[SPOILERS] Dawntrail should get an ARR-style retcon in the post-MSQ

[Mondschnee]

Personally, I really love the concept of Azem in connection to our WoL. Inspired me to write my own lore for my WoL, too.

Agreed. Whilst not doing so would've made the story much shorter I didn't enjoy the silly "hey, nice to meet you before I pull the plug on this place!" tour we had to undertake.

In my opinion, they had much better ways to fill the MSQ. They could have used the time more effectively by looking for alternative ways, or *some* of the endless could have tried to stop them and challenge their perspective at least. That would have made it more interesting, and it would have explored the moral ambiguity more. But no, nothing.

Instead, they kept stalling Krile's and Erenville's chapters until the final zone so they could at last get their five minutes of spotlight (despite being teased as the expansion's focus *sigh*). I just think they didn't do themselves a favor with the overall story structure.

[ExESGO]

This was the intent? To create a massively divisive issue that splits the community into two halves that feel alienated by the other?

I don't think the devs expected people to be radically toxic about it since it's fiction, but here we are with people taking fiction too seriously.

[Eyrilona]

I don't think the devs expected people to be radically toxic about it since it's fiction, but here we are with people taking fiction too seriously.

The fundamental problem with that attitude, is that you are promoting that people shouldn't care or be emotionally be invested in the game. In an RPGMMO. Whose main and pretty much only selling point is that it does make you feel things.

[Mikey_R]

When you boil the whole thing down, this is essentially a variation of the trolley problem.

For those unfamiliar, at it's base you have a trolley going down a track about to run over several people, you notice a lever that can change the track to a separate one, saving all those people, however, this other track has a single person on it. Do you pull the lever or not?

To make the comparison, us shutting down the terminals is equivalent to us flipping the lever. This means, on the 2 tracks, the main track is all of life, the second track is the Endless. In this case, the trolley is essentially the passage of time.

You now have the choice. Do you do nothing and end all life as we know it, or, flip the switch and kill off the Endless and save everyone else. Whether you consider the Endless alive or not doesn't matter in this scenario, this is the choice you have to make in a limited time. You don't have enough time to try and find an alternate energy source (where are you even going to find a Source sized battery from anyway), you have to make this decision, what are you choosing?

Note that this does not excuse the bad writing, however, with what we have, this is the choice that is being made. Now, this isn't an easy choice and there is a reason the trolley problem creates philosophical discussions but that is also the reason why this variant is so extreme. You can either kill a few to save everyone, or, do nothing and everyone dies. It's meant to make this an easier choice for people to come to terms with but, as with everything, there is always a conflicting viewpoint, which, to be clear, isn't a bad thing, as long as you can reasonably justify why you made the decision you did.

[Eyrilona]

When you boil the whole thing down, this is essentially a variation of the trolley problem. (...) Note that this does not excuse the bad writing, however, with what we have, this is the choice that is being made. Now, this isn't an easy choice and there is a reason the trolley problem creates philosophical discussions but that is also the reason why this variant is so extreme. You can either kill a few to save everyone, or, do nothing and everyone dies. It's meant to make this an easier choice for people to come to terms with but, as with everything, there is always a conflicting viewpoint, which, to be clear, isn't a bad thing, as long as you can reasonably justify why you made the decision you did.

Indeed, and what most people are falling over is not the inevitability of having to put a stop to the systems running Living Memory. Rather, it is the poor writing which shows complete lack of consideration how our characters feel troubled by having to do this, consider alternatives, etc. Every other time a dilemma like this has emerged in the game, whether that was putting an end to the Ascians' desire to save their world at the expense of ours, or Venat sundering the world, we at least see the characters involved appreciate the gravity of what they do. In Dawntrail, the whole shutting down of the Endless was just done so.. callous, self-centered on what Wuk and Cahciua want and no thought spared for anything else.

Worst yet -- the writers could also have SO easily given themselves an 'out' because the lore we are given for the Endless is that living aether is only needed to give them bodies again in order to incarnate/manifest them in Living Memory, so that an entirely obvious solution would have been to shut down their ability to re-instantiate, leaving all of them in cold storage stasis on the 'hard drive' as it were.

