*Spoilers* The Past and After the Endwalker MSQ End

[LystAP]

The thing is that we don't know whether or not meaningfully changing the past will cut us off from returning to the (relative) present. G'raha never tried, so there's no guarantee.

That a risk you'd be willing to take?

That didn't stop us the first two times. But I guess it will depend on whatever SE has planned. It doesn't feel like we totally wrapped up everything with the World Unsundered. Hydaelyn and Zodiark's story may be over, but the World Unsundered as we traveled to has yet to create either.

Except that if you look at the following dialogue options we are given both outright state that that isn't the case at all. One says that it wasn't there all along and the other says we made it together, which I presume has something to do with the scions as Meteion says this in relation to having used her powers to feel the player characters emotions.

Both choices end up with the same reply. She makes the flower analogy either way.

[Iscah]

The biggest reason to not meddle with the past and attempt to change it is the risk of getting trapped in that newly created branch of the timeline, in the same way that G'raha (or more specifically the Exarch immediately post-5.0) is trapped in ours. He's here willingly of course, but functionally he has no way of returning to the future he came from. If he fired up the time machine again and travelled forwards 200 years into the Source's future, he would arrive to a world completely different from the one he departed.

Travelling via Elidibus's portal might negate that risk, since it is tethered to a fixed point in our own timeline and not a permanent leap across time and space like the Crystal TARDIS, but it's still an unknown until we actually attempted it.

From a practical gameplay/storytelling perspective, the amount of things we would have to do to save the ancient world would boil down to "talking and politics, then repeat what we did in Endwalker to defeat Meteion in this timeline".

I also feel like it doesn't change things enough. Yes, you create a second better timeline for them, but you can't spare them the pain that they are destined to experience in this one.


On a side note, I think they should have leaned harder into the hopelessness of the Eighth Calamity situation, to make it more exceptional and justifiable as to why they didn't just carry on and try to fix things. There needed to be no recovery. No "endless age of war" – not enough people left for that. Just the last survivors scraping together and hoping they can complete this mad plan to give the past a second chance at life before the silent death of Black Rose claims them all.

That scenario would then create a better answer to this question: the other timeline was a literal dead end with no recovery; the only way to restore it was to wind back the clock and do it better. But the aftermath of the Sundering is recoverable and our present day is proof of it.

[Veloran]

functionally he has no way of returning to the future he came from.

He never even made an attempt to do so.

[RyuDragnier]

He never even made an attempt to do so.

Because for all he knows it disappeared. Nobody ingame really knows how time travel works for certain other than Alexander, for everyone else it's all theory.

[Iscah]

He never even made an attempt to do so.

He didn't, but theoretically if he did so simply moving forwards in time from here cannot take him back to where he came from.

[Lurina]

The story feels so wrapped up now that I honestly wouldn't care, were I in the WoL's shoes, about "sacrificing myself" and cutting myself off from the main timeline to give the Ancients a chance to overcome their problems.

It won't happen - if there does end up being a split timeline for them in one of the patch plotlines, they'll contrive some reason for us to be able to go back home - but that feels like the heroic thing to do.

[Hezzlocks]

Yes. G'raha took that same chance.

G'raha also came from a timeline that was basically all but doomed, with the world devastated and the people mostly simply trying to survive. Even his role model, the Warrior of Light, lay dead and buried.

He basically had nothing to lose. Meanwhile, our timeline honestly could not be in a better state atm. Garlemald is no longer an enemy faction, the world is in relative peace, the beast tribes are slowly becoming allies and have even been shown how they could summon Primals without that nasty tempering business if they felt they needed to, and we've even put a permanent end to the Final Days.

Would you risk throwing all that away?

[Cilia]

More pointedly G'raha never intended even to survive the events of Shadowbringers, and spent the remainder of his time on the First as the Crystal Exarch trying to find a way to send the rest of the Scions home. He can't do it on the Source either, since that Crystal Tower isn't retrofitted for spacetime travel, and doesn't know if it's possible at all. We don't either.

Our journey to unsundered Elpis was made affirming we would come back, and thus wouldn't be able to effect meaningful change. The implicit rule therefore is that if you effect meaningful change you won't be able to return to the (relative) present or the (relative) present will reflect said changes, creating a paradox. In other words, either way you won't be able to return to the "now" you know.

Again, would you risk that?

[Rulakir]

Does it matter? I mean, unless someone hates the Ancients, saving them in an alternate timeline that we'll likely never see (same as the 8UC one) doesn't seem like a big deal. It makes the people who wanted to save them happy and has zero effect on anything else.

[Kordarion]

Does it matter? I mean, unless someone hates the Ancients, saving them in an alternate timeline that we'll likely never see (same as the 8UC one) doesn't seem like a big deal. It makes the people who wanted to save them happy and has zero effect on anything else.

What's the point then if we never see any of it? Either it would be a branch timeline we created and then people would be, rightfully, complaining why the devs created this interesting new story beat and then abandoned it, or it would be an alternate universe created by someone who wasn't our character and then people would complain that it doesn't make sense for someone else to create the branch timeline when our character should have done it while time travelling. It's a lose, lose situation.