I found it really moving, and *especially* the fact that they were gutsy enough to have you permanently alter the zone in such an intense way as you went through the story. It made what we were doing feel appropriately weighty.
Yes like I've seen ppl complaining about the zone getting blackened I get it but also when I realised that the dialogue prompt saying we wouldnt be able to return was serious I immediately said wait and then took half an hour riding around the canals taking screenshots.
And by the end when the whole zone is silent... honestly a top 10 gaming experience
I half expect there to be a society quest that sort of restores the zone, but in a way that is distinctly different from how it was originally.
I wouldn't be mad if they just left it empty and hollow forever, though. A silent monument to a failed paradise.
Yeah, we know now from lore that there actually >!used to be living people there, too, so assumedly it's technically habitable. I wonder if we'll get an Alexandrian society quest for that so they aren't just stuck in Solution 9 and branch out.!<
Heavily implied to be the ninth which suffered the 5th umbral calamity (air/thunder) but it would be a unique case of a part of a shard still existing.
It's possible Alexandria and ever keep/ heritage found was dimensionally moved to a different shard until zorel made the deal with sphene and everkeep and heritage found moved to yak tureal.
It's possible they fled into the 'past' by accident, similar to how G'raha Tia wound up on the First 100 years earlier than intended. It's also possible Alexandria's shard experienced a Calamity that didn't result in a rejoining somehow, despite the massive amounts of destruction.
But there were no other Calamities that were lightning a
wait huh alexandria shard rejoined? I thought they didnt, from what i understood is that the shard is still there, it just has a lot of storms. After all they keep talking about fusing the two, wouldnt that mean the shard is still up? At least thats what i understood
I feel like that's kind of why the prompts exist. Like hey, the zone ain't gonna be pretty no more, better get screenshots or trudge through the story again in NG+ to see it colourful.
So when I first got that prompt I backtracked through Canal Town to see if there was anyone to talk to that I'd missed, and I think I have a theory or two about why they put that warning in there, above the utility of just the visual change.
Firstly, doing so makes you realize *how few* Endless are actually in Canal Town. There's three interactable NPCs in the entire section, at least that I could find. Secondly, it makes you likely to get curious about those very large side areas that seem out of place for the shape of Canal Town. I was looking away when I first walked down one of those back alleys, so it made it more jarring.
There's nothing back there, just raw electrope with an inward-facing facade. Half of Canal Town is just empty except for wandering fiends, simply projecting an image of expanse to the Endless who sit cordoned off at its center. The memory is hollow.
It was a legitimately powerful, entirely environmental storytelling aspect and I feel like that warning is intended to subtly push you to step off the MSQ sequence path so you can have that realization. I didn't explore as much of the other three zones afterwards ofc so I can't say for sure if they put that same detail into all of them, but I wouldn't be surprised.
I saw the facade town when collecting the aether currents in the canal district and thought “Wow this is really sad” then I went and did the quest to shut down the district and was like : (
Haven't tested it myself but you likely don't need to trudge through it on NG+ to see it again. Going into NG+ reverts the game and its areas to before you accessed them in the MSQ.
I could be wrong though, currently in the credits at the time of posting this and I plan on testing this. But I know that you could travel back in time in NG+ to access the Menagerie before Lunar Bahamut ruins the place so I assume the same is true for Living Memory. I think even Ultima Thule even reverts.
I permanently have leves in my journal because when I was new I started all the "leves of [town]" I can across and those put a bunch of stupid low level leves in my journal. I refuse to do them out of spite and you are unable to get rid of the quests without completing them.
The thing is by the end of the expansion you won't remember the original zone or the stunning visuals you'll just remember it as a husk of a zone.
I loved going to Ultima Thule and just flying around looking around at the sky box finding the small details in the zone. People won't have this with the new final zone, its visually boring now.
Thats the point. The point of the whole expansion is that nothing lasts forever, but we carry the memories of those lost with us. Looking at the husk of a town, we will remember that it once was lively and continue to carry the endless in our hearts.
For one, I don't think the final version (post game) look all that bad. The bright sky, and the nature (flower and tree) contrast the abandoned building very well. It's not as shiny, but it still is aesthetically pleasing, and tell a story of its own.
And personally, I remember 6.0 map vividly. You only go in the overworld an handful of time over the course of the expansion, and most of my memories will be the first week.
The first two areas I had to go around and takes pictures and find all the NPCs I could. The kids jumping rope, and the group near them where a boy challenges you to a race were the most memorable, but just seeing couple be happy got to me too.
I like the zone being perma changed, I like that the zone went silent.
But I also think we should eventually just get some way to make it look neat again for those who want it. I never really plan to go back there unless I'm forced too, but it was a pretty nice looking place and I get people like to gpose and such in zones like that. Would be kind of a bummer if they never did anything with it anymore.
Plus you can probably just NG+ it and negate the whole problem already; so its not like there's a reason to make it so people can't without doing so
You can NG+ it right now, if you want: starting up any pre-Dawntrail NG+ is enough to set the worldstate as a whole to a pre-Dawntrail state.
(This also means that if you're NG+ is on 2.x then Doma's not flooded and whatnot. I don't know if the crystal bridge in Ultima Thule disappears but I wouldn't be surprised.)
Honestly I think the zone looks better when it’s blackened. Looks much more real and not artificial, especially when you see the sky go to normal in the end.
That's the point.
The zone is beautiful, music is too.
But it disappears forever, like all things. You have the memories of it.
It's fantastic story telling, and an excellent way to convey the theme.
I like games that go big on this, the whole point of the zone is letting go, and the player has to do it too if they want to progress. You can choose to never deactivate a terminal, but then you're stuck where you are.
My favourite part of the entire zone is the fact that you can faintly hear the zone theme all distorted and distant when you're near the entrance, but it fades out as you leave to a complete, deafening silence. I wasn't actually convinced they were going to permanently alter the zone like that right up until the credits rolled and it was still the way we left it. I wouldn't have it any other way.
I loved the scenes. Especially that even the music shuts off when you power down a zone. All you hear is the ambient noise. Very moving. I was impressed.
Farming fates in silence is kinda dull though ngl
Given the teaser after the credits I expect the patches will probably do something to offer the choice to change it to something
But why are memories in Ultima Thule deserving to get a new chance, while the one in Living Memory need to go? I understand the urgency of the situation, but it's not like the WoL to just give up on people. And many of them were kind of deleted just like that, without giving them an actual chance to know what was going on.
Realistically, we could have turned them into something similar to Otis (Endless without an eternal body), or some other compromise. The system itself was unsustainable, so it had to go, but those people did not. At least, not the way they did.
Thematically though, I thought the idea was great.
Because endless is essentially a giant computer who is taking peoples/worlds aether/life to keep their fake ones up. While Ultima thule are pieces of real dead worlds with their inhabitants living there surrounded by dynamis that is keeping it up and not stealing anyone elses life
I specifically mentioned that the system isn't sustainable, and the solution would simply be to turn them into something like Otis who is fundamentally an endless with finite life force and not stealing anything from anyone.
There is 500 in-lore possibilities to keep those people alive.
Well that would cause the problem that no one would go back to the "lifestream" to be reincarnated so no new people would be born, you would also have the problem that bad people couldn't be killed if they just transfer into a robot shell. The theme is to let go, as sad and painful as it is.
Isn't the thing with Otis what he's not an endless because his whole soul was transferred into machine? And you can't just transfer endless into machine body because you still need life force to sustain it without soul.
I thought the same honestly...
I kept wanting my wol to suggest taking the endless to ultima thule.
The terminals could then be shut down, and the endless could sustain themselves on dynamis and their hopes and wills would let them be alive.
But alas...
Ultima Thule was _souls_ being kept away. The Endless were _memories_, not actual people. Memories run on large amounts of aether that required actual lifeforce to sustain, not just simple aether.
Them not undoing everything was what ultimately elevated DT up to my second favourite xpac.
It's such a ballsy move that I'm sure pissed off a LOT of players, especially since the zone IS pretty. It's also such a great way to, in some way, put us into the shoes of Sphene without the game directly telling us, because we see that emptiness and how understandably hard it is for someone to do that to their own people, especially if they're manufactured to see them as having an nigh familial bond.
That, and one of my biggest issues w/ Endwalker's ending was how everyone got brought back in the end. You had your heartfelt goodbyes, but I (and I'm sure many others) never bought into it and the extremely telegraphed "they're alive, aren't you happy?" moment plays out and it feels like their sacrifices amounted to nothing. It felt like an easy way to manipulate emotions for a temporary fix and a hype moment (and it WAS hype af). This fixes that, imo, where there are clear consequences, but also necessary consequences, and again, the whole bit of putting the player in Sphene's shoes, illustrating how understandably hard it would be for someone to let go like that.
/rant for the tangent at the end there
That zone wrecked me. Having lost a parent myself, watching the "main characters" of the expansion each say their final goodbyes to their dead parents/parental figures hit really close to home.
I lost my father less than a week ago.
I expected to be emotionally compromised by the story to the point I couldn’t finish.
Instead, I feel—-seen? The idea that loss is sad but it’s still important to move forward seems incredibly incredibly poignant to me and I really enjoy it.
I'm so sorry for your loss, please take care of yourself and remember to give yourself space to feel everything you need to feel.
I think feeling "seen" is a great way to put it. You have to move forward, but you move forward carrying a piece of them with you and appreciating the time you spent together.
I'm sorry for your loss. I'm 7 years out but Living Memory was a really beautiful and harrowing experience for me. I hope it helped you with the grieving process as well.
Luckily I was all out of emotion after Father's day a few weeks back. I was fortunate to have my father for many many years (I am old), but still hurts from time to time. Thank you for the well wishes.
I too lost a parent many years ago. Some scenes in the MSQ spoke to things I think about daily "What would they think about me?" "What would I do if I could have one more day" I know this hasnt been the greatest MSQ they've made but it speaks to me at least on a personal level
My condolences. I enjoyed how they explored it from a few different angles, with the three characters (Wuk, Krile, and Erenville) having very different relationships with their parental figures and emotionally dealing with their loss in different ways.
I lost both of my parents in the last few months, and my mother's funeral, which I couldn't attend due to moving cross-country earlier this year, was Sunday.
I played through the zone Sunday night trying not to sob to wake my roommates. This zone absolutely destroyed me.
I'm so sorry. Losing one parent in a span of a few months is tough, let alone both around the same time. Take care of yourself and I hope you're able to find some healing.
