Gamerescape E3 Interview

[Dualblade]

Ok but what if, hear me out, on one of the other shards Brendt/Brennan/Bremondt's Shard twin became a Warrior of Light!

Merchant of Light? Trader of Light? The class/job exists in other SE games so its possible!

[Sathona]

the B brothers are the primals of all primals just watching over us

[Zetsumei_Tsunarashi]

I think we are in fact going to encounter 1st counterparts of people on the source. Yes, things developed differently in the 10,000 years since Hydaelyn split, but in all that time, out of all the dice throws that can occur in that time leading up to the present day, at least some of those dice throws had to land the same as they did on the source.

I think the theme will be that people are the end result of their life experiences and don't really have fates that are set in stone. So you will see the same people who ended up radically different than they did on the source and in that way, they are not the same person.

[Rocl]

Yes, things developed differently in the 10,000 years since Hydaelyn split, but in all that time, out of all the dice throws that can occur in that time leading up to the present day, at least some of those dice throws had to land the same as they did on the source.

This analogy only really works if you're dumping a tonne of one-hundred sided dice and gathering the sum and each individual dice's result. Eventually you'd probably get the same results—the same sum surely, maybe even the same distribution of numbers, but the likelihood of the specific dice rolling the same numbers in two casts (or fourteen, as the case may be) would be astronomically low. The whole butterfly effect concept makes the idea that a Brendon on the First is of the same exact parentage as Brendt, Brennan, and Bremondt hard to swallow for me.

That being said, I acknowledge the trope and its usefulness; but it's a very dangerous game to play imo. You cheapen things like Haurchefant, sure; but it just also feels contrived. Sure, comic books do it all the time in their respective multiverses, but I've always been more a fan of seeing another Spider-Man in another world and learning that it isn't Peter Parker. Figuring out how that masked vigilante became one so similar to the one we know is neat! The same character being the same person with the same backstory and same family except, like, they drive on the other side of the road in NYC is lame. It's honestly just a personal preference.

[ObsidianFire]

I think the kind of "doppelgängers" we will see, if we do see any, are going to be less carbon copies of characters and more along the lines of "does that guy remind you of that other guy on the Source". Only the guy on the 1st Shard is a different race and it's only going to be his mannerisms that are similar, not his backstory or motivations. It wouldn't be that hard to make a character with Hargefaunt's mannerisms, but who has completely different motivations.

I don't think it's all that fair to say that any character with similar mannerisms (or story roles) to characters from the Source is a "doppelgänger" of someone on the source. FFXIV is very tropey and needs characters in certain roles to make the story work. Now that we aren't in the Source anymore, we need characters that can fulfill the roles of characters back on the Source.

[JeanneOrnitier]

It's kind of premature to get upset at a First-Haurchefant showing up considering there isn't even the slightest hint so far of that happening.

[EdwinLi]

It's kind of premature to get upset at a First-Haurchefant showing up considering there isn't even the slightest hint so far of that happening.

Fear of what introducing doppelgängers from alternate realities/parallel worlds may bring to the story is causing the advance hate before the final result is even presented.

but as I said before, majority of people we know may have their doppelgängers dead or turned into Sin Eaters in the First due to the Flood of light covering majority of the world and the only place we can go in 5.0 are the few remaining places that have not been consumed yet.

not to mention as I said multiple times, the doppelgängers does not mean that everything in the past is undone since these people are completely different people with only similarities are their name and appearance.

Treating a doppelgängers as the same person is rather a result of the mind not being able to accept the person as a different person simply because the appearance and voice of the person is the same as someone they or we knew. Though this is a common plot for alternate realities/parallel worlds since the mind and/or heart of a person is trying to tell themselves that this person is not the same person but the memories of the person we know prevents people from accepting this at the sametime.

It is like the Flash with the multiple versions of Harrison Wells or the different Peter Parkers of the Spiderverse which each had different life and different results in their life to be completely different people such as in Spider-Gwen Universe of Spiderverse, Peter Parker gave into his darker nature thus instead of becoming Spider-man he became the Lizardman and died fighting Spider-Gwen.

As for Harrison Wells example, well the Flash series basically shows it with how different each Harrison Wells are to a point they are completely different people.

[Gula]

If they go the doppelganger route, even further anyway, I'd want it to be Mide (I think that's her name) from the Alexander story. Minus *touches scar.*

[LineageRazor]

I was going to write something like what Iscah did above.

Basically, alternate universes that are full of people we know only really work if one of the following is true:

- The split occurred recently, like a couple years ago. If the timelines were all identical between the two worlds up until a couple years ago, then yeah, there should be copies of pretty much everyone except for a few of the younger children. This doesn't leave a lot of room for DIFFERENCES, however; the butterfly effect takes time to get going, and a few years might not cut it. Not only would it be all the same people, but they'd basically be EXACTLY the same people.

- There are a LOT of alternate universes. Like more universes than there are atoms in our universe. Way more. Enough universes, that if you search hard enough you can find one that happens to have a bunch of the same people that managed to be assembled by sheer random chance. This is the monkeys writing Shakespeare analogy - when you approach infinity, anything is possible. When you approach fourteen, however, it becomes pure schlock. This is the route that comic books and Star Trek takes, though they downplay the truly mind-boggling number of alternate universes that must exist in order to make something like this happen.

The split happened 12,000 years ago, and produced a mere thirteen copies of the original world. Neither of the above scenarios works. In those 12,000 years Hauchefant's first ancestors MIGHT have married. If they all had sex at EXACTLY the same time, down to the nanosecond, they MIGHT have had the same children. But those children, and their children, and their children, for twelve thousand years... Even as their worlds follow different paths, they're still somehow pumping out the same kids generation after generation, all to lead up to a copy of Hauchefant? Just so we can feel melancholy? That would be so very, very stupid.

[Dualblade]

A couple characters being around on both the Source and First is okay. The merchant is mostly a little fun thing since his Source brothers were there at the start of ARR, and Minifillia is clearly going to be very important. Any other characters that are have doppelgangers on the first shouldn't be that important at least on the Source and thus should rule out characters like Louisoix and Haurchefant. Moenbyrda would be the closest character I could see to having a version of themselves on the First that we also interact with.

Please not Moenbryda. Not when Urianger has just slowly come to acceptance of her death.

I'd rather she'd not either, if only because I'd also rather not have a lot of doppelgangers and leave it as the only important one being Minfillia. She's just the only other one I could see being accepted by most people and not seen as just trying to use characters to pull at players by just existing again.