The Venat Cutscene

[Necrotica]

I don’t see the problem.

Back to the Future more or less works with loops and changes in the timeline.
Chrono Trigger also does this.

In FFXIV it becomes more plausible in that it took 300ish years of Uber-tech for them to figure out how to even do it.

Not my favorite kind of writing, but in the story it works fine.

Not sure if I saw a video on it or read it somewhere here, but the idea that all time travel Azem does has already happened because they are tied with fate somehow could make it all work. I still don't like it, but at least it is a rule that seems to apply.

[Iscah]

Not sure if I saw a video on it or read it somewhere here, but the idea that all time travel Azem does has already happened because they are tied with fate somehow could make it all work. I still don't like it, but at least it is a rule that seems to apply.

It doesn't need to be about Azem; it's just the physics of how time travel works in this system. If you move from a later point in time to an earlier point in time, you aren't creating a duplicate of that earlier time with/without your presence but already were present at your "destination" time and place, even before you personally reached your "departure" time.

It isn't poor writing but – certainly to me – the logical way that time travel would have to work, especially if it doesn't inherently create split timelines, which we know it doesn't in this story.

It doesn't matter that your departure time hasn't happened yet, so long as it will happen in the future.

[Naraku_Diabolos]

You are mistaken about the basics of the time travel alteration, and from there reaching the wrong conclusion about thinking "Meteion only becomes the Endsinger later".

Multiple incidents from the beginning of Endwalker indicate that the world is already in a state affected by our trip to Elpis. If there ever theoretically was a timeline where the changes were yet to be applied, we are not in it, but more likely there never was such a timeline and it has always played out this way.

• At the beginning of the game when Hydaelyn speaks to us on the ship, she is already aware that we are approaching the point where the time loop resolves.

• Argos is willing to let us ride him when we first (to us) meet him on the moon because to him, we already met him in Elpis and earned his trust there. This is specified in the mount description as a quirk of time travel.

• As you note, the Endsinger – the collective Meteia as opposed to a single Meteion – already exists.

Also, even if there theoretically was a "pre-altered timeline" without our interference at Elpis, I don't agree that it could change the Endsinger from a pre-existing entity with its own history to being connected up to the Meteia.

And I don't believe there is any need for a pre-altered timeline to exist, particularly in this universe's time-travel rules. The ultimate example of this is when we travel back in time during the A12 fight to save our earlier self from Alexander's laser beam. There cannot be a pre-interference version of this timeline, because then we would be dead and unavailable to be sent back. Alternately, if something else saved us the first time, then there is no need to overwrite the event. Therefore logically no version of events occurred except the one we experienced, time travel and all.

Oh! I see what you mean. I was looking at the pieces in a different way so it made me think that our playable character had changed the timeline somehow because of what Venat had said once we arrived back on the First from Elpis.