[ENDWALKER MSQ SPOILERS] Timeline weirdness

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

I don't want to get my hopes up, but I'd love to see it. I can't tell if they did too good a job with the Ancients or not a good enough job with everything else. I'm far more excited about the possibility of interacting with Emet & Hythlodaeus again than any of the Scions and the Ancient world is more fascinating to me than anything else has been since Ishgard. Emet listing off all the places we haven't seen on Etheirys didn't sound exciting on their own.

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I'd be game for it provided they don't try use it to push some kind of "See! they'd have died anyway?!" nonsense to try retroactively vindicate the sundering as it went down. I'm also of two minds on it. On the one hand, I find what Veloran mentioned appealing. I'd like a departure from the Scions irrespective of where we're headed next and I'd also like a move to completely new pastures and a plot that is a bit more dialled down for a while and yes, using the Overlords in that manner would be a good idea, and certainly preferable to having them just be villains for the sake of it. On the other, would I complain if SE came back to the World Unsundered via an AU or something, and if it were done tastefully? Probably not. Leaving some element of mystery to what it was like isn't a bad thing but at the same time I would be very curious to see their world under better circumstances.

I have to echo the sentiment that I'm not too excited about going back to the past again.

There is the rest of our world to see, plus the shards, plus we have a spaceship now. I wouldn't mind a bit more clarity on a few loose ends, but for the most part I'm happy to wrap things up and move on.

I appreciate the time travel, but only so far as it's predicated on time loops. Otherwise things make even less sense. The past is in the past - let it stay there.

With Trusts and that the game wasn't at all subtle about how the 'disbanding' of the Scions was a sham, the idea that the MSQ is going to actually leave them behind and introduce a new cast of characters seems erroneous. Frankly I'll be surprised if more than one or at most two of the main Scion cast fades into a support character a la Cid while they make room for Krile to have more importance. A rebranding may or may not happen.

As for the Ancient past, I will stand for the opposite opinion that I found they vastly inferior as a cast of characters and setting, and if the MSQ and related raids continue to focus on them past Pandaemonion, I will disappointed. The more the plot focuses on Azem, the less enjoyable it has been, and as I would rather go on adventure with Grynewaht and Livia than Emet, plus the problems with the Ancient models being a Hyur on an Elezen frame thus making any players whose WoL is a Hrothgar, Miq'ote, Viera, Au'ra, Lalafell, or just a Roe or Elezen with a non-Hyuran skintone be further divorced from 'Azem' ...any roleplay as Azem or, worse, our WoL through more time travel shenanigans becomes the Azem that succeeds Venat sounds like the worst case scenario for the plot to go.

The new year's message was one of excitement to explore new zones and plotlines and enemies.

The sundering has been vindicated over and over. Those ancients crying to Zodiark wouldn't be able to get their lives together. Even if they had sacrificed new lives to restore the world to pre-final days, they're so spoiled that the next time something bad happen they would just come crying to Zodiark again. And eventually they will ask Zodiark to just let Meteion end them

The sundering accomplished two things:
1. To deny access to Zodiark but not kill Zodiark (because he's needed to forestall final days)
2. To prepare humanity to eventually confront and defeat Meteion by teaching them the struggle of life and how to find hope even if things go bad

I don't know why people are so enamored by the ancient lifestyle anyway. It's not a good lifestyle. They wantonly create living beings and then kill them off cold-heartedly if they're "not suitable" even though these creatures feel pain. Imagine buying a dog from a pet shop and 1 week later, you decided you don't like it and throw it out to the street. It's full of hubris and hypocrisy that Hermes was almost justified to calling out Emet at the end of the dungeon.

I wasn't trying to say let's hang out in the past forever, that's not even plausible. I would've been perfectly fine had Elpis ended with everyone being saved and that was the last of it. Unfortunately, due to the time loop, they weren't saved and now I'll always have this nagging desire to do so.

I think EW made me realize how tired I am of the Scions though, for different reasons. Thancred used to be my favorite, but he can't stop moping about Minfilia and I'm over it. He's welcome if/when he ever gets his ARR mojo back. Urianger has lied to me twice and I've been forced to forgive him both times when after the second I would've been done with him. I've never particularly been a fan of Y'shtola. Alphinaud is fine in small doses, but I do get tired of him being my mouthpiece for extended periods of time.

Estinien is my brother-in-arms, but he has no reason to follow me around the world (unless it's to Meracydia I guess) and doing so would be out of character. I like Alisaie, but at some point she (and her brother) need to stay off screen long enough to grow into adults. So, that leaves G'raha, who I adore, and is free to join me on all the adventures he wants. :P

I just love Emet and Hythlodaeus' personalities and chemistry. All through Elpis I was jealous of Azem. The trio sounded like a blast.

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Originally Posted by Yuella

Imagine buying a dog from a pet shop and 1 week later, you decided you don't like it and throw it out to the street.

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You mean something that happens every day everywhere? Don't even get me started on holidays. People who adopt bunnies for Easter, black cats for Halloween, or puppies for Christmas, only to be surrendered to shelters after they've worn out their cuteness.

It seriously is infuriating how anyone thinks that modern humanity has a leg to stand on, like, how oblivious to the cruelties of the world are you?

Thankfully MMO's are designed to appeal to a broad variety of tastes, so I think we can take comfort in the simple fact that there's plenty of room for many characters and factions to receive their fair share of time in the spotlight moving forward. Even if such comes solely in the form of the occasional cameo.

Though there's a very vocal minority around these parts who bring up their distaste for the Ancients at every possible turn, there's quite a lot of people who are quite fond of them. I imagine that number has only grown as a result of Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

You mean something that happens every day everywhere? Don't even get me started on holidays. People who adopt bunnies for Easter, black cats for Halloween, or puppies for Christmas, only to be surrendered to shelters after they've worn out their cuteness.

It seriously is infuriating how anyone thinks that modern humanity has a leg to stand on, like, how oblivious to the cruelties of the world are you?

