[ENDWALKER MSQ SPOILERS] Timeline weirdness

[SilverArrow20XX]

I dislike this concept of approach to time travel in general, though I had to put some thought into exactly why - and I think the simple answer is that it makes no sense to me that you can have "two pasts" leading to the exact same outcome.

As I see it, at any point in time, a single event can have two possible outcomes and so it is conceivably possible to picture the timeline splitting in two directions where a different outcome happens in each one.

But to have a past where everything turns out perfectly the same except for one event which we somehow displace with a different event but don't disrupt anything else? That doesn't work for me. I don't consider it to be an option in this story.

To be clear though, I see that as a different path to replacing an unknown past event with an event that requires time travel to play out.

For a simpler example back in Alexander: we previously didn't know how Alexander manifested three years ago, though Mide incorrectly assumed she had summoned it herself. But once we get teleported there ourselves, we replace our incorrect assumption with the truth. That's a very different thing to actively overwriting an earlier version of events.

And as an example of an event where there can't have been an earlier version, we have the "save yourself" moment in Alexander where we travel back mid-A12 for the sole purpose of releasing the forcefield. If there was an earlier version where someone else did it, then there would be no reason for Alexander to overwrite the original version of events to achieve the same result.

The A12 situation happens within Alexander, so I'm willing attribute cases of non-linear time happening there as being possible.

In reality, a single small change would probably cause huge differences to the future, but the idea of the general flow of history being harder to change is a staple of the time travel genre.
It just makes things easier for stories having the changed thing in the past only affect things it was directly involved with in the future.

Meteion being tagged for instance, is an obvious major thing that can be taken advantage of in the present, but would be completely irrelevant throughout the rest of history.
Otherwise, the difference is that a single person has foreknowledge, and we see her try to do things differently, but fail.
Narratively, there's no reason for the new timeline to be much different after that before the present day.

It doesn't really matter in the end, because any previous loops are hypothetical. The original could have been vastly different and it stabilized over thousands of loops. The logic behind it is the same though.

Personally, I prefer it to there just being impossible paradoxes that have no beginning.

[Zero-ELEC]

The A12 situation happens within Alexander, so I'm willing attribute cases of non-linear time happening there as being possible.

In reality, a single small change would probably cause huge differences to the future, but the idea of the general flow of history being harder to change is a staple of the time travel genre.
It just makes things easier for stories having the changed thing in the past only affect things it was directly involved with in the future.

Meteion being tagged for instance, is an obvious major thing that can be taken advantage of in the present, but would be completely irrelevant throughout the rest of history.
Otherwise, the difference is that a single person has foreknowledge, and we see her try to do things differently, but fail.
Narratively, there's no reason for the new timeline to be much different after that before the present day.

It doesn't really matter in the end, because any previous loops are hypothetical. The original could have been vastly different and it stabilized over thousands of loops. The logic behind it is the same though.

Personally, I prefer it to there just being impossible paradoxes that have no beginning.

You're thinking about time too linearly... or not linearly enough?

Outside of time, all time travel, loops and all, already happened. The causal paradox/loop has no beginning or end, especially since we've seen time travel before in the setting and have been either a stable time loop within its own timeline (Alexander) or a violent uprooting across time and dimensions (Crystal Tower). As it stands the Elpis sections seem more akin to the former than the latter, based on the WoL's influence in the past (creation of Behemoths, funerary rites with lylies, etc) which carried on to the original timeline.

This is supported by the text of the game, saying things cannot be changed by time travelling.

[Katie_Kitty]

I feel like we are talking past eachother. I have acknowledged that there are different kinds of time travel, thats not the point of confusion to me.

Let me establish two names for simplicity:

"Timeline G" is the original timeline G'raha came from, where the Black Rose killed most of the population on the Source.

"Timeline S" is the timeline that we experience from ARR to Endwalker and onwards.

How does Timeline G even end up at the point it is, with a version of us having died to Black Rose, when the Final Days shouldnt have ended in a sundering since we were NOT summoned to the First by a G'raha from a different timeline, thus Elidibus and the Crystal Tower couldnt intertwine to send the Warrior of Light to Elpis to inform Hydaelyn about the coming crisis, so that her faction could prepare? "Coincidental Similarities" is an answer of course, although underwhelming.

I don't know why you're assuming no sundering would happen without us going to elpis. There's no reason to assume that.

[Cilia]

The "time" within which 99.9% of Final Fantasy XIV takes place is now known to be a time loop. Everything from our departure from the Crystal Tower / arrival on Elpis up to our return to the Crystal Tower / departure from Elpis is more or less set in stone, since otherwise we wouldn't be in a position to shape the distant past that led to us going there.

Kind of breaks the whole existentialist narrative of Endwalker, we're the Warrior of Light both because we choose to be and because otherwise it creates a paradox. Time travel, gotta love it!

[SilverArrow20XX]

You're thinking about time too linearly... or not linearly enough?

