A Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Citation At Last

[Anonymoose]

I've always been a big proponent of, "Until we have a citation that excludes other possibilities, it's speculation/theory." Even if speculation makes sense, that doesn't necessarily confirm it as canon, just yet. (More than one thing can make sense at the same time, after all.) One of the most consequential places I've been hesitant to make any leaps is the nature of FFXIV and spacetime. The Alexander loop, the 8th Umbral Era branch, the even larger Elpis/Endsinger loop, so on and so on.

Welp: It's here.

The way we imagine space-time in FFXIV is what's known as the branch theory, i.e. there isn't just one timeline, but each time an event occurs, it splits into different branches. The branch where the 8th plague took place, i.e. the poisoning of the Scions and the Warrior of Light, their deaths, the awakening of G'raha Tia in the Crystal Tower, who will return to the past, etc. This branch of space-time still exists and continues even after G'raha's departure. If we had to sum this up in a single word, it's the Multiverse theory.

"...each time an event happens..."
"...in a word <...> the multiverse..."

The bootstrap paradoxes, the Y-shaped timeline, and a (potentially) much more open/expansive multiverse are all in play at once.

Deryk have mercy.



Bonus: Turns out those, "...Wait, isn't it a little early for that hopeful tone on the other side of the Y-shaped timeline?" concerns also have merit, lol.

In the stories published the summer after Shadowbringers was released, there's a story set in [the other Source, where the 8th Umbral Era happened] after G'raha's departure, to show you that life goes on in this reflection. <...> In this version of reality, Emet-Selch is surely their greatest enemy, and they face threats previously unknown to them. Since the Warrior of Light died in the 8th Umbral Calamity, no one can stop or kill him, so, somewhere, he's still out there.

[Iscah]

"Infinite splits every time an event occurs" is a horrible way to run a narrative, because it basically makes your efforts worthless in the grand scheme of things when it just means there's an infinite amount of other universes where you failed.

Additionally, it seems to fly in the face of canon information about the nature of time, such as the discussion between Mide and Dayan at the end of Alexander, or the entire ability for stable time loops to form, or the value of "going back in time to change it" when you can just suppose there are already a block of realities where the world didn't get ruined the way yours did.

The whole story does not make sense in an infinitely splitting multiverse. The splitting of the timeline has to be an extraordinary event to make the narrative work.

Yoshida's past statements have sounded like he's just interpreting the story as much as any of us, and if that's the case then I think he's fallen for the same false dichotomy of "infinitely splitting multiverse VS single timeline" just because there was one clear instance of a split timeline.

[Iscah]

On the separate question of threats remaining for the Eighth Umbral Calamity timeline, there was already no question of those Ascian threats remaining.

We can reason that in the absence of the WoL, both Emet-Selch and Elidibus survived and are doubtless scheming to bring about the Ninth Calamity, if Elidibus hasn't had a complete mental breakdown by this point.

Meteion is still out there, but Fandaniel's scheming is still kept at bay by the elder Ascians' presence, so that entire issue is something for the future.

Hydaelyn might be out of battery, or might have been replenished by the influx of Light aether.

The Warrior of Light will be reborn eventually and Hydaelyn can call to them again, and this time she can reveal everything because she is no longer bound to trying keep the time loop stable.

The events of Dawntrail are a further complication, but perhaps we can assume that whatever happened in the other timeline's rite of succession (with possible derailing from worldwide effects of Black Rose) was an outcome that never led to the worlds being bridged, so Sphene is not a threat and is just off in her own shard quietly running out of battery.

[Cleretic]

Yeah, this is generally how I assumed it worked. Fortunately, as intimidating as branch theory sounds, it doesn't actually ask all that much of you. Sure, theoretically the WoL making a snarky response in Stormblood that you didn't pick might have led to an alternate universe where giant lizards rule, but you only have to care about that if that alternate universe somehow turns up. And in a setting where the amount of people capable of time travel is vanishingly small, and the amount of people who can cross dimensions is likely even smaller (remembering that shards aren't alternate dimensions in this metric), that's not especially likely to happen.

[kaynide]

I think it just boils down to YoshiP playing it safe and not wanting to commit to any specific thing and be forced to take it back later.

Early Ff14 he had been called out for wrong information (ex how housing would be FC only, then how it’d be a different system for private, then just it’s the same). I’m sure he loves the game, and cares about it/plays it for fun, but I don’t think he necessarily has a deep grasp of in game lore, as he has a lore team for that.

