Are the Endless in Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail truly alive? Let’s explore identity, consciousness and more in the game’s latest expansion.
More on ‘Anatta’: https://www.lionsroar.com/buddhism/no-self-anatta/
AgentYoda’s post on FFXIVDiscussions: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/1dybi3h/analysis_of_philosophy_in_dawntrail_consciousness/
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The story has specifically told us on multiple occasions what "life" is. Primarily in Endwalker.
Hermes "Do you know the difference between a living thing and an arcane construct? The presence of a soul". The Scholarch: gave us a power(aether?)point presentation on the soul, the body (corporeal aether) and memories being separate things entirely. The endless are arcane entities. They posses neither soul nor corporeal aether. Technically by the rules as laid out thus far they would qualify as less than ghosts. Per the Encyclopedia Eorzea corporeal aether with the soul removed is a zombie. Soul with the corporeal aether removed is a ghost. They didn't have either, we just turned off a macabre holodeck.
The endless did not qualify. They were not alive. Cacihua specifically stated "we are not alive, just facsimiles created with the memories of the dead." Plus every endless that we spoke to was completely fine with us turning them off.
They were no different than an AI running a shadow of a long dead person. The entire zone was no different than a corpse puppet show. It was a (honestly, weak) attempt at mirroring Emet-Selch. One that would slaughter billions to bring back what was already gone and one that would slaughter billions not to let go of what was already gone.
It was unpleasant, to a degree, but they were burning living souls to keep what, as Cacihua said, was a "twisted mausoleum". 10 more minutes and she's throwing Themis into a furnace to keep a fake gardener trimming the hedges.
I thought I was okay in Living Memory. The whole soul economy was so unnatural in Alexandria to me from the start; of course I was opposed. Living Memory was unsustainable and obviously a danger to life. And I STILL hesitated when it was time to turn off the first terminal. I applaud the devs for their ability to get me to connect to things.
The follow-up quests with the endless letting go helped me feel a little better.
Great video once again!
I never noticed that similarity with Emet-Selch… that's actually really interesting to think about whether we are basically filling the role of ascians of this world, but i also think its not a 1:1. The endless seem to know they are endless, the one elezen in the water park mentioned how they have cycles of who can come out of the pillars what with the energy shortage (tho hes unaware of the shortage) and i think its mentioned somewhere else that i cant remember, but regardless the endless know their existence is different from humanity. Cahciua and Kriles parents understand whats going on and actively want things to end, where as Otis is simply unsure of his situation, and maybe vaguely understands what you plan to do? Its interesting to think about tho cause, like Emet-Selch, its easy to view the endless as not truly alive, since they are just facsimiles created from memories and not a soul, but then thats the AI question and THATS a whole can of worms in itself lol
The endless are not the same person there a very complicated ai . If we made some one to be just like anyone else that would be a endless as long as that person is truthful about how and who they are . Saying that i still am sad they hade to go if there was a way to not use aether to keep them active then i would have chosen that. Learning about what a person thought about others in there life is great closer but it would not be right to endlessly go see that person when we wanted more like we can only go there one time. Its kind of crazy but yea this is wrong because it needed others souls and aether to be alive for lack of a better word .
I don't even know how ppl were crying at the end. Only time I felt sadness was with Krile and her parents.
I did find the Endless to be alive enough in all the ways that matter, which is to say, being capable of growth and having the free will to even want to stop living forever. Cahciua is definitely the biggest example of this, having the agency to even aid the Scions to Living Memory with the goal of shutting it all down to begin with. Which… made that exact action uncomfortable for sure, only softened by the fact that the Endless themselves seem more or less content with passing on (with the few stragglers being those with unfinished business).
It does make what happened to Sphene that much more tragic. By being programmed with an unsustainable directive that she's seemingly aware she can't even go against, she's partially stripped of her free will and can only very subtly resist… which in turn wrecks what makes her truly 'living', in my eyes.
