The missing mood in the existential horror of the last zone of the game (spoilers)

[Taliriah]

What made it obvious that they weren't real persons is that they seemed content to live a completely empty and purposeless existence. Living Memory had the same vibe as The Good Place in the show of the same name where people were living a perfect but completely empty life without any purpose.
And the fact that they seemed equally content for it to end really drove home the fact that they weren't real.

[KuroTenshi]

What made it obvious that they weren't real persons is that they seemed content to live a completely empty and purposeless existence. Living Memory had the same vibe as The Good Place in the show of the same name where people were living a perfect but completely empty life without any purpose.
And the fact that they seemed equally content for it to end really drove home the fact that they weren't real.

Not everyone was content to end, a couple didn't want their knowledge used for nefarious purposes, that doesn't mean they want to end. The other was morally opposed to the situation at hand. Neither of those things suggest that everyone there wanted to die. (I didn't talk to everyone and read every bit of unvoiced dialogue so I may have missed some things, if this is incorrect and everyone was begging you to kill them, disregard this message.)

[Lersayil]

...snip...

I honestly think they just outright forgot the time dilation thing after they used it for the Zooral Ja time skip. Multiple people attest that from Alexandrias perspective it was only a few (4ish?) centuries since their cataclysm and the Eternal system coming online. Leaves place for possible fluctuations in the dilation rate, but still.

That aside, that would also open up a few more can of worms.

• At what point did someone live "enough" for them to have to step aside for those that haven't? Viera live for hundreds of years. Should they? Do we have the right to decide otherwise? How much should we be affected until we get that right?
• Wouldn't long lives be more valuable? If the Endless could lead infinite, happy, content lives, wouldn't their lives have infinitely more value over our fleeting existence?
• Do the Endless people know - and I mean informedly know - the price of their extended afterlife?
• Knowing the price, would they still choose to keep living? We know they don't have the choice, but we're not giving them one either.

This whole Endless situation brings up so many ocean deep issues and discussions, but the story just skims over most of them while wildly waving its hands like a coked-up Jedi master in an attempt to distract us from thinking about it.

[Taliriah]

Not everyone was content to end, a couple didn't want their knowledge used for nefarious purposes, that doesn't mean they want to end. The other was morally opposed to the situation at hand. Neither of those things suggest that everyone there wanted to die. (I didn't talk to everyone and read every bit of unvoiced dialogue so I may have missed some things, if this is incorrect and everyone was begging you to kill them, disregard this message.)

Between the people who were like "oh you're going to shut us down? Aight then have a nice day" and the stragglers in aether current side quests who just sounded no more than inconvenienced that everyone else disapeared id say they were content. Or at least oblivious. It just didn't seem to mean much to them.

[Sephi_Ravour]

Thanks for writing that all down. I wholehearthdely agree with you. That last zone just feels so wrong, and I dread having to go there again, to farm crafting materials.
The point that someone recreated from memories isn't a real person rings hollow, when the Crystal Exarch G'raha Tia stands right next us. Guy literally got his memories transfered into his younger body. I know it's not exactly the same, but close enough for me.

There are serveral points in the 2nd part of the story that fell like the writers ran out of time to flesh things out and had to hastly rewrite and cut things out. For example the scene with the sick child, that suffers from an aetherical imbalance. Something that can we know a cure for. I was fully expecting the WoL to summon Alisaie via link perl point at the kid and let her do her thing. That would have served to show Sphene that there is a different path and approaches they haven't even considered yet.

But no, someone wanted to cramp in an Endwalker level extinction threat into the story, so every possible solution gets ignored.

[Mikey_R]

The Unlost world is part of Sphene's reflection as well, so here time should also pass faster, shouldn't it? Yet Krile's parents say only 20 years have passed.

I think it is worth pointing out that it was Krile that mentioned it had been 20 years.

Not that it matters in Living Memory. Whilst time has been flowing on the outside, there isn't really a concept of time inside. This is shown both by the fact the clock tower clock has no hands and by the fact they can recreate people from whatever point in momory they want. One moment you can be your younger self, the next, you're older, as with Namikka.

