I'm not nearly as critical as most on Dawntrail, BUT...

[Cleretic]

Also, how are the beings of Elysion and Living Memory any different from a philisophical standpoint? Both are originally dead, one is made of memories/dynamis the other memories/souls. Both seem sentient and tangible. I guess my question is, outside of HOW they are sustained, why would the concept of living memory be horrifying to the cast, but Elysion would not?

You said philosophically, so I'm shooting entirely past any in-universe material divisions here like the presence (or lack thereof) of a soul here. Which is good, because I don't think that argument matters.

Essentially, the core difference in reaction to both of them are actually in exactly 'how they are sustained'. Both were essentially recreations of people, but their root reasons for existing and cost are different. Ultima Thule's people, including the people we met in the Omicron society quest, essentially do not have a meaningful 'cost'--either whatever they're running on literally can exist perpetually, or the question of what they're running on just wasn't especially relevant to anyone we talked to. The Endless, on the other hand, have a very concrete cost: corporeal aether (a.k.a. life force, different from souls; not the most clearly stated thing), harvested from living people, preferably yours.

There's also a question of why they were made in both cases. Ultima Thule's denizens are, in a weird, twisted way, created for their own sake: Meteion made the originals essentially to make them suffer, and then the Omicrons later made some simulations for the purposes of giving them whatever form of closure and community they can. They are there for themselves. That is actually not true for the Endless: they essentially exist for the sake of the living. The Endless are a twisted manifestation of Alexandria's belief that you live as long as you're remembered; they are, essentially, an extremely elaborate photo album of the deceased. ...but a photo album is only worth having if you look at it, so you have the deep, tragic irony that because of the regulators' memory erasure, nobody is looking at it. Compound that with the exorbitant cost required to keep them 'alive'? We can only ever pull out the blade against that.

If the Endless weren't running on literal human lives, we'd probably be cool with it; we actually didn't really shut them down due to an objection to the Endless, we shut them down because they were the thing Sphene was willing to kill entire planets for. But they are a memorial to the dead; the worst thing you could do is keep sacrificing living people to it.

[Corgain]

That's a pretty good explaination. I still feel super bad though. I'm sitting here asking myself, if we can pull off all of this other super impossible, hope driven nonsense, why did no one stop and ask. "Is there a different way? Can Y'shtola or Urianger put their two cents in?" Can we ask Sharlayan if there is another source of energy that could be substituted to sustain the "people" of Living Memory. But then again, TOO MANY impossibly good solutions can break suspension of disbelief. I'm just super conflicted with this one.

[RedLolly]

One detail is dynamis is just a fantasy metaphor for dark matter (while aether is matter) but it was framed as a bit of an easter egg as Hermes used the same estimated percentage of dynamis as is estimated for dark matter. The recreations in Ultima Thule are a wholly unknown and new form of life of pur dynamis are just living out there.

So I fully agree with Cleretic that the difference is entirely how the Endless are sustained. We also have the factor that many Endless, particularly in the optional side quests, are fully cognizant to the fact they are copies of dead people and are fine with fading away, which takes much of the edge off of turning them off.

[Cleretic]

So I fully agree with Cleretic that the difference is entirely how the Endless are sustained. We also have the factor that many Endless, particularly in the optional side quests, are fully cognizant to the fact they are copies of dead people and are fine with fading away, which takes much of the edge off of turning them off.

Yeah, a constant emotion around the Endless is that they're fine with calling it a day. Not only are they aware that they aren't the real thing, they're also not really begging to be given any other treatment; they know they've had a good run, usually all they want is just to have one last good memory to go out on.

That doesn't mean they're nothing, of course: there's a later conversation with Erenville that makes a solid point, that even if the Endless Cahciua wasn't the real Cahciua, the closure he got from talking to her wasn't false.

[VictorSpoils]

So we're finally admitting this isn't a FF9 expansion. Guess a little over a year was faster than expected.

[Corgain]

That was my main disappointment. Someone I know. "Wait for Dawntrail! We get Alexandria from that game!"

[Corgain]

The only other issue, now that the rest has been clarified as I've progressed, that is bothering me, is why is the ruins of Archeo Alexandria SO FAR from Everkeep? The city was literally surrounding the castle shown in the dungeon, but in the Heritage Found, the castle, being within Everkeep is very far from the city itself. The ruins should be literally right up against and underneath Everkeep.

[Cleretic]

The only other issue, now that the rest has been clarified as I've progressed, that is bothering me, is why is the ruins of Archeo Alexandria SO FAR from Everkeep? The city was literally surrounding the castle shown in the dungeon, but in the Heritage Found, the castle, being within Everkeep is very far from the city itself. The ruins should be literally right up against and underneath Everkeep.

Simple: Big city.

While Archeo Alexandria does have some areas based on FFIX Alexandria, the game gets a little cheeky and never actually places them near Alexandria Castle; the Alexandria dungeon never shows them. So we were simply left to take our natural assumption that the castle got destroyed somehow (there's a big crater roughly where Alexandria Castle would be if you used the FFIX recreations as reference point), and it wasn't until we discover the Underkeep ourselves that we learn otherwise.

We know that Alexandria was consumed by rising sea levels, so chances are Archeo Alexandria was on higher hills than the castle itself. There's also some sheer cliffs around the Everkeep, so there's a good chance the land didn't stay put over those four hundred years, either, and we have no idea what the dimensional grafting onto Yyasulani did.

[Corgain]

But the original Alexandria Castle is IN Everkeeps sub level. Everkeep was built right overtop of Alexandria Castle as we see in the Alexandria dungeon. In that dungeon we go through the city, to reach the castle, it shows that Alexandria Castle was part of the city itself , it's "castle town" so to speak. If we assume that they couldn't simply move something as huge as Everkeep, away from the city, then the only thing I can come up with is that the dimensional fusion somehow created a geographical distance between the two. I'm sure the city is huge, but the lack of ruins near the Everkeep, where the castle is , is what's bugging me, because the way the dungeon was laid out, you literally walked right from the city streets, into the Castle area. https://external-content.duckduckgo....8a8bd071b7a896 You can sort of make it out in this photo, the city pretty much surrounds the castle. Then everkeep was built up right in the middle of it, OVER the ruins of the castle.

[Corgain]

I mean, I guess the explaination is that it's because the rest of it is underwater, and maybe that's the case. It's just the layout of seems a bit wacky to me and I would still think the mostly intact parts would still be situated a bit closer to the site of the original castle in Everkeep. It's a minor nitpick I admit.