Timetravel, including Echo based time travel, confuses me. I need charts, so I am rather glad this isn't still in the game.
As an aside, If anyone has a chart or diagram explaining the Alexander time travel, please link it... I still don't understand what happened, to whom, and when.
Lore Book Revelations
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12-13-2016, 02:05 PMGrayve
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12-13-2016, 10:06 PMFenral
Cilia broke this down pretty well in the patch thread, but I can flatten it into a line for you.
1) Some thousands of years ago, a clan of Au Ra is formed by a young male and female who emerge from a metal giant.
2) A few years earlier than the present, their descendants (including Mide and Dayan) attempt a summoning with assistance from Travanchet. It fails, Dayan is consumed, and the sole survivor is Mide.
3) Just before the present day, Mide contacts the Illuminati, who appear to be working based entirely on a prophecy that spells out exactly how events will play out. They succeed in summoning Alexander.
4 / 2) Many raid bosses later, the WoL, Mide, and co. travel back in time with Alexander to Point 2. The Alexander that appeared at that time was actually the one summoned in the present. The "prophecy" Quickthinx was following was actually a record of your raid progress so far.
5) Alexander Prime is defeated, and Mide is trapped along with Dayan in the core. Alexander declares the world doesn't need it to exist, and opts to erase itself from existence by freezing itself in a single moment in time. Why Mide and Dayan need to be sealed along with him is never really explained, but as it turns out...
6 / 1) Alexander does need them to exist after all. It sends them back into the past, to found the clan that would one day birth themselves, so that they may initiate the loop that ends with Alexander's summoning prevented.
(And that's without going into the other mini-loop that takes place during the Alexander Prime boss itself, where completing Alexander's trial during that boss fight is what allows you to break free of the trap that would have kept you from fighting it.)
Basically, it all happened already, with no definite beginning or end, in a complete f[kupo] you to laws of causality, and the ultimate goal of Alexander was to prevent its own existence. -
12-14-2016, 07:51 AMCiliaThis is kind of difficult to follow because, as Quickthinx says, time is a closed circle. You have to get used to fluidity in the flow of time instead of thinking of it as a one-way street. Anyone who has played BlazBlue can get it pretty easily, but it follows like this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Grayve
1. At an unknown point in the distant past, Alexander spits out Mide and Dayan. They return to Othard, found the Hotgo tribe, and live out their lives. The idea (legend) of Alexander is passed down in the tribe.
2. Inspired by their ancestors' tales, near past Mide, Dayan, and the others summon Alexander using Travanchet's horn as a catalyst. Things go awry: Dayan is absorbed by Alexander, the other Auri treasure hunters die, and Mide seals Alexander in the lake. (Truth: this wasn't Alexander's summoning, but Roundrox using Alexander's time warp function to return us to that fateful day. The Auri treasure hunters are killed by the on-board Illuminati, and Schrodinger knocks Backrix' journal chronicling A1-A10 from his hands, tumbling to the ground with it before we're warped back to the present. Past Quickthinx gets ahold of Schrodinger, whom he renames Shanoa, and the journal, which he uses as a guide to set up the events of A1-A10.)
3. A1-A10 play out, leading to 2.
4. Upon reaching the core of Alexander, Quickthinx traps us in a time bubble and forces Alexander to cast Judgment on us. We're saved at the last second and go on to face Alexander Prime.
5. After proving our worthiness by surviving Alexander Prime's Divine Judgment, he creates portals that send four party members back to 4 so we can save ourselves. (Alternate timeline: we die from a time paradox. We always survived Divine Judgment, because otherwise we wouldn't be there to have Divine Judgment passed on us. Time travel is funny that way.) Alexander Prime is successfully defeated.
6. Mide throws herself into Alexander's core to shut him down, allowing 1 to happen above. Alexander seals himself outside of spacetime.
It's all one big closed circle - there is no beginning or end. The events of Alexander play out in an infinitely recurring loop, constantly spiraling in on itself. It's a temporal singularity - everything within the loop has to happen, because it already has. We're just actors on a stage, unknowingly performing the same worthless comedy show over and over and over and over and over and over...