Which is another thing that goes against the grain. Are you living if someone/something else is choosing what you live? Whilst we don't know how it works in terms of memory and how it all works in the memory timeline, ie. is the new memory tacked on the end, or, is it put in place where it would make sense time wise. That then brings up weird points of confusion. Take the couple again. For 30? years the wife lived without the husband, now, they are married. How would that mess with the memory, or has the AI changed it slightly to compensate?

We can draw parallels with G'Raha Tia and the Crystal Exarch. At some point in time, they are essentially split into 2 different people, merged back together, memories and all. The difference here is that G'Raha was essentially in statis inside the Crystal Tower, it could then be reasonably assumed time doesn't flow for him. So, whilst his Crystal Exarch self is off saving the first, there are no additional memories being created as G'Raha Tia that could conflict. Once they merge, it still flows as one continuous timeline.

[Loggos]

I honestly think they just outright forgot the time dilation thing after they used it for the Zooral Ja time skip.

That aside, that would also open up a few more can of worms.

• At what point did someone live "enough" for them to have to step aside for those that haven't? Viera live for hundreds of years. Should they? Do we have the right to decide?
• Do the Endless people know - and I mean informedly know - the price of their extended afterlife?
• Knowing the price, would they still choose to keep living? We know they don't have the choice, but we're not giving them one either.

I don't think that there is inherently a point where somebody has lived enough but I do think that you can measure the fairness of it relative to those who will be killed by Sphene.

If you have already lived hundreds or thousands of years in pure bliss and you are about to obliterate people who live much, much shorter lives only so you can live even longer then I think it's justified to say "you have had your fill (and you lived in such a paradise, you've probably been happier than most of your victims will ever be)". "You" (or your leader, whether you want it or not) don't get to murder whole worlds so you can live longer while robbing them of their shot of at least a short life.

Vieras don't live long at the expense of anybody else.

You are right that they didn't choose this and perhaps they wouldn't condone what Sphene is doing, so the blame completely lies with her.

But this brings up a new question: Does it make a difference if they know, when the outcome is the same? Genocide of one, possibly many, many more worlds?
Of course if there is a way to save them, then this should definitely happen. But if we follow the game's premise that it's just not possible then I think the victims deserve the fairness I mentioned above.

(But yeah, this is all obv. completely speculative because it hinges on the assumption of time passing much faster.)

I think it is worth pointing out that it was Krile that mentioned it had been 20 years.
Not that it matters in Living Memory. Whilst time has been flowing on the outside, there isn't really a concept of time inside. This is shown both by the fact the clock tower clock has no hands and by the fact they can recreate people from whatever point in momory they want. One moment you can be your younger self, the next, you're older, as with Namikka.

Oh yeah, that's true! And I forgot that she said "I don't know how much time has passed for you."
Though I wonder if it just means there is no time for the endless because it's irrelevant to them as simulations. The world they inhabit still seems to be somewhat physical and when we remove the glamour we can see buildings that have dilapidated over time.
So it could mean that technically time still flows normally in the reflection, it just doesn't matter for the everyday life of the endless due to their digital nature.

But you are right, it doesn't matter much because neither situation serves the writers imo. If time passes normally or if time doesn't exist, it both poses huge problems for the story.

Which is another thing that goes against the grain. Are you living if someone/something else is choosing what you live? Whilst we don't know how it works in terms of memory and how it all works in the memory timeline, ie. is the new memory tacked on the end, or, is it put in place where it would make sense time wise. That then brings up weird points of confusion. Take the couple again. For 30? years the wife lived without the husband, now, they are married. How would that mess with the memory, or has the AI changed it slightly to compensate?

