Dawntrail's Final Zones destroy everything the story has built.

[Aulainn]

I get what you're saying, but this wasn't a race of people. It was AI computer code based on the memories of living people that required the consumption of actual living souls to maintain. Unless you think an AI generated version of someone has the same rights as a living breathing person you shouldn't feel anything at all except relief no more souls are being destroyed to fuel it.

Say goodbye to G'raha then. He is just "AI computer code" controlling a physical body.

[Boblawblah]

Say goodbye to G'raha then. He is just "AI computer code" controlling a physical body.

Well, as soon as G'raha decides to kill entire realities of other people to steal their souls to sustain his existance, I'll take him out as well.

[Aulainn]

Well, as soon as G'raha decides to kill entire realities of other people to steal their souls to sustain his existance, I'll take him out as well.

You really fail to see the bigger picture, instead of trying to figure out a solution like G'rahas, for example artificial bodies or SOMETHING, you decided to snuff out the potential lives of billions. I want you to remember, we shut those machines down only because "then Sphene will have no reason to merge worlds" not because we needed to.

[Connor]

Say goodbye to G'raha then. He is just "AI computer code" controlling a physical body.

Isn’t G’raha’s body more like a chicken-before-egg situation? He went to sleep in the Crystal Tower to wake up as Crystal Exarch, does a Shadowbringers, then when we returned we used the soul stuff we got from Exarch to wake up G’raha in our time/world?

It’s more time-space-nonsense-shenanigans than it is being an artificially constructed body and/or consciousness

[Boblawblah]

You really fail to see the bigger picture, instead of trying to figure out a solution like G'rahas, for example artificial bodies or SOMETHING, you decided to snuff out the potential lives of billions. I want you to remember, we shut those machines down only because "then Sphene will have no reason to merge worlds" not because we needed to.

I snuffed out those lives because the story didn't give me a choice. You're overthinking how much the writers thought about this. Good guys good, bad guys bad. It's not meant to be some philosophical trolly mental exercise. You'll just frustrate yourself if you try to do that.

[Aulainn]

Isn’t G’raha’s body more like a chicken-before-egg situation? He went to sleep in the Crystal Tower to wake up as Crystal Exarch, so those things, then when we returned we used the soul stuff we got from Exarch to wake up G’raha in our time/world?

It’s more time-space-nonsense-shenanigans than it is being an artificially constructed body and/or consciousness

Sure, it's more acceptable because he went into his own body but as he himself explains the Omicron in Endwalker, it's not much different in essence. Omicrons are an example of what we could've done with their memories, artificial bodies to host them, preferably without a hivemind AI to control them ofc...

[Roda]

I'm sorry but I can't help myself.

Is it even possible to genocide AIs? Even if they are based on real people. Like, it’s not like you killed anyone - you literally saved countless lives by turning the system off. We just shut down the programs emulating once-living people.

(the unfortunate problem with the Endless wasn't that they "weren't people", we weren't given enough time to have any kind of revelation to validate that, it's that their society couldn't be sustained without the destruction of ours and everyone else's. They were unsustainable and a threat.)

[GrizzlyTank]

I snuffed out those lives because the story didn't give me a choice. You're overthinking how much the writers thought about this. Good guys good, bad guys bad. It's not meant to be some philosophical trolly mental exercise. You'll just frustrate yourself if you try to do that.

Yeah, in this particular case it's much more cut and dry than the previous ones. For better or for worse.

[Eyrilona]

I snuffed out those lives because the story didn't give me a choice. You're overthinking how much the writers thought about this. Good guys good, bad guys bad. It's not meant to be some philosophical trolly mental exercise. You'll just frustrate yourself if you try to do that.

Except that for its best two expansions, that is exactly what this game has been. This game has helped people through depressions, has saved lives even is what I hear from a lot of people who got through a dark period in their lives because of how well written and emotionally resonant the message of hope was through Shadowbringers and base game Endwalker.

A good guys good, bad guys bad shonen style story isn't a bad thing per se, but not as a successor to the above.

It is in the same sense that boxing is a fine sport -- you walk up to your opponent and after some posturing exchange a few punches. That's fine. But not when you do it to someone who was expecting to play chess, in a room generally considered a chess club.

[Connor]

I'm sorry but I can't help myself.

I mean, it’s maybe a little bit of a leap between turning off ChatGPT(Dead People Version) and the literal extinction of several humanoid species if you ask me lol. Though maybe Emet-Selch would say the same thing lol, so maybe it’s not that far off…

To the post above, I think Omicron are maybe not the best comparison point. The Omicron were an initially biological species that gradually mechanised themselves to the point they became essentially full robot. If the Endless had done something similar and sustained themselves through gradual mechanisation I’d be much more hesitant to say ‘just turn it off’. But there’s not actually any ‘person’ in there for the Endless, and there never was. The program just gives the illusion that they are.

Which interestingly does bring up one point actually. Who was Living Memory really for? Was it truly for the dead, to let them live on forever? Or was it for the living to salve their grief over the dead? I mean, the entire place is essentially a virtual graveyard.