The Road to 5.0

[Fenral]

If they do got the route of introducing a new princess character, her name would have to be Sarah. There's simply no way around it. There's even wiggle-room to misspell it slightly (Sara/Sarah/Serah), as needed to best fit naming conventions.

Or perhaps it's her first shard counterpart (assuming they do such things, despite historical drift making such direct parallels ponderously implausible)?

I believe that level of historical drift is already canon, down to even languages being different between shards. (Arbert wasn't the WoD's real name, and he had the Echo to get around language issues.) I think the closest analogy is the various parallel Earths seen in the original Star Trek. There may have been some similarities in the distant past, but they would have since spiraled out to the point that nobody has a parallel-world twin or anything.

[Cilia]

I believe that level of historical drift is already canon, down to even languages being different between shards. (Arbert wasn't the WoD's real name, and he had the Echo to get around language issues.) I think the closest analogy is the various parallel Earths seen in the original Star Trek. There may have been some similarities in the distant past, but they would have since spiraled out to the point that nobody has a parallel-world twin or anything.

Well, it would be preposterous... I was thinking back on Dragon Ball a bit when I wrote that, and as anyone still following that knows, it introduced a multiverse that has mirror counterparts. (I.e. Kale is Broly's counterpart; the latter is now canon as of the post-Super film.)

It's incredibly implausible based on what we know of how XIV's fractured reality works.

The key issue is Thancred saying "Well, this town has certainly changed... and not at all for the better." That means he's been there before. If it's a time travel thing, the Flood of Light is reaching back in time. If it's a world-jumping thing, Thancred would have had to been on the First Shard for a while (which is plausible if he obtains a vessel). His companion (for lack of a better word), if it is Ascilia and they are on the First Shard, would have had to been de-aged as a consequence of trying to "clean up" the excess Light.

If they're not on the First Shard, it all goes out the window and it could simply be a place Thancred visited during his recon mission in Imperial provinces, and his companion could just as easily be a new character. (Imperial Princess Sarah wir Galvus?)

[Fenral]

If it's a time travel thing, the Flood of Light is reaching back in time.

I'm going to assume you haven't yet had the pleasure of playing Bayonetta. The third option is Ascilia pulled forward from the past. Thancred could be either in the near future or simply commenting on how things have gone since 4.5. A pulled-forward Ascilia is liable to latch onto Thancred as he's someone sho whe knows in her original time.


If it is time-travel shenanigans, anyway.

[Cilia]

I'm going to assume you haven't yet had the pleasure of playing Bayonetta. The third option is Ascilia pulled forward from the past.

Well, I picked it up, but on account of how horrible the PS3 load times were and how shit I am at spectacle fighters, didn't get very far.

Self-deprecation aside, I can't see what value there would be in pulling Minfilia Lily Ascilia forward through time. Minfilia's supposed ability to "clean up the excess Light" from the First Shard was implicitly linked to her status as Hydaelyn's meat puppet emissary, something her younger self does not share.

It's definitely a plausible scenario if time travel is involved (and between the talk of "undoing [a] tragedy" there's likely to be either time travel or dimension hopping shenanigans afoot), but the specific scenario I can't picture a reason for with what we know at the moment.

Ah... I need to go into a full analysis of the Shadowbringers teaser, but I'm too tired to do that right now. Maybe tomorrow.