A Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Citation At Last

[DreadCrow]

"Infinite splits every time an event occurs" is a horrible way to run a narrative, because it basically makes your efforts worthless in the grand scheme of things when it just means there's an infinite amount of other universes where you failed.

I mean, yeah. In the "grand scheme of things". But the grand scheme of things doesn't really matter. Our victories and sacrifices, in our timeline and universe, will always be important because they are [I]our[/I ]victories and sacrifices, in our timeline and universe. Remember the Ea? The folks that realized eventually, they'll the universe will die of heat death, so they just gave up? Thinking what we do doesn't matter because there's another version of us out there somewhere is the same thing, on even a grander scale.

[DreadCrow]

Seriously, I played through all of Dawntrail and I honestly have no idea what the real threat of the new narrative is. Frankly, Dawntrail has the weakest villains to date.

I have a theory for the next major villain...

One of my theories? Azem. Maybe us being Azem is a red herring. Or maybe it's not, we're the Azem of the Source, and we merged with the Azem of the First; but the other Azem is out there and wants to merge with us. Even if it's against our will. Either way, Azem's Legacy is going to 100% play a roll in the future, given the artifact at the end of Dawntrail.

[Mixawaves]

All I really got from the interview is he was specifically asked about the 8th Umbral Calamity timeline, and on-the-spot, made a comparison to it and the present we play in being like two different branches of a multiverse. That's not really confirmation of anything to me, especially not that the writing team is crafting stories around it in the near future or that's it's any confirmation of something bigger than what we already know about the 8th timeline's existence.

If we're really being honest, 'Interview Naoki Yoshida' is not at all a reliable source of game lore. This is the same guy that was asked at the media tour what lore to go over to prep for Dawntrail and responded with two things (The names of the Convocation, and Myths of the Realm) that had literally nothing to do with the MSQ at all.

[Lyth]

The "infinite potential futures" were an unnatural strain on the timeline caused by Quickthinx's scheme; preventing it brought time back to its ideal state, a single "proper path".

My interpretation of this was that at the moment of Alexander's summoning, the timeline could have diverged in infinite possible directions based off of Alexander's decision. For example, Dayan describes a future in which Alexander averts the Seventh Umbral Calamity by sweeping Dalamud out of the sky. It's not a singular bifurcation on a decision tree. Alexander had the power to change absolutely anything in the timeline in an instant. That's why the infinite 'potential futures' (i.e. a multifurcation) were separated by 'nary a thread'.

It's worth noting that Yoshi-p isn't necessarily invoking western pop-culture interpretations of a 'multiverse' when he discusses 'branch theory'. I don't think he's suggesting that all the Azem reboots are going to get together and make an ensemble film. Nor is he implying that 8UC Emet is going to lose his memory, get a cyborg arm, and then fall into a dimensional rift into our world. I think what he's describing sounds a lot more like the standard light novel 'What if' side story, where you evaluate the consequences of a specific decision against the events of the story. The point of the 8UC 'What if' was that humanity would find a way to survive even without the Warrior of Light, but the course of that history remains unwritten.

I think an important consideration in this is that significantly altering events in the past causes timelines to diverge. If you go back into the past and change an event, you are now in a new timeline and cannot return to the old one. G'raha has no way of returning to the 8UC timeline, for example. You can't really jump timelines the same way that you do dimensional travel. We have dimensional travel already, as each shard exists in the same physical co-ordinates but on a separate, displaced layer of reality (EE Vol 3, p.13). You are always continuously existing in one singular timeline, regardless of what you do. Changing an event, either in the past or present, just causes your current timeline to splinter off and bifurcate. The alternate timelines are specifically what you didn't do, and you have no real way of interacting with that.

I suppose a mathematical way of thinking of it is that your trajectory within a timeline is path-dependent, while spatial or dimensional travel isn't.

[Kesey]

I have a theory for the next major villain...

One of my theories? Azem. Maybe us being Azem is a red herring. Or maybe it's not, we're the Azem of the Source, and we merged with the Azem of the First; but the other Azem is out there and wants to merge with us. Even if it's against our will. Either way, Azem's Legacy is going to 100% play a roll in the future, given the artifact at the end of Dawntrail.

Idk, maybe I just miss the days when you had a masked villain and had months to a year to speculate what their motivation is and who they are. At this point what are we waiting for? To ease relations between Alexandria and Tuliyollal? Have a mentor moment with Gulool Ja so he can decide what do with Alexandria? Help Koana take Alexandrian tech to Tural? None of these really cry we have a dungeon and/or trial waiting in the wing. Would it have killed them to have two face obscured by shadows/masks people say things are complicated now that Azem's reincarnation has the key and something needs to be done about it--then cut to the WOL looking at the key and map of Etheirys? I'm not feeling SE's "excitement" to bring us a new story line and, frankly, they are playing their cards too close to their chest.