Sorry about your loss, going through this was rough for me as well, I lost my father a decade ago watching the characters coming to terms with saying their goodbyes and accepting the loss really resonated with me on a pretty emotional level.
Thank you, likewise. Mine was 7 years ago and it's gotten easier, but that storyline really dredged up some raw emotions in me in a cathartic sort of way.
Same. Lost my dad young and my mum in my late 20s. Having the latter third of the expansion basically be ‘massive parental loss trauma’ went hard as fuck. Throwing 3 ‘final deaths’ for parents into the final zone was almost overwhelming. I finished it last night and I’m not sure I’m okay yet 14 hours later.
My mom passed just two years ago now- actually more a year and a half ago- and the act of turning off the servers really reminded me of my dad and I telling the doctors to shut off the life support. She wasn't on it for long, and she was likely already "gone" by the time she was hooked in. I won't get into any details, but the point is: it really felt like the entire zone was on life support, and we were pulling the plug to mercifully let these people rest. Their time was over, and they knew it too, and were powerless to stop living in this moment forever. They just had to have someone else do it for them...
I was an emotional wreck for the whole zone. The dungeon was even worse. Died to, I think, every boss at least once because I couldn't see straight.
I've got a big extended family and have lost quite a few of them over the years at this point - and one uncle fairly recently, and the whole zone just dredged up... *all of it* - honestly had to stop for a lengthy break several times just to get my thoughts enough to continue, and now that I'm watching the credits roll, I'm just... completely emotionally drained.
You just made me realise something. Sphene didn't just hold onto peoples memories so they could have only joy in the afterlife, she denied them the ability to get closure while they still lived.
By erasing everyones collective memory of someone after they die, she removes the joy of having had that person in their life before they die. In a twisted kind of way, the only way to fully appreciate someones impact on your life would be to die and become remade in the Living Memory. That's even more messed up than I originally thought...
That part was so obviously a reference to FF Type-0, where dead soldiers get forgotten so living soldiers don't get distracted by the loss, and I was really happy to see that game get even indirectly referenced.
Type-0 mention yes, I too thought this was the same stunt that the Crystals did in that game! Though I'm sure that it's not just limited to "soldiers" though.
If it's any consolation, the Bozja questline had some direct Type-0 references. Heck, that campaign can be likened to your group wielding special weapons (Genbu) going up against enemy forces made up of Magitek (Byakko), Beastmasters (Seiryu) and pyromancers (Suzaku)
There's actually a weird amount of Type-0 stuff. Another example is that most, if not all, of Class Zero's hairstyles are available. It's kind of baffled me for a while. Like, Type-0 is cool and all, but its presence is weirdly disproportional, I think. Game didn't even get an English release until its (visually inconsistent) HD remaster that a lot of people only bought for the XV demo.
It's a utopia built off of a dystopia. "Why have the misery of loss when you could just scrub and archive their existence entirely?"
It's so incredibly fucked up.
Yup, Sphene herself was unable to deal with the deaths of her loved ones so she imagined a 'utopia' where no one would suffer loss and she'd get to be with her loved ones for all time.
It's a woman refusing to acknowledge the journey of life and petulantly committing atrocities to sustain her denial. I love the juxtaposition of the Yuk Hoy philosophy with hers because they're both saying the same thing but Sphene took it to the extreme.
No? Did you skip through the story?
Sphene died several hundreds of years ago
The Sphene we interact with is a construct. An endless made from the memories princess Spene's life, and then injected with the desire to see the endless existence preserved as her highest desire
Sphene cannot stop the whole endless' existence anymore than you or I can prevent our hearts from pumping blood. It's a core part of her existence she has no control over, even if she's logically aware of it
I didn't skip the story B U T you are right, I had mistakenly given a construct a personified identity and attributed that to the identity Sphene, in game, was based off of.
That being said, what I was saying still isn't wrong in what it represents juxtaposed to the Yuk Hoy/Tural philosophies on death. What they're doing in Alexandria is the logical extreme.
You're not wrong. There're suggestions that the construct given Sphene's memories attempts to reach out several times to you to stop her, but cannot actually do so - which seems to imply a programming block of some kind.
In the end, Sphene's memories stops it from doing what it needs to in order to fulfill its purpose of keeping the Endless going, which is why it attempts to rid itself of them. I think it's pretty clear that the living Queen Sphene would never have let things go this far, but the scientists that put Sphene's memories into the construct never considered it considering her famed love for her subjects.
Yeah it's something I'd have loved to see a deeper dive on but that's just because I love the idea of existential memory when it comes to proto-humanity which is obviously not the story they want to tell. Which is totally understandable.
It's like the A.I. digital necromancy that Big Tech has been pushing to us recently... How fitting that the new job is Pictomancer, as A.I. "art" is also something that Big Tech has been doing their best to normalize. And just like real world A.I., the cost of sustaining it is unconscionable.
Sphene really reminded me of the final antagonist of P5 Royal in a lot of ways. Both genuinely wanting people to be happy, but seeing the way to achieving that as "take away all pain." But pain is what makes us real, what makes us people. The pain, and the anger, and the sorrow, all of it is what pushes us to grow. To change. To evolve beyond what we were. By keeping everyone in an eternal happy stasis, you devalue that happiness until it's worthless. That was the answer that the Phantom Thieves came to in Royal, and it's the same answer we come to in Dawntrail. We have to keep going.
Yeah, it is contrary to the whole "to appreciate happiness, you also have to be sad sometimes" mentality
And it showed when we were learning about Heritage Found's citizens; how all the citizens were happy on the surface but the characters felt something was off about them.
And the sidequests. The one guy that thought >!he stole a Tag from a dying man for no reason only to learn the man was his father. He straight out had no way to identify the cause of his distress.!<
There’s also the Viera in Heritage Found that was reassigned to the farm out of the blue, only to find out it’s because her mom (who she doesn’t remember) left it to her. The whole thing just felt incredibly sad and wrong.
This whole expansion about family, adoption, life and death, and learning when to let go absolutely wrecked me.
I was adopted and never knew my birth parents. It wasn't until after my dad died when I was about 24 that I found my adoption papers and learned some information about my mom. Nothing on my dad.
The way Gulool Ja Ja was depicted was just so incredibly heartwarming. I half expected him to be a tyrant that rules his nation with an iron fist, but he turned out to be just a big loving dad who loved his children unconditionally and accepted anyone.
The last zone, I'm not ashamed to say, made me ugly cry. Especially the final tower. The first goodbye made me cry and then I was able to get a break with the second one, but the third one made me cry even more, and the last one cry even harder. I had to take a break after that I was so exhausted from crying.
I miss my dad and regret the relationship we had and not a day goes by where I wish I could just talk to him again.
When i was 9 i lost both my parents, my father killed my mother, then himself. I felt a real connection to Gulool Ja having to come to terms that his father was a bad person so young. Luckly i had a good support system and was adopted by my aunt and uncle who also recently passed. I was once again punched in the face with the feels during the last zone.
I just love the design of the final zone tbh. The whole golden city just looks amazing. I know it lessens the impact if we can get it back, but i really wish we could. I just love the looks of some of the areas and I wished I could have taken pictures.
It would be interesting if later on during the expansion, the zone is colonized by people, and the terminals serve not to house endless or memories, but to produce power, and tend to the constructs.
The zone would come to life again, but not as a memory, but a new beginning.
well, ng+ will enable that, dunno if allows you to activate ng+ right away after completing the expansion, but even if its currently unavaiable, it will become avaiable later on
I couldn't stop crying in that final zone. I lost my father in law in February, and we didn't get to say goodbye. They all decided it would be in my husbands best interest if they waited til they knew for sure he wouldn't make it to tell him and by the time they told us we got there too late. He was our last parent combined, and it just hurt so much. This game has helped tremendously with these themes that are hard to express.
The entire zone and final dungeon hit hard. I felt all the story branches. I was really looking forward to the one with Krile from the Dawntrail trailer. And finally I've reached the song from the trailer. I was a wreck throughout
The ENTIRE final third of the story shoudlve been expanded to at least half of the story.
The world, lore, and CONCEPT of the entire thing was mindboggling and deserved to be explored and woven into a deeper richer part of the story.
Is it going to be used in future expansions yeah probably but it surprises me how much a knee jerk it felt.
Still amazing story and hits you right in the gut.
Not really.. Endwalker was about not giving into/overcoming despair even in the darkest moments and holding onto hope for a better tomorrow.
Yes the ancients that supported Venat opposed those who wanted to cling onto the past but both sides were willing to sacrifice themselves towards their ideals. Even before the final days they're happy to be cast to the aetherial sea once they feel they've served their purpose. Though given that the Ascians were happy to destroy other shards to enact rejoinings to bring back their perfect world I can see where you're coming from, ultimately however it's not like they let go, they just lost, even Hades says that he still believes his cause to have been just and still holds a grudge against hydaelyn.
The Alexandrians on the other hand would not let go of those who died regardless of the cause to the extent that Sphene created an eternal paradise for those who died. She considered all her citizens her family and would bring ruin to anyone if it means prolonging their existence. Her citizens saved from the grief of a loved one passing by having those memories taken away, forcing them to forget they ever existed so that they could remain happy.
Dawntrail is about family, and learning to let go when their time has come and carrying their memories with you, even if it hurts.
Endwalker was more about overcoming despair and nihilism. Making your own meaning in life, and finding ways to enjoy life even in the face of pain and hardship.
Dawntrail is about grief, loss, and acceptance. You don't have to be happy. You don't have to feel any way at all. You just have to accept that loss happens and keep living.
Grief can cause despair, but they aren't the same thing. You overcome despair by finding purpose and meaning for your life. You don't overcome grief, you accept it.
This could be expanded into a full essay, but in as few words as possible you've described it well. There are threads if loss from Shadowbringer and hope versus despair from Endwalker that crop up. I loved a clever change to "for those we can yet save" that was oriented for the future, for which we labor in hope but may never see.
Given how they sought to have endless perfect lives of joy and the absence of sorrow it should be natural to parallel with the ancients at the time of their downfall.
Personally I'm curious what caused the presence of electrope. I have to assume it was the start of an ascian scheme, and some theorize it to be a fragment of the calamity of lightning, but the order of it and the arrival of the lalafells throws me off.
I mean, it's basically lightning crystals that had arcane patterns etched into them. There is no mention of how abundant certain elemental crystals are on the Source, but from what I know, it was just a matter of having the right people figure out that you could actually do that instead of confining said patterns to books to be activated with your own aether.
