*Spoilers* Questions about Shadowbringers

[Iscah]

In the previous Block of the timeline, it is most likely that CT happened in the intended timeline of 2.X but this new Block created due to the time travel to continue the Timeline with different events is designed to have CT event happen based on when the player choose as part of a ripple effect.

No, it doesn't change. We keep having this conversation. That's not how the game handles optional quests.

CT happened in post-ARR. Nothing changes that.

Dialogue in the CT quests, particularly involving Nero, indicates you are in post-ARR regardless of when you do it.

Completing the CT after Shadowbringers then rewatching the cutscene where G'raha previously claimed you hadn't met yet has altered that line. The events of CT have been "slotted in" to the overall story at their appropriate time and have now happened prior to your trip to the First, even if you played them afterwards.

The events of CT are not affected by the changes to the timeline initiated in post-Stormblood because they took place before the timeline split and have not been altered.

[EdwinLi]

No, it doesn't change. We keep having this conversation. That's not how the game handles optional quests.

CT happened in post-ARR. Nothing changes that.

Dialogue in the CT quests, particularly involving Nero, indicates you are in post-ARR regardless of when you do it.

Completing the CT after Shadowbringers then rewatching the cutscene where G'raha previously claimed you hadn't met yet has altered that line. The events of CT have been "slotted in" to the overall story at their appropriate time and have now happened prior to your trip to the First, even if you played them afterwards.

The events of CT are not affected by the changes to the timeline initiated in post-Stormblood because they took place before the timeline split and have not been altered.

I am speaking of how the MSQ handle the view of things, Not how CT handle your progress in MSQ.

CT will always be considered in 2.X era but MSQ dialogue is based on progress in the CT thus the MSQ view of the New Timeline is hard lock on how far has been progressed in CT being...

1) New done CT = Not met yet.

2) In Progress CT = He will say he is adventuring with WoL currently.

3) Complete CT = He will say they met already

This changes what Block Timeline the WoL is in being that is #1 is the case then the timeline is a New Timeline that never had CT event happens or have not happened yet, #2 case is a timeline when CT story was only half way done thus G'raha Tia has not yet sealed himself in the Tower but in the future he will eventually, and Case #3 is the new timeline where things progressed as intended and CT happened in 2.X.

If a player start with Case #1 and finish 5.0 then finish CT after, then they are no longer in Case #1 timeline but in Case #3 new timeline where CT did happen in 2.X era and Case #1 becomes a Previous Timeline that happened before something happened before Exarch G'raha Tia Block Timeline.

In a Block Timeline, all possible outcomes happened in one possible Block timeline that previously existed until that Block stopped and a new Block continues where it left of as a New Timeline with events changing in certain areas. In this case Case #1, #2, and #3 still happens but if it is the current Block Timeline or a Previous Block Timeline that happened before is up to the player's view of things.

It is like a cycle that repeat itself in slightly different ways until one Block allow the Cycle/river to reach the intended destination being the current events in MSQ (with the Player's choices taken into consideration as well).

[Iscah]

I am speaking of how the MSQ handle the view of things, Not how CT handle your progress in MSQ.

I'm also talking about how MSQ handles it.

Once you have completed CT, there is no ambiguity about when it happened. It happened prior to Shadowbringers, and your character knows G'raha Tia prior to meeting the Exarch.

Your progress in the Crystal Tower storyline permanently alters the details of the MSQ that follows it. But your progress in the MSQ has no effect on the Crystal Tower.

The CT story is never intended to take place at any time other than post-ARR. It cannot. Even if G'raha Tia was a one-shot character who never came back, and all this time business never happened, the CT story is still set in a designated point in the MSQ because it forms part of Cid and Nero's story. It happens prior to their interactions in post-Heavensward and the Omega storyline, even though it's possible to play those first and then do CT afterwards. That just means you saw their interactions out of order - not that you changed the order in which those interactions happened.

The important thing is, the game will not acknowledge those earlier events happening unless the player has seen them. It doesn't change the sequence of events, but it does affect whether people will say at the time if those events happened or not.

All quests are supposed to have happened at the time they became available to you, and the story doesn't actually support "multiple sequences". Early events affect later events, but completing later events first does not have any effect on the early events or when they happened.

[EdwinLi]

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I know the story does not support Multiple Sequences.

I am talking about how the Block Timeline treats these aspect of "Progress" with them being just a new timelines that have replaced the old Block timeline. It is basically everything you said but in a Block timeline perspective of things.

For example, in One Block timeline the WoL would have done CT in 2.X and Alex in 3.X but Omega in a different timeframe. The game system will always treat Omega in 4.X era but in this Block Timeline perspective of events Omega happened in a later time beyond 4.X. However, by completing Omega, you have basically stopped the Old Block Timeline where Omega happened later and replaced it with a New Block Timeline where Omega happened in 4.X as intended thus now you are in a New Timeline where CT happened in 2.X, Alex happened in 3.X, and Omega in 4.X.

Think of Block timelines as all possible events mixed up in each Different Block that eventually stops at certain points to be replaced with a New Block that has a certain difference in event's placements in time while remaining mostly the same so it can continue building until it reach the intended destination.

