[Spoilers] Material Ultimania Plus discussion

[Odysseus]

Aerith getting visions of the future unrelated to the Whispers is changing my idea about what's really going on, at least. Some others probably already expected that to be the case though.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Maybe even have Sephiroth slip some visions in, except they're obviously wrong

This is exactly what he does at Northern Crater in the OG. So I'd imagine he'll be doing what he did in the VR room even more often.

 

[oty]

Remember when they thought Genesis would be out haha those were funny days, we had so much fun, everything was good back then.

To be honest tho, I still prefer every single aspect of this time travel jumbo than any of the Goddess stuff from Genesis by a country mile.

I both like and dislike all these weird rules being added to the premonition shenanigans.

I don't think the devs really give a lot of thought to the rules and whatnot of it lol. It's like George Lucas' treatment of the Force back in the Original Trilogy (and also partly the Prequels). He really just gave whatever powers he thought were necessary without really extrapolating. It was more of a device that allowed his vision of the plot to happen rather than the focus of it.

You want Luke to jump really tall? You got it. Premonitions? Yup, just say the word. Freaking lightning out of someone's hands? Why the hell not? Put that shit in.

In the end, plenty of creators aren't really interested in explaining the rules of their universes. They are there to serve a purpose. Not that they don't make sense, they just don't have that much explaining.

Part 2 is going to be interesting with all these future visions lol

I feel like many of those visions also are there to entertain us. Like Cloud shedding a tear when he sees Aerith at the tunnel. Is Cloud going to do something about that? Not really. But for us, that was a insane moment. I remember almost screaming seeing that.

 

[ForceStealer]

I feel like many of those visions also are there to entertain us. Like Cloud shedding a tear when he sees Aerith at the tunnel. Is Cloud going to do something about that? Not really. But for us, that was a insane moment.

This was my read on basically ALL of the timey weirdness throughout the remake until things really get off the rails at the end.

 

[oty]

Yep. Again, it's like a weird junction. Some future visions matter, some clearly do not. Atleast it's pretty clear which ones do. Those we discuss at every thread lmao

 

[KindOfBlue]

The whole vision during the Whisper Harbinger battle with Red XIII seeing himself in the future with his cubs, was as most said, him misinterpreting the future due to his lack of context and understanding.

Yeah people took “a glimpse of tomorrow if we fail here today” to mean that everything we know about FF7 is the “bad ending” but like…there’s a whole 500 years in between those points in time that we know nothing about

 

[SilverArrow20XX]

The powers and memories of the dead allowing connections across time is very much staple Final Fantasy. It's what makes time travel possible in XIII-2, X, and IX. The past and future can be connected by those memories.

IX isn't exactly time travel. More like traveling back along memory itself.
XIII-2's time travel doesn't operate on memories. The Historia Crux exists because of the existence of paradoxes that came into being because of Etro's meddling in the timeline.
X doesn't have any time travel at all.
VIII's the only one where time travel really relies on memories, because it uses Ellone.

I don't think the connections across time in VIIR are just memories existing across time.
I think there's specifically something happening in the future that is allowing the memories to leak into the past.

 

[Humming]

Screw the future, the most exciting thing about part 2 is additional depth to the gang. They did an amazing job with Barret and the girls in part 1, now I crave some Red XIII content.

About time as a concept, I would take into account KH too, since it has some interesting rules like the impossibility to rewrite certain events or the fact that once you travel back in time, you can only move forward after that in a lineal aspect of time.

 

[Makoeyes987]

IX isn't exactly time travel. More like traveling back along memory itself.

That's still time travel. That's how it's described. The Crystal World is in the literal past at the beginning of creation, and utilizing the memories that created Memoria, Zidane and his friends traveled back into time where Kuja was.

XIII-2's time travel doesn't operate on memories. The Historia Crux exists because of the existence of paradoxes that came into being because of Etro's meddling in the timeline.

But it does, because time travel utilizes the power of Chaos. The Unseen Chaos is made of the thoughts, feelings, memories and all the unique aspects that encompass a living being's heart. Those paradoxes were created thanks to Etro opening the Gate which allowed the Chaos from the Unseen Realm (the realm of the dead) to warp the space-time of the world of the living.