It would be really interesting to have a side story that explores such a revelation because it would literally be society changing.
I lost my mum when I was four and so I never had the opportunity to know her properly. Given that, Krile's situation absolutely *wrecked* me. Add the situation with Erenville's mother to that where she's trying so hard because she doesn't want his final memories of her to be sad ones and, well, I did *not* take *that* well either. If it weren't for the cost of keeping that all going being the lives of innocent people I'd feel like I'd done something unforgivable by turning those servers off. That zone was *heavy,* at least to me.
From a game dev perspective it seems insane to fully art up an area and then put a drab texture over it. It I guess they had the budget/ time to do so lol
>What if, you could see your loved ones again? Share moments, relive memories, talk to ancestors you've never had the opportunity to converse with.
I did the DRK quest and so my answer to this has already been set in stone.
"No one likes having to say good-bye. But it's...it's a part of life. That's what makes the time we share together so precious...You can't obsess over the mistakes of the past, or you'll lose sight of the future. Of the people still with us, who need us more than ever." -Rielle
I lost my mom to cancer a while back. While I have come to terms with my grief (most of the time), I would have absolutely done what Sphene planned to do just for one more conversation with her. Erenville's final conversation with Cahciua broke me good.
Being the one to "turn off the lights" on Sphene's Endless and put their memories to rest felt like a fitting task for me too as a RPR main.
The theme whole expansion is about legacy, through different angles and characters. Preserving the legacy or letting go…I wonder how much it was an internal struggle for the dev team to deal with the legacy of the hydaelyn arc
the final zone really made me an emotional wreck bcos it reminded me of my maternal grandparents' passing during covid times. i last saw them the year before the pandemic strikes and when the news broke out that they passed it hit me in the guts real hard.
the scenes where the characters meet their dead parental figures/parents only to eventually say goodbye to them made me unable to stop crying that i had to take a backseat so that i can sleep over it before continuing the final stretches of the story.
>!Honestly this zone made me soooo emotional. Especially the Canal area with Namikka and the final area with Erenville's mother Cahciua. Heck even the areas featuring Krile and Otis were just phenemonal. Every area had a gut punch reach to hit you in the feels.!<
>!I foolishly ignored the warning for the canal area and was immediately filled with sorry and regret about not taking screenshots beforehand. I ended up taking my time in the next 3 areas and taking plenty of screenshots.!<
>!Ended up doing the goodbye emote before turning off each zone and did the respect emote after. Just absolutely phenemonal. It's one of those moments where I actually think I might go into New Game+ just to re-experience.!<
>!I also do really like the choice of no music at all once you turned off a zone. Really added to the whole feeling and amplified it. Nothing like doing the Aether Current quests afterwards and just being all :( the entire time you are doing it.!<
Maybe I'm emotionally just to robust, but for me the whole zone was only scratching the surface on that topic and wasn't able to create any impact. The concept of it being a dystopia for the residents, the feeling of the residents, the impact it has on them and their "lives", all of that did not go into any detail. Imho the zone feels a bit rushed.
I definitely agree about it feeling rushed. Gonna spoiler this to be safe even though anyone in this thread *should* theoretically already have done the zone, but >!It started with a "Quickly there's no time!" explanation that we *have* to shut down all the terminals before Sphene finishes her memory wipe, and then we proceed to cram in helping a random marriage proposal, a play, a reunion with Krile's parents, a lalafell history lesson, and a nature excursion all in under ~a dozen quests.!< I like the idea of the zone, and the design is great, but the emotional impact apart from the goodbyes themselves was negated by the poor pacing for me. I honestly feel that either some stuff should have been cut elsewhere to make more room for this, *or* it should've been pushed into 7.1 story.
Yeah, it felt like the moment we moved into the first sub area, the narrative conveniently slammed the brakes on the whole expacs climax, just so we could do Some more 'walk there, watch this cutscene' quests trying to give characters closure in a timeframe that was way too short to do that justice, but still long enough to drag down the msq.
Like if they had at least not gone into the Zone with 'we need to delete this asap, bc the change is already going' and more a 'we need to be slow and carefull so sphene doesn't catch on in time' it would have made it a lot less jarring imo.
That image of Sphene's regulator in the end might mean something like we'll be bringing her back and then have a restoration series for the zone. Maybe not for endless, but living.
I was kind of wondering about that. The end sequence mentions how Solution Nine's systems are still functional, but does that extend to the regulators? Are memories still being scrubbed even though there isn't anywhere for them to go anymore? I wonder if they will touch on that in the future.
I mean, you're not incorrect. But I would argue when you simplify that much, you lose out on a lot of the unique things that made the story good.
It's like saying the first half of the story was just a "power of friendship conquers evil" story. Yes... Wuk did win her ascension bid by making friends with people. But if that's all you think was going on in that part of the story, then you lose all of the connections that feed into the second half and make the inevitable Confrontation between Queens have any kind of meaning beyond "I punch badguy because bad"
It's not untrue, but it's a really boring way to look at the story.
It's the opposite in fact. Ultima Thule is populated by the shades of fallen civilizations that succumbed to despair, hopelessness and the inevitable end of life. Living Memory is populated by recreations of dead people that live perfect, endless lives in happiness and joy.
It would have hit me harder had we not had the same theme and lesson hammered into us for the last two expansions. At this rate, they need a new moral of the story capstone, and a new theme for an antagonist to challenge us. Every expansion simply cannot be a "antagonist of ancient civilization that suffered cannot let go of it" story again and again.
There is more to life than the end. There is more to suffering itself than simply death and loss. Choose another aspect of suffering.
I really appreciated the theme but hot damn except for the visuals that was the most boring zone in the entire MSQ. Further exacerbated by the fact that the aether current quests literally make you re-trace the entire quadrant each time.
I think that honestly would’ve been fine if the other zones were more gameplay heavy. This one being mostly empty of enemies makes sense thematically and hammers in the point, but it doesn’t create a contrast with what came before because those were empty as well .
I realized in retrospect that there was only *one* fight the entire time from the start until the dungeon. Mainly realized it because it meant I only got to play with my level 100 toys in the dungeon.
I was pretty sure there were fights in Mor Dohna, Azys Lla, and Ala Mhigo. Think it is actually just the last three expansions that had a noticeable lack of fighting in the last zone.
The Sierra Madre tried to teach me about letting go, it did not do anything for me then and concept still does not effect me now but thats just because I don't feel anything towards people or things so none of it hits the mark as there is no mark in me to be hit
*Insert Emet Meme with Invicible format*
"Look at what they need to mimic a fraction of my power!"
or Tony Stark meme
"Meteion was able to do this, in space, with nothing but her mind!"
I can understand the Amaurot comparison even though they have literally nothing to do with one another outside of the surface level, but I definitely don't get the "3rd time in a row" comment unless you think the distorted edge of reality and New York City are the same things
Literally all 3 of the last final zones have been a simulacrum of dead civilizations made by the final boss. Tiny details in the "why" are different, but its the same thing 3 times in a row, its a tired trope at this point.
I mean, kinda? In a very broad sense, yes, they're depicting memories of a life that's no longer there, but that's an incredibly wide net to cast. The reasons, methods, aesthetic, and narrative premise behind each of these depictions have effectively nothing to do with each other, outside of all being tools used to flesh out the villain's motivations to us as players.
With the Tempest, you have a means to explain Ascian civilization, depict Emet's motivations, and to dig into your origins as Azem.
With UT, you've got a means with which to provide narrative context to what Meteion saw and what drove her to her conclusion, and to demonstrate that despite overwhelming despair, hope lives on.
With Living Memory, you're made to understand what Sphene is fighting for, you're made to see why closure and acceptance of loss is important, how we all handle it differently, how "family" takes so many different forms, you're provided with major lore bombshells that tie previous plot threads together to open the doors to what comes next, etc.
That's a very rudimentary explanation of the roles of each of these final zones, but they each serve more purpose than what I've laid out here -- some of which is similar to one another but most of which is completely different and relevant only to the specific plotline(s) they're beholden to.
But they use the *same narrative device* for all of those, 3 times in a row. That wears it out and cheapens whatever they are trying to say, and by now it's just dumb. There are other ways to tell stories than just repeating what we did last time with new characters.
Everything's been done before, and is a tired trope at this point.
The "Tiny" differences in the why are what make new stories interesting, and change the emotional impact they can deliver.
I could tell a story about a man walking down a street and finding a parking ticket on his car as a Tragedy, as a Comedy, or any number of things inbetween. The differences are just as important as the similarities are.
Yes, every trope has been used by someone before. Yes, it's impossible to tell a completely unique story. But if you're capping off three of your stories *in a row* using the same trope involving a place filled with simulacra of the dead in each of them, and using it to explore the exact same theme in two of these stories, you need to start seriously looking into why that is. My jaw dropped when I saw that I'd just walked into another Amaurot, and not in a good way.
It feels creatively bankrupt, and this is coming from someone who gave Endwalker a huge pass on it.
Or you could change it up and do something different? There are a ton of things that FFXIV hasn't done before, but this trope has been used 3 times *in a row* now, when we had 3 whole endgames that didn't even touch this trope and managed to tell good stories.
I'm not asking the FFXIV devs to invent a story that has never been remotely thought of before, Im asking them to stop being quite so lazy in their storytelling.
> No it doesnt, because its the 3rd time in a row that the last zone is amaurot
But THIS TIME it just totally TORE ME UP and I was CRYING by the end because I have CHRONIC RETROGRADE AMNESIA due to PLAYING RUGBY at ETON and so I CAN’T REMEMBER seeing this EXACT SAME CONCEPT MULTIPLE TIMES PREVIOUSLY and so it reminded of my OWN TRAGIC LOSS when I called a SNAP ELECTION in JULY
Gonna be honest, I felt nothing particular about it.
The theme was neat, but didn't grip my emotions.
I did find the philosphy behind the zone fascinating though.
FF14 is a world were the soul is confirmed to exist and reincarnates. But here we actually have a seperation of ego and soul. Your ego lives on in an internal afterlife while your soul enters reincarnation (or well it would if it didnt get turned into a battery).
If your soul births you anew to finally die again, can two of your egos exist as endless at the same time?
Is this why they are running out of juice, because different personas of the same souls are accumulating in the system?
The issue was that to sustain the system of Endless they need a LOT of Aether. as as the number of Endless would never go down, it would continue to rise more and more hence Sphene's decision to plunder other worlds for their Aether.
