*Spoilers* about the scions....

[Iscah]

It's Alphinaud's voice, even sounds like it in the JP audio. Since time travel has been already been shown to be possible (Alexander raids), it's very possible this is Alphinaud from the future, and he is trying to get us to allow him into the past to prevent the events leading up to the Calamity. And if Urianger, Y'shtola, and Thancred helped usher in those events, it only makes sense to knock them out of the running for a bit.

It's a good point that the Alexander plotline has set a precedent for time travel, but the exact nature of that story was a stable time loop where there is only ever one unaltered course of events, but the characters experience it out-of-sequence or 'twice' if their past and future selves are in the same place at the 'same' time (to an outside observer).

(Another good example that a lot of people will be familiar with is the climax of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - winding back time and taking a second pass through those few hours didn't allow them to change anything that happened 'the first time around', but was an integral part of what happened there in the first place. From an outside perspective there were always two versions of them present in that part of time and space.)

If this voice is Alphinaud calling from a "bad" future to manipulate the past and ensure a "good" future, that's the opposite of a stable time loop. We listen to the warning, we fix things, we stop that future from ever happening. Bad-future-Alphinaud no longer exists. So where did that message come from, then?

It's possible different rules could apply at different times - Alexander was able to create a stable loop, but it's not strictly required by the universe - but it's a lot less confusing when time rules are consistent.

IF it's Alphinaud and IF the Alexander raids suggest time needs to be stable, it could still work if, say, future-Alphinaud remembers that time when the Alliance was planning to undermine Garlemald, and in hindsight it would have been a terrible idea, but fortunately it was averted when the Scions all had strange visions and collapsed (but they were okay in the end)... and now he's worked out a way to be that person who reached into the past and stopped it from happening. The events still have to happen as they were described to him, but his doing this becomes part of the events in the first place.


For enjoyable storytelling, I much prefer stable loops to messy 'changed timelines'. They're usually more clever, and make more sense in the end.

Plus, if we can spawn multiple timelines and send messages across them, have we really achieved anything by winning? We're just in the version of the timeline where it didn't all go horribly wrong, but the others must be out there. Either that or preventing the bad timeline (which exists sufficiently for someone from it to speak to us) is equivalent to not-preventing a Rejoining: the obliteration of everyone who existed in that version of the world.

[Bhearil]

It's a good point that the Alexander plotline has set a precedent for time travel, but the exact nature of that story was a stable time loop where there is only ever one unaltered course of events, but the characters experience it out-of-sequence or 'twice' if their past and future selves are in the same place at the 'same' time (to an outside observer).

(Another good example that a lot of people will be familiar with is the climax of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - winding back time and taking a second pass through those few hours didn't allow them to change anything that happened 'the first time around', but was an integral part of what happened there in the first place. From an outside perspective there were always two versions of them present in that part of time and space.)

If this voice is Alphinaud calling from a "bad" future to manipulate the past and ensure a "good" future, that's the opposite of a stable time loop. We listen to the warning, we fix things, we stop that future from ever happening. Bad-future-Alphinaud no longer exists. So where did that message come from, then?

It's possible different rules could apply at different times - Alexander was able to create a stable loop, but it's not strictly required by the universe - but it's a lot less confusing when time rules are consistent.

IF it's Alphinaud and IF the Alexander raids suggest time needs to be stable, it could still work if, say, future-Alphinaud remembers that time when the Alliance was planning to undermine Garlemald, and in hindsight it would have been a terrible idea, but fortunately it was averted when the Scions all had strange visions and collapsed (but they were okay in the end)... and now he's worked out a way to be that person who reached into the past and stopped it from happening. The events still have to happen as they were described to him, but his doing this becomes part of the events in the first place.


For enjoyable storytelling, I much prefer stable loops to messy 'changed timelines'. They're usually more clever, and make more sense in the end.

Plus, if we can spawn multiple timelines and send messages across them, have we really achieved anything by winning? We're just in the version of the timeline where it didn't all go horribly wrong, but the others must be out there. Either that or preventing the bad timeline (which exists sufficiently for someone from it to speak to us) is equivalent to not-preventing a Rejoining: the obliteration of everyone who existed in that version of the world.

Yeah, but do remember that there are different interpretations to temporal lines.

For example you have the stable loop where it doesnt matter what you do history wont change because all was done already since there is only a single timeline (Gargoyles time loops are of that type)

Then, when changing the past creates a paralel timeline, where yours still exist but on a different axis (Trunks timeline in Dragon Ball is non dependant on fixed timeline)

And we have the one when changing the past overwrites the future with some "bugs" as exceptions (Days of the future past X-Men movie for example, where only those who were at the causants of the changes are fused with their alternante timeline version, on that case, Wolverine)

If it is the second one, you are still screwed on your bad reality, giving a chance of salvation only to the specific timeline you have contacted with. If its the first, the changes you did in the past are already in motion but those changes might be noted after so you dont realize it yet.

But the third option can provide a way to solve the issues that are going to happen without leaving someone screwed

Btw if remember well Arbert japanese VA is Junichi Suwabe, famous for works like Archer in Fate or Yasha on Asura Wrath amongst many others. His voice is 100% not the one on the trailer, but it do seems really similar to Alphinaud albeit with an older tone. Urianger voice has a somewhat refined tone that its lacking on the trailer voice as well