Azar is mentally impaired? (SPOILERS)

[Three-Factor Authentication]

Spoilers, as stated in the title.

It's stated in the game that the ice age is coming to an end during the final events of the game - it is also revealed that the cyro pods need the low temperatures of the ice age in order to function and continue running the VR.

I really wanted to sympathize with Azar, but the above fact makes his entire behavior (both his clone and program master) go way past selfish or even stupid, to simply incoherent. If the temperatures are rising enough outside to allow for human habitation, then the ARK project would no longer be able to function in realspace. So when you are fighting that last battle against the program master, it would follow that the VR universe has only hours left before it shuts down, of course annihilating all within.

But maybe there's an overlap in "warm enough for humans to survive" and "cold enough for the ARK to work". After all, they were still alive when they got in the pods in reality. That leaves us with a few possible scenarios:
1. Azar creates his new world, it continues on for as long as the ARK program can continue to function in real life before mechanic failure or rising temperature shuts it down. As I said above, it seemed implied that meant a few hours, but maybe it could last a couple years.
2. The ARK program unloads its real-life occupants and shuts down as planned. Note this means anyone who drank the magic potion would still take their memory of the true intent of the ARK project (eventual deletion of the avatars) into the real world with them.
3. As a variation of the above, the real-world former ARK inhabitants take pity on their digital clones after they awaken, and reinstall the ARK simulation in Antarctica or something after they rebuild civilization. I can't think of why a people so advanced would not be able to pause or reboot such a simulation.

So digital-Azar's best bet for survival in the long term (as well as short-term, by the end of the game) is to have everyone "wake up". He's supposed to be a genius computer programmer, right? Did he not think about this?

I have a few other, smaller complaints about the writing in other places, but I think the above does the greatest harm to the quality of the story, because it makes the motivation for the main mover of the plot completely nonsensical.

[Ohko]

He covers this during the story fight cutscene vs program master. He is pissed that humanity made the digital versions to just keep things running during the ice age and be sacrificed once it was time to come out of cryosleep. So he would rather have humanity end as a last act of defiance rather that fulfill his role as a sacrifice. He knows that the arc project can't last forever.

It would be like if I told you that you were actually a clone who exists to donate his organs to the real you. You will die in 1 year whether you donate them or not, and real you can't live without the organs and needs them soon. Would you donate your organs and die or have 1 last epic year and let real you die?

I think it was mentioned that the system was set up so that the digital copies would be deleted upon revival in the real world. This must have been set up in such a way that even the program master couldn't get around it.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by Ohko:

He covers this during the story fight cutscene vs program master. He is pissed that humanity made the digital versions to just keep things running during the ice age and be sacrificed once it was time to come out of cryosleep. So he would rather have humanity end as a last act of defiance rather that fulfill his role as a sacrifice. He knows that the arc project can't last forever.

It would be like if I told you that you were actually a clone who exists to donate his organs to the real you. You will die in 1 year whether you donate them or not, and real you can't live without the organs and needs them soon. Would you donate your organs and die or have 1 last epic year and let real you die?

I think it was mentioned that the system was set up so that the digital copies would be deleted upon revival in the real world. This must have been set up in such a way that even the program master couldn't get around it.

And it was set up that way because it turns out that anyone less single-mindedly focused on the survival of humanity at all costs than Clyne (which is to say, everyone who is not Clyne) freaks out upon being split into two people and only one of them being allowed to live. Selene is essentially grandfathered into the system from before this was established.

[thefollowingcharacters]

The key to realize is that the digital world and the people inside are not dependent on one another. Meaning as long as the electricity keeps running, the digital avatars survive. So sure, humanity would die soon, but the ark project would likely function for hundreds of years longer. Yes, eventually it will die out, but that's hundreds of years longer living for the people in the digital world.

[waku waku]

He made a clone of himself to live in his stead then was surprised to see that his clone was just as upset about not being "real" as him, and his answer was to torture his clone into submission, so yeah. I'm not sure what exactly did he expect to change in a looping world. Especially since the things that could change, did, but it wasn't enough for him.

[SufferNot]

Clyne lied to him, so he thinks he's completely justified in letting 8 billion other unrelated people (who are entered cyro sleep because they truested and relied on Azar and his the company he works for) die because as a clone he only got to exist for 500 years instead of the 80 years he'd have gotten in a normal life.

