A Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Citation At Last

I've always been a big proponent of, "Until we have a citation that excludes other possibilities, it's speculation/theory." Even if speculation makes sense, that doesn't necessarily confirm it as canon, just yet. (More than one thing can make sense at the same time, after all.) One of the most consequential places I've been hesitant to make any leaps is the nature of FFXIV and spacetime. The Alexander loop, the 8th Umbral Era branch, the even larger Elpis/Endsinger loop, so on and so on.

Welp: It's here.

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Originally Posted by Naoki Yoshida

The way we imagine space-time in FFXIV is what's known as the branch theory, i.e. there isn't just one timeline, but each time an event occurs, it splits into different branches. The branch where the 8th plague took place, i.e. the poisoning of the Scions and the Warrior of Light, their deaths, the awakening of G'raha Tia in the Crystal Tower, who will return to the past, etc. This branch of space-time still exists and continues even after G'raha's departure. If we had to sum this up in a single word, it's the Multiverse theory.

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"...each time an event happens..."
"...in a word <...> the multiverse..."

The bootstrap paradoxes, the Y-shaped timeline, and a (potentially) much more open/expansive multiverse are all in play at once.

Deryk have mercy.



Bonus: Turns out those, "...Wait, isn't it a little early for that hopeful tone on the other side of the Y-shaped timeline?" concerns also have merit, lol.

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Originally Posted by Naoki Yoshida

In the stories published the summer after Shadowbringers was released, there's a story set in [the other Source, where the 8th Umbral Era happened] after G'raha's departure, to show you that life goes on in this reflection. <...> In this version of reality, Emet-Selch is surely their greatest enemy, and they face threats previously unknown to them. Since the Warrior of Light died in the 8th Umbral Calamity, no one can stop or kill him, so, somewhere, he's still out there.

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"Infinite splits every time an event occurs" is a horrible way to run a narrative, because it basically makes your efforts worthless in the grand scheme of things when it just means there's an infinite amount of other universes where you failed.

Additionally, it seems to fly in the face of canon information about the nature of time, such as the discussion between Mide and Dayan at the end of Alexander, or the entire ability for stable time loops to form, or the value of "going back in time to change it" when you can just suppose there are already a block of realities where the world didn't get ruined the way yours did.

The whole story does not make sense in an infinitely splitting multiverse. The splitting of the timeline has to be an extraordinary event to make the narrative work.

Yoshida's past statements have sounded like he's just interpreting the story as much as any of us, and if that's the case then I think he's fallen for the same false dichotomy of "infinitely splitting multiverse VS single timeline" just because there was one clear instance of a split timeline.

On the separate question of threats remaining for the Eighth Umbral Calamity timeline, there was already no question of those Ascian threats remaining.

We can reason that in the absence of the WoL, both Emet-Selch and Elidibus survived and are doubtless scheming to bring about the Ninth Calamity, if Elidibus hasn't had a complete mental breakdown by this point.

Meteion is still out there, but Fandaniel's scheming is still kept at bay by the elder Ascians' presence, so that entire issue is something for the future.

Hydaelyn might be out of battery, or might have been replenished by the influx of Light aether.

The Warrior of Light will be reborn eventually and Hydaelyn can call to them again, and this time she can reveal everything because she is no longer bound to trying keep the time loop stable.

The events of Dawntrail are a further complication, but perhaps we can assume that whatever happened in the other timeline's rite of succession (with possible derailing from worldwide effects of Black Rose) was an outcome that never led to the worlds being bridged, so Sphene is not a threat and is just off in her own shard quietly running out of battery.

Yeah, this is generally how I assumed it worked. Fortunately, as intimidating as branch theory sounds, it doesn't actually ask all that much of you. Sure, theoretically the WoL making a snarky response in Stormblood that you didn't pick might have led to an alternate universe where giant lizards rule, but you only have to care about that if that alternate universe somehow turns up. And in a setting where the amount of people capable of time travel is vanishingly small, and the amount of people who can cross dimensions is likely even smaller (remembering that shards aren't alternate dimensions in this metric), that's not especially likely to happen.

