Did we actually avert the final days?

There's an old cliche' in timetravel in fiction that sometimes theorizes if you fix something from happening, the universe may replace it with something else to fix the timeline.

My friend on Discord brought up a point when we were discussing. Both us and Krile saw visions of the final days. OTHER than Mikoto in Bozja, the echo does not usually show the future, hers was special. It does show memories.

So were we and Krile just seeing Amaurot's final days, or is there something that may still happen in place of what we thought was the final days? As in OUR final days, not the one we had that echoed Amaurot.

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Originally Posted by Nekaru_Infitima

There's an old cliche' in timetravel in fiction that sometimes theorizes if you fix something from happening, the universe may replace it with something else to fix the timeline.

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"Soft Determinism" seems to have been a possibility Venat was considering, but I'm not sure her musing on it turned out to be accurate, as Hades refers to himself showing up to make the field of flowers and deliver the Ancients' final message as (variable presentation by language) him being the "the keystone propping up Venat's meddling with time" and making sure it all holds. (Time travel stories really frustrate me with what they do to the scale and stakes.)

I would very much love to hear Oda and Ishikawa sit down and give us a quick run-through of how they see the time shenanigans and what we can and can't take for granted, because it barely makes sense to me in a dozen ways and I don't think I'll ever get there without knowing their epistemology, even if their epistemology is, "We don't care if it doesn't make sense, please just think of the Rift and dynamis as applied phlebotinum."

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Originally Posted by Nekaru_Infitima

Both us and Krile saw visions of the final days. OTHER than Mikoto in Bozja, the echo does not usually show the future, hers was special.

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My personal theory was that when we saw things others didn't it was because we were sensitive to things others weren't seeing something that was still too subtle for others to see. I think from an out-of-world point of view it's relatively safe to assume this plot point is over. Such a big deal was made of all the factors that came together to beat it, all we can do now is cheapen it. (But I've said that before and been wrong so...)

I think we'll probably end up dealing with some of the fallout in the 6.x MSQ like some stray blasphemies in dungeons and quests.

While Alphinaud kind of dismisses them by saying the city states can handle what remains, the role quests wouldn't exist if it was that simple...though that could also just be an excuse for letting people ignore doing the role quests entirely.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I think we'll probably end up dealing with some of the fallout in the 6.x MSQ like some stray blasphemies in dungeons and quests.

While Alphinaud kind of dismisses them by saying the city states can handle what remains, the role quests wouldn't exist if it was that simple...though that could also just be an excuse for letting people ignore doing the role quests entirely.

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It's similar to sin eaters in Shadowbringers: just because we cut off the course, doesn't mean there's not some lingering problems that themselves could proliferate. Which, yeah, is essentially an excuse to still have the role quests be about dealing with the Blasphemies while still having the crisis be over. We turned off the tap, but the water's still in the tub.

The way that both 6.0 was written as well as how the developers talked about the future patches says to me that, yeah, we did stop the Final Days. We're not doing a patches-finale which kinda necessitates 'oh but did you REALLY save the day', we did the thing and what comes later is Something Else. Which yeah, will most likely be partially still dealing with the aftermath, I'd be disappointed if it didn't, but it won't be on the scale of 'BUT NIDHOGG', and the End of Days itself will be behind us.

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Originally Posted by Nekaru_Infitima

There's an old cliche' in timetravel in fiction that sometimes theorizes if you fix something from happening, the universe may replace it with something else to fix the timeline.

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That is essentially what happened when we were time-travelling. We attempted to warn them about the Final Days and getting tempered by Zodiark, and the universe conspired to throw a new twist that stopped our message from changing anything (except the bits it was always destined to affect).

Of course, that only holds if you look at it from the perspective of assuming we changed things at all by visiting Elpis, rather than that it simply always did happen this way and we just had no idea of the details until now, which seems to be the actual case.

But even if the universe is actively subverting a time-traveller's attempts to change past events, we are not time-travelling when we defeat the Endsinger –so unless there is some kind of immutable prophecy requiring the Final Days to happen regardless, there's no reason for a new threat to arise to replace it.

Just have to think about the mechanism for how the Endsinger's "song" worked. It basically took the Dynamis and injected it into the planet for a long time or played at the Dynamis already present in the planet, just being harmless due to Zodiark's existence. It's like Cleretic said. The water is still in the tub. It's also now plain to see for a lot of people, and in the role quests there are still active transformations taking place when any life gives into despair.

Though, it might also mean that because the star is still sundered, it might always be this way universe wide for beings with lower aetheric density. Dynamis might be quite the insidious force even without a muse giving it direction(or perhaps what's in motion stays in motion). It gives the writers a lot of room to write in new baddies too.