Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[WickedSensei]

I agree with this. I don't like that my character was involved in this..And just because the few people we talked to were ok with being deleted there are hundreds if not thousands of endless we never got their opinion if they wanted to be erased or not.

But as you said either way it wasn't our call to make. I enjoyed the zone and the themes in it but it was all just too easy for us, there should have been some resistance which gave us pause, and force us to justify what we are doing.

But the whole expansion, everything was just too easily resolved imo.

I hope that in the upcoming patches this is addressed.

[Carolingian]

And just because the few people we talked to were ok with being deleted there are hundreds if not thousands of endless we never got their opinion if they wanted to be erased or not.

But as you said either way it wasn't our call to make.

This seems to be becoming a trend and I don't like it. Normally people who make decisions that impact the lives of countless people in such a way would be seen as villains. But after Venat Cahciua is now the second person that we cheer on for making the decision that it's fine to just kill I don't know how many people just because they personally think that is the right thing to do. But they don't have the right to make decisions like that for others. And it's really frustrating that the game just handwaves this away and expects us to agree with those decisions just because one person said so.

The question what it means to be truly alive is one of the pillars of science-fiction. From Star Trek to Blade Runner to even Final Fantasy. FFIX, which Dawntrail is very much inspired by, uses Vivi for that purpose. FFXIV itself even has a storyline with the Vivi-inspired character Gigi that explores the very same question. Yet in Dawntrail all we get is "they don't have souls, they're just facsimiles so it's fine to kill them" and we're just supposed to accept that? It's just so ridiculously shallow and childish just like most of Dawntrail. Which is so frustrating because they could have done something really great with it. It's honestly embarrassing that the Hildibrand quests show more depth and complexity in the exploration of these kinds of themes than the whole of Dawntrail.

[CKNovel]

I agree with this. I don't like that my character was involved in this..And just because the few people we talked to were ok with being deleted there are hundreds if not thousands of endless we never got their opinion if they wanted to be erased or not.

But as you said either way it wasn't our call to make. I enjoyed the zone and the themes in it but it was all just too easy for us, there should have been some resistance which gave us pause, and force us to justify what we are doing.

You just unplugged your AI Grandma' mimicking your real Grandma who passed away, because Grandpa' couldn't afford the bills and started stealing vital money from the neighbours and family.
At one point it became so expansive he attacked people to sell their livers.

[Daralii]

Theoretically speaking, would it have been possible to relocate the recreations and the hardware containing the memories to Ultima Thule to remove the necessity for soul vampirism? They share a lot of the same concepts as Meteion's museum pieces, but those are all given form and maintained by the inexhaustible dyanamis.

[Cach]

Everything surrounding The Endless felt nonsensical and inconsistent which made it difficult for me to care. Not to mention that coming up with these complex sci-fi elements and just slap you with them at the last 1/4 of the story made it felt rushed and very shallow.

I don't want to write an essay, so I'll just boil down my opinion to two points:

You either:
1- Committed genocide with barely a question or objection. Refused to explore any other venue.
2- Were forced to go through pointless, hollow melodrama during the last moments of the game. After all they're all "fakes that deserve to die", a giant waste of time.

Gotta pick one.

[Espon]

To me, the Endless are the equivalent to AI chatbots that we see today. They're not actually real people despite how much they act like it, they're just recreations based on memories. The man meeting in love after death did not truly happen because their lives did not continue on after death in the living memory, it's just a recreation based on their memories to create a what-if. Also notice that none of the Endless seem to plea with you to not shut them down, even the ones that linger on with unfinished business. It's like they know they're life has long since ended and some even encourage you to shut them down or help them with their final desire so they can disappear. The only exception is Sphene, where her created purpose was to keep the Endless going. It's even said that the real Sphene likely would of never wanted any of this.

Keep in mind of the consequences of what would happen if we didn't stop Sphene. The Endless need the souls of the living to continue to exist, and for every soul taken Sphene thinks she's doing them a service by turning them into an Endless as well. It's an exponentially increasing problem that will require more and more souls to sustain. Even though Zoraal Ja lead the attack on Tuliyollal, Sphere was completely complicit in it. And it's not like we did not try to reason with her. We really did, but she absolutely refused to negotiate. Even in her final moments when Wuk Lamat was calling out to her, she did not give in.