Put as simply as it can be, Alexander's Legend -> Alexander's Summoning -> Alexander (Raid) -> Alexander's Legend, ad infinitum.
(Yes, this means that Alexander essentially created himself and that Mide and Dayan are their own distant ancestors. The only other alternative is to believe that there is a "Time Zero" that Alexander originated from, but... it would have to be outside of observable time, and now we're getting really hypothetical in something that's already highly hypothetical to begin with.)
The Echo is something entirely different. With the Echo we can observe others' memories, but not interfere with them. The one exception seems to be Cid's goggles, but I have no idea how or why that single event is an exception. /shrug Even if you could interfere with the past, it would ultimately change nothing since doing so would create a temporal paradox a la not surviving Divine Judgment / failing to save your past self. -
12-14-2016, 11:29 AMBelhi
The final truth of Alexander is pretty full on. He is probably the first primal we have faced which we genuinely couldn't have beaten if it had seriously wanted us to dead. It is extremely fortunate that the purpose for existence essentially decreed that it must remove itself from the timestream. Its also the first primal I think we have fought that help us beat it.
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12-14-2016, 01:21 PMTinyRedLeaf
Well, to be sure, Alexander's "Gordian knot" — his time paradox which, in this case, allows him to remove himself from the timeline — is possible if one accepts there's only a single timeline. From there comes the assumption that everything in the future must have been caused by something in the past.
If this were a reality that allows multiple, tangential timelines to exist, who knows how many alternative realities are possible? :confused:
After all, we now know there used to have been as many 13 Shards of the Source. Technically speaking, we do have a multiverse within the reality that is FFXIV. And, technically, that would also mean that as many as 13 different space-time realities are possible.
Thankfully, we don't have to deal with that mind-exploding possibility, because it seems time flows in a single direction and at the same pace for all 13 shards and the source. :p -
12-15-2016, 06:19 AMLineageRazorWell, I'm not so certain that this is true. Dialog from the closing cutscenes from Alexander indicate that he examined many different timelines before deciding that the best one was one in which he sealed himself away. The implication is that he had the ability to NOT choose the timeline we know, if he had deemed another one superior - that he had the means to set us upon whatever track he deemed best, and could, essentially, decide which future is going to be the "real" future.Quote:
Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf
Of course, Alexander DID make a decision, and the timeline we witnessed reflected that decision, so it's impossible to know whether Alexander ACTUALLY changed anything in the past, or instead simply fulfilled his predetermined role in it. It's seriously implied, however, that Alexander had a choice in the matter. Things turned out the way they did because he willed them to, and that he COULD have willed otherwise.
From a logical standpoint, it doesn't make much sense, to be sure. But, hey, this is Final Fantasy - logic doesn't have to play a role! -
12-15-2016, 12:38 PMCilia
While it's true that Alexander seems to have the ability to reconfigure the timeline (you stop him from doing so by going back to save your past self), whether or not he can ever succeed without causing a time crash is unknown. Everything in the time loop(s) surrounding Alexander had to happen... because it already has. Long before we even set foot in Alexander, we had already defeated him... because had we not, we would not be setting foot in him.
Not only does this make Quickthinx' arrogant belief that he had been "chosen by the future" doubly hilarious, it also makes Alexander somewhat pitiable because he literally cannot do anything that would violate the temporal loop(s) he exists in. It is somewhat implied that Alexander could have changed the timeline, but if we're to follow causality to its logical extreme doing so at all could have made his existence nullified... unless he had an observer, or calculated his actions so precisely so that even if he, say, stopped Bahamut he'd still be summoned 2 years later in the Hinterlands. The aether problem could easily be solved by traveling to the (a) future, loading up, and then returning to the past. Yes it would create a paradox, but if Alexander really can alter the time stream... aether should be a nonissue. And here I thought he was smart.
