Tales From the Shadows Updated (SPOILERS ABOUND)

[Iscah]

it would seem everyone needs a refresher on why they did time travel in the first place.

I haven't seen anyone here indicate that they do not understand those facts.

Also the Eighth Umbral Era city-states world (and the Empty) are not "void of aether". That description goes to the opposite state, as seen in the World of Darkness.

An umbral (Light) charge brings the flow of aether to a halt. It isn't destroyed, just frozen and inhospitable to life. If you think of aether as water then the Eighth Umbral Era is an ice age.

Up until now we had to assume this was an irreversible effect, to justify the writers' logic that it made sense for them to throw all their ingenuity into saving another version of the timeline over improving their own. The ending of this new story seems to imply otherwise. Perhaps it's not looking as bleak as it once was and the aether is slowly recovering, even though earlier generations thought it couldn't.

What the exarch said was true the tower needs to go back to eorzea to ensure the 8th calamity of that nature doesn't happen. Until it leaves the first, there will be a calamity of epic proportion that will necessitate the use of the tower again. Maybe when we defeat zenos the tower will vanish. But until it has nothing will have changed.

It is simple cause and effect.

You're confusing the cause and the effect.

What the Exarch said is that if the Calamity is averted and the original "dark future" timeline ceases to exist, that may cause the Crystal Tower to vanish along with the entire timeline it came from. There is no "going back to Eorzea". There is no Eighth Umbral Era and no original location in Eorzea for it to go back to. It simply ceases to be.

What you seem to be getting from this information is that the tower must return to where it came from to prevent the Calamity. This is not the case. Even if the Exarch's prediction was correct, the tower's absence would simply be an indicator that the timeline had changed, not the cause of it changing.

Additionally, you're playing with paradoxes if you assume that the necessary outcome is that the original timeline will be overwritten and the tower will vanish. The consequences of that approach form an unresolvable loop:

1. G'raha travelled back in time and to the First to prevent the Calamity.
2. The Calamity is prevented and the timeline overwritten.
3. Because there was no Calamity, G'raha did not travel to the First.
4. Because G'raha did not travel to the First, the Crystal Tower was never moved to the First.
5. Because G'raha and Tower were never in the First, nobody was there to kill the Lightwardens and remove the excess Light.
6. Because nobody removed the excess Light, the First is still full of Light and primed for rejoining.
8. Because the First is still full of Light, Black Rose happens.
9. Because Black Rose happens, eventually G'raha travels back in time to prevent...

If this is the scenario you want to play, where do you stop that paradox loop? Even if it somehow didn't lead to the First being re-doomed, I would find it overly convenient if the tower vanished and nothing else. What happens to the Crystarium? What happens to any technology or building materials they ever derived from the artifacts in the tower? The whole town could literally fall apart - assuming it ever existed. Do people remember he was there, or are the memories erased as well?

The scenario in which the tower vanishes is fraught with paradox and the risk of undoing the very thing it was meant to achieve. Other scenarios allow for time to be altered without this happening. We seem to be in one.

The simpler conclusion is that G'raha's expectation was incorrect. From all the evidence we now have, the specific calamity he came back to prevent can no longer occur. The First's Light has been dispelled and is no longer available to supercharge a Black Rose explosion even if it was set off. Even if a different disaster happens, it will not match the scenario that G'raha learned of as history in the dark future, and events cannot lead to that particular future any more.

The non-collapsing split timeline makes the most sense because it means that G'raha's knowledge of the dark future doesn't form a paradox once that future is "averted". It still exists. He was there, even though he can't return.

My attempted knowledge comes from Chrono Trigger and loz MM ( song of time anyone)

I don't know about Chrono Trigger, but the time travel logic of Majora's Mask is not applicable here.

The Song of Time rewinds time so he can live those three days over and over again, with the things that happened one time not carrying over to the next. Everything resets every time you go back. (Alternately, every time you go back, you're leaving that timeline to its doom and creating yet another one that will probably share the same fate.)

