About the death of Dream Zanarkand...

[-Demos-]

Hello fellow Final Fantasy fans, I was just replaying Final Fantasy X, and I just realize something quite dark, when the party killed Yu Yevon, all the people that lived into the "Dream Zanarkand" were also destroyed, so the heroes indirectly caused a small genocide.

I know these people are not supposed to be "real" as they are only "Dreams of the Fayth" but they are sentient, they live their lives, fall in love, marry each other and have children together, they created genuine bonds of love with their friends and families, so how is it ok to let them all die, just because they are not native from the "real" Spira.

Now, I reckon SIN needed to be deal with, but I find it a little strange that the heroes don't even address the fact, that they are willing to wipe out an entire city full of feeling, thinking beings in order to destroy the monster.

This is especially bad with Tidus, as he has literally lived his whole life in “Dream Zanarkand" jet he does not express a single worry about potentially killing all the people he knew from his home city, I mean, he must had at least some friends in his teammates from the Zanarkand Abes.

Also all these people are innocent, they didn't asked for SIN's "Protection", they don't even know that SIN exist, and they don't know that they are part of a "Dream" so they could not even decide to voluntary accept their incoming demise, the way Tidus did.

I bet there were a few minutes of absolute widespread confusion and terror in the "Dream Zanarkand" when everything and everyone started to disintegrate into pyreflies without anybody understanding how or why.

¿So what are your thought into this matter? Please tell me in the comments, and thank for reading.

[Jessweeee♪]

yeah I thought that was an underdeveloped point
would have liked to have seen more Zanarkand lore

[Karifean]

I don't think the lives of people living in luxury are worth the suffering of everybody on Spira. Is this in unfair to the people of Dream Zanarkand? No way in hell; it's unfair to the people of Spira. Why should they have to suffer and live in constant fear of death just for the sake of people living much better lives than them? Tidus and Jecht both came to the same conclusion on that.

Really this game has only become more topical and relevant over the years.

[-Demos-]

I don't think the lives of people living in luxury are worth the suffering of everybody on Spira. Is this in unfair to the people of Dream Zanarkand? No way in hell; it's unfair to the people of Spira. Why should they have to suffer and live in constant fear of death just for the sake of people living much better lives than them? Tidus and Jecht both came to the same conclusion on that.

Really this game has only become more topical and relevant over the years.

There is also another factor to consider, the Fayth are tired of dreaming and want the dream to end, even if SIN was not an issue, it stills presents a difficult moral dilemma, ¿does the desire of the immortal Fayth to rest supersedes the desire of all the people they had created to continue living?

A way or another there must be something slightly "wrong" with the people of Dream Zanarkand, cause any other way it would have been impossible for them to spend a thousand years living into the same city without anybody realizing that is impossible to leave said city, also unless there is some sort of extremely effective birth control policy, the population would have increased overtime, requiring the city to expand, and... ¿is that even possible? ¿Could Yu Yevon dream a bigger Zanarkand?

That is why in my first play trough, I assumed the people of Dream Zanarkand were just "memories" of the people that used to live in the real Zanarkand at the moment it was destroyed, so the whole "Dream Zanarkand" was just the equivalent of a gigantic "video sphere" that kept replaying the last few years of the real Zanarkand over and over again, that would have explained why Tidus looks and fights exactly like Shuyin, as Tidus was the "memory" of Shuyin, but the game implies time passes at the same rate in Spira and the Dream Zanarkand, so that would mean Tidus is at least ten generations separate from Shuyin, so... neither interpretation actually makes much sense.

Anyway the theme of "Dream Zanarkand" and how it "works", is one that definitely deserves a deeper exploration into the lore of the game.

[Jessweeee♪]

I think it warranted like, a thought. Even if the conclusion is the same.

[Del Murder]

This question goes all the way to the old philosophical 'what is sentience?' Seems like the dream Zanarkandians were sentient, Tidus and Jecht certainly were once they made it to the real world. I never thought about whether that Zanarkand was on a loop, I always assumed they lived and died like normal humans. Though in that case, how are babies in that world created? I agree this should have had at least some attention in the game though the game already dealt with a lot of issues.

[-Demos-]

The more you think about it the more bizarre it becomes, if "Dream Zanarkand" was a physical place, then the giant Fayth in Mount Gagazet were dreaming not only the people, but also all the buildings, all the food that people eat, (Tidus seem familiar with the concepts of hunger and eating), all the clothes the people wear, and all the machines that keep the city working, from the pumps used to fill the water sphere in the blitzball stadium, to the toilets in each individual house, Yu Yevon should have been truly a genius in order to create a summoning that literally rewrote a large chunk of reality to such an amazing level of detail, an entire city with living, thinking inhabitants all made of concentrated pyreflies.

The question of sentience is indeed a very difficult one in the case of "Dream Zanarkand", the way I see it, it will be the equivalent of a modern scientist creating a really detailed simulation of a modern city using an very powerful super computer, if each of the simulated citizens were programed with an advance Artificial Intelligence that allowed them to reckon themselves as individuals, and take decisions inside that affect their existences within the confine of their simulated environment, ¿would these simulated citizens be considered "sentient"? ¿will it be moral for the scientist to turn off the supercomputer and delete all the simulated citizens? ¿would these simulated citizens have any sort of rights under the law?, it's truly a fascinating conundrum.

[BG-57]

The more you think about it the more bizarre it becomes, if "Dream Zanarkand" was a physical place, then the giant Fayth in Mount Gagazet were dreaming not only the people, but also all the buildings, all the food that people eat, (Tidus seem familiar with the concepts of hunger and eating), all the clothes the people wear, and all the machines that keep the city working, from the pumps used to fill the water sphere in the blitzball stadium, to the toilets in each individual house, Yu Yevon should have been truly a genius in order to create a summoning that literally rewrote a large chunk of reality to such an amazing level of detail, an entire city with living, thinking inhabitants all made of concentrated pyreflies.

The question of sentience is indeed a very difficult one in the case of "Dream Zanarkand", the way I see it, it will be the equivalent of a modern scientist creating a really detailed simulation of a modern city using an very powerful super computer, if each of the simulated citizens were programed with an advance Artificial Intelligence that allowed them to reckon themselves as individuals, and take decisions inside that affect their existences within the confine of their simulated environment, ¿would these simulated citizens be considered "sentient"? ¿will it be moral for the scientist to turn off the supercomputer and delete all the simulated citizens? ¿would these simulated citizens have any sort of rights under the law?, it's truly a fascinating conundrum.

The FFX Ultimania clearly shows DZ was a separate physical location in the FFX world, not where the ruins of Zanarkand are located. Tidus naturally assumes he must have traveled in time since he assumes both were in the same location, but the game doesn't do a good enough job clarifying that he didn't.

Star Trek loves exploring simulated world taking on a life of their own and the moral issues involving the rights of self-aware simulants. Ship in a Bottle in TNG is a great example. The Doctor in Voyager is a main character that explores these issue.