Tales From the Shadows Updated (SPOILERS ABOUND)

[Cilia]

I won't comment on your hypotheses, but...

Here's my question though, are Emet Selch and Elidibus still alive in the original timeline? Is Minfilia? Hydaelyn?

Considering they died by our hand, and we died in the Bad Future to Black Rose, both Emet-Selch and Elidibus should still be alive in said Bad Future unless someone else found a time and way to do them in for good.

Minfilia, having been reduced to little more than an errant soul lending power to and occasionally possessing girls / young women, should have been killed (or rather her soul returned to the Source's lifestream) when the First was rejoined as per the Warriors of Darkness' original plan in 3.1 - 3.4.

Hydaelyn would still be around, albeit even weaker than before due to needing yet more energy to maintain her seal on Zodiark.

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 latter part is news to me. I'm normally pretty lax about it, but do you have a source?

[Crushnight]

So I will say I prefer having the Y-shaped time travel than the paradox that could've been really head scratching with erasing a timeline, but dear god time travel is not off the table until Cid croaks now.

Cid is the one person who could pen the plans for time travel for anyone in the future to abuse(OMG story for reference of Cid being the one to leave the base concepts for future people to try and bring into fruition), the only thing keeping him from actually thinking about it, is motivation, and I hope he never gets it because I want to be done with time travel, I don't want more Y branches, let it be the one stem and move on.

Cid is the only person who could come up with the theoretical time travel due his very unique circumstances of dealing with Alexander, Omega and his innate intelligence, so no one else is likely to be able to do it.

I don't wanna kill Cid, I like Cid, but until he dies never putting that idea to paper or words, we could have more timelines and it could get out of control.

This is currently possible:

YYYY
Y Y
Y
Y

and so on and so on, right branch still has everything needed CT and Cid, left branch could have more divergent futures if they ever find something equalling the CT as a power source but if they never do then that is a stop point.

Love Middy returned to be alongside man we really changed him didn't we :3 . I'll take Middy looking at the little girl as Middy looking at a young Omega-F and actually heeding Cid's advice to grow with people to see if can understand our unusual strength.

[Riastrad]

The latter part is news to me. I'm normally pretty lax about it, but do you have a source?

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fi.../1100-6480013/

"Question: Leading into Shadowbringers, you told people to play the Crystal Tower raid series, and with the new patch, it'll be required. Is there any other piece of content that you can point to that players should play in anticipation of what's coming next like you did with Crystal Tower and Shadowbringers?"

"Yoshida: Having the Crystal Tower as part of the required content for Shadowbringers, it's something that the team was torn on and I had to think about whether or not we really want to put this in there. But just the fact that the narrative tied in so closely to the main scenario, it was such a core element of the story. And plus, it's not a very difficult dungeon to get through. That's why for Shadowbringers we felt that it was okay to have it tied into the main scenario.

Now, other than that, all of the content is created so that they connect with each other no matter when you play it. It doesn't matter at what timing you tackle any content within Final Fantasy XIV. But specifically speaking for if you've already finished Shadowbringers, then go to the Interdimensional Rift for all the Omega raids, and then do the Alexander raid series. You might see the connections between different elements you play through and in the story. Conversely, sometimes you do some of the raids first and then connect to the main story, and you see that the narrative actually flows naturally into each other. We made it so that you can tackle it from whichever side you please.

We don't intend on specifying certain content to be mandatory before getting into certain parts of the story. But again, I think it might be nice to go through the Alexander and Omega raids. You don't have to do the Savage content but maybe having those two under your belt may help with getting the gist or having a much richer understanding and enjoyment of the overall world and lore.

Oh, and of course, you can totally take your time on this, but it might be a good idea to get a refresher on Heavensward."


Crystal Tower was not required content until very recently. Until 5.3 it was only a "nice, you completed it!" sort of thing. He talks about Alexander and Omega the same way he did about CT a year ago.

[JeanneOrnitier]

The way I read that he's saying Omega and Alexander help understand ShB more (ie, the time travel plot). It's separate from his statement about refreshing on Heavensward.

[axemtitanium]

7.0 villain is going to be Ascians from the bad future breaking into the main timeline confirmed.

[Riastrad]

The way I read that he's saying Omega and Alexander help understand ShB more (ie, the time travel plot). It's separate from his statement about refreshing on Heavensward.

Oh, for sure. There is every possibility that statement was just meant to refer to this very sentiment. It's just something that springs back up to my mind after this most recent Tales from the Shadows. If my WoL/WoD (i'm going with Warrior of Twilight personally) knew that these people were still around and struggling, he would do everything he could to help them. We aren't the type to not do something. We even fight so our favorite grapes can continue being grown.

For those we have lost. For those we can yet save.

[YianKutku]

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.

There was a theory on Reddit that Alexander's goal in light of new information wasn't just to minimize its impact on the world, but to minimize it while also being present in the world, if only for a comparatively brief time. This is so it can have an audience of the Ironworks, as well as the Warrior of Light being involved, thus creating the conditions necessary to create the Tycoon, which helped avert the Eighth Calamity in at least one timeline.

Obviously this wasn't actually planned by the writers, but I like to think that at least this piece of game lore might fit coincidentally neatly.

I concede that it doesn't answer the issues with Alexander's timeline being a loop instead of split, though.

