Right, then... [Nier: Automata/Copied Factory] [Spoilers]

[RicaRuin]

Yoko says that what happens in the raid is now canon to Nier, which in turn means that Nier is also canon for FF14.

No, it doesn't mean that at all. The Raid and NieR can still be not canon to FF XIV.

For example, all crows are birds, but not all birds are crows in return.

[TheMightyMollusk]

This factory is just there, nobody really cares that seemingly there are human looking androids running around.

Nobody being the whole three people (Anogg, Konogg, and the WoL) who know about it and are shown to be rather concerned about the situation. Maybe four if the dig site chief is involved, I forget. (We could argue about 23 other people being involved, those being the other people in the raid party, but there's another thread for that.) The existence of the Copied Factory and all that it entails is not public knowledge.

I don't feel we have enough information yet to know how, or if, this fits into established lore. But I'm also still working my way through Automata (albeit having large parts of the plot spoiled, thanks to jerks deliberately yapping about it during the raid), so I dunno.

[Alleo]

Nobody being the whole three people (Anogg, Konogg, and the WoL) who know about it and are shown to be rather concerned about the situation. Maybe four if the dig site chief is involved, I forget. (We could argue about 23 other people being involved, those being the other people in the raid party, but there's another thread for that.) The existence of the Copied Factory and all that it entails is not public knowledge.

I don't feel we have enough information yet to know how, or if, this fits into established lore. But I'm also still working my way through Automata (albeit having large parts of the plot spoiled, thanks to jerks deliberately yapping about it during the raid), so I dunno.

I really hope we get more information there. The best imo would just be if it disappears at the end (into another dimension or something) because if it stays then this could influence the first. (Different technology and stuff like that) I am just a bit sad that we seemingly dont get any information at all and have to wait for later..They could have at least used the data logs a bit better but as far as I understood it, they are fanservice pure for Nier fans. (At least I did not understand a single bit of it)

(There is also a part of me that wonders how some would have reacted if it was a different franchise that got a whole raid to it)

[ObsidianFire]

There is no way we are not going to be getting more information about what is going on. All the Yoko Taro games I've played/watched follow the same over-all pattern of dumping the player character into one situation and then not really explaining how the situation got to be the way it is until the 3rd Act of the story. The bigger question is if the information we will be getting is going to answer any of the questions we want answered...

In a lot of ways, Yoko Taro stories are told backwards in that the people at the end of the story are trying to figure out how the story started. Which for this story probably won't be happening until 5.5. So those of us who are still on the fence about how well this crossover will go over have an entire year (or more) to wait before we think we'll be able to make an honest judgment call. In the meantime, we're enjoying the fact that the 1st Act of it was done well and shows a lot of promise.

[purgatori]

(If their aim is to encourage FFXIV fans to go play the other games, it's not working for me. Maybe I'm just being stubborn and digging my heels in, but I'm not going to go and play a game I wasn't interested in just so I can understand this one.

If we're going to liberally throw shoulds around in this thread, then I would suggest that the reason you should play these games is because they are both amazing. That doing so will render their crossovers in FFXIV more enjoyable is just a bonus, really.

---

Back on the merger of these seemingly-disparate worlds. An infinite multiverse is a sufficient explanation for how Earth and Hydaelyn can inhabit the same reality, but I think this would be fairly lazy and uninteresting (not that this would have a big impact unless it was the main focus of the story). Some sort of fusion would be much more interesting, e.g:

(Spoilers for both FFXIV & games in the Drakengard/Nier universe follow)

- Nier's Earth represents a possible (?) distant-future of a world that underwent rejoining.
- We're still waiting to find out what the connection between the Watchers/the Cult of Watchers and the machines of NieR might be. This has been something that Taro has been keeping close to his chest ever since he alluded to this using an image that appeared on Adam's chest. Could it be that the Watchers exert their influence across dimensions in order to inspire the creation of machines that will ultimately rise up and exterminate higher-order organic life?

