Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Kiarin]

Hey o//

Spoilers for the end of MSQ.

Our actions in Living Memory seem morally wrong.
We don't hold any authority in Sphene's kingdom and don't have the right to wander around switching off parts of her realm as we please. The only reason why we do it is because one of the Endless asked for it, but she doesn't have the right to make the decision for all of them either.

What right we have is to go and stop Sphene, because she's aiming to harm people outside that she has no rule over, and who we have to protect. After we defeat her, if Sphene is still somehow alive, it's her who should enact changes in her realm. If she's not, than a new legitimate local power must do it, e.g. the little Gulool Ja, or better a majority vote where Endless decide their own fate.

Now, most likely we just shut down a couple of advanced chatbots, and our actions objectively are most likely not evil, but Sphene explicitly stated multiple times that she views Endless as her full-fledged citizens, and we know this viewpoint of her. So to her perception, what we are doing is willingly commiting a mass-scale genocide of her people. If I were her, I would be very mad at us to say the least. But she doesn't even mention our actions, which is weird in itself, but that's another point.

Note 1: if Endless are your precious citizens, dear Sphene, why the heck didn't you try to protect them? Put at least some guards around monoliths, you know? Especially considering that you saw and knew that we, hostile forces, have arrived into Living Memory.

Why we do even have to erase them instead of just shutting the system down? We know that only 1/10 of Endless are online, so that means they can be kept archived offline for no or much less energy. We could just put them all offline temporarily, without erasing the data itself, and take any amount of time to search for the solution of their problem. If we could fetch huge amounts of aether from 1st to 13th, we have all chances to reconfigure Sphene's system somehow. Maybe feed it the souls of voisent, lol, since they all want to die anyway. Perfect combo.

Note 2: when the fight with Robo-Sphene starts and she talks again about protecting her precious Endless, why couldn't anyone tell her - sorry, lady, we just erased all of them, so you don't have the reason to fight anymore?

Now, one could counterargument that we are effectively at war with Sphene's nation and we make harsh decisions in extreme circumstances. But erasing Endless doesn't serve to diminish Sphene's battle power. We are just targeting civilians, which is a warcrime - at least from Sphene's point of view.

Summary. I have a feeling that thay wanted no matter to implement the art decision of shutting down the beatiful realm, because they knew it would have emotional impact. But in doing so, they hammered the whole plot logic into a very questionable, to say the least, writing.

What do you think?

[Evergrey]

Note 2: when the start with Robo-Sphene starts and she talks again about protecting her precious Endless, why couldn't anyone tell her - sorry, lady, we just erased all of them, so you don't have the reason to fight anymore?

Seeing how she was able to make more Endless she could've simply made more so even if the previous ones weren't there anyone she could start over.

[Mnemy]

This also bring to mind one of the things that really fucked me up cus it conflicts so much with lot of shit that we fought Emet for.

Cahcuia's "Dont feel bad about shutting them down they are not alive" vs Emet's "I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you." Really took the cake for my disbelief in this expac.

If the scions in DT is written by Ishikawa THIS would be a big issue and a BIG ASS RED FLAG. The Scions would be aghast with this, Cahciua is saying they are not alive but we see it to be contradictory, There is a truth to Sphene's words that just because they're machines/programs doesnt mean they arent sentient. Even Cahciua proves this by having the sentience enough to HATE the fact that shes alive because of souls of other people. HECK EVEN THE FINAL BATTLE PROVES THIS BECAUSE WHEN WL ENTERED THE STAGE SPHENE HAS SENTIENCE AND EMOTIONS ENOUGH TO REACT AND PARTIALLY RESTORE HERSELF IN REACTION TO WL. And has everyone forgotten the Omicrons and Omega? Hello?? I would love for the game to explore the moral dilemma of this problem because it could've been so gut wrenching and excrutiatingly painful for us to shut them down if we explored this more instead of the token shoved down our throats gimmick to harvest tears from players.

[Caitlinzulu]

I would rather not have huge moral issues in my relaxation game. Its just a game, there is no way any of us would do things rl that we choose or do ingame.

[Galvuu]

I would rather not have huge moral issues in my relaxation game. Its just a game, there is no way any of us would do things rl that we choose or do ingame.

Only slightly on-topic, but you picked a terrible game for this, sorry.
XIV's story has always touched on dark and morally gray topics.
Even the WoL has been forced to side with "lesser evils" at times (like letting Lolorito get away with a bunch of terrible stuff for the benefit of the Ala Mhigans, or cooperating with Gaius who has a history of conquest, etc etc).
DT being this happy-go-lucky place where all strife is resolved with 10 minutes of talk-no-jutsu and even the cruelest people can magically become good-doers is an exception, not the rule, as far as XIV goes.

[Chiru_Kai]

The memories are not real people.
They're AI chatbots using your grandma's voice recordings.
And they require the power of souls from actual living people to power these AI chatbots.

Which, are not even used by the actual living people. Because somehow there is no hypocrisy in deleting someone's memories from your brain once they die. Even in this culture of "you don't truly die unless you're no longer remembered"?

"questionable ethics", yeah right.
Will you be the first to sacrifice yourself so someone else can listen to an AI interpretation of their dead grandma?

If they had this culture, this system, but it was stable and self-sustaining without the need to endlessly consume souls of the living to power this system, it would just be another culture. It's weird, but they can do whatever, it doesn't affect people outside of that culture.
... but the moment that they required the souls of the living and had to kill the living people from outside of their culture, and we had to make a hard call between the memories or the actual alive people across all shards + Source... is when they lost all sympathy and had to go.

[DrForester]

We turned off a holodeck.

[SteakDriven]

What's questionable is the physics of the place - when the rest of the tower got yeeted into the Source, why didn't the whole place come tumbling to the ground?

[TheMightyMollusk]

What's questionable is the physics of the place - when the rest of the tower got yeeted into the Source, why didn't the whole place come tumbling to the ground?

Same reason Azys Lla didn't crash when we killed the Warring Triad and removed its power source.

[Xellith]

Something tells me the writers never once considered any of this. In fact there are a bunch of things that were never considered.

Sphene is an AI, right? One that needs to make her people happy? So a seemingly viable way of achiveing this is to simply fix the Alexandrians problems. We have possible solutions on to the source to some of these.

The kid in the room suffering from levin sickness. "Oh this is a terrible sickness with no cure! So many people are suffering from this!" Ima stop you right there Sphene. "Hey, Alisae? We have a kid here with lightning aspected sickness. Do you think a porxie would help? We are at the apartments". But no. I guess we cant make her people happy THAT way because reasons...

Crops are failing? Why dont we strike up some form of trade agreement on the condition of peace? We can deliver goods to them and they can deliver goods to us? They dont even need to reveal their electrope secrets. Maybe we can give them the ole mamool ja treatment and find crops suitable for their lightning aspected environment?

You have Endless (basically vampires!) who need life force to sustain themselves? Why dont we see about whether or not we can just get them new bodies instead? Or perhaps we can just harvest the life force of clones? Its my understanding that the soul and life force are two distinct things. So the Alexandrians need life force? Can we supply it? I hear the Garleans are adept at cloning technologies. Is getting the endless new bodies for use or life force extraction a viable solution?

You're worried about people dying outside of the city? How about you just dont let them go outside into the lightning hellscape anymore? I mean... they could always take a train outside the barrier. I know some people interested in putting train tracks all over the continent!

Im sure I missed a good deal more. It just seems that the writers needed conflict to happen to have some form of dramatic climax.