Quote Originally Posted by Galvuu View Post
I don't want to veer into a "death of the author" tirade, but this type of argument from scripture has nothing to do with what most people are discussing.
Patch 7.1 could come out and tell me that all the beast tribes aren't really alive/conscious and, by necessity of the plot, killing them all off would be ok, and I'd still question this, especially in the face of what's been portrayed before. Even if that's what the writer thinks is true and intended to be transmitted, it's not what their work actually portrays in practice when viewed by most people (I think the author didn't put thought into anything and just made a cheap copy of Amaurot with AI instead of Ancients, honestly).
I'm not even definitely on the camp that the Endless are alive- I don't know what qualifies as "being alive" or what consciousness is, in XIV or irl- but that's why it's a subject of discussion. It honestly feels unnatural that the scions, scholars and brilliant people who are known to be curious, don't spend any time considering this.
It's like we ran into some alien machine that seems sapient/creative/conscious/self-aware and we don't wonder if it's alive or not, if it's like us or not.
For the purpose of the plot, it doesn't matter because the Source was under an existential threat and they had to be destroyed, but that doesn't immediately imply that they were alive or not, or what does it means to be alive. The game glosses this over with a lot of levity.
This rings hollow especially after Shadowbringers, where this is explored in detail with the duality of the Ancients compared to the Sundered souls, and a bit more in EW with the phantasms in the Ultima Thule, Omega and Alpha- which is what many people are drawing comparisons to.
So your argument is despite it making sense in the way it was written. . . you don't like it and think it's still unethical.
I mean, you can dislike the writing sure but this is next level cope.