Problematic notion about Zone 5 & 6 story bits.

[Lyth]

There's not enough storytelling here to create any sort of moral quandary. I agree that deleting Sphene's photo album of data wraiths from her cloud storage in response to her soldiers firing at Turali civilians seems like it could have been written as a very mean-spirited thing to do given the right story context, but it didn't even generate so much as a blink from anyone involved. It just doesn't seem like anyone in the story actually had any emotional connection to the event to properly contextualize it or attach any sort of values to it.

It's disappointing, I know. You came here looking for a philosophical debate and ended up with a consensus on the writing quality.

[Iscah]

The fact that they keep returning to this kind of story (right down to the Amaurot-esque imagery of Living Memory and the final dungeon where you run through the memories of a dying civilization...) while seemingly having nothing new to say is just dire.

It really feels like they're trying to recapture what Shadowbringers did well, but every time they try again they do it weirdly, and it just retrospectively dilutes the potency of the one time they did it well.

Honestly, it's kind of what I was dreading we'd get ever since the early broad-strokes promotion of "a story about values" and "difficult choices". Obviously the details were unpredictable, but coming out of Endwalker where "both side have a point" boils down to "both sides have reasons for you to dislike them but the story requires you to side with one now that we've made you uncomfortable about it" which they seem to intend as profound and high-concept but just feels unenjoyable.

There's a balance to be found, no doubt, but at this point I really hope they can find some other type of storyline for 8.0 and not make it be all about life and death and remembrance again.

[Cleretic]

It really feels like they're trying to recapture what Shadowbringers did well, but every time they try again they do it weirdly, and it just retrospectively dilutes the potency of the one time they did it well.

Ironic, because this works better than the Shadowbringers equivalent for me. And I think it's because the voices being prioritized are the actual people of this false city. Fake Amaurot's citizens weren't really citizens, they were apparitions made by Emet-Selch--an extension of his voice, rather than additional ones. (And yes, that includes Fake Hythlodaeus.) As a result Fake Amaurot never rang to me as anything but the sob story of one man I was already sick of.

They could've done that with Living Memory, making everything we meet an extension of Sphene--just spitballing how, perhaps you'd place Sphene as the 'central program' for a simulation of Alexandria at its prime, and therefore everyone we meet is both a reflection of her and a reflection of the world she left behind. But that's not what they do: what they do is have Sphene sit the zone out entirely, fill it full of the memories of actual people, and give the microphone to them instead, giving us a much deeper view of that world than Shadowbringers ever gave us of Amaurot. In fact, we might have a more detailed view of Alexandria than both Shadowbringers and Endwalker combined gave us of Amaurot, but that's sorta beside the point at that stage.

[Denishia]

I can see that- Old Alexandria feels more realized as a world and society than any of the other dead places, including Amaurot. But the Endless felt like extremely edited diary entries rather than Old Alexandria truly preserved. And was a strong reminder of how funerals practices are for the living, not for the dead. About the living getting closure, positive or negative, by having something physical to interact with the dead, and how the decision to hide the dead via memory removal and blocking access to Living Memory removed what little good could be found in that terrible technological horror-show.

I just wish Sphene didn't fall as flat as a pancake for me, in part because she felt like a lame attempt to give what elements of Emet that people latched onto to soften and flanderize his character. I hope any more plot threads involve her creators instead of her character.