What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Theodric]

It was in a live letter. I wish I had noted the number. 58 perhaps?? I will edit when I find it. It's 68 during the portion when the translator is with him for fan q and a.

Here, I’ve posted the answer they put down on the official site after the Q&A, where they tidied up some of his trailing off:



Nowhere is Yoshi implying the timeline is fixed. He's even saying there's the possibility of the timeline diverging in his first scenario and discussing it in terms of Venat's plans.

And again what led us to this discussion is the nature of time in XIV and, although many of you are in denial the director's answer and game make it clear that the characters are locked into a timeline of their own making.

I think it is you who is in denial of his answer because he’s not saying what you’re saying at all. In fact, he continually discusses Venat in terms of actions she deliberately makes, much like when he discusses her decision to spare Emet as a deliberate course of action:



This is consistent with what he’s saying about her working behind the scenes to make sure the timeline doesn’t diverge, since the Ascians and the Rejoinings form an essential part of the timeline you told her about. G'raha and 8UC also pour cold water on the idea that time cannot be changed.

While you’re welcome to your opinion on this, what you’re saying we’re in denial of is not what is being said by Yoshi at all and in fact there’s other answers by him which contradict such an interpretation.

Also time travel is not irrelevant in any aspect of story discussion. As it turns out XIV is the story of a meddling time travel who instigates two Primals whose battle results in the sundering. If the major events don't occur in Elpis we don't exist.

With all due respect, what you’re asserting as fact is ultimately just one possible outcome. Whilst it is possible that the original timeline ceases to exist, it is also possible that instead an AU would form, as was the case with the 8UC timeline. And as an addendum, it’s even more unfortunate that, after Hydaelyn had stated that the timeline conjunction had taken place, while interacting with the ancients in Elpis in dealing with Pandaemonium, the WoL still did not provide them the information that could have resulted in an AU.

I refer you back to the answer given to you earlier about the nature of the time loop:

It's called a bootstrap paradox. For it to exist someone or something (it can even be raw information) must travel into the past and change things in a way that both leads to and requires the aforementioned time travel to occur in the first place. It has no defined beginning or end as a result. At a base level the key players in maintaining a bootstrap paradox operate in ignorance and therefore lack agency, but this can change when one or more parties are somehow made aware of what's happening. The paradox becomes consensual the moment even one of the participants necessary for its perpetuation is afforded knowledge and therefore agency, although the prospect of breaking one of these opens some very migraine-inducing cans of worms.

In this case, Venat is the party that has been provided and more importantly given Kairos, retains the knowledge he’s referring to.

Venat gives the Ancients more choice than we already know she does (as it is shown), finds an alternative, and the game collapses.

Or an AU spawns, much like it did in the 8UC timeline.

Also we know from the conversation in Elpis the Ancients had NO concept of the primals. We are the ones who brought it into their plane of thought. Saying "they could have chosen not to" just brings us back to the same loop. You cannot ignore it.

I can when it’s essentially just headcanon on your part.

And if you think Venat can just willy nilly the future with zero consequence, guess who has joined me on the train to alternate timelines? Because that's the only way she can change events with no effect on the MSq timeline.

Yeah, I think you will find most of us who are asking for her to bring about a better timeline are doing so under the assumption that if she made an attempt to, it would spawn an AU just like when G’raha made the decision to defy what would otherwise be the 8UC timeline’s fate. We don’t know for certain how this would work, because the writers have never elaborated on it, and even Yoshi’s answer states it is possible for the timeline to diverge.

As I said before, many of us were dissatisfied with the use of time travel in EW, have actively criticised it and would have preferred the story to be written without it, as it obfuscated more than it clarified and ended up becoming the “because a time traveller told me” explanation for so many major lore elements.

With that said, throughout the discussion you’ve been trying to categorically assert it’s not possible for time to change whereas it’s simply not what Yoshi is saying. If your case is that for the WoL’s timeline to exist it is necessary for her to go down the same course of action, and so the Venat we deal with would’ve always come to this decision, this is true – but it doesn’t follow from that that Venat in this timeline isn’t making the conscious choice towards this outcome, and so her actions can be evaluated accordingly.

The devs could very easily, in the Q&A, have simply said she lacked choice in the matter because of this being locked into the timeline. But they don’t and ask you to see her in a similar light to Emet-Selch in SHB. Likewise, this could very easily have been used as a defence for her in the belated addition of the Omega quest, but it isn’t. We are asked throughout to view her as someone with agency in the matter. You keep insisting that she says she will do certain things, but we lack even a shred of evidence for what most of this is, if anything at all. And she’s been generous with the truth on more than a few occasions.

What we definitely do know is she never told her people the full truth about Endsinger or what she heard of the Nibirun. What is shown of her relaying her concerns is presented in the most generic terms. You’re free to fill in the gaps and assume she did more, but there’s nothing obligating me to do so. This is why I say that time travel is irrelevant in the context of the discussion, and certainly the way you’re presenting it is not the only way to view the time loop, and certainly doesn’t follow from dev commentary or other plot elements.

Maybe you think time changing is something separate to an AU spawning, it’s hard to say, but an AU is ultimately what we are getting at. The decision of Venat in the timeline we’re familiar with not to provide the ancients the knowledge they’d need for an AU to potentially result is down to her own decision, much as it was with the Ironworks in the 8UC timeline to take the risk to try change fate even at the risk of erasing their timeline. You could say she didn’t want to take this risk but given the way Yoshi has worded his answers and how she’s presented in the story, she is never once implied to lack agency in this matter. If we’re presented with a Venat in an AU who made the effort, successful or not, I will commend that Venat for it. Much as you say fate is a theme in FF games, so is defying it.