I think it just boils down to YoshiP playing it safe and not wanting to commit to any specific thing and be forced to take it back later.

Early Ff14 he had been called out for wrong information (ex how housing would be FC only, then how it’d be a different system for private, then just it’s the same). I’m sure he loves the game, and cares about it/plays it for fun, but I don’t think he necessarily has a deep grasp of in game lore, as he has a lore team for that.

In the same interview, when asked if Ascians are coming back or not, his answer was an elaborate form of “man I dunno that ‘chit, but maybe if the writers want to”. (Convocation members not easy to kill, could come back if the story needed it kinda quote)

for the love of hydaelyn, we better hope that the other Emet (or anyone else for this matter) dont find a way to travel to our world line as Raha did.

this open soo much room for bad writing

"Potential" really is the key word.

In the past, a lot of my arguments have hinged on, "Wouldn't it be better for the long-term health of any world-setting if there wasn't that potential?" So often with such tropes, the more you lean on time travel / alternate universes / alternate timelines / alternate dimensions, the less prominent and relevant the place you're actually from and fighting for seems, and the less consequential basically any plot point becomes because that plot point only even exists conditionally relative to where the story is currently focused. You have to rely on writers to not make choices that inadvertently create those conditions.

In a world-setting like this, I usually prefer "the infinite multiverse" of possible timelines and realities be canonically "unmanifest" until it is used and relevant. For example, you could say only the Y-shaped timeline "exists" but the sea of swirling chaos beyond the rift, all that unrealized potential time and space, is the "real" multiverse. (It could exist...but it doesn't.) It's like a safeguard against temptation to devalue the world-setting without proper precautions.

But, in the end, I suppose we're relying on people to not choose "bad writing", either way, right? It's up to them whether that potential manifests - because it's not real. It's fiction. The "unseen" isn't really there (yet). And from that perspective, I can understand why the writers would be tempted to always err on the side of "more wiggle room to create more content", and that's really all a "branching" / "multiverse" space is - increased freedom to choose whatever you want whenever you want. We're hoping they won't choose the lame options regardless of what is and is not potentially on the table, lol.

I really appreciate the fact that Yoshi-p put this out there. With serial works involving different writers over time, you really need to have a degree of consistency, which requires an internal set of rules. It's about having respect for the lore that previous stories have built. Having the EE as an agreed-on and standardized 'canon' source is helpful in establishing that consistency across different arcs.

I'm also glad that they're sticking with the shard diagram that they constructed from EE Vol. 3 (p.13). It's interesting because the interviewer specifically references the Twelfth Shard (rejoined in the Second Umbral Calamity of Lightning), but Yoshi-p re-iterates that worlds that have been rejoined are definitively gone. I think the implication here is that Living Memory is part of one of the four unaccounted for shards (Fourth, Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh). Which makes me a bit sad, in a way, because I would love to see even one completely intact shard as another world to explore in its entirety.

The comment on different elementally-aspected Floods is likewise really interesting, especially in the context of LM. There's a really interesting comment that Mitron makes along these lines during the Eden raid series, but I'm curious to know what direction they go with it. I also appreciate the fact that there may be the opportunity to learn more about shards that were destroyed from their survivors in the future. In short, it sounds like they're keeping storytelling possibilities open while preserving existing lore, which I'm glad for.

I will say as an aside, this partial fusion business reminds me a lot of Dragon Quest VII, which was my favorite installment in that series. I wonder if at some point in the future we'll have different fragments of the remaining worlds spliced into our own, creating new regions to explore and resulting in interesting topological connections between different shard landmasses.

I mean, at the end of the day, nothing has really changed. Split timelines had been implied since the moment that short story was published. The multiverse is not really "at play" so far as we've seen (we are not more at risk of timeline jumping than we were before this comment), it's just what we'd already seen. He's just clarifying that it is what it appeared to be from that story.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I think it just boils down to YoshiP playing it safe and not wanting to commit to any specific thing and be forced to take it back later.

