Idyllshire: Expanded

[LisSquid]

Also note that in WoW, you can't actually change anything in the areas you can go back in time in, it is just there so you can experience certain zones before their major changes and do content that would otherwise no longer be available to your character once they went past the event in the story.

Question is how would we go back and forth? WoW has the easy, lore compliant answer in the form of the adorable Chromie.

[Shougun]

Question is how would we go back and forth? WoW has the easy, lore compliant answer in the form of the adorable Chromie.

Echo. echo.. echo...

You can see the past with Echo and some users of Echo have seen the future.

If you wanted to give it a very strong cave of time vibe, not sure why but just to say we can lol, rather here it would be Cid's cave of time (feat. Mikoto perhaps). Through magitek and echo you're able to interface with the future or past in a limited simulation capacity. You can bring things back as the magitek devices scan the items aether and then recreate them (you're not literally taking items back or forward in time, just recreating them). Interactions are limited and simulated (and obviously not actually going to affect the timeline, 'as much' lol).

Although like I said in the first page I would be more for the player doesn't travel through time but just technically views / recalls time non-linearly. So you might be in Ishgard at the year 2031, meanwhile in Gridania everything is on fire in the year 2020, but actions done in Gridania's don't ripple through like a time traveler (to Ishgard's view whatever was in 2020 was in 2020). If you wanted to take that one step further (rather than just funky memory + echo)- then maybe a visualization of that would be the WoL is a sun with their rays beaming down onto the timeline (the rays don't move up and down the timeline as they all radiate out from the sun, there is no time travel - you touch down onto the timeline from the point outside of the timeline and no ray returns and then bounces back down again to interact with another, the WoL exists as one blip of great radiance - the echo facilitating a sense of recollection for each ray), of course that begins to call forth some god like imagery (outside of time, etc), or at least some sort of interdimensional/outerdimensional being, but I'm okay with that- we're already basically on that path to be a god killer as is the ancient tradition of jRPGs lol. Extra Nomura points if you're the thing that caused Ascians to lose control (by entering the dimension/sudden introduction of your existence caused creation magic to fracture, the great terrible sound, the echo source, all you baby ).

Coming back down to a bit less out there thoughts- Without actual time travel they could have shattered / false memories too if SE wanted to play with the idea of time travel without making it 'time travel', like in Chrono Trigger if you do something in the past it can affect the future - here perhaps they keep that fun part of time but it's represented rather through your mind trying to make sense of this madness (and there is /technically/ only one solution but you may have difficultly seeing straight until you recall everything properly). Divergent timelines 'could' be represented through mental stress, with only one truth (so no actual time travel) lol. Especially could create interesting story if we keep somehow getting stronger and stronger, might suggest 'actual' changes occur but again are not technically through time travel but just the enormous amount of energy your character contains and it leaking out making thoughts reality and perhaps with a bit of community faith / thoughts (just like a.... a certain.. something something.... lol, "the tree was always red... wasn't it....? You think, and the towns folk think it would be cool too" no it wasn't red before, but it is now! ).

In terms of in game example there is a cooking quest that can happen that relates to a MSQ that may have happened already. But the suggestion isn't that you changed time, but simply viewed it non-linearly. Making the player sort of a being outside of time (I like to take that a bit further and say it's why we don't age either, just sprinkling the time bubble with cannon xD), while still avoiding like "yo WoL since you can manipulate time why don't you just go back and hug Zenos as a kid so he's not so bad".

(Yes I will go through lengths to avoid actual regular time travel, that most 'timeline' affecting, "what if I kill my grandfather" / "why hasn't the superior technological enemy ripped the rug from underneath me", mechanics! lol). Not that I'd riot if they did exist (I still watch/read/play stuff that sometimes uses it, obviously lol), just a preference to treat that whole concept with greater than dalamud levels of massive caution.

There are multiple quests in Idyllshire and the Hinterlands about wanting to expand Idyllshire to the rest of the Hinterlands.

I'd love to see some sort of natural change, like if you had a cute stream in the 'present' but in the far future that's a giant canyon. Mountains are a desert, etc. OF course for Idyllshire it's more about seeing that expansion of civilization, so that'd be the focus for that- was just thinking for other areas.

Or you know seeing Silvertear lake back when it was not a giant crystal garden lol.

[zlygork]

Question is how would we go back and forth? WoW has the easy, lore compliant answer in the form of the adorable Chromie.

I could see a special "echo empowering" item that we could use to trigger all applicable areas between "present" and "echo".