On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

[Denishia]

My own thoughts on timelines are more about minimising the number of splits – "one disruption per time travel event" – so there would only be one break resulting from the changed information we delivered to Venat, not a splayed variety of them. But yeah, if and when she succeeded in breaking it and finding a different way forward, she's in uncharted waters for better or worse, and it could lead to survival or just a different variety of doom as the hypothetical writer desires.

I also don't believe we have any way of accessing the 8UE unless the Ironworks can create a higher order of space-time machine than their counterparts previously built – which at this point seems unlikely, as Cid's reaction to learning he invented a time machine is along the lines of "nice to know I achieved that, now I can spend my time tackling other ideas".

We're not playing FFXIII so constantly hopping between branching timeline options is not feasible and thus their existence outside of fan musing irrelevant, and the 8UE will likely be untouched unless I could see it being used by the Wandering Minstrel as his imaginary location a reason to have the 'Ascian Ultimate'.

[Iscah]

We're not playing FFXIII so constantly hopping between branching timeline options is not feasible and thus their existence outside of fan musing irrelevant, and the 8UE will likely be untouched unless I could see it being used by the Wandering Minstrel as his imaginary location a reason to have the 'Ascian Ultimate'.

Yes, I should have said "no way of accessing 8UE or hypothetically saved Elpis". They might be out there somewhere but we don't need to go there. Let the plot move on to something else, let us explore more of the distant continents or, if we somehow run out of places in the Source, we can spend several expansions per shard if we need somewhere to go.

Let the other timelines remain hypothetical and unaccessed, and avoid further convolutions to space-time.

[Lurina]

and avoid further convolutions to space-time.

Counting ARR, we have only had two one (edit: just realized it was only one because ARR literally opens with time travel lmao) expansions out of five that didn't contain any sort of time travel. That's not a great record on which to predicate future hopes.

[Iscah]

Counting ARR, we have only had two one (edit: just realized it was only one because ARR literally opens with time travel lmao) expansions out of five that didn't contain any sort of time travel. That's not a great record on which to predicate future hopes.

Most of that time travel is shifting around a single timeline, though.

I'm saying we should not engage in leaping between multiple timelines, which is a higher order of complication than moving between shards or time travelling non-disruptively within our own timeline (although that should be kept to a minimum also).