Are <5.0 main villain> fanboys also supportive of <6.1-6.5 main villain>? *SPOILERS*

[Eisi]

Do you count as an Emet-Selch fanboy if you like him as a villain too? Cause that's I think most Emet fanboys.

I like Golbez. He's stupid, he's tragic, he's evil, but in the end he found the right path again cause Zero was willing to give him a chance in light of his past and failure and in light of herself too. I like Emet more, because he was more of a guy.

[Cilia]

Do you count as an Emet-Selch fanboy if you like him as a villain too? Cause that's I think most Emet fanboys.

Hardcore Emet-Selch fanboys don't think of him as a villain.

[Aneshda]

Hardcore Emet-Selch fanboys don't think of him as a villain.

He is a Villain.
If you had the Power that the 3 Unsundered had and if you lost your World, without knowing what the Heck happend, would you not try to get back what was lost?
12000 years is a damn long time, for suffering. Maybe those 3 could have made it, if Lahabrea and Emet would have stayed in the Shadows.

[Cilia]

Since Golbez seems to be a part of Azem, yes 100% and even if he wouldn't be a part of Azem. I have a nack for Villains, I prefer them more as the Scions.

Pretty sure people are talking about "Golbez" (Durante), not Contramemoria-era Golbez. They're two different people.

He is a Villain.
If you had the Power that the 3 Unsundered had and if you lost your World, without knowing what the Heck happend, would you not try to get back what was lost?
12000 years is a damn long time, for suffering. Maybe those 3 could have made it, if Lahabrea and Emet would have stayed in the Shadows.

Me, personally?

First I'd try to find out what and then why, so as to prevent it from happening again if at all possible. Going back to the old status quo would be completely meaningless if the same phenomenon just broke it again! ... but I would also recognize that going back to the old status quo is impossible no matter what you do, and so try to find a way forward.

Certainly not engage in a millennia-long genocidal campaign weakly excused by failings I engender in the new humanity! I mean, if you focus only on the bad - judge people at their worst - well, you've kind of already made up your mind, haven't you? Conversely if you look back on the past with rose-tinted goggles you'll never see, much less appreciate, the endless possibilities of the future...

Has that not been like, the core overarching message of the story since A Realm Reborn? Did I miss something somewhere?

[Iscah]

Pretty sure people are talking about "Golbez" (Durante), not Contramemoria-era Golbez. They're two different people.

I wish they'd thrown in some kind of remark that Golbez is just a title or "stage name" and not really the other guy's name either.

We could call the other one Theodor, anyway.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Do you count as an Emet-Selch fanboy if you like him as a villain too? Cause that's I think most Emet fanboys.

I like Golbez. He's stupid, he's tragic, he's evil, but in the end he found the right path again cause Zero was willing to give him a chance in light of his past and failure and in light of herself too. I like Emet more, because he was more of a guy.

I don't view Emet-Selch as a villain. I view him as an antagonist. I don't blame the wolf for eating the hare and I don't blame the hare for running even if it means the wolf will starve. We are made of the parts of his people. It was a case of survival of the fittest. Nature can be cruel (or Venat as I later discovered).

If only we had time travel and alternate timelines so that both groups could have lived...oh wait...

[Cleretic]

If only we had time travel and alternate timelines so that both groups could have lived...oh wait...

So, let me slap down the primer of how FFXIV time travel works. Definitive mechanical explanations don't really exist, because Alexander (or the Tycoon) is the only one who'd know and isn't talking, but we have two different potential results:

1. Stable time loop; the person/thing that goes back always went back, and did whatever resulted in the timeline they originally came from. This happened in Alexander (twice), and with us in Elpis.Because it's all still the same timeline, traveling back to the original point is possible.

2. Divergent timeline; the person/thing that goes back creates an entirely new timeline, with their old one being orphaned. This happened in Shadowbringers, with the Crystal Exarch. Their previous timeline appears to continue existing, but there's no longer a way to access it from the now-prime timeline.

It's unclear what causes the two different events; most likely it's related to the scale/type of the change being made, because all the time-loop changes were very 'clean' in terms of leaving everything where it was, but we don't actually have any evidence. For all we know, it's controlled by the average temperature in Radz-at-Han across both time periods. So on an in-universe level, there's no way to control for this even if anyone wanted to, unless that anyone was Alexander (or the Tycoon).

