Problematic notion about Zone 5 & 6 story bits.

[Cleretic]

I don't especially want to argue with you on this, in part because I think you're saying something both broadly true and writer-intended, and arguments that wheel out the G word often get pretty ugly and emotionally-charged, but there's a few other things to keep in mind here.

1. This was depicted as a heavy choice. It's depicted as the heavy choice, in fact, damn near the first thing we knew about this story was that the development team were saying 7.0 would have us make a difficult choice. This isn't just the story waving off a horrible thing that happened; you are supposed to feel this way, at least in part.

2. It's also essentially our only choice. There's no soft and happy third option, no middle road not taken. It boils down to an 'us or them' situation--and a very tangible 'us or them' at that, we've been very directly told by several people that Sphene's going to try to kill us all so they can keep going.

3. The call for what happens is from inside the house, so to speak; it's not Wuk Lamat that says this has to happen, it's not Zoraal Ja who only thinks about solving problems through bloodshed, it's not even our usual 'emotionally detached advisor' types like Y'shtola or Urianger: it's Cahciua, one of the Endless. That essentially makes this less murder, and more assisted suicide; and yes, on an objective reality level that wouldn't necessarily change anything, but FFXIV's story is ultimately very character-driven and emotionally-driven; we frequently have one or two people stand in for a whole community (my favorite example is 'Estinien is Ishgard'), and if there's supposed to be dissent or opposition, that's also given embodied voice (best example there is probably Emet and Venat as the contrasted voices of the Ancients). There are no dissenting voices in Living Memory; there's only those corroborating it, either literally in the case of Krile's parents, or emotionally in Otis'.

Living Memory's tragedy is, in a strange way, one of their own making; they're a people who think being remembered is to be alive, who created a status quo where the dead aren't remembered. That certainly makes this sadder, but it doesn't cause the right solution to suddenly be to let Sphene win. The right answer is probably to completely shut down Origenics and the regulators, to change the status quo that makes Living Memory the tragedy it is. And I suspect that will be a core element of the Arcadion's whole story, albeit with a bit of an unorthodox backdrop of 'also we are terrible to athletes'.

EDIT: Also, I think it's interesting that you bring up people who 'fall through the cracks' of society, because I have the same questions but about Living Memory. Like, let's take your example of the lonely people; someone who didn't make connections, whose family died, or perhaps someone whose family even rejected them and never found a new one. We know that Living Memory prioritizes reconnections, lost loves and family, stuff like that, so... what does happen to someone who didn't have them? Are they dropped into Canal Town completely alone, surrounded by people who already know each other, like turning up to a reunion you aren't invited to? Or are they never brought back, eternally at the bottom of Living Memory's priority list because it's always going to be more important to reunite siblings, spouses and best friends?

And while I think this is ultimately a secondary element to things that shouldn't change the feelings about it, I don't think the terminals were wiped of their stored data, I think the terminals were just turned off. The fact that the various Living Memory sidequests have people still hanging around suggests to me that all the data's still in there, it's just mostly shut down with some subprocesses still spinning.