Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Turtledeluxe]

Canonically, so are the sundered. Yet the story clearly shows that the sundered have a right to live.

Shadowbringers dealt with this exact theme and did it brilliantly, DT fails to even question it, that's the problem many people are having here and one of the reasons why DT is such a disappointment. According to Yoshi's quote, that was the intended theme of that area, to question what 'being alive' really means.

The sundered are all unique people distinct from the Ancients resulting from their effective death. SHB is pretty much nothing like what's going on here where we are dealing with exact perversions meant to function as the original identity.

[Fiel_Tana]

The sundered are all unique people distinct from the Ancients resulting from their effective death.

Yes, that is fairly true, however nowhere in the story does that define life nor whether any group deserves to continue or not. Whether or not you feel they are "perversions" is also your opinion, not canonical to DT. If they were so perverse, why bother to give them happy memories before destroying them? Why not say something about how the scions, WoL and Wuk felt about them? Why do none of the characters have any opinions or curiosity?

What I'm getting at is that the story doesn't deal with the theme that Yoshi set out, to quote him "That then makes us face the question, would we call that human? If someone is living in this digital world, are they really living?" You have the opinion that they are not. Others feel that they do fully qualify as alive. I feel that perhaps they are and in previous expansions that would have been examined and 100% should have been here. All those opinions are perfectly valid.

What I'm arguing is that based on the story so far in previous expansions and the characters canonical experiences and knowledge, there should be more than enough doubt that the scions and WoL should have questioned whether they qualified as alive or not, whether there was another way, or at the very least not been so blasé about destroying them all.

That fact that they don't leaves the area very uncomfortable for some players, along with leaving a (for the WoL and scions) a rather large moral issue left unquestioned. It also makes for a very unsatisfying story for many players.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

The major problem I have with that zone is that nobody in the MSQ questions "If someone is living in this digital world, are they really living?". Does Yoshi think it does? If so, has he not played DT? Had he even read the script? Talked to the writers at all during pre-production? Checked in during production? Where is that questioning in game??

The MSQ shows the "heroes" destroying them all without questioning the morality of it, looking for better/other alternatives or even feeling a tiny bit bad about it.

Was the MSQ written that way on purpose to make some players question it and start discussions? That seems like quite a reach, so pretty doubtful.

So what went wrong there?

It feels he's talking about a story that is pure headcannon, not what we actually received in the MSQ and that is honestly more than a bit worrying for the future of FFXIV.

Given the state DT launched in, I'd bet all the money in my bank account he hasn't played it. There is just no way if someone with power had played through the entirety of this we would have gotten what we got. So I agree he might be talking about why it was added while having no idea how it was handled in the story.

The sundered are all unique people distinct from the Ancients resulting from their effective death. SHB is pretty much nothing like what's going on here where we are dealing with exact perversions meant to function as the original identity.

Okay, Azem.

[Turtledeluxe]

Given the state DT launched in, I'd bet all the money in my bank account he hasn't played it. There is just no way if someone with power had played through the entirety of this we would have gotten what we got. So I agree he might be talking about why it was added while having no idea how it was handled in the story.




Okay, Azem.

I mean I'm sorry you feel that Zodiark losing and Ancients being soundly defeated, resulting in an entirely new mankind, is a perversion (they are ethically on par with Ancients despite Emet's delusional egotism).

If anything it just shows your continued lack of ethics to compare an ancient war to people deliberately cloning the dead with the intention of perpetuating their fake new instance based existence just so Sphene and any given observer can pretend they're really the person becuase they act the same. That's not to mention relying on continued devouring of aether.

[NanaWiloh]

It really does feel terrible to not even have tried or questioned the situation at all, fully agree!

Why bother reuniting a couple to only seem to say 'hope you have the best 5 minutes of your lives before we destroy you'. 'Hey kids, you liked that play? Wait till you see the pretty lightshow as you vanish forever in a cloud of gold sparkles!' If they're not alive in any sense, there is no point to making their final moments better. If they are, then, well... it's not a great look for 'heroes' to have coldly killed them all without even thinking how to possibly save them.

And the fact that deleting them did nothing to Sphene, what was the point? Both from writing and player perspectives none of it means anything.

But then again, we're putting more thought and care into this story than the writers and/or producer/director did it seems.

There was no chance to question or try. Sphene was going to commit genocide from the moment we met her. When finally did find out the plan, she just goes full throttle with it giving us no chance to reason with her. Sphene is %100 to blame for the memories of her people getting wiped out. She put us in that position and left no way out.

[OMGJesuis66]

THE MENTAL GYMNASTICS, OMFG.

The Sundered is now the same as the Endless. Wow. That's baffling.
Absolutely baffling. People then want to blame the writers because of their rationalizations, which make absolutely no sense. Mmk.

Swear to god, SE mistake with the FFXIV storyline was making the WoL be Azem and this whole debacle about the Ancients, it backfired so hard to the point of people genuine believe the Ancients are right and they just fully embrace all the twisted logic from them in order to uphold arguments to future story points. Yeesh.

[Basteala]

Congratulations, you realized the plot of the zone.

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.

Also the fact that Sphene was going to consume our world's aether to sustain the Endless. That's...kind of an important detail. Remember that shutting down the Meso Terminal would have switched them off in the end, anyway.

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.

Because crossing the rift is considered impossible. Sphene DID take the key with her, and the Living Memory is not entirely bereft of security. It IS very much a security by obscurity situation--which is a fallacy in and of itself--but to say the terminals were out in the open for anyone to shut down is erroneous.

Why we do even have to erase them instead of just shutting the system down?

It's explicitly stated that shutting down the terminal erases them. It probably works similar to RAM on a PC. Once you stop providing power, the data is lost.