He's being incredibly self centered and selfish, but that's kind of the point. He and Clyne are foils of each other. One is only capable of seeing the big picture and cannot even comprehend the small details, and the other is so detail oriented that he's incapable of seeing the forest for the trees. Both had skill sets absolutely necessary for surviving the crisis, but their own hilarious flaws made the ensuing virtual reality debacle so credible. Had either of them been a normal functioning adult with some common sense, this whole event would have been easily navigated and avoided.

[Sunwave]

Basically, Azar is an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for taking out his grief / hatred for Clyne on everyone else who is unrelated/ignorant, making a plan that will guarantee everyone's destruction, and then hypocritically tells Lucy "you don't understand anything" without actually explaining the reason. It frustrates me to no end as well, that he never gives the real reason for his actions until he's literally disappearing. Everything before that is either lies, or half-truths because he doesn't want to face the truth himself. "making this world endless" is just an excuse.

However, it's strange that nobody in-story questions him about how long the hardware would last. If you could undermine his reasoning, why not at least try?

Also, Clyne was a moron for setting it so that the avatars automatically got deleted. There was no reason to, ESPECIALLY from the standpoint of having no morals except "humanity must survive". In fact, if he had not created that setting, it would have been more in-character, I believe, because he would have had left open more possible paths to the successful end of project. (I mean, "we won't shut down the avatars" would have come a long way for Azar and like-minded people").

[goombasolini]

The motivation of Azar is very simple - to spite his creators into making him into basically sentient tool whose end goal is to die for survival of somebody he doesnt care about at all. Mutually Assured Digital Destruction.

Clyne on the other hand went with 200% pragmatism on saving every human, so if plan includes killing sentient digital beings - he will do it. So he did. The risk is too great and end will justify the means in his eyes.

Honestly both operate on half-truths and information obfuscation. one of them just have more nefarious goals than the others.

[Sunwave]

Originally posted by goombasolini:

Clyne on the other [...], so if plan includes killing sentient digital beings - he will do it. So he did. The risk is too great and end will justify the means in his eyes.

What risk? There is no risk. That's why I don't understand HIS choice of deleting the avatars. The only risk is a "moral" risk, which he doesn't care about at all.

I understand why he keeps quiet. But he's very prepared. I think he would prepare "not deleting the avatars" for if someone found out their own nature of existence.

[goombasolini]

Originally posted by Sunwave:

Originally posted by goombasolini:

Clyne on the other [...], so if plan includes killing sentient digital beings - he will do it. So he did. The risk is too great and end will justify the means in his eyes.

What risk? There is no risk. That's why I don't understand HIS choice of deleting the avatars. The only risk is a "moral" risk, which he doesn't care about at all.

I understand why he keeps quiet. But he's very prepared. I think he would prepare "not deleting the avatars" for if someone found out their own nature of existence.

The risk is very simple - if others would learn about this (especially humans), the whole project could literally stop in its tracks as everybody rebels toeven participate. That's what Clyne believes it would happen anyway.

As for "being prepared" - the time beetween him learning digital avatars exist and Haru finding out (and immidietaly trying to tell everybody) was like 10 minutes at most. Not even Batman is that prepared...

[Sunwave]

Originally posted by Sunwave:

What risk? There is no risk.

The risk is very simple - if others would learn about this (especially humans), the whole project could literally stop in its tracks as everybody rebels to even participate. That's what Clyne believes it would happen anyway.

Why? At least I wouldn't care. Would you? Both before going to sleep and after waking up, your experience was not interrupted at all. Feels as if you lived in there for all that time (even though you didn't). The end result would be that some copy of us was created in digital form, who also wants to stay alive. Which is not me. And not my problem as a "real" human.

Best outcome is if people don't care. Worst outcome is if they demand the avatars are people too and should not be deleted (Which is not that bad). I don't think most people would care that they are "not the only one" anymore if the other one is merely digital.

Originally posted by goombasolini:

As for "being prepared" -

Whether the info about the avatars got out is of no strong relevance? (see above). Why not make sure that the actual real outcomes are somewhat desirable for all parties? Including the avatars themselves since you'll be relying on them to complete the project? Avatar Azar only felt betrayed because he would be deleted.

Well clearly that is not how the story goes so your point stands. Clyne might just have been afraid of a possible backlash even if I personally don't believe it would have been that bad.

[thateclipse]

Originally posted by Sunwave:

Why? At least I wouldn't care. Would you?

Our opinions are irrelevant. It's those in the story that matter, and Clyne has at least one case where someone cared.

[Sunwave]

Yeah true. That's what I admitted at the end of my post too. What Clyne believes matters most.

