Quote Originally Posted by -Demos- View Post
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.