Outside of time, all time travel, loops and all, already happened. The causal paradox/loop has no beginning or end, especially since we've seen time travel before in the setting and have been either a stable time loop within its own timeline (Alexander) or a violent uprooting across time and dimensions (Crystal Tower). As it stands the Elpis sections seem more akin to the former than the latter, based on the WoL's influence in the past (creation of Behemoths, funerary rites with lylies, etc) which carried on to the original timeline.

This is supported by the text of the game, saying things cannot be changed by time travelling.

It wasn't that things can't be changed by time traveling.
It was that WE probably wouldn't be able to. Specifically because it was going to be hard to even interact with things.
The Behemoth was already created, we just named it. A name that wouldn't have survived to present day anyway going by all the other different named creatures.
Just because we introduced ideas from the future to the past, doesn't mean that those ideas only exist in the future because of that.

Paradoxes are a fun idea, but in the end, they're nonsense. Of course there's a beginning. It's just unidentifiable.

[AlysanneVrannai]

I don't know why you're assuming no sundering would happen without us going to elpis. There's no reason to assume that.

Perhaps its unfounded to say one definitely wouldnt happen, but its not an out of nowhere assumption to make. Venat prepares her faction and Hydaelyns summoning from the moment you leave Elpis behind, I find it strange for a coincidental set of circumstances to intersect to create the exact same outcome without the major instigating factor. Basically, I think it is highly unlikely that the sundering by Venat becoming Hydaelyn could happen without the time-loop.

[Jandor]

The difference is that if it's a mini-sundering of the shards then it seems a lot harder to accidentally only slice apart the correct bits of shards to isolate the right timeline. It seems like something that would need more deliberate intent than just everything equally duplicating at once.

It's also placing the cause of a split at a different level of reality – your version being on the same level as the Sundering and mine being something that happens on a higher level of reality, not involving shards or quantities of aether at all. They're very different mechanism concepts.

I agree with the assumption that whatever mechanism is at work in the Alexander storyline is still at work in Shadowbringers, and that's why I'm happy to argue that there's no inconsistency with it producing stable loops in one case and a split in another, but I disagree that the mechanism must be sundering.

It's also worth noting that Alexander itself is not, at least in its capacity as a time-travelling robot, the thing that creates the split in the timelines. It is simply the vehicle used to transport people through time, at which point those people's actions may or may not trigger a split.

Of course, one of those "people" is Alexander the thinking entity with deep knowledge of time and a cat sidekick, but still that doesn't mean Alexander has the direct power to split timelines. It has to deliberately get involved and manipulate events to ensure time stays on track, which means that stopping a split is not as simple as not using its powers to cause one.

Well we're working from different starting points here I think.

I think the natural law of the Universe so to speak, is that time "wants" to remain clumped together and flowing the same way. A sufficiently powerful time machine can force a paradox to happen though, and when it does the natural consequence of that is that the world splits to support both outcomes.
It doesn't require any conscious effort, at least no more than a traditional 2nd timeline would, it's just how things are basically.

If the aliens of Otherplanetia invented a sufficiently powerful time machine and messed with the timeline to the point a paradox was created, then they'd sunder their world too.

Alexander would be getting involved and manipulating events to ensure they stay on track in large part to prevent mortals that don't really know what they're doing from accidentally splitting the world further.

Parts of the Ironworks research was probably trying to find a way to switch the Alex-tech safeties off

[Alleluia]

Perhaps its unfounded to say one definitely wouldnt happen, but its not an out of nowhere assumption to make. Venat prepares her faction and Hydaelyns summoning from the moment you leave Elpis behind, I find it strange for a coincidental set of circumstances to intersect to create the exact same outcome without the major instigating factor. Basically, I think it is highly unlikely that the sundering by Venat becoming Hydaelyn could happen without the time-loop.

Maybe its not a loop? Hear me out.

Many people have noted the inconsistency with the cutscene showing Venat sunder the ancients vs what we're shown happened in Anem. Anyder's record crystals. People have explained it away as metaphor, but what if we actually did diverge the timelines? And what we saw in AA is what happened in our timeline (and the 8th umbral), but what we saw in the cutscene is what happened in that second timeline where we warned Venat? She summons Hydaelyn in both, b/c that's the logical course of action she ultimately comes to regardless, but the events are different depending on our presence or lack of it.



Either way, I don't see why Venat wouldn't have thought of or executed the Hydaelyn plan without foreknowledge of events. Its just the summoning of a primal. The Convocation thought up and summoned Zodiark without foreknowledge (that we know of), and that was while the world was falling down around their ears. Venat and her group, at least in the AA telling of events, came up with Hydaelyn either: in the same timeframe, or in the grace period after Zodiark had stabilized everything. Probably the latter, cus the only reason they invent Hydaelyn in the first place is in response to the proposal to kill new life to rez the Ancients, which was of course the last phase of the plan. Its more than possible they could come up with their own summon in that timeframe. It doesn't require forewarning from the future.

[Iscah]

Well we're working from different starting points here I think.

I think the natural law of the Universe so to speak, is that time "wants" to remain clumped together and flowing the same way. A sufficiently powerful time machine can force a paradox to happen though, and when it does the natural consequence of that is that the world splits to support both outcomes.

