Endwalker's story had me, but lost me. Ethical issues especially (spoilers)

[HyoMinPark]

The present day wasn't a hypothetical child you 'could have had' though. It exists, you came from it, those peole are there waiting for you to come back. Going back in time and changing the past to make them not exist is as good as killing them.

I agree with this. Changing the past and unraveling your future is counterproductive to what our character stands for. The story has revolved around us helping and saving and changing our world. Having our character go back to Elpis and opt to save the Ancients and their society seems counterproductive to everything we have done and stood for. And it would completely undo what G’raha did in ShB—which was done entirely to prevent the Eighth Umbral Calamity and save our life.

Unraveling our future unravels us and all that we love. As you said, Rinoa—

I would not support the WoL damning all Eorzeans to death so that a future race could survive.

But that would be what would happen should our character strive to save a past civilization. Saving the Ancients would damn our future.

Why do people still keep insisting that if you change the past, you erase the future? We know for a fact that this isn't the case. It's not called a split timeline because one is erased, it's called that because they both continue to exist at the same time.

To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of time travel tropes (despite enjoying Doctor Who from time to time) because they become very messy very quickly.

Edit: I’ll have to go back and revisit the ShB timeline stuff, but the trailer itself does advocate “unwriting history” and “rewriting it”. Which would carry an implication of unraveling one timeline for the sake of preserving another. At least, in my interpretation. The lore for time travel in this game is immensely “don’t think too hard about it” right now; given how there’s very little clarification on split timelines or if one timeline suddenly ceased to be versus existing independently.