On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

[Iscah]

And that the timelines where Venat's attempts at sharing what she knew would end in the disastrous annihilation of Etheirys would vastly outnumber any that saved the planet...

My own thoughts on timelines are more about minimising the number of splits – "one disruption per time travel event" – so there would only be one break resulting from the changed information we delivered to Venat, not a splayed variety of them. But yeah, if and when she succeeded in breaking it and finding a different way forward, she's in uncharted waters for better or worse, and it could lead to survival or just a different variety of doom as the hypothetical writer desires.

I also don't believe we have any way of accessing the 8UE unless the Ironworks can create a higher order of space-time machine than their counterparts previously built – which at this point seems unlikely, as Cid's reaction to learning he invented a time machine is along the lines of "nice to know I achieved that, now I can spend my time tackling other ideas".

[Kozh]

We wouldn't, because it didn't come to pass in this timeline where her efforts failed and things played out as foretold.

I was referring to when she said in elpis, right before sending us back, that she would need to fortify their defense in anticipation of Final Days. Yet all we saw in her alk cutscene is her letting a man eaten by blasphemy.

[Iscah]

I was referring to when she said in elpis, right before sending us back, that she would need to fortify their defense in anticipation of Final Days. Yet all we saw in her alk cutscene is her letting a man eaten by blasphemy.

That was pretty clearly a "thematic swirl of things that happened at some point" kind of scene and not something she really did walk past unfazed.

She clearly can't have walked past Emet and Hyth saying farewell on her way to objecting to a later round of sacrifices, so why assume the other part was any more simultaneous?

[Denishia]

My own thoughts on timelines are more about minimising the number of splits – "one disruption per time travel event" – so there would only be one break resulting from the changed information we delivered to Venat, not a splayed variety of them. But yeah, if and when she succeeded in breaking it and finding a different way forward, she's in uncharted waters for better or worse, and it could lead to survival or just a different variety of doom as the hypothetical writer desires.

I also don't believe we have any way of accessing the 8UE unless the Ironworks can create a higher order of space-time machine than their counterparts previously built – which at this point seems unlikely, as Cid's reaction to learning he invented a time machine is along the lines of "nice to know I achieved that, now I can spend my time tackling other ideas".

We're not playing FFXIII so constantly hopping between branching timeline options is not feasible and thus their existence outside of fan musing irrelevant, and the 8UE will likely be untouched unless I could see it being used by the Wandering Minstrel as his imaginary location a reason to have the 'Ascian Ultimate'.

[Iscah]

We're not playing FFXIII so constantly hopping between branching timeline options is not feasible and thus their existence outside of fan musing irrelevant, and the 8UE will likely be untouched unless I could see it being used by the Wandering Minstrel as his imaginary location a reason to have the 'Ascian Ultimate'.

Yes, I should have said "no way of accessing 8UE or hypothetically saved Elpis". They might be out there somewhere but we don't need to go there. Let the plot move on to something else, let us explore more of the distant continents or, if we somehow run out of places in the Source, we can spend several expansions per shard if we need somewhere to go.

Let the other timelines remain hypothetical and unaccessed, and avoid further convolutions to space-time.

[Lurina]

and avoid further convolutions to space-time.

Counting ARR, we have only had two one (edit: just realized it was only one because ARR literally opens with time travel lmao) expansions out of five that didn't contain any sort of time travel. That's not a great record on which to predicate future hopes.

[RyuDragnier]

Counting ARR, we have only had two one (edit: just realized it was only one because ARR literally opens with time travel lmao) expansions out of five that didn't contain any sort of time travel. That's not a great record on which to predicate future hopes.

Hell, the Echo itself is pretty much mental time travel in a sense due to being able to see into people's memories and reliving past events.

[Kozh]

That was pretty clearly a "thematic swirl of things that happened at some point" kind of scene and not something she really did walk past unfazed.

She clearly can't have walked past Emet and Hyth saying farewell on her way to objecting to a later round of sacrifices, so why assume the other part was any more simultaneous?

Oh I realize that. But still, would it kill them to show that she at least try something? Rather than going straight into preaching to some strawman ancients.

And that’s kind my point. We were expected to believe that she did something, but it’s never shown. People said that she did try to tell the convocation before the third sacrifice, yet we don’t have confirmation whether her group trying to argue about the sacrifice or tell about the truth (and considering how venat didn’t tell her followers, I doubt it’s the latter). Venat is the ultimate “tell not show”. So why is she the reliable source while emet who never lies about the past is seen as the unreliable source? The game clearly show when he’s biased and when he’s not. I’m concerned for someone’s media literacy if they couldn’t tell the difference.

*not directed to you personally btw, so put down your pitchfork

[Lunaxia]

A fun bit I picked up from, er, browsing/collecting Athena fanart (for Reasons), since 6.2...

Ah, I forgot about the red eyes motif that felt vaguely significant for a time. It seems like there should have been something to that, and to the fact that Athena's eye colour changed between tiers, just as much as it feels like they couldn't possibly have been completely unaware of the implications behind giving a mother figure taking it upon herself to reconstruct her race in accordance with her own sense of judgement nearly the exact same eye colour and hue as someone nearly identical from a narrative perspective, but... I mean, looking at the choices made so far, I think we can logically assume that was the case.

Although I will say - and it may just be me - I can't shake the feeling overall that like Endwalker, Panda might have originally had a different ending that more closely tied into the previous tiers, but wound up changed closer to the deadline. Setting aside my issues with hypocrisy vis-a-vis morality and what constitutes a "greater good", I feel there were notable hints alluding to something a little more than "out of control lady scientist" going on behind the scenes, and the bosses in general felt really disjointed and thrown together in comparison to past raids.

It's pretty much just irrelevant rambling conjecture though, we'll never truly know either way so there's not much to be gained from discussing it. La.

[Iscah]

Oh I realize that. But still, would it kill them to show that she at least try something? Rather than going straight into preaching to some strawman ancients.

And that’s kind my point. We were expected to believe that she did something, but it’s never shown.

But she was never actually there to save that specific person. It's an overlap of an event that happened in the Final Days and another event that happened in the same place at a different time.

And my issue with Emet is not believing whether he did a thing, but what we are supposed to make of a small amount of contradictory information that nobody could naturally come across by playing FFXIV or reading supplementary resources for FFXIV.