Revelations from Keynote II

[ShinShimon]

It's absolutely time travel. I don't see how people can support a "we're going to the First!" interpretation with all the hints that Yoshida's been dropping. Specifically, we're going into an apocalyptic future, but also trying to avert it... this will probably mean splitting the timeline, which will justify us being able to go back to visit the alt-future zones even after we've prevented the calamity/flood of light.

[Kaizersan]

What's new for our many ongoing debates?

• Urianger and Y'shtola are rocking new jobs (AST and BLM) as the world goes to hell
• Y'shtola refers to "until our friend returns"
• ...Did Urianger just call Y'shtola "Matoya?"
• So is this the "aethersight is an added burden on the spiritual vitality" brick finally dropping? Or is it just a title now? lol
• It seems they're in Rak'tika but something's gonna go to hell there
• I'm somehow even more confused about where we're going. Some possibly Mesoamerican themes, old west themes, and that armadillo thing, have just added the New World to the possibility mix along with The First, Light-rekt areas, and/or Dalmasca.

• The Child of Light is Minfilia

• The gunblade-wielding job is called Gunbreaker, it is a TANK.
• This is not a Garlean gunblade; they will be closer to FF8, uses magicked ammo, and will start in Gridania
• Preview of the TRUST system showed Thancred tanking, Urianger healing, and Y'shtola on DPS in a forest dungeon
• New Area: Il Mheg, a very colorful, high-fantasy plains-like area
• Area is home to the pixies, notorious tricksters (not as bad as the moogles)
• They speak a unique Oda/Koji-formulated language (Fae) and worship the primal Titania, a major 5.0 plot point
• Much can be gleaned by the new 24-man raid title...

• How the sugar-frosted f[kupo!] is this going to work? PLEASE LOOK FORWARD TO IT.
• (Some of you don't know Yoko Taro / Yosuke Saito levels of "be careful what you wish for" and it shows. This is going to be amazing.)
• Viera shown off, but there were only ladies. (SO FAR...?)

Y'shtola is possessed by Matoya you can tell by how she talks in the trailer her voice tone and speech pattern is that of Matoya and not Y'shtola's and given that they have established that another soul can posses someones body it's not impossible for one as powerful as Matoya to do what the Ascians do.

[ObsidianFire]

The only souls we've seen posses bodies are souls with the Echo or the Resonance. Matoya, as far as we know, has neither. Body possession also seems to be linked to the Ascians and has never been shown to be something good for people to do. So until Patch 4.56 comes, I'm putting that view of the situation lower down on my list of explanations for the scene.

As far as Y'shtola talking like Matoya goes... Matoya was Y'shtola's mentor and it seems Matoya views Y'shtola as her protege at the very least, maybe even as her daughter. Y'shtola herself makes fun of herself turning into Matoya in Patch 4.4. So it's very probable that Y'shtola picked up on a lot of Matoya's mannerisms over the years. I could easily see something happening to Matoya while she tries to get the rest of the Scions back from being Called and Y'shtola deciding to take up her beloved mentor's legacy in her place.

[KageTokage]

I'm pleasantly surprised that they've thus far managed to avoid disclosing any information that really spoils what's going to actually happen at the end of the 4.5 MSQ. There's really only fuel for theories at this point.

The only souls we've seen posses bodies are souls with the Echo or the Resonance. Matoya, as far as we know, has neither. Body possession also seems to be linked to the Ascians and has never been shown to be something good for people to do. So until Patch 4.56 comes, I'm putting that view of the situation lower down on my list of explanations for the scene.

As far as Y'shtola talking like Matoya goes... Matoya was Y'shtola's mentor and it seems Matoya views Y'shtola as her protege at the very least, maybe even as her daughter. Y'shtola herself makes fun of herself turning into Matoya in Patch 4.4. So it's very probable that Y'shtola picked up on a lot of Matoya's mannerisms over the years. I could easily see something happening to Matoya while she tries to get the rest of the Scions back from being Called and Y'shtola deciding to take up her beloved mentor's legacy in her place.

