[Spoilers] Writing in Dawntrail's 6th zone makes me extremely uncomfortable

[KitSkylark]

The way characters talk and events play out in Living Memory feels very bizarre and uncomfortable to me and entirely out of step with how the rest of FFXIV has felt.

We learn that the Endless and the entire area of Living Memory are being fueled by the life force of others, that normal aether cannot sustain them, and Cahciua points out that the civilians killed during the assault on Tullioyal could be fueling any of them. And yet the entire zone and string of quests are a very long tour of how pretty the place is, how happy everyone is and how it allows such beautiful miracles to occur. Wuk Lamat says seeing everyone so happy makes her happy, and G'raha wonders at how he never thought he'd see such sights.

But the whole time I couldn't get over the fact that they are talking about an area built entirely on robbing others of their life. I genuinely don't understand if I've missed something here, but the Endless are a chosen group of people (Alexandrians) who are living centuries beyond their actual natural deaths in eternal luxury and splendor and comfort without a single care and with their every whim catered to, on the backs of the literal slaughter and consumption of innocent people. I understand that this is why the Scions and Wuk Lamat end all of this, but it's still very strange and uncomfortable to me that everyone keeps talking about how hard a choice it is and how wonderful the area is, at no point does it seem to be brought up that all of this 'beauty' is being sustained by a system as evil as any Ascian or voidsent plot. Eulmore in Shadowbringers made the case that living in luxury supported by exploitation is wrong, yet here the characters view it as bittersweet to put an end to when the exploitation is on such a higher scale.

I felt genuinely disgusted talking to the characters living an eternal theme-park existence while burning the lives of others, and if this is intentional that's great writing but the way the other scions react to it makes it feel very unintentional. When G'raha looked out on the gondola ride and talked about how incredible the glowing city was, all I could think of it as was a corpse-fire.

This is just a big rant to say I've never felt so out of step with what the writing is trying to convey, I've loved every moment of FFXIV before this and it's really sapped my desire to push through the last couple quests

[Zero-ELEC]

That's why... they're turning it off? Because it's an unconscionable, unsustainable theme park for facsimile of people. But the sights were great, and the people were happy.

[MikkoAkure]

I think part of the point of having us meet and interact with the Endless (other than to pad out the final zone) was to learn their stories and their culture so we can remember them when we shut them off and they’re gone since “remembrance of the dead equating to the dead never truly being gone” was one of the themes of the expansion.

Otherwise yeah, couldn’t shut it off fast enough and I don’t understand the position of those who think otherwise.

[17cupsofcoffee]

Just because the characters were able to acknowledge the beauty of the place, and the fact that it kinda sucked to have to erase the memories of an entire civilization, doesn't mean they couldn't recognize that it needed to end? Basically from the moment Cahciua asks the party to shut off the terminals, there was never a point where the characters seriously questioned if they were doing the right thing. The only ones who even slightly wavered were Krile and Erenville, which I think they can be forgiven for, given they were literally talking to their dead parents (and even then, they basically immediately recognized it was wishful thinking).

[Cleretic]

While everyone else has pointed out all the central points of Living Memory, I think it's also worth noting that while its existence itself is nothing short of an atrocity, it's also one that nobody we meet is actually guilty of.

Contrast with Ultima Thule, which is ultimately all Meteion's doing (although even her guilt is complicated), nobody we meet in Canal Town, Yesterworld, Asyle Volcane or Windspath Gardens are in any way to blame for what's happening. Even Sphene, the one we ultimately have to stop, is at worst complicit; she didn't start this going, she seems to even know how horrible it is, she just sees it as her eternal duty to keep this status quo going. Preservation are ultimately the guilty party... but by all appearances, they're long dead.

So, we're just left walking a theme park full of innocent people, who had no part in the crimes we have to stop, but are nonetheless the ones that have to be lost; the best we can do is ensure they're not forgotten. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to hurt when we turn it all off.

[Astronema]

I found the whole story at the point they present the regulators and how they work disgusting.
I hate this msq besides the jobs and zones etc this story is icky as hell and childish.

[Alleo]

I think part of the point of having us meet and interact with the Endless (other than to pad out the final zone) was to learn their stories and their culture so we can remember them when we shut them off and they’re gone since “remembrance of the dead equating to the dead never truly being gone” was one of the themes of the expansion.

Otherwise yeah, couldn’t shut it off fast enough and I don’t understand the position of those who think otherwise.

Even more so because thanks to the memory manipulation, nobody else will ever remember these people.

[Denishia]

Living Memory is unsettling and wrong in many ways- the extreme negative energy consumption without even touching that said energy is the literal life force of others and that with the attack on Tuliyollal it's no longer taken by people who have opted into the system and are ignorant of what its being used for but via violent invasion.

Or the programming's manipulation of the Endless.

But that the one positive, as seen with Krile and Erenville, that of allowing the living to have the equivalent of a ChatGP conversation pulled from the diary entries of dead people and memories that others had of said deceased and thus gaining some family knowledge or a possible form of closure depending on an individual's philosophy and emotional reaction, is rendered moot.

Because Sphene no longer allowed her living subjects to mingle in the Endless Theme Park, this electric ofrenda has no one visiting it. And nobody remembers the dead exist aside from her.

There's a horrifying side quest "An Usher's Lament" that highlights this.

[Iscah]

There's a horrifying side quest "An Usher's Lament" that highlights this.

Also the sidequest chain at the farm in the Outskirts.

[kaynide]

I love this quote from another similar thread regarding Zone 6:

Don't worry, since we don't consider them to be alive we're not guilty of murder for killing the-- hey wait a goddamn minute