I agree with parts of this. Time naturally wants to retain a single timeline, which is why "changed" events get absorbed into it if they can, but a split occurs spontaneously when a paradox is created.

The difference is in what we consider to be an unbreakable unit of time, what causes a paradox, and what sundering entails.

As I interpret it, sundering is a breaking of physical space that has nothing to do with time.

Compare a smaller example: Emet's illustrative "sundering" of Ryne. If that actually happened and we now permanently had two Rynes, we wouldn't consider them "split timelines of Ryne", but two now-independent people existing in the same physical space and time. They are basically identical but will lead separate lives and may not look exactly the same.

The worlds, similarly, are not separate timelines. They are physical copies of a single original object (located in neighbouring pocket dimensions, in this case), free to evolve independently but still all existing within the same flow of time and maintaining a degree of physical connection via the rift.

I think when time splits, the entire universe-full of time splits at once. All of space-time counts as a single unit, which is what I am calling a timeline.

As I'm sure I've said before by this point, the act of time travelling itself does not create a paradox, or the events of Alexander could not play out as they do. That storyline shows that you can travel to the past, influence things if the outcome is consistent with the present you came from, and return safely to your starting point.

Therefore the time machine itself is not responsible for the split. It is the actions of the time traveller once they arrive, combined with their pre-existing knowledge of what happens in this visited place and time, that determine whether their actions become part of the single flow of time or cause a split.

Basically, the less you know, the safer you are. We had no idea of what happened back in Elpis, and still have no idea what's going on in Pandæmonium – anything we do short of preventing the Final Days can become part of "stuff that always happened back in ancient times, but we didn't know about it until now".

On the other hand, G'raha goes back in time armed with detailed knowledge of what happened to the Source in the Eighth Calamity and the circumstances required to cause it.

His original arrival in Lakeland did not cause a paradox because he had no prior familiarity with the location and has no proof of a pre-existing alternate version of events. Thus, the Crystal Tower "always did" materialise in Lakeland shortly after the Flood. Instead, by averting the known circumstances of the calamity and making it impossible for it to occur, that is what creates a paradox (why is he here if he only came back to prevent something that won't happen?) and causes the spontaneous splitting of space-time – or perhaps "branching" is a better term.

If your hypothetical aliens from Otherplaneta invented a time machine and caused a paradox, then by my interpretation the whole universe would split – ourselves included – and we would have absolutely no idea it had happened. So really it doesn't concern us and we have no control over it, so for the sake of the story we can ignore the possibility entirely.

Maybe its not a loop? Hear me out.

Many people have noted the inconsistency with the cutscene showing Venat sunder the ancients vs what we're shown happened in Anem. Anyder's record crystals. People have explained it away as metaphor, but what if we actually did diverge the timelines? And what we saw in AA is what happened in our timeline (and the 8th umbral), but what we saw in the cutscene is what happened in that second timeline where we warned Venat? She summons Hydaelyn in both, b/c that's the logical course of action she ultimately comes to regardless, but the events are different depending on our presence or lack of it.

I don't see how that could line up. The Hydaelyn who once met us in Elpis and was warned about the future has to be the one from our timeline, because she knows us when we meet again afterwards.

[Vflower]

Many people have noted the inconsistency with the cutscene showing Venat sunder the ancients vs what we're shown happened in Anem. Anyder's record crystals. People have explained it away as metaphor, but what if we actually did diverge the timelines?

Good point, I think the discrepancy can't be ignored. We basically have two version of events:

Everything we heard in Shadowbringers: Final Days happen, people sacrifice themselves to summon the primal Zodiark, more people are sacrificed to restore the world, some people have had enough, creating a divide between the ancients that even made Elidibus leave Zodiark to try and help mediate, eventually those rebels summon the primal Hydaelyn to bind Zodiark and Hydaelyn sunders everything.
What we saw in Endwalker: Venat knows exactly what is going to happen and while people are in the middle of summoning Zodiark (monsters are still being summoned at the same time as Venat does her thing, and Hythlodaeus, who was one of the sacrificed souls, is still alive), Venat shows up and sunders everything. We don't know how she got that power or how she turned into Hydaelyn or what happened to Zodiark and Elidibus.

These two versions of events are irreconcilable. Clearly the Shadowbringers version has to have happened in our timeline, since it has been corroborated by two people who lived through it as well as historical records, while the Endwalker version cannot be dismissed as a metaphor, since we saw it while traversing time and space. Why would the river of time show us a vague metaphor? It would obviously show us what actually happened.

The only possible conclusion is that we created a separate timeline with our actions in Elpis. We saw that timeline's sundering, not our own timeline's sundering.
Unfortunately that also creates some problems: Emet-Selch makes a reference to 'remember us' which can only have happened when we defeated him in our timeline, but at the same time he admits that he had 'forgotten' which is something that happened in the timeline we created in Elpis.
Similarly, Hydaelyn knows us from Elpis in our timeline while talking to us in our own timeline, which doesn't make any sense.


I don't see how there can be any explanation for this other than 'plot hole', which I guess, is what the whole 'oh yeah by the way our two timelines are kind of merging somehow' explanation in the game is supposed to cover.