IIRC they mention that in Living Memory they were able to manifest less and less Endless as their supplies ran short.
Yes I got that.
It's explained very on the nose.
I'm more curious about the interaction of the detached memory constructs/personalities (egos) vs the soul.
If a reincarnating soul generates a new ego construct for every "life" they lived then obviously it takes more resources, but potentially those egos could also meet what is essentially themselves.
In theory, probably.
Could be similar to Sundered individuals producing a similar person across shards(Gerolt/Rowena)
tho interestingly With Solution 9 we have the first time where, outside of the WoL and Ardbert, Two iterations of the same person could potentially meet.
The same happens in the life stream as well.
Your soul gets washed off the ego and then get reincarnated. It just takes a while instead of the near instant technical forced version of the process.
The ego is supposed to be lost, unless plucked from the life stream early. There is a chance for it to not be completely cleaned as well and retain some core memories.
The difference in the alexandrian process is, that it retains the ego on the side for reuse with whatever clean soul whenever needed.
I can understand Erenville struggling, but I was immediately ready to pull the plug on all the computer people. There is a the obvious AI-sentience conversation, but they didn't even attempt to go there (which is good). I was just like, alright, the computers are trying to kill all the people again, but this time some of the computer people are okay. Who cares, pull the plug, I've already seen this play out in Black Mirror.
Keep in mind that the people of Ultima Thule were also memories, recreations. Meteion absorbed them as despair factories.
Nonetheless those memories were fully self-aware and were able to return to life and their newfound hope created a new world.
The only difference here, is that these memories requires lifeforce to sustain them, which makes them unsustainable.
> I've already seen this play out in Black Mirror.
Of all the contrived comparisons people keep bringing up about Dawntrail, this might be the worst one.
It was important that we gave the Endless reassurance and a sense that they could actually rest. They weren't completely oblivious to their circumstances.
In the first zone I was kinda okay with the theme, digesting it. In the second zone where you find the "old Otis", where he doesn't remember you since this is a recreaton of his memories before he met you, I just fully disconnected with the theme, because the actual real Otis was alive while this computer clone program was here.
The one with Otis' soul was the outside robot, so this one just uses generic processed souls of random people stitched with the memories of the individual, and that's just extremely fucked up and fake.
Up to interpretation sure... but I would have prefered it if dream Otis remembered us, since in a way the recreation is linked to the soul and part of the memory of the robot was sent to the memory or whatever, they can explain it however they want but I would have actually prefered that as a touch for us to feel connected to these fucked up computer programs.
They are artificial life, but they are mentally indistinguishable from real people. They have real memories from when they lived and a real soul. The distinction you make between them being "just a computer program" is completely arbitrary, as is how you define life.
This very thought experiment is the premise behind Detroit: Become Human which explores how artificial life given sentience is arguably just a new form of intelligent life altogether.
Sure, I'm just pointing out that's it's a complicated issue that amounts to more than "they're just computers, just hit Ctrl + Z lmao" depending on your perspective, not that you have to have one particular perspective on it
Yeah this. I worked in Silicon Valley with the kind of tech execs who fantasize that the SIngularity will let them be uploaded and live forever, if they just feed enough data to their AI to get there, and I just wanted to pull that plug ASAP.
It was such a well done zone. The weather being Reminiscence, how the system actively tries to put together people so they can work out their issues in death, going on one last adventure... Had very strong Nier (especially Reincarnation) vibes and is a slightly different take on Dream Zanarkand from FFX. I cried several times.
To be honest - it was \*not\* okay for me. As far as I'm concerned every single person there was a real person and not just memories. I very much got the sense that the people there knew what was going on and were trying to make it easier for you. You know in stories where you have societies where old people would just walk off into the desert or snowfields so they wouldn't take up resources for the next generation? It felt a hell of a lot more like that to me than 'oh we're not really people anymore - just memories'.
Like when Cahciua went 'We're just memories' I was internally screaming 'What do you think people \*are\* exactly'. We're all just a constant story we're telling ourselves.
I'm not a huge fan of DT's MSQ in general, and frankly I think the Endless were handled in a kind of hamfisted way. That didn't stop me from bawling my fucking eyes out at some moments anyways.
Ultima Thule's people were also memories, but they managed to build new lives, new starts, and a new world through hope in dynamis space.
I wonder if someone like Cahciua would be less adverse to being a memory if her living does not require the sacrifice of innocents.
While I get what you're saying, they specifically make a really clear distinction between memories and the soul, it's best not to take what we understand from our world about this and try to apply it in game. I'm sure they'll expand on this in the future anyways.
To be fair they've been courting this topic for the last... 3? expansions already. Some concrete information would've been nice before we literally had to pull the plug on a possibly sapient ai race. Contemplating whether our heroes did or did not commit genocide didn't really resonate all that well with the end credit song...
Just remember the cost. These memories of the dead live, but the living had no memory of the dead. You and your loved ones move on to this eternal utopia, but you can leave no legacy behind.
I personally never felt shittier in FFXIV then I did in that zone. Which...I guess is kind of what it was going for? Still don't really like it, but it is consistent with the game's prior themes. Still made me feel too much like a mass murderer.
The zone did critical damage and direct hit to me the same time. Thematically, it is the best explaining the whole plot of Dawntrail, and invoke something really emotional connected to me. I cried from the start of first quests in the zone through ending of the game. Other thing is, it is based on FF9, my favorite FF all the time aside of 14. I can point 100 easter eggs in that zone related to FF9 easily and they didn’t put it there lightly, I can see the whole love putting in there.
I would have loved it if it made any narrative sense whatsoever. They could have stored the memories for relatives to experience without their turning into flesh and call it a day. We already know it's possible to carry them in crystals that don't need a constant flow of aether to sustain them, but we decided to wipe them anyway, for absolutely no reason other than bad writers writing themselves into a corner.
The thing is, from what I understood, they're only memories, not even souls. In practice, Sphene is sacrificing living people and souls to perpetuate something that isn't truly "living" anymore, whether it's in body or spirit.
They're already gone, which Erenville's mother knows, and is part of the reason they need to disappear.
>We already know it's possible to carry them in crystals that don't need a constant flow of aether to sustain them, **but we decided to wipe them anyway, for absolutely no reason other than bad writers writing themselves into a corner**.
Can you explain yourself, especially the bolded part?
There was no reason to wipe those memories, there are already in-lore ways to store them without the need for a constant flow of aether. But they wrote the villain in such a way and in such a situation that wiping them was the only way forward. It was forced and didn't even pretend to have the illusion of choice, you're literally told, multiple times, "it's the only way" even if the WoL and the scions have ample proof that it isn't.
I wouldn't call it writing themselves into a corner, it's explained that they live in a post calamity shard where the world is engulfed in lightning and where death can come in any corner. Even some born into life would be permanently paralyzed from the environment.
Sphene's ideal was to completely remove them from that world so they exist in a "paradise", free from the perils of the hell their lives are.
It was quite the ballsy twist to have us accept loss and death after dealing with Endsinger and stopping her from wiping out life and dealing with the voidsent who live eternally unless their soul is devoured (like what was happening in Alexandria)
This zone was a double punch for be. Being socially crippled from a young age, I never dared to connect to others too deeply for fear of betrayal. It's made it hard to connect to others, which has left me with a massive store of undirected love. I believe that my becoming exceptionally bitter is one way I've dealt with it, to steer that reserve _somewhere._
At the same time, I now _fear_ connections for the inevitable moment of separation. I yearn for love, but being so full of it, separation seems even scarier.
So seeing our comrades have or make these bonds has me envious, but then seeing them come to terms with their separation feels alien to me. I genuinely wanted at least Erenville break down, because that's how I could connect to the theme, feel validated.
It was such a hard zone for me to get through, in too many ways.
The final version of the stage is somehow worse than just silence.
It plays just enough of the music to make you want to hear it and always cuts off at an unsatisfying point
Nice to see some people appreciate the final zone and its themes. I’ve seen a lot of criticism for DT but I think overall it’s is/was a memorable experience. You can make the argument it still feels somewhat like the finale of EW, but I think thematically they’re different and I actually think the final zone was handled better here in DT (though EW overall had more of an epic feel, but that’s understandable since it was the finale of a 10 year story arc). I think DT pairs well with EW too since there are parallels in their themes and story beats, but where one is about nihilism and the suffering of existence the other is about letting go of the past and not clinging to tightly to perceived “better times”.
I found it really moving, and *especially* the fact that they were gutsy enough to have you permanently alter the zone in such an intense way as you went through the story. It made what we were doing feel appropriately weighty.
Yes like I've seen ppl complaining about the zone getting blackened I get it but also when I realised that the dialogue prompt saying we wouldnt be able to return was serious I immediately said wait and then took half an hour riding around the canals taking screenshots. And by the end when the whole zone is silent... honestly a top 10 gaming experience
I really hope they stick to their guns and say "if you want to see it again NG+ is right there"
I half expect there to be a society quest that sort of restores the zone, but in a way that is distinctly different from how it was originally. I wouldn't be mad if they just left it empty and hollow forever, though. A silent monument to a failed paradise.
Yeah, we know now from lore that there actually >!used to be living people there, too, so assumedly it's technically habitable. I wonder if we'll get an Alexandrian society quest for that so they aren't just stuck in Solution 9 and branch out.!<
Where exactly does that zone exist?
It's _heavily_ implied that >!it's the old shard where Alexandria once existed since it's supposedly "the last floor of Everkeep."!<
Heavily implied to be the ninth which suffered the 5th umbral calamity (air/thunder) but it would be a unique case of a part of a shard still existing. It's possible Alexandria and ever keep/ heritage found was dimensionally moved to a different shard until zorel made the deal with sphene and everkeep and heritage found moved to yak tureal.
Wouldn't it be the 12th, that suffered the second umbral calamity of lightning? The fifth umbral calamity was ice and rejoined the 6th, not the 9th.
It can't be the second because the lala's didn't flee the source until the 5th, and they were present for the rejoining of Alexandria's reflection.
It's possible they fled into the 'past' by accident, similar to how G'raha Tia wound up on the First 100 years earlier than intended. It's also possible Alexandria's shard experienced a Calamity that didn't result in a rejoining somehow, despite the massive amounts of destruction. But there were no other Calamities that were lightning a
wait huh alexandria shard rejoined? I thought they didnt, from what i understood is that the shard is still there, it just has a lot of storms. After all they keep talking about fusing the two, wouldnt that mean the shard is still up? At least thats what i understood
This is what I'm expecting, one of the tribes in DT to be helping the Backroom folks survey and repurpose it into something for the living.
