[ENDWALKER MSQ SPOILERS] Timeline weirdness

[Rannie]

If Venat had no knowledge of what was to come then how was it that Minfillia, as the oracle of light/Word of the Mother know that Ardbert's job wasn't complete when they traveled back to the first to stop the flood of Light? It was almost as if she knew the WoL would be coming to the first to try to save it...

"Your time has not yet come"

Also "Not even the most Valiant of Heros can stand alone"

[Bhearil]

Personally I think that Tycoon tech allowed them to bypass the normal time travel constrictions to instead slip into another timeline that splitted 13 thousand years ago. Its still possible that Venat was warned beforehand same as in our timeline, but who and how it was done would be different because it wasnt our WoL since we died before we could time travel, or even that Venat managed to escape the memory altering by herself but was forced to work with that knowledge alone since they needed Hermes mind no matter what to fight against the coming situation and would have instantly turned on them if the truth was revealed

The timeline during those 13 thousand years was pretty much the same but since that crucial point was different the branching happened much earlier than we though on Shadowbringers because our appearance in Elpis kickstarted an eons long gambit and Venat ways could be aparently similar but far different in intention in that "Bad End" timeline compared to ours

[Vflower]

So after thinking a bit more about how to reconcile our timeline and the Elpis timeline, I remembered our first meeting with Hydaeyln in Endwalker.

There, she confirms the same origin story that we heard in ShB and then says:

A conjunction has begun to form; an intertwining of your time and mine.[...]Then shall I honor the promise made in another time. Another age.

You can use these lines to gain a coherent understanding of the different timelines shown in Endwalker:

The Hydaelyn we know is -presumably- the most powerful primal in existence, summoned long ago, and as a being with such immense power, she has some amount of insight into the flow of time and different timelines. Thus, she knows, albeit vaguely, that 'she' made a promise to the WoL in a different timeline.

This would also explain why, throughout the whole game, she never really talked to us directly about our meeting in Elpis.
The Venat that we met in Elpis and who we shared all this information with ("your time") isn't Hydaelyn. Our Hydaelyn never met us in Elpis ("and mine"), she just knows that there is some weird thing going on with different timelines.

'Our' Venat didn't even let Zodiark's summoning happen, based on what we saw in the river of time. It's clearly a separate timeline.

[Bhearil]

Hydaelyn lacks any kind of time powers, same as Zodiark despite being extremely more powerful than her (even if she can counter Zodiark due to her division skill). she is just saying that both their times finally aligned: She had to wait for our WoL to be born but also she couldnt spill the beams before the WoL traveled to the past to avoid a time paradox

Primals are created with an specific set of powers and the only known Primal with time related powers is Alexander.

it is true that Ancients have time related powers (like Elidibus sending us to the past or Gaia and Nabriales "slown time" shaenigans) but it was stated that time travel only gives at best a different perspective on some event and nothing will really change.

Peering/Altering different timelines is beyond them and only was managed by Garlond works after 200 years of research combining magiteck with allaghan's and Omega's tech plus Alexander's time bending powers and was a one way travel

[Iscah]

Personally I think that Tycoon tech allowed them to bypass the normal time travel constrictions to instead slip into another timeline that splitted 13 thousand years ago.

A timeline that split away 13,000 years ago would likely be as different as the Source is to the First. Not one you can just jump to and have everything the same except for a few details at the beginning while everything at the end is the same.

(Even if this were possible, it comes with the side consequence that the WoL who the Exarch waited a hundred years to save is not the person he once knew but an alternate-timeline copy, and every time he reminisces about our past time together he's actually remembering someone who isn't us but apparently is a perfect substitute.)

Peering/Altering different timelines is beyond them and only was managed by Garlond works after 200 years of research combining magiteck with allaghan's and Omega's tech plus Alexander's time bending powers and was a one way travel

Indeed, and they don't (at least as shown) even have the power to jump timelines, only to move backwards along the same timeline. The branching timelines are a result of G'raha's actions after he arrives.


Your two posts seem to be confusingly at odds with each other. I didn't realise they were both from the same person until after I'd written the replies.

'Our' Venat didn't even let Zodiark's summoning happen, based on what we saw in the river of time. It's clearly a separate timeline.

The events we saw in the river of time are not literal. They can't be, although it's very vague about it. We have Venat witnessing a man attacked by a monster and not intervening; Hyth farewelling Emet as he goes to be one of the original sacrifices that gave birth to Zodiark, immediately followed by Venat confronting the group attempting to carry out a sacrifice to Zodiark.

It's all extremely unhelpful, and I hope we can ask for some further answers at the next lore Q&A.