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And you're assuming that because we know people do those things in the real world that means we are okay with that? I have a problem with that reckless disregard for life in both cases, as would many others I can only presume.

It is seriously infuriating that you think that because some modern humans are monsters that all modern humans are monsters.

Someone posted this on Reddit a couple weeks ago: Results of FF14 Japanese fandom character popularity poll post-Endwalker

The Ancients seem quite popular in Japan as well, especially Emet.

Emet-Selch 4621 votes(17.2%)
Hythlodaeus 3513 votes (13.1%)
Venat / Hydaelyn 3136 votes(11.7%)
G'raha 1546 (5.8%)
Meteion 1295 (4.8%)
Alisae 1197 (4.5%)
Hermes 961 (3.6%)
Estinien 930 (3.5%)
Alphinaud 893 (3.3%)
Urianger 869 (3.2%)
Zenos 866 (3.2%)

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Originally Posted by Kordarion

And you're assuming that because we know people do those things in the real world that means we are okay with that? I have a problem with that reckless disregard for life in both cases, as would many others I can only presume.

It is seriously infuriating that you think that because some modern humans are monsters that all modern humans are monsters.

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In every country on Earth, it's pretty normal to cull predators or invasive species when they start causing problems to the wider biosphere. The US alone culls tens of thousands of wolves a year. Even greater numbers of predatory fish and merely disruptive herbivores, like deer, are killed for no purpose other than management of the environment and maintaining a sustainable population of all species.

It's not that the Ancients doing it is morally uncomplicated, just that it's weird to act like it makes them alien or evil - I assume you don't think of the RSPB workers who do this stuff as 'monsters'. If I might be a little presumptuous, I doubt this is something you think about much in your day-to-day life at all. They probably don't either.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

In every country on Earth, it's pretty normal to cull predators or invasive species when they start causing problems to the wider biosphere. The US alone culls tens of thousands of wolves a year. Even greater numbers of predatory fish and merely disruptive herbivores, like deer, are killed for no purpose other than management of the environment and maintaining a sustainable population of all species.

It's not that the Ancients doing it is morally uncomplicated, just that it's weird to act like it makes them alien or evil - I assume you don't think of the RSPB workers who do this stuff as 'monsters'. If I might be a little presumptuous, I doubt this is something you think about much in your day-to-day life at all. They probably don't either.

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The moral difference, in my opinion at least, is that for the most part the predatory animals we cull in our world came into existence separate from our actions. In Elpis they make these creatures, playing god in every aspect of their lives, not to mention that in real life we cull a species and not render it extinct like in Elpis. However I do agree that the people who cull those populations in our world aren't monsters, that comment was more directed at use of:

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People who adopt bunnies for Easter, black cats for Halloween, or puppies for Christmas, only to be surrendered to shelters after they've worn out their cuteness.

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as an example of why modern humanity can't make comments on the morality of designing species at a whim and when it doesn't work out erasing their mistakes while ignoring the fact they are living beings and then starting the process over until you, the ancients, get what you want.

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Originally Posted by Kordarion

In Elpis they make these creatures, playing god in every aspect of their lives, not to mention that in real life we cull a species and not render it extinct like in Elpis.

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We create new breeds of dogs, cats, and livestock and then render them extinct because they didn't 'come out right' all the time. Recently we've even started to do it with genetic engineering. On that note, entire new races of mice and other lab animals are regularly created exclusively for the purpose of researching experimental treatments for diseases and then are summarily disposed of.

I think that the Ancients were a little dubious in their treatment of other life, but only in the way that baseline humanity is dubious. The distinction you're drawing where we hold back in playing with their lives to suit our purposes doesn't meaningfully exist beyond the fact that their methods are magical and fantastic while ours are scientific and aesthetically banal.

Lurina's beating me to the punch. I listed examples based on what the person I responded to said. I mean, if we really want to go down the rabbit hole of the atrocities humans commit against non-human creatures on a daily basis, actions that unless you're a hardcore vegan I guarantee you financially support, we can do that. However, my point was those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

We do play god too much in our own world don't we, I guess I went and got a bit too emotional in the way I was responding to what was being said and didn't quite articulate myself properly. I see a difference in creating a new breed of a species and developing a whole new species entirely, maybe I shouldn't, and I do see your point about making and then getting rid of need breeds of animals, it is wrong. I guess part of my problem is the sort of technological difference we see between our societies and the ancients. Obviously they used magic and we don't but they come across as a sort of future society that is supposed to be beyond that sort of stuff while we are still in a period of working out our relationship to the world around us in a healthy way whilst retaining our advancements. It just feels that from what we know they should be beyond that and aren't, I prefer my futuristic advanced societies to be better, not simply appearing better but just being the same.

I guess I don't like the "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" idea because it limits you to only calling out your own society and not calling out both societies for doing the wrong thing.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

Not really, maybe I've explained poorly.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe the rubbish I can draw in paint is worth a hundred.

https://i.ibb.co/dr17dHx/Untitled.png

It's a pretty terrible picture, but I hope it serves to get across the general idea. The slice is for visual effect, not because I think the tip of the tower was actually physically used like a knife on a birthday cake. :p

It's one unit, one "timeline" if you like, just split various different ways at various points.

It's not about having space as in an actual physical space for it to go, I mean space in the sense that Etheirys is an aether rich place but the worlds contained within only require 1/14th of the total resources, and there are currently far fewer than 14 worlds.

G'raha's "original world" starts as the Source, and I personally think it probably has to be the Source, I doubt the Shards are meaty enough to survive being sliced any thinner, but his adventure doesn't require that said world ends as the Source. All that is required for his trip to work is that his original world and the events that led to his departure are preserved.

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There are some big things I disagree with on this theory.

Firstly, the maths isn't right. Rejoining a shard doesn't remove its aether from the world, it just redistributes it. The sundered world started as (14 x 1/14) but after seven rejoinings it is currently (1 x 8/14) + (6 x 1/14).