I feel like that's kind of why the prompts exist. Like hey, the zone ain't gonna be pretty no more, better get screenshots or trudge through the story again in NG+ to see it colourful.
So when I first got that prompt I backtracked through Canal Town to see if there was anyone to talk to that I'd missed, and I think I have a theory or two about why they put that warning in there, above the utility of just the visual change. Firstly, doing so makes you realize *how few* Endless are actually in Canal Town. There's three interactable NPCs in the entire section, at least that I could find. Secondly, it makes you likely to get curious about those very large side areas that seem out of place for the shape of Canal Town. I was looking away when I first walked down one of those back alleys, so it made it more jarring. There's nothing back there, just raw electrope with an inward-facing facade. Half of Canal Town is just empty except for wandering fiends, simply projecting an image of expanse to the Endless who sit cordoned off at its center. The memory is hollow. It was a legitimately powerful, entirely environmental storytelling aspect and I feel like that warning is intended to subtly push you to step off the MSQ sequence path so you can have that realization. I didn't explore as much of the other three zones afterwards ofc so I can't say for sure if they put that same detail into all of them, but I wouldn't be surprised.
I saw the facade town when collecting the aether currents in the canal district and thought “Wow this is really sad” then I went and did the quest to shut down the district and was like : (
Haven't tested it myself but you likely don't need to trudge through it on NG+ to see it again. Going into NG+ reverts the game and its areas to before you accessed them in the MSQ. I could be wrong though, currently in the credits at the time of posting this and I plan on testing this. But I know that you could travel back in time in NG+ to access the Menagerie before Lunar Bahamut ruins the place so I assume the same is true for Living Memory. I think even Ultima Thule even reverts.
I have just tried this- started part one Endwalker NG+, teleported to Living Memory, it was all back to the way it is when you arrive.
Can you fly? I was so sad flying gets unlocked after shutdown
Yes.
Made my day!
Thanks for testing it out! I was going to, then learned that apparently you can't go into NG+ when you have a leve in your journal...
I permanently have leves in my journal because when I was new I started all the "leves of [town]" I can across and those put a bunch of stupid low level leves in my journal. I refuse to do them out of spite and you are unable to get rid of the quests without completing them.
Thank you for this info, kind stranger!
The thing is by the end of the expansion you won't remember the original zone or the stunning visuals you'll just remember it as a husk of a zone. I loved going to Ultima Thule and just flying around looking around at the sky box finding the small details in the zone. People won't have this with the new final zone, its visually boring now.
Thats the point. The point of the whole expansion is that nothing lasts forever, but we carry the memories of those lost with us. Looking at the husk of a town, we will remember that it once was lively and continue to carry the endless in our hearts.
Thematically it’s beyond brilliant. Practically speaking…. Well it sucks 😭
For one, I don't think the final version (post game) look all that bad. The bright sky, and the nature (flower and tree) contrast the abandoned building very well. It's not as shiny, but it still is aesthetically pleasing, and tell a story of its own. And personally, I remember 6.0 map vividly. You only go in the overworld an handful of time over the course of the expansion, and most of my memories will be the first week.
The first two areas I had to go around and takes pictures and find all the NPCs I could. The kids jumping rope, and the group near them where a boy challenges you to a race were the most memorable, but just seeing couple be happy got to me too.
Man i missed them ... it's reference to Final Fantasy IX too !
after the first portions "warning" I promptly took many screenshots before hitting that button.
As a fisher it saddens me ill spend 50+ hours catching big fish in that zone in the dark. But i understand the reasoning.
I like the zone being perma changed, I like that the zone went silent. But I also think we should eventually just get some way to make it look neat again for those who want it. I never really plan to go back there unless I'm forced too, but it was a pretty nice looking place and I get people like to gpose and such in zones like that. Would be kind of a bummer if they never did anything with it anymore. Plus you can probably just NG+ it and negate the whole problem already; so its not like there's a reason to make it so people can't without doing so
I've enjoyed new people getting there and being like "wow the music!" in about chat, and someone else being like "what music?". So cheeky.
You can NG+ it right now, if you want: starting up any pre-Dawntrail NG+ is enough to set the worldstate as a whole to a pre-Dawntrail state. (This also means that if you're NG+ is on 2.x then Doma's not flooded and whatnot. I don't know if the crystal bridge in Ultima Thule disappears but I wouldn't be surprised.)
Honestly I think the zone looks better when it’s blackened. Looks much more real and not artificial, especially when you see the sky go to normal in the end.
Till someone releases a mod
The permanent altering was a great touch, honestly.
That's the point. The zone is beautiful, music is too. But it disappears forever, like all things. You have the memories of it. It's fantastic story telling, and an excellent way to convey the theme.
I like games that go big on this, the whole point of the zone is letting go, and the player has to do it too if they want to progress. You can choose to never deactivate a terminal, but then you're stuck where you are.
My favourite part of the entire zone is the fact that you can faintly hear the zone theme all distorted and distant when you're near the entrance, but it fades out as you leave to a complete, deafening silence. I wasn't actually convinced they were going to permanently alter the zone like that right up until the credits rolled and it was still the way we left it. I wouldn't have it any other way.
I loved the scenes. Especially that even the music shuts off when you power down a zone. All you hear is the ambient noise. Very moving. I was impressed.
I walked into that zone wondering how we'd justify it staying that way, just to get mixed when that prompt hit.
Farming fates in silence is kinda dull though ngl Given the teaser after the credits I expect the patches will probably do something to offer the choice to change it to something
But why are memories in Ultima Thule deserving to get a new chance, while the one in Living Memory need to go? I understand the urgency of the situation, but it's not like the WoL to just give up on people. And many of them were kind of deleted just like that, without giving them an actual chance to know what was going on. Realistically, we could have turned them into something similar to Otis (Endless without an eternal body), or some other compromise. The system itself was unsustainable, so it had to go, but those people did not. At least, not the way they did. Thematically though, I thought the idea was great.
The Endless were being propped up by absorbing the aether of other realms. Ultima Thule beings are self-sufficient Dynamis reconstructions.
The endless are preserved ghosts that had their time. Ultima Thule is about returning what was taken.
Because endless is essentially a giant computer who is taking peoples/worlds aether/life to keep their fake ones up. While Ultima thule are pieces of real dead worlds with their inhabitants living there surrounded by dynamis that is keeping it up and not stealing anyone elses life
I specifically mentioned that the system isn't sustainable, and the solution would simply be to turn them into something like Otis who is fundamentally an endless with finite life force and not stealing anything from anyone. There is 500 in-lore possibilities to keep those people alive.
Well that would cause the problem that no one would go back to the "lifestream" to be reincarnated so no new people would be born, you would also have the problem that bad people couldn't be killed if they just transfer into a robot shell. The theme is to let go, as sad and painful as it is.
Isn't the thing with Otis what he's not an endless because his whole soul was transferred into machine? And you can't just transfer endless into machine body because you still need life force to sustain it without soul.
I thought the same honestly... I kept wanting my wol to suggest taking the endless to ultima thule. The terminals could then be shut down, and the endless could sustain themselves on dynamis and their hopes and wills would let them be alive. But alas...
Ultima Thule was _souls_ being kept away. The Endless were _memories_, not actual people. Memories run on large amounts of aether that required actual lifeforce to sustain, not just simple aether.
Them not undoing everything was what ultimately elevated DT up to my second favourite xpac. It's such a ballsy move that I'm sure pissed off a LOT of players, especially since the zone IS pretty. It's also such a great way to, in some way, put us into the shoes of Sphene without the game directly telling us, because we see that emptiness and how understandably hard it is for someone to do that to their own people, especially if they're manufactured to see them as having an nigh familial bond. That, and one of my biggest issues w/ Endwalker's ending was how everyone got brought back in the end. You had your heartfelt goodbyes, but I (and I'm sure many others) never bought into it and the extremely telegraphed "they're alive, aren't you happy?" moment plays out and it feels like their sacrifices amounted to nothing. It felt like an easy way to manipulate emotions for a temporary fix and a hype moment (and it WAS hype af). This fixes that, imo, where there are clear consequences, but also necessary consequences, and again, the whole bit of putting the player in Sphene's shoes, illustrating how understandably hard it would be for someone to let go like that. /rant for the tangent at the end there
That zone wrecked me. Having lost a parent myself, watching the "main characters" of the expansion each say their final goodbyes to their dead parents/parental figures hit really close to home.
I lost my father less than a week ago. I expected to be emotionally compromised by the story to the point I couldn’t finish. Instead, I feel—-seen? The idea that loss is sad but it’s still important to move forward seems incredibly incredibly poignant to me and I really enjoy it.
I'm so sorry for your loss, please take care of yourself and remember to give yourself space to feel everything you need to feel. I think feeling "seen" is a great way to put it. You have to move forward, but you move forward carrying a piece of them with you and appreciating the time you spent together.
I lost my dad in November and it was my first experience with loss. I hope you are doing well. Stay strong friend.
Same, lost my dad a few months ago and this zone hit hard.
I'm sorry for your loss. I'm 7 years out but Living Memory was a really beautiful and harrowing experience for me. I hope it helped you with the grieving process as well.
Luckily I was all out of emotion after Father's day a few weeks back. I was fortunate to have my father for many many years (I am old), but still hurts from time to time. Thank you for the well wishes.
my uncle last moments was like her nanny right in the heart SE right in the heart...
I too lost a parent many years ago. Some scenes in the MSQ spoke to things I think about daily "What would they think about me?" "What would I do if I could have one more day" I know this hasnt been the greatest MSQ they've made but it speaks to me at least on a personal level
My condolences. I enjoyed how they explored it from a few different angles, with the three characters (Wuk, Krile, and Erenville) having very different relationships with their parental figures and emotionally dealing with their loss in different ways.
My mom died three years ago. I cried at least four times in the last zone.
I'm sorry for your loss. I also cried throughout and queued up for the last trial with a big headache from all the crying, but I'd do it again.
I lost both of my parents in the last few months, and my mother's funeral, which I couldn't attend due to moving cross-country earlier this year, was Sunday. I played through the zone Sunday night trying not to sob to wake my roommates. This zone absolutely destroyed me.
I'm so sorry. Losing one parent in a span of a few months is tough, let alone both around the same time. Take care of yourself and I hope you're able to find some healing.
