Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Fiel_Tana]

People trot out this quote quite a bit but they're not really comparable. Emet is referring to beings who have souls. The Endless are just simulacrums made from data. It's like insisting your Legos are alive and when someone tells you that's ridiculous you pull out the Emet quote.

It's never been determined in this story what "alive" really means, it's never been defined. Therefore having, or not having, a soul is irrelevant. I wish that zone had delved into the entire question of what it really means to be alive in this story's world, but it did not sadly. It could have made for a far more interesting and emotional story imo.

That DT zone did however show us thinking, feeling people with hopes and dreams yet said that deleting them was not something to feel bad about simply because they were 'incomplete'. Emet-Selch felt that despite the sundered's abilities to think, feel, have hopes and dreams they were not truly alive simply because they are 'incomplete'. Same thing.

That zone failed by showing one thing and saying another, simply sloppy writing really, but unfortunately that does leave a rather difficult moral failure according to pre-existing in-story lore.

Didnt we just have an entire beast tribe that involved the Omnicrons who technically are robots with uploaded consciousness?

Yes, that also leaves a planet sized plot hole! Our WoL's either forgot or didn't feel it was relevant to mention that fact. Despite Sphene in one scene stating she wanted to find a peaceful way.

[Y2K21]

Yes, that also leaves a planet sized plot hole! Our WoL's either forgot or didn't feel it was relevant to mention that fact. Despite Sphene in one scene stating she wanted to find a peaceful way.

Listen, we couldnt do it during the MSQ - we need a plot for the Post MSQ!

[CidHeiral]

It's never been determined in this story what "alive" really means, it's never been defined.

It has been defined in detail on multiple occasions.

That DT zone did however show us thinking, feeling people with hopes and dreams yet said that deleting them was not something to feel bad about simply because they were 'incomplete'. Emet-Selch felt that despite the sundered's abilities to think, feel, have hopes and dreams they were not truly alive simply because they are 'incomplete'. Same thing.

You seem to have a very fundamental misunderstanding of both those sections of the game. I'd recommend going through again on New Game+ and paying closer attention to what is being said.

[Y2K21]

It's ai. It's not alive. If we didn't shut it down she'd have farmed more people for souls and aether. Her time was finite and she knew it

Didnt we just have an entire beast tribe that involved the Omnicrons who technically are robots with uploaded consciousness?

[Magikazam]

Didnt we just have an entire beast tribe that involved the Omnicrons who technically are robots with uploaded consciousness?

We also had Omega who canonically ''developed'' a soul.

[Chiru_Kai]

Still doesn't matter if the Endless are technically alive or not. They (or rather: Sphene AI overlady) wanted to invade all of the reflections and harvest all of the souls.
Alive, not alive, doesn't matter, there is no ethical conundrum in stopping that. I'd happily murder some genocidal maniac and if you go around saying "omg it's wrong to kill ppl", then you need to get your priorities straight.

In Sphene's case we also did the Wuk Lamat approach of Trying To Be Friends, but Speen was committed to the bit so then we kinda have no choice.

EDIT: and if you argue "but then only kill Sphene! not every other innocent Endless", means you paid no attention to the MSQ. Destroying the Endless terminals would result in opening up a weakness at the main terminal which we needed to actually get to the problematic Speeeeen wanting to consume all the souls. Just so happened to align with what Cuckatoo MILF wanted and it gave us some story exposition when they finally realized that Krile was also around and needed some character development.

[Papayatar]

Didnt we just have an entire beast tribe that involved the Omnicrons who technically are robots with uploaded consciousness?

Everyone always bring up Ultima Thule or the Omicrons as a solution for the Endless, but wasn’t the issue for the Omicrons that they p.much lost their humanity or w/e makes living important? With no small part of them “evolving” by getting stronger and better through conquest of other stars and improving themselves after destroying places (like their war with the Dragonstar and then some of the modified dragons you see in the one dungeon from the Omicrons experimenting).

I guess as far as we know Alexandrians could be fine with a robot body, Robo-Otis is p.much the closest to the Omicrons. But they deemed putting everyone in Robo bodies not viable, for some reason unknown to us, or we would have saw more people like Robo-Otis.

The Omicrons seem to value function over form, and improved themselves based on what was the superior option regardless of looks. So it’s possible their memory transfer process varies by a lot from the Alexandrians, and may even not factor in the soul in their process either.

[KageTokage]

None of the UT shades in general have souls, but nonetheless are treated no differently from actual living beings.

That said, none of the reasons they bring up for terminating their existence felt terribly convincing to me aside from the "sustained by living aether" bit...and I question why they were even designed with that specifications in the first place.

[Nihility]

The omicrons ended up as just robots and they couldn't grow or change so all they could do was mass murder everything because it was the only solution that resulted in 100% chance of safety. The ones we meet are just part of the ultima thule memory museum of exterminated species as far as i know so they're not even the real thing.

the endless are just... memory recordings kept inside a habitat. Being able to simulate feelings does not make it real. Even at the best of times they were just turned on or off depending on who was visiting. Keeping them "alive" required killing actual alive people on a regular basis too. It's really kind of a black and white situation

[OMGJesuis66]

A decade this game has existed, and people still do not realize that side content cannot ever be brought to MSQ.
Doesn't matter that 'we had a beast tribe like that', beast tribes are not going to be brought into the MSQ because they cannot force people to do side content.
Plus, the situation is vastly different, we cannot even say that those beings in Ultima Thule even exist. All of that was made out of dynamis, a recreation from Meteon itself, it does not mean those creatures are alive, no matter what the Beast Tribe quest says.
The quote from Emet being brought constantly is such a false symmetry that is also hilarious. And then people want to argue about 'sloppy writing', when the fault in their critical thinking to even understand how basic and non-comparable both scenarios are is huge.
But yeah, sure. We format a server and because of that we 'commit genocide'. Ffs.