Finished the MSQ - Feels bad, pushed to do evil [Spoilers inside]

[Remilia_Nightfall]

Yikes... where to start with this one. Uh... they're not living people? They don't have souls. The fact that not only did Cahciua ask this of us but Krile's parents were also in notion of agreement gave us the full idea that sustaining this world was not right. Living off the backs of people who were murdered just to entertain someone's dream is very pitiful and deranged. There's no way you're trying to entertain the idea that any of it was moral. Given that what was left of the Providence team was dead and the original Sphene wasn't even fully herself, but only just the memories, she had forcefully created a world to sustain people because she was programmed to do so, in protecting the Endless at all costs. And she continued to do so despite having the appearance and memories of Sphene. She was a slave to those urges.

When we first entered into the area, there was the introduction ceremony, which should have been a huge red flag in the "grace period" to adjust to suddenly living again. It seemed like they operated this procedure without the consent of those still living just because someone wanted to keep them alive. That's the most horrifying thing in all of this.

No, the irony is that your perspective is literally that of the Ascians. People of the reflections (including the current source) are incomplete beings who are not truly alive, so they are not really worth preserving.

From our perspective, the Endless are not really alive and not worth preserving.

What we define as "alive" is just a label based on biased criteria that inevitably favours our pre-established position.

[Folsom]

This is virtue signalling at best. The Endless are just the memories of their former selves when they lived right before their true death. They were sustained not by magic, not by electricity, but by the souls of other living people who were murdered for the sake of this futile project to continue someone's folly of a dream, someone who was but just a mere fragment of their original self. There's no justification for continuing said project, it is incredibly morally wrong. All of that is playing God and goes against the true natural living order of things.

The Endless don't even have souls because they were extracted from them. That process, which created the Endless, took the memories, spliced them from its soul, and put the memories into these bodies, kinda like the Replicants from Nier Replicant. The argument about Otis... his soul and memories were not spliced when his soul was placed inside that relic of a machine. One could say he was still living, but only within that relic. The version of Otis we met in Living Memory was the one where his memories were duplicated at the point he initially died in his original body over 300-odd years ago from the point of Dawntrail's story. These two are not the same and were essentially co-existing in two different spaces. The only difference is, I would say that Relic Otis was the real Otis all along and the memories he retained in that mechanical body were not transferred (or rather could not be transferred) to the version of him in Living Memory.

All of this. I'm surprised people are missing the actual parallel here. We are not like Emet-Selch in this scenario; Sphene is. Emet-Selch wanted to merge all of the reflections into the source to revive his people. Sphene wants to eat an entire reflection/the source to sustain the memory of her people. Both were planning to orchestrate the murder of an/all shards to preserve the past; both had also already done part of that. The theme of both characters was "the past at the cost of the future."

The Endless could not continue to live (at least as far as this expansion has gone so far) for the same reason we could not let Emet-Selch sacrifice yet more lives to Zodiark.

[Remilia_Nightfall]

All of this. I'm surprised people are missing the actual parallel here. We are not like Emet-Selch in this scenario; Sphene is. Emet-Selch wanted to merge all of the reflections into the source to revive his people. Sphene wants to eat an entire reflection/the source to sustain the memory of her people. Both were planning to orchestrate the murder of an/all shards to preserve the past; both had also already done part of that. The theme of both characters was "the past at the cost of the future."

The Endless could not continue to live (at least as far as this expansion has gone so far) for the same reason we could not let Emet-Selch sacrifice yet more lives to Zodiark.

Not really tho. As someone else already stated, Emet Selch didn't just want to "preserve memory", or "preserve the past". Emet had a plan to make the Ascians Great Again and make them the FUTURE.

Emet had to lose, obviously, as it was a "us or them" situation, and it kinda was the whole plotline of the Ascians since 2.0.

Sphene's plan is myopic, in comparison. The parallel between us and Emet is not insomuch as the end goal, but rather as the mindset of considering another species as very easily wipable without remorse due to being effectively "inferior".

