alive even if they are dead in the aetheric sense or don't necessarily fulfills all the requirements to be living. Heck Ascians can be considered dead because they're fundamentally a ghost / a soul that embodies a host. But after the events in Shadowbringers we can conclude they are very much 'alive' as an individual. You can survive being just a soul with the Echo. The definition of being 'alive' has constantly been refreshed throughout our journey.

To me, being able to "feel, hear, and think" are effectively the core tenets to being alive, as cliche as that may sound. Any sentient being that can do all those 3 things are considered alive to me because it shows they can react and respond to stimuli on their own accord and demonstrate growth of an individual.

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.

Yes, they are not the same person, but that doesn't stop them from being a person themselves. A better example is the Blue sidequest 'Well-wishing at the Wishing Well", where the Endless has lingering sentiments and he mentions he wants to live again in another life as a tour guide -- which makes no sense because he currently already is living his dream as an Endless. The words "And I'm proud of that. Proud of staying true to myself." means he definitely felt the influence to do something else in this new lifetime, and it was an active decision on his part that kept him as a tour guide in this life based on the stimuli he received in Living Memory. In other words, the Endless himself has the same dream that separates him from the original dead self based on the experiences he had during his time as an Endless. The Endless then become more akin to a clone with similar experiences and memories.

By the way, in definition of the game... a ghost is alive and is a person, just not in the same circumstances of being alive with flesh and blood.

Alphinaud: “Hmmm… In the past, when I sought to identify the true nature of ghosts, I came upon literature examining a similar subject. The soul was likened to a core that resides in the aether, and its presence is what differentiates us from such beings as sprites and arcane entities. Upon death, said core ordinarily dissipates alongside the aether that composed the flesh. However, it may be held together and bound to the corporeal realm, either by the will of its owner or by means of certain arts. In time, the soul may regather aether unto itself to assume another form, or find newly emerged life in which to abide. The pixies may be one such instance of this.”
Alisaie: "...If ghosts are merely souls without bodies, what does that make us? I think you've become that which you fear most, Brother dearest.”

Sentient too, in fact. Edda also exists. Edda can be considered physically dead, but her ghost pervades the City-States at 2AM Eorzean time if you haven't completed Palace of the Dead after completing Tam Tara Deepcroft. She is still alive but not in the same sense as being physically alive. She's also gotten some experiments done by the real boss of PoTD and went off the deep end since losing her fiance though.

[Carolingian]

The actual "moral" problem with the Living Memory has nothing to do with us shutting it down. It's the entire system itself. When someone dies their memories and all that get uploaded into the Living Memory so they can continue to "Live on" and people can come visit them and all that, but also those little techno dodads everyone's wearing then wipes their memories of the dead. Why? If they don't believe dying is that big of a deal because they'll just get uploaded into the Living Memory, then why wipe their memories of the person? In fact, why wipe their memories of the person at all? This is where things aren't making sense, why are they wiping peoples memories of the dead in the first place? None of it makes sense, and seems to directly contradict their stated philosophy of "living on forever so long as your remembered". With the way the Living Memory is designed the living could still come visit those that have passed on, except they don't cause they have no memory of them.

The whole memory wipe thing doesn't make sense in general and is probably just something the writers came up with to make the whole thing seem more evil and contrast it more clearly with the whole "you live on in our memories" message of the previous zones. I don't think it has anything to do with how Living Memory itself works (as proven by the two Otis) nor with the question whether the Endless (intelligent and self-aware as they are) should be considered alive/sentient or not.

It's just one of many instances this expansion where the weak writing lets you see the hand of the writer way too clearly.

[Zakuyia]

Look ill be real.... I wasn't remotely attach to living memories so I could easily shut it off. Judge me how u see fit. IF THAT PLACE THREATENS OTHER SHARDS it has to go down. Your ok with the 1st being destroyed cause oh sympathy for that place question your own mindset. It was a blight and cursed existence that needed to be removed like the disease it is. Pretty zone tho.