That being said, I think Sphene was definitely fighting back in her own way, mainly pointing us in the direction of Cahciua who absolutely CAN help shut it all down. Bun-mom was already an Endless for a while, I feel like with how intimate Sphene is with her subjects she HAS to be aware that she's had that goal for a while, she wouldn't have given us the start of that trail of crumbs to follow if she's absolutely against it. I like to think the Queen Eternal we fought was the directive made manifest, and when we erased THAT it was enough to free the 'kind' Sphene that wanted that outcome… well, before she poofed out of existence along with the rest of Meso Terminal.
Wait, is that Jeff Hardy in the video's thumbnail?
There is no dilemma – Living Memory was a very poorly optimized holodeck that was costing the lives of living people to sustain, and shutting it down was perfectly just.
Another masterpiece, thanks Stout
FF14 is over. So Sad. DT is a disgrace for an expansion. I quit playing after years of enjoying FF14 . DT is so cringe it made me want to take an electric bath.
Oohhhh shit!!! NEW STOUT DROP
Talks about ff14 lore, has ff11 ambuscade music in background
It's strange to say, but I would love to have seen Emet's reaction to the people of Alexandria. I can't imagine he would react positively to the idea of no long remembering those that have passed.
If James Day isn't cast as Steiner in the 9 remake they're missing out on a perfect performer
I recently watched a full playthrough of SOMA … and realized Dawntrail's main theme that late in the story almost matched… very eerie.
When playing this, I thought being endless was honestly pointless. Even the ancients chose to die. I honestly feel like being endless would become hell very quickly. Like imagine being stuck in Disney World for hundreds of years. Not to mention there was that civilization in the last Endwalker dungeon that achieved actual no strings attached immortality and prosperity and they also decided they wanted to quit existing.
The one thing I kind of thought was interesting / useful was forgetting about people who died. The reason for that is not to avoid sadness. Loss can help people grow. However, for some people, they never get over the loss of someone and it actually stunts their growth and ruins their life. Those people are honestly better off forgetting.
The amount of people lacking media literacy was astounding to me on twitter lmao
I won’t argue whether or not the folks in Living Memory are “alive.” But the amount of people saying they weren’t sentient was actually insane. Every point I made was countered with, essentially, “NO. The AI is just THAT good.”
Yeah. Good enough for one of them to operate a resistance effort on the outside from within lol yup. Totally not a single ounce of free will there
For me, at least, there's no dilemma. The Preservation did a few nasty things that put in danger to everyone, including themselves, from their own hubris. They want to preserve Sphene as the eternal ruler, but they also implied their own code so Sphene behaves in a matter that helps Alexandria and denies anyone (including its main source and the reflections). Someone pointed this out: What happens in Dawntrail? The sun rises above the Living Memory. So… the citizens could, in theory, have lived up there and avoid the surge and storm and get the necessary aether thanks to the storm that's happening below, but they were moved and no one knew why. That was until it was discovered it was for the Endless, but they went a step further and declared only other sources of aether is required such as killing and extracting the aether from there.
The people, fortunate or not, moved on and already passed, so the next to take the mantle are the following generations. But the Preservation wanted specifically only Alexandrians to thrive and no one else. That doesn't mean that there's no feeling to be had. For the characters CONNECTED to said memory (Krile, for example, and her parents), I feel bad about. They died and the actual person didn't see what has happened to the people they care deeply about. The people that died? I also feel bad about. But the Endless that represents the person and its memory? I… don't, cause they are already gone. I know that the Endless acts like the person before, but they have contained the memory of said person to behave in a matter. Sphene would be this, but again, from the Preservation's will, they instructed a code to behave in another matter, which is why I can't really judge Sphene as a whole. Part of it yes cause she was a very kind and thoughtful ruler, but the person that's there? Sadly, again, Preservation made her act differently.
It's a bit hard yeah, but basically, outside of the Endless, I do feel bad and I do understand the dilemma there. However, with the rest of the lives at stake and knowing what the Preservation had in mind on their mission? It needed to be shut down.
