The Warring States of NPF - Final Fantasy

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Final Fantasy - The Time Loop

Quote:

Out of nowhere, a knight appears in Corneria. Inexplicably he seems to be infused with the power of the four elements, making him a being of near godlike power. His appearance changes to that of a winged demon and he adopts the name Chaos. Having vast knowledge of future events, he has a temple built where he creates four powerful elemental spirits, known as Fiends, and sends them into the future to ensure that everything happens as he remembers. Somewhere along the line Chaos goes into hiding and makes the lower levels of the temple inaccessible, allowing the structure itself to rot and crumble. Except for a select few people forget him.

After 1600 years, the Fiends start to appear and drain the power of the elemental crystals that hold the world together. It is focused on the old temple to create a time gate that itself is sealed by the elements. A knight named Garland who has gone rogue and kidnapped the princess of Corneria uses this temple as a hideout. Four young warriors appear in Corneria and rescue the princess, defeating Garland. However, instead of dying he is allowed to slip through the time gate to a time 2000 years in the past, becoming imbued with the elemental powers in the process (since the gate is a focus point of those powers). There he becomes Chaos. Time loops back on itself.

The four warriors proceed to kill the four fiends and relight the crystals using special orbs they carry. Maybe those are shards of the elemental crystals that the Fiends have removed to dim their lights, but that's speculation. Once the orbs are brought near the crystals, however, they as well as the orbs themselves start to shine again with elemental light.

With four orbs alight with elemental power the warriors are able to unseal the time gate and travel 2000 years into the past. This marks the end of the tangent universe they have lived in and which has split from another universe 2000 years ago.

In this universe, out of nowhere a knight appears in Corneria. Inexplicably he seems to be infused with the power of the four elements, making him a being of near godlike power. His appearance changes to that of a winged demon and he adopts the name Chaos. Having vast knowledge of future events in a tangent universe, he has a temple built where he creates four powerful elemental spirits in an attempt to create the tangent. However, soon after him four powerful warriors arrive and decend into the lower levels of the temple. They kill the fiends one by one and finally slay Chaos himself.

Chaos' death means the he has never existed since he can't make the knight from the future become him. Time and space briefly become distorted. Although it has never happened, memories of the events live on in people's subconscious minds, over time becoming the Legend of the Light Warriors - in both universes. The light of the crystals, however, will never be tarnished and the world is given a chance to prosper.

Some things are probably a matter of interpretation, but in my eyes this makes sense. I had some trouble fitting the creation of the legend in there, so if there's anything I've missed that could help with that (or anything else), tell me.

EDIT: And yeah, I wrote it. I just put it in a quote box for aesthetics. ^^

I'd say that's one of the most reasonable and understandable presentations of the time loop I've read yet.

Hmmm...I sort of half get it. You lost me at the whole "tangent universe" thing. But it does explain it a lot better than the game does, which was just pretty much "I am Garland, the worst knight ever! But now you have found me in the past, and now I am Chaos, bwhahahaha! Die!" Where did you find this anyway?

EDIT: I read it again, and I now get the "tangent universe" idea. That's a pretty profound explanation.

That makes even more sense to me, seeing how I just beat Final Fantasy in Dawn of Souls.

Meister, you rock. That is probably the most accurate and precise explanation to date. I am no longer confused.

That is a very well done explanation. :)

I wrote it myself after playing through the Dawn of Souls version, which for all its shortcomings has the advantage of better in-game text that goes a long way in explaining things. Yay me. ^^

The tangent universe (or, as you could say, parallel universe) is probably the only way to deal with the paradoxons inherent in most time travel stories. Think of it this way: in one universe the Light Warriors defeated Chaos, in another they didn't. In the game you see them travel from the reality where they didn't back in time to the splitting point, from where they likely ended up in the other one. That or they, too, ended up never existing except in people's collective subconscious.

Well, to be very technical, the terms "parallel" and "tangent" are both incorrect. Parallel implies that they never meet. This is not so, because up until Chaos' death/triumph, they are one and the same. Tangent implies that they only touch in one point. The timelines intersect at one point, but only there. Again, that is not true. The timeline merely splits in two at that moment. Therefore, the most correct term to use there would be "alternate."

That's just my two cents. And I loved your explanation...Dawn of Souls does indeed help the explanations a bit.

-A

This does actually explain a lot, but there's one thing that sometimes comes to my mind that no one seems to dwell on: What happens to everything after the 2000 year period? The game implies that time comes to a screeching halt and goes back 2000 years. But does it really? Doesn't it just continue without any reprecussions? Because if it didn't, then you would have no chance to relight the crystals because Garland has already gone to the past, become Chaos and has sent the Fiends into the future. Yet you have all the time in the world to go through the time gate.

But perhaps a wizard did it. ;)

If you recall, after each fiend was defeated, they were yanked out of the future and back to Chaos's time when he first created them so when Garland was defeated 1600 years later, they pulled him back 1600 years so he would become Chaos to send them forward so they would ensure everything went according to plan...
I think... I hate time travel.

I have always preferred the theory of 'alternate' timelines, each born of a branch from the original timeline, i.e. the big bang. Though even parallell time lines, which do not touch one another, can have weak points in which something from one may escape into the other. This helps to avoid the whole time paradox notion which could really only take place in a universe with a solitary timeline. Or, at least, that's what I've gleaned from Doctor Who.