I was honestly shocked when I saw how many players actually thought the WoL was committing some kinda genocide in Living Memory. So I’ve decided that before the MSQ does anything else with the Endless I’d make this video to set the record straight. Of course the writers may very well retcon this video into oblivion later but so far the lore has been quite clear on the different between living and non-living things. So join me as we talk about that!
Follow me at: https://twitter.com/ScribeSynodic
Channel Art by Catti: https://ko-fi.com/catticatgame21234
Join the Channel’s Discord: https://discord.gg/YKBu4sQBEk
Support the Channel on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/synodicscribe?fan_landing=true
Disclaimer: The MMORPG known as FinalFantasy XIV Online as well as all its related publications and merchandise are owned by Square Enix. I have no claims to it.
Primary Sources:
Video Games-
FinalFantasy XIV Online
Publications-
Encyclopedia Eorzea Volume I
Encyclopedia Eorzea Volume II
Encyclopedia Eorzea Volume III
Alternative Sources:
FinalFantasyXIV, The Lodestone/Sidestory
FFXIV, Letter from the Producer
Published FFXIV Brand Art Books
#ffxiv #lore #dawntrail
source
I get the assessment you’re putting forth, but I also feel like you’re discrediting how massive of an achievement it was for living Memory to exist at all. My issue with the area wasn’t that the WoL and company were effectively committing genocide, the exact thing they were stoping the Asians from doing, it was that nothing else was even considered. These things had to be shut down. Even when there were examples we could’ve drawn on to try and save them. It still bugs me that we had a few soul cells left over from our fight with Zoraal Ja that were just left unused. If the Living memories were just ink without parchment, why not give them that parchment in the form of an unused soul cell? After that, they could be transplanted into robots like Otis was. Better that than to be consumed by Alexandria.
@10:17 say that to tataru
I really wanna know why nobody has decided to explore living memory: if we canonically still have access to the place, why aren't we dealing with "where is this?" Or is it just a bubble with nothing beyond what we can see?😊
I remember in Fallout 3 there was a group of survivors locked in a vault they dumped their consciousness into a simulation unknowingly, they could live for as long as the vault had power likely forever; the ideal situation for Queen Sphene, and the people were happy but could never grow a man that was likely 90 years old could never grow up to be a man he could never live anormal life he was a child for 80 years like Miquella stuck in childhood. The one woman that understood what was going on that it was a simulation… she was begging me to let her die.
Living memory felt a lot like that to me. just they were continuing a war that had already destroyed the star; taking resources from other people it started with electrope and it graduated into souls and after souls it would have been something else or it would have just ended when there were no more resources to consume if there is no production consuming becomes unsustainable, but if there is just production and no consuming that is also unsustainable.
I feel like the last zone was a waste of time if we knew that the memories were just memories we shouldn't have wasted any time dealing with them, but because we did waste time more value should have been placed on them, it comes back to the main flaw with XIV's writing; filler Titan is going to break the land but the WOL is fetching cheese for a party…
People have different opinions about what makes something consious, and very popular functionalist theories of consciousness don't allow for beings that act exactly like a conscious being that arent.The game saying souls are what makes you alive in this setting is going to clash with that , and its pretty valid to interpret it as people in universe being wrong about philosophy.
Answering to philosophical questions with in game lore that's supposed to override the answers they might have on our wold metaphysically not just in terms of the physics of how the fictional world and its people works is just not satisfying.
And yes is seems likely that for other reasons deleting them was the best option but like "justified genocide" is pretty yikes and a very different situation from turning off things that only seem like people but aren't and so you should argue whether turning off the terminals was the best choice and whether it was killing people separately.
If you think beings without souls can be conscious and have feelings but aren't "alive" and that means its ok to delete them, that's even worse cause then you are trying to have the game provide answers to morality questions in a way that a lot of people will disagree on.
And I feel like a lot of the reason this explantion feels compelling is the vibes and tropes of simulated people and ghosts the endless have and the ones we talk to wanting us to kill them.
If the game had made a race of biological people who didn't have souls for some reason and the wol killed all of them while they begged them not to I feel like you woud be much less comfortable saying that that's all meaningless because they have not souls and therefore they are not truly "alive" whatever that means. The obvious plot that would be written there instead would be that those people do matter anyway.
