"Time Skip" for 4.5 or 5.0?

[EdwinLi]

Let us discuss what we learned from the Teaser trailer that hints about 5.0 plot being a "Time Skip" that will lead WoL into a world he (or she) is no longer needed in the future and he (or she) "saved" the world from the threat of Ascians.

So far we know enough time have passed since the defeat of Garlemald that the WoL now is no longer needed in the world to a point that the Light he or she faught to protect is attempting to discard the WoL by force.

Do you think this will be the permanent setting for 5.0 timeline or a small moment in 4.5 so the WoL is sent back to current timeline?

If you assume 5.0 timeline or a small moment in 4.5, explain how do you think this may affect the story for 5.0.


For me, I am assuming it is in 5.0 timeline because it will setup where 4.4 left off being what became of the bodies for everyone after the time skip. I am guess in 4.5 the WoL will experience that final battle scene in the trailer. After that the WoL is finally sent into the future thus waking up right in the middle of the battlefield to replicate that teaser trailer seen (slightly altered so no "Job change") only to be saved and later learn the WoL been missing since that final battle for years. This scenario is my assumption because the Child of Light shown in the teasers is in the future and for WoL to protect the child of light, the WoL must also remain in the future.

This scenario would fit for a small moment for 4.5 as a temporary thing as well but then we will not have a reason to protect the "child of light" in 5.0 that the teasers shows the WoL protecting since the child of light is in the future being protected by Thancred.

[Anonymoose]

While that's one interpretation of the picture that's been painted for us so far, we probably haven't seen the complete teaser, yet; and it may be designed to leave us confused. Once again, I'm left fairly certain that that's Arbert's voice actor talking - which makes me question whether I ever should have discarded the concern in 4.4. (Either that or Alphinaud's voice actor sounds just like him while pretending to be older...)

But this whole thing is like a rogue planet just sped through my systemic understanding of the story and now everything is settling back into a new structure. Arbert himself told us not to fight for Light or Darkness, but for ourselves. We can't discard that already, right?

So if the 4.4 voice is sincere, Thancred's plan leads to direct conflict with Zelidibus and beckons a possible Calamity and/or Flood of Light.
"The laws of time and space will bend before me. Let me in."

If 3.0 and 4.0 are any precedent, the very beginning of the plot is reflecting in the very end of the expansion before it. So PLOT POINT #1 seems to be related to 4.5's dungeon, the catalyst for the "Eighth and Final Umbral Era". But then we see that there are new areas - areas that are not necessarily from a world post-Calamity or post-Flood - areas that we can presumably teleport to regular old city-states from so we can hand in our dailies.

So is it a localized disturbance? Do we too suddenly shift the balance in favor of the Light and have to push back with Darkness while still fighting for the preservation of mortals and Hydaelyn and our world? Or was Elidibus not the snake I accused (and continue to accuse) him of being all this time? How deep is our change in worldview? And why?

All of that we have a better grip on than these time shenanigans. Are we getting a message from a broken future about how to unwrite it into a stable loop? Are we going to change the game's own timeline? Are there branching worlds and timelines? Or is this all a bait and switch for something to do with Minfilia and the First? Are we using the FFXI approach to traversing a "doorway" into another time or dimension? Whatever is it, I just hope it doesn't cheapen the world we've fought for or the journey we've taken, which is always the risk when time shenanigans pop up.

[Mieck]

Once again, I'm left fairly certain that that's Arbert's voice actor talking - which makes me question whether I ever should have discarded the concern in 4.4.

One thing I think it does do (and, of course, this could just be a result of the edit / stuff we haven't seen yet, all those caveats, yadda yadda etc), is give us a little more of a steer on the attitude of the Voice speaker.
I was pretty firmly on the side of it being Arbert, but then I was drawn to the lines in cutscene 1 of MSQ "Prelude in Violet", where the Voice returns and hits the WoL with a repetition of lines already heard in the cutscenes for "The Call".

