Is this a plothole? Question about the Endless

[SongOfTheWind]

Gleaners are scholars. He says so when he's talking to the forum member EW. Okay, fine, a scientist made an oopsie daisy in regards to the location of his dead mother cause he's sad. Fine. Like this is encyclopedia level knowledge in his world. It'd basically be trying to argue a computer programmer might not know what email addresses look like. I'll toss it in the pile. A person who can literally walk down to the aetherial sea because the place where he lives dug a hole to it, doesn't know what's down there or how his afterlife works, even though it can and has been visited...even Minfilia the miner was able to explain how the afterlife works...but okay, fine. I surrender. It was just too complex a notion for his sweet little gleaner head.

I think they had to lobotomise him a little tiny bit for him to accept the plan to erase her and be hopeful at the end.
But also, even if her soul were to be released as a result of his actions, even then - the aetherial sea is not a hanging out place. I don’t think any scholar proved or even theorised that souls are meeting there and exchange news. It’s not the purpose of it. Also logically him being a very young Viera means it would be hundreds of years before he joins that fancy sea. No one is waiting for him, all memories wiped, souls reborn, maybe many times.
So to me it all sounds like a very out of touch wishful thinking. Cause really, who is he going to live that dream for? I wish he did it for himself, not his mother who abandoned him several times. I really hate that message.

[Cach]

Another thing about Otis is that he's a superior alternative for becoming "endless" than the unsustainable one the super advanced civilization end up going for.

Over time, they could even evolved the quality of the robot bodies to be more human-like. Or have spares, or even using clones.
If the memories are indeed digitized, why not live in a matrix-style simulation instead? Etc... etc...

I know its just contrivances to manufacture drama, but it really bothers me.

[LilimoLimomo]

Also, the regulators are extracting memories, so that sounds more like they are removing memory aether, rather than just copying memories.

We actually know that memory data does get copied/duplicated, because that's what happens constantly with Regulators; a person's memories are uploaded to the cloud as a backup, while the person still retains all their memories. Then when a person dies and needs to be revived by using one of their souls, the uploaded memories are pasted back onto the actual person to prevent soul corruption or whatever.

However, we are also told that the Endless are made from memory aether

From what I recall, the Endless are simulations based on memories, but not actually entirely comprised of memories. For example, their bodies are made of living aether. Living Memory has a shortage of this living aether relative to the number of simulations it stores, which is why only a subset of the simulations can have physical bodies at any one time, with lengthy waiting periods for simulations that aren't currently manifested.

And in fact, remember that they're not just comprised of the memories from the dead person, but also the memories of the dead person from those who knew them. Keep that in mind!

They shouldn't require lifeforce to exist if they are just digital copies of memories and not memory aether.

They aren't just digital copies, though; Living Memory gives the computer simulations physical form by providing living aether to constitute physical bodies for these simulations.

As for why robots require actual life-force to exist...yeah, they don't provide a reasonable explanation for that.

If it's the latter, then we dissipated the one and only version of these people that exists, so they won't get the slower disintegration in the aetherial sea that allows them to watch over friends and family and wait for them, so why would Erenville expect to see his mother there?

It sounds like you are somehow interpreting the concept of "dissipating" as "being deleted"; it's an understandable mistake to make, so let's illustrate with an example. A crowd can dissipate. And what this means is that the people that make up the crowd spread out and go their separate ways. Everything that comprised the crowd still exists, it's just not consolidated as a "crowd" anymore. Aether (which is just the FF14 word for "energy") is similar. It cannot be destroyed, it can only change form and move.

So regardless of what kind of aether the simulations in Living Memory were comprised of, it's all still in play. When it dissipates because it is no longer being forced into a certain form by Living Memory's systems, it will once again be subject to natural forces.

Edit: Re-reading this, I think I misunderstood what you were saying the first time. On re-read, it sounds like you're saying that his mom's memories have long-since been separated from their associated soul, and hence when the soul returns to the aetherial sea it will have already been cleansed of memories, thus not allowing for the brief window when souls would be in the aetherial sea as some semblance of their former selves. And if I have you right this time, then I 100% agree with you.


To be clear, it's entirely valid that you're confused by all of this, because you seem to not simply be trying to understand the mechanics of Living Memory, but trying to understand them in a way that makes sense. And Living Memory simply doesn't make sense.

It's a place where soulless computer simulations of dead people are given bodies made of living aether, where these simulations convincingly mimic the dead until the end of time. And they're very convincing replicas, as your party members repeatedly tell you after interacting with them. But like...there's no purpose to doing that.