Saying that Alpha didn't matter or didn't have feelings or something before he had a soul is also not going to be compelling to most players.
"The exception that proves the rule" was always a nonsensical saying, if something has a exception is not the true rule.
At minimun alpha getting a soul and things that can act like people for years leading a resistance movement not having one kind of works on cross purposes narratively.
Also do the omicron even have souls? seems like it kind of goes against the talk graha gives and the themes of that section of endwalker if they don't and you decide that means they are not real.
Like I'm not saying your interpretation is not valid, I'm mostly complaining on the implication that the lore settles this question and there's no reason for people to reasonably disagree.
The "Fake" Golden city.
Man i hate how we get to this expansion to just witness that this mythical place since ARR was just a purgatory made by a sentimental AI.
I have a lot of conflicted feelings about DT, but Living Memory was an aspect I hated. I mean, I hated it in the story, but the concept and how they explored it was very interesting.
Because Living Memory was a place Sphene considered a heaven, and to the Endless it was more an uncaring hell. After all, they themselves didn’t mind fading away, and with the exception of Sphene and Cachiua, were trapped within LM with all the illusions of life slowly fading away like an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese.
I am honestly quite surprised that the teachings of the Yok Huy were not mentioned here in some capacity. They were the first in Dawntrail to talk about and center on memories as a focal point in terms of life and death and it never did leave my mind especially during the events of Living Memory. I never saw it as 'no one really cared about deleting thousands of memories' as much as remembering that memories are for the living, to keep those that have passed alive still within the loved ones that were left behind.
Memories may fade by they are not without importance, and as someone who has lost many more than I wished to in my lifetime, this has to be one the first times I can not fully agree with the approach of this lecture. It all feels so black and white when the lesson I got from this expansion is more shaded than it may appear. I understand the core concept of souls and memory and the entire dilemma posed by Living Memory did call for putting their memories to rest. The aether may fade but as was stated, it needed to leave an impression in order to write down the memory on the parchment of one's soul. And impressions are not so easily removed.
So every time I go to Living Memory, I will give time to pause and remember. It's my duty as a living being to do at least that much.
2:07 – Confirmation that Lalas don't have souls.
I really wish I could come back to the game once the writing get better, living memory was a cool concept but it feel underwhelming at the end
You can tell the developer team is being reduced making them work on side projects such at the cellphone edition of the game and other projects still on the oven
I just a reason to come back
Another thing about Living Memory is it's stuck in stasis. The living memories really aren't doing anything there. They don't really have the power to do anything. And if they tried to do anything, they'd probably fade away from the effort. So it's merely a masquerade of living. Little events to keep them occupied and distracted from thinking about their existence. All of them know they died. Some of them suspect they're not the same person as when they lived. And a small handful know they're not the same person as when they lived.
Even worse is the system was failing over the long term. The amount of energy needed to keep just that one zone in existence was unfathomable. And it once used to be larger with more memories allowed to co-exist, but many had to be put into sleep mode just to allow for what we saw. But also some memories weren't returning. And this would have grown worse and worse over time. And no matter how much the Eternal Queen tried to stop it, it would probably just accelerate its demise. But it would have done untold amount of damage and destruction as it tried to stop the whole system from unravelling.
I firmly believe Living Memory should stay off. People asking for it to be turned back on are missing the point.
Just go to NG+ if you want your Screenshots, folks.
I feel like the the soul stone is a pretty apt comparison. The servers of electrope are equivelent but to a much larger and power hungry degree. Like the wielder of a soul stone would probably get pretty upset about losing one too, but at the end of the day it's not because the small fragments of memory from battle were alive, it was just a useful impression to have.
SPOIL ME FOOL
I love this channel!
Sphene is basically Meteion, but slightly more successful in the killing of existence.
Erasure from Existence by Memorial Soul Cannibalism, think we can guess what the ice Cream in Living Memory was actually made of.
Until future patches adds or retcons it's own story, because Dawntrail have this weird habit of forgiving an antagonist for absolutely horrible actions because "they were just having a bad day you know, just SMILE while thousands of souls are eradicated!"
Thanks for the amazing video! Again!
First of all, great video Mr Scribe. Always a pleasure sir.
I had zero regrets or feelings for terminating these false things. They are shadows of what the actual person used to be, not the person themselves. The actual person is dead.