[Ilenya]

One other issues is the timeflow difference that suggests Zoraal Ja after the attack on Tuliyollal waited for around 20 years before Wuk Lamat comes to him for their revenge plot.

Why do you think this?

We were explicitly told that the timeflow differences synced when Heritage Found and Solution Nine connected with our reality.

[Bunyon]

The Endless could not continue to live (at least as far as this expansion has gone so far) for the same reason we could not let Emet-Selch sacrifice yet more lives to Zodiark.

I would have liked that this was explored more, and that it had been treated with the weight of wiping out the last remnants of a world to save your own. But instead I feel like everyone treated it like none of these people were alive despite them just looking and acting like regular people with feeling and memories. Everyone is just "Hurray we saved the world again".

[Loggos]

Why do you think this?

We were explicitly told that the timeflow differences synced when Heritage Found and Solution Nine connected with our reality.

Huh, we were? (I might have missed that though. I stopped reading properly at some point).

But didn't they technically connect with our reality as soon as the dome appeared in Tural? And yet, in the day or so it took us to get inside 30 years passed within the dome. Or did the sync (conveniently) happen after we had entered?

[Bunyon]

Huh, we were? (I might have missed that though. I stopped reading properly at some point).

But didn't they technically connect with our reality as soon as the dome appeared in Tural? And yet, in the day or so it took us to get inside 30 years passed within the dome. Or did the sync (conveniently) happen after we had entered?

I believe the sync likely happened when they decided to start the invasion. Perhaps they were able to control time syncing somehow with the interdimensional key? Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to leave the dome with those huge ships, since time would be going so differently between each side of the barrier as they crossed over. Might be one of those "don't think about it too hard" things.

[Ilenya]

Good point. I'd have to check.

It definitely happened, because outside SE requiring all locations to match time for non-lore reasons, we'd have issues with us being in there working with Koana for the second attack.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

And let's not forget the living aether is required to give them bodies. But they can exist and interact in artificial bodies. So why did we not look for a way to save the data even if we obviously couldn't let them continue in the physical world by consuming people? There are three tiers here.

1. Stopping Sphene from killing more people.
2. Destroying the Unlost World.
3. Deleting the data of countless innocent people including the parents of half the people with us!

And no, deleting them doesn't return them to the cycle of life because it's their memories that are in the machine and the aetherial sea just washes away memories.

[AlexisLestrange]

...
Maybe they were alive though. And the game doesn't seem to be showing me that they were lifeless, robotic AI, especially given how they diverge from their original settings on a whim. In fact, the story is better if there is a moral consequence to our choice. Was the WoL justified? Yes, it was for the survival of the Source. But doesn't make it less tragic.

I mean, if there's anything to be learned from the Turing test and today's examples of AI - i.e. GPT-4o - it is that Artificial Intelligence is becoming uncannily close to presenting like that of a living human being. I agree to an extent that these AI with the make-up of memories from the formerly living are innocent in all of this, though it is quite the mockery that Sphene is sustaining this way of living in her own fairytale utopia she has enforced upon them since she was coded to do so. So yes, like others have said... it is a mercy that we go straight to shutting it down. There are so many red flags such as the introduction ceremony, a kid having seen the same show 30+ times, the food is tasteless, some of the Endless even trying to enjoy themselves because it makes the Queen happy. Living or not, in whatever way you want to see it, I think the WoL, Krile, G'raha Tia, and Erenville are all justified in shutting this down. Though yes I agree, it doesn't make the whole situation any less bittersweet. That's how SQE wanted us to see it. And to reiterate the point of this post, I don't think this makes our Warrior of Light evil. The longer the world existed, the more lives of Alexandrians and even those of the source would be taken.

As for the moral consequence to our choice, the whole beauty and liveliness of the area ceases to be, but all that remains is those of the Endless that still have one thing chaining them to existence, something that needs resolving. Personally, I think it would be a cool idea if we get an Alliance quest that revitalises the area to some extent, or perhaps just a small portion of it. However, the area of Living Memory changes forever more as a consequence of us shutting down the Meso towers.