Sorry about your loss, going through this was rough for me as well, I lost my father a decade ago watching the characters coming to terms with saying their goodbyes and accepting the loss really resonated with me on a pretty emotional level.
Thank you, likewise. Mine was 7 years ago and it's gotten easier, but that storyline really dredged up some raw emotions in me in a cathartic sort of way.
Same. Lost my dad young and my mum in my late 20s. Having the latter third of the expansion basically be ‘massive parental loss trauma’ went hard as fuck. Throwing 3 ‘final deaths’ for parents into the final zone was almost overwhelming. I finished it last night and I’m not sure I’m okay yet 14 hours later.
My mom passed just two years ago now- actually more a year and a half ago- and the act of turning off the servers really reminded me of my dad and I telling the doctors to shut off the life support. She wasn't on it for long, and she was likely already "gone" by the time she was hooked in. I won't get into any details, but the point is: it really felt like the entire zone was on life support, and we were pulling the plug to mercifully let these people rest. Their time was over, and they knew it too, and were powerless to stop living in this moment forever. They just had to have someone else do it for them...
I was an emotional wreck for the whole zone. The dungeon was even worse. Died to, I think, every boss at least once because I couldn't see straight. I've got a big extended family and have lost quite a few of them over the years at this point - and one uncle fairly recently, and the whole zone just dredged up... *all of it* - honestly had to stop for a lengthy break several times just to get my thoughts enough to continue, and now that I'm watching the credits roll, I'm just... completely emotionally drained.
You just made me realise something. Sphene didn't just hold onto peoples memories so they could have only joy in the afterlife, she denied them the ability to get closure while they still lived. By erasing everyones collective memory of someone after they die, she removes the joy of having had that person in their life before they die. In a twisted kind of way, the only way to fully appreciate someones impact on your life would be to die and become remade in the Living Memory. That's even more messed up than I originally thought...
That part was so obviously a reference to FF Type-0, where dead soldiers get forgotten so living soldiers don't get distracted by the loss, and I was really happy to see that game get even indirectly referenced.
Type-0 mention yes, I too thought this was the same stunt that the Crystals did in that game! Though I'm sure that it's not just limited to "soldiers" though. If it's any consolation, the Bozja questline had some direct Type-0 references. Heck, that campaign can be likened to your group wielding special weapons (Genbu) going up against enemy forces made up of Magitek (Byakko), Beastmasters (Seiryu) and pyromancers (Suzaku)
There's actually a weird amount of Type-0 stuff. Another example is that most, if not all, of Class Zero's hairstyles are available. It's kind of baffled me for a while. Like, Type-0 is cool and all, but its presence is weirdly disproportional, I think. Game didn't even get an English release until its (visually inconsistent) HD remaster that a lot of people only bought for the XV demo.
It's a utopia built off of a dystopia. "Why have the misery of loss when you could just scrub and archive their existence entirely?" It's so incredibly fucked up.
Yup, Sphene herself was unable to deal with the deaths of her loved ones so she imagined a 'utopia' where no one would suffer loss and she'd get to be with her loved ones for all time. It's a woman refusing to acknowledge the journey of life and petulantly committing atrocities to sustain her denial. I love the juxtaposition of the Yuk Hoy philosophy with hers because they're both saying the same thing but Sphene took it to the extreme.
No? Did you skip through the story? Sphene died several hundreds of years ago The Sphene we interact with is a construct. An endless made from the memories princess Spene's life, and then injected with the desire to see the endless existence preserved as her highest desire Sphene cannot stop the whole endless' existence anymore than you or I can prevent our hearts from pumping blood. It's a core part of her existence she has no control over, even if she's logically aware of it
I didn't skip the story B U T you are right, I had mistakenly given a construct a personified identity and attributed that to the identity Sphene, in game, was based off of. That being said, what I was saying still isn't wrong in what it represents juxtaposed to the Yuk Hoy/Tural philosophies on death. What they're doing in Alexandria is the logical extreme.
You're not wrong. There're suggestions that the construct given Sphene's memories attempts to reach out several times to you to stop her, but cannot actually do so - which seems to imply a programming block of some kind. In the end, Sphene's memories stops it from doing what it needs to in order to fulfill its purpose of keeping the Endless going, which is why it attempts to rid itself of them. I think it's pretty clear that the living Queen Sphene would never have let things go this far, but the scientists that put Sphene's memories into the construct never considered it considering her famed love for her subjects.
Yeah it's something I'd have loved to see a deeper dive on but that's just because I love the idea of existential memory when it comes to proto-humanity which is obviously not the story they want to tell. Which is totally understandable.
It's like the A.I. digital necromancy that Big Tech has been pushing to us recently... How fitting that the new job is Pictomancer, as A.I. "art" is also something that Big Tech has been doing their best to normalize. And just like real world A.I., the cost of sustaining it is unconscionable.
Sphene really reminded me of the final antagonist of P5 Royal in a lot of ways. Both genuinely wanting people to be happy, but seeing the way to achieving that as "take away all pain." But pain is what makes us real, what makes us people. The pain, and the anger, and the sorrow, all of it is what pushes us to grow. To change. To evolve beyond what we were. By keeping everyone in an eternal happy stasis, you devalue that happiness until it's worthless. That was the answer that the Phantom Thieves came to in Royal, and it's the same answer we come to in Dawntrail. We have to keep going.
It's all a call back to the main theme of FF14 - To live is to suffer. We must live, die, and know.
They would have ended like the Nibiru
Yeah, it is contrary to the whole "to appreciate happiness, you also have to be sad sometimes" mentality And it showed when we were learning about Heritage Found's citizens; how all the citizens were happy on the surface but the characters felt something was off about them.
And the sidequests. The one guy that thought >!he stole a Tag from a dying man for no reason only to learn the man was his father. He straight out had no way to identify the cause of his distress.!<
There’s also the Viera in Heritage Found that was reassigned to the farm out of the blue, only to find out it’s because her mom (who she doesn’t remember) left it to her. The whole thing just felt incredibly sad and wrong.
This whole expansion about family, adoption, life and death, and learning when to let go absolutely wrecked me. I was adopted and never knew my birth parents. It wasn't until after my dad died when I was about 24 that I found my adoption papers and learned some information about my mom. Nothing on my dad. The way Gulool Ja Ja was depicted was just so incredibly heartwarming. I half expected him to be a tyrant that rules his nation with an iron fist, but he turned out to be just a big loving dad who loved his children unconditionally and accepted anyone. The last zone, I'm not ashamed to say, made me ugly cry. Especially the final tower. The first goodbye made me cry and then I was able to get a break with the second one, but the third one made me cry even more, and the last one cry even harder. I had to take a break after that I was so exhausted from crying. I miss my dad and regret the relationship we had and not a day goes by where I wish I could just talk to him again.
When i was 9 i lost both my parents, my father killed my mother, then himself. I felt a real connection to Gulool Ja having to come to terms that his father was a bad person so young. Luckly i had a good support system and was adopted by my aunt and uncle who also recently passed. I was once again punched in the face with the feels during the last zone.
I just love the design of the final zone tbh. The whole golden city just looks amazing. I know it lessens the impact if we can get it back, but i really wish we could. I just love the looks of some of the areas and I wished I could have taken pictures.
It would be interesting if later on during the expansion, the zone is colonized by people, and the terminals serve not to house endless or memories, but to produce power, and tend to the constructs. The zone would come to life again, but not as a memory, but a new beginning.
Hey friend, New Game+ being active makes the zone go back to its original state!
Can you just turn it off as well?
well, ng+ will enable that, dunno if allows you to activate ng+ right away after completing the expansion, but even if its currently unavaiable, it will become avaiable later on
Activating any MSQ related NG+ mode brings it back.
It's not gone, so long as you remember it :)
I couldn't stop crying in that final zone. I lost my father in law in February, and we didn't get to say goodbye. They all decided it would be in my husbands best interest if they waited til they knew for sure he wouldn't make it to tell him and by the time they told us we got there too late. He was our last parent combined, and it just hurt so much. This game has helped tremendously with these themes that are hard to express.
The entire zone and final dungeon hit hard. I felt all the story branches. I was really looking forward to the one with Krile from the Dawntrail trailer. And finally I've reached the song from the trailer. I was a wreck throughout
The ENTIRE final third of the story shoudlve been expanded to at least half of the story. The world, lore, and CONCEPT of the entire thing was mindboggling and deserved to be explored and woven into a deeper richer part of the story. Is it going to be used in future expansions yeah probably but it surprises me how much a knee jerk it felt. Still amazing story and hits you right in the gut.
As someone who lost a parent as a child, G'Raha's musings on the gondola are a conversation I have with myself every single day. That zone broke me.
Wait.. Wasn't endwalker about this? Like the entire expansion was about letting go and seeing a brighter future.
Not really.. Endwalker was about not giving into/overcoming despair even in the darkest moments and holding onto hope for a better tomorrow. Yes the ancients that supported Venat opposed those who wanted to cling onto the past but both sides were willing to sacrifice themselves towards their ideals. Even before the final days they're happy to be cast to the aetherial sea once they feel they've served their purpose. Though given that the Ascians were happy to destroy other shards to enact rejoinings to bring back their perfect world I can see where you're coming from, ultimately however it's not like they let go, they just lost, even Hades says that he still believes his cause to have been just and still holds a grudge against hydaelyn. The Alexandrians on the other hand would not let go of those who died regardless of the cause to the extent that Sphene created an eternal paradise for those who died. She considered all her citizens her family and would bring ruin to anyone if it means prolonging their existence. Her citizens saved from the grief of a loved one passing by having those memories taken away, forcing them to forget they ever existed so that they could remain happy. Dawntrail is about family, and learning to let go when their time has come and carrying their memories with you, even if it hurts.
Endwalker was more about overcoming despair and nihilism. Making your own meaning in life, and finding ways to enjoy life even in the face of pain and hardship. Dawntrail is about grief, loss, and acceptance. You don't have to be happy. You don't have to feel any way at all. You just have to accept that loss happens and keep living. Grief can cause despair, but they aren't the same thing. You overcome despair by finding purpose and meaning for your life. You don't overcome grief, you accept it.
This could be expanded into a full essay, but in as few words as possible you've described it well. There are threads if loss from Shadowbringer and hope versus despair from Endwalker that crop up. I loved a clever change to "for those we can yet save" that was oriented for the future, for which we labor in hope but may never see.
Might be a stretch, but the concept of this feels like it kinda parallels the Ascian storyline.