There's been multiple instances of non-Echo related soul shenanigans in side quests, such as with Genbu and Soroban in the Four Lords quests and Lalai and Shatotto in the SB BLM quests. You could probably consider what happened with Nidhogg and Estinien a similar case.

It seems like anyone who's powerful enough and has the know-how can potentially linger after the loss of their physical body.

[Kalise]

There's that interesting aspect about this whole "Matoya Possessing Y'shtola's body" thing.

Which is, unless something happens between now and 5.0 to change it... Y'shtola's body is in the Rising Sands along with the rest of the Scions that have had their souls taken.

This suggests, that only their souls are being transported to wherever (And/or whenever) ShB is happening. Which suggests that whatever vessels they'll be using might have room for "Possession".

Like, we've had a glimpse of Solus clones and we now have knowledge of Nier style automatons with souls imbued with them with the upcoming raid.

Therefore there's a possibility that, however we end up getting to ShB content, what might be awaiting us is clones or automatons for us to inhabit in order to affect the physical world. With the potential that Matoya found a way to come with us and because she was unaccounted for, she ended up having to borrow a Y'shtola clone/automaton instead of having one of herself.

Since, as long as our physical bodies remain on the Source, it won't be like the way Ascians and the First's WoD who can get the ability to travel between shards with their teleporty tricks because they need to relinquish their physical bodies to do so. As such, we'd need some way of allowing us to leave the Aethereal Sea and interact with the physical world without transporting our physical bodies there (Unless, of course, 4.55 - 5.0 has something in store to show us transporting our physical bodies to wherever ShB occurs)

[Grayve]

I really hope it's not time travel. It always ends up convoluted and confusing, with forced arbitrary rules to excuse the plot from going to far back.

[Crushnight]

The thing with Matoya and Y'shtola is the only way i can see Matoya die is for Y'shtola body possession has happened for non echo users with Genbu and Soraban, Ultima and Alma Nidhogg and Estinien but said possession has also had a high amount of aether involved being auspices a living primal or dragon eyes so if Matoya is possessing Y'shtola i think the crystal eye will be used to do it as for what sets things off i think we kill Elidibus as well as Solus releases a light aspected Black rose killing both the Alliance and Garlean main forces and this tips the balance on the source within the maelstrom of death we plead to Hydalen for a way to stop it and we get sent to the source to fetch Minifilia and bring her back but she refuses to leave the 1st to their own suffering and to combat the light there we become the WoD

[KageTokage]

It's absolutely time travel. I don't see how people can support a "we're going to the First!" interpretation with all the hints that Yoshida's been dropping. Specifically, we're going into an apocalyptic future, but also trying to avert it... this will probably mean splitting the timeline, which will justify us being able to go back to visit the alt-future zones even after we've prevented the calamity/flood of light.

The thing makes me doubt time travel is involved is the fact that we're inevitably going to have to return to all of the different expansion zones for the post-5.0 MSQ. What reason would we have to return to a bad future if things have been patched up?

On the flipside, if we're going to the First to curb the flood of light, there's all sorts of reasons we could have for going back over there once matters have been seemingly resolved.

[Theodric]

It seems like anyone who's powerful enough and has the know-how can potentially linger after the loss of their physical body.

Mm. There's also the possibility that Matoya will make use of a forbidden spell in order to accomplish it.

[Iscah]

I really hope it's not time travel. It always ends up convoluted and confusing, with forced arbitrary rules to excuse the plot from going to far back.

I agree that I don't want to see a convoluted time travel story that creates paradoxes or alters past events - but what does give me some hope, if they're going that path, is the Alexander questline: a stable time loop.

Time loops make for more clever writing, and a much neater conclusion. I also prefer it to the implication that there are multiple timelines splitting off from events, and somewhere out there is going to be an alternate version of every time we failed to save the world.