(Given Alexander himself seems to be an observer, though... well, I dunno. But it's time travel - wonky as all hell because time travel doesn't exist and therefore doesn't have to obey logic. Best to stop thinking about it so hard before my brain starts hurting.)
While we do have a sort of multiverse, it's more like... parallel worlds. Not a multiverse per sé, just alternate timelines that diverged at some point in the past (circa 10,000 years if I remember right). Sure would have been great if we could ask Alexander about that point in time... you know, instead of the cryptic and biased shit we get from Hydaelyn and the Ascians...
Err... wasn't this supposed to be about the Lore Book, not a treatise on time travel? -
12-15-2016, 01:53 PMGrayveSee? That's the stuff I mean. The confusion is real. How did we save ourselves? How was he summoned if the summoning we saw was only Alex transporting to the past? Who was the original summoners/creators of Primal Alexander? It makes no sense, because he had to already exist in the future to become a legend in the past...Quote:
Originally Posted by Cilia
EDIT: Not expecting an answer, as I understand ( I think) that its a temporal paradox, but it explains my point of why I don't like time travel in echos. Only rarely does time travel make logical sense, and the Alex story really destroys the suspension of my belief. -
12-15-2016, 09:35 PMKhalitharDoesn't everyone love how time travel makes a story so simple and easy to comprehend? /sarcasmQuote:
Originally Posted by Fenral
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12-15-2016, 10:40 PMLineageRazorSo who wants a simple and easy-to-comprehend story? Not me! I LOVE time travel! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Khalithar
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12-16-2016, 06:11 AMCiliaIt's a causal paradox, specifically a bootstrap paradox.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grayve
As I explained earlier, the only way to make heads or tails of it is to assume there is a "Zeroth Loop" that we cannot observe where, say, the Auri treasure hunters really did summon Alexander, and the Illuminati later independently "refurbished" him, leading to the events of the raid. The Illuminati shoot the Auri treasure hunters in their confusion, and Backrix loses his footing, his journal tumbling to the ground without Schrodinger's influence. Past Quickthinx gets ahold of it. We genuinely proved ourselves worthy to Alexander, and after her sacrifice he takes pity on Mide and Dayan, releasing them in the distant past. With the knowledge of Alexander, his tale is passed down in the Hotgo tribe as legend until near-past Mide and Dayan try to summon him - however the time loop is now in effect, meaning Alexander now has to exist as a fixed entity in time. To this end he creates Schrodinger / Shanoa, an automaton cat he acts through that will nudge events to keep the loop perpetual.
In other words, the "Zeroth Loop" is a genuinely alternate timeline that may no longer exist because Alexander is self-observing. Since it exists outside of our ability to observe, such as it is, it's anyone's guess what the "Zeroth Loop" really was like and by extension how and when Alexander first came into existence. (This is all highly hypothetical, mind.)
Except for the "Zeroth Loop," we're all just actors on the stage, unwittingly performing the same worthless comedy show for eternity. And even if we did know, we still couldn't perform anything but that same worthless comedy show. Exactly when or how Alexander was first summoned nobody knows for sure since the "Zeroth Loop" cannot be observed by us, but the events surrounding Alexander are the way it had - well, has, I guess - to be... Can't turn out any other way.
I'm probably getting way more involved than you asked for, and for that, I apologize.
Side note: the Echo is not time travel, it's just the ability to dive into others' souls and view their memories.