Splitting the Source and the First into two copies each so you can then rejoin those copies either calls for pulling another 9/14th of aether out of nowhere, or effectively performing a second mini-Sundering by accident without any of the disruptive effects like worldwide memory loss.

And it does require splitting both the Source and the First, or there's nothing to get rejoined to the other Source in the other timeline in the first place.

This idea of more selective splitting of two specific shards without touching the others also just sounds like something less likely to happen spontaneously.


Also, I don't believe the mere action of moving the Crystal Tower to the First was what caused the split in the timelines, especially given (or at least assuming) the natural tendency towards time loops over splitting timelines.

Simply travelling to the past is not enough to disrupt the timeline, or time loops could never form.

At the point where G'raha travels to the First, as far as we know, he has no idea what was there before he arrives. There is no proof of there ever being a separate timeline where the tower didn't appear in Lakeland shortly after the Flood.

As I understand it, the appearance of the tower in Lakeland and the hundred years (in First time) that followed are still part of the pre-split timeline.

The exact point where it does split is a debate in itself, and generally I'm just inclined to put a big question mark over the section of the timeline starting with the first call from the Exarch and ending with our defeat of Hades and say "it splits somewhere in here". That's all that matters for the sake of understanding the larger timeline.

But regardless of exactly when it happened, I think it is much simpler to think of it as a "higher level" split and not something happening among the shards.

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Originally Posted by LystAP

We already seen their responses. "Our" Emet, Hythlodaeus, Venat and Hermes have already acted out their role in this timeline, and their actions will continue to be reflected in our history. Going back to change 'that' history wouldn't change anything that happened in our timeline, but raise the curtain for a new play and create options for the future.
https://i.imgur.com/Wdb1c0P.png
We'll be able to see how they react to new information, get more details on the story of the original Azem, and other issues related to the Ancients. But I guess it's up to SE.

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I think you're misinterpreting that quote.

The Emet speaking that line is in our timeline. Even if we went back and changed the past to create a second branch, it would have no effect on him personally.

If the "new tale" will still involve him, it will be something moving forward from his position here as he speaks those words - though in any case I am inclined to take it as simply referring to the characters of the modern day. He himself seems fairly definite about bowing out.

To turn to his own words elsewhere:

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And thus the aether beckons me
To depths of black eternity,
To dream of things long lost and gone,
And futures which might yet be won─
Though not by me, lest you mistake,
For others wait, the stage to take,

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To be fair, this may be coming from the point of his appearance at the Seat of Sacrifice rather than later, but it's an echo of the same metaphor and in both cases, he seems to be accepting that his tale is at an end and it is time for others to take the stage in his place.

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Originally Posted by SilverArrow20XX

It's also possible that these are just stable loops in many branching timelines.
As long as the changes aren't big enough to cause significant changes, you end up with a new timeline branch where the time travelers existed in the past, but is otherwise mostly the same.

- Timeline 1A
The original timeline.
Mide is not the founder of the Hotgo tribe, and the initial Alexander time travel happens.
WoL does not travel to Elpis, and the 8UC happens.
G'raha likely cannot be sent back in time because the Ironworks do not have knowledge of Alexander.
This timeline is not necessarily doomed since Fandaniel wouldn't be able to kill Zodiark.

[etc.]

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I dislike this concept of approach to time travel in general, though I had to put some thought into exactly why - and I think the simple answer is that it makes no sense to me that you can have "two pasts" leading to the exact same outcome.

As I see it, at any point in time, a single event can have two possible outcomes and so it is conceivably possible to picture the timeline splitting in two directions where a different outcome happens in each one.

But to have a past where everything turns out perfectly the same except for one event which we somehow displace with a different event but don't disrupt anything else? That doesn't work for me. I don't consider it to be an option in this story.

To be clear though, I see that as a different path to replacing an unknown past event with an event that requires time travel to play out.

For a simpler example back in Alexander: we previously didn't know how Alexander manifested three years ago, though Mide incorrectly assumed she had summoned it herself. But once we get teleported there ourselves, we replace our incorrect assumption with the truth. That's a very different thing to actively overwriting an earlier version of events.

And as an example of an event where there can't have been an earlier version, we have the "save yourself" moment in Alexander where we travel back mid-A12 for the sole purpose of releasing the forcefield. If there was an earlier version where someone else did it, then there would be no reason for Alexander to overwrite the original version of events to achieve the same result.

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Originally Posted by Kordarion

We do play god too much in our own world don't we, I guess I went and got a bit too emotional in the way I was responding to what was being said and didn't quite articulate myself properly. I see a difference in creating a new breed of a species and developing a whole new species entirely, maybe I shouldn't, and I do see your point about making and then getting rid of need breeds of animals, it is wrong. I guess part of my problem is the sort of technological difference we see between our societies and the ancients. Obviously they used magic and we don't but they come across as a sort of future society that is supposed to be beyond that sort of stuff while we are still in a period of working out our relationship to the world around us in a healthy way whilst retaining our advancements. It just feels that from what we know they should be beyond that and aren't, I prefer my futuristic advanced societies to be better, not simply appearing better but just being the same.

I guess I don't like the "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" idea because it limits you to only calling out your own society and not calling out both societies for doing the wrong thing.

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I don't think there's anything wrong for judging the Ancients for their treatment of other living beings, so long as you're also willing to extend those arguments to contemporary humanity. For me, what puts me off in these conversations is the dissonant hypocrisy of hearing people talk about how the Ancients were perverse and deserved to die for that stuff, while drawing a line between themselves as us. To bring it around to the sacrifices, we slaughter an unthinkable amount of relatively intelligent beings just to keep the wheels of our civilization turning. We're crushing entire biospheres for our convenience. The Anthropocene has driven more species into extinction than any other event in 60 million years.

If they deserved to get sundered, we deserve to get sundered.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

I don't think there's anything wrong for judging the Ancients for their treatment of other living beings, so long as you're also willing to extend those arguments to contemporary humanity. For me, what puts me off in these conversations is the dissonant hypocrisy of hearing people talk about how the Ancients were perverse and deserved to die for that stuff, while drawing a line between themselves as us.

