Thread: On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

Originally Posted by Kozh

Uh, not really. Why would it be a trolley problem when the 8UC still exist? G'raha can't return because he's tied to CT and doesn't see the reason to go back to his timeline (after living in the First for 100 years). Plus he kinda died before any attempt was made, so...

Let's just say, if the writer wants to have both an AU and WoL returning to their timeline, it can easily be done.


Why? It's supposed to be a heroic thing to do, isn't it? After all that's what the 8UC Ironworks did. Sacrifice themselves so that other generation can be spared the pain of experiencing it.

G'raha and the generations of Ironworks engineers in the 8UC sacrificed their own timeline for the sake of another, flipped the switch the trolley towards themselves, and now face an uncertain future. 8UC still exists but now they have a further weakened Hydaelyn and a further strengthened Zodiark along with 2 of 3 Unsundered Ascians still kicking. Things look a bit better in the short term that Midgardsormr woke up and decided to lead humanity into the next era, but that world isn't safe from the Rejoining and it could and probably would still happen in that timeline.

If we're dealing with some combination of Bill & Ted and Back to the Future-style time travel, then there's no way according to our (limited) knowledge of how timelines work here that would allow you to make sweeping changes to the timeline and return to the unaltered timeline you came from. By all evidence, G'raha's journey was a one-way trip.


Everything the WoL has done in the game up to and including EW was to save their own world from the Ascians. It would be out of character for them to forget all of that for a world they barely know about that has an uncertain future and was Sundered partly for the express purpose of being able to save them from the cosmic dilemma both worlds were facing. We already know that Venat's plan worked because we lived it and to try to save the Ancients could jeopardize our own world's existence, especially since there's still stuff happening in the MSQ that threatens the world if the WoL doesn't show up to save it because they decided to play with the Ancients.

The reasons the writers gave like memory wipes, aether too strong to interact with Dynamis, and that Hermes would stonewall any attempt at solving anything if he found out the truth are all admittedly weak. But at the same time story exists in MMO form, the story about the Ascians' origins hasn't even been a concept for half the game's lifespan, and everything revolves around our world being more important to the characters and the story than that of the Ancients so we're not likely to get any happy ending for them.

Even if there's "an AU where WoL helped save the Ancients from Meteion without the aid of a God of Darkness", the player will still have to return to our original world where the Ancient world was Sundered and the Ascians lost in order to continue our adventures and play in the living MMO world. There's always going to be one where things went bad for them, so to have the narration say "well, in one of three existing worlds, the Ancients are happy in their own different, un-interactable timeline" changes nothing except gives some people warm and fuzzies. But I guess that's what fan fiction can be for, just means it's not canon unless we're also dealing with a story where every action makes its own, separate timeline in a sea of infinite timelines.

Like I said, I don't find the idea of an alternate timeline very narratively appealing, but let's not pretend that the writers couldn't have done it if they'd wanted to avoid the moral dissonance of the WoL actively choosing to withhold critical information from the Ancients and become complicit in their doom. Since the opening of Pandaemonium changed the portal to the past from something very precarious to a thing that's just there now, we could have just chucked a memory crystal with everything we knew in on our way out of the Crystal Tower and side-stepped stranding ourselves.

But that wouldn't have fit the tone they're going for, which is supposed to be one of melancholy acceptance of the inevitable, ala Shadowbringbers. Which works in isolation, but...

The issue is that the writers built the Pandaemonium storyline on the assumption that we'd understand the Ancients fate to be unavoidable or ultimately for the best, but for myriad discussed-to-death reasons, base-game Endwalker did an awkward job of selling that premise, the inconsistent time travel mechanics among them. Like the Omega quest series and to a lesser extent the Omicron tribe quests, I appreciate that raid series a lot for stepping back from the weird message about the Ancients emotional fragility justifying their deaths central to EW's plot, but the problem is that said message was sort of the only thing holding an otherwise awkward scenario together. As it stands, you're potentially left with a pervasive sense of "wait, why are we accepting these people having to die horribly, again...?"

Originally Posted by Kozh

If it's still exist, then it's no trolley problem at all.

It exists, but is almost certainly doomed. 2 Unsundered Ascians are still around to continue the Rejoinings and re-mantle lost Sundered Ascians. Hydaelyn in our own timeline was barely strong enough to possess Krile to speak to us, let alone provide the same amount of direct assistance she did in ARR in confrontations with the Ascians. Future WoLs will not have the same advantage we had.

Originally Posted by Kozh

If. And again, there's lack of evidence considering there hasn't any attempt made by G'raha to go back to his timeline, iirc.

It's a trope in most time travel media that if you time travel back to the future after changing the past, you go to the new timeline's future and stay on the same timeline instead of skipping over whole timelines. I don't see why this would be any different unless the writers want to go out of their way to make some AU Ancients happy.

Originally Posted by Kozh

Wow, so selfish. Louisoux would be rolling in his grave if he learned about this. Should we decide to stay, we could potentially save many more people in the long run. Not just the Ancients, but probably the aliens too. Who knows how many planets died in the span of 12k years while Hydaelyn waited for the WoL. And hey, the WoL won't be alive forever, shouldn't the sundered learn to take care of themselves by now?

This is an MMO so we have to deal with the limitations of having to be chained to the original world and always having new threats to face until the service ends.

We're the player character. We're not going to sacrifice ourselves and become unplayable. The writing around Elpis wasn't great and the dance around time travel repercussions was awkward, but it's silly to suggest that there's a better end for the Ascians they could've gotten or that our WoL needs to pull out all the stops to save them. It's a trolley problem because either their world exists or our world exists. In the timeline that our world exists, theirs cannot. One world needs to end in order for the other to continue. Opening up room for both to exist simultaneously in separate unique timelines is meaningless because in the timeline that will always be playable that we have been in for a decade, the Ancients have to die in order for it to exist so there will always be a failed world of dead Ancients that got Sundered no matter what you do.

They could have made a throwaway line that would affect a whole other timeline of Ancients, but it still won't change the fact that in our timeline they die and I'd rather the story address the ones who have direct involvement with our timeline rather than a separate one that won't matter. Ultimately the Ancients are backstory for the world and an explanation for the Ascians long after the Ascians were originally written, they're not the main event.