Also, to keep the Endless and Living Memory running costs many souls to be consumed as fuel and destroyed. They'll never get to reincarnate into new life, actual real life that hears, feels and thinks. So then knowing this, why do the "people" that are already dead deserve to "live" at the expense of actual living breathing people and animals? There is just no way that this is even a question that deserves thinking about for more than 2 seconds for me. They made it very simple to me.
The questing in this zone tried to make me connect emotionally to the endless, but i just did not care for one single moment knowing the cost of all of this. We go into the zone with a timer to switch things off or real people will likely die. Fake Sphene is killing living people and trying to wage war on the source to keep Living Meme-ery powered on. However, before we shut it down, lets put on a play for the AI children that are actually already dead. I just can't fathom how you could feel anything for these shadows knowing that they're not real. They had their chance at life like everyone else. It isn't fair or right to prolong a synthetic fake version of life at the expense of other peoples lives. It really is just stupid to me. It is insulting how they make a mockery of life and death with the neuralink brain chip as well. The Yok Huy have the right of it by remembering the fallen, not erasing them from existence like they don't even matter. Imagine someone you love died and you'll never see them again, and then they are erased from your memory. It's insulting. 2/10
Honestly the dislike and the feeling people have that we committed genocide on the Endless is completely the writers fault. There was barely any effort in distinguishing a living person from an Endless outside of the part where we try eating the food. The Endless hear, feel, and think like any normal person. If you put an Endless right next to a living being, no one would be able to tell the difference. In fact, the Endless are so real, that they completely contradict the values of Alexandria and Living Memory. Those of Living Memory and Alexandria only keep cherished memories, while extremely negative memories are taken from them, however we see Otis have a PTSD episode, which should literally be impossible. How does Living Memory know how to process PTSD? Why does living memory even have access to memories that it was built NOT to use? We see this again with Namika. We're told that depending on the form that an Endless takes, there's a high possibility that they won't be able to remember the memories after their chosen age group. Yet Namika contradicts this by being able to pull more memories from Living Memory somehow just at the mere sight of seeing Wuk Lamat. Just like that, the possibility of the people of Living Memory having their memories manipulated and lacking free will goes right out the window. They have free will, they completely contradict their 'coding'. They're able to make completely new memories, and experience all forms of emotion. So it boggled my mind that the WoL and the Scions didn't explain the situation to the people at all. Instead we just, well, kill them and we're supposed to be okay with it without any real discussion cause the plot said so. The writers have written completely real people, with the only suggestion otherwise being that the game literally verbally tells you that they aren't real and need to go and you're supposed to throw your hands in the air and just say "OK!"
Sphene and the people of Alexandria consider the Endless alive. The people of Alexandria believe that those they have forgotten are alive, waiting for them in "The Cloud." While I still believe that shutting down Living Memory would have been the end goal regardless, the way it's written is dumb and comes across as heartless and equally pointless. Shutting down the terminals does nothing, and doesn't even turn out to be the reason why we can even encounter Sphene in the first place. Sphene doesn't acknowledge that we've killed the Endless at all during the final dungeon or battle. "Learning" about the people and giving them one last hurrah feels pointless because only five people have witnessed any of this and will walk out with any memory of what happened in Living Memory. None of the Endless and absolutely zero of the Alexandrians have a say. We "Learn" about one or two NPCs per area, then turn off the terminal containing dozens of the projected ones that we never even interacted with, and hundreds of thousands of those who were never projected in the first place.
At the end of the day, the people of Living Memory and how to deal with it is an extremely complex issue, one that didn't get the amount of time needed that the Scions prior to Dawntrial would have 100% approached completely differently. It's bad writing.
As Rikku from 10 perfectly described. "Memories are nice, but that's all they are."
5:40 yknow I've always found a parallel between Hermes and ShB Emet, but I didn't know they were truly so tied together! I even had a theory they'd reveal that the Twelve was the Convocation in Myths of the Realm and really hammer home the parallels with NaldThal
Thank goodness you covered this. This subject frustrated me so much in DT's MSQ and having a reputable and clear worded lore content creator explain what was going on in DT and it's weirdness is great to both reference to and give to other confused players. Thank you Synodic.