If they deserved to get sundered, we deserve to get sundered.

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I think my original point in this conversation in this thread was that I would simply rather spend my time in the "present" rather than the ancient world if given a choice. And then that lead to me commenting on how I don't like either what the ancients did in Elpis or the concept of "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". I don't think they should have been sundered for what they were doing in Elpis either, although it does play into why I don't think they would have been able to permanently defeat Meteion but that is another can of worms I'd rather not open right now.

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Originally Posted by Kordarion

I think my original point in this conversation in this thread was that I would simply rather spend my time in the "present" rather than the ancient world if given a choice. And then that lead to me commenting on how I don't like either what the ancients did in Elpis or the concept of "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". I don't think they should have been sundered for what they were doing in Elpis either, although it does play into why I don't think they would have been able to permanently defeat Meteion but that is another can of worms I'd rather not open right now.

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That's fair. This part of the conversation started because of Yuella asserting that the Ancient's deserved to be sundered for their "lifestyle", though, and drawing an explicit distinction between us and them by saying:

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Originally Posted by Yuella

I don't know why people are so enamored by the ancient lifestyle anyway. It's not a good lifestyle. They wantonly create living beings and then kill them off cold-heartedly if they're "not suitable" even though these creatures feel pain.

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I think Rulakir was pointing out their hypocrisy - since this statement could just as easily describe modern human culture - rather than saying that it was wrong to criticize the Ancients at all, which is the way you seemed to interpret it in your reply.

As modern humans, we are all complicit in extra-species violence and manipulation on a scale so spectacular that it boggles the mind. In the time it took me to type this message, we have cold-bloodedly slaughtered roughly 400,000 chickens, creatures proven to experience complex emotional states and capable of solving simple math problems (as well as being, by the way, a subspecies of our own creation), despite the fact that we've advanced to the point we don't even need meat to survive. And that's just chickens. To condemn a fictional culture as deserving of death on that basis is goofy, unless you'd also extend that judgement to yourself.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

There are some big things I disagree with on this theory.

Firstly, the maths isn't right. Rejoining a shard doesn't remove its aether from the world, it just redistributes it. The sundered world started as (14 x 1/14) but after seven rejoinings it is currently (1 x 8/14) + (6 x 1/14).

Splitting the Source and the First into two copies each so you can then rejoin those copies either calls for pulling another 9/14th of aether out of nowhere, or effectively performing a second mini-Sundering by accident without any of the disruptive effects like worldwide memory loss.

And it does require splitting both the Source and the First, or there's nothing to get rejoined to the other Source in the other timeline in the first place.

This idea of more selective splitting of two specific shards without touching the others also just sounds like something less likely to happen spontaneously.

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In the first picture you've got the Source, which is exactly 7x wider than the First. When they rejoin the Source line gets one shard wider to represent that.

In the last picture, you've got the Source, which is exactly 6x wider than First, and below it you've got the 8UC world and the First, both only one shard thick.

There is no extra aether, it's the same quantity just shifted around.

On the accident or happening spontaneously point, I don't really understand why that would make any difference? It's not like your version of the timeline split is any less accidental or spontaneous.

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People still remembered what happened after the big main Sundering, at least to enough of an extent that they could paint it on the walls of caves. There's no reason to believe a second mini-Sundering would be any more deleterious than the first, and every reason to believe that whatever side-effects occurred would be lesser.

Going from being a 14/14 Ancient to a 1/14 mortal would likely be a far more jarring experience than going from being a 8/14 mortal to a 6/14 or 1/14 mortal. In the latter you're essentially going from being yourself to ... being yourself still, albeit with a thinner soul, which following our experiences on the First seems to generally not be all that big of a deal. (Apart from if you need to absorb the aether of a half a dozen Lightwardens, but lets be fair, that hardly ever comes up.)

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Part of my reasoning is from Alexander. His story was a closed loop one, but IIRC it didn't have to be. He could have split the world/timeline but chose not to as too many splits could cause reality to crumble. It's also stated that excessive messing with time would use a tremendous amount of aether.

A way to cause a split, that uses a tremendous amount of aether, and if done too much could result in things being spread too thin to remain functional.
The end result of an Alexander induced split sounds a lot like a Sundering to me, and Alexander is the basis of the Crystal Tower time machine tech, so it stands to reason a split induced by the tower would function similarly.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

On the accident or happening spontaneously point, I don't really understand why that would make any difference? It's not like your version of the timeline split is any less accidental or spontaneous.

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The difference is that if it's a mini-sundering of the shards then it seems a lot harder to accidentally only slice apart the correct bits of shards to isolate the right timeline. It seems like something that would need more deliberate intent than just everything equally duplicating at once.

It's also placing the cause of a split at a different level of reality – your version being on the same level as the Sundering and mine being something that happens on a higher level of reality, not involving shards or quantities of aether at all. They're very different mechanism concepts.

I agree with the assumption that whatever mechanism is at work in the Alexander storyline is still at work in Shadowbringers, and that's why I'm happy to argue that there's no inconsistency with it producing stable loops in one case and a split in another, but I disagree that the mechanism must be sundering.

It's also worth noting that Alexander itself is not, at least in its capacity as a time-travelling robot, the thing that creates the split in the timelines. It is simply the vehicle used to transport people through time, at which point those people's actions may or may not trigger a split.

Of course, one of those "people" is Alexander the thinking entity with deep knowledge of time and a cat sidekick, but still that doesn't mean Alexander has the direct power to split timelines. It has to deliberately get involved and manipulate events to ensure time stays on track, which means that stopping a split is not as simple as not using its powers to cause one.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I dislike this concept of approach to time travel in general, though I had to put some thought into exactly why - and I think the simple answer is that it makes no sense to me that you can have "two pasts" leading to the exact same outcome.

As I see it, at any point in time, a single event can have two possible outcomes and so it is conceivably possible to picture the timeline splitting in two directions where a different outcome happens in each one.