I'm not a fan of it in particular, but I do enjoy how it makes me think. Usually it's just "bad guys are doing bad things, go stop them!" Here I'm having to actually think... if only a little. The first BlazBlue game ran heavily on a similar setup, and Sonic 06 had a big one as a part of the story, so it's not really anything new to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by LineageRazor
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12-16-2016, 02:21 PMGrayveWhile fascinating, that only raises more questions. Specifically, if there is at least one 'alternate timeline', does that not mean there are more? And how does an 'alternate timeline' differ from an 'alternate dimension'? While I don't mind time travel stories, they need to establish the rules they work under, and stick to those rules. The Alex tale does not do the former, as far as I can tell. Did Alex kill (or let die) millions of alternate lives and worlds to calculate his results via alternate timelines? Did the WoL die over and over before the true ending happened? (if there are answers, please tell me... its questions like these that make me shove Alex into 'fun fights, but ignore the story' in my brain, unlike the rest of the games story.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cilia
And, yes, I know the Echo isn't time travel. Viewing the past is fine, but doing so and not being aware what you are viewing is the past is not. It only confuses the narrative, at least to me. Maybe playing through the events (of 1.0) made sense, but reading about them only makes me confused. Also, Echo with in an Echo just... makes even more confusion. -
12-16-2016, 11:27 PMLineageRazor
I don't consider so-called "bootstrap paradoxes" to be actual paradoxes. To me, a paradox has to produce an irreconcilable impossibility, such as inventing a time machine to go back and kill yourself before you invent a time machine. If we assume time travel is deterministic, there is no need for a zeroth timeline where the loop hadn't been established yet; the loop is and always was part of the timeline. You can think of it like a roller coaster with a big loop that takes you back to the same spot before continuing on. The roller coaster was built with that loop in place. There was never a time when the loop wasn't there. There is no cause that is "canceled" by its effect, or vice versa, which is what would cause a true paradox to arise.
One might protest that this allows for things to pop out of nowhere - and this IS the case. Star Trek IV provided an example of this with the chemical formula for transparent aluminum; the formula was never truly discovered, but instead handed off from time travelers to individuals in the past. Or one of my favorites, the short story "All You Zombies" by Robert Heinlein, in which a manThe fact that this man is human at all is pretty much nothing short of an amazing coincidence - but not impossible.is revealed to be his own parents. Yes, both of them - true hermaphrodism is involved.
All this said, though, as I noted in my post above, in the specific case of Alexander there MAY be a zeroth loop as Cilia describes, since it is implied that Alexander can both see and access alternate timelines. The deterministic time travel model does not apply here.
Alexander's storyline stays fairly vague as to what its rules are, and I think that it was a wise choice to make, as most writers tend to be sloppy and Back-to-the-Future-ish and by keeping things vague they reduce the probability that they wind up contradicting themselves.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grayve
As for multi-timeline murder - while it is stated that Alexander pondered many possible futures before settling on the one that wiped himself out, I don't think that necessarily means those timelines actually occurred. It all depends on whether there's one "true" timeline and whether all the other timelines aren't "real". I think this is the implication made by the game because, otherwise, Alexander's choice is meaningless. He could make whatever choice he wanted, and all of the other choices would occur anyway, in the other timelines. No, in this game, the choice matters, and Alexander's decision picked between the myriad potential timelines and settled on one to be the real timeline. The other potential timelines never occurred; Alexander may have viewed them and seen the potential consequences, but since he didn't actually do the actions required to make them a reality, they didn't happen. You could insist that the act of observing those potential timelines DID cause them to be real, at least for the duration of the observation, but then that's an argument that you'd need to apply to ANY precognitive in any other fiction, as well. That prophet that predicted a terrible future that the heroes must now work to prevent? All those people died because the prophet existed to observe them dying! Best to kill any precognitive before they have a chance to observe the future, eh?
As for alternate dimensions versus alternate timelines, in many works of fiction they are treated as one and the same. I'm hesitant to make the same assumption here, though, given the whole "Thirteen reflections" deal. I've seen a lot of discussion on the Thirteen reflections in the Lore forums that seem to imply that these other worlds are alternate dimension counterparts of the main world, and that would suggest that Alexander's machinations are something different. Safer to assume, I think, that the Source and all Thirteen Reflections are chugging along on a single timeline together. Changes made by Alexander to the timeline primarily affect the Source (since that's where he's sitting), but could theoretically cause changes to the Reflections due to the fact that certain individuals (mainly Ascians) on the Source are capable of traveling to the Reflections. -
12-17-2016, 04:06 AMCilia
The thing with Alexander is that he is an observer - he is capable of dealing in possibilities, or more specifically, making possibilities real. However, since our Zeroth self was somehow able to pass his Divine Judgment and for some reason Zeroth Alexander sent Mide and Dayan back to the past, that now means that we can never fail to pass Divine Judgment and defeat Alexander Prime. Everything in the loop is now perpetual and certain - everything from Mide and Dayan being spat out by Alexander, to his sealing himself outside of spacetime, will always happen. (This is why Quickthinx' arrogance is so entertaining; for all his blustering, he can never win. Only Zeroth Quickthinx had a chance, and we're still around, so obviously he didn't succeed.) Or at least, that's all our limited ability to observe time can see.
