Quote Originally Posted by Akonyl View Post
That's actually a problem they already ran into, with optional content, because narratively the concept of doing a piece of story or not is similar to choosing different dialog options. It impacted ShB to the point where they felt the need to "remove the impactful option" by forcing you to do CT, to collapse that choice and ensure where the player was in the narrative. Even there, they said that if they run into the "optional content question" in the future, they'd just assume the player had done the content, so I really doubt they'll go any further down the "impactful choices" path beyond adding a few lines of text to congratulate you for doing whatever thing beforehand.
I don't recall them ever saying they would pretend players have done content that they hadn't done, and if they said it then they certainly aren't sticking to it, because we just recently got significant references to side content in MSQ (Void quests and Eden) only if you had done them in advance.

Or are you thinking of the fact that in Shadowbringers they initially referenced CT even if you hadn't done it? That's different (and quite neatly done) because
the time travel aspect gets around that. It doesn't matter whether you have been through CT or not – all that matters is that G'raha went through it from his perspective, whether that's a past or future event for you.

Likewise, the time machine relies on technology developed from Alexander and Omega because again it happened at some point before the other timeline's Eighth Calamity even if you haven't done it yet.