But to have a past where everything turns out perfectly the same except for one event which we somehow displace with a different event but don't disrupt anything else? That doesn't work for me. I don't consider it to be an option in this story.

To be clear though, I see that as a different path to replacing an unknown past event with an event that requires time travel to play out.

For a simpler example back in Alexander: we previously didn't know how Alexander manifested three years ago, though Mide incorrectly assumed she had summoned it herself. But once we get teleported there ourselves, we replace our incorrect assumption with the truth. That's a very different thing to actively overwriting an earlier version of events.

And as an example of an event where there can't have been an earlier version, we have the "save yourself" moment in Alexander where we travel back mid-A12 for the sole purpose of releasing the forcefield. If there was an earlier version where someone else did it, then there would be no reason for Alexander to overwrite the original version of events to achieve the same result.

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The A12 situation happens within Alexander, so I'm willing attribute cases of non-linear time happening there as being possible.

In reality, a single small change would probably cause huge differences to the future, but the idea of the general flow of history being harder to change is a staple of the time travel genre.
It just makes things easier for stories having the changed thing in the past only affect things it was directly involved with in the future.

Meteion being tagged for instance, is an obvious major thing that can be taken advantage of in the present, but would be completely irrelevant throughout the rest of history.
Otherwise, the difference is that a single person has foreknowledge, and we see her try to do things differently, but fail.
Narratively, there's no reason for the new timeline to be much different after that before the present day.

It doesn't really matter in the end, because any previous loops are hypothetical. The original could have been vastly different and it stabilized over thousands of loops. The logic behind it is the same though.

Personally, I prefer it to there just being impossible paradoxes that have no beginning.

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Originally Posted by SilverArrow20XX

The A12 situation happens within Alexander, so I'm willing attribute cases of non-linear time happening there as being possible.

In reality, a single small change would probably cause huge differences to the future, but the idea of the general flow of history being harder to change is a staple of the time travel genre.
It just makes things easier for stories having the changed thing in the past only affect things it was directly involved with in the future.

Meteion being tagged for instance, is an obvious major thing that can be taken advantage of in the present, but would be completely irrelevant throughout the rest of history.
Otherwise, the difference is that a single person has foreknowledge, and we see her try to do things differently, but fail.
Narratively, there's no reason for the new timeline to be much different after that before the present day.

It doesn't really matter in the end, because any previous loops are hypothetical. The original could have been vastly different and it stabilized over thousands of loops. The logic behind it is the same though.

Personally, I prefer it to there just being impossible paradoxes that have no beginning.

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You're thinking about time too linearly... or not linearly enough?

Outside of time, all time travel, loops and all, already happened. The causal paradox/loop has no beginning or end, especially since we've seen time travel before in the setting and have been either a stable time loop within its own timeline (Alexander) or a violent uprooting across time and dimensions (Crystal Tower). As it stands the Elpis sections seem more akin to the former than the latter, based on the WoL's influence in the past (creation of Behemoths, funerary rites with lylies, etc) which carried on to the original timeline.

This is supported by the text of the game, saying things cannot be changed by time travelling.

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

I feel like we are talking past eachother. I have acknowledged that there are different kinds of time travel, thats not the point of confusion to me.

Let me establish two names for simplicity:

"Timeline G" is the original timeline G'raha came from, where the Black Rose killed most of the population on the Source.

"Timeline S" is the timeline that we experience from ARR to Endwalker and onwards.

How does Timeline G even end up at the point it is, with a version of us having died to Black Rose, when the Final Days shouldnt have ended in a sundering since we were NOT summoned to the First by a G'raha from a different timeline, thus Elidibus and the Crystal Tower couldnt intertwine to send the Warrior of Light to Elpis to inform Hydaelyn about the coming crisis, so that her faction could prepare? "Coincidental Similarities" is an answer of course, although underwhelming.

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I don't know why you're assuming no sundering would happen without us going to elpis. There's no reason to assume that.

The "time" within which 99.9% of Final Fantasy XIV takes place is now known to be a time loop. Everything from our departure from the Crystal Tower / arrival on Elpis up to our return to the Crystal Tower / departure from Elpis is more or less set in stone, since otherwise we wouldn't be in a position to shape the distant past that led to us going there.

Kind of breaks the whole existentialist narrative of Endwalker, we're the Warrior of Light both because we choose to be and because otherwise it creates a paradox. Time travel, gotta love it!

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Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

You're thinking about time too linearly... or not linearly enough?

Outside of time, all time travel, loops and all, already happened. The causal paradox/loop has no beginning or end, especially since we've seen time travel before in the setting and have been either a stable time loop within its own timeline (Alexander) or a violent uprooting across time and dimensions (Crystal Tower). As it stands the Elpis sections seem more akin to the former than the latter, based on the WoL's influence in the past (creation of Behemoths, funerary rites with lylies, etc) which carried on to the original timeline.

This is supported by the text of the game, saying things cannot be changed by time travelling.

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It wasn't that things can't be changed by time traveling.
It was that WE probably wouldn't be able to. Specifically because it was going to be hard to even interact with things.
The Behemoth was already created, we just named it. A name that wouldn't have survived to present day anyway going by all the other different named creatures.
Just because we introduced ideas from the future to the past, doesn't mean that those ideas only exist in the future because of that.

Paradoxes are a fun idea, but in the end, they're nonsense. Of course there's a beginning. It's just unidentifiable.

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Originally Posted by Katie_Kitty

I don't know why you're assuming no sundering would happen without us going to elpis. There's no reason to assume that.

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Perhaps its unfounded to say one definitely wouldnt happen, but its not an out of nowhere assumption to make. Venat prepares her faction and Hydaelyns summoning from the moment you leave Elpis behind, I find it strange for a coincidental set of circumstances to intersect to create the exact same outcome without the major instigating factor. Basically, I think it is highly unlikely that the sundering by Venat becoming Hydaelyn could happen without the time-loop.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

The difference is that if it's a mini-sundering of the shards then it seems a lot harder to accidentally only slice apart the correct bits of shards to isolate the right timeline. It seems like something that would need more deliberate intent than just everything equally duplicating at once.