[Iscah]

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That's adding complexity and multiple timelines that have not been hinted and do not need to be there. I can't see the point in inventing other timelines where things happen in different orders and then immediately "throwing them out" so we're left with the one timeline that we have already.

The Alexander quests imply that we are on a single timeline, and the instability caused by time travel in that story had to be resolved to keep history on the right course.

Doing CT after Shadowbringers doesn't work. It can't happen then. We're either too busy dying in the Eighth Calamity to go exploring Allagan ruins on our day off from saving the world, or we've escaped the timeline that leads to the dark future - in which case it's "too late" to set up the events of CT that need to happen so G'raha is in the tower in that timeline by the time the Eighth Calamity happens, so he can be let out of it afterwards.

Also, setting CT after Shadowbringers would mean that we have not directly met the G'raha who becomes the Exarch. He met the other version of us in the other timeline after the split, but not "us". From a storytelling perspective, that shouldn't happen.

And as I said before, it affects other characters' continuity. You can't put the Omega story before Crystal Tower for Cid and Nero. You can't have Binding Coil take place after Alisaie joins the Scions in post-Heavenward. You can't interact with Estinien the pre-Heavensward Azure Dragoon any time after starting Heavensward, but the Lv30-50 DRG quest have him there anyway. These events are fixed in time, and you're just stepping back into that part of the story to play them.

[EdwinLi]

And as I said before, it affects other characters' continuity. You can't put the Omega story before Crystal Tower for Cid and Nero. You can't have Binding Coil take place after Alisaie joins the Scions in post-Heavenward. You can't interact with Estinien the pre-Heavensward Azure Dragoon any time after starting Heavensward, but the Lv30-50 DRG quest have him there anyway. These events are fixed in time, and you're just stepping back into that part of the story to play them.

you are still not understanding how Block Timeline works.

As I said YES these things will always be set in that Time frame they are made.

For example, in One Block timeline WoL did not do DRG quest but in 2nd Block Timeline the WoL did do the DRG quest.

Now it is a matter which Block Timeline happened First and which one is the WoL currently in.

If Block 1 is the old timeline that stopped and got replaced by Block 2 Timeline then current events is that Block 2 is the Timeline that WoL is in and Block 1 is the old timeline that no longer continues within this Single timeline path.

Block 1 and Block 2 are both part of a Single Timeline but Block 1 was the first Part of the Timeline and ended at a certain point. Block 2 will then begin after Block 1 ended with History being mostly the same until a certain point alters small parts but still continues to the same intended destination that Block 1 intended to reach but could not since it had to be stopped at a certain point.

It is for this reason why the MSQ will always happen as intended no matter the dialogue choices made and no matter how many of the extra content players complete or did not complete because the Variation in the MSQ are all just different Block Timelines within this single Timeline path. It is only a matter of which Block is the WoL in and which are the past Block timelines that have stopped to create this new Block timeline.


but I will stop trying to explain how Block Timeline works now since you do not understand my explanation.

[Iscah]

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It just seems like an incredibly convoluted explanation to come to the same final point. There is one intended timeline with all quests completed, and we reach that timeline by completing all the quests. Things will be askew if we leave earlier quests undone.

The difference is that you seem to be claiming that all versions of the story exist equally, rather than one intended canon storyline and some quirks that only exist because this is an interactive story and they have to cover all their bases when players leave quests undone.

It's more like a jigsaw puzzle. You can leave some pieces out, and a part of the picture is missing. But if you add those pieces in later there's only one place where they can fit.

[Iscah]

Because the main post is asking about TIMELINE and which one is the MSQ possibly using.

Read it again. It's not asking "which timeline we're in". It's asking whether the timeline we're not in still exists - and that's a question that can be answered with the assumption we are in a relatively simple "Y-shaped" timeline with one single sequence of events up until the events of Shadowbringers cause it to split into two paths.

That's is how the flow of time has been described to us in the game up to this point. One timeline with a single "crossroads" created to change the path of history away from the dark future.

Any other variable events are altered by external gameplay factors, not portrayed in-game as doing something that changes the past and affects the present. Our character is not time-traveling, just filling in gaps that should have been completed earlier - and any remarks about us not having met people yet are "temporary measures" until we've done the quests as intended.

There's no version of the story where doing CT post-Shadowbringers actually makes sense - but it's a good enough excuse to cover the gap until the player completes that story and puts it in the proper earlier position. And it's not just a matter of it being immediately replaced by the "happened in 2.X" version of events, because if the Exarch saying we haven't met his past self is a valid timeline, then CT has to have happened post-timeline-split in 5.0 for him - and that doesn't make sense, therefore that timeline shouldn't be possible, therefore it shouldn't be considered equally canon. It's just a temporary fill-in for the proper version of events.

And generally speaking, for the sake of discussing the story, my understanding is that we treat the single "all quests complete" version of the story as canon and ignore the variations. You can look at the variations and maybe learn something interesting from them, but they're not supposed to happen that way.