It's like making robots that act like your dead grandparents and locking them in a room together for all eternity, and then never entering that room again. And you might think, "Yeah, that's odd, but grief is weird, and we do weird things to try to process grief." And yeah, we do...but there's no grief here. Regulators ensure that you can't remember your dead loved ones, thus removing grief from the equation. So now you've got 2 roombas in a shed pretending to be your grandparents where you'll never witness it, and you don't even remember that you ever had grandparents....so what purpose is there to the roombas in the shed? Living Memory is an absolute nonsense system that doesn't help anyone, and it does so at the cost of requiring an unsustainable amount of energy.

I hope that this helps!

[Havenchild]

It was fairly directly stated that Endless are solely the severed memories of someone's soul that can "live on" with autonomy within the system preserving their essence.
The aetherial sea, where "souls" go, seems to encompass all memory and soul combined as evidenced by Fandaniel (all forms), Emet and Hythlodaeus. So by what we have seen atm, Endless specifically do not go to the aetherial sea. They solely live as data within some super tech powered by Electrope. Their manifestations within this technology require cleansed souls to sustain. Erenville is just being hopeful here but he also wasn't present during our convos with Sphene or Otis. While Erenville said that, I also think he is aware of the consequences Cahciua is facing right now.

That is NOT to say however that at the time of corporeal death, there isn't a record that goes to the aetherial sea and one that can get extracted to be an endless also. We never actually see the process of what "going to the cloud" looks like at time of corporeal death but MAYBE we can get some inference from the attack on Tural when the soldier targets someone as they died and 2 orbs get absorbed, an orange one, and a blue white one. When we see it in Origenics, the blue white one is separated into a pure white and yellow looking one. So maybe there is something else at play there still.

As for Otis, he was an experiment that lead the way to create the Endless. He also confirmed to living a full life till he was gray, so the Endless we see in Living Memory should contain all memories up til he became Robo. Which only points to that he was probably one of the first if not the first successful Endless.

They clearly also made a copy of his soul and tested what options were available to them. The copy that got experimented on (before Queen Sphene's) become the endless Otis, written off of the memories up to that point and the other copy was either tossed away into the Robot, or they were trying to come up with a way of creating artificial bodies to supplement the corporeal form post death.

This is, imo, where Sphene's Crown comes in which allows her to body hop the Robo's in full Endless imagery compared to Robo-Otis. Robo-Otis is their attempt in merging the soul with an inanimate object which while successful is only early stage to their ultimate goal of bringing back Sphene in all her pre-death glory from long long ago. I wouldn't be surprised at this point if the crown itself maintains a copy of Sphene's soul / memory separate from the overall system.

[Raven2014]

snip

If you ask me WHICH version of the Endless presentation I prefer, than Mechanical Otis is far superior than the zone 6 Endless. But like I said, his existence kinda just invalidate all the sentimental strings that zone 6 tried to pull. It would also a real condominium for us because it's much easier to make the argument that mechanical Otis is a actual life form and not just a memory.


Now, if I'm going out my limb to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, there is an alternative way to interpret the Endless that is consistent with both of what Cahcuia trying to say, as well as the intention of the last zone. And that is it's based on 3 school of thought:


- First: believe in the after life. Proper burial, ceremonies, rite ...etc... Because the belief is this is the duty of the living, we're doing this so the dead can have a good afterlife, we're doing this to honor "them". And this can get really extreme, I know (poor) families that would get into debt in order to have a proper burial. The Endless could be a reflection of this mindset.

- Second: dead is dead, keep them in memory but the living move on. There is no after life, and all the expensive expectation are just social construct designed to exploit the living - aka the Grief industry. And this correlate to the unsustainable in maintaining the illusion paradise for the Endless at great cost to the living.

- Third: a mixed of the first two. They don't necessary believe in the afterlife, but they don't outright dismiss things like rites and ceremonies either. The difference between the first and third is instead of believing you're doing things for the death, you're doing for the shake of the living. It's not about science, logic or rationality. Human are emotional creatures, and we need closure. It's ok to do something and give it meaning as a way to cope, even if it's probably meaningless. And I think this is the quest line in Zone 6 is about. On the surface the narrative framed it as we're doing for the Endless, to pay them one last homemade. But it could be we (the party) doing it for themselves, so we don't feel bad when we shut them down. Krile's encounter with her parents isn't about her parents, they're already dead, the illusion is not real. But Krile herself desperately needed that encounter to find peace and closure.