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Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

I mean, at the end of the day, nothing has really changed.

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This isn't the minor statement you guys seem to think it is.

There was no need to confirm that there was a split timeline in play. But the split seemed to be an extraordinary event in an otherwise single timeline where time loops can form.

If Yoshida is not just guessing and not being mistranslated here, he's introducing the existence of countless additional timelines, many of them where we failed one way or another.

It devalues our victories if it always equally creates a world where we lose.

I just don't know if he even means it, since he goes on to only talk about the state of things in the one specific alternate timeline implied to be a unique split, and not the many he's just spun into existence by declaring there are many other splits.

The Alexander storyline already introduced the concept of countless timelines:

'Alexander dreamed all the realities imaginable - all the realities mathematically computable - and in the end, reached a single, logical conclusion. It would change nothing, and erase itself from existence.'

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'There was but a single time Alexander was spurred into action - not to change history, but preserve it. The summoning of the colossus, and events that followed, had potentially disastrous consequence for our reality. Its fabric strained to accommodate an infinite number of potential futures separated by nary a thread.' (Dayan, Lv. 60 Judgement Day)

Not every outcome is possible or even equally probable. Nor do past splits really matter, as we know from the short story that Yoshi-p references in the interview:

'Though we shall remain forever on different pages of history ─ and different books, besides ─ I take comfort in knowing we strive for a future of the selfsame brightness.' (Biggs III, Tales from the Shadows: An Unpromised Tomorrow).

It's a bit like how a quantum mechanical description of the universe might work, except where every possible sequence of outcomes is recorded in parallel as its own 'timeline'. Which could be the case, but we'd have no way of knowing because they would perpetually diverge and not be able to interact.

From a storywriting perspective, it doesn't really change anything outside of showing you 'what if' cases and letting you understand the consequences of decisions. You're still primarily concerned with one timeline, namely, the one we exist in.

I love this game, but I'm done with the fanservice and lack of character building.

This time lore, while interesting, comes with the tease that an alternate Emet is out there waiting to be a threat.

Emet, in my opinion, was the greatest villain this game has produced. He was swan-songed in Endwalker. Leave him there.

Seriously, I played through all of Dawntrail and I honestly have no idea what the real threat of the new narrative is. Frankly, Dawntrail has the weakest villains to date.

And you want to tease alternate Emet...

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Originally Posted by Lyth

The Alexander storyline already introduced the concept of countless timelines:

'Alexander dreamed all the realities imaginable - all the realities mathematically computable - and in the end, reached a single, logical conclusion. It would change nothing, and erase itself from existence.'

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'There was but a single time Alexander was spurred into action - not to change history, but preserve it. The summoning of the colossus, and events that followed, had potentially disastrous consequence for our reality. Its fabric strained to accommodate an infinite number of potential futures separated by nary a thread.' (Dayan, Lv. 60 Judgement Day)

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The thing is, I don't see that as evidence of a permanent, ever-splitting multiverse, but the opposite – there is ideally only a single timeline, which Alexander is trying to safeguard both by calculating its best possible route and by ensuring that any time-travel meddling will form stable time loops rather than changing something and causing a split.

While the possibility of time travel is in play (I take from these quotes), the ideally-single timeline becomes strained, as each second brings new possibilities of it diverging off in new directions if the time traveller does something incompatible with their original future. But this is a very different prospect to it spontaneously splitting all the time, and as Dayan says, it is not the intended state of the timeline.

To go back to the explanation you quoted in part:

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There was but a single time Alexander was spurred to action─not to change history, but to preserve it. The summoning of the colossus, and the events that followed, had potentially disastrous consequence for our reality. Its fabric strained to accommodate an infinite number of potential futures separated by nary a thread.
Were the wings of time to fall into the hands of the Illuminati, the repercussions would be dire indeed. History would be rewritten over and over again, each time bleeding the land of aether. And in the end, the colossus would usher in another calamity.
To prevent this tragedy─to preserve the circle of time as it had already been set in motion─Alexander sent forth a humble servant to do its bidding.
A clockwork coeurl, an eternal child, to gently nudge history back onto its proper path.