There is no way we are not going to be getting more information about what is going on. All the Yoko Taro games I've played/watched follow the same over-all pattern of dumping the player character into one situation and then not really explaining how the situation got to be the way it is until the 3rd Act of the story. The bigger question is if the information we will be getting is going to answer any of the questions we want answered...

So true. If I had the faintest idea of what was going on, I'd think something had gone wrong in the writing room. One thing I'm sure of is that it's canon for both properties. I doubt that Taro would waste his time on something that contributed nothing at all to the universe he was been building for almost two decades now. For all his wackiness, self-deprecation, and feigned nonchalance, he obviously cares deeply about what he has created... Deeply enough that even his joke endings go on to be more than mere throwaways lol

[Iscah]

An infinite multiverse is a sufficient explanation for how Earth and Hydaelyn can inhabit the same reality, but I think this would be fairly lazy and uninteresting (not that this would have a big impact unless it was the main focus of the story).

Actually that would have a big impact at an underlying "theory of time and dimensions" level. We already have to reconcile Alexander's single timeline with Shadowbringers' "rewriting history" business - which I've made sense of for myself at least, but my take on it certainly does not allow for an infinite multiverse. That's the complete opposite of what's been established in Alexander, whereas Shadowbringers is a bit more of a special case. (By my take, exceptional circumstances have caused one split in what is otherwise a single stable timeline, not an infinitely splitting one, and it won't happen again - at least without another case of a time-traveler deliberately changing what they know of the past.)

Also, I really hate infinite multiverses - it completely devalues your achievements. You failed and doomed the world? Don't worry, everything's fine on the other path. Someone had to get the dud one. Alternately, winning just means you doomed the other world.

It also specifically negates the entire point of what the Exarch was trying to do, because good and bad futures were both going to happen anyway. There are just a few more good variations now without removing any of the bad ones.

[Idea:] Nier's Earth represents a possible (?) distant-future of a world that underwent rejoining.

No location can be "a world that underwent rejoining", future or present. If it's been rejoined, it's gone.

It also can't be the distant future of anything unless the people of that world also worked out time and dimensional travel, minus Alexander - not impossible, but also opening up a whole extra can of worms.

[purgatori]

Actually that would have a big impact at an underlying "theory of time and dimensions" level. We already have to reconcile Alexander's single timeline with Shadowbringers' "rewriting history" business - which I've made sense of for myself at least, but my take on it certainly does not allow for an infinite multiverse. That's the complete opposite of what's been established in Alexander, whereas Shadowbringers is a bit more of a special case. (By my take, exceptional circumstances have caused one split in what is otherwise a single stable timeline, not an infinitely splitting one, and it won't happen again - at least without another case of a time-traveler deliberately changing what they know of the past.)

Also, I really hate infinite multiverses - it completely devalues your achievements. You failed and doomed the world? Don't worry, everything's fine on the other path. Someone had to get the dud one. Alternately, winning just means you doomed the other world.

It also specifically negates the entire point of what the Exarch was trying to do, because good and bad futures were both going to happen anyway. There are just a few more good variations now without removing any of the bad ones.





No location can be "a world that underwent rejoining", future or present. If it's been rejoined, it's gone.

It also can't be the distant future of anything unless the people of that world also worked out time and dimensional travel, minus Alexander - not impossible, but also opening up a whole extra can of worms.

What I meant to say, and probably did not convey was a world in which all the shards have been rejoined into one world. As for Alexander, I have only done the one clear of the whole raid sequence and have not delved very deeply into the lore implications. I'm actually much more au fait with Nier/Drakengard lore than FFXIV, so that's the main angle I'm approaching it from. NieR can definitely accommodate multiple dimensions, but perhaps FFXIV cannot... Which would be fine, because, as I said, I would find that a somewhat uninteresting solution anyway.

