Revelations from Keynote II

[Fenral]

If it really does turn out to be G'raha, it's going to be a fantastic "called it" moment for me. I'll have to find the post I made suggesting it during the 4.4 discussion...

And I'll get to go back to the comment I made to Moose (years ago) about wanting Gaius and G'raha in the same expansion.

[Lauront]

I'm currently hoping they keep the time travel to a minimum. I'm still holding out on the hope that any talk of "let expanse contract, let eon become instant", "history must be changed" etc. is referring to how Zodiark perceives time, seeing it as a compressed singularity, and therefore able to foresee how current choices will affect future paths.

With that said, it could be any of the Paragons, including Elidibus, as he'd make a tempting host for any of them. Elidibus was my first guess, but they've also integrated the gemini theme into some monstrosities in past FFs. I think the thing with Solus is that it really is just an assumption that he is Emet-Selch; there is nothing specific tying the two together, other than the fact that Emet-Selch as an esper is also associated with death (via its dark analogue, Zalera) and this vaguely ties into the Black Rose train of thought. At any rate, if it's G'raha it'd explain the crystalline corruption, at least, and as you say it could have interesting plot direction for the tower. I won't deny that he could well be the missing link in all this echoing, mysterious voice stuff, although I am still leaning to it being Zodiark.

Makes me wonder if the body-jacking could occur precisely to put the Crystal Tower to some such use as you described.

[Lambdafish]

I think the biggest revelation is that SE europe breaks technology often

[Guiballad]

Titania does kinda looks like the twins don't they?
If we are going to the future then maybe Titania is how an idealized version of one of them looks like.

But with all the sheer weirdness we are seeing in the previews alone i think we might be in for a "reality break" scenario rather than a time travel plot. The reason they still haven't given us a map is because each zone is in one of the shards. That would certainly explain a Nier raid (which just made me 300% more hyped for the expansion).

[Lauront]

Titania does kinda looks like the twins don't they?
If we are going to the future then maybe Titania is how an idealized version of one of them looks like.

But with all the sheer weirdness we are seeing in the previews alone i think we might be in for a "reality break" scenario rather than a time travel plot. The reason they still haven't given us a map is because each zone is in one of the shards. That would certainly explain a Nier raid (which just made me 300% more hyped for the expansion).

Could be where they're going with it. Not a bad suggestion, actually. They'll devote one or two to Dalmasca, plus we're getting the Rak'tika Greatwood, but for the rest (they may not even stop at 6), if they want to reserve Ilsabard for 6.0, they could certainly do that, and bring in some realm-hopping. It'd tie in with some of the fortunes from the current seasonal event.

I'd be more partial to Shard hopping than time travel, even with an awareness of the hints towards such a story arc... if they limited any time travel to one character coming back from the future, I'd be ok with it. It's one of those things that's best left on the shelf unless it really enhances the story narrative in some way.

[Guiballad]

Could be where they're going with it. Not a bad suggestion, actually. They'll devote one or two to Dalmasca, plus we're getting the Rak'tika Greatwood, but for the rest (they may not even stop at 6), if they want to reserve Ilsabard for 6.0, they could certainly do that, and bring in some realm-hopping. It'd tie in with some of the fortunes from the current seasonal event.

I'd be more partial to Shard hopping than time travel, even with an awareness of the hints towards such a story arc... if they limited any time travel to one character coming back from the future, I'd be ok with it. It's one of those things that's best left on the shelf unless it really enhances the story narrative in some way.

The team did a really good job on the Alexander storyline so i think they could handle a time travel plot quite nicely if they set some REALLY hard rules for it. But honestly i feel like time travel is always tricky to include in any story and can lead to some really frustrating plot holes or bad conclusions.
Breaking some in-universe rules to allow us to shard hop, even in a limited fashion, would give the team a lot of liberty to do some cool stuff without threatening much of the game's internal consistency.

[Kalise]

On the topic of time travel...

There's some potential for very messy ways to make it work.

Such as if we and G'raha Tia go back in time to visit another shard (Such as, say, the First) before it was engulfed by light in order to prevent said engulfing in light, thereby changing the future of the shard and thus our past (Since the Source wouldn't be affected by the First being engulfed, in addition to the WoD's we met no longer having a reason to visit us), then it would mean that we wouldn't have to then go back in time to do this thus creating an alternate timeline.

So there's one timeline where we fail to prevent the destruction of the First where we go back in time to fix it which we can travel between at will and one where we prevented the destruction of the First and thus don't have to time travel, which becomes the new canon timeline when the story progresses forwards.

Basically, allowing the retconning of events, but with a reasonable explanation that we are involved with. Potentially also allowing memories of the events to be kept for those involved, while others would be none the wiser (If those involved ended up taking their places in the "New" timeline)

With of course, the multiple timelines allowing us to freely move between the "Past" and the "Present" with ease, because we're really just shifting between the timelines.

Also, it would be funny to start causing a hassle for the WoD's we met while they're the WoL's and we're the invading WoD's see how they like it! xD

P.S. I spend too much time thinking about time travel...

[Lauront]

Time travel on another shard is how I could foresee it working, but I'd want them to introduce some plot element, if they were to go down that route, that made it prohibitively difficult to accomplish, so that it remains a "limited use" plot device. Still, we're missing many elements of the puzzle, which will most likely appear in 4.57. I can't wait for late March.

[Kalise]

Time travel on another shard is how I could foresee it working, but I'd want them to introduce some plot element, if they were to go down that route, that made it prohibitively difficult to accomplish, so that it remains a "limited use" plot device. Still, we're missing many elements of the puzzle, which will most likely appear in 4.57. I can't wait for late March.

Well, I imagine that it would take an extraordinarily high amount of Aether to accomplish such a feat.

Not to mention, limitations within who and how it can work.

For example, why the chosen few scions? Why are their souls gone from their bodies? The answer to those questions being a factor in why they wouldn't be able to just pull this plot device out whenever they felt like it.

[Cybylt]

I'm iffy on time travel as a plot element because mechanically going to these places can't function any differently than changing zones currently does. And say we jump ahead in time, why is Rebuild Ishgard a thing? Shouldn't they have dealt with that themselves by then? It also rubs time bubble issues right in your face constantly because it can't take away any content and they've been careful to limit the points where we do cross it.