Only you... Only you...

Throw wide... the gates...

At the very least, in the English VA, I found the intonation insistent, and a little threatening. It seemed, along with the other text, that this could be someone / something entirely without our best interests at heart.


However, now we have the trailer for Edgebringers, and the Voice is back, asking (rhetorically) how long they've been waiting for the

one who stood against the storm. For the one they called the Warrior of Light

Taken in English alone, the form of words suggest the speaker is a being with what we would recognise as a normal concept of time. I don't think, with what little we can infer about Zodiark (comparing to Hydaelyn) that He is a being that would recognise our measures of time.

What's the trailer voice over like in the other languages?

[ScootPatoot]

Taken in English alone, the form of words suggest the speaker is a being with what we would recognise as a normal concept of time.

It does mention time, but I don't think that it's referring to the player character as the Warrior of Light.

In the trailer, we are witnessing memories in what seems to be an Echo vision. Whose memories are these? Personally, I think the one experiencing the vision is Arbert. That would certainly explain why we hear his VA in the trailer.

The Warriors of Darkness are from the First, a world which progressed parallel to ours, with small but significant historical divergences. Looking at the trailer, we see something similar to Kuribu featured. For us, that's simply a dungeon boss and nothing too big to overcome, but who's to say that it wasn't a larger problem for them as Light overcame their world?

Remember, they also were once Warriors of Light like us, and I suspect we're going to have to help them bring darkness to their world. They asked to return to their world to restore it, but it could be a larger undertaking: one that could affect all worlds.

Light, Dark, it doesn't matter. What matters is how you choose to use them.

[Mansion]

What's the trailer voice over like in the other languages?

In French, I would say that 4.4 MSQ voice and ShB teaser are the same voice actor.
But Arbert, I'm not sure at all. It is similar, but the tones are so different it is hard to tell. I've never been that convinced in English either actually.

The only major difference is that in English he says "the one thay called the WoL" and in French he says "the one they call the WoL"-present tense.

[Theodric]

I'm not convinced that we'll be getting a time skip so much as a glimpse of the potential future should things go awry. So far the game has been content to mostly contain established events within a specific bubble - with the only exception being the shift from 1.0 to 2.0.

There would be an immense amount of text and character models/zone models to adjust if the entire game world were to advance multiple years. I don't think we're getting any major revamps for the existing zones - bar Ishgard - for quite some time.

[EdwinLi]

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The Doma Enclave is a good example of changing the world without altering much to fit past and future timeline appearances.

If anything, Doma Enclave maybe a prototype to the time skip changes if they go for the time skip route.

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Don't forget the most important figure in 5.0 teasers being the Child of Light.

This child seem to be the focus of the 5.0 storyline and the person WoL must protect if they wish to stop whatever horrors is about to be or is unleashed in 5.0. Not to mention the forces of Light seem to really want to "kill" this child of light. Though as I said with the Child of Light with older Thancred in the future, the Time Skip may be necessary since the Child of Light can only be protected by WoL if WoL is in the future as well.

[Enkidoh]

I'm not convinced that we'll be getting a time skip so much as a glimpse of the potential future should things go awry. So far the game has been content to mostly contain established events within a specific bubble - with the only exception being the shift from 1.0 to 2.0.

There would be an immense amount of text and character models/zone models to adjust if the entire game world were to advance multiple years. I don't think we're getting any major revamps for the existing zones - bar Ishgard - for quite some time.

I agree with the Garlean - I'm actually getting FFXI Rhapsodies of Vana'diel vibes with this whole scenario, where the 'end of the world' happens out of gameplay time in the 'far' future' and the player's future incarnation sends someone or something back to change this 'bad future'. At the very least the 'bad future' would probably not have any real gameplay other than an instance or two set there.