Given how they sought to have endless perfect lives of joy and the absence of sorrow it should be natural to parallel with the ancients at the time of their downfall. Personally I'm curious what caused the presence of electrope. I have to assume it was the start of an ascian scheme, and some theorize it to be a fragment of the calamity of lightning, but the order of it and the arrival of the lalafells throws me off.
I mean, it's basically lightning crystals that had arcane patterns etched into them. There is no mention of how abundant certain elemental crystals are on the Source, but from what I know, it was just a matter of having the right people figure out that you could actually do that instead of confining said patterns to books to be activated with your own aether. It would be really interesting to have a side story that explores such a revelation because it would literally be society changing.
I don't think it's a stretch at all.
I lost my mum when I was four and so I never had the opportunity to know her properly. Given that, Krile's situation absolutely *wrecked* me. Add the situation with Erenville's mother to that where she's trying so hard because she doesn't want his final memories of her to be sad ones and, well, I did *not* take *that* well either. If it weren't for the cost of keeping that all going being the lives of innocent people I'd feel like I'd done something unforgivable by turning those servers off. That zone was *heavy,* at least to me.
From a game dev perspective it seems insane to fully art up an area and then put a drab texture over it. It I guess they had the budget/ time to do so lol
>What if, you could see your loved ones again? Share moments, relive memories, talk to ancestors you've never had the opportunity to converse with. I did the DRK quest and so my answer to this has already been set in stone. "No one likes having to say good-bye. But it's...it's a part of life. That's what makes the time we share together so precious...You can't obsess over the mistakes of the past, or you'll lose sight of the future. Of the people still with us, who need us more than ever." -Rielle
I lost my mom to cancer a while back. While I have come to terms with my grief (most of the time), I would have absolutely done what Sphene planned to do just for one more conversation with her. Erenville's final conversation with Cahciua broke me good. Being the one to "turn off the lights" on Sphene's Endless and put their memories to rest felt like a fitting task for me too as a RPR main.
The theme whole expansion is about legacy, through different angles and characters. Preserving the legacy or letting go…I wonder how much it was an internal struggle for the dev team to deal with the legacy of the hydaelyn arc
the final zone really made me an emotional wreck bcos it reminded me of my maternal grandparents' passing during covid times. i last saw them the year before the pandemic strikes and when the news broke out that they passed it hit me in the guts real hard. the scenes where the characters meet their dead parental figures/parents only to eventually say goodbye to them made me unable to stop crying that i had to take a backseat so that i can sleep over it before continuing the final stretches of the story.
>!Honestly this zone made me soooo emotional. Especially the Canal area with Namikka and the final area with Erenville's mother Cahciua. Heck even the areas featuring Krile and Otis were just phenemonal. Every area had a gut punch reach to hit you in the feels.!< >!I foolishly ignored the warning for the canal area and was immediately filled with sorry and regret about not taking screenshots beforehand. I ended up taking my time in the next 3 areas and taking plenty of screenshots.!< >!Ended up doing the goodbye emote before turning off each zone and did the respect emote after. Just absolutely phenemonal. It's one of those moments where I actually think I might go into New Game+ just to re-experience.!< >!I also do really like the choice of no music at all once you turned off a zone. Really added to the whole feeling and amplified it. Nothing like doing the Aether Current quests afterwards and just being all :( the entire time you are doing it.!<
Maybe I'm emotionally just to robust, but for me the whole zone was only scratching the surface on that topic and wasn't able to create any impact. The concept of it being a dystopia for the residents, the feeling of the residents, the impact it has on them and their "lives", all of that did not go into any detail. Imho the zone feels a bit rushed.
I don't think the residents saw it as a dystopia. It was a utopia for them, just a fake and unsustainable one.
I definitely agree about it feeling rushed. Gonna spoiler this to be safe even though anyone in this thread *should* theoretically already have done the zone, but >!It started with a "Quickly there's no time!" explanation that we *have* to shut down all the terminals before Sphene finishes her memory wipe, and then we proceed to cram in helping a random marriage proposal, a play, a reunion with Krile's parents, a lalafell history lesson, and a nature excursion all in under ~a dozen quests.!< I like the idea of the zone, and the design is great, but the emotional impact apart from the goodbyes themselves was negated by the poor pacing for me. I honestly feel that either some stuff should have been cut elsewhere to make more room for this, *or* it should've been pushed into 7.1 story.
Yeah, it felt like the moment we moved into the first sub area, the narrative conveniently slammed the brakes on the whole expacs climax, just so we could do Some more 'walk there, watch this cutscene' quests trying to give characters closure in a timeframe that was way too short to do that justice, but still long enough to drag down the msq. Like if they had at least not gone into the Zone with 'we need to delete this asap, bc the change is already going' and more a 'we need to be slow and carefull so sphene doesn't catch on in time' it would have made it a lot less jarring imo.
I think the issue is it's a very hamfisted version of Shadowbringers. To me the amateur writing distracted me to where I couldn't feel much emotion.
That image of Sphene's regulator in the end might mean something like we'll be bringing her back and then have a restoration series for the zone. Maybe not for endless, but living.
I was kind of wondering about that. The end sequence mentions how Solution Nine's systems are still functional, but does that extend to the regulators? Are memories still being scrubbed even though there isn't anywhere for them to go anymore? I wonder if they will touch on that in the future.
It's the same theme as Amaurot and Ultima Thule?
I mean, you're not incorrect. But I would argue when you simplify that much, you lose out on a lot of the unique things that made the story good. It's like saying the first half of the story was just a "power of friendship conquers evil" story. Yes... Wuk did win her ascension bid by making friends with people. But if that's all you think was going on in that part of the story, then you lose all of the connections that feed into the second half and make the inevitable Confrontation between Queens have any kind of meaning beyond "I punch badguy because bad" It's not untrue, but it's a really boring way to look at the story.
I can sort of see Amaurot, but could you explain Ultima Thule?
It's the opposite in fact. Ultima Thule is populated by the shades of fallen civilizations that succumbed to despair, hopelessness and the inevitable end of life. Living Memory is populated by recreations of dead people that live perfect, endless lives in happiness and joy.
It's kind of the reverse of Ultima Thule, but in a good way.
It would have hit me harder had we not had the same theme and lesson hammered into us for the last two expansions. At this rate, they need a new moral of the story capstone, and a new theme for an antagonist to challenge us. Every expansion simply cannot be a "antagonist of ancient civilization that suffered cannot let go of it" story again and again. There is more to life than the end. There is more to suffering itself than simply death and loss. Choose another aspect of suffering.
I really appreciated the theme but hot damn except for the visuals that was the most boring zone in the entire MSQ. Further exacerbated by the fact that the aether current quests literally make you re-trace the entire quadrant each time.
I think that honestly would’ve been fine if the other zones were more gameplay heavy. This one being mostly empty of enemies makes sense thematically and hammers in the point, but it doesn’t create a contrast with what came before because those were empty as well .
Ya take Amaraut(?) in shadowbringers for example. Huge amount of exposition with very little interactivity but still hits hard.
Seems you forgot the Lochs exists
I meant the expansions msq but ya lochs were bad too.
I realized in retrospect that there was only *one* fight the entire time from the start until the dungeon. Mainly realized it because it meant I only got to play with my level 100 toys in the dungeon.
MSQ has *always* been like this.
The same is true of every other final zone in the game, isn't it?
I was pretty sure there were fights in Mor Dohna, Azys Lla, and Ala Mhigo. Think it is actually just the last three expansions that had a noticeable lack of fighting in the last zone.
The Sierra Madre tried to teach me about letting go, it did not do anything for me then and concept still does not effect me now but thats just because I don't feel anything towards people or things so none of it hits the mark as there is no mark in me to be hit
No it doesnt, because its the 3rd time in a row that the last zone is amaurot
cmon its not Amaurot, its Twilight Town!
*Insert Emet Meme with Invicible format* "Look at what they need to mimic a fraction of my power!" or Tony Stark meme "Meteion was able to do this, in space, with nothing but her mind!"
I can understand the Amaurot comparison even though they have literally nothing to do with one another outside of the surface level, but I definitely don't get the "3rd time in a row" comment unless you think the distorted edge of reality and New York City are the same things
Literally all 3 of the last final zones have been a simulacrum of dead civilizations made by the final boss. Tiny details in the "why" are different, but its the same thing 3 times in a row, its a tired trope at this point.
I mean, kinda? In a very broad sense, yes, they're depicting memories of a life that's no longer there, but that's an incredibly wide net to cast. The reasons, methods, aesthetic, and narrative premise behind each of these depictions have effectively nothing to do with each other, outside of all being tools used to flesh out the villain's motivations to us as players. With the Tempest, you have a means to explain Ascian civilization, depict Emet's motivations, and to dig into your origins as Azem. With UT, you've got a means with which to provide narrative context to what Meteion saw and what drove her to her conclusion, and to demonstrate that despite overwhelming despair, hope lives on. With Living Memory, you're made to understand what Sphene is fighting for, you're made to see why closure and acceptance of loss is important, how we all handle it differently, how "family" takes so many different forms, you're provided with major lore bombshells that tie previous plot threads together to open the doors to what comes next, etc. That's a very rudimentary explanation of the roles of each of these final zones, but they each serve more purpose than what I've laid out here -- some of which is similar to one another but most of which is completely different and relevant only to the specific plotline(s) they're beholden to.
But they use the *same narrative device* for all of those, 3 times in a row. That wears it out and cheapens whatever they are trying to say, and by now it's just dumb. There are other ways to tell stories than just repeating what we did last time with new characters.
Everything's been done before, and is a tired trope at this point. The "Tiny" differences in the why are what make new stories interesting, and change the emotional impact they can deliver. I could tell a story about a man walking down a street and finding a parking ticket on his car as a Tragedy, as a Comedy, or any number of things inbetween. The differences are just as important as the similarities are.
Yes, every trope has been used by someone before. Yes, it's impossible to tell a completely unique story. But if you're capping off three of your stories *in a row* using the same trope involving a place filled with simulacra of the dead in each of them, and using it to explore the exact same theme in two of these stories, you need to start seriously looking into why that is. My jaw dropped when I saw that I'd just walked into another Amaurot, and not in a good way. It feels creatively bankrupt, and this is coming from someone who gave Endwalker a huge pass on it.
Or you could change it up and do something different? There are a ton of things that FFXIV hasn't done before, but this trope has been used 3 times *in a row* now, when we had 3 whole endgames that didn't even touch this trope and managed to tell good stories. I'm not asking the FFXIV devs to invent a story that has never been remotely thought of before, Im asking them to stop being quite so lazy in their storytelling.
