Endwalker Main Scenario Commentary & Feedback

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Originally Posted by Iscah

You know what would have been an excellent resolution to a side story problem if it could have been made canon?

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I like the idea, although I do think it would've been nonviable.

Remember that Alexander is ultimately optional content, and if you never touch it, then to your story, Alexander barely exists. So if the solution to powering the ship is Alexander, but you haven't done Alexander... what do you even see, does it even work as a payoff?

That said, I did find Alexander as a story to be surprisingly thin on the ground in references, which was surprising to me for how popular it is. Personally, if I were doing a bit of a punch-up on the story, that'd actually be how I'd save the problem of Labyrinthos dragging; have the Illuminati recur as a minor foe to add some action to the proceedings. If there's any group that'd have some fun reasons to mess with a spaceship and/or artificial habitation, it'd be the Illuminati.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

An explanation I've seen elsewhere that makes sense:

The inhabitants are initially recreated memories, as explained to us while we're exploring, but that changes when we summon Emet and Hyth and they work their magic to allow us to reclaim the other Scions' souls. This (according to the theory) flooded the whole zone with aether, replacing the dynamis that originally gave it form – so the Scions' aether is no longer needed to do the same job – and this seems to have affected the inhabitants as well. It has given them physical aether-based forms and they seem to have broken out of the frozen state they were trapped in.

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So would that mean

the Ultima Thule denizens weren’t composed of souls prior to Emet and Hythlodaeus’ magick and/or Meteoin’s defeat and the dead sun spilling out the souls it had had trapped inside it?

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Originally Posted by Iscah

What do you mean, I seem to have a pet subject...?

G'raha's timeline has always been an oddity because it contrasted with the Alexander plot before it, which indicates that time loops are the standard outcome of time travel shenanigans and G'raha's successful "breaking out" is inconsistent.

My own theory is that the split specifically happened because he altered the past in a way that could not be reconciled with his original future, so the timeline has to take a second course but the first one can't be shut down.

For everything else, the changes get absorbed into the single original timeline.

The "Elpis time loop" doesn't have anything to do with G'raha's time loop spiral besides that his actions paved the way for the timeline where the Elpis loop is completed.

You don't need one to happen "before" the other can be fulfilled. In the sort of objective whole-of-timeline view of everything that happened over time, they're just separate loops and swirls that link into each other.

We may feel like we "create" time as we live it, but as soon as it's possible to make contact with someone from another point in time, you have to accept that from another person's perspective your future has already happened even though you are in full control of your actions at all times.

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Wouldn’t it just be simpler to just accept that Alexander and Endwalker causal loop time travel while G’raha Tia in ShadowBringers does multiverse-theory (a la Future Trunks in DBZ) time travel. And therefore just assume that Exarch!G’raha’s timeline had a slightly different history even before the 8th Umbral Calamity?

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Originally Posted by Theozilla

So would that mean

the Ultima Thule denizens weren’t composed of souls prior to Emet and Hythlodaeus’ magick and/or Meteoin’s defeat and the dead sun spilling out the souls it had had trapped inside it?

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Spoooodles

Endsinger mentions how the souls inside her writhe and rage so I would say that’s likely.

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Originally Posted by Theozilla

Wouldn’t it just be simpler to just accept that Alexander and Endwalker causal loop time travel while G’raha Tia in ShadowBringers does multiverse-theory (a la Future Trunks in DBZ) time travel. And therefore just assume that Exarch!G’raha’s timeline had a slightly different history even before the 8th Umbral Calamity?

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That is basically what I "accept" already, though? G'raha's actions bring about a multiverse-style splitting of timelines despite all other examples so far resulting in causal loops in a single timeline. (Though I am not familiar enough with DBZ to know how that timeline originated exactly.)

The key thing is, there was only one timeline until the events of Shadowbringers caused it to diverge into one path that leads to the Eighth Calamity and a second path that does not. The second path could not have formed if G'raha did not come back from the future of the first path, but now they are simply equal paths for history to take.

I feel like it's something that is actually quite simple but in a way that is hard to explain, especially if people have a fundamentally different concept of how time works.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

That is basically what I "accept" already, though? G'raha's actions bring about a multiverse-style splitting of timelines despite all other examples so far resulting in causal loops in a single timeline. (Though I am not familiar enough with DBZ to know how that timeline originated exactly.)

The key thing is, there was only one timeline until the events of Shadowbringers caused it to diverge into one path that leads to the Eighth Calamity and a second path that does not. The second path could not have formed if G'raha did not come back from the future of the first path, but now they are simply equal paths for history to take.

I feel like it's something that is actually quite simple but in a way that is hard to explain, especially if people have a fundamentally different concept of how time works.