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The "infinite potential futures" were an unnatural strain on the timeline caused by Quickthinx's scheme; preventing it brought time back to its ideal state, a single "proper path".

That path diverged later to bring about the Eighth Calamity timeline, of course, but if it was just a single split then perhaps that can be accommodated, especially when it becomes essentially a necessary loop-the-loop to build the Crystal TARDIS (the work of several lifetimes) and get it positioned to defend the other half of the split timeline from ruin, twice – the best possible outcome Alexander could hope for, indeed.

I don't think the writers really have a plan with the time travel stuff. Alexander and Elpis were closed loops because they thought it made for a good story, and Shadowbringers wasn't because they thought it made for a good story. And now they're saying it's all an open ended multiverse where new timelines are constantly formed because that's a convenient way to dismiss the incongruence.

Despite what everyone seems to be concluding elsewhere, it feels likely to me the Milalla also travelled through time and Alexandria originates from prior to the 2nd Umbral Calamity, too - that possibility was explicitly raised within the narrative, and it's an hourglass, after all. I don't understand why anyone would expect adherence to any consistent set of metaphysical rules when Shadowbringers and Endwalker made it obvious this is all being written by the seat of their pants.

I am actively avoiding this forum in general due to still working my Minfilia alt/new main WoL(?) through Endwalker. Already had a few Dawntrail things spoiled for me elsewhere, so no sense in taking chances. But I saw the title and had to click on it.

I feel so very, very validated now.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

Despite what everyone seems to be concluding elsewhere, it feels likely to me the Milalla also travelled through time and Alexandria originates from prior to the 2nd Umbral Calamity, too - that possibility was explicitly raised within the narrative, and it's an hourglass, after all. I don't understand why anyone would expect adherence to any consistent set of metaphysical rules when Shadowbringers and Endwalker made it obvious this is all being written by the seat of their pants.

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I mean, with that one I'd more caution an Occam's Razor situation than anything; it's not that it's impossible that the Unlost World is from the shard lost by the Second Calamity, it's that it's less likely than another possible option (that it's from some other shard that didn't get rejoined).

It's a 'why take a longer road to the same destination' kind of problem.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I mean, with that one I'd more caution an Occam's Razor situation than anything; it's not that it's impossible that the Unlost World is from the shard lost by the Second Calamity, it's that it's less likely than another possible option (that it's from some other shard that didn't get rejoined).

It's a 'why take a longer road to the same destination' kind of problem.

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With respect, that's true only from the perspective of a reader. It's "simpler" for the Milalla not to have time traveled, and for it not to be possible for a remnant of a rejoined shard to be left floating in the void insofar as that concept has never been established, but only in an in-universe sense where this all some real unfolding history.

If you view the final scenario as the product of a series of creative decisions going from the foundations of the premise to the specifics, it seems more likely they decided on having a lightning-themed group from the lightning-themed dead shard first, then just fudged the details to make it work with the planned metaplot and decisions from the other creative departments, like the appearance of the post-MSQ state of Living Memory.

I could be wrong, but...

Without getting into this game specifically, modern media has taught me that "multiverse" is too often an excuse for lazy writing. Want to bring back dead characters? Multiverse. Want to change the rules of how the world works? Multiverse. Want to retcon another writer's story to fit your own ideas? Multiverse. Nothing is impossible; everything is meaningless.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

And now they're saying it's all an open ended multiverse where new timelines are constantly formed because that's a convenient way to dismiss the incongruence.

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I've been saying for some time that I don't see an incongruence between the "usually stable loops but one instance of a split". Both can coexist with the right set of rules.

It makes sense to me that the setting seems to prefer stable time loops if it is possible for them to form, but a split can result if someone is time-travelling to the past and creates a situation that contradicts the future they came from, so the timeline splits due to the paradox.