It's messy enough already that there are multiple planes of reality, let alone introducing multiple timelines for those multiple planes.

I'm iffy on time travel as a plot element because mechanically going to these places can't function any differently than changing zones currently does. And say we jump ahead in time, why is Rebuild Ishgard a thing? Shouldn't they have dealt with that themselves by then? It also rubs time bubble issues right in your face constantly because it can't take away any content and they've been careful to limit the points where we do cross it.

I highly expect that any time travel will come with a stable way of moving back and forth between the "standard" and "future" times. Yes, it will probably be, functionally, no different to moving between zones - although it might mean we can't freely teleport across time. (Or maybe we can due to either our special powers or just some previously unencountered mechanic of how aetherial travel functions. Say, if you attune to one aetheryte in Now and another one in The Future, it will transport you across time as well as space. It always worked that way, but nobody was ever able to attune to aetherytes anywhere other than Now to discover that.)

If we do have The Future as a destination, I expect it will essentially be a second time bubble, so we're moving between the two. I've said before (when it was only a theory based on the more dubious part of those leaks) that moving to a "later" time bubble would allow the writers to bring in elements from main-time-bubble sidequests and use them in the MSQ, because there's no longer a need to hold off in case an individual player hasn't completed that quest yet.

For the specific example of bringing G'raha Tia back into the storyline, his timeline looks something like this:

====
1. Start of main time bubble events
<---------------------------------------------- Player may be here
2. Player meets G'raha
<---------------------------------------------- Player may be here
3. G'raha is sealed in the tower
<---------------------------------------------- Player may be here
4. End of time bubble
====

====
5. Start of future time bubble events
6. Tower is unsealed
7. ???
8. Player pulled to future
<---------------------------------------------- Player is definitely here
9. Plot ensues.
====

Because we've moved to a different time bubble, there's no question that the events of the Crystal Tower raid have already occurred, whether the player has personally experienced them yet or not. That means they are entirely free to (re-)introduce Future G'raha to the player whether or not Past G'raha has been sealed in the tower yet, only needing a bit of variable dialogue depending on where the player is up to in the raid.

(Of course, due to the oddities of time travel, he will know you regardless of whether or not you've met him!)


By the same logic (and if they won't involve him in current-day MSQ) I'm really hoping Unukalhai will finally get to be involved in the plot as well.



Meanwhile, on the specific question of "why rebuild Ishgard if we're going to the future where it will be fixed anyway?"... well, present Ishgard is still in a mess, and someone has to do that fixing in the first place.

4. The mysterious figure in the right corner of the expansion image. G'raha Tia looks like a very good fit and he has a trait which would make him possibly very useful to an Ascian (Elidibus? Emet-Selch?) seeking to use the Crystal Tower in some way. The body is mutated in several ways and the robes are highly suggestive of an Ascian.

We haven't seen any other Ascian hosts looking "corrupted" like that though, so it's more likely to be unrelated and (if it is indeed G'raha) attributable to the Crystal Tower's influence.

And the robes are a tricky one. There are all sorts of reasons for him to be wearing a hooded robe, not least that they might simply want to be able to put him on the poster image without entirely giving the game away! But also perhaps within the story for the same reason - we see this strange hooded figure, and perhaps after several glimpses we finally come face-to-face with them, and realise that it's not a stranger after all.

Somewhere in the vast amount of reading I've been doing on the forums today, someone (perhaps you) also brought up the colour of the robes - black and white, and "red to match G'raha's old outfit" - but having checked back on screenshots, his original costume features all three of those colours. Red-and-black shirt, white pants, white necklace, black boots and gloves with white highlights.

The robes look like they could be Allagan - eg. compare the Dreadwyrm Hood and High Allagan Gloves of Healing. They're not the same, but it's that kind of idea.

Oh, yeah, and our oft-forgotten magitek armor "Maggie" arguably has a soul too.

That's apparently due to the "mammet core" we installed in her - however they're supposed to work.