Time travel here is the opposite. Outside of the exceptional circumstances that cause the split in Shadowbringers, there is a single constant timeline and (as seen in Alexander) your time-travelling activities can merge into the sequence of events that were always there. If you go back to a time and place that you previously visited, you will encounter your past self there. You can't simply attempt the same day over and over - either you'll get a pile-up of alternate selves or you're definitely splitting the timeline with each attempt.

Additionally, Link is not coming from the future to change the past, but is simply manipulating the present. Meanwhile Ocarina of Time does involve changing elements of the past to affect the future, but it runs on a completely different style of time logic to what is happening here. The mechanisms are simply not compatible.

The price and frequency of time travel is also very different. Link can move freely through time as often as he likes with no ill-effect, and must do so to drive the plot. G'raha travelled once, at heavy personal cost (again, I think the majority of his crystallisation happened as a direct consequence of the trip) and will not do so again. Once he arrives in the First, the actual time travel element of the plot is over and everything else happens in real time.

[KalinOrthos]

snip, sorry fren, you make a lot of good points

I don't think it's an issue of "no its fine dont think about it", since characters both in the story and out of the game acknowledge the inconsistency: the presence of a paradox or the worry that nothing changed at all was a serious concern of the Ironworks in the story, at the very least. Rather, I think it's an issue of the information is just incomplete, and the movers and shakers of the story simply don't know. Future Biggs is the most brilliant of the age and even he's just taking shots in the dark. The inconsistencies do have a chance of being resolved if either Omega or Alexander come back in some form, which I sincerely doubt, so for now, we can only speculate, as Biggs, G'raha, and the rest of the Scions do in the story. I thought my theory was decently solid, in that direct interference causes a loop, and indirect interference via altering the influence on another plane of existence causes divergence.

I don't know about Chrono Trigger, but the time travel logic of Majora's Mask is not applicable here.

I can comment on the Chrono Trigger theory: It's also not applicable.

Chrono Trigger's time system is weird in that it's inconsistent within itself. Most of the time, it works on a series of both constants and divergences. For instance, in order to change a greedy mayor's mentality in the past, you go back in time and teach his ancestors kindness, which in turn teaches the mayor how to be generous. However, 1999 will always be doomsday, and the future will always be ash and ruin: these do not change no matter how much you try until you defeat the main antagonist. This implies that the timelines work on the Y-branch theory of time that ultimately lead to a pseudo-convergence when the apocalypse happens and nothing really matters after that, save for a few minor side quest events that carry on through time. If this were in a vacuum, this would jive with the theory Grimr has, with the averting of Black Rose's deployment being the Lavos of FFXIV.

At the same time, though, early in the game, you're introduced to paradoxes: one of your characters simply ceases to exist because you change the timeline, or more correctly she does inadvertently. This implies that there's a single timeline and diverging from it causes Big Problems™. This gets somewhat discarded but it's also played with during Lucca's sidequest, in which it's theorized that there's some higher force that has a hand in the events that's keeping things handled. It's also disproven at times by both the previous Y-branch example and Robo's presence after the final battle, where he should not actually exist due to being from a ruined future. Its presence at all, regardless, works against Grimr's theory.

One thing does remain in both sets of circumstances: even if paradoxes happen, just because you may have lost your initial purpose of having time traveled in the first place, doesn't eliminate your presence there. It seems like jumping to different ages using certain methods (not the one the character previously mentioned uses), having made the conscious decision or maintaining the will to actively jump across time, or by wielding a certain macguffin (in this case a pendant) makes you immune to the timeline attempting to correct itself. It's not a foolproof theory, but given the inconsistency of time travel in the game, it's really the best I can have, and it still gives the main cast the ability to actually alter the timeline, which I believe to be the case as to why the party isn't paradoxed out of existence multiple times over.

Still, again, it doesn't fit the same circumstances as we see in FFXIV, which are also more than slightly inconsistent.

[Rosenstrauch]

I might be wrong on this, but I think it's important to remember that Alexander creating time loops was born from the primal's own desire to minimize its "footprint" on the world. As primals consume vast quantities of aether, both due to their existence and the use of their natural power, any time travel Alexander did would have a significant impact on the surrounding environment. I recall this being the reason it decided against using its power to do such things as stopping the 7th Umbral Calamity. Rather than dismissing it as impossible because it hadn't already happened—which would be the case if time travel only allowing causal loops was a universal rule—Alexander chose not to do so because the cost of attempting it would greatly outweigh the benefits of stopping Bahamut.

