"Time Skip" for 4.5 or 5.0?

[EdwinLi]

Let us discuss what we learned from the Teaser trailer that hints about 5.0 plot being a "Time Skip" that will lead WoL into a world he (or she) is no longer needed in the future and he (or she) "saved" the world from the threat of Ascians.

So far we know enough time have passed since the defeat of Garlemald that the WoL now is no longer needed in the world to a point that the Light he or she faught to protect is attempting to discard the WoL by force.

Do you think this will be the permanent setting for 5.0 timeline or a small moment in 4.5 so the WoL is sent back to current timeline?

If you assume 5.0 timeline or a small moment in 4.5, explain how do you think this may affect the story for 5.0.


For me, I am assuming it is in 5.0 timeline because it will setup where 4.4 left off being what became of the bodies for everyone after the time skip. I am guess in 4.5 the WoL will experience that final battle scene in the trailer. After that the WoL is finally sent into the future thus waking up right in the middle of the battlefield to replicate that teaser trailer seen (slightly altered so no "Job change") only to be saved and later learn the WoL been missing since that final battle for years. This scenario is my assumption because the Child of Light shown in the teasers is in the future and for WoL to protect the child of light, the WoL must also remain in the future.

This scenario would fit for a small moment for 4.5 as a temporary thing as well but then we will not have a reason to protect the "child of light" in 5.0 that the teasers shows the WoL protecting since the child of light is in the future being protected by Thancred.

[Anonymoose]

While that's one interpretation of the picture that's been painted for us so far, we probably haven't seen the complete teaser, yet; and it may be designed to leave us confused. Once again, I'm left fairly certain that that's Arbert's voice actor talking - which makes me question whether I ever should have discarded the concern in 4.4. (Either that or Alphinaud's voice actor sounds just like him while pretending to be older...)

But this whole thing is like a rogue planet just sped through my systemic understanding of the story and now everything is settling back into a new structure. Arbert himself told us not to fight for Light or Darkness, but for ourselves. We can't discard that already, right?

So if the 4.4 voice is sincere, Thancred's plan leads to direct conflict with Zelidibus and beckons a possible Calamity and/or Flood of Light.
"The laws of time and space will bend before me. Let me in."

If 3.0 and 4.0 are any precedent, the very beginning of the plot is reflecting in the very end of the expansion before it. So PLOT POINT #1 seems to be related to 4.5's dungeon, the catalyst for the "Eighth and Final Umbral Era". But then we see that there are new areas - areas that are not necessarily from a world post-Calamity or post-Flood - areas that we can presumably teleport to regular old city-states from so we can hand in our dailies.

So is it a localized disturbance? Do we too suddenly shift the balance in favor of the Light and have to push back with Darkness while still fighting for the preservation of mortals and Hydaelyn and our world? Or was Elidibus not the snake I accused (and continue to accuse) him of being all this time? How deep is our change in worldview? And why?

All of that we have a better grip on than these time shenanigans. Are we getting a message from a broken future about how to unwrite it into a stable loop? Are we going to change the game's own timeline? Are there branching worlds and timelines? Or is this all a bait and switch for something to do with Minfilia and the First? Are we using the FFXI approach to traversing a "doorway" into another time or dimension? Whatever is it, I just hope it doesn't cheapen the world we've fought for or the journey we've taken, which is always the risk when time shenanigans pop up.

[Theodric]

I'm not convinced that we'll be getting a time skip so much as a glimpse of the potential future should things go awry. So far the game has been content to mostly contain established events within a specific bubble - with the only exception being the shift from 1.0 to 2.0.

There would be an immense amount of text and character models/zone models to adjust if the entire game world were to advance multiple years. I don't think we're getting any major revamps for the existing zones - bar Ishgard - for quite some time.

[EdwinLi]

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The Doma Enclave is a good example of changing the world without altering much to fit past and future timeline appearances.

If anything, Doma Enclave maybe a prototype to the time skip changes if they go for the time skip route.

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Don't forget the most important figure in 5.0 teasers being the Child of Light.

This child seem to be the focus of the 5.0 storyline and the person WoL must protect if they wish to stop whatever horrors is about to be or is unleashed in 5.0. Not to mention the forces of Light seem to really want to "kill" this child of light. Though as I said with the Child of Light with older Thancred in the future, the Time Skip may be necessary since the Child of Light can only be protected by WoL if WoL is in the future as well.

[Enkidoh]

I'm not convinced that we'll be getting a time skip so much as a glimpse of the potential future should things go awry. So far the game has been content to mostly contain established events within a specific bubble - with the only exception being the shift from 1.0 to 2.0.

There would be an immense amount of text and character models/zone models to adjust if the entire game world were to advance multiple years. I don't think we're getting any major revamps for the existing zones - bar Ishgard - for quite some time.

I agree with the Garlean - I'm actually getting FFXI Rhapsodies of Vana'diel vibes with this whole scenario, where the 'end of the world' happens out of gameplay time in the 'far' future' and the player's future incarnation sends someone or something back to change this 'bad future'. At the very least the 'bad future' would probably not have any real gameplay other than an instance or two set there.

