The Road to 5.0

[RicaRuin]

That is... actually quite the interesting fact. If I recall correctly, our german trailer had something along the lines of must be stopped, and I'd love to add to it, but currently my internet is too bad to play the video. (Or does anyone happen to have the german lines for me?)

For the english translation, I always happened to understand the 'unwritten' as 'erase from history' in the sense of 'this happened but we'll fix it and erase from history that it ever happened'.

EDIT: Purely going by my memory, the first line was 'dieses Unheil, größer noch als die siebte Katastrophe, muss aufgehalten werden.' (second sentence absent from my memory). So, like 'this calamity, greater even than the Seventh Calamity, must be stopped'. Quite on the point, since 'aufhalten' is used for stopping something that is in the process of happening.

[TheHeavenAbyss]

English is also not my mother tongue, but even if technically "unwritten" and "rewritten" mean different things, in practice, aren't they the same?

I see "rewrite history" in this context as "go back in time and change something, so that you alter the way history happened". And "unwrite history" as "go back in time to stop something from ever happening". But that's essentialy writing another version of history.

Again, English is not my first languange, so I might be wrong.

[RicaRuin]

I quickly browsed the Oxford Dictionary for it.

Unwrite is 'Not recorded in writing / (especially of a law) resting originally on custom or judicial decision rather than on statute / (of a convention) understood and generally accepted, although not formally established'.

Rewrite is 'Write (something) again so as to alter or improve it.'

Keep in mind that I didn't list all possible definitions, but seems to me as if only Rewrite has the aspect of change...

[TheHeavenAbyss]

Yes, I understand, but if you "remove" something from history, you're "altering" history, so I'd say it means the same in this context.

[Anonymoose]

I'm only throwing this wrench into the works for shiggles but one could also claim that Alexander suggested that time is an illusion experienced by three-dimensional creatures. In such a scenario, all time is happening at once and all you need to do to change time is transcend the 3rd dimension and manipulate the complete block. One could claim that Alexander merely knew that the aetherial cost of a 3D primal manipulating spacetime from a 4D perspective was so utterly costly as to create a situation whereby no good could ever outweigh the harm, and therefore it manipulated the complete block of time to include a stable loop which solves the paradox of its own existence by locking it in a temporal prison, doomed to cyclically rise and fall forever from different perspectives. In that sense, the future is already written ... it just must needs be unwritten by something with extraordinary power before it comes to pass. Maybe something that allegedly has power over the Precepts of time and space.

[Fenral]

Fenral's [sorta] fluent Japanese to the rescue.

Unpretty literal translation from the Japanese teaser trailer:

悲劇を止めなければならない
This tragedy must be stopped.

第七霊災を超える、新たな悲劇を
This new tragedy that surpasses the Seventh Calamity.

たとえそれが、歴史を書き換える事になろうとも。
Even if that means rewriting history.

So, Japanese is also literally talking about rewriting history here. "Unwritten" in the English is likely being used to mean "undo what was written". It may not be Oxford correct, but a certain Ahriman would no doubt argue that spoken (and archaic) English isn't always 100% Oxford correct.


EDIT: Unless English is being a snowflake again and trying to suggest that history must literally no longer be prerecorded in order to prevent the next Calamity. (As in, it can't be written in advance.)

[RicaRuin]

Maybe something that allegedly has power over the Precepts of time and space.

... I see what you did there. But I quite like the idea.

[ObsidianFire]

I do like the idea that somewhere along the line it became apparent that the Ascians needed to be replaced as "Agents of Darkness". There's just never been a good candidate for the job until now that wouldn't fall prey to Ascian shenanigans. The other idea I like is that the Warrior of Light/Darkness is supposed to flip between the two orientations to prevent them becoming unbalanced and it's time for us to make the first flip to Darkness.

One of the things I'm wracking my brain about 5.0 is the MSQs tend not to repeat story theme that have already been done before. Like... 2.0 is about rebirth, 3.0 is about reconciliation, 4.0 is about revolution... 5.0 is about re? (no, I did not purposely make all the words start with re-).

[Cilia]

"This tragedy, greater even than the Seventh Umbral Calamity, must be undone. If history is to be unwritten, let it be unwritten. Become who you must. Become the Warrior of Darkness."

So from the sounds of it, we're either going to have to rewrite history, or fix some huge mess without getting credit for it.

Exactly which I could not yet say.

[Mansion]

I quickly browsed the Oxford Dictionary for it.

Unwrite is 'Not recorded in writing / (especially of a law) resting originally on custom or judicial decision rather than on statute / (of a convention) understood and generally accepted, although not formally established'.

I actually considered that option, although it's ruled out by French (would have been translated otherwise) and now Japanese it seems.
Based on translations and original text, it is "unwritten" in the sense of going back on something and doing it again. But the "going back" is not so firmly defined, it can be either that "going back to the past to change it", or just fixing a mistake and its consequences.

So let's wait for 4.5 and/or the second part of the trailer I guess! I'll keep an eye on any significant translation detail, as I play the game with english audio and french text.