Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

[EaraGrace]

I disagree entirely on this interpretation of Endwalkers message, but this argument has been had again and again and there’s little point in rehashing it.

[Iscah]

I'm nervous the current direction of the story is that the Azem that is us is actually us further in the future and it's just one giant paradox waiting to happen

Basically the game is heading into Song of Storms paradox direction if anyone is familiar with where I'm pulling that from.

We're already in a "Song of Storms paradox" plot (causal loop or "bootstrap paradox") due to the events at Elpis.

If we turned out to be Azem, that would just be an extra layer of time loop in a universe that has already demonstrated it can support that kind of paradox.

I'm not saying I want it to happen, but it wouldn't introduce any new types of time travel logic if it did.

[Lurina]

I disagree entirely on this interpretation of Endwalkers message, but this argument has been had again and again and there’s little point in rehashing it.

It's a little dire that this thread opened with pretty much everyone agreeing that the quest was good, and then fighting for weeks about the context in which it exists.

Like I (and Raelle) said, I don't think the writers intended that to be the 'message', but just let the vibe slip into the script by accident - at the very least it's inarguable at this point that a fair number of people took that away from the experience. Regardless of how reasonable you feel that interpretation is, this quest seemed like a pretty thoughtful way to counter it. Can't we agree on that much, at least?

[Lyth]

Why don't we just agree to disagree, instead, and leave it at that?

[Lustre]

We're already in a "Song of Storms paradox" plot (causal loop or "bootstrap paradox") due to the events at Elpis.

If we turned out to be Azem, that would just be an extra layer of time loop in a universe that has already demonstrated it can support that kind of paradox.

I'm not saying I want it to happen, but it wouldn't introduce any new types of time travel logic if it did.

I remember reading a post about how the 8UC timeline time travel and the current timeline/elpis time loop cannot be sustained, or is a straight up paradox that can't exist but I forget the details. Time travel confuses me I'm dumb. I dont think I have I ever seen a franchise utilise it properly. Nearly always leads to all sorts of strange potholes and stuff

[Cilia]

Something to consider is that Endwalker is a deeply philosophical piece; it takes a lot of cues from Friedrich Nietzsche, specifically. Unless you engage with it on that level, it's hard to fully appreciate what the story is trying to tell you.

Shadowbringers blurred the line between good and evil; Endwalker straight up destroys it.

[EaraGrace]

Like I (and Raelle) said, I don't think the writers intended that to be the 'message', but just let the vibe slip into the script by accident - at the very least it's inarguable at this point that a fair number of people took that away from the experience. Regardless of how reasonable you feel that interpretation is, this quest seemed like a pretty thoughtful way to counter it. Can't we agree on that much, at least?

Sure, I can totally agree that I enjoyed the quest, and talked about incessantly with friends afterwards. I just disagree on how others have placed it in the wider context if EWs narrative.

But like Lyth says maybe agreeing to disagree on that is best.

Something to consider is that Endwalker is a deeply philosophical piece; it takes a lot of cues from Friedrich Nietzsche, specifically. Unless you engage with it on that level, it's hard to fully appreciate what the story is trying to tell you.

Shadowbringers blurred the line between good and evil; Endwalker straight up destroys it.

EW is full existentialist. Schopenhauer, Sartre, Camus all feel at home here. There’s a line in Tarkovskys Stalker that it reminds me of.

And if there were no sorrow in our lives, it wouldn’t be better.
It would be worse.
Because then there’d be no happiness, either.
And there’d be no hope.

[Iscah]

I remember reading a post about how the 8UC timeline time travel and the current timeline/elpis time loop cannot be sustained, or is a straight up paradox that can't exist but I forget the details. Time travel confuses me I'm dumb. I dont think I have I ever seen a franchise utilise it properly. Nearly always leads to all sorts of strange potholes and stuff

Different people are going to have different takes on the timeline issues. I don't think there's any particular issue with "sustaining" the two types of time travel next to each other. They just form different parts of an interlocking causal loop around (1) events of Elpis creating history as we know it, leading to (2) end result of the Shadowbringers timeline split creating one path where the loop can continue onwards to (3) our travel back to Elpis that sets the whole thing in motion. Each one needs the others to occur first, but as long as you can accept that's a thing that's possible in this setting, it all makes sense within that logic.

The thing that commonly comes up when people think the Elpis loop is incompatible with the 8UE timeline is that the WoL "dies and can't travel back in that timeline, so it breaks down" - but that is misunderstanding the situation. The 8UE WoL is not needed for the Elpis loop because those events happen before the timeline splits, so "our" WoL is the one who visited Elpis in the past of "their" timeline.

People also may just say it doesn't work because it puts splititng timelines and causal loops in the same story, but I think they can coexist and it just depends on whether the time traveller alters something that makes the current situation incompatible with the future they came from. G'raha caused a timeline split by preventing a known historical event from happening at a specific time, but we didn't know enough about Elpis for anything we did to create a similar contradiction.

[Rulakir]

Regardless of how reasonable you feel that interpretation is, this quest seemed like a pretty thoughtful way to counter it.

I've gone back and forth on this quest. Initially, I was perplexed by it (which I'll get into momentarily), then I was excited to have some form of nuance that was sorely lacking throughout 6.0, then upon further reflection I feel like it wasn't enough (or anywhere close to it) for many reasons.

First and foremost because, obviously, people interpreted those quests differently. Whereas some found Venat's comparison to Hermes as throwing shade on the sundering, I saw it as further reaffirming Hermes especially because 1) Ishikawa had already made the comment about him being a "first step" for mankind and 2) Omega ignores that the rejoinings also would've made mankind stronger. I don't see how you can imply (or interpret) the Final Days somehow 'toughened up' mankind and ignore that being unsundered (or close enough to it) would've made mankind more formidable against all threats save perhaps dynamis (which is another topic). Not to mention that, despite everything, Emet is still suggested to be our "worst enemy" while we speak in 'fond/friendly' terms about Venat. So, it still seemed like it was pushing Ascians = bad, Hydaelyn = good rather than both being morally grey.

Meanwhile, the Watcher, Venat's ultimate simp, is the capstone to the quest line and his only lamentation is that mankind had forgotten about the Ancients. Not that I expected anything more from him, but we're ending on a note of "the world mankind deserved". So, aside from her dynamis reasoning for sundering being completely undermined by doing away with the Social Darwinism aspect (which I'll agree was probably not the writer's intent), we still end up with Venat's ideological view of what mankind and the world should be is what we deserved in the end. Not to mention doubling down that Venat somehow loved mankind (in her own special, twisted way I suppose), especially considering I believe this quest coincided with Hydaelyn's codex entry which is... something.

I know some thought that Omega having the same dialog response regardless of which option you pick was genius, but I thought it was a cop out. It would've been nice to have some insightful dialog depending on your choice.

Overall, I can't say I'm optimistic about future storytelling at all, I've certainly lost all confidence they can appropriately handle a "conflict of values", but I always appreciate yours and Brinne's insight even if I don't entirely agree. I've cut Ishikawa a lot of slack for having been put in the position she was, but a side quest locked behind an old content raid rather than something in the MSQ isn't going to address all the issues of EW and I'd be genuinely surprised if any of it is touched upon further. This felt like a minimum effort olive branch before just dropping all these plot lines entirely, including the "forge ahead" message which is likely what they hope players who didn't like EW will do. :P

[KageTokage]

Given that they tend to have different writers responsible for different storylines, I have zero confidence they're going to maintain the relative neutrality of the Omega quests and will just go right back to pushing one side as having made the "right" decision in the MSQ and the other sidestories.