I thought the 2nd half was… a bit rushed simply because if you think about it, we shut down the Living Memory, but the whole resource thing IS STILL being used. There are a few inconsistencies, but if there's one thing to look forward to is how these get tackled through the raid and post MSQ. Here's hoping that's the case!
It's not an Elidibus video… But it's a Stout Helm video that I immediately watched when I saw it pop up… So… Clearly, beggars can't be choosers! Great content as always. So glad you're still posting.
Thank you for the very thoughtful video, it made me backpedal and think about things that I had initially overlooked! And thanks to that I greatly appreciate the writing that went into this narrative. It brought to mind Soma, a lot, with the idea of copied/cloned minds inhabiting artificial bodies. And it is a heavy choice we are forced into, narratively speaking. It's of my opinion that the whole situation is thus: Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Its either destroy the Living Memory, or let Alexandria pillage all of existence to fuel its Soul Economy.
Yes, we did perform genocide. Yes, I do think the Endless are alive. And yes, I think it was the right choice.
In the short-story "A Friendship of Record", Venat comes to the conclusion which is verified by her peer that Life is inevitable. As long as there is Aether, life can and will exist. The short-story makes does not imply or make a wishy-washy statement about this. It is fact in the metaphysical realm of FF14's world building. But even reaching this conclusion, Venat continues to journey to experience as much life as she can. Because as the story relates, life takes many forms. The Endless is another form of life, brought to existence via Electrope and various scientific processes. However, it was life that was bound by enforced processes.
As I've learned through the course of the game, ideas or even orders can be implanted upon someone's very soul. It is how Sharlayan kept the exodus secret, and it is how Primals persisted in their own calamitous lives. Instructions, or programing, are implanted to bring silence regarding very specific subjects or to enforce constant worship. The Alexandrians forced happiness on their citizens, Endless and mortal alive. The Endless
arealive, but are bound to the principles of the Living Memory: endless, happy nostalgia. A heaven on earth, a place free of painful strife. And all it costs is the souls of the living to fuel what amounts to a massive luxury meant to provide comfort.As for how I justify this genocide as being "right", while acknowledging it is in fact a horrible act, it is that Living Memory was a flawed idea in the first place. It was draining Alexiandria of its resources solely for comfort and entertainment. If the Endless were allowed true freedom, instead of being bound by the rules set by the programming of the place, then destroying all of them would have made me feel vile and awful. But as they were prisoners, unable to grow or experience more (as the case was with Endless Otis), one could reason it was a mercy killing. And for the sake of saying it, just because I think it was the "right" thing to do does not mean I was happy to do it.
Just goes to show how clinging to the Legacy of the past can really poison the prospects of the future.
Not even 60 seconds in and you claim "and even believe they are among the living". Sources? Who said this in game specifically. Where did you obtain this nugget of info because ALL of the Endless in Living Memory I talked to already knew they were dead. The game goes to painstaking lengths to avoid 'this is genocide' by hammering in they are the memories of the dead, uploaded, 'soulless' and contained in living memory via this AI program (which we turn off with the terminals); which is also how they are able to add to the memories (what Otis was doing putting on the play) and is how they are edited out as well. Random NPCs (the wedding ring guy for one) and Cahciua and even the lingering after ALL know they are dead, and never counted themselves among the living. Having studied the subject academically, I enjoy folks grasping at mind-body dualism (consciousness/mind/soul/memory existing apart from the physical) or the Ship of Theseus, BS premises or assumptions fault the logic the follows and of which its based on. Set good premises, apply and adhere to good reasoning, and you will ALWAYS reach good/accurate conclusions.
I believe we encountered entities similar to the Endless before. The memories of Ultima Thule, which are constructs made of Dynamis. We spend a lot of the Omicron tribe quests convincing them that the reborn memories of the lost species of the universe that their existence matters. And they do ultimately matter – they change and evolve and can decide on new things – including competing in a race with the hippo riders and the loporrits.