Now, if you recall, we went to Elpis for a specific reason in a specific scenario: we were following up a lead in finding information, because in the face of the Final Days everyone was at a bit of a dead end on what to do. That meant that, while we were off having a chill-out tea time with Emet and Hyth in the past, everyone in the present was desperately performing damage control and waiting for us to come back with the info. In the long term, they needed us to formulate a solution, but remember that when we got back, people were kind of on the back foot; never mind the long term, I'm not even sure they had a short term left if we didn't come back.

Causing an alternate timeline doesn't create a best-of-both-worlds: it's one response to a Sophie's Choice, as suddenly we can't get back to the present that needs us, leaving them to die even if the ancient world lives (and as an aside, that's a big 'if'). By going back through causing a stable time loop, we make the other response: the ancient world still dies, but we can still save our own.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

Yes, I am aware, but when we first went back, I assumed us going back would lead to the outcome of two timelines like with what happened in Shadowbringers as it makes the most sense given we can keep going back there to do quests, raid and gather. I did not imagine my WoL just going back in history chilling with these people and not mentioning, "Oh, btw, the lot of you are about to die horribly, good luck with that."

I just assumed given it's a place we could continue to return to, our actions would be similar to G'raha's causing a new timeline. But nope, while it was okay to go back in time and save us, the Ancients must die for some reason.

[Iscah]

If only we had time travel and alternate timelines so that both groups could have lived...oh wait...

There's time travel along a single timeline, and then there is jumping between different branches of a split timeline.

All instances of time travel that we have seen used in the game stem from Alexander's power, and so far as we have been shown, those powers have only performed the first type of time travel. Either it forms a clear loop on a single timeline (Alexander raids, Elpis time loop) or is only used for the first step of causing a split timeline, which is travelling backwards along a single timeline to transport the timeline-breaker from their original future to their past, at which point their own actions are what causes a split. The breaker – G'raha in our sole canon example – is carried into the new split and has no way back to their original timeline unless their time machine has the ability to jump from one branch to another, which has not been indicated as possible. G'raha seems to believe that the people he knew in the other future are utterly beyond his reach now.

If we somehow succeeded in changing events at Elpis to prevent the history we know, then we would likewise be swept into an alternate timeline with no guarantee of finding our way back to our original present. Neither would we actually have prevented the suffering of the Final Days, because that already happened in the past that led to our own existence, and would still happen in that timeline. Meanwhile the people we left behind in our own present would not be saved, because we might not return at all, or might return but not have witnessed the reason for the Final Days occurring.

If we do not bring news of the root cause of the Final Days to our present, then it is utterly doomed, everyone dies permanently because their souls get imprisoned by Meteion, and Emet-Selch's twelve thousand years of suffering have been for nothing.


The two potential story courses are...

If we only witness the events at Elpis (or unsuccessfully meddle):
- the ancients still go through the Final Days
- events up to the present happen, resulting in our character being alive
- we go to Elpis and return with a solution
- the present-day world is saved

Final outcome: could not help the ancients; could help present-day people.


If we broke the timeline:
- the ancients still go through the Final Days and Sundering in one branch of the timeline
- events up to the present happen
- we go to Elpis and do NOT return with a solution
- present-day world is doomed
- in another branch of the timeline, maybe we saved the ancients and they live happily ever after, or maybe a different crisis strikes and they're doomed anyway.

Final outcome: could not help the original ancients, could not help the present day, cannot guarantee that the other timeline won't just be a different variety of failure.

So in short, splitting the timeline does not prevent any suffering, while dooming people who could otherwise be saved.


In any case, my personal theory is that you can only break the timeline if you are already familiar with how things "should" happen. G'raha was armed with detailed knowledge of the event he was trying to stop; we did not have a single clue what to expect in Elpis.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

All I know is there is a timeline where history has been changed and both timelines continue. Yes, they could make it so that we'd have trouble getting back to our time if we'd changed the past, but given they are handwaving us back and forth through time with magic, they could have just as easily given us two timelines, one where they were doomed and one where they were saved. It's not like there is any real science behind why I'm able to go back to Elpis and do the Pandamonium raids. And I was sure they were gonna do that, because who would go hang out with these people on the regular and not try to save them? I'm sick of my character glancing down and looking all sad when these people ask about the horrors coming their way.