The bootstrap paradox doesn't explicitly state that something is self-causing or causeless - just that the cause of something cannot be temporally discerned. Hence, the introduction of a Zeroth timeline that set everything into motion. To use the roller coaster analogy, while the coaster itself always follows the same causeway, the blueprints can be changed - the Zeroth timeline is essentially that. Once it is built, though, it can't be changed - or, we run through the same motions for eternity within Alexander's causal loops. Granted this is just a hypothesis, but time travel isn't real anyway.
Now, "are there other timelines?" Well... maybe. As reasoned above while we cannot discern Alexander's origin, he must have one. The Zeroth timeline would be the only one, unless Alexander chooses to observe another possibility. So we don't die over and over trying to beat him, because our Zeroth self already did so - meaning we will always win and Quickthinx will always lose. Can't turn out any other way. Countless worlds and possibilities won't be erased because they didn't exist to begin with - they were just that, possibilities. As we know, however, Alexander determined the only possibility worth observing is one where he does nothing outside of his immutable temporal loops and then seals himself outside of spacetime.
A different timeline has different things happen at different points in time - the further you get from "time zero," the more warped it gets. A different dimension, on the other hand, is fundamentally different - think "replace water aether with fire across the globe and vice versa." Not because of anyone or anything's machinations, but just because that's how it is.
Have I analyzed Alexander's time travel implications thoroughly enough to get the Rise lyrics yet? -
12-17-2016, 08:45 AMZhaneX
Finally got my copy of the Lorebook! Have to say, I think one of my favorite entries is the character profile for Koh/Noah. Loved the bit about their contrasting personalities, and how Noah's something of a party girl; something which utterly horrifies Koh when she wakes up the day after one of Noah's drunken escapades.
Certainly not the immediate impression one gets when you talk to her for the weekly Crystal Tower quest. -
12-17-2016, 09:13 AMFenral
I was more impressed by how, in spite of the sheer volume of unmarked spoilers and obituaries (including one for Mide, who technically isn't dead), most of the Crystal Tower story isn't documented at all beyond the broad strokes (the Tower was sealed, the end). It's probably not because of that catman-loving jerk who used the lore itself to shoot holes in the logic required to make that ending work, but I can't help but be curious as to what the ground rules were for documenting details like that.
And that comment about G'raha singing the songs of his ancestors gave me a mental image of him singing "Eternal Wind" (or really any of the old FFIII vocal arrangements) that I really want to see in game... -
12-17-2016, 01:56 PMGrayve
While I appreciate the time Cilia and Lineage took typing those replies, I am only more confused then I was when this started.
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12-17-2016, 02:48 PMCiliaWell, the sequence of events that played out in Alexander are easy enough to chart out. Exactly how or when Alexander came into existence, though... well, I can throw out complex quantum / metaphysical explanations as much as I want; at the end of the day, Alexander's time and place of origin are things we simply cannot discern.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grayve
Put simply, the ultimate answer is: "/shrug"
Side note: Mide is dead, from our perspective at least. She is born in the relatively near past, but lives out the rest of her life and dies in the distant past. She died before she was born. When you move forward and backwards through it, time is all about perspective... -
12-17-2016, 09:55 PMFenral
But she didn't die at twenty and six, unless it was birthing an entire clan of lizard babies all at once that got her in the end...