So if you decide to look at this way ... most of the story points come together pretty well with very little inconsistency and contradiction. It's actually ... good writing, abeit the message is hidden bit ... too well. The inconsistency is not really inconsistency, rather just illustration of different view points of how the living perceive the death. But alas I don't know whether this is real intention of the writers, or I'm just reading into it a bit too much. I'll be honest, it's kinda hard to accept it's the former case because then you have to wonder: if this is the level of writing the team actually is actually capable of ... then what the hell happened in the first 5 zones?!?!

[Loggos]

II wish he did it for himself, not his mother who abandoned him several times. I really hate that message.

Yep, all the nonsensical "soul physics" aside, the messages they were trying to feed us were just as half-cooked. I too wish that he would have gotten a moment of emancipation or self-realisation, understanding that he can follow his own dreams.

Everything about the last zone felt so patronising towards Erenville. His grief was constantly delegitimised while every aspect of Cahciua's perspective was presented as the "right thing" and her bad parenting decisions were downplayed as funny and charming quirks. Erenville on the other hand was painted as unreasonably dour and grumpy who deserved the never-ending stream of teasing and of being "corrected".

But I just don't think "kid Erenville always cried and begged his mum to take him with her/not leave him alone whenever she would go away for a prolonged period of time" or his words à la "you always decide everything by yourself and then leave (and I have to deal with the results)" are very charming.
I think it's reasonable that this kind of behaviour (esp. during his childhood) caused him quite a bit of recurring pain.
I don't mean to say he should hate his mum but she also shouldn't be treated as this person with superior wisdom that is 100% right and Erenville as the irrational one who is always wrong, and that him following her words and path will automatically be the best thing for him.
He can love her and forgive her and still recognise that he is his own person with his own ideas, desires and dreams and they might not be the exact same things that were fulfilling for his mother.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

It's like making robots that act like your dead grandparents and locking them in a room together for all eternity, and then never entering that room again. And you might think, "Yeah, that's odd, but grief is weird, and we do weird things to try to process grief." And yeah, we do...but there's no grief here. Regulators ensure that you can't remember your dead loved ones, thus removing grief from the equation. So now you've got 2 roombas in a shed pretending to be your grandparents where you'll never witness it, and you don't even remember that you ever had grandparents....so what purpose is there to the roombas in the shed? Living Memory is an absolute nonsense system that doesn't help anyone, and it does so at the cost of requiring an unsustainable amount of energy.

That was something else that hit me as dumb. Why go through all this trouble of keeping the dead around if you're gonna wipe them from everyone's memories? I'd make more sense if they were like, "Miss grandma? Then go visit the upstairs amusement park, she's there."

They clearly also made a copy of his soul and tested what options were available to them. The copy that got experimented on (before Queen Sphene's) become the endless Otis, written off of the memories up to that point and the other copy was either tossed away into the Robot, or they were trying to come up with a way of creating artificial bodies to supplement the corporeal form post death.

Never in this game's history has there been a single example of a soul being copied. If that ever becomes possible, they might as well just set their afterlife lore on fire, cause they are done.

Yep, all the nonsensical "soul physics" aside, the messages they were trying to feed us were just as half-cooked. I too wish that he would have gotten a moment of emancipation or self-realisation, understanding that he can follow his own dreams.

Everything about the last zone felt so patronising towards Erenville. His grief was constantly delegitimised while every aspect of Cahciua's perspective was presented as the "right thing" and her bad parenting decisions were downplayed as funny and charming quirks. Erenville on the other hand was painted as unreasonably dour and grumpy who deserved the never-ending stream of teasing and of being "corrected".

Some people claim that one of the themes of this expansion is family. I disagree as the family relations were all terrible and half the cast end up offing a family member. So if the theme was family, it'd be "don't have them, because they'll be the literal death of you." What I think is they attempted to create a theme around legacy, but the message was, "No one lives forever, so have kids and burden them with fulfilling your dreams." And that forces me to ask for the hundredth time, "WHO WROTE THIS?!"