[Iscah]

What I meant to say, and probably did not convey was a world in which all the shards have been rejoined into one world. As for Alexander, I have only done the one clear of the whole raid sequence and have not delved very deeply into the lore implications. I'm actually much more au fait with Nier/Drakengard lore than FFXIV, so that's the main angle I'm approaching it from. NieR can definitely accommodate multiple dimensions, but perhaps FFXIV cannot... Which would be fine, because, as I said, I would find that a somewhat uninteresting solution anyway.

A key point of time travel in the Alexander storyline is making sure history is kept on course and not derailed/altered by the goblins. Alexander itself seems to have some kind of overview of time (described like it's running a computer simulation, but it seems to have knowledge beyond what its summoners could give it) and decides on the correct course of action to create the best possible future.

It's a "stable time loop" story setup where traveling to the past and doing stuff there becomes part of the timeline and "always happened that way" - you don't actually alter events, just get a new understanding of what happened. This seems entirely at odds with the concept of a splitting multiverse.

(Again, for working Shadowbringers into this, I assume there must be a point where the timeline can't bend to accomodate the difference between what you previously knew to have happened and what is happening now - say, successfully averting a Calamity that you know is historical fact - and that paradox causes time itself to break into two separate paths: the one that led you here and the one resulting from your actions. No further splits are possible because you're now on a different path with no knowledge of how it will play out, and can't create another inconsistency.)

[Alleo]

A key point of time travel in the Alexander storyline is making sure history is kept on course and not derailed/altered by the goblins. Alexander itself seems to have some kind of overview of time (described like it's running a computer simulation, but it seems to have knowledge beyond what its summoners could give it) and decides on the correct course of action to create the best possible future.

Maybe a bit off topic: Its interesting that this would have been the best possible future since without the time travel later it would have ended with a dieing source and another calamity done. How bad would have been the other ones? Seeing how the bad future would have happened not that long after Alexander anyways.

[purgatori]

A key point of time travel in the Alexander storyline is...

Thanks for offering up that clarification. I feel like I have a better handle on how the storyline has handled timey-wimey stuff now. I can also see why squaring Alexander with Graha'Tia is difficult, but I like your proposed solution. In some ways this is not too dissimilar from NieR/Drakengard, in that timelines don't 'naturally' diverge in a multiverse fashion (i.e., whenever there are multiple possible cause-effect outcomes in any given instance). Up until a certain point in Earth's history, the timeline is singular and stable, but a paradox is caused by a great cataclysm in 800AD results in 'multiple world divergence phenomena,' giving rise to two timelines: one in which Europe becomes the fantasy world of Midgard, in which the Drakengard games take place, and the one which mirrors our own history exactly, up until 2012 when beings from Midgard cross over into 'our' history to spark the events that leads to the NieR timeline (yes, it's extremely confusing).

NieR/Drakengard even has its own Alexander of sorts in the form of an Android known as Accord. Not a whole lot is known about her, but she appears to be able to operate between timelines (at will?), and works to ensure that undesirable outcomes are averted (obviously, her powers are limited, because very bad things occur with some regularity in the NieR/Drakengard universe). And it just so happens that Accord is referenced in the weapon shop flyer fragment discovered in the copied factory :]

I mean, it's pretty obvious this whole raid is based off of Ending K...

LOL well... you may not be as far off as you think. I mean, I don't know what the hell Taro is going to do, and it's usually a mistake to try and make predictions about which way he is going to go at any given but. Buuuut we do know that 9S has a propensity to go off the deep end, especially when it comes to 2B, and there is the whole 'Ark' ending, which isn't quite a joke ending, but isn't the 'true' ending either... And perhaps he really does abhor all these 2B copies being churned out by the Ark (to satisfy the machines' need for an enemy to defeat?). Perhaps he opposes 2P in particular because the P in 2P = Primal? (A theory proposed by Clemps (looking him up if you aren't familiar, he's awesome)).

Oooor... Perhaps YorHa Dark Apocalypse really is the prelude to Automata in some fashion, because the evolution of the machine network described in one of the other fragments (presumably a recording by 2P herself) is something that has already occurred by the time the player joins the events playing out in Automata....

My head hurts now