And Sarah herself had visions of the future thanks to the power of Etro. The power of Chaos. Which is the power and energy of the dead. Powerful emotions transcend time and space allowing people and things to phase out or fall out of their original timeline and into alternate ones. And even dreams timelines that they don't exist in, or originally came from. Like Alyssa.

X doesn't have any time travel at all.

The novella Final Fantasy X-2.5 Price of Eternity does.

I don't think the connections across time in VIIR are just memories existing across time.
I think there's specifically something happening in the future that is allowing the memories to leak into the past.

I'm not saying that these temporal anomalies are "just memories," I agree that something has happened in the future that has destabilized time and there is actual time travel of some sort going on. I believe it's connected to Sephiroth. But my point was, that spirit energy, the power and memories/thoughts/feelings/hearts/etc of the dead have been consistently depicted as capable of transcending time and space. The limits of what spirit energy can do is pretty much unknown.

Except for being able to regenerate itself if refined burned away as fuel, of course.

 

[Odysseus]

I get the feeling there's some kind of "Life Stream White/Life Stream Black" thing going on here where Sephiroth in the future somehow disrupted time and now Aerith is somehow sending her past self her future memories in an effort to combat Sephiroth's new plan.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

The Lifestream is literally made out of memories. That is what "mako" is. Memories that are so concentrated it's a physical substance. Honestly, it's more or less what Kingdom Hearts is in... the game series of the same name.

We've known this since the OG at Temple of the Ancients when Sephiroth says the Memories of the Cetra are in the Lifestream. And that he's absorbed them by absorbing the Lifestream into himself. Materia being memories and how it works was revealed in the Kalm Flashback by Sephiroth as well. People are accessing the memories of the Cetra that is in the matera and the nature of the memories determines what type and effects the materia has.

Remake then took those concepts and added the twist that the Lifestream exists across all of time in the same "state". So once someone dies and their memories join the Lifestream, then... their memories have always been in the Lifestream that exists across all of time. So since Aerith *did* die in the future... her memories are now in the Lifestream... across all of time to boot. And she's also a Cetra, so she lasts longer than most people do.

I don't think we're supposed to infer that the physical state or energy level of the Lifestream has a constant value. Otherwise, the health of the Lifestream would be a constant, and it would neither grow (the purpose of a planet's flora and fauna, humans included) nor be endangered by daily human activities like burning up mako.

Rather, I believe something like ... memories/spirit energy further down the river of time have the keys to the doors of all prior time periods baked in because of the blended and sedimentary nature of memories/spirit energy in the Lifestream.

Those keys and doors aren't always labeled as such for easy matching, though, perhaps for reasons like what @LicoriceAllsorts emphasized -- i.e. the dead's consciousness fades as their memories get diluted over time and blend with the swell.

Saying that the Lifestream is made of the energy of memories isn't the same thing as saying it's a collection of distinct, discreet memories. Memories are not 'the building blocks of the spirit'. Memories are the building blocks of identity, as this game clearly shows, or at least it used to. The Lifestream isn't just a physical fifth element that flows perpetually around the planet. It's also inside every living being. It flows into them at conception and out of them when they die. It's "命", inochi, which (according to Denshi Jisho) translates as both 'life force' and 'destiny'. Identities and their unique memories dissolve in the Lifestream after the death of the physical body. If they didn't, every living entity would be able to remember all of its spirit energy's past lives as a tree, a worm, fish etc... (Unless we imagine some convenient apparatus exists to circumvent this logical conclusion.)

I think there was a moment in this part of the discussion where you and some others were talking past one another, as you're not wrong here and they weren't wrong either. So, the Lifestream is made of memories -- yes; but also yes, few of those remain distinct memories (and fewer still constitute an enduring consciousness).

And the International War from the Early material Files is being brought back

AWWW, hell yeah!

I've long maintained the position that it never went away since the Ultimania Omega's profile on Shin-Ra (in the main section of the book, not just the Early Material Files section) talked about this prior war -- but I've been met with resistance about that.