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12-17-2016, 10:45 PMZojhaWell, I just crack it up to: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AWizardDidItQuote:
Originally Posted by Grayve
It's meant to be a fancy story, not make causal sense. It's clear the author wanted an alexander creation-solution loop and the fact it cannot causally come into existence like that has to be handwaved.
The issue typically arises with time travel because people (including scientists) often think of time as something akin to space, that one could move around in. Something that exists separately. Time however does not "really" exist, it's an artificial construct we humans use to explain sequences of motion/movement. It's an abstract concept like many math objects. That's also why time has to be relative, as motion is relative.
As such, travelling in time requires one to go to a different point in the sequence. And that can be achieved two ways: Either remain in stasis until things around you have moved further (aka travelling into the future) or moving every single bit of energy in space (including one's own) back to the exact same point and state it was previously - rewinding the world or travelling back in time. That's all still a forward motion - or as we humans like to say, the rewinding happens "after" the original motions and the rewinded events happen after that.
And that's where "the wizard" comes in: He says "screw you" to all that and pretends the rewinded events are the actual original motions instead of a rewind while at the same time, inserting a copy of the time traveler in its later state into the rewinded world in addition to the rewinded version of the time traveler. That's where it all falls apart and paradoxes are bound to happen.
What should happen is that the person either is rewinded like everything else and an infinite coil (not loop) is played in which time "ends" for all participants with the time travel (as the rewind makes the future the past, anything past the time travel is just a repeat) or the person is not rewinded and consequently, no previous version of him exists in the new rewinded world (Since he himself did not get rewinded) and he can do different decisions than previously. -
12-18-2016, 02:22 AMCilia
Well, yes, time and space are essentially the same thing. That's why they're commonly referred to as "spacetime;" moving forward through time is essentially stopping your own movement through space while the rest of the universe continues on, and moving backward through time is stopping your movement through space while rewinding the rest of the universe's. (So every time machine is also a space machine. Think about it - if the DeLorean from Back to the Future really just moved through time, the chances of them ending up in the cold vacuum of space after every time jump is extremely high since the Earth would more than likely be in a different space.) A person with super speed isn't really faster, they're just able to reduce the relative space between them and wherever they're trying to get or otherwise slow the advancement of space relative to them. Any faster-than-light travel we could ever hope to accomplish runs on this principle - don't move faster, just reduce the space between points A and B.
For the purposes of a layman's explanation of a time loop's origin, though... best to just stick with the "who knows?"
Time is relative. From our perspective the first time we met Mide, she had already died... in our past, which is her future. Unless we gain the ability to move through [space]time ourselves we'll never meet her again, because she is born, lives, and dies as a cog in Alexander's temporal loops.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fenral
Mide didn't die at 26, but from our perspective she has been dead a long, long time. Time travel is wonky like that.
EDIT
Humor can be hard to convey through pure text... -
12-18-2016, 03:29 AMFenralI do understand that, but I was making a joke about how her lore book obituary indeed says she died at 26.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cilia
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12-18-2016, 04:12 AMPArcherWell, she was absorbed into the core, and lost her mortal form. That's death in a nutshell. Alexander kept her soul, and then remade her (a) body in the past.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fenral
That's what I get from the whole thing. -
12-19-2016, 02:37 PMShadotterdan
Well if one thinks of time as having two axis of travel instead of just the one, a lot of paradoxes dissappear so long as the second axis cannot be rewound upon (though it could be rewound if there was a third axis that couldn't be rewound but thought experiments beyond this get kinda hard) thus even in the context of time travel, there is still a 'past' that happened that created the events of the time travel in the first place, it also makes an explanation for people not being effected by changes they make as they've gone away from their original timeline (though if you traveled forward by the exact same amount you previously went backwards in, then you would actually return to your own timeline without any of the changes you made.
That said, not all of what happened this time around in Alexander needed to happen the first time around, all that needed to happen is for Alexander to be summoned, view the possible futures, come to his conclusion and then create the sequence of events that lead to the paradox. For all we know it was originally built by the Sharlayans but Alex determined that Mide's clan and the goblins would allow for a more favourable outcome.