[Alleo]

Not really a fan of the last story but at least we now know for 100% what happened with the bad future. (Also this finally settles the argument if Graha is as bad as the asciancs since we know that they are all still alive.) I do wonder if the Ascians had managed to take the time travel devices and traveled to the past if that too would have created a different timeline instead of just changing it all up..which kinda would mean that theoretically they could do that but we would never ever feel the consequences. But I try not do think about it much and hope that the other timeline is really not able to influence ours otherwise we might never be truly save from Zodiark...

The one before that with Azim was pure gold. Feel a bit bad for Hades with these two as friends. Now I want more stories from that time..still I am surprised how different the translations are again..In the german version Hades outright calls the people living there as mortals and that they would try to find some primitive explanations for the catastrophy. That really sounds like the Ancients were not the only race there..and that people existed that they see as below them. Which would explain why they even needed someone like Azim traveling around..because if everyone had the power to just create stuff they could just solve all of their problems..but it would also beg the question why those other races were so inferior towards the Ancient ones? Ugh seeing how this was not in the english version I wonder if its still canon or if this was something the german version did on their own...

[Iscah]

We currently have both Cid and Graha alive and well with all his memories on how to actually achieve time and space travel.

That depends on how much G'raha understood of the time-and-space mechanism personally and whether he can explain it to Cid (and whether both of them agree that it's a good idea to do so).

Obviously G'raha has a full understanding of any parts relying on the Crystal Tower and/or involving the spell to draw anyone he stumbles upon the WoL across the rift. But as for actually getting there, it's not clear if he would understand how to build such a thing from scratch or whether he simply knows how to drive it.

I also wouldn't be surprised if this world's Cid, on being told about it, goes "wait, I invented what? That could be abused terribly and I must have been seriously desperate to even contemplate it. Don't tell me how it works; I don't want to know."

(And then the knowledge that it's possible bugs him so much that he figures it out anyway.)

I concede that it doesn't answer the issues with Alexander's timeline being a loop instead of split, though.

My take on the timeline theory entirely started from the point that "Alexander is a loop, Shadowbringers is a split; how do we reconcile these stories into a consistent mechanism of how time works?"

And my answer is, Alexander is a loop because we didn't change any facts we previously knew. Therefore there was nothing that required a split to prevent a paradox, and so our actions simply melded into the single timeline.

When we briefly visited "three years ago", if we were prepared and determined to act then we theoretically could have done something to change events as Mide knew them, but that would have created a split and we wouldn't have been able to return to our own timeline again.

Or to be exact, there'd be a version of us still in the other half of the split timeline that hadn't changed anything, and they could go back to where they came from, but we're not that version. And if we tried to go back to "three years later" again it wouldn't be our original present and there'd be a second version of us running around too. (Analogous to young G'raha being asleep in the tower in both timelines as of 5.0ish, while the Exarch is a third instance of the same person existing due to time travel.)


On a side note: from the way this would work, one half of a split timeline still functions as a loop. In the case of Shadowbringers, it's the bad future that's the loop while ours is the spin-off. In the other timeline - at least as I picture it - G'raha travels back, tries to call us to the First but either fails or we refuse the call in favour of urgently fighting Garlemald, and the Calamity still happens. This version of events would lead right back to where he started.

[Riastrad]

That depends on how much G'raha understood of the time-and-space mechanism personally and whether he can explain it to Cid (and whether both of them agree that it's a good idea to do so).

Obviously G'raha has a full understanding of any parts relying on the Crystal Tower and/or involving the spell to draw anyone he stumbles upon the WoL across the rift. But as for actually getting there, it's not clear if he would understand how to build such a thing from scratch or whether he simply knows how to drive it.

I also wouldn't be surprised if this world's Cid, on being told about it, goes "wait, I invented what? That could be abused terribly and I must have been seriously desperate to even contemplate it. Don't tell me how it works; I don't want to know."

(And then the knowledge that it's possible bugs him so much that he figures it out anyway.)

It was seemingly enough for Emet Selch to take him as compensation for our failure to contain the light of the First. I'm not saying your wrong, I in fact agree with your hypothetical conversation Cid and Graha would have on the matter, but I am saying we are not done with the knowledge. It's too convenient a plot element for the devs not to use in some fashion or another and that is the real issue with Graha surviving. I myself would abuse the crap out of it if I could. The worst part is, why wouldn't they use it to secure the future at a much earlier time like big heroes? Entire nations have experienced tragedy and loss at the hands of the Empire (the same Empire that created the weapon that sealed our fate and that of the world). Why not nip that problem in the bud instead of travelling to the first? And now that we are back on the Source, can you imagine the report our allies are going to get? "So we traveled to another reality and across time to save everyone! Oh, yeah time travel is possible! What? Use it to win the war? Why on Hydaelyn would we do that?"

Thus my love and hatred for time travel stories. The obvious never seems to just work without some contrivance to stop it from being so. Some will give all manner of reasons why it can't be done, all the while ignoring that time travel has been cracked along with reality jumping and seemingly works well enough to save not one but two worlds at the brink. The answer of why it wouldn't work doesn't make any sense if it would have been easier to do than what was already achieved.


tldr; time travel is apparently possible and it would have been easier to do than reality jumping and time travel combined.