As Moose said though, this is just a teaser trailer so we don't have the full picture yet, let alone proper context as to what exactly is going on (look back at HW's opening - the original teaser just showed Derplander struggling through the snow and facing Nidhrasvelgar, and a brief shot of a DRG on a steeple. Only with the events of 2.55 and the full trailer did everything make sense. So I think we need to wait til the last patch story is added for Stormblood and the full trailer is out before we can actually understand just what the hells is going, and why Derplander is having a bad Echo-induced migraine while getting a tongue-lashing from a gremlin.

[Iscah]

If there is time travel involved, and it's not implemented as temporary "instanced content" you do at critical story points then return to the normal game-world, then I think the nature of the game makes it necessary to have a stable portal between past and future.

Permanently moving characters out of the standard time bubble could make a huge chronological mess out of sidequests, require all the old fixed NPCs to remain, and would mean the "redesigned" zones are still forced to fit the shape of the current ones so people "from the other time" don't walk through walls and objects. No adding or removing platforms, blocking or opening passages.

One of the other things mentioned alongside those so-far-reliable leaks is that the Crystal Tower would be involved, and (if I'm remembering correctly) finding a portal there. In any case that would tie in with the ending of that questline where Nero throws away his magitek compass - and then it seems to have found a signal as he walks away.


...you don't suppose we might be hearing from G'raha Tia??? Could that add up? The voice would suit him, he may well be waiting years for us, and he's essentially the last of the Allagans now... plus hints of further plot involving Princess Salina.

Small chance, of course, especially since it's an optional quest and they don't like crossing those into MSQ. But we did see a brief flash of G'raha during one of the Omega cutscenes. Or at least I did. No idea if they'd make it a variable cutscene depending on whether you'd completed the other raids or not.

[Fenral]

One of the other things mentioned alongside those so-far-reliable leaks is that the Crystal Tower would be involved, and (if I'm remembering correctly) finding a portal there. In any case that would tie in with the ending of that questline where Nero throws away his magitek compass - and then it seems to have found a signal as he walks away.

...you don't suppose we might be hearing from G'raha Tia??? Could that add up? The voice would suit him, he may well be waiting years for us, and he's essentially the last of the Allagans now... plus hints of further plot involving Princess Salina.

Small chance, of course, especially since it's an optional quest and they don't like crossing those into MSQ. But we did see a brief flash of G'raha during one of the Omega cutscenes. Or at least I did. No idea if they'd make it a variable cutscene depending on whether you'd completed the other raids or not.

Wait, the leaks are saying what now? *ears perk up*

I've already written at exhaustive length, and to the annoyance of a great many people, about why G'raha can't be kept too separate from the Allagan lore going forward, but you appear to be on the same page already, so...

It is literally impossible for the Crystal Tower to be involved in the MSQ without bringing in G'raha Tia. That would be like fighting Nidhogg without Estinien, but worse because when last we left it, he was already in there. There would be no accounting for it.


However, the more likely progression of events will be that the WoL will end up in a situation where all/most of their allies are gone, and with nobody able to save us, G'raha will come to our aid (this would be massive FFIII fanservice, given he was modeled after the FF series' first "fake" heroic sacrifice, Desch, including copying his famous "this is my destiny" line). Afterwards, Krile could facilitate an alternate introduction, perhaps even crediting him with her inexplicable knowledge of Allagan tech, and then the tower could be conveniently (re)visited regardless of the player's prior completion, with just a little bit of head scratching along the same lines as DRG 30-50 or the Binding Coil. This could even happen in 4.5, given Y'shtola was about to do the thing with Allagan tech that we've been trying to stop everyone else from doing since 1.0.

All that said, the voice is probably not G'raha (though he was on my shortlist before the teaser). While I grant that the casting would be more than good, the pronoun doesn't add up ("watashi" vs "ore"). However, the pronoun was actually the only part that didn't resemble G'raha's speech patterns in Japanese, so it would be too obvious a tell, especially for the JP playerbase that already expects him to return. Maybe it'll change in a later version. Hrm...