It's relevant of course because of the timing of SOLDIER's inception, the timing of Deepground's construction relative to the rest of Midgar, whether Seph was the first Shin-Ra supersoldier, etc.

Looks like President Shinra = Cloud's father can still work!

Much as I'd like to think so, I doubt it. I can't imagine President Shinra could disappear for a couple of years by that point in Shin-Ra's growth and expect the company to just be handed back to him, or that no one in Nibelheim would have figured out who he was in all that time.

Literally the only game you mentioned of those 3 that was anything close to widely hated or poorly received was the 3rd Birthday, and it utilizing time travel was not the reason it's so hated.

XIII-2 sold like gangbusters, received critical acclaim and was considered a complete positive 180 gameplay wise for the franchise. And you really don't know what you're talking about if you're going to claim KH 3D was somehow widely disliked. I'm not sure what you're saying has any sort of validity whatsoever.

Does any of that mean it was a good plot direction, though? =P

I get the feeling there's some kind of "Life Stream White/Life Stream Black" thing going on here where Sephiroth in the future somehow disrupted time and now Aerith is somehow sending her past self her future memories in an effort to combat Sephiroth's new plan.

That has been my guess since last April and I feel increasingly like it's probably a good one.

 

[Wol]

I get the feeling there's some kind of "Life Stream White/Life Stream Black" thing going on here where Sephiroth in the future somehow disrupted time and now Aerith is somehow sending her past self her future memories in an effort to combat Sephiroth's new plan.

This is so FFXIII-2.

Light sending dreams and visions to characters in the past. Caius guiding past Caius and something about Yeul. Aka characters knowing the future/true history trying to change (or prevent that change) the order of past events.

 

[Makoeyes987]

This is so FFXIII-2.

Light sending dreams and visions to characters in the past. Caius guiding past Caius and something about Yeul. Aka characters knowing the future/true history trying to change (or prevent that change) the order of past events.

That's literally what I thought once Toriyama started talking and explaining everything. Like, holy shit.

That's the frame of reference that I feel is most relevant here now. The more I think about it, the more Toriyama talks, and the more the nature of time travel is shown thus far, we're seeing that FFVII-R has taken more from XIII than its battle concepts and stuff.

Sephiroth straight up released the Unseen Chaos and now wants help stuffing it back inside Etro's Gate from Cloud and is gonna tempt him with false memories and shit, lol.

Wait.

Wait a fucking second.

....This is fucking starting to sound like the Mobius Final Fantasy's Fatal Calling event!! WHAT THE-

 

[SilverArrow20XX]

That's still time travel. That's how it's described. The Crystal World is in the literal past at the beginning of creation, and utilizing the memories that created Memoria, Zidane and his friends traveled back into time where Kuja was.

Ehhhh.
It's more like following the branches of Yggdrasil to the source to see where it started growing.
It's the origin of time, rather than a point in time.
The entire journey through Memoria is outside of time.

But it does, because time travel utilizes the power of Chaos. The Unseen Chaos is made of the thoughts, feelings, memories and all the unique aspects that encompass a living being's heart. Those paradoxes were created thanks to Etro opening the Gate which allowed the Chaos from the Unseen Realm (the realm of the dead) to warp the space-time of the world of the living.

And Sarah herself had visions of the future thanks to the power of Etro. The power of Chaos. Which is the power and energy of the dead. Powerful emotions transcend time and space allowing people and things to phase out or fall out of their original timeline and into alternate ones. And even dreams timelines that they don't exist in, or originally came from. Like Alyssa.

Hearts are essentially made out of Chaos, yes. The memory aspect of it being what allows for time travel isn't really a thing though.
It's just Chaos itself that does it. It flooded the world and messed up time.
And then after it's done, affected people will have memories and and powerful feelings of alternate timelines, but those memories and feelings aren't what caused the change.

Though the nature of Chaos itself REALLY reminds me of whatever's happening in VIIR now that people mention it.

The novella Final Fantasy X-2.5 Price of Eternity does.