[Bhearil]

Even if the timeline splitted 13 thousand years ago the events that transpired meanwhile should remain the same because if the "trigger" didnt happened 13 thousand years ago the consequences only would have manifested during late Stormblood. Traveling to the past allowed the present to have a "black box" that gave us a chance to break free from the End of Days, but everything in between remained unaltered, because both paralel worlds are virtually the same since the WoL visit to the past was unnoticed to everyone but Venat and she tried to keep it hidden until the proper time came.

Think about it: The fact that Wol visited or not the past doesnt change the End of Days arrival, and "dead end" timeline Hydaelyn on the surface seems to behave very similar to ours, which means that anything in between remained virtually the same.

If you could go to the ancient Rome and save an random slave that was supposed to die and instead lives his life normally, is not the same timeline anymore even if the actions of that slave living his life doesnt change history in any way because is one more among nameless millions of people living simple lives that never got recorded in history neither were relevant in any way to it

[Iscah]

If you could go to the ancient Rome and save an random slave that was supposed to die and instead lives his life normally, is not the same timeline anymore even if the actions of that slave living his life doesnt change history in any way because is one more among nameless millions of people living simple lives that never got recorded in history neither were relevant in any way to it

That's not how it works.

You change that one thing. A person lives instead of dying. Maybe they invent something or destroy something. Maybe they save someone else's life in turn, or murder someone. Maybe they startle a butterfly.

Maybe they have children and the consequences of every future generation ripples down through history: each descendant could marry someone who, in another path of time, married a different person – utterly changing the mix of people in the world over time. Each descendant again could invent or destroy things or change a further person's life.

You cannot change the starting circumstances of a whole world and leave it to run for 13,000 years and expect it to produce the same result.

[Impulsikk]

Sadly, time flow in this game is a VERY confusing thing, and I believe only Alexander knows how everything works. Though somebody had a theory that may explain it...the Exarch's time jump wasn't just through time, but also space/dimension.

If you assume the timeline follows the rule of "You went back in time because you were supposed to in order to cause these events to happen", then we have a lot of stable time loops, nothing contradicting itself. With the exception of the Exarch, every other time travel method has followed this. Summoners of Alex go back and time and give birth to the tribe that eventually leads to his summoning, us going back in time to save ourselves from the laser attack in Alex raids, us traveling to Elpis which sets in motion the events that lead to the Final Days and the Sundering, etc. The Exarch...doesn't match that pattern, and only makes sense if it's a dimension hop, meaning something outside of the normal rules of time travel. Due to how the time flows, him being here is a paradox...which is accepted by the timeline adjusting to him helping cause the events that lead to us going back in time to Elpis.

Again, really confusing as hell overall, and only Alex could tell us how time really works.

Then that means everything has been preordained and there is no free will.

[RyuDragnier]

Then that means everything has been preordained and there is no free will.

No, only certain events are preordained, and those that involve the important individuals you need. Everybody else's lives are not and are in a way, collateral. Example, Final Days in Thavnair, it was supposed to happen, was going to happen. What villagers changed and fell to despair did not matter, just that the event happened at all.

[Cilia]

What G'raha's time jumping did was make a different branching timeline, while his original 8UC timeline continued into its own future. Just the same there are countless possibilities where Venat / Hydaelyn succeeded in saving the day, but since we exist as a consequence of the multitude of failures at her hands to change the future we dictated to her we can't observe those alternate realities.

Remember how in Back to the Future Doc and Marty make a bunch of jumps forward and back through time? Each time the "present" (1985) is different, but following time travel as it's been explained to us in this game the timelines they leave behind continue on - the "original" 1985, "better" 1985, "best" 1985, and "bad" 1985 all exist, but Doc and Marty can't observe them all and their time traveling shenanigans limit them to "best" 1985 by the end of the trilogy.

That is to say, the relative past is "preordained" because it already happened from our perspective and if events aren't set up so they roughly occur as we said we won't be in a position to go to Elpis, creating a temporal paradox. I think G'raha gets around this by having the altered past become his new future.

Further G'raha can't return to the 8UC timeline, because moving forward in time will only take him to the future of the Shadowbringers timeline (or what it would be if he'd vanished at whatever point he time traveled), just like the events on Elpis playing out any way besides a time loop that sets up the story as we know it would break the timeline and leave us unable to return to the "present" we wanted to save. (Remember, Doc and Marty couldn't go back to the 2015 Gray's Sports Almanac came from - going forward from "bad" 1985 would just take them to an equally "bad" 2015. And of course the Butterfly effect should render the Almanac useless at some point... but I digress.)

Time isn't something you play with lightly.