In the same interview, when asked if Ascians are coming back or not, his answer was an elaborate form of “man I dunno that ‘chit, but maybe if the writers want to”. (Convocation members not easy to kill, could come back if the story needed it kinda quote)

[Eldhelion]

for the love of hydaelyn, we better hope that the other Emet (or anyone else for this matter) dont find a way to travel to our world line as Raha did.

this open soo much room for bad writing

[Anonymoose]

"Potential" really is the key word.

In the past, a lot of my arguments have hinged on, "Wouldn't it be better for the long-term health of any world-setting if there wasn't that potential?" So often with such tropes, the more you lean on time travel / alternate universes / alternate timelines / alternate dimensions, the less prominent and relevant the place you're actually from and fighting for seems, and the less consequential basically any plot point becomes because that plot point only even exists conditionally relative to where the story is currently focused. You have to rely on writers to not make choices that inadvertently create those conditions.

In a world-setting like this, I usually prefer "the infinite multiverse" of possible timelines and realities be canonically "unmanifest" until it is used and relevant. For example, you could say only the Y-shaped timeline "exists" but the sea of swirling chaos beyond the rift, all that unrealized potential time and space, is the "real" multiverse. (It could exist...but it doesn't.) It's like a safeguard against temptation to devalue the world-setting without proper precautions.

But, in the end, I suppose we're relying on people to not choose "bad writing", either way, right? It's up to them whether that potential manifests - because it's not real. It's fiction. The "unseen" isn't really there (yet). And from that perspective, I can understand why the writers would be tempted to always err on the side of "more wiggle room to create more content", and that's really all a "branching" / "multiverse" space is - increased freedom to choose whatever you want whenever you want. We're hoping they won't choose the lame options regardless of what is and is not potentially on the table, lol.

[Lyth]

I really appreciate the fact that Yoshi-p put this out there. With serial works involving different writers over time, you really need to have a degree of consistency, which requires an internal set of rules. It's about having respect for the lore that previous stories have built. Having the EE as an agreed-on and standardized 'canon' source is helpful in establishing that consistency across different arcs.

I'm also glad that they're sticking with the shard diagram that they constructed from EE Vol. 3 (p.13). It's interesting because the interviewer specifically references the Twelfth Shard (rejoined in the Second Umbral Calamity of Lightning), but Yoshi-p re-iterates that worlds that have been rejoined are definitively gone. I think the implication here is that Living Memory is part of one of the four unaccounted for shards (Fourth, Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh). Which makes me a bit sad, in a way, because I would love to see even one completely intact shard as another world to explore in its entirety.

The comment on different elementally-aspected Floods is likewise really interesting, especially in the context of LM. There's a really interesting comment that Mitron makes along these lines during the Eden raid series, but I'm curious to know what direction they go with it. I also appreciate the fact that there may be the opportunity to learn more about shards that were destroyed from their survivors in the future. In short, it sounds like they're keeping storytelling possibilities open while preserving existing lore, which I'm glad for.

I will say as an aside, this partial fusion business reminds me a lot of Dragon Quest VII, which was my favorite installment in that series. I wonder if at some point in the future we'll have different fragments of the remaining worlds spliced into our own, creating new regions to explore and resulting in interesting topological connections between different shard landmasses.

[Zero-ELEC]

I mean, at the end of the day, nothing has really changed. Split timelines had been implied since the moment that short story was published. The multiverse is not really "at play" so far as we've seen (we are not more at risk of timeline jumping than we were before this comment), it's just what we'd already seen. He's just clarifying that it is what it appeared to be from that story.

[Iscah]

I think it just boils down to YoshiP playing it safe and not wanting to commit to any specific thing and be forced to take it back later.

I mean, at the end of the day, nothing has really changed.

This isn't the minor statement you guys seem to think it is.

There was no need to confirm that there was a split timeline in play. But the split seemed to be an extraordinary event in an otherwise single timeline where time loops can form.

If Yoshida is not just guessing and not being mistranslated here, he's introducing the existence of countless additional timelines, many of them where we failed one way or another.

It devalues our victories if it always equally creates a world where we lose.

I just don't know if he even means it, since he goes on to only talk about the state of things in the one specific alternate timeline implied to be a unique split, and not the many he's just spun into existence by declaring there are many other splits.