Just the stakes alone that it was now on our WoL to find a solution for thousands upon thousands of dormant virtual people, some of who we may have come to care about, would have done so much for an expansion that already gave us a continent almost devoid of any stakes for our character and too few real cliffhanger plot elements.

But no, like Supersnow845 said, instead what we get is lazy writing completely ignoring gravitas, then lazily( apparently wanting to fully wrap up this whole plot point on the spot and be done with it) going straight to full erasure instead of just switching the system off leaving them as data to be restored in some potential future, and then... we play Smile, as if we should be happy about all this. It is just so tone deaf on the part of the writing room, when it had SO much potential to actually be good, if only a little extra thought and effort had been put into it, it is just almost unbelievable how they didn't see this.

[Rin_Sato]

and then... we play Smile

cue bomb-making montage
cue instating a puppet king (after genociding a foreign civilization and killing their ruler)

You can not convince me it isn't a massive parody at this point, you just can't. It's too perfectly written. They even had the "two heads is better than one!" thing, that was so painfully obvious from square one that it hurt to see fulfilled.

[lolnotacat]

Snip...

What sucks is they could've made either option (kill or save) make sense with the Endless and fit within the story without stealing our characters agency.

As we progress and Bun Mom gives her recommendation we kill the Endless, the WoL and Scions refuse. Instead we decide there must be another way. Since we have some time before Sphene finishes her calculations, we use the opportunity to contact Cid/Nero and the Omicrons.

After getting in touch with both, they confer with one another using the Loporrits as communication intermediaries. They decide they don't have enough information and need us to run some scans. The Omicrons give Cid & Nero some designs for a scanner we need to use on some Endless and a terminal (Now we have a reason to explore the zone that's better than "let's talk to them before we kill them.")

Endless Must Die.
We speak to the Endless and quickly find out they're sentient, living beings. We start to run our scans and send data back to Cid, while we talk to the Endless. At first everything seems idyllic, then we're given the task of finding a early generation Endless and to scan them to check their data. We scan them and find out that all the data is inherently corrupted. The copy process isn't perfect; which is why the Aether is required to keep them alive and as the data corruption gets worse, the Aether requirements will grow. The Omicrons state their earliest attempts at becoming machine life were similar and took a long time to improve upon, and they were never able to find a solution to the data corruption. More worrisome though, is after talking to the older Endless we find out that they're no longer happy. There's nothing new or interesting for them, and over the centuries living in Temu Disneyland has become hell for them. Sphene will not let their consciousness or memories fade away so they're stuck there, essentially being force fed souls doing the same thing over and over. The Omicrons suspect Sphene's programming requires her to keep the Endless existing, no matter what so this is why she'll let them suffer and is willing to kill everyone in order to continue feeding them souls. The worst part is, She's aware of everything. The Endless being tortured by their existence, the near infinite requirement of souls, the corruption, etc... but she's unable to go against her flawed base programming.

At this point after talking everything over with the Omicrons, Cid, Bun Mom, and Krile's parents, we come to the painful conclusion to flip the switches and turn off the Endless, giving us access to Sphene for the final fight. This way we at least have a clear villain who is still tragic to some degree, and there's absolutely no question about the Endless having to go. But it also gives the emotional impact of having to kill people, even if their existence inevitably becomes torturous.

1/2

[lolnotacat]

Endless Survive -- Sort of.
When we enter the zone with our scanner we talk to the endless and find out they're living beings but have become despondent with their relatively monotonous existence. They don't want to die, but they do want something new. As we progress through the zone with our scans, the Omicrons realize that while the Endless do take up a fair bit of souls and is still unsustainable in the long run, the math doesn't add up and the consumption rate is much higher than what it should be.