I am further questioned…
If the memories can be extracted, what happens to the memories of someone who dies naturally? When someone reincarnates, where does the memories of his past lives end up?
The logic is so complex, I'm worried that the writers either wrote themselves in a corner, or that those questions will never be touched again.
LOL Krile just withdrew weapon with no weapon.
Otis is probably the most important character in the entire second half of the game. His dual existence as both the robot, who I consider to actually be alive and the true Otis, and his Living Memory version proves that these people are in fact copies of and not the original versions of themselves. Also, because robot Otis didn't have a regulator and had his complete original soul, he most likely actually did return to the Aetherial Sea when he died.
We DO know which reflection it is; it's the Twelfth, which was destroyed in the Calamity of Levin (the second Umbral Calamity).
As for Living Memory…. it's fake. Everything is fake. You see it with the popcorn, you see it with the ice cream. You see it with the incredibly contrived meetings of unrequited lovers. Automatons trapped in a saccharine amusement park living an infinite loop of meaningless PBS specials designed by a sociopathic computer pretending it's following the guidance of a long dead tween girl who was, to everyone's misfortune, about as well-adjusted as Wuk Lamat. None of this would be so bad if they weren't invading and consuming all the life in other dimensions in order to maintain the theme park attractions. It had to end.
To quote Michael Crichton, "When Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists! "
Interesting discussion however we seem to be overlooking the fact that the game itself has created this false "dilemma" by contradicting itself all over the place. The Endless are the same type of being as found in Ultima Thule – dead beings who exist only as reconstituted memory. Neither are "alive". Both are reanimated either by Dynamis, or by Soul Aether. They have no "souls". But the game itself devotes entire questlines in Endwalker to the idea that these soulless beings are, in fact alive. We even build them a nice coffee shop where they can sit and talk about it.
It isn't our job to find philosophical depth or emotional nuance in a plot which is simply trying to have its cake and eat it too by reusing so many previous plotlines and ideas that they can't keep their own game lore straight. I can hear Emet laughing his head off now. Was it genocide? By the games own definition of this concept yes. It's irritating and they need to do better.
The biggest thing that bothered me about the conflict in Dawntrail's later half was that the whole "energy crisis" thing made no sense.
Here we have a city made of a special metal that transforms lightning aspected aether into usable energy, in a world that has experienced a calamity which filled the entire world with lightning aether, and they look at each other and say "You know what would be a great source of energy? HUMAN SOULS!"
Why don't they just use any of the limitless quantities of lightning they have outside the city?
when i learned the truth about Endless, my instant thought was "Oh, so Soma? Not really Soma though.. But Soma(?)"
I feel like sphene is an earlier look at the elidibus/zodiark story. From just before his memory was nuked. There's also something here about how after answers everyone seemed to forget the player characters. Maybe we weren't teleported into the future but reborn through phoenix. There's also something here about our own memories about life before the sundering. Are we like the endless otis? No memories of the hardest part of our (Azem) life, walking around helping children with their problems?
I feel that the endless are very advanced AI. The problem is that because of programming, they dont have complete free will. They can't even refuse or rebel against the system or die if they want to. Then there us the fact that they take up too much ether. I understand what they are going for, but I feel it was the right action to shut the system down cause in the end they are not the people who they were made to resemble but copies. Copies that if they knew the costs of them staying alive, I believe would be very angry about it.
Living Memory is a perversion of the concept of Heaven; it is a place that the Alexandrians find comfort that their loved ones will have peace after they pass.
One of the parts in MSQ that made me sick with was how we see Namikka reunited with Wuk Lamat immediately after it gets established the Cloud orchestrates beautiful memories for the Endless.
That being said, I felt like the Endless deserved to live on, and we should’ve been able to find another way to save them
Personally, I feel like the weight of the entire dilemma is undercut when you consider the possibility for alternatives exist. For example, I think all the memories should have been placed in a virtual reality world (like the lvl 100 dungeon). Then you wouldn’t need to give every endless a soul (or life energy, I think the issue got confused in translation) just to keep them going. But because Sphene refuses any attempt at being reasoned with, even going as far as running home and locking the doors (twice – once after the Zoraal Ja trial and again when we arrive in living memory), we’re forced into the position of turning off the endless to stop her.