[Chrome_Aerial]

"I believe it's said that Sphene needs souls specifically because using them allows the Endless to be given form without turning them into full living beings that require all the things that life needs, although I can't fully remember--half checked out by this point in the story."

this specific part shows a big plothole tbh. if memory souls need soul eather to sustain form. then WHY do they even seperate these 2 to begin with? why even remove the memory aether from soul aether if memory aether NEEDS soul aether to give form to the person the memory belongs to?
while i love the disturbing concept of this whole alexandria, regulator and soul harvesting... i think the devs havent really given it much thought.

the story is mediocre regardless. i believe they focused a little too much on making duties fun and having pretty graphics. funding cut on the writers? idk but the story feels meh at best.
BUT given its the buildingblock of a new story i am very well interested to see where this is going and if it can reach ShB levels on greatness.

but on the topic at hand. there are a few things that seem odd and show the writers haven't really thought out the entire process of things.
another good example of that is Vanguard honestly.
Sphene cudn't open the gate in skydeep cenote without the key. but pretty sure zoraal ja hasn't opened the gate with the key cause for 1: this gate leads to living memory, and 2: if he did open the gate, why was it closed again when we went there?
whats the point of getting alexandria Fusing into yasulani if you got a ready to go build gate where you can send hundreds if not thousands of robots trough? (not all at the same time but given it remote location i'd assume the invasion would start in yak'tel)
yet the invasion starts after the dome appears in yasulani and near shaaloani and Vanguard is Build half IN the dome and half OUT the dome. how? thought they had no way of going out of the dome? that was the whole purpose of the dome... a protection bubble.

[aTanpopo]

But I just don't think "kid Erenville always cried and begged his mum to take him with her/not leave him alone whenever she would go away for a prolonged period of time" or his words à la "you always decide everything by yourself and then leave (and I have to deal with the results)" are very charming.
I think it's reasonable that this kind of behaviour (esp. during his childhood) caused him quite a bit of recurring pain.
I don't mean to say he should hate his mum but she also shouldn't be treated as this person with superior wisdom that is 100% right and Erenville as the irrational one who is always wrong, and that him following her words and path will automatically be the best thing for him.
He can love her and forgive her and still recognise that he is his own person with his own ideas, desires and dreams and they might not be the exact same things that were fulfilling for his mother.

I managed to find transcripts of the japanese text for MSQ, since I was curious if localisation changed anything with how characters were presented. Some characters have a different feel to their personalities from how they speak in the JP version imo, so I just wondered what differences i'd find, if any.

Honestly i just came out feeling even more sad since the line you brought up about him being left while his mum went off on adventures had 1 small difference in japanese:
EN: "Oh, how you would cry and beg her to take you along. It must've been hard on you."
JP:「あの頃のエレネッシパ、寂しくて泣いちゃったり、一緒に連れていけって必死にせがんだり……　大変だったよねえ？」
"Back then Erene'shpya was so lonely he would cry, and frantically beg (his mother) to let him go with (her).... It was really tough on you wasn't it?"

On the one hand I'm glad there is more confirmation that its not just some headcannon, because the game never elaborates on the relationship between them/no one comments on it I was starting to think I was just crazy and cooking up stuff. But on the other hand, now I'm just very sad ;__;

BTW the conclusion to his arc still felt rushed when I read through the JP text, so its not an issue with localisation specifically, but the way some things are worded felt like they had a bit more flavour in JP at least. If they had more of a build-up to that end moment, maybe I would be more inclined to believe him changing his whole life's purpose. But it feels like whiplash the way they ended up handling it.

Maybe post-MSQ will elaborate on the specifics of living memory and make it feel less riddled with holes, but I'm not optimistic. Hard to retroactively make something like that feel better.

[Zaniel]

Some people claim that one of the themes of this expansion is family. I disagree as the family relations were all terrible and half the cast end up offing a family member. So if the theme was family, it'd be "don't have them, because they'll be the literal death of you." What I think is they attempted to create a theme around legacy, but the message was, "No one lives forever, so have kids and burden them with fulfilling your dreams." And that forces me to ask for the hundredth time, "WHO WROTE THIS?!"

This is a recurring issue in Dawntrail, they try for X theme or feeling then their flashy reveal sends it in the complete opposite direction. "It's about accepting other's cultures" but then everyone's cultures are shallow/abominable/not explained/based on food only/over-ridden by Eorzea's CIA Hostile Regime Change Team. "Experience the feelz of the sad fate of the Endless", oh but the Endless are just ChatGPT sessions, don't feel bad about it. Which is it!?!? What are you trying to write?!?! "The Skyruin is the greatest threat Tural has ever faced and if it is released the continent will be destroyed!!". Oh wait no don't worry it's depowered so you can just kill it and skin it. This happens over and over and I just have no idea how they scripted out and/or storyboarded the plot.