Hmmm.. Well the "fate" in this case seems to be the planet so I wonder what would be the reason...
It would make sense spirit energy and magic could create such deviations, if a planet/universe got large enough with a sizable quantity of memories and energy mixing together long enough... Sort of like how memory or a message gets distorted or changed when enough time passes. Sorta like how Eidolons have the ability to change over time.
In this case, the memories of the world/time diffract and distort, creating alternate worlds and deviations that are similar but can differ in certain key ways. All because memories can change and twist over time even in the Lifestream.
All that seems to me a helpful way of thinking about it.
For the sake of nerd cred, I will venture an obligatory theory or two on why the Whispers may want to reduce deviation. Assuming there's more to it than simple preference, maybe it's a conservation of energy type thing? Perhaps an individual timeline's Lifestream loses some of its own energy with every branching, and the less deviation there is, the less sharing/weakening there has to be?
Or perhaps it's a sort of FFXIV situation where there was only one timeline originally -- i.e. it got splintered into many at some point, and the arbiters have been slowly getting them whittled back down by making them match as much as possible?
I’ve been having a bit of fun kicking around this theory in my head.
For starters, a quick overview of the similarities between the lifestream and Jenova:
Too much exposure to either can turn a being into a monster
Memories are an important aspect of both (the lifestream contains all memories, Jenova manipulates memories)
Both travel the universe for survival (the lifestream travels through Omega to maintain an interplanetary cycle of life, Jenova is an alien virus that arrived on a meteorite)
Considering these similarities, it has been my (and maybe other’s) headcanon since the Compilation days that Jenova is some type of twisted Minerva/Omega from another planet. Let's just roll with that for now.
This headcanon answers "what" Jenova is, but not the "how" (i.e. how did this other planet’s lifestream become twisted?) Enter the Whispers. Their job is to ensure destiny stays its course. But what happens if the Whispers fail? What happens if a planet is no longer able to prevent its course from diverging, intersecting, or overwriting itself? (e.g. whatever is going on in Remake’s Zack scenes) My theory is that the defeat of the Whispers will result in the lifestream fluxing uncontrollably. Without the Whispers at the reins, perhaps the lifestream spirals violently out of control, which is maybe the origin of Jenova?
What I'm trying to say is that Jenova could be the unfortunate lifestream of a previous planet that defied its fate. A "twisted Minerva” if you will that hijacked Omega’s ability to sail the cosmos.
So where could this go? I often think about Sephiroth's offer to Cloud at the end of Remake to join forces and defy fate. Just bear with me for a moment: let's say Sephiroth is aware of a higher power. Let's name this higher power Destiny (with a capital D). Destiny is a cosmic being that watches over all the lifestream in the universe. It equips every planet with Whispers, a type of Weapon that tries to prevent cases like Jenova. Sephiroth, heir to Jenova's legacy, doesn't like this. He seeks Cloud's help to defeat Destiny (promising that Aerith's fate can be altered or something).
Cloud and Sephiroth join forces at the climax of the remake project. Together they defeat Destiny. However, this is Sephiroth we're talking about, he fancies himself at the throne where Destiny once sat. The party is quick to react and kick his ass. With this victory the universe is utterly rid of Jenova's influence. The end.
I think this plot would be in-line thematically with what we've been given so far in Remake. Also, escalating the stakes to the point you're fighting a literal god is definitely a direction I can see this project going (see also: the FF13 trilogy).
That's a really solid and thematically fitting theory, @cold_spirit -- I can see it! I'd somewhat mourn the loss of the unsolved mystery to Jenova's origins if this comes to pass, but this might just be cool enough to make me okay with it.
Also, escalating the stakes to the point you're fighting a literal god is definitely a direction I can see this project going (see also: the FF13 trilogy).
I was kind of impressed that they were finally doing something else in FFXV, but nope, the real villain is Bahamut all along, according to that novel where the leads kill him.
I don't know what you mean by that, Mako, is Ellie your god now?
Well XV the game has it to where Noctis obeys and trusts Bahamut. He abides by the will of the gods and goes forward with their plan. Hence the original game's ending.