In other words, I don't think the inconsistency is on Shadowbringers/the Eighth Era for introducing a split timeline, but rather that it highlights an inconsistency in the Heavensward/Alexander era. To wit: If time travel must resolve into a causal loop, why does Alexander believe it can change the past? And if time travel must resolve into a split timeline, why does it seemingly resolve into a causal loop?

I can just assume that Alexander, as a literal machine god, calculated exactly how to make time travel play out the way it needed to. And I think that's what the writer was going for, but I imagine "God did it" isn't the most satisfying solution to the problem. Also, there might be two or three extra timeline splits because of Alexander's interference. Maybe. I would have to go back and play/read through the plot of the Alexander raids to map that out.

[Jandor]

Maybe it only worked out because Hydaelyn noticed and gave the whole scheme a bit of a silent helping hand?

She's been losing ground for 12'000 years, maybe she noticed the mortals messing with time trying to undo Zodiarks latest victory and used their 'Omegaxander Frankenstein Tower' as a power boost to split the doomed timeline off from the Source and whip up a replacement shard?

I don't know, probably not likely, but keeps everything contained and consistent. I think.

[LineageRazor]

Dang, never thought I’d end up talking about Homestuck in detail again anywhere, but I guess it’s true you can NEVER escape the Homestuck. u.u

The impending death of the Flash player will make it easier to escape the Homestuck. ;_;

I'm glad they're gonna rebuild. But the rebuilding seems to have been something that didn't result from their time travel efforts, so it begs the question of "Couldn't we have just been doing that before?" [/hb]

Well, to be fair, the fact that hope exists is attributable to almost literally a deux ex machina - a dead dragon god unexpectedly came to life and offered to help out. That's not something they could have been working toward, because almost nobody even knew Middy COULD come to life.

The sundered ascians they raise from soul shards are from shards of Ascians who are tempered and predisposed to go along with the convocation.

Emet mentions that while they PREFER to use Ascian convocation soul shard bearers, they don't always. Anyone at all can be raised to be an Ascian - including, theoretically, a bearer of Azem's shard. Now, actually getting that rapscallion to cooperate with their nefarious plans might be another story, since do-goodery seems to be baked in pretty deep...

tl;dr old man yells at cloud of darkness

For whatever it's worth, my issue with it isn't that 5.0's time travel doesn't make sense in a vacuum - the Y-branch is pretty simple. Granted, one hopes it is only a Y, in that case. An infinite fractalling multiverse renders our world (also its own shattered multiverse) not only one insignificant speck in a sea of infinite universal possibilities, but one could argue that it really means we abandoned "our world" to its death to live in a preferable nearby alternative and pretend it's ok because our personal story of it is nice and it works out for us. Moreover, since there would be infinite worlds within which the existence of the Tycoon can never be fully erased, and thus is always potentially accessible, nothing we ever defeat is ever truly dead, and nothing we do cannot be undone, since it could just as easily come back from one of the millions of branches where it still exists. So yes, let us hope it's a Y.

They could always go the XI route - an infinite fractalling multiverse, but one in which the vast majority of timelines are "incorrect" and fade away (or, as was the case in XI, messily devoured by Atomos). Only "sturdy" timelines survive, and we've now been assured that the Exarch's former home is one such sturdy timeline.

Wings of the Goddess is the time travelling expansion. It dealt with the Crystal War (pre-vanilla) where we (the playable races) beat Shadowlord's army. The expansion actually implied that the Shadowlord would've won if we had not interfered in Wings of the Goddess.

More specifically, the Shadowlord only lost because Altana herself stepped in and arranged for him to lose. The resistance members of that now-lost timeline (a stalemate against the Shadowlord), led by Lilith, called BS on the fact that all of their sacrifices and hard-won victories were being rewarded with a one-way trip to Atomos's stomach, and used time travel to try to reestablish their timeline as the dominant one. Their world was a crapsack one, but it was a world they'd shed enough blood and tears for that they rebelled against the idea that a goddess's whim had doomed them all, even if the world that replaced it was a better, more peaceful one. (Though, that peacefulness would come back to bite Altana hard come "Rhapsodies of Vana'diel", when the peace allowed the Cloud of Darkness to encroach.)