As Moose said though, this is just a teaser trailer so we don't have the full picture yet, let alone proper context as to what exactly is going on (look back at HW's opening - the original teaser just showed Derplander struggling through the snow and facing Nidhrasvelgar, and a brief shot of a DRG on a steeple. Only with the events of 2.55 and the full trailer did everything make sense. So I think we need to wait til the last patch story is added for Stormblood and the full trailer is out before we can actually understand just what the hells is going, and why Derplander is having a bad Echo-induced migraine while getting a tongue-lashing from a gremlin.

[Iscah]

If there is time travel involved, and it's not implemented as temporary "instanced content" you do at critical story points then return to the normal game-world, then I think the nature of the game makes it necessary to have a stable portal between past and future.

Permanently moving characters out of the standard time bubble could make a huge chronological mess out of sidequests, require all the old fixed NPCs to remain, and would mean the "redesigned" zones are still forced to fit the shape of the current ones so people "from the other time" don't walk through walls and objects. No adding or removing platforms, blocking or opening passages.

One of the other things mentioned alongside those so-far-reliable leaks is that the Crystal Tower would be involved, and (if I'm remembering correctly) finding a portal there. In any case that would tie in with the ending of that questline where Nero throws away his magitek compass - and then it seems to have found a signal as he walks away.


...you don't suppose we might be hearing from G'raha Tia??? Could that add up? The voice would suit him, he may well be waiting years for us, and he's essentially the last of the Allagans now... plus hints of further plot involving Princess Salina.

Small chance, of course, especially since it's an optional quest and they don't like crossing those into MSQ. But we did see a brief flash of G'raha during one of the Omega cutscenes. Or at least I did. No idea if they'd make it a variable cutscene depending on whether you'd completed the other raids or not.

[KageTokage]

I seriously doubt we're getting any timey-wimey shenanigans in 4.5 or 5.x because if it involves exploring parts of the ruined world as zones it would necessitate having some kind of time portal just for the sake of traveling back there to gather or do hunt marks which seems...awkward from a narrative standpoint.

I feel like it's more probable that we're just going to travel to the first shard if they want us to experience a ruined world and get a glimpse at what would become of the source if things continue as they do.

[EdwinLi]

The whole timey wimey sutff has actually happened in FF14 already back in 1.0.

Don't forget the WoL in 1.0 was actually sent back into the past through the Echo and experienced the past events back in 1.0 during the moments before the Battle of Silver tear lake while switching between the past and present timeline.

They can keep the current quests with the time skip and have the Echo basically have the WoL experience these Quest within their timeframes without compromising the Lore since the Echo can send the WoL between Past and Present as we seen in 1.0 to a point that WoL may not even know he or she is in the Past or Present.

[Anonymoose]

Don't forget the WoL in 1.0 was actually sent back into the past through the Echo and experienced the past events back in 1.0 during the moments before the Battle of Silver tear lake while switching between the past and present timeline.

If I may request elaboration on this part, you are aware that when using the Echo in 1.0, you couldn't actually change the past, right? You were in a localized copy of that moment in someone's memory, and you could affect it with your presence and make it play out in a different way in the vision, but you it didn't change the past. How could that be used here? The trailer says history must be unwritten, the very thing the 1.0 Echo couldn't do, right?

Or are you suggesting we were wrong about the Echo then and have been wrong about it ever since?

Was it always time shenanigans? Or is Zodiark's ability to bend time and space (as the King of Precepts) the key to this?

[Enkidoh]

The whole timey wimey sutff has actually happened in FF14 already back in 1.0.

Don't forget the WoL in 1.0 was actually sent back into the past through the Echo and experienced the past events back in 1.0 during the moments before the Battle of Silver tear lake while switching between the past and present timeline.

They can keep the current quests with the time skip and have the Echo basically have the WoL experience these Quest within their timeframes without compromising the Lore since the Echo can send the WoL between Past and Present as we seen in 1.0 to a point that WoL may not even know he or she is in the Past or Present.

Not quite. Derplander's trip back to the Battle of Silvertear Skies in 1.0's opening movie was merely an exaggerated rendition of how the Echo was depicted in 1.0 (where it was interactive and virtually indistinguishable from 'reality'). The Echo's depiction was changed gameplay wise in ARR (to become an non-interactive grainy and washed out video feed), so what was shown in 1.0's opening movie has now been well and truly retconned I'm afraid. And even in 1.0, it was not the actual past you were visiting, but just another's memories of that event (that was the big twist that Ferne revealed on the old 1.0 forum, that the first part of 1.0's story had already happened - the player's character didn't realize it but they were just blundering about in other people's memories of events that had happened ten years before during the starting city storyline).

And remember, as HW's opening movie showed all too well, the full rendered trailers may have errornous information in them, given they're actually produced by a seperate team to the FFXIV team (Square Enix Visual Works), and who may not have the most accurate information that the lore and writing teams have.