Introducing infinite additional worlds is what feels like the incongruence to me. I was saying that when it was theoretical, and I'm sticking to it now.

Iscah, honestly, it feels like you're doing a lot of Doomsaying right now. In theory, there is a possibility that the writing team will throw everything in the garbage and instead focus MSQ entirely on Hildibrand-style shenanigans. In theory, it's entirely plausible we'll get the Turali version of Ifrit that's actually very nice and gives ice cream to children. In theory, it's possible that CU3 decides there'll be no more MSQ going forward and we'll just get new raid content. It's not a 100% possibility, but it's not 0, either.

That's what that answer read to me as, at least. And it's not even the first time that Yoshi-P's given an answer that basically amounts to "I mean, this is open here if you want to write fanfic about it." Because they like to poke at player creativity, and the "multiverse theory" he's talking about is basically locked to two universes which were already "connected" back in ShB (and if anything, sounds to me more like "hey, if our writers want to write another short story about that timeline, or you guys want to write fanfic about it, who am I to stop you/them?"

In no way is he saying we're going to get travelers from the universe where Varis was a good father and Zenos is our best friend but for reals this time.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

"Infinite splits every time an event occurs" is a horrible way to run a narrative, because it basically makes your efforts worthless in the grand scheme of things when it just means there's an infinite amount of other universes where you failed.

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I mean, yeah. In the "grand scheme of things". But the grand scheme of things doesn't really matter. Our victories and sacrifices, in our timeline and universe, will always be important because they are [I]our[/I ]victories and sacrifices, in our timeline and universe. Remember the Ea? The folks that realized eventually, they'll the universe will die of heat death, so they just gave up? Thinking what we do doesn't matter because there's another version of us out there somewhere is the same thing, on even a grander scale.

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Originally Posted by Kesey

Seriously, I played through all of Dawntrail and I honestly have no idea what the real threat of the new narrative is. Frankly, Dawntrail has the weakest villains to date.

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I have a theory for the next major villain...

One of my theories? Azem. Maybe us being Azem is a red herring. Or maybe it's not, we're the Azem of the Source, and we merged with the Azem of the First; but the other Azem is out there and wants to merge with us. Even if it's against our will. Either way, Azem's Legacy is going to 100% play a roll in the future, given the artifact at the end of Dawntrail.

All I really got from the interview is he was specifically asked about the 8th Umbral Calamity timeline, and on-the-spot, made a comparison to it and the present we play in being like two different branches of a multiverse. That's not really confirmation of anything to me, especially not that the writing team is crafting stories around it in the near future or that's it's any confirmation of something bigger than what we already know about the 8th timeline's existence.

If we're really being honest, 'Interview Naoki Yoshida' is not at all a reliable source of game lore. This is the same guy that was asked at the media tour what lore to go over to prep for Dawntrail and responded with two things (The names of the Convocation, and Myths of the Realm) that had literally nothing to do with the MSQ at all.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

The "infinite potential futures" were an unnatural strain on the timeline caused by Quickthinx's scheme; preventing it brought time back to its ideal state, a single "proper path".

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My interpretation of this was that at the moment of Alexander's summoning, the timeline could have diverged in infinite possible directions based off of Alexander's decision. For example, Dayan describes a future in which Alexander averts the Seventh Umbral Calamity by sweeping Dalamud out of the sky. It's not a singular bifurcation on a decision tree. Alexander had the power to change absolutely anything in the timeline in an instant. That's why the infinite 'potential futures' (i.e. a multifurcation) were separated by 'nary a thread'.

It's worth noting that Yoshi-p isn't necessarily invoking western pop-culture interpretations of a 'multiverse' when he discusses 'branch theory'. I don't think he's suggesting that all the Azem reboots are going to get together and make an ensemble film. Nor is he implying that 8UC Emet is going to lose his memory, get a cyborg arm, and then fall into a dimensional rift into our world. I think what he's describing sounds a lot more like the standard light novel 'What if' side story, where you evaluate the consequences of a specific decision against the events of the story. The point of the 8UC 'What if' was that humanity would find a way to survive even without the Warrior of Light, but the course of that history remains unwritten.