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Oh well, I was under the impression that there was frustration that FFXIV has two different types of time travel existing within the same narrative.
Also Exarch!G’raha’s original timeline doesn’t just diverge from the new one (our main timeline) in regards to the future. Because of Endwalker, Exarch!G’raha’s timeline also has to have a slightly different past as well since it never had its WoL travel back in time to do a causal loop, because the WoL was dead (and the 8th Umbral Calamity occurred instead of the second Final Days occurring), so therefore the Hydaelyn of that timeline still sundered the original world even without having met the WoL in Elpis.

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Originally Posted by Theozilla

Because of Endwalker, Exarch!G’raha’s timeline also has to have a slightly different past as well since it never had its WoL travel back in time to do a causal loop, because the WoL was dead

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This is where things get really wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey but very simple if you have the right picture in mind.

Our "other self" from the Eighth Calamity timeline does not need to travel back in time at all, and in fact would confuse things for our side of the time divergence if they did. The time loop only happens on our side.

Although the starting point for our time travel trip is after the two timelines diverge, our destination is before the split. What we do there affects "the past of both timelines simultaneously" because they aren't separate things yet.

Therefore it is our presence in Elpis, and ours alone, that is experienced and remembered by the people there.

(Or to look at it another way, if our other self somehow did make it to Elpis prior to their untimely demise, they would be arriving in the same Elpis that we visited ourselves. There is no alternate version of those events.)

About the last zone, the post MSQ dungeon and the side quests there

So I have finally finished all the side quests and done the two new LVL90 dungeons. And I am completely confused...

So in one dungeon we stopped the production of more weapons and after that we know plan to start a cafe in the last zone...

This is just something that I dont understand. Arent all of those beings in the last zone reconstructions of death people that Meteion met? Why do we fear the reproduction of more weapons if those robots are not even real or alive? Why would we built a cafe there?

Also the side quests made it feel like those are not just reconstructions but souls..yet Ysthola also mentioned in the main story that we fell for this act and that we should remember that they are not real.

Can someone explain this to me? @_@

About the role quest (Dancer)

I loved this one. Not only do we at least see Hien again but his actions with Yotsuyu do have consequences. I always could not believe how easily the people of Doma seemingly accepted that Tsuyu was able to run around after all Yotsuyu has done to the people. Seeing that they did harbor some very bad feelings towards their own king for that was great because you cant just get rid of all these negative feelings that fast.

Still I loved his idea at the end and cried some tears. The battle was awesome too and I loved the part Gosetsu played.

I cant help though to feel even worse when they pray for the souls to find rest...the WoL knows that there is nothing left...how much must that hurt?

About reaper

I just started that job and it just feels strange story wise. So we totally just made a contract with a voidsend and bascially collect souls to use as attacks...I know that we already did the souls part with the relic quests (which I also did not like) but we are going around using souls as batteries while we are also shocked that nothing is left of ones soul after turning into a beast...

I dont know if they explain it a bit more later but I just headcanon it now that we are only using some left overs of the souls and not the whole thing..otherwise we are just bascially destroying other peoples and animals chances at being reborn...

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Originally Posted by Alleo

So I have finally finished all the side quests and done the two new LVL90 dungeons. And I am completely confused...

So in one dungeon we stopped the production of more weapons and after that we know plan to start a cafe in the last zone...

This is just something that I dont understand. Arent all of those beings in the last zone reconstructions of death people that Meteion met? Why do we fear the reproduction of more weapons if those robots are not even real or alive? Why would we built a cafe there?

Also the side quests made it feel like those are not just reconstructions but souls..yet Ysthola also mentioned in the main story that we fell for this act and that we should remember that they are not real.

Can someone explain this to me? @_@

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A few thoughts on that dungeon.

Its my understanding that Meteion was gathering souls there as a source for her dynamis and when we arrive its Thancred's will bending the dynamis to create everything there. The question becomes, how accurate, how thorough, was everything recreated? Ysthola warns us that these are effectively illusions, souls with no aether, but that doesn't make them less real; get in a fight with one and it will hurt you. By a similar token, we have the soul of Sir, and possibly a great many of the race, but do we have all of them? The Omicrons spanned multiple worlds and while they are sentient, are all machines on their world sentient? Are their factories sentient? Its shown during the MSQ that things were created well enough to mimic electricity and wireless communication. My interpretation was that regardless if the soul of Sigma was there, we were sending a communication to somewhere else to change what the factories were doing on some far away planet. If we hadn't, then eventually we'd have a horde of drone missiles coming towards Etheirys.

As for the cafe...the lopporits didn't get the memo that these things aren't real so they're treating them like a new race they've met. And its probably a set up for the beast tribe quests later.

My feels and thoughts after the raids:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...id-Spoilers%29

Still leveling Summoner as opposed to touching the new raid—and got to see how the tank trusts handle the level 87 dungeon.

Of course Emet-Selch would be a faux Dark Knight. It's arguably even more fitting for him than Black Mage, lol. Tempted to swap over to Scholar—which I have no idea how to play—just to check out Venat as a faux Paladin.

I'll probably get to the raid questline sooner or later. Though I think I saw a new thread up for that, so I'll be putting my thoughts there instead, I guess.