Tales from the Shadows

[Valenth]

I have to admit, though, that this story focuses on my least favorite part of the ShB plotline: the whole "send someone to the past to prevent a dark future" thing... It also tends to ignore the fact that the BAD GUYS could use this kind of cheap trick, as well.

This is not entirely the case in ShB though. There is some nuance to things to take away the foul taste of "convenient time travel solution to everything and all".

First thing first, we destroyed the time traveling machine in The Twinning, so that other wouldn't get their hands on it and it's technology (and we can't use it anymore). Second, it's not actually sending someone back into one's own past. The Exarch and the Crystal Tower were sent back into the past of an alternative timeline. The own timeline of the Cid we see in this part of Tales of the Shadow is doomed, won't change. Lastely, there is only a hand full of people who know how things happened, and Emet was the only Ascian who was even close to figuring out how the time travel worked (which he wasn't as the Exarch wasn't talking).

I would say the devteam wrote themselves out pretty well of this one.