I think an important consideration in this is that significantly altering events in the past causes timelines to diverge. If you go back into the past and change an event, you are now in a new timeline and cannot return to the old one. G'raha has no way of returning to the 8UC timeline, for example. You can't really jump timelines the same way that you do dimensional travel. We have dimensional travel already, as each shard exists in the same physical co-ordinates but on a separate, displaced layer of reality (EE Vol 3, p.13). You are always continuously existing in one singular timeline, regardless of what you do. Changing an event, either in the past or present, just causes your current timeline to splinter off and bifurcate. The alternate timelines are specifically what you didn't do, and you have no real way of interacting with that.

I suppose a mathematical way of thinking of it is that your trajectory within a timeline is path-dependent, while spatial or dimensional travel isn't.

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Originally Posted by DreadCrow

I have a theory for the next major villain...

One of my theories? Azem. Maybe us being Azem is a red herring. Or maybe it's not, we're the Azem of the Source, and we merged with the Azem of the First; but the other Azem is out there and wants to merge with us. Even if it's against our will. Either way, Azem's Legacy is going to 100% play a roll in the future, given the artifact at the end of Dawntrail.

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Idk, maybe I just miss the days when you had a masked villain and had months to a year to speculate what their motivation is and who they are. At this point what are we waiting for? To ease relations between Alexandria and Tuliyollal? Have a mentor moment with Gulool Ja so he can decide what do with Alexandria? Help Koana take Alexandrian tech to Tural? None of these really cry we have a dungeon and/or trial waiting in the wing. Would it have killed them to have two face obscured by shadows/masks people say things are complicated now that Azem's reincarnation has the key and something needs to be done about it--then cut to the WOL looking at the key and map of Etheirys? I'm not feeling SE's "excitement" to bring us a new story line and, frankly, they are playing their cards too close to their chest.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

There was no need to confirm that there was a split timeline in play. But the split seemed to be an extraordinary event in an otherwise single timeline where time loops can form.

If Yoshida is not just guessing and not being mistranslated here, he's introducing the existence of countless additional timelines, many of them where we failed one way or another.

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I mean, the existence of Shadowbringers as it is already introduced the split. They could have have worked out a million different story angles to get G’raha on the first without need of a future time travel bit. So whether we like it or not, time’s been split. I personally was fine here because it was “hard” to do and nobody could believe it possible, until it was easy to do and send us to Elpis. Magic!

Furthermore, I do think it’s as light a thing as it is. YoshiP has his writers pitch ideas, which I’m sure he hears a lot of, before settling on which threads make it into a particular expansion. I’m sure he keeps track to the best of his abilities, but he also probably has a lot of plates spinning, so to speak.

So when asked on some specific minutiae, rather than commit, he probably just talks about possibilities and vagueness to not cut off his writers.

because you know at least one write already pitched alternate timeline Emet as a future villain because of course they did.

Ultimately,it’s a video game. There are no rules that require it to adhere to any specifics. If tomorrow they said Alexandria is in fact the 2nd shard and “whoops, we got the order wrong”, or “oh they just time traveled from the ice calamity to just before lightning on the 12th.” We’d just have to accept it, as dumb and illogical as it may be.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I mean, the existence of Shadowbringers as it is already introduced the split. They could have have worked out a million different story angles to get G’raha on the first without need of a future time travel bit. So whether we like it or not, time’s been split. I personally was fine here because it was “hard” to do and nobody could believe it possible, until it was easy to do and send us to Elpis. Magic!

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I am not in any way arguing again the fact that the timeline split once due to the events of Shadowbringers.

In fact I am arguing in favour of the arguments you are putting in favour of it – it was hard to do, it took effort to cause an extremely rare outcome of a split timeline. That is the way to marry up the ability to split timelines with the discussion in Alexander about time having a single proper path.