[risbolla]

azar's motivations is one of the more minor plot holes i think. the entire story is rife with plot holes. from what i can tell the virtual azar/program master's motivations boils down to little more than spite or maybe a pyrrhic victory over humans. and at the same time there seemed to be little reason for actually having to dispose of the avatars at the conclusion of the ark project either

if there was an explanation for why exactly it was necessary to have a simulation in the first place in order for the cryosleep to work then i did not catch it at all in the main story at least. and if it was necessary, why would the rest of the world which is apparently unable to wake itself up from cryo without the help of the ark project be satisfied with a contingent of only some 600 people in the same project without any redundancy

i think the reason for all of these narrative lapses is mainly to set up a disposition for having fun exploring some broader themes about simulation and a virtual self. thinking of it this way makes the story easier for me to appreciate

[Zetact]

Clyne deleting the virtual copies only makes sense given his character. He already directly witnessed it put the copy of Stella into an existential crisis, and he isn't really empathetic enough to care about addressing that moral dilemma directly when the deletion of the avatars immediately on the project's end would mean they wouldn't be the wiser of the deaths of their virtual copies.

The primary reason and most logical one given for the simulation is as Sizz explains in the opening ceremony
It's because it is designed to have the people to gain the knowledge and skills to build their society from scratch - a skillset that would be essential to rebuilding the world after awakening from the cryo-pods. While Azar sets up the memory resetting time loop, this was actually not the main intent and Clyne only had it as a last resort, if everything went without a hitch it would be the 600 participants undergoing the regular development of society, accumulating that experience to rebuild society.
While it may not have been 100% necessary to perform the simulation simply to "survive", for the prospect of "rebuilding human society" the simulation was explicitly beneficial to that front. As we see in the epilogue, this was ultimately helpful.

In addition, the simulation has a secondary benefit to solve the major defect in the cryo-pods of observation. By maintaining consciousness while in cold sleep, they're able to monitor the outside world directly, since automatic temperature sensing functions had numerous flaws. In order to keep the pods running in perpetuity, they need to be in Hibernation Mode, but if they are in Hibernation Mode for over 80 years the sensors break. Rather than needing to address the flaws, it was more practical to create a system that scraps the automatic sensors and maintains indefinite Hibernation Mode, but allows direct observation of the outside world - this would be fit to purpose for the virtual world.

[MeowMeow]

Originally posted by Sunwave:

Also, Clyne was a moron for setting it so that the avatars automatically got deleted. There was no reason to, ESPECIALLY from the standpoint of having no morals except "humanity must survive". In fact, if he had not created that setting, it would have been more in-character, I believe, because he would have had left open more possible paths to the successful end of project. (I mean, "we won't shut down the avatars" would have come a long way for Azar and like-minded people").

Like Zetact said,
Clyne reasoning make sense if u ve heard or understand the monke head transplant theory.

To make it simple, I will use teleportation device as an example instead of digital world, but they basically run on same principle.
Let say u have to travel from point A to point B using teleportation device. Since u can transfer data to very far distance almost instantenously but cant transfer the material (this is assuming we dont use wormhole, which make it very similiar to digital world to real world transfer).
The device would tore u appart on point A, kept the information about urself and transfer it to point B, and then rebuild u on the point B.
Since there is only 1 of u after the whole process happend, u would assume u teleported safely from point A, BUT if let say the teleportation device from point A didnt tore u appart imidiately, and now make a copy of u on point B.
2 of u now exist with same memories and experience, making it technically both of u are real, except the u on point A stuck there.

Same thing here apply, there is a record where the experiment in the game let stelle or something, and didnt kill the digital avatar, the avatar cant comperhend what happend, and start questioning why she stuck in there, but there is her on the other world that alrd wake up, WHY she is the one that get to stuck, not the one to get wake up in real world, both of them are real as it can get, same exact experience and memories, unfortunately 1 of u is unlucky, in this case the one that get stuck in digital world.

So what clyne do is technically form of mercy to both person that will get stuck in the digital world and for the oblivious real world person. Ofcourse this is only apply to those who oblivious to the fact, the one who doesnt knew what happen during loop will think in peace. But someone like lucy is completely aware that there are her otherself that sacrifice her whole being so she could live.

u can watch this youtube video insetad, since its more entertaining than the actuall paper or my explantion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMkrrjKf5AE
in simple term mention in the video that quoted there.
Its not a "CUT PASTE" its a "COPY PASTE"