Even if Living Memory could be maintained indefinitely without the sacrifice of souls, it's simply a dead end to existence. Those memories can't have children, strive towards anything, grow, change, experience new things. It's complete stagnation. The Endless are more akin to Sin Eaters than actual living beings. They are Vauthry, living in decadence and surviving off the aether of others. And on a long enough timeline would lead to the end of life on Etheirys and its reflections.
Considering the conversation we had with G'raha in Labyrinthos regarding souls maintaining certain traits, this could be more defining of what makes a living being. A newborn is still alive even if it doesn't have any memories. Memories are just something that the soul acquires over time. So strictly speaking the memory isn't a person it's a record of their experiences.
It could also be argued that what makes an individual isn't either/or, but rather both. Instead of a nature vs. nurture it's nature + nurture. A soul provides base stats and the experiences provide choices. Which are informed by predilections of the soul and memories of past experiences, making the individual. And you cease to be if you are without both.
11:00 sorry for the second comment, bit I felt like this was a separate question
What would happen if in theory we gave a carbuncle a blank soul crystal?
A few other things of note, the relic weapons are made out of either souls, memories, or creating a weapon that bonds with the WOL's soul.
The ARR relic weapon is a weapon that takes the souls of those it slays and then uses there memories and experience to adapt to what the WOL needs. The WOL has been taking the soul of Garleans and beast tirbes to make this weapon. The weapon itself is bound to the WOL soul and so only the WOL soul unlocks this power.
The Heavensward relic is the weapon now evolving from those souls and experience in one of its own, it asks for the WOL to go into its own memories of battle and so it can learn and adapt itself more as its own identity so the WOL no longer has too. It more or less is a soul taking weapon that learns and can communicate to the WOL.
The Shadowbringers Relic weapon is a weapon made of memories from warfields in Bozja. The collective memories of trauma from war and the raw emotions are used in the construction of the weapon. By all accounts it is using the same powersource blasphemy use.
Some fun things for those who do not read with a fine tooth comb the lore of relic weapons or ever made one. The method Solution 9 is using is not new to the WOL only the fact they have a tech version of it not magical.
I'm surprised by a lot of the comments on this video, because I had a completely different read on Dawntrail and Living Memory.
In my opinion, each expansion has its own set of themes. Heavensward asks the player to take a hard look at prejudice, injustice, and cycles of violence. Stormblood considers oppression and how one might create a better world from ashes. Shadowbringers deals with the deep grief of those left behind, and how this grief can lead to healing as easily as madness. Endwalker challenges the player to look fear and suffering and death in the face, and still choose hope and life—to recognize that meaning is something we choose.
Dawntrail, however… Dawntrail is legacy and letting go. So many of the characters are concerned with the impact of those who went before, and their continuity. It breaks Gulool Ja, who is terrified of expectations, as well as Sphene, who can't let go of her people. Erenville, Krile, and Wuk Lamat, on the other hand… all three of them meet a precious relative in Living Memory, share a moment… then let those 'living' memories go.
That's what I found so moving and difficult about the final zone. I would give anything to speak with my grandmother again. To hug my grandfather. To tell them everything I didn't say in life, when I had the chance. Moving on from loss can feel impossible.
I don't see how the nature of the beings in Living Memory as memories makes any difference at all. Look at how characters have reacted during the patch. The presence of these artificial memories allow them to push back grief. To ignore it, and pretend there never was a loss at all. It's a cheat, and I think the party knows that. Shutting down the AI, to me, is not a meaningless press of a button because of what it represents—acceptance that the people we loved and cared for are gone and that, although it hurts, we will walk on.
In a way, it makes the act (for the player) all the more meaningful. The game is asking you to choose life, over and over, rather than be swallowed in nostalgia and death.
Pretty sure they upload the psyche of the person as well, actually making them 'living'. If it was 'just memories' I agree. But its a lot more then that. As someone pointed out, shutting down living memory wasn't what go to me. It was sad, yes but I was more freaked out by the use of souls in solution 9. And was more upset we didn't end that.
The problem is that this concept just… doesn't work.
If you believe the Endless are truly alive, then turning them off is totally unconscionable and goes against so much of what we've learned about other quasi-living creatures. If you believe they're alive, you are committing genocide by erasing them, and we are no longer a hero but a terrible villain.
If you don't believe the Endless are truly alive, then there's literally no reason not to turn them off, and all the time we spend learning about them and getting to know them is completely pointless.