What I'm objecting to is the proposal that there are a constantly, infinitely splitting array of timelines forming spontaneously "each time an event occurs".

In fact, I'm not even sure that it's possible for stable loops to form in an infinitely splitting many-timelines scenario, if "time-traveller is present"/"time-traveller is not present" is a difference that immediately causes another split.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

My interpretation of this was that at the moment of Alexander's summoning, the timeline could have diverged in infinite possible directions based off of Alexander's decision. For example, Dayan describes a future in which Alexander averts the Seventh Umbral Calamity by sweeping Dalamud out of the sky. It's not a singular bifurcation on a decision tree. Alexander had the power to change absolutely anything in the timeline in an instant. That's why the infinite 'potential futures' (i.e. a multifurcation) were separated by 'nary a thread'.

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Dayan clearly describes these as Alexander's predictions of possible alternate outcomes, particularly focused on whether it could improve the overall state of the world by intervening.

Again, the relevant conversation in full:

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MIDE
My love...! What...what is this place?

DAYAN
How best to put it? We stand inside a mathematical simulation, calculated and projected by the device at the heart of the colossus. One might equally say it is the dream that Alexander dreams...

MIDE
And what of our companions? Are they...?

DAYAN
...Their fate was not mine to change, Mide. All that came to pass did so for a reason. History is as it was─as it should be─free of the paradoxes that spelled its undoing.
From this place─unfettered by the mortal construct of time─Alexander looks out upon past, present, and future, seeing infinite possibilities. I see what it sees, and feel what it feels─this perfect machine, born from yearnings for an ideal world.
Oh, if you could see the worlds we have seen! A world in which the Illuminati rule history with an iron fist, every nation brought under their yoke. A world in which Alexander spread wide the wings of time and swept the lesser moon from the heavens, averting the Calamity...
Alexander dreamed all the realities imaginable─all the realities mathematically computable─and in the end, reached a single, logical conclusion. It would change nothing, and erase itself from existence.

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Alexander dreamed – calculated – these visions of worlds that never were. It is not presented as an alternate reality that exists, only that could have existed depending on different factors.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's worth noting that Yoshi-p isn't necessarily invoking western pop-culture interpretations of a 'multiverse' when he discusses 'branch theory'. I don't think he's suggesting that all the Azem reboots are going to get together and make an ensemble film. Nor is he implying that 8UC Emet is going to lose his memory, get a cyborg arm, and then fall into a dimensional rift into our world. I think what he's describing sounds a lot more like the standard light novel 'What if' side story, where you evaluate the consequences of a specific decision against the events of the story. The point of the 8UC 'What if' was that humanity would find a way to survive even without the Warrior of Light, but the course of that history remains unwritten.

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Again, I'm not objecting to having this one isolated what-if alternate timeline or even hypothesising how things would play out in this one alternate timeline. But it can be created in isolation without needing the infinite-splitting scenario where for every victory we achieve, there's also a newly created timeline where we lost and the world is a worse place for the people occupying it.

Will we ever see that world? No. Will those people's plight ever directly affect us? No. But still, the author's pen has power – it created that suffering world for no purpose beyond a throwaway explanation that doesn't even fit the canon evidence.

That's why I don't like this statement, casually declaring that there are ever-splitting worlds even though we only need to deal with these two specific strands that could be – and from my interpretation of canon, actually were – written to exist alone, only split apart because someone did it deliberately, and with a second outcome that was an improvement on the first.

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Originally Posted by Mixawaves

If we're really being honest, 'Interview Naoki Yoshida' is not at all a reliable source of game lore. This is the same guy that was asked at the media tour what lore to go over to prep for Dawntrail and responded with two things (The names of the Convocation, and Myths of the Realm) that had literally nothing to do with the MSQ at all.

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This is my feeling on it too. He runs the game overall but it's not his job to plan the intricacies of the lore and may be vulnerable to misinterpreting the finer points as much as any of us.