Yeah, it seems like Sphene "locks them" into their self during their happienst moments but all the memories they had afterwards are not included. Which is strange; only because you had your one happiest moment at one point in time doesn't mean you didn't have any other happy moments past that point that are worth remembering.
There is also Otis. I don't remember all the dialogue pertaining to him (I started to skip at some point), but I recall them talking about "both of them converging" (endless Otis and robo Otis) and him being one of the first candidates to try out the memory extraction process.
Does that mean that his memories were just copied and not really extracted? Because his soul and his memories of who he was were clearly intact inside the robot.
Was he a "failure" and the tech didn't work properly yet, not being able to neatly separate his soul and memories?

If he wasn't a failure, then this would open up another can of worms. It doesn't end.

[AlysCamoa]

You summed up all of my issues with the last zone almost verbatim in the OP.

Everyone talking about AI, ChatGPT, and copies are missing the story. I don't know if it's a purposeful tangent, or if they just sped-read and missed this part: but it's stated in no uncertain terms that memories are extracted and transplanted directly to living memory, in the same process as the lifestream. This would be as if we had the capability to extract the human brain and transplant it directly into a machine. There is no interruption here, no 'cointoss problem', no 'but which is real?' dilemma. You simply move from one state to another. There is no copying. I cannot stress this enough. There is still only one, discreet instance of these people's memories. Their memories did not go to the lifestream. Their memories did not pass Go, they did not collect 200 dollars.

None of these memories are 'locked in'. They manifest at the prime of their lives, yes, but as Wuk's nursemaid shows us that is not a set rule. They can change their appearance if that perceived prime changes. Just like they're capable of developing new memories, undertaking new experiences, understanding changes in their situation. Living Memory is not comparable to Aumaurot. It is Ultima Thule, but gold.

It is true that the life in Living Memory is antithetical to the life outside of it. It requires that outside life to sustain itself; so does every other form of life. The difference, then, is that we're the cow. And so just like with Emet, we defend ourselves. This isn't wrong. What's wrong is that we kill untold thousands of people without even attempting a compromise. Sphene didn't want to compromise? What? Did we read the same MSQ? She was constantly talking about how she wanted to be on the same side, to find some path together. And we constantly tell her that no, her way is wrong. We never present Ultima Thule as a possible solution. We never offer to try and look into aetheric conversion. Sphene could have put her people into stand-by, just like 9-in-10 Living Memories were. Would she have been happy about it? Probably not. But it would have allowed us to give this theme the space to be properly explored and developed.

The Disney sing-along music that plays during the final cutscene is like alpaca spit to the face. We're supposed to feel good, looking out over that dead city we just exterminated life from? Don't make me laugh. I'll sum this all up with a banal platitude that I think is perfectly appropriate because that's all this expansion was:
An old adage is that authors should write what they know. I think that’s a generally boring bit of advice because it stifles innovation, but I respect it as generally true with the addition that when branching out, the author should refrain from trying to preach about what they don’t know.
And holy shit, does Hiroi not know anything about memory.

[Lersayil]

Everyone talking about AI, ChatGPT, and copies are missing the story. I don't know if it's a purposeful tangent, or if they just sped-read and missed this part: but it's stated in no uncertain terms that memories are extracted and transplanted directly to living memory, in the same process as the lifestream. This would be as if we had the capability to extract the human brain and transplant it directly into a machine. There is no interruption here, no 'cointoss problem', no 'but which is real?' dilemma. You simply move from one state to another. There is no copying. I cannot stress this enough. There is still only one, discreet instance of these people's memories. Their memories did not go to the lifestream. Their memories did not pass Go, they did not collect 200 dollars.

Currently we can't rule out that the Endless really are just some hyper advanced form of predictive language model with extended capacity to build new memories. While its clearly the deceased peoples memory being transferred into Living Memory, we currently don't know how Living Memory uses them to create the Endless.

On the surface, from the outside they seem perfectly sapient, but without looking further under the hood we just can't be sure. There may not be an actual consciousness in there, just a self learning super computer making wildly accurate extrapolations based on the memories provided. It is very much beyond what current real world technology is capable of, but we don't know how much further the current type of models can go without actually simulating thought processes and a consciousness or outright a brain. It's still a possibility, and one which would pretty cleanly fit the "not alive" category. It wouldn't make much sense, given what we know of the stated objective behind the Endless project, but its a possibility.

