What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[ApolloGenX]

Think of it like this;

A future version of you arrives infront of you. You see they are extremely wealthy, and they tell you that they won the lottery and created a scientific research company, who then discovered time travel. They then give you the winning lottery numbers and return to the future. You use those numbers and win the lottery and you end up creating a company based on scientific research. One of the researchers discovers time travel and you become the first person to use it. You arrive in the past infront of a younger version of yourself and tell them you won the lottery and created a company etc. then return to the present. From the moment you returned to the present, you have absolutely no knowledge on what to do next, as the future version of you only told you up to the point of the researcher discovering time travel, and the rest of what happened you just lived through it. Your knowledge of the future is gone, and so you must figure something out. That is what Hydaelyn was like.

That's fine- but it's cheesy. It's what it is because it's what we said it would be.

That kind of removes the agency from all the characters and puts everything on a deterministic path. If that is what they wanted to do (they DID say we couldn't change the future) then why did we interact with the Ancients at all? It should have kept us invisible to them and we should have just passively learned what happened. Honestly, that is kind of what I expected to happen. The fact that they made our presence there a crucial part of the way things turned out means that we created this new future - ok... but if that is the case, why did the future ignore so much of the REST of what happened in the past?

It felt like if you watched Back to the Future and he got back to the present and nothing had changed.... because they had written the story of the present first and then no matter what happened in the past, they were stuck in a corner. That's the problem with time travel I guess.

[Imperius_Relampago]

That kind of removes the agency from all the characters and puts everything on a deterministic path.

I mean, the Echo literally lets you see the attacks of opponents before they happen. Also, every time you fail a duty, it is canonical that it was the Echo granting you a vision of what would happen if you attempted it at your current strength/mindset. The whole "empowered by the Echo" mechanic is described as you having learned from the vision and using that knowledge to defeat your opponent. So we already have some manner of precognition.

If that is what they wanted to do (they DID say we couldn't change the future) then why did we interact with the Ancients at all? It should have kept us invisible to them and we should have just passively learned what happened

Back to the Future used a different set of Time Travel rules. There are many rules and paradoxes to time travel, but the one FFXIV uses in Endwalker is the Predestination Paradox, aka Causal Loop/Closed Time Loop. In layman's terms, it means this: The time traveller is in the past, which means they were in the past before. Therefore, their presence is vital to the future, and they do something that causes the future to occur in the same way that their knowledge of the future has already happened. Prior to going to the Unsundered World, us arriving in Elpis already happened, as stated by Elidibus. He had memories of seeing us in Elpis in the Unsundered World. This means that in our time, we had already been in Elpis all those years ago. Our presence in the past and our actions is what caused Meteion to become the Endsinger. If we didn't tell Venat and co. about the Final Days etc, then Emet-Selch wouldn't have pushed so hard to take Meteion into the Convocations custody and away from Hermes, and as such Hermes wouldn't have pushed back so hard. Hermes simply wanted to hear Meteion's report, but Emet-Selch was trying to prevent it. If Hermes had heard the full report, chances are he wouldn't have done the stuff he did out of desperation.

The fact that they made our presence there a crucial part of the way things turned out means that we created this new future

It's not a new future. The past occurred in our past. We have always went to Elpis to discover what was causing the Final Days. Our travel to the past is what inevitably causes the Final Days in the first place. Hence, closed loop. It's like learning that you were going to be hit by a car that day, so you stay at home, and then a car crashes into your house and hits you. If you weren't at home, you wouldn't have been hit by the car. It's simple causality; You were influenced by the knowledge that you were going to be hit by a car that day and as such stayed at home, which in turn contributes to the car hitting you; The cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause.

[ApolloGenX]

It's not a new future. The past occurred in our past. We have always went to Elpis to discover what was causing the Final Days. Our travel to the past is what inevitably causes the Final Days in the first place. Hence, closed loop. It's like learning that you were going to be hit by a car that day, so you stay at home, and then a car crashes into your house and hits you. If you weren't at home, you wouldn't have been hit by the car. It's simple causality; You were influenced by the knowledge that you were going to be hit by a car that day and as such stayed at home, which in turn contributes to the car hitting you; The cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause.