While we progress, the time crunch becomes more apparent as Sphene gets closer to finishing her calculations, and it looks like we're going to be forced to kill the Endless to reach Sphene and stop her -- a prospect nobody is onboard with. Finally the Omicrons and Cid are able to solve for the missing variable in regards to the soul consumption. It's Sphene. Keeping her massive program running, which is not just her, but is the OS that Runs everything; Solution 9, Living Memory, and almost all the Tech. The Omicrons and Cid agree they can come up with a new distributed OS which will have lower energy requirements but not have nearly as much functionality, meaning Living Memory would be deactivated and all the memories would go into cold storage. If Sphene were to deactivate herself, the new OS could be installed. Unfortunately because Sphene is tied into every system and is part of the OS kernel, she cannot be saved. The small upside is that the memories of the Endless can be implanted into mechanical bodies. They won't have a nearly infinite lifespan like Otto because the souls powering them aren't "theirs", but each personality can be linked to enough souls to give them another 30-50 years in the mechanical body if they want.

We get Sphene's attention and try to convince her of our solution. She's intrigued and sees the benefits to our solution, but ultimately she can't agree to it because the endless would still inevitably die and allowing that goes against her programming. As we reach an impasse, Sphene disappears once again and the Terminal states the final calculations are starting. As we're about to go and turn off all the terminals, a small rift appears, allowing us to go through. During the final fight, we find that the rift was created by Sphene. It was her (the person) giving us her blessing to end her program and give the people of Alexandria, including the Endless a new path forward.

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Personally I like the "Kill the Endless" option more between the two.

What sucks is I'm not a writer by any stretch and threw this together between Zoom calls, but I think both are better than what we got and still fit in-line with the ultimate path of the story while providing the possibility for an emotionally satisfying ending.

[OMGJesuis66]

Then I'm not sure why you stick to the game that long tbh. The WoL has been the chosen one since day one, you didn't have to wait until ShB to become one. I don't think the relevation of the WoL being Azem make us any more of a chosen one than we already are from the beginning. All it does is establish a connection between our character and the past, and that rarely is a bad thing.



I don't think this is a game where you're supposed to self-insert as the WoL, unlike say ... Mass Effect where you can self-insert as Shepard and role play the good cop/bad cop action. The personality and narrative for the WoL is set in stone. If anything, I feel the connection to Azem flesh out the personality of the the WoL a lot more. Up until the relevation, I sometime get annoyed with the WoL's terminal case of selflessness like ... no one can be that much of a goodies two shoes who keep throwing their life away and jumping into fire to save others. But when it's revealed that how Azem is, both as a personality and the responsibility of their office. If we assume all Azem office holders carry the same zeal (Emet implied as much), that means our WoL would love the world as much as Venat do. As such, it helps justify the hopelessly good personality the WoL has.

Again, I don't think the Azem connection is intended for you to be relatable to the WoL, but rather to flesh out the WoL as a character, and it does a very good job at that.

My friends play this game, I play with them. FFXIV universe is fun and I have been playing since ARR, where you are A Warrior of Light, not THE.

Shadowbringers was the expansion that set your character as protagonist and chosen one more than anything else, completely yanking the character from the world itself and making it special.

There were better ideas to flesh out the WoL than make him one of the older Convocation, aka. The 13 more important people of the world.

In terms of "self insert", well. A lot if the community does that. That's the principle of a role playing game with customizable avatar. For you to build your identity and see "yourself" in the game. Else people in this community would not be so obsessed with their WoL, but they are. So, it comes of personal approachment and enjoyment.

Thats also how people build perceptions of what the silent protagonist would do or not do, and feel upset that the writing takes them to a path they never believed the WoL would do. Thus, creating this whole genocide talk, since being the player, it made people uncomfortable with what shouldn't even be questioned, tbh.

[Silberzerox]

No thats not what she is doing. She calls out people that cannot accepte that the story goes how it goes, dont like it and getting too emotional about it. And she calls out people that cannot accepte that others have another pov and opinion about it.
Its ok to be emotional invested in a story, its ok to say you dont like it. But its not ok to go on an endless rage about it and hold onto this emotions. At some point you have to take a step back, take a breath and accepte that it is how it is.