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.

Because she said her people. There are still plenty of living, breathing subjects of Alexandria in Everkeep, and Heritage Found, come to think of it.,

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?

There's some flaws in Living Memory's writing, but I think it comes more from the poor handling of urgency at the very beginning, that sets up the whole premise of the zone, rather than the zone story itself.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Swear to god, SE mistake with the FFXIV storyline was making the WoL be Azem and this whole debacle about the Ancients, it backfired so hard to the point of people genuine believe the Ancients are right and they just fully embrace all the twisted logic from them in order to uphold arguments to future story points. Yeesh.

It's not even that. It's that the morals of DT contradict the morals of ShB. If the Sundered had the right to live even though they aren't life as recognized by Emet-Selch, then why don't the Endless even if they aren't life as recognized by Cahcuia? We're acting like Ascians, down to playing with our food before the kill. There is no functional change in what happens in DT if we just sit in lawn chairs and wait for Sphene to finish reformatting so we can kill her. Everything shuts down anyway. But instead we're playing with these people right before wiping them from existence. It's sick.

*snip*

Given they will be destroyed anyway, there is absolutely no reason to do what we did. There is no benefit to it besides it was fun for the characters. They throw in some bull about "you live as long as you're remembered" but that doesn't extend to the guy I bought popcorn from one time. I'm sure that applies to the people you actually know and think about.

That only works if Sphene didn't see us there before starting the reformatting. Not only does she know we're there, living people used to be in Living Memory and the ziplines actually still have security.

The problem in the writing is it prioritizes the emotions it wants you to feel over what makes logical sense or how real people would behave in that situation. If my mom's memories are in a virtual world and what I'm about to do next shuts down that world, we're spending the whole time Sphene is reformatting looking for a USB stick. No joke. I'm not consigning my mom's memories to oblivion due to some vague "everything that lives must die." For one, she did die, that's why she's here. And her soul is being reincarnated, what's in Living Memory is what the universe throws away and while her memories might not be of value to nature or the star, they'd be of value to me.

Imagine if Erenville could take his mom with him on his adventures. He's only 25. He has centuries more life left where he'll never speak to his mom again. And what about Krile? There was still so much her e-parents could have told her. Even if they were "just" information, they were valuable information. Information worth at least attempting to save.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Usually when people die in the FF14 universe, their force ghosts are sitting in the afterlife, they can watch people on the star doing stuff, make commentary, maybe pop in and do us a favor. They can still interact with and impact the world. Emet-Selch and Hyth helped save the universe after they died. That's not possible with the Endless because we shut them down without a second thought. We dissipated the part of them that hangs out in the afterlife and narrates.

And the argument that we had to because they need something from us that would harm us doesn't work because that's true for any conflict. If we wipe out the Mamool Ja then they can't attack the Xbr'aal for their land anymore. If we wiped out the Garleans then they can't drop moons on people. Wiping out an entire population pretty much solves any conflict with any group. So why do we bother looking for other ways in those situations? We could just wipe them out and declare "we had no choice."

Also, for the people who believe Venat "had no choice" but to sunder the world because otherwise the Ancients would have died out, but also believe death is a natural part of life, how do you reconcile it being acceptable to mutilate an entire race to avoid it's possible end, with it's wrong to not accept the end?

[OMGJesuis66]

It's not even that. It's that the morals of DT contradict the morals of ShB. If the Sundered had the right to live even though they aren't life as recognized by Emet-Selch, then why don't the Endless even if they aren't life as recognized by Cahcuia? We're acting like Ascians, down to playing with our food before the kill. There is no functional change in what happens in DT if we just sit in lawn chairs and wait for Sphene to finish reformatting so we can kill her. Everything shuts down anyway. But instead we're playing with these people right before wiping them from existence. It's sick.

No. It doesn't. Because that is a false symmetry and twisted logic. We are not acting like Emet-Selch. The Sundered are living beings, of flesh and bone, they are born, they grow up, and die. They are a completely functional new form of life. The Endless, are not. An Endless cannot be born. An Endless cannot die. An Endless cannot eat. An Endless cannot drink. They have no biological or moral functions beyond what the data of the terminals processed to give them a form and a sense of self-awareness and free will. They are, simply put, a ghosts unable to move on to the afterlife, because they have this 'afterlife' built to them at the cost of the living.

Usually when people die in the FF14 universe, their force ghosts are sitting in the afterlife, they can watch people on the star doing stuff, make commentary, maybe pop in and do us a favor. They can still interact with and impact the world. Emet-Selch and Hyth helped save the universe after they died. That's not possible with the Endless because we shut them down without a second thought. We dissipated the part of them that hangs out in the afterlife and narrates.

Also, for the people who believe Venat "had no choice" but to sunder the world because otherwise the Ancients would have died out, but also believe death is a natural part of life, how do you reconcile it being acceptable to mutilate an entire race to avoid it's possible end, with it's wrong to not accept the end?

There we go, 'VENAT BAD'. This idolatry towards the Ancients proved my point. Again, the people in Living Memory are akin to an afterlife in the Aetherial Sea. Not only they are disconnected from it, but they are also disconnected from the outside world and NO ONE from the living world can remember them. It is a forgotten mausoleum that devours life to sustain false life, there is no actual logic to sustain the argument that 'we did a bad thing'. We didn't. We helped spirits to find their rest. If you want to genuinely make this argument now, why are not making the same argument of how sick it was that by defeating Emet and Elidibus, we stopped all possibilities of rejoining, thus condemning thousands of souls inside Zodiark to never be reborn and to be erased? Oh yeah, and we also kill Zodiark afterward. Man, what a tragedy right? Clearly a genocide.