Ktisis Hyperboreia question [Spoilers]

[CKNovel]

If Elidibus could just open a portal back in time why didn't ascians and crew do that first even if they didn't remember what caused it in the first place? They could constantly keep going back looking for ways to prevent the final days or at the very least assaasinate venet before the sundering. They obviously knew it was her doing

He couldn't, only the modified crystal tower can and he lacked both aether and administrator rights of the CT.
It take a massive amount of aether to transport someone in the past, Alexander would have absorbed the surrounding aether and made the earth around him unexploitable, impossible to live on. If my memories don't fail me.
Elidibus "only" transported the WoL's consciouness.

That said, I really think SQEX initially wanted the WoL to remember the past as Azem but they probably thought it was weird to implement.
Yet it's the thing that would've made the most sense without time travel and memoryWipe McGuffin and keeping the possibility to explore Elpis.
I would have prefered this scenario, remembering as "Azem" and for convenience, the WoL just remembers in their own body.

An altered timeline would be interesting in its own way, but it is inarguably not the story the writer wanted to tell here, or they would have made it happen that way.

And my two personal cents are that utterly rewriting the timeline at this late stage would be poor storytelling. It would be dropping every single plot thread that has built up, without resolution, and re-learning an entirely new world. As a story, it would be unsatisfying, and from a practical gameplay standard I don't even know how much of the world as we know it could exist any more.

Spoilers about DQ XI:

DQ XI just does that.

And it feels incredibly weird to go back in time and solve everything before the crisis.
The most awkward part was how Hendrick character development was simply wiped.

[Iscah]

Certainly possible, but it feels very much like Chekov’s gun at this point- the story needed a memory wipe device to exist for a later plot point, so the writers had to make a chunk of the scenario to utilize it in a satisfying way…

Otherwise why do it at all- the overall narrative would have functioned more or less as is if it had Hermès question the ancients logic on right to life as Hermès but ultimately support the Convocation.

Why do it at all? So we can hang out with Emet and Hyth while not having an impact on his antagonistic behaviour towards us in Shadowbringers (or for that matter, his willingness to go along with the plan of creating Zodiark once he learns what results from it, or still approve Hermes' membership in the Convocation) and yet have the ability to pick that relationship right back up again for the finale once he's regained those memories.

The story needs a memory wipe device to exist for this plot point, whether they intend to return to it later or not.

[Bright-Flower]

The memory wiping device was checkov gun'd. It's mentioned in the quests earlier in the zone, a way to sort of mentally reset a creation to retest it etc without having to resort to unmaking it and starting anew. Which also explained why it was where it was in general.

[SaberMaxwell]

Honestly throughout Elpis my friends and I were theorizing that we were gonna make a new timeline akin to how the Crystal Tower had already been used to create a second timeline by G'raha. Was tragic to see that hope dashed by Kairos, and I think that might have been part of the point.

[CKNovel]

Honestly throughout Elpis my friends and I were theorizing that we were gonna make a new timeline akin to how the Crystal Tower had already been used to create a second timeline by G'raha. Was tragic to see that hope dashed by Kairos, and I think that might have been part of the point.

Definitely, an Elpis ending with "You saved our world but have yet to save yours. Rest assured we will provide every help you need." would have just been amazing.
They don't have to care about that other timeline, just being in G'raha's shoes would have been cool.

I loved Elpis but holy moly Kairos threw so much into the garbage can.
I guess it was needed for developping Venat's story, which turned out awesome, and setting up later cutscenes.

[Katie_Kitty]

I didn't have a problem with the memory-erasing thing, but I sure did with Hermes shackling everybody, just after we'd beaten the daylight out of him. Our party sure was dumb, we should have put immediate shackles of our own on him. That's a part of the story I still think was just too contrived for my own taste...

I think you're putting too much into this. It's just a video game which means they need dungeons and bosses to fight but if we actually defeated every boss we faced up against then nothing would happen in the story. So yeah win the battle but lose the cutscene this is pretty standard RPG story stuff.

[Iscah]

Definitely, an Elpis ending with "You saved our world but have yet to save yours. Rest assured we will provide every help you need." would have just been amazing.
They don't have to care about that other timeline, just being in G'raha's shoes would have been cool.

"Being in G'raha's shoes" would mean creating a new timeline at the likely expense of never being able to return to our own.

Save the ancient world but doom the one we came from, never to return there with the information we learned.

And even if we could get back there because Elidibus's spell is strong enough to guide us back across timelines, creating a split still doesn't resolve the actual narrative purpose of us visiting Elpis. It's not just about us visiting the past but about the other characters knowing us in return.

If we only knew and successfully saved "another timeline's Emet and Hythlodaeus", the pair who come to our rescue in the finale would not have that memory of us.

As much as it is sad to know what happens to everyone there after we leave, it suits the overall scope of the story better because our actions there can carry into the rest of the story. The characters know us when we meet them again, give or take some magical amnesia.

[Atamis]

Was the Emet-Selch at the end of Ultima Thule the same one we sent to the shadow realm in the First? He just randomly decided to revert to his old robe instead of the Garlean coat? He didn't even do the dismissive hand wave. He felt like a completely different person who never went through everything Ascian Emet did.

[KageTokage]

Was the Emet-Selch at the end of Ultima Thule the same one we sent to the shadow realm in the First? He just randomly decided to revert to his old robe instead of the Garlean coat? He didn't even do the dismissive hand wave. He felt like a completely different person who never went through everything Ascian Emet did.

The weight he carried on his shoulders for millenia was no longer with him with Zodiark gone and faith in the sundered world having been kindled with his defeat.

I took him appearing in his original form to be symbolic of that and his renewed outlook; the Emet-Selch who ever strove towards a brighter future, not to restore a lost past.

[kaynide]

Re: memory wipe/Kairos

Maybe it has run its course and all it ever was going to be has played out, but just imho it feels very “scraping the bottom of the barrel” of ideas if that’s all there will be too it. There are certainly more elegant ways to achieve a similar outcome in story without having to go full Men in Black.

It is what it is, but if this is “all there is to it”, it will be a major jumping the shark moment for me.

A convenience to attempt to fill some plot holes without meaningful future implication.