The novel is a different subject altogether, and instead focuses on the opposite. Which ending you find more satisfying depends on taste, but yes XV did do "something else" in regards to having the story for the game play out with Noctis trusting the gods, when in it's counterpart entry (when it was part of the FNC series) had the heroes do the opposite.
When I made the crack about Naughty Dog, I was more referring to how their games don't really deal with magical/spiritual matters and instead just focus on worlds that are more or less parallel to reality. They're not fantasy. Wasn't really a specific reference to TLOU2 let alone Ellie being my god lolol
Or perhaps it's a sort of FFXIV situation where there was only one timeline originally -- i.e. it got splintered into many at some point, and the arbiters have been slowly getting them whittled back down by making them match as much as possible?
I'm... very sure it's not at all similar to FFXIV's world. For one thing, it wasn't the timeline that was splintered, it was the world's entire metaphysical structure.... For another, FFXIV's Lifestream situation is very different than FFVII's is.
FFXIV's timeline wasn't splintered... instead, it's actual world was. Only some splinters have been forced back together as time has gone on. The worlds are... very much separate, and the being that serves the FFXIV world as its... Lifestream director (for lack of a better term) wants them to stay as separate as possible while her enemies would like to make the world "whole"... which kills all the life on the separate worlds when they rejoin the original one. No one who is a "good guy" wants this to happen by the way... speiciflcy because it kills off an entire world's worth of life. The different splintered worlds all have their own histories too (and even different rates at which time "passes"), which are very dfferent from the "main" world. This is viewed as being totally fine.
Ironically, FFXIV has at least two times that time-travel has happened. Both with seemingly no negative consequences either. The first would be when Alexander was summoned. In FFXIV, he's a giant time-line simulator and is supposed to calculate all possible future timelines and then chose which one is the "best". And he can manipulate time (send things back, freeze time, etc.). He ultimately decides the "best future" is the one where nothing changes from how it was going to go and essentially locks himself up in a single instant of frozen time so he can't effect the time-line anymore (or absorb energy from the surrounding area in catastrophic amounts). The story itself is a stable time-loop.
The second time would be Shadowbringers Spoilers, so that's underneath.
The story after Stormblood goes so bad that the Ironworks (an organization that makes a lot of Dues Ex Machina with their knowledge of technology) decides that they really don't have anything to lose by making a time-traveling device to go back to when you were alive and try to make history end up not being so terrible. Your character is famous enough by this point that "use our own doomed timeline to make sure your character can make their own timeline end up better" sounds like a good idea to a lot of people.
To build the time-travel machine... they end up using a lot of technology they've copied from other beings you've fought. Stuff like a robot that can create it's own dimensions, a crystal tower that generates crazy amounts of energy from sunlight and has a door that can open to other dimentions and... the robot that can simulate time-lines and travel backwards in time. So yeah, they build their own version of Alexander and calculate when the person going back in time should "arrive" to head off the doomed timeline from ever happening. And then use a combination of Alexander's time-travel powers and the other robots dimension hopping powers to actually time-travel.
Your character ends up destroying the time-travel part. Probably so the story team could plug the plot-hole of why more time-travel shinangians couldn't happen later...
It should be noted that both of these stories involve beings that physically travel back in time instead of sending memories back in time to their younger selves. At some points, you legitimately have two versions of the same being existing in two different places at the same time! One older and one younger. They also feature a world that really don't "push against" the idea of time-travel. It kinda just happens and everything goes on like normal. Granted, in FFXIV, the Lifestream (or the being in it) is very much on your side and is all but actively working (as much as they are able to) to make sure you win.
I was joking (re Ellie's ascent to godhood, not about not understanding the ref to ND.) In terms of not being fantasy, I'd probably go for EA's endless FIFA games.
ND games are okay, but they don't tend to be my favourites. (Although Amy Hennig has my eternal respect for writing LoK-which are actually games about defying fate, oddly enough.).
DOTF feels kinda like the game they would have made if they hadn't run out of time, which makes it hard to credit them with going somewhere new.
