Thread: The Reasoning behind The Sundering? (*6.0 Endwalker Spoilers*)

Originally Posted by Rosenstrauch

Well, let me stop you right there. First off, we're not talking about our universe. We're talking about a work of fiction.

I think that was the royal "we". As in, the "we" of those in-universe. I agree that the notion of predestination undermines many of the themes presented throughout the game, and that setup has about as many issues and implications for the story as we've seen as that of a multiverse/many-worlds interpretation of time.

If we ever have an expansion where we fight the Time Devourer within the Tesseract/Darkness Beyond Time, where discarded timelines settle like detritus on the ocean floor,

Honestly given the sheer abuse of time travel within the narrative that probably should be the next saga.

Originally Posted by Veloran

I think that was the royal "we". As in, the "we" of those in-universe. I agree that the notion of predestination undermines many of the themes presented throughout the game, and that setup has about as many issues and implications for the story as we've seen as that of a multiverse/many-worlds interpretation of time.

Yep, give it a few expansions and we'll be fighting the Arbiters of Fate or something similar. Maybe they can borrow some ideas from 7R for it.

Determinism itself as an idea is often rooted in the notion that it is impossible based on physical (and any other derived) laws to explain something like free will in humans (or any other living being.) That, along with consciousness, remain as exceedingly thorny philosophical issues because of that constraint. XIV on the other hand has immaterial souls, about which we know very little, beyond that they have an aetheric composition and perhaps some other irreducible aspects, to which dynamis might relate, so it's easier to introduce free will as a concept - on the other hand, it is also that much easier to introduce some thing that rigidly ensures certain outcomes for whatever purpose. But with that all said, if anything our universe is the readier candidate for deterministic explanations than a setting with rather elusive things like souls.

That preordainment from beginning to end is part of what I don't like about some of the theories hinging on the timeline playing out in a specific way irrespective of what actions take place and correcting itself to ensure that outcome is arrived at. We'll see how the writers address this, if they deign to.