On the flip-side, we don't really know anything about how souls work in the living. They may indeed be something irreplaceable in there that gets lost when only the memory is extracted. They seem to imply there is, but its never really explained.

Long story short, we are missing a lot of information to make a judgment call, but the really aggravating thing is that the heroes seem to be in the same position... and they either don't really seem to care, or are privy to information we are not.

Either way, its a writing issue.

[Loggos]

None of these memories are 'locked in'. They manifest at the prime of their lives, yes, but as Wuk's nursemaid shows us that is not a set rule. They can change their appearance if that perceived prime changes.

I don't think the latter contradicts the former tbh. Yes, they seem to be their full selves and if "triggered" in the correct way they can reactivate their full memories. But they do seem to be locked in their prime. There appears to be some kind of filter placed on their memories.

If they had full access to them, then people who lived until old age would merely have the body of a younger person (unless their happiest moment was when they were old of course), but their personality and knowledge would be the same as those they had just before they died.

But Namikka for example believes that Wuk is still a child and she is looking for her. If she had full access to her memories then she would know that Wuk is an adult and has become Dawnservant. So she does seem to be “frozen” in that time of her life.
It takes Wuk to actually break through to her in order to remove that filter and grant Namikka the ability to access her full memories.

I think the children are another example. Some of them might have died during childhood. But Erenville points out how some of them might just not have had any happier moments in their adult lives. Yet the children don't seem like adults in children's bodies. They have regressed to the actual mental age of children and don't seem to remember their adult life (if they had one).

---

About Sphene compromising I'm kind of torn. I completely agree that it was a grave mistake of the writers to not even offer her the whole repertoire of solutions we have. Perhaps that would have swayed her mind.
At the same time her words of how she wished we could be on the same side sounded as if she had already made up her mind that it's not possible. She was in clear agony but also seemed convinced there is no other way.

She was prepared to actively invade and destroy another reflection after all, which is such a big and cruel step that you could speculate she is already "too far gone" wrt her extremist belief that it is inevitable, even though it pains her.

I think it's also worth pointing out that her endeavours do not actually save all of her people. Her people in flesh don't actually rely on killing other worlds. The cloud/Unlost World does. She wouldn't have to do any of that for them.
Sphene is zealous in her belief that her people deserve to live forever (and happily as that) as memories in her virtual afterlife and also that it is perfectly acceptable that it happens at the cost of other lives.
(Yes, there are problems her mortal people face like the sickness but you do not need to grant them an endless life to solve this. Those are two separate goals of hers.)

You can’t even call her belief entitled anymore. It is a full-blown superiority complex to believe your people deserve eternity and others should die for it, even if she doesn’t want to admit it to herself.

She can tell herself she is sad all she wants and that it is necessary but as a matter of fact, it is not. Eternal life is not a necessity for her people to be happy. You can also live a happy life if your time is limited.
If she/the program had been able to accept the mortality of her people then none of this would have happened and she could have focused on giving them the best lives possible, e,g. allocating more of her cloud's (enormous) resource consumption on finding cures. They have electrope, acarne knowledge from the Lalas of the source, they have built an interdimensional gate Y'shtola praises as masterful and vastly beyond her capabilities and they were able to recreate the soul cleansing process of the lifestream. It sounds like a real stretch that a society so advanced they can literally operate on the level of souls would never have found a cure for their lightning sickness, while the scions in our comparably "backwards" world can come up with solutions to the toughest problems.
She could have given the remaining Endless a second life as long as their energy would last but simulate their aging or otherwise let them know their time is limited (which it is bc energy). They could then have made the most of that second life just like their counterparts in flesh. At the same time, she could have stopped entering any new memories/people into the system.
Like this she could have phased it out while giving the existing memories a dignified but finite life.

In the end I don't know if she would have cooperated. It is definitely possible that offering an actual solution would have changed her mind. But I think it is important to keep her belief system in mind and at least account for the possibility that her view might already have been so distorted that nothing could have truly convinced her.