You are right, I shouldn't have said "new" future... in fact, according to this story- this entire arc had already happened before players even started playing...because back in the past we said it would.

That still removes all agency from the characters and essentially means that we have been in a predetermined play that started I don't know over a thousand years ago. I don't love that. I especially don't love that it is being passed off as some kind of "You helped set this is motion". No we didn't. If we did, then all the rest of the circumstances they ignored would have been factored into the story, but they weren't. That's why I think we should have been passive learners in the past... we just left behind way too much evidence/opportunity for things to have gone differently to be shoehorned into the story the writers wrote. It was their story, not ours.

It's fine to say we are stuck on this course of history- I think it's a cheap trick to try to lay that at the feet of players and say "You were responsible for how we got here... because we said so". No, we weren't. You wrote a history and then stuck us into it, ignored the actual impact we had and said "Ta-da! Now you are responsible".

[Lauront]

You are right, I shouldn't have said "new" future... in fact, according to this story- this entire arc had already happened before players even started playing...because back in the past we said it would.

That still removes all agency from the characters and essentially means that we have been in a predetermined play that started I don't know over a thousand years ago. I don't love that. I especially don't love that it is being passed off as some kind of "You helped set this is motion". No we didn't. If we did, then all the rest of the circumstances they ignored would have been factored into the story, but they weren't. That's why I think we should have been passive learners in the past... we just left behind way too much evidence/opportunity for things to have gone differently to be shoehorned into the story the writers wrote. It was their story, not ours.

It's fine to say we are stuck on this course of history- I think it's a cheap trick to try to lay that at the feet of players and say "You were responsible for how we got here... because we said so". No, we weren't. You wrote a history and then stuck us into it, ignored the actual impact we had and said "Ta-da! Now you are responsible".

Heavily agree with this. It's what I find so entirely dissatisfactory with explanations like the one given. Plus they utilised time travel just an expansion prior, that time resulting in the formation of a branching world.

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

I think the other problem people have, along with all of the other ones that have been stated in this thread in regards to the time stuff, is that they use two different types of time travel over the course of only two expansions(Graha and Elpis). It's like they only introduced it because they couldnt come up with any other way to make the plot. They had to use two different instances of time travel to try and make it work so it just makes things unnecessarily convoluted.

[Imperius_Relampago]

I think the other problem people have, along with all of the other ones that have been stated in this thread in regards to the time stuff, is that they use two different types of time travel over the course of only two expansions(Graha and Elpis). It's like they only introduced it because they couldnt come up with any other way to make the plot. They had to use two different instances of time travel to try and make it work so it just makes things unnecessarily convoluted.

I personally wasn't a fan of ShBs time travel concept. It made no sense whatsoever, and made no effort into explaining it. It is clearly meant to use the Black Hole Theory along with the World Line Theory. The Black Hole theory for how they were able to travel back in time and across shards, and the World Line theory, for how Graha was going to change the past. Essentially, if I were to use FFXIV terms, the Black Hole theory posits that by compressing the data of the brain (2.5 petabytes) and body, via Aetheric manipulation, to a size sendable by the Crystal Tower, along with Graha's link to said tower, then both the Crystal Tower and Graha would be able to traverse time via the Life Stream with no potential for being stuck (Again, barebones'd this theory while using FFXIV terms as opposed to real terms used IRL). The World Line theory, however, posits that there is only one World at any given point. When a new World Line is realized, the previous World Line fades back into nothing but potential and the new one reconstructs in its place. So Graha was from World Line A, but he travelled to World Line B's past through the use of the Black Hole theory. He changed the outcomes, and as a result, World Line A faded into nothing but potential, and Worldline B became World Line A. Endwalker's version of time travel is a lot more simpler in that it is based off of causality.