It's also placing the cause of a split at a different level of reality – your version being on the same level as the Sundering and mine being something that happens on a higher level of reality, not involving shards or quantities of aether at all. They're very different mechanism concepts.

I agree with the assumption that whatever mechanism is at work in the Alexander storyline is still at work in Shadowbringers, and that's why I'm happy to argue that there's no inconsistency with it producing stable loops in one case and a split in another, but I disagree that the mechanism must be sundering.

It's also worth noting that Alexander itself is not, at least in its capacity as a time-travelling robot, the thing that creates the split in the timelines. It is simply the vehicle used to transport people through time, at which point those people's actions may or may not trigger a split.

Of course, one of those "people" is Alexander the thinking entity with deep knowledge of time and a cat sidekick, but still that doesn't mean Alexander has the direct power to split timelines. It has to deliberately get involved and manipulate events to ensure time stays on track, which means that stopping a split is not as simple as not using its powers to cause one.

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Well we're working from different starting points here I think.

I think the natural law of the Universe so to speak, is that time "wants" to remain clumped together and flowing the same way. A sufficiently powerful time machine can force a paradox to happen though, and when it does the natural consequence of that is that the world splits to support both outcomes.
It doesn't require any conscious effort, at least no more than a traditional 2nd timeline would, it's just how things are basically.

If the aliens of Otherplanetia invented a sufficiently powerful time machine and messed with the timeline to the point a paradox was created, then they'd sunder their world too.

Alexander would be getting involved and manipulating events to ensure they stay on track in large part to prevent mortals that don't really know what they're doing from accidentally splitting the world further.

Parts of the Ironworks research was probably trying to find a way to switch the Alex-tech safeties off :p

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Originally Posted by AlysanneVrannai

Perhaps its unfounded to say one definitely wouldnt happen, but its not an out of nowhere assumption to make. Venat prepares her faction and Hydaelyns summoning from the moment you leave Elpis behind, I find it strange for a coincidental set of circumstances to intersect to create the exact same outcome without the major instigating factor. Basically, I think it is highly unlikely that the sundering by Venat becoming Hydaelyn could happen without the time-loop.

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Maybe its not a loop? Hear me out.

Many people have noted the inconsistency with the cutscene showing Venat sunder the ancients vs what we're shown happened in Anem. Anyder's record crystals. People have explained it away as metaphor, but what if we actually did diverge the timelines? And what we saw in AA is what happened in our timeline (and the 8th umbral), but what we saw in the cutscene is what happened in that second timeline where we warned Venat? She summons Hydaelyn in both, b/c that's the logical course of action she ultimately comes to regardless, but the events are different depending on our presence or lack of it.



Either way, I don't see why Venat wouldn't have thought of or executed the Hydaelyn plan without foreknowledge of events. Its just the summoning of a primal. The Convocation thought up and summoned Zodiark without foreknowledge (that we know of), and that was while the world was falling down around their ears. Venat and her group, at least in the AA telling of events, came up with Hydaelyn either: in the same timeframe, or in the grace period after Zodiark had stabilized everything. Probably the latter, cus the only reason they invent Hydaelyn in the first place is in response to the proposal to kill new life to rez the Ancients, which was of course the last phase of the plan. Its more than possible they could come up with their own summon in that timeframe. It doesn't require forewarning from the future.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

Well we're working from different starting points here I think.

I think the natural law of the Universe so to speak, is that time "wants" to remain clumped together and flowing the same way. A sufficiently powerful time machine can force a paradox to happen though, and when it does the natural consequence of that is that the world splits to support both outcomes.

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I agree with parts of this. Time naturally wants to retain a single timeline, which is why "changed" events get absorbed into it if they can, but a split occurs spontaneously when a paradox is created.

The difference is in what we consider to be an unbreakable unit of time, what causes a paradox, and what sundering entails.

As I interpret it, sundering is a breaking of physical space that has nothing to do with time.

Compare a smaller example: Emet's illustrative "sundering" of Ryne. If that actually happened and we now permanently had two Rynes, we wouldn't consider them "split timelines of Ryne", but two now-independent people existing in the same physical space and time. They are basically identical but will lead separate lives and may not look exactly the same.

The worlds, similarly, are not separate timelines. They are physical copies of a single original object (located in neighbouring pocket dimensions, in this case), free to evolve independently but still all existing within the same flow of time and maintaining a degree of physical connection via the rift.

I think when time splits, the entire universe-full of time splits at once. All of space-time counts as a single unit, which is what I am calling a timeline.

As I'm sure I've said before by this point, the act of time travelling itself does not create a paradox, or the events of Alexander could not play out as they do. That storyline shows that you can travel to the past, influence things if the outcome is consistent with the present you came from, and return safely to your starting point.

Therefore the time machine itself is not responsible for the split. It is the actions of the time traveller once they arrive, combined with their pre-existing knowledge of what happens in this visited place and time, that determine whether their actions become part of the single flow of time or cause a split.

Basically, the less you know, the safer you are. We had no idea of what happened back in Elpis, and still have no idea what's going on in Pandæmonium – anything we do short of preventing the Final Days can become part of "stuff that always happened back in ancient times, but we didn't know about it until now".

On the other hand, G'raha goes back in time armed with detailed knowledge of what happened to the Source in the Eighth Calamity and the circumstances required to cause it.

His original arrival in Lakeland did not cause a paradox because he had no prior familiarity with the location and has no proof of a pre-existing alternate version of events. Thus, the Crystal Tower "always did" materialise in Lakeland shortly after the Flood. Instead, by averting the known circumstances of the calamity and making it impossible for it to occur, that is what creates a paradox (why is he here if he only came back to prevent something that won't happen?) and causes the spontaneous splitting of space-time – or perhaps "branching" is a better term.

If your hypothetical aliens from Otherplaneta invented a time machine and caused a paradox, then by my interpretation the whole universe would split – ourselves included – and we would have absolutely no idea it had happened. So really it doesn't concern us and we have no control over it, so for the sake of the story we can ignore the possibility entirely.