With Emet-Selch, there was no alternatives. Either he completes his goal and unsunders the world or he allows the source/reflections to remain sundered. And he spent an entire expansion traveling and discussing this with the WoL/scions and considering if we should be allowed to stay sundered.
Here, Sphene avoids talking about it for as long as possible. And when she finally does mention it, she just says “what wouldn’t you do to save your people?” and runs away with her ears plugged. And it’s made even worse by the endless with the ring indirectly telling us that memories can be stored for hundreds of years while waiting for a soul/life energy. So running out of souls isn’t even as big a deal as she makes it out to be for the endless who can be kept waiting. She could’ve entered a low power/souls mode and taken time to think over or discuss any sort of alternative to solve the problem.
Which, come to think about it, also feels like a massive undercutting of Wuk’s journey to become somebody who can understand and work with others for the sake of peace. She spends all that time learning how to get along with others only to have her first official interaction with another country end in a double regicide because neither Zoraal Ja or Sphene could be reasoned with (and Wuk refused to try reasoning with Zoraal Ja).
I see the Endless kind of like what AI is in fiction. They're a way for both themselves and the living to say goodbye, to move on, and to find peace after death. But on the other, their existence requires too reasonably much to justify it, and Sphene knows it.
I do consider them alive, however, but not as people, but as machines. They are as alive to me as the Omicrons are.
But even then, it doesn't change the fact that their existence is like a rabbid animal needing to be put down. If allowed to live, they would threaten others, even if it's someone you love(like your own dog getting rabies as I said). Thus, IMO, it should be considered murder and it should weigh on the mind, yet is also a necessary sacrifice, as it should be(which by the way, is also the same with Sphene herself, she also believes that, as one who wishes the best for even the Endless like her). It's why a Hero and a Leader's burden are the heaviest, after all, and it's why the Meteia became the Endsinger in the first place.
The question of Endwalker was NOT "what is the meaning of life?". Is that all you got from EW? It was "how do you overcome the meaninglessness of life, how do you find hope when only presented with hopelessness?"
Cute vid but my God, read a philosophy book or two.
No, The Endless are not actually the same as living people. I’m so sick of having to explain this.
You can explore the ideas and concepts with as much of a philosophical approach as you want, but the fact still remains that The Endless are nothing more than AI-generated projections recreating the people’s behavior via the memories stolen from their corpses.
I will not tolerate anyone massively overthinking projections trying to call me cold-blooded, just because I recognize the fact that The Endless were dead centuries before we showed up to unplug them.
People are making this a moral dilemma but I'm struggling to have any compassion towards Endless. Are we killing an entire nation? No, we're shutting down servers that use real, living people as fuel to maintain this amusement park for some of the nearly departed. That's where the discussion ends. Sphene is also not a character, but just a rogue AI intent on destroying everything and everyone to get enough server capacity.
See also Soma.
David Chalmers' work is fascinating and I'm really glad you referred his work here!
I very much consider the Endless of Living Memory to be real people who deserved better than what they got. It's tragic that Alexandria's attempt to preserve them had the inevitable end result of completely destroying them. We were just forced to expedite the process, because the price of maintaining their continued existence was too high.
They may not have been living creatures by the regular definition, but they were hearing, thinking, feeling people. They were even able to manipulate dynamis.
Of course it's comparable to any given sci-fi that involves cloning and/or duplication of a person's consciousness. Transporter clones are valid, and people whose brains are digitized and run on a computer are too.
I feel a lot of people are overthinking the whole Endless thing, 'cause it's pretty obviously an allegory for AI, even down to the fact that it's ultimately unsustainable. (Real life AI requires an obscene amount of energy to function and risks harming the enviroment.) And frankly, even if the Endless are "alive", they can't exist without the complete and total destruction of a "human" soul. Their very nature is parasitical and eventually, all life in the universe would be snuffed out to keep them in existence… At which point, they'd eventually fade away anyway.