[celfhelp]

i think that was a big point of the entire zone/third act

we are doing the exact same thing sphene is trying to do, just from a different perspective; we 'killed' her and her world to save our own

but i think that was the beauty of it for me. it was two forces who didn't want to be opposing but simply had no choice because of the cards that had been dealt; their conflict was not malicious, it was just necessity, and the loser lost with grace and dignity (put up one hell of a fight too, given how many people i've watched get butchered in their first try of that trial. lmao)

to the point about sphene not protecting her citizens enough, i mean she did try, we just beat the defenses, plus Living Memory wouldn't have been accessible to us at all if it weren't for Krile's earring (which was snuck out) AND Galool Ja being present with us at the gate; sphene had no reason to expect visitors who weren't endless after she had the key, because even though the King's authority was handed over, there was no other key to grant access (to her knowledge)

no matter how much a ruler loves her people, sometimes you just lose. sometimes you're just not enough

i personally want them to explore this from OUR side next, but i don't know if they're ready to go down that road yet

[SDaemon]

we are doing the exact same thing sphene is trying to do, just from a different perspective; we 'killed' her and her world to save our own

Except the situations are not the same. If Sphene had stopped her mad plans to destroy all life everywhere to power her Endless with souls and talked with us, then a peaceful resolution could probably have been found. The people of the Source had 0 aggressive plans towards her or her people. She declared our annihilation and we answered by defending ourselves. On the other hand, if we refused to defend ourselves and journey to Sphene's world then not only would the Source have been destroyed and their souls harvested but eventually all life would potentially have been consumed to fuel the Endless. This isn't a case where both sides wished to destroy the other, instead one side wished to destroy the other and one side chose to defend themselves.

[celfhelp]

Except the situations are not the same. If Sphene had stopped her mad plans to destroy all life everywhere to power her Endless with souls and talked with us, then a peaceful resolution could probably have been found. The people of the Source had 0 aggressive plans towards her or her people. She declared our annihilation and we answered by defending ourselves. On the other hand, if we refused to defend ourselves and journey to Sphene's world then not only would the Source have been destroyed and their souls harvested but eventually all life would potentially have been consumed to fuel the Endless. This isn't a case where both sides wished to destroy the other, instead one side wished to destroy the other and one side chose to defend themselves.

she did try to peacefully resolve the issue, albeit briefly, and double albeit not in the most effective way

she asked wuk lamat (and by extension, us) to become alexandrian citizens, which would have resolved the issue without mass destruction, because a continent worth of natural death supplies far more 'empty souls' than just the kingdom of alexandria. obviously this isn't a rational or good solution, but it was a passive one

i also disagree that we just "chose to defend ourselves" by erasing an entire kingdom of people.

imo we overcorrected, because nothing was stopping us from going straight to sphene at the meso terminal and confronting her. we didn't have to turn everything off before hand, and the reason we DID do that ended up being completely irrelevant and useless. we 'killed' her people in an effort to demoralize her and it didn't. she wasn't even aware of it (frankly this is probably more 'oopsie' from the writers than it is something to dig into). hell, had we gone straight for the terminal she probably would've been far weaker an adversary

we could've just as easily "killed" sphene, taken the key, and left alexandria to naturally fade away, but instead we played God and sped up the process

do i personally think there's much of a difference? yes and no, but i'm just posturing on this side for the sake of discussion

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

she did try to peacefully resolve the issue, albeit briefly, and double albeit not in the most effective way

she asked wuk lamat (and by extension, us) to become alexandrian citizens, which would have resolved the issue without mass destruction, because a continent worth of natural death supplies far more 'empty souls' than just the kingdom of alexandria. obviously this isn't a rational or good solution, but it was a passive one

i also disagree that we just "chose to defend ourselves" by erasing an entire kingdom of people.

imo we overcorrected, because nothing was stopping us from going straight to sphene at the meso terminal and confronting her. we didn't have to turn everything off before hand, and the reason we DID do that ended up being completely irrelevant and useless. we 'killed' her people in an effort to demoralize her and it didn't. she wasn't even aware of it (frankly this is probably more 'oopsie' from the writers than it is something to dig into)

we could've just as easily "killed" sphene, taken the key, and left alexandria to naturally fade away, but instead we played God and sped up the process

do i personally think there's much of a difference? yes and no, but i'm just posturing on this side for the sake of discussion

She was only asking us. Not our peoples, nations,etc. Us as individuals, so she wouldn't have to fight us. That's all. She was still going to attack tulliyolal.