Much like this case, that story had a happy-ish ending in which it's implied that Lilisette's departure to the other timeline (to take up Lilith's mantle after her defeat) would cause that timeline to become a stable, alternate timeline safe from Atomos's hunger. (Just why her presence there stablized the timeline was never really made clear.)

[Alleluia]

I can just assume that Alexander, as a literal machine god, calculated exactly how to make time travel play out the way it needed to. And I think that's what the writer was going for, but I imagine "God did it" isn't the most satisfying solution to the problem. Also, there might be two or three extra timeline splits because of Alexander's interference. Maybe. I would have to go back and play/read through the plot of the Alexander raids to map that out.

This is basically what I thought. Alexander is a loop b/c Alexander wanted it to be such b/c it figured that was the best way to go for maximum happiness for all involved. Maximum benefit was its stated goal, after all. And it had the ability to figure out how to do that. I don't see any issues with this and with how the branching timelines have played out in Shadowbringers.

[Cilia]

Alexander is in a loop because causality is a bit backwards for him from our perspective; he exists due to events that occurred in our past, but that past is also Mide and Dayan's future.

It goes [A] Mide and Dayan spread the legend of Alexander in the distant past -> [B] The Illuminati summon Alexander in the present -> [C] Alexander Raid events send Mide and Dayan to the distant past -> [A] again, spiraling forever. Alexander sealed himself off from the rest of spacetime in the future so as to prevent aetheric drain on the planet, but he (and every actor within it) is bound by this causal loop. The question fielded here most often is "Then where did Alexander come from in the first place?," to which the most logical answer is that he came from a timeline outside of our ability to observe.

As someone else noted, this seems to be following the Dragon Ball Z model of time travel where Trunks going to the past doesn't actually change his own future, but instead creates a branching timeline that exists independently. The original timeline where Emet-Selch's plans with Black Rose succeeded would then be the "Bad Future," while the one we're in now is a "Good Future" (to borrow a term from Sonic CD). The problem is that because this "us" can only exist in the Good Future, we can't observe the Bad Future. (Our Bad Future self was killed with Black Rose, remember?) Only with something like the Tycoon could we possibly reach the Bad Future, and even then it's questionable whether that would really work or just make another branching timeline where we disappear and reappear at a later date in the Good Future.

Time travel works however the writers want it to work. In Back to the Future II Future Biff steals the DeLorean and gives his younger self Gray's Sports Almanac to use in winning a fortune gambling, then fades out of existence upon returning to the future due to the timeline being altered. This is the only time this happens in the entire series despite lots of time travel and messing with the timeline by Rick and Morty Doc and Marty. Doc and Marty are self-observing but Future Biff isn't? And how the kupo is Gray's Sports Almanac still accurate in the Bad Present after all the changes Past Biff made using it as a locus?

You're sure to be in a fine haze right about now, so just... don't think too hard about it. Let's just hope some Goku Black shite doesn't happen down the line like it did in Dragon Ball Super.

[Kallera]

I don’t know the full details of lore between Alexander and the 8th calamity but I have a wild speculation:

Could it be that, Graha Tia is an unreliable narrator and isn’t changing history at all? Despite saving the first we are still on track to march with the alliance to Garlemald, which will only cause their desperation to try anything just to stop the sack of their cities. One would think a weapon of such magnitude would have records on how it was deployed and by who in particular, and depending on who, it might even have been willfully removed. I wouldn’t put it past the remaining ascians to float the weapon around more unknowing participants much like how Elidibus used the eyes of Nidhogg, and since the parties against them believe it destroyed....no one will be expecting it now.

[KalinOrthos]

I don’t know the full details of lore between Alexander and the 8th calamity but I have a wild speculation:

Could it be that, Graha Tia is an unreliable narrator and isn’t changing history at all? Despite saving the first we are still on track to march with the alliance to Garlemald, which will only cause their desperation to try anything just to stop the sack of their cities. One would think a weapon of such magnitude would have records on how it was deployed and by who in particular, and depending on who, it might even have been willfully removed. I wouldn’t put it past the remaining ascians to float the weapon around more unknowing participants much like how Elidibus used the eyes of Nidhogg, and since the parties against them believe it destroyed....no one will be expecting it now.

