Dawntrail's MSQ story is a disaster and waste of potential. [full spoilers]

[Mondschnee]

I've been enjoying his work. For the most part I was nodding along and saying, "Right on, right on," but he did start to lose me with his critique of Living Memory. I admire his passion, but by that point in the story I just didn't care about Living Memory or the Endless. There were too many unanswered questions, too many contrivances, too much time-wasting and faffing about--let's just shut it down so I can defeat the Big Bad and go home. Stories that question how to define life and consciousness have been done countless times, and in far better ways.

I get it. Personally, I felt really empty while doing Living Memory, because it just felt weird going on a sightseeing tour knowing that we would shut all these terminals down, and the zone's concept also felt like a bad copy of Ultima Thule.
But I get what he is saying. Shadowbringers did a much better job at exploring the moral ambiguity that came with certain topics, while Dawntrail pretended like there is no moral ambiguity to what we were doing. Instead of doing some "sightseeing", I do wish they would have dived into the justness of it all more, and not treated all of the endless as if they were a hive mind sharing all the moral standards and wishes.

But this was also a problem with Tural as a whole. We spent the first few levels of the story learning that different people in Tural have different goals and wishes, yet when Wuk Lamat became Dawnservant, they all cheered to her preaching about smiles and happiness without ever having learned what this actually means. It's just not realistic, which made it seem immature.

I'm just shocked, if anything. Previously, the writers were never afraid to explore moral topics to keep the narrative interesting.

[ovIm]

I get it. Personally, I felt really empty while doing Living Memory, because it just felt weird going on a sightseeing tour knowing that we would shut all these terminals down, and the zone's concept also felt like a bad copy of Ultima Thule.

The entirety of Living Memory had me legit yell at the screen at that point. We have a BBEG who threatens to drain the life force of every living being from every dimension, and we... take a fucking stroll, ride a gondola and eat popcorn so we could "understand how they live" or some shit instead of just, you know, pushing forward and resolving the issue at hand? Plus that we just destroy it all instead of setting Living Memory into a hibernation status until we find a better solution with the moral dilemma presented to us.
Add in how shitty both Erenville and Krile were handled even here, everything about that zone infuriated me.