[kaynide]

There was no need to confirm that there was a split timeline in play. But the split seemed to be an extraordinary event in an otherwise single timeline where time loops can form.

If Yoshida is not just guessing and not being mistranslated here, he's introducing the existence of countless additional timelines, many of them where we failed one way or another.

I mean, the existence of Shadowbringers as it is already introduced the split. They could have have worked out a million different story angles to get G’raha on the first without need of a future time travel bit. So whether we like it or not, time’s been split. I personally was fine here because it was “hard” to do and nobody could believe it possible, until it was easy to do and send us to Elpis. Magic!

Furthermore, I do think it’s as light a thing as it is. YoshiP has his writers pitch ideas, which I’m sure he hears a lot of, before settling on which threads make it into a particular expansion. I’m sure he keeps track to the best of his abilities, but he also probably has a lot of plates spinning, so to speak.

So when asked on some specific minutiae, rather than commit, he probably just talks about possibilities and vagueness to not cut off his writers.

because you know at least one write already pitched alternate timeline Emet as a future villain because of course they did.

Ultimately,it’s a video game. There are no rules that require it to adhere to any specifics. If tomorrow they said Alexandria is in fact the 2nd shard and “whoops, we got the order wrong”, or “oh they just time traveled from the ice calamity to just before lightning on the 12th.” We’d just have to accept it, as dumb and illogical as it may be.

[Iscah]

I mean, the existence of Shadowbringers as it is already introduced the split. They could have have worked out a million different story angles to get G’raha on the first without need of a future time travel bit. So whether we like it or not, time’s been split. I personally was fine here because it was “hard” to do and nobody could believe it possible, until it was easy to do and send us to Elpis. Magic!

I am not in any way arguing again the fact that the timeline split once due to the events of Shadowbringers.

In fact I am arguing in favour of the arguments you are putting in favour of it – it was hard to do, it took effort to cause an extremely rare outcome of a split timeline. That is the way to marry up the ability to split timelines with the discussion in Alexander about time having a single proper path.

What I'm objecting to is the proposal that there are a constantly, infinitely splitting array of timelines forming spontaneously "each time an event occurs".

In fact, I'm not even sure that it's possible for stable loops to form in an infinitely splitting many-timelines scenario, if "time-traveller is present"/"time-traveller is not present" is a difference that immediately causes another split.

My interpretation of this was that at the moment of Alexander's summoning, the timeline could have diverged in infinite possible directions based off of Alexander's decision. For example, Dayan describes a future in which Alexander averts the Seventh Umbral Calamity by sweeping Dalamud out of the sky. It's not a singular bifurcation on a decision tree. Alexander had the power to change absolutely anything in the timeline in an instant. That's why the infinite 'potential futures' (i.e. a multifurcation) were separated by 'nary a thread'.

Dayan clearly describes these as Alexander's predictions of possible alternate outcomes, particularly focused on whether it could improve the overall state of the world by intervening.

Again, the relevant conversation in full:

MIDE
My love...! What...what is this place?

DAYAN
How best to put it? We stand inside a mathematical simulation, calculated and projected by the device at the heart of the colossus. One might equally say it is the dream that Alexander dreams...

MIDE
And what of our companions? Are they...?

DAYAN
...Their fate was not mine to change, Mide. All that came to pass did so for a reason. History is as it was─as it should be─free of the paradoxes that spelled its undoing.
From this place─unfettered by the mortal construct of time─Alexander looks out upon past, present, and future, seeing infinite possibilities. I see what it sees, and feel what it feels─this perfect machine, born from yearnings for an ideal world.
Oh, if you could see the worlds we have seen! A world in which the Illuminati rule history with an iron fist, every nation brought under their yoke. A world in which Alexander spread wide the wings of time and swept the lesser moon from the heavens, averting the Calamity...
Alexander dreamed all the realities imaginable─all the realities mathematically computable─and in the end, reached a single, logical conclusion. It would change nothing, and erase itself from existence.

Alexander dreamed – calculated – these visions of worlds that never were. It is not presented as an alternate reality that exists, only that could have existed depending on different factors.

It's worth noting that Yoshi-p isn't necessarily invoking western pop-culture interpretations of a 'multiverse' when he discusses 'branch theory'. I don't think he's suggesting that all the Azem reboots are going to get together and make an ensemble film. Nor is he implying that 8UC Emet is going to lose his memory, get a cyborg arm, and then fall into a dimensional rift into our world. I think what he's describing sounds a lot more like the standard light novel 'What if' side story, where you evaluate the consequences of a specific decision against the events of the story. The point of the 8UC 'What if' was that humanity would find a way to survive even without the Warrior of Light, but the course of that history remains unwritten.

Again, I'm not objecting to having this one isolated what-if alternate timeline or even hypothesising how things would play out in this one alternate timeline. But it can be created in isolation without needing the infinite-splitting scenario where for every victory we achieve, there's also a newly created timeline where we lost and the world is a worse place for the people occupying it.