The Twinning and its post-dungeon cutscene pretty definitively disprove the idea that G'raha is just making this up, with the information being corroborated by the Eighth Umbral Era story. Keep in mind that Black Rose was as effective as it was due to the First's corruption of Light, something Emet-Selch, G'raha, and Urianger all verify. If they did deploy it somehow, despite Gaius' team's efforts, it wouldn't have the same effectiveness: this is pure speculation, but I don't think the land would die so completely, nor spread to living beings so contagiously.

[Riastrad]

As others stated, Gaius and Estinien had been destroying facilities creating the Black Rose weapon and only stopped due to events occurring in the Capital. Zenos on the other hand killed his father to prevent the order for its use to go out. I am forced to wonder if the use of the weapon will be used as a tool for good in stopping some threat somehow later down the line though.


Here's my question though, are Emet Selch and Elidibus still alive in the original timeline? Is Minfilia? Hydaelyn? The Devs said that to understand where we are going we would need to look at Heavensward. They also said some things about making sure to do the Omega raid as well as Alexander. The Twinning is very much a amalgamation of both and the ramifications of the dungeon are immense considering it was what allowed the plan to become reality. In the dungeon we get both eScape as the dungeon music and Locus as the boss theme. This is important to note because eScape is about changing realities (going to the first) and Locus is about the dangers of time travel.


I once replied to a 5.3 prediction thread as follows.

The quest after Minfilia merges with Ryne is called Crossroads. Roads are meant to be walked. Look to those who walked before, to lead those who walk after... The Road that we walked is lost in the flood...
We went one way, she went another in an alternate timeline. Same for every action we did or did not take.

Every time we log into the game what do we hear? The Shadowbringers theme song. It tells us that we will want for nothing, nothing denied. Wandering ended, Futures aligned.

In the lyrics to A Long Fall from The Twinning, a selection of lyrics from eScape is played remixed. eScape was and is stupidly prophetic. Locus being the boss theme needs to be examined closely as well, but that's another point.

Here's what i'm talking about in particular:

Time
Stellar stories starward bestrewn, slipping sidewise; see, they're snakes. <---- Elidibus is the snake (Serpentarius), Us travelling to the First by "slipping sideways"
Twixt the leaves you'll find naught amiss—missing aughts and crossing fates. <--- Ronka and and the true meaning behind the echo. We go to the Tomb of Tiuna, finding more questions than answers.
Freedom surgent shifting ahead, comets dancing in her wake. <--- Hydaelyn awakening the echo using comets to do so.
To the cosmic clarion's accord, along the path not taken. <--- Exarch changing events etched in time by forcing us to take a path we never would have.


Try, dare the dead tread ahead on a road that was borrowed design. (Design) <--- We died in the canonical history. We are the dead treading ahead
Through the sum of their suns do they seek tomorrow. (Tomorrow) <--- The Ironworks sons literally finish what their forefathers started.
Tonight, witness then as the end shall begin what was final. <---- Amaurot's fall.
Their lies, folding back, further back, ever back to the primal. <--- Hydaelyn and Zodiark tempering mortals in an endless proxy war.


Hmmm.

I left it at that for awhile. But this latest tale made me stop and think about it some more. See, if we add Locus to the mix (again Alexander was recommended for higher understanding) we also get this bit.

Falling back right into the system of
Falling back on all that's erased
When fighting back right out of this system
Means falling back right into this space

Yes, falling back right in with the system
Who'll see you falling back to the end
When falling back is better than simply
Falling back into pieces again.


This makes me question if we aren't done with the original timeline. We currently have both Cid and Graha alive and well with all his memories on how to actually achieve time and space travel. I understand there is a few people who would absolutely hate that thought as it seems as though it's a bittersweet farewell to those left behind. I don't know, my theories are generally not well liked by a fair amount of people, but I am happy to find out either way.