I personally fell into the latter category, causing the entire final zone of Dawntrail to feel like a chore with zero stakes. I literally didn't care about turning off Alexandria's AI chatbots of dead people and all the melodrama around doing so completely fell flat.
The game could have addressed the morally grey elements of this if it bothered to explore those elements. But the writing in Dawntrail is nowhere near that smart.
It just came to my attention that … if they lose their souls from the alexandrian soul extraction machines, what becomes of their other shard selves? Are they perma-nerfed or do they regain that portion of their own aether but in a bleached out, factory-reset format? Plot hole?
1 thing i don't get is why in the 24man raid the boss's seem to get electrop bodies but in living memory they are more like projections
I need a big bottle of ink so I can forget how Krile got snubbed during DT
I think for me my only real frustration with living memory was just how lackadaisically we went about it. There was no sense of urgency from either the us nor the Sphene. I understand that what I'm about to say may be retreading old ground but this zone really needed us (IMO) to be either chased through or under some sort of timer with obstacles in our path. Again, I'm aware that suggestion probably just sounds like Amaurot and Ultima Thule again but that just raises the stakes. For me this section felt ridiculously anticlimactic.
Algorithm
I’m surprised you didn’t bring up [DRK job quest spoilers] Myste, as weaving lingering memory into a false person was kinda their whole thing, and the lessons we learned from it.
Thats the reason i didnt care for what was going on with living memory,i was happy for krile and i tought erenvilles goodbye to his mom was underwelming…but in the end,the endless are just memory,they are the equivalent o ai,i felt more about amaurot because it was a monument to emet selchs solitude,i didnt care about ai sphene,honestly i wanted her to be skynet and not have a redemption moment in the end
Reading some of the comments here just shows how some people were only scratching the surface of the DT MSQ. No wonder some of them claimed it was good. You gotta dig a little deeper to see what's lacking, guys.
what about Tataru's Carbuncle? As far as we know, it's still running free somewhere
It wasn't killing it was burning the library of Alexandria if said libray was going to eat the world just to protect a few 1000 books. Yes I know my word play.
Lot of folks seem more upset that we "wasted time" talking to pointless memories and yet they likely adored the shadow of our dear friend from Shadowbringers. That Hythlodaus copy might not be a danger to the first but he could be if we let it last to long.
Plus we came to this game for stories grand and small.
the carbuncle segment reminds me of tataru's carbuncle, and how it seems to have a personality at the very least. that, and that she's such a masterclass weaver, she apparently wove that much of a mind-numbingly efficient spell that the dang this is still roaming the lands of Eorzea to this day
Thank you for publishing a clear & succinct explanation as to why we're not "exactly like Emet-Selch" for shutting down Living Memory.
Hopefully that argument can die down like the Zodiark Trancers from Shadowbringers who were ready to rejoin Etheirys because Emet missed his way cooler friends
This is honestly a fairly disingenuous take on the matter. You know damn well that the memories are the identities of the people, are the people, and that is why they are saved and separated from the souls. In this world where souls are tangible, where it was established that you can physically waltz into the afterlife and strike down souls with your mortal blades, it is the intangible things like memories that matter the most.
It's evident that they are alive, as they remember their entire lives and have wills that they enact. Wills that even cause some of them to linger on past the shutting down of the server, until that last will was placated.
Remember, remember they once lived.
The memory aether kept in the denizens of Living Memory is a denial of death. It is living beings taking control of their fate to survive no matter what comes. In a city that was the only thing that survived from its shard, isolated from a natural aetherial sea cycle entirely.
It is tragic and bad, because of what its cost is. It is something that is renewable but is not renewable at the rate at which Alexandria consumes it.
But also, your definition of life in FFXIV's universe is flat out WRONG. You failed to account for the living beings composed of Dynamis, who as far as we know, have no souls. Are all of the denizens of Ultima Thule as it stands now not living, because they are recreated from Dynamis? Meteion sure experienced a whole lot of pain, for something you consider to not be alive. And you know what the Dynamis recreated them from? MEMORY.
The WoL is simply the morale good, because the hard calculus is that Alexandria's way of lives costs the lives of others. That's it. You don't need to try and justify the atrocity being committed in the name of that to act like they are implacably heroic in this matter. But whatever keeps you feeling good about it, I suppose.