Been a while since I read it but, from what i remember.
In X-2.5, and Will, there's a weird thing going on where memories are causing things from the past to be recreated.
The dead are returning to life. Sin comes back.
All actually recreations made from memory and strong feelings rather than actual Unsent.
The Besaid they go to in X-2.5 is kind of like Dream Zanarkand. It's an actual physical place that has been created, separate from the real Besaid.
Real memories exist there and they learn about the actual past, but they aren't in the actual past.
Yuna even compares leaving the island to Tidus escaping Dream Zanarkand on Sin.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Ehhhh.
It's more like following the branches of Yggdrasil to the source to see where it started growing.
It's the origin of time, rather than a point in time.
The entire journey through Memoria is outside of time.

That is still time travel.

If you're moving from one time period to the another, including to the "origin of time" (i.e. the beginning of everything) that's still time travel lol

Hearts are essentially made out of Chaos, yes. The memory aspect of it being what allows for time travel isn't really a thing though.
It's just Chaos itself that does it. It flooded the world and messed up time.
And then after it's done, affected people will have memories and and powerful feelings of alternate timelines, but those memories and feelings aren't what caused the change.

I mean none of what you're saying is refuting what I said. Yes, the heart is made up of memories, emotions, etc. Hearts are Chaos. Ergo, all that is within the Chaos- hearts, memories, feelings, etc of the dead, composes Chaos. That's the secret that's revealed about the Unseen Chaos in Lightning Returns and hinted at in XIII-2. The Unseen Chaos is volatile, reality warping dark colored lifestream from the Unseen Realm. No, the memories and feelings of individuals aren't causing the change, but those feelings and memories respond and resonate. You can end up dreaming and feeling the emotions and things of others in other timelines. Or in the past or future. Just like a certain Cetra is doing, or a certain younger sister did.

Been a while since I read it but, from what i remember.
In X-2.5, and Will, there's a weird thing going on where memories are causing things from the past to be recreated.
The dead are returning to life. Sin comes back.
All actually recreations made from memory and strong feelings rather than actual Unsent.
The Besaid they go to in X-2.5 is kind of like Dream Zanarkand. It's an actual physical place that has been created, separate from the real Besaid.
Real memories exist there and they learn about the actual past, but they aren't in the actual past.

I thought the memories recreated of the past Besaid allowed them to visit it via the pyreflies. But you might be right since it's been awhile and I wasn't that fond of that novella anyways. So scratch X off the list

 

[SilverArrow20XX]

That is still time travel.

If you're moving from one time period to the another, including to the "origin of time" (i.e. the beginning of everything) that's still time travel lol

lol
I disagree on the semantics, but not with you.
Cause like, it's not a time period cause it's not in time.
And they traveled through the planet's (universe's?) memories, rather than through time periods.

I mean none of what you're saying is refuting what I said. Yes, the heart is made up of memories, emotions, etc. Hearts are Chaos. Ergo, all that is within the Chaos- hearts, memories, feelings, etc of the dead, composes Chaos. That's the secret that's revealed about the Unseen Chaos in Lightning Returns and hinted at in XIII-2. The Unseen Chaos is volatile, reality warping dark colored lifestream from the Unseen Realm. No, the memories and feelings of individuals aren't causing the change, but those feelings and memories respond and resonate. You can end up dreaming and feeling the emotions and things of others in other timelines. Or in the past or future. Just like a certain Cetra is doing, or a certain younger sister did.

I guess my distinction is that people with strong feelings and memories can use Chaos to communicate across time.
If there's not an overabundance of Chaos destabilizing the timeline, it doesn't work.
But if that's exactly what's happening in VII, it's brilliant.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Much as I do love discussion of metaphysics in FF, I have to confess that I'm sharing some of Lic's sadness that such discussion has far and away overshadowed the character work. When the damn Love Triangle Debate gives more attention to it than talk about the primary plot is lending itself, I can't help but feel there was a misfire somewhere.

At one point, I (now hilariously) believed that this being a remake meant we would mostly be able to skip the metaphysics debates. Again, not that I don't enjoy them. It's just ... hard to explain.

@LicoriceAllsorts
I feel your feels.