Like, it's not even a moral quandary at that point. The obliteration of every soul in across all the Shards, or unplugging the machine that keeps the Endless functioning. The former is pretty objectively the moral choice.
There's no dilemma: They're AI. If you are decieved by very good AI calculations, idk what to tell you
I’m sure someone has stated this, but the role that the group Preservation planned shouldn’t be ignored. Especially concerning the Princess as her memories are really just dressing to the program meant to keep the Endless running. Her memories of the pre-Endless life and her Endless life gave her the desire to protect/love her people, but her pre-Endless life was apparently the chain that kept her from cruelly harvesting aether/souls at will. Making the decisions of Preservation very interesting.
Here is the dilemma, if I out a sticker of someones face on a mannequin does that make it a person? The answer is no and its the same with the endless. Just because you take the memories of a person who lived and power them with aether doesnt make them a person. Same with the endless, these memories just being the "stickers" thrown on to a being
The ending of Dawntrail made me very disgruntled and uncomfortable.
As a lifelong Star Trek fan, I have been conditioned to recognize life in unusual circumstances, not the least of which is digital life. I believe the Endless fall into this category. They may be digital and follow programming based on their installed memories, but we see them forming new memories and having new experiences that they can process and react to. Most notably, many of the Endless are self aware enough to understand their condition on top of this.
As such, I greatly disliked that the act of destroying them came with such a cavalier attitude from most of our companions, and particularly from the WoL themself. It felt like a hollow justification for the writers to throw in little comments about how they didn't want to continue existing because of what they were… easing the blow, so to speak. I absolutely hated that we didn't even TRY to find another way to preserve their knowledge and experiences. Even if we had tried and ultimately failed, and had to delete them anyway, it would have felt more true to the WoL and the Scions, and would have made for some great drama and higher stakes to boot.
Instead, we got a completely scripted finale that never once felt like there was any agency or choice, or any real conflict outside of the final battle. Where was the climactic ending that the last four expansions gave us? It felt like more of a forced walk to the end than Endwalker did, and without the sadness and dread that Ultima Thule's sacrifices gave us.
The first part of Dawntrail was great. I loved all the character development. It should've been more drawn out and 7.0 should have ended with the coronation. They needed to have spent more time on this story.
The endless are fascinating in that they clearly have desire and act upon it so if life is measured by one's unique desire then they are living. However, living memory and Alexandria is such a brilliant way of showing the exact opposite of funerals. Death rites are more often than not for the living to carry on the memory and legacy of those who passed on. Alexandria goes the opposite way. Mourning cannot occur when people forget everything about those who died. The living can no longer go to the top level of the tower to talk to those memories. It isn't even a mausoleum at this point it just is and eventually it will be all there is.
I consider the Endless to be more like Human-sized primals. It's a very similar principle in how they are manifestations of an idea of something in this case memories that continued existence draws away Aether from their Aetherial sea at the cost of living people.
That is why the Emet Selch Dilemma doesn't really work to me. (Also Welcome back)
It is a fun thought experiment in the fictional world of FF.
But in reality we are chained to our physical bodies.
The Is no soul and all we are come from our brain.
You alter the brain you alter the mind , you alter who that person is.
That is where the omicrons become a more interesting topic.
Can the memory of the endless posess a mechanical body the way Spheen does?
Do they only need souls to manifest physically.?
As theyare technically stored in a data bank, id say the souls were not necessary.
Going through and interacting with the Endless before shutting down the servers was rough. Wuk Lamat’s adopted mother shared many similarities with my grandmother who was lost to Alzheimer’s. I had to stop and cry several times though the Unlost World part of the story.
I love Dawntrail so much because I love Endwalker so much. A story with many messages but one that sticks with me is about how to find purpose and a reason to live, then leading into a story about how to find purpose in the life you have, and where to find joy