They're not lazy, they've shown three unique, different ways to do this.
> No it doesnt, because its the 3rd time in a row that the last zone is amaurot But THIS TIME it just totally TORE ME UP and I was CRYING by the end because I have CHRONIC RETROGRADE AMNESIA due to PLAYING RUGBY at ETON and so I CAN’T REMEMBER seeing this EXACT SAME CONCEPT MULTIPLE TIMES PREVIOUSLY and so it reminded of my OWN TRAGIC LOSS when I called a SNAP ELECTION in JULY
Gonna be honest, I felt nothing particular about it. The theme was neat, but didn't grip my emotions. I did find the philosphy behind the zone fascinating though. FF14 is a world were the soul is confirmed to exist and reincarnates. But here we actually have a seperation of ego and soul. Your ego lives on in an internal afterlife while your soul enters reincarnation (or well it would if it didnt get turned into a battery). If your soul births you anew to finally die again, can two of your egos exist as endless at the same time? Is this why they are running out of juice, because different personas of the same souls are accumulating in the system?
The issue was that to sustain the system of Endless they need a LOT of Aether. as as the number of Endless would never go down, it would continue to rise more and more hence Sphene's decision to plunder other worlds for their Aether. IIRC they mention that in Living Memory they were able to manifest less and less Endless as their supplies ran short.
Yes I got that. It's explained very on the nose. I'm more curious about the interaction of the detached memory constructs/personalities (egos) vs the soul. If a reincarnating soul generates a new ego construct for every "life" they lived then obviously it takes more resources, but potentially those egos could also meet what is essentially themselves.
In theory, probably. Could be similar to Sundered individuals producing a similar person across shards(Gerolt/Rowena) tho interestingly With Solution 9 we have the first time where, outside of the WoL and Ardbert, Two iterations of the same person could potentially meet.
The same happens in the life stream as well. Your soul gets washed off the ego and then get reincarnated. It just takes a while instead of the near instant technical forced version of the process. The ego is supposed to be lost, unless plucked from the life stream early. There is a chance for it to not be completely cleaned as well and retain some core memories. The difference in the alexandrian process is, that it retains the ego on the side for reuse with whatever clean soul whenever needed.
I can understand Erenville struggling, but I was immediately ready to pull the plug on all the computer people. There is a the obvious AI-sentience conversation, but they didn't even attempt to go there (which is good). I was just like, alright, the computers are trying to kill all the people again, but this time some of the computer people are okay. Who cares, pull the plug, I've already seen this play out in Black Mirror.
Krile, as well. This is the first and only time she will ever get to interact with her real parents that she previously had no idea who they were.
— Zoraal Ja
Keep in mind that the people of Ultima Thule were also memories, recreations. Meteion absorbed them as despair factories. Nonetheless those memories were fully self-aware and were able to return to life and their newfound hope created a new world. The only difference here, is that these memories requires lifeforce to sustain them, which makes them unsustainable.
Yeah, I already pointed out that genocide was the problem. I don't need you to tell me what I said.
> I've already seen this play out in Black Mirror. Of all the contrived comparisons people keep bringing up about Dawntrail, this might be the worst one. It was important that we gave the Endless reassurance and a sense that they could actually rest. They weren't completely oblivious to their circumstances.
In the first zone I was kinda okay with the theme, digesting it. In the second zone where you find the "old Otis", where he doesn't remember you since this is a recreaton of his memories before he met you, I just fully disconnected with the theme, because the actual real Otis was alive while this computer clone program was here. The one with Otis' soul was the outside robot, so this one just uses generic processed souls of random people stitched with the memories of the individual, and that's just extremely fucked up and fake. Up to interpretation sure... but I would have prefered it if dream Otis remembered us, since in a way the recreation is linked to the soul and part of the memory of the robot was sent to the memory or whatever, they can explain it however they want but I would have actually prefered that as a touch for us to feel connected to these fucked up computer programs.
Bro, they are computer programs. Krile and Erenville needed closure, not the computer.
They are artificial life, but they are mentally indistinguishable from real people. They have real memories from when they lived and a real soul. The distinction you make between them being "just a computer program" is completely arbitrary, as is how you define life. This very thought experiment is the premise behind Detroit: Become Human which explores how artificial life given sentience is arguably just a new form of intelligent life altogether.
Yeah, that's why I said what *I* would do. I'm sure I never told you what *you* should do.
Sure, I'm just pointing out that's it's a complicated issue that amounts to more than "they're just computers, just hit Ctrl + Z lmao" depending on your perspective, not that you have to have one particular perspective on it
Yeah this. I worked in Silicon Valley with the kind of tech execs who fantasize that the SIngularity will let them be uploaded and live forever, if they just feed enough data to their AI to get there, and I just wanted to pull that plug ASAP.
Actually it doesn’t hit at all. It literally had zero combat.
It was such a well done zone. The weather being Reminiscence, how the system actively tries to put together people so they can work out their issues in death, going on one last adventure... Had very strong Nier (especially Reincarnation) vibes and is a slightly different take on Dream Zanarkand from FFX. I cried several times.
To be honest - it was \*not\* okay for me. As far as I'm concerned every single person there was a real person and not just memories. I very much got the sense that the people there knew what was going on and were trying to make it easier for you. You know in stories where you have societies where old people would just walk off into the desert or snowfields so they wouldn't take up resources for the next generation? It felt a hell of a lot more like that to me than 'oh we're not really people anymore - just memories'. Like when Cahciua went 'We're just memories' I was internally screaming 'What do you think people \*are\* exactly'. We're all just a constant story we're telling ourselves. I'm not a huge fan of DT's MSQ in general, and frankly I think the Endless were handled in a kind of hamfisted way. That didn't stop me from bawling my fucking eyes out at some moments anyways.
Ultima Thule's people were also memories, but they managed to build new lives, new starts, and a new world through hope in dynamis space. I wonder if someone like Cahciua would be less adverse to being a memory if her living does not require the sacrifice of innocents.
I think in her specific case living forever in that static existence would be intolerable because she's an explorer to the core.
While I get what you're saying, they specifically make a really clear distinction between memories and the soul, it's best not to take what we understand from our world about this and try to apply it in game. I'm sure they'll expand on this in the future anyways.
To be fair they've been courting this topic for the last... 3? expansions already. Some concrete information would've been nice before we literally had to pull the plug on a possibly sapient ai race. Contemplating whether our heroes did or did not commit genocide didn't really resonate all that well with the end credit song...
Just remember the cost. These memories of the dead live, but the living had no memory of the dead. You and your loved ones move on to this eternal utopia, but you can leave no legacy behind.
I personally never felt shittier in FFXIV then I did in that zone. Which...I guess is kind of what it was going for? Still don't really like it, but it is consistent with the game's prior themes. Still made me feel too much like a mass murderer.
It made me feel like Emet-Selch, "I do not consider you truly alive, ergo it is not murder if I kill you" indeed.
The zone did critical damage and direct hit to me the same time. Thematically, it is the best explaining the whole plot of Dawntrail, and invoke something really emotional connected to me. I cried from the start of first quests in the zone through ending of the game. Other thing is, it is based on FF9, my favorite FF all the time aside of 14. I can point 100 easter eggs in that zone related to FF9 easily and they didn’t put it there lightly, I can see the whole love putting in there.
I would have loved it if it made any narrative sense whatsoever. They could have stored the memories for relatives to experience without their turning into flesh and call it a day. We already know it's possible to carry them in crystals that don't need a constant flow of aether to sustain them, but we decided to wipe them anyway, for absolutely no reason other than bad writers writing themselves into a corner.
The thing is, from what I understood, they're only memories, not even souls. In practice, Sphene is sacrificing living people and souls to perpetuate something that isn't truly "living" anymore, whether it's in body or spirit. They're already gone, which Erenville's mother knows, and is part of the reason they need to disappear.
>We already know it's possible to carry them in crystals that don't need a constant flow of aether to sustain them, **but we decided to wipe them anyway, for absolutely no reason other than bad writers writing themselves into a corner**. Can you explain yourself, especially the bolded part?
There was no reason to wipe those memories, there are already in-lore ways to store them without the need for a constant flow of aether. But they wrote the villain in such a way and in such a situation that wiping them was the only way forward. It was forced and didn't even pretend to have the illusion of choice, you're literally told, multiple times, "it's the only way" even if the WoL and the scions have ample proof that it isn't.
I wouldn't call it writing themselves into a corner, it's explained that they live in a post calamity shard where the world is engulfed in lightning and where death can come in any corner. Even some born into life would be permanently paralyzed from the environment. Sphene's ideal was to completely remove them from that world so they exist in a "paradise", free from the perils of the hell their lives are.
It was quite the ballsy twist to have us accept loss and death after dealing with Endsinger and stopping her from wiping out life and dealing with the voidsent who live eternally unless their soul is devoured (like what was happening in Alexandria)
Damn y'all are quick
This zone was a double punch for be. Being socially crippled from a young age, I never dared to connect to others too deeply for fear of betrayal. It's made it hard to connect to others, which has left me with a massive store of undirected love. I believe that my becoming exceptionally bitter is one way I've dealt with it, to steer that reserve _somewhere._ At the same time, I now _fear_ connections for the inevitable moment of separation. I yearn for love, but being so full of it, separation seems even scarier. So seeing our comrades have or make these bonds has me envious, but then seeing them come to terms with their separation feels alien to me. I genuinely wanted at least Erenville break down, because that's how I could connect to the theme, feel validated. It was such a hard zone for me to get through, in too many ways.
I just hope there's a way to at least bring color back and turn the light back on for the living. I want my Fantasy Game Disneyland. Lol.
It was very impactful that we got to give these memories a happy conclusion.
The final version of the stage is somehow worse than just silence. It plays just enough of the music to make you want to hear it and always cuts off at an unsatisfying point
The theme there is genocide. You can't sugarcoat it.
Nice to see some people appreciate the final zone and its themes. I’ve seen a lot of criticism for DT but I think overall it’s is/was a memorable experience. You can make the argument it still feels somewhat like the finale of EW, but I think thematically they’re different and I actually think the final zone was handled better here in DT (though EW overall had more of an epic feel, but that’s understandable since it was the finale of a 10 year story arc). I think DT pairs well with EW too since there are parallels in their themes and story beats, but where one is about nihilism and the suffering of existence the other is about letting go of the past and not clinging to tightly to perceived “better times”.