I'm... very sure it's not at all similar to FFXIV's world. For one thing, it wasn't the timeline that was splintered, it was the world's entire metaphysical structure.... For another, FFXIV's Lifestream situation is very different than FFVII's is.
FFXIV's timeline wasn't splintered... instead, it's actual world was. Only some splinters have been forced back together as time has gone on. The worlds are... very much separate, and the being that serves the FFXIV world as its... Lifestream director (for lack of a better term) wants them to stay as separate as possible while her enemies would like to make the world "whole"... which kills all the life on the separate worlds when they rejoin the original one. No one who is a "good guy" wants this to happen by the way... speiciflcy because it kills off an entire world's worth of life. The different splintered worlds all have their own histories too (and even different rates at which time "passes"), which are very dfferent from the "main" world. This is viewed as being totally fine.
Ironically, FFXIV has at least two times that time-travel has happened. Both with seemingly no negative consequences either. The first would be when Alexander was summoned. In FFXIV, he's a giant time-line simulator and is supposed to calculate all possible future timelines and then chose which one is the "best". And he can manipulate time (send things back, freeze time, etc.). He ultimately decides the "best future" is the one where nothing changes from how it was going to go and essentially locks himself up in a single instant of frozen time so he can't effect the time-line anymore (or absorb energy from the surrounding area in catastrophic amounts). The story itself is a stable time-loop.
The second time would be Shadowbringers Spoilers, so that's underneath.
The story after Stormblood goes so bad that the Ironworks (an organization that makes a lot of Dues Ex Machina with their knowledge of technology) decides that they really don't have anything to lose by making a time-traveling device to go back to when you were alive and try to make history end up not being so terrible. Your character is famous enough by this point that "use our own doomed timeline to make sure your character can make their own timeline end up better" sounds like a good idea to a lot of people.
To build the time-travel machine... they end up using a lot of technology they've copied from other beings you've fought. Stuff like a robot that can create it's own dimensions, a crystal tower that generates crazy amounts of energy from sunlight and has a door that can open to other dimentions and... the robot that can simulate time-lines and travel backwards in time. So yeah, they build their own version of Alexander and calculate when the person going back in time should "arrive" to head off the doomed timeline from ever happening. And then use a combination of Alexander's time-travel powers and the other robots dimension hopping powers to actually time-travel.
Your character ends up destroying the time-travel part. Probably so the story team could plug the plot-hole of why more time-travel shinangians couldn't happen later...
It should be noted that both of these stories involve beings that physically travel back in time instead of sending memories back in time to their younger selves. At some points, you legitimately have two versions of the same being existing in two different places at the same time! One older and one younger. They also feature a world that really don't "push against" the idea of time-travel. It kinda just happens and everything goes on like normal. Granted, in FFXIV, the Lifestream (or the being in it) is very much on your side and is all but actively working (as much as they are able to) to make sure you win.
If you're talking about the canceled DLC, then yes, it's precisely that. If you mean the base game, then no, this pretty much runs counter to it at most every juncture.
My first thought too! But then, it’s more like killing Jesus (who... was God? [citation needed] so maybe you’re right). Kefka‘s a contender too, although he starts mortal, and Necron I guess is godlike (being the avatar of corruption and mortal fear).
I feel like in FF games, the trope is more like "end the established religious order/current age by killing the being that is worshiped". Kefka was never worshiped as an actual god, so killing him doesn't feel like you're killing a being that was revered as a god by the world at large.
I know what you mean though. But, in the case of Sin, isn't it just a matter of length of reign? I kind of wish the time skip in World of Ruin was longer -- if we had skipped ahead 1000 years (I've done this in D&D, but in a video game having two complete casts would be... hard to pitch).
Sin would be what I would consider the "end the current age by killing something". Sin might not be a "god" in the traditional sense, but defeating him for good effectively ended the current religious order (which was practically a de facto government) in Spira. And that religion had been around for a long time.
Usually, "killing a god" has a social upheaval element to it. The thing people's lives and morals revolved around is now gone and the people who come after are going to have to come up with a new way of living (or reason to live) to replace it. FFXIII and FFXV very much have that feel at the end of their games as well.