 

[Odysseus]

People always want to know what happens next and what's going on, and due to the large implications of those questions, it overshadows everything else. I agree, it does suck.

 

[SilverArrow20XX]

I guess part of it is, we kinda already know the broad strokes of what the main plot is going to be, cause it's a remake.
So the new stuff to talk about is the changes.
Which happen because of weird metaphysics.
So........well here we are.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Oh, please don't misunderstand my meaning. I totally get why we're here, and I'm all up in it as well.

A part of me, though, strongly wishes that they were taking more of a FFXIV approach to the changes; i.e. rather than make speculation about the metaphysics surrounding those changes the star, just go ahead and mostly get that stuff out of the way in the game itself so that how the characters respond to those developments takes center stage (along with the new, more broadly-equipped depictions of the original dialogue).

 

[BioTeach]

I'm really enjoying all these shared tidbits from the novel and I really wish I could read it now. I am curious though: I don't think I've seen any translations/summaries from the Aerith portion yet (unless I'm just missing them?). Is there nothing new to discuss there or are the Tifa fans just that much more excited about the novel? (For the record I love both girls and want to hear more about each!)
(On a side note: should the novel have its own thread separate from the ultimania plus?)

 

[Theozilla]

Oh, please don't misunderstand my meaning. I totally get why we're here, and I'm all up in it as well.

A part of me, though, strongly wishes that they were taking more of a FFXIV approach to the changes; i.e. rather than make speculation about the metaphysics surrounding those changes the star, just go ahead and mostly get that stuff out of the way in the game itself so that how the characters respond to those developments takes center stage (along with the new, more broadly-equipped depictions of the original dialogue).

You haven’t seen the official FFXIV forums then, it’s loaded with discussions of the metaphysics/meta-lore of its setting. Especially once the 3.2 patch introduced the concept of multiple realities and even moreso when ShadowBringers had timetravel as integral plot element of the expansions plot.
Greater clarity or better perceived execution/writing of plot devices doesn’t calm discussions of the world building of a video game (heck the significance of world building is arguably what makes the medium of storytelling in video games more unique than other mediums of fiction).

 

[Tetsujin]

(On a side note: should the novel have its own thread separate from the ultimania plus?)

Absolutely

 

[Obsidian Fire]

There is a difference though when a game refuses to give information in a timely manner about metaphysics and one that does give answers in a timely manner. Particularly in terms of when you want to give exposition on later down the line (and type of exposition).

FFXIV is different in that *because* so much of it's world-building is done early, it doesn't have to spend time *later* talking about the "basics" of the setting. FFVII... so much of it feels like a treasure hunt for *basic* information to figure out what actually *happened* in the plot.

This means that FFXIV can then have some climaxes that are really metaphysically significant... and most people have a very good idea what is going on in them *as they are happening*. They don't need to ask people later what all the weird stuff happening at the end of Shadowbringers is. It's instead "this thing we've done before but the character/circumstances make the stakes a lot higher this time around." And FFXIV was doing that as early as 2.0 finale....

FFVII... often leaves people feeling lost at the end because there's not a lot of context for how oh... the OG ended. It was something new that had never been done before in the setting and the way the story ended meant that wasn't happened couldn't be discussed afterwards. Except out of the game in Ultimanias.

The discussions on fFXIV metaphysics are a lot less "how does this concept actually work" and a lot more "we know this concept works like x... so how does this concept interact with this other concept that works like y and what would that mean for z plot point?"

There's also a lot more disucsions about oh... the politics of the setting because FFXIV loves complicated political situations.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

You haven’t seen the official FFXIV forums then, it’s loaded with discussions of the metaphysics/meta-lore of its setting. Especially once the 3.2 patch introduced the concept of multiple realities and even moreso when ShadowBringers had timetravel as integral plot element of the expansions plot.
Greater clarity or better perceived execution/writing of plot devices doesn’t calm discussions of the world building of a video game (heck the significance of world building is arguably what makes the medium of storytelling in video games more unique than other mediums of fiction).

I could be perceiving it incorrectly, but I don't feel like the characters get left behind in the whole thing. =\

EDIT: @Obsidian Fire explained what I've been trying to say.