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Originally Posted by WhiteArchmage

In no way is he saying we're going to get travelers from the universe where Varis was a good father and Zenos is our best friend but for reals this time.

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This is not remotely my argument. "Multiverse where things are topsy-turvy for the fun of writing it" is essentially what they're writing with the shards now anyway, not that I'm fond of it, but they don't need a time-based multiverse to write that thing if they want to.

I think that stuff about the names of the convocation and Myths of the Realm probably is going somewhere. I remember everyone had a similar "??? that never happened, does he even know the story for his own game" when he gave an Endwalker launch interview about how Zenos's reaper avatar was going to be important, and we all know how that went after a couple patches.

I think Yoshi-P knows exactly what he's saying. We know from prior interviews that he sits on the story planning team with the writing leads, and influences it a fair amount himself. I think the fact that he has this whole explanation ready to deliver without his usual "this is just my opinion..." qualification is extremely worrying in regard to timeline nonsense being a cornerstone of future plots, especially now that, again, we've been given a magic hourglass with ambiguous spacetime powers.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I am not in any way arguing again the fact that the timeline split once due to the events of Shadowbringers.

In fact I am arguing in favour of the arguments you are putting in favour of it – it was hard to do, it took effort to cause an extremely rare outcome of a split timeline. That is the way to marry up the ability to split timelines with the discussion in Alexander about time having a single proper path.

What I'm objecting to is the proposal that there are a constantly, infinitely splitting array of timelines forming spontaneously "each time an event occurs".

In fact, I'm not even sure that it's possible for stable loops to form in an infinitely splitting many-timelines scenario, if "time-traveller is present"/"time-traveller is not present" is a difference that immediately causes another split.

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I'm with you here, honestly. I think multiverse "everything-everywhere-all-at-once" scenarios are lazy/awful, unless they ARE the central thing in the fiction (as in the movie).

My biggest issue is that we have lore that's all well and good, and rules we hope we can theorize by, but the writers seem to regularly additive-retcon things in ways that I'm not much a fan for, since late Shadowbringers/Endwalker.

Like, we said earlier, Time Travel and Dimensional Travel should be hard, and super risky. It took generations, a psuedo-alexander unit, and finally the entire Crystal Tower. And even then it was off, sending him farther back than intended. After all that, G'raha mistakenly soul-snatched the wrong people several times before finally getting us over there.

Emet (and I assume all ancients) found even the concept of time travel inconceivable, and was more than ok to dissect G'raha over it.

But, -suddenly- Elidabus (who is somehow still somewhat sentient/intact despite being absorbed by the tower) can just send us exactly to the time and place we need to be? Just like that? Didn't we destroy the Alexander-Unit?

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Like, we said earlier, Time Travel and Dimensional Travel should be hard, and super risky. It took generations, a psuedo-alexander unit, and finally the entire Crystal Tower. And even then it was off, sending him farther back than intended. After all that, G'raha mistakenly soul-snatched the wrong people several times before finally getting us over there.

...

But, -suddenly- Elidabus (who is somehow still somewhat sentient/in tact despite being absorbed by the tower) can just send us exactly to the time and place we need to be? Just like that? Didn't we destroy the Alexander-Unit?

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What gripes me about both of those scenarios is that we're now able to go back to those places at will, with no cost or consequence, and it doesn't seem to bother anybody. We have NPCs in Sharlyan saying, "Boy, it sure would be nice if someone could go back in time and get me an ancient fish. *looks at WoL expectantly*" And if Zero's soul can be put into a bottle and carried to the First, why I can't I bring Y'shtola? Maybe this has been explained and I'm just a moron, but I've gotten three characters through EW and don't have any good answers yet.

I feel like through ShB, EW, and now DT, the writing team has played fast and loose with the rules, and now they are just doing things because it sounds cool or because the plot needs it to happen. "Multiverse" seems like a way to conveniently write themselves out of the inconsistencies they've created.