Quote Originally Posted by Rezef View Post
Time travel can be a great setting for storytelling i.e. Steins Gate but when you deal with time travel you're extremely prone to create paradoxes. Which happened first? Venat giving us the Elpis flower or us telling her in Elpis facility about it. In other word which came first the chicken or the egg paradox.
You mentioned Steins;Gate, but Steins;Gate approach to time-travel is the "multiple universes" approach, and not the "single timeline" one used in Endwalker and other media. Even though it appears as though Okabe is only experiencing "one timeline", every time it triggers and he gets new memories, the universe has now changed - it's different. That's why he even has the divergence meter, which can be used to check which "universe" he is in.

But I see a lot of people asking this question - what came first? Well, in the "single timeline" scenario, assuming time-travel is possible, everything that is supposed to happen, will happen.

This is what happens in the movie Interstellar. Everyone went crazy at the end when they realized the main character was the one who was sending the messages to himself in the past. But WHICH ONE HAPPENED FIRST?! This assumes there was a "first" version of the universe in which he didn't see the message, because he hadn't gone to the future yet, etc. But that's not how it works. Because as I said - everything that is supposed to happen, will happen.

It's the exact same concept in Endwalker.

Now I for one didn't like Interstellar. I've seen enough time-travel to not be amazed by the concept when it's used. But I did like what they did on Endwalker. Especially because it meant us getting to see the Ascians before everything got destroyed. We got to see them interacting with one another.

It was a nice touch. The memory wipe bit was a bit meh, but overall I thought it was a good story.

Another story that uses the "single timeline" mechanic is Harry Potter, in the third book/movie. When Harry goes back in the past and realizes he was the one who saved himself.