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Originally Posted by Alleluia

Maybe its not a loop? Hear me out.

Many people have noted the inconsistency with the cutscene showing Venat sunder the ancients vs what we're shown happened in Anem. Anyder's record crystals. People have explained it away as metaphor, but what if we actually did diverge the timelines? And what we saw in AA is what happened in our timeline (and the 8th umbral), but what we saw in the cutscene is what happened in that second timeline where we warned Venat? She summons Hydaelyn in both, b/c that's the logical course of action she ultimately comes to regardless, but the events are different depending on our presence or lack of it.

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I don't see how that could line up. The Hydaelyn who once met us in Elpis and was warned about the future has to be the one from our timeline, because she knows us when we meet again afterwards.

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Originally Posted by Alleluia

Many people have noted the inconsistency with the cutscene showing Venat sunder the ancients vs what we're shown happened in Anem. Anyder's record crystals. People have explained it away as metaphor, but what if we actually did diverge the timelines?

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Good point, I think the discrepancy can't be ignored. We basically have two version of events:

Everything we heard in Shadowbringers: Final Days happen, people sacrifice themselves to summon the primal Zodiark, more people are sacrificed to restore the world, some people have had enough, creating a divide between the ancients that even made Elidibus leave Zodiark to try and help mediate, eventually those rebels summon the primal Hydaelyn to bind Zodiark and Hydaelyn sunders everything.
What we saw in Endwalker: Venat knows exactly what is going to happen and while people are in the middle of summoning Zodiark (monsters are still being summoned at the same time as Venat does her thing, and Hythlodaeus, who was one of the sacrificed souls, is still alive), Venat shows up and sunders everything. We don't know how she got that power or how she turned into Hydaelyn or what happened to Zodiark and Elidibus.

These two versions of events are irreconcilable. Clearly the Shadowbringers version has to have happened in our timeline, since it has been corroborated by two people who lived through it as well as historical records, while the Endwalker version cannot be dismissed as a metaphor, since we saw it while traversing time and space. Why would the river of time show us a vague metaphor? It would obviously show us what actually happened.

The only possible conclusion is that we created a separate timeline with our actions in Elpis. We saw that timeline's sundering, not our own timeline's sundering.
Unfortunately that also creates some problems: Emet-Selch makes a reference to 'remember us' which can only have happened when we defeated him in our timeline, but at the same time he admits that he had 'forgotten' which is something that happened in the timeline we created in Elpis.
Similarly, Hydaelyn knows us from Elpis in our timeline while talking to us in our own timeline, which doesn't make any sense.


I don't see how there can be any explanation for this other than 'plot hole', which I guess, is what the whole 'oh yeah by the way our two timelines are kind of merging somehow' explanation in the game is supposed to cover.

If Venat had no knowledge of what was to come then how was it that Minfillia, as the oracle of light/Word of the Mother know that Ardbert's job wasn't complete when they traveled back to the first to stop the flood of Light? It was almost as if she knew the WoL would be coming to the first to try to save it...

"Your time has not yet come"

Also "Not even the most Valiant of Heros can stand alone"

Personally I think that Tycoon tech allowed them to bypass the normal time travel constrictions to instead slip into another timeline that splitted 13 thousand years ago. Its still possible that Venat was warned beforehand same as in our timeline, but who and how it was done would be different because it wasnt our WoL since we died before we could time travel, or even that Venat managed to escape the memory altering by herself but was forced to work with that knowledge alone since they needed Hermes mind no matter what to fight against the coming situation and would have instantly turned on them if the truth was revealed

The timeline during those 13 thousand years was pretty much the same but since that crucial point was different the branching happened much earlier than we though on Shadowbringers because our appearance in Elpis kickstarted an eons long gambit and Venat ways could be aparently similar but far different in intention in that "Bad End" timeline compared to ours

So after thinking a bit more about how to reconcile our timeline and the Elpis timeline, I remembered our first meeting with Hydaeyln in Endwalker.

There, she confirms the same origin story that we heard in ShB and then says:

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A conjunction has begun to form; an intertwining of your time and mine.[...]Then shall I honor the promise made in another time. Another age.

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You can use these lines to gain a coherent understanding of the different timelines shown in Endwalker:

The Hydaelyn we know is -presumably- the most powerful primal in existence, summoned long ago, and as a being with such immense power, she has some amount of insight into the flow of time and different timelines. Thus, she knows, albeit vaguely, that 'she' made a promise to the WoL in a different timeline.

This would also explain why, throughout the whole game, she never really talked to us directly about our meeting in Elpis.
The Venat that we met in Elpis and who we shared all this information with ("your time") isn't Hydaelyn. Our Hydaelyn never met us in Elpis ("and mine"), she just knows that there is some weird thing going on with different timelines.

'Our' Venat didn't even let Zodiark's summoning happen, based on what we saw in the river of time. It's clearly a separate timeline.

Hydaelyn lacks any kind of time powers, same as Zodiark despite being extremely more powerful than her (even if she can counter Zodiark due to her division skill). she is just saying that both their times finally aligned: She had to wait for our WoL to be born but also she couldnt spill the beams before the WoL traveled to the past to avoid a time paradox

Primals are created with an specific set of powers and the only known Primal with time related powers is Alexander.

it is true that Ancients have time related powers (like Elidibus sending us to the past or Gaia and Nabriales "slown time" shaenigans) but it was stated that time travel only gives at best a different perspective on some event and nothing will really change.

Peering/Altering different timelines is beyond them and only was managed by Garlond works after 200 years of research combining magiteck with allaghan's and Omega's tech plus Alexander's time bending powers and was a one way travel

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Originally Posted by Bhearil

Personally I think that Tycoon tech allowed them to bypass the normal time travel constrictions to instead slip into another timeline that splitted 13 thousand years ago.

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A timeline that split away 13,000 years ago would likely be as different as the Source is to the First. Not one you can just jump to and have everything the same except for a few details at the beginning while everything at the end is the same.