Will we ever see that world? No. Will those people's plight ever directly affect us? No. But still, the author's pen has power – it created that suffering world for no purpose beyond a throwaway explanation that doesn't even fit the canon evidence.

That's why I don't like this statement, casually declaring that there are ever-splitting worlds even though we only need to deal with these two specific strands that could be – and from my interpretation of canon, actually were – written to exist alone, only split apart because someone did it deliberately, and with a second outcome that was an improvement on the first.

If we're really being honest, 'Interview Naoki Yoshida' is not at all a reliable source of game lore. This is the same guy that was asked at the media tour what lore to go over to prep for Dawntrail and responded with two things (The names of the Convocation, and Myths of the Realm) that had literally nothing to do with the MSQ at all.

This is my feeling on it too. He runs the game overall but it's not his job to plan the intricacies of the lore and may be vulnerable to misinterpreting the finer points as much as any of us.

In no way is he saying we're going to get travelers from the universe where Varis was a good father and Zenos is our best friend but for reals this time.

This is not remotely my argument. "Multiverse where things are topsy-turvy for the fun of writing it" is essentially what they're writing with the shards now anyway, not that I'm fond of it, but they don't need a time-based multiverse to write that thing if they want to.

[Lurina]

I think that stuff about the names of the convocation and Myths of the Realm probably is going somewhere. I remember everyone had a similar "??? that never happened, does he even know the story for his own game" when he gave an Endwalker launch interview about how Zenos's reaper avatar was going to be important, and we all know how that went after a couple patches.

I think Yoshi-P knows exactly what he's saying. We know from prior interviews that he sits on the story planning team with the writing leads, and influences it a fair amount himself. I think the fact that he has this whole explanation ready to deliver without his usual "this is just my opinion..." qualification is extremely worrying in regard to timeline nonsense being a cornerstone of future plots, especially now that, again, we've been given a magic hourglass with ambiguous spacetime powers.

[kaynide]

I am not in any way arguing again the fact that the timeline split once due to the events of Shadowbringers.

In fact I am arguing in favour of the arguments you are putting in favour of it – it was hard to do, it took effort to cause an extremely rare outcome of a split timeline. That is the way to marry up the ability to split timelines with the discussion in Alexander about time having a single proper path.

What I'm objecting to is the proposal that there are a constantly, infinitely splitting array of timelines forming spontaneously "each time an event occurs".

In fact, I'm not even sure that it's possible for stable loops to form in an infinitely splitting many-timelines scenario, if "time-traveller is present"/"time-traveller is not present" is a difference that immediately causes another split.

I'm with you here, honestly. I think multiverse "everything-everywhere-all-at-once" scenarios are lazy/awful, unless they ARE the central thing in the fiction (as in the movie).

My biggest issue is that we have lore that's all well and good, and rules we hope we can theorize by, but the writers seem to regularly additive-retcon things in ways that I'm not much a fan for, since late Shadowbringers/Endwalker.

Like, we said earlier, Time Travel and Dimensional Travel should be hard, and super risky. It took generations, a psuedo-alexander unit, and finally the entire Crystal Tower. And even then it was off, sending him farther back than intended. After all that, G'raha mistakenly soul-snatched the wrong people several times before finally getting us over there.

Emet (and I assume all ancients) found even the concept of time travel inconceivable, and was more than ok to dissect G'raha over it.

But, -suddenly- Elidabus (who is somehow still somewhat sentient/intact despite being absorbed by the tower) can just send us exactly to the time and place we need to be? Just like that? Didn't we destroy the Alexander-Unit?

[Kennar]

Like, we said earlier, Time Travel and Dimensional Travel should be hard, and super risky. It took generations, a psuedo-alexander unit, and finally the entire Crystal Tower. And even then it was off, sending him farther back than intended. After all that, G'raha mistakenly soul-snatched the wrong people several times before finally getting us over there.

...

But, -suddenly- Elidabus (who is somehow still somewhat sentient/in tact despite being absorbed by the tower) can just send us exactly to the time and place we need to be? Just like that? Didn't we destroy the Alexander-Unit?

What gripes me about both of those scenarios is that we're now able to go back to those places at will, with no cost or consequence, and it doesn't seem to bother anybody. We have NPCs in Sharlyan saying, "Boy, it sure would be nice if someone could go back in time and get me an ancient fish. *looks at WoL expectantly*" And if Zero's soul can be put into a bottle and carried to the First, why I can't I bring Y'shtola? Maybe this has been explained and I'm just a moron, but I've gotten three characters through EW and don't have any good answers yet.

I feel like through ShB, EW, and now DT, the writing team has played fast and loose with the rules, and now they are just doing things because it sounds cool or because the plot needs it to happen. "Multiverse" seems like a way to conveniently write themselves out of the inconsistencies they've created.