(Even if this were possible, it comes with the side consequence that the WoL who the Exarch waited a hundred years to save is not the person he once knew but an alternate-timeline copy, and every time he reminisces about our past time together he's actually remembering someone who isn't us but apparently is a perfect substitute.)

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Originally Posted by Bhearil

Peering/Altering different timelines is beyond them and only was managed by Garlond works after 200 years of research combining magiteck with allaghan's and Omega's tech plus Alexander's time bending powers and was a one way travel

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Indeed, and they don't (at least as shown) even have the power to jump timelines, only to move backwards along the same timeline. The branching timelines are a result of G'raha's actions after he arrives.


Your two posts seem to be confusingly at odds with each other. I didn't realise they were both from the same person until after I'd written the replies.

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Originally Posted by Vflower

'Our' Venat didn't even let Zodiark's summoning happen, based on what we saw in the river of time. It's clearly a separate timeline.

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The events we saw in the river of time are not literal. They can't be, although it's very vague about it. We have Venat witnessing a man attacked by a monster and not intervening; Hyth farewelling Emet as he goes to be one of the original sacrifices that gave birth to Zodiark, immediately followed by Venat confronting the group attempting to carry out a sacrifice to Zodiark.

It's all extremely unhelpful, and I hope we can ask for some further answers at the next lore Q&A.

Even if the timeline splitted 13 thousand years ago the events that transpired meanwhile should remain the same because if the "trigger" didnt happened 13 thousand years ago the consequences only would have manifested during late Stormblood. Traveling to the past allowed the present to have a "black box" that gave us a chance to break free from the End of Days, but everything in between remained unaltered, because both paralel worlds are virtually the same since the WoL visit to the past was unnoticed to everyone but Venat and she tried to keep it hidden until the proper time came.

Think about it: The fact that Wol visited or not the past doesnt change the End of Days arrival, and "dead end" timeline Hydaelyn on the surface seems to behave very similar to ours, which means that anything in between remained virtually the same.

If you could go to the ancient Rome and save an random slave that was supposed to die and instead lives his life normally, is not the same timeline anymore even if the actions of that slave living his life doesnt change history in any way because is one more among nameless millions of people living simple lives that never got recorded in history neither were relevant in any way to it

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Originally Posted by Bhearil

If you could go to the ancient Rome and save an random slave that was supposed to die and instead lives his life normally, is not the same timeline anymore even if the actions of that slave living his life doesnt change history in any way because is one more among nameless millions of people living simple lives that never got recorded in history neither were relevant in any way to it

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That's not how it works.

You change that one thing. A person lives instead of dying. Maybe they invent something or destroy something. Maybe they save someone else's life in turn, or murder someone. Maybe they startle a butterfly.

Maybe they have children and the consequences of every future generation ripples down through history: each descendant could marry someone who, in another path of time, married a different person – utterly changing the mix of people in the world over time. Each descendant again could invent or destroy things or change a further person's life.

You cannot change the starting circumstances of a whole world and leave it to run for 13,000 years and expect it to produce the same result.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Sadly, time flow in this game is a VERY confusing thing, and I believe only Alexander knows how everything works. Though somebody had a theory that may explain it...the Exarch's time jump wasn't just through time, but also space/dimension.

If you assume the timeline follows the rule of "You went back in time because you were supposed to in order to cause these events to happen", then we have a lot of stable time loops, nothing contradicting itself. With the exception of the Exarch, every other time travel method has followed this. Summoners of Alex go back and time and give birth to the tribe that eventually leads to his summoning, us going back in time to save ourselves from the laser attack in Alex raids, us traveling to Elpis which sets in motion the events that lead to the Final Days and the Sundering, etc. The Exarch...doesn't match that pattern, and only makes sense if it's a dimension hop, meaning something outside of the normal rules of time travel. Due to how the time flows, him being here is a paradox...which is accepted by the timeline adjusting to him helping cause the events that lead to us going back in time to Elpis.

Again, really confusing as hell overall, and only Alex could tell us how time really works.

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Then that means everything has been preordained and there is no free will.

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Originally Posted by Impulsikk

Then that means everything has been preordained and there is no free will.

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No, only certain events are preordained, and those that involve the important individuals you need. Everybody else's lives are not and are in a way, collateral. Example, Final Days in Thavnair, it was supposed to happen, was going to happen. What villagers changed and fell to despair did not matter, just that the event happened at all.

What G'raha's time jumping did was make a different branching timeline, while his original 8UC timeline continued into its own future. Just the same there are countless possibilities where Venat / Hydaelyn succeeded in saving the day, but since we exist as a consequence of the multitude of failures at her hands to change the future we dictated to her we can't observe those alternate realities.

Remember how in Back to the Future Doc and Marty make a bunch of jumps forward and back through time? Each time the "present" (1985) is different, but following time travel as it's been explained to us in this game the timelines they leave behind continue on - the "original" 1985, "better" 1985, "best" 1985, and "bad" 1985 all exist, but Doc and Marty can't observe them all and their time traveling shenanigans limit them to "best" 1985 by the end of the trilogy.

That is to say, the relative past is "preordained" because it already happened from our perspective and if events aren't set up so they roughly occur as we said we won't be in a position to go to Elpis, creating a temporal paradox. I think G'raha gets around this by having the altered past become his new future.

https://c.tenor.com/DV57xIl2lgkAAAAd...re-explain.gif

Further G'raha can't return to the 8UC timeline, because moving forward in time will only take him to the future of the Shadowbringers timeline (or what it would be if he'd vanished at whatever point he time traveled), just like the events on Elpis playing out any way besides a time loop that sets up the story as we know it would break the timeline and leave us unable to return to the "present" we wanted to save. (Remember, Doc and Marty couldn't go back to the 2015 Gray's Sports Almanac came from - going forward from "bad" 1985 would just take them to an equally "bad" 2015. And of course the Butterfly effect should render the Almanac useless at some point... but I digress.)

Time isn't something you play with lightly.