The player character is powering up the Lance of Heorot in order to use it to kill the Immortal Emperor
We need the blessing/power/blood of all four gods to empower the lance. Only Rahyeh is left now
All the four gods, including Rahyeh, die some time between the Divine Era and the Imperial Era
The Observer/Orobyss was locked away in a room with what looks like a lotus flower prison; we find the remains of the Immortal Emperor near the Lotus Halls, in a room that looks like the one in which Orobyss was imprisioned
The game heavily hints that the Immortal Emperor is Gael
The game strongly hints that Orobyss escapes his prison by the end of the Imperial Era, when the void takes over the world
So, based on what we know, it looks like the remaining storyline will be:
Chapter 11: we go back to the Divine Era, kill Rahyeh with Gael, finish powering up the lance, and Gael becomes the Immortal Emperor.
Chapter 12: we go back to the Imperial Era and find the Immortal Emperor in the Temple of Eterra where Orobyss is imprisioned. There, we (mostly) kill the Emperor using the lance, but Orobyss is released and begins the Ruined Era.
Then we get the Monolith content, powering up the Epoch, gathering the āknowledge of Orobyssā, and the main storyline ends with a fight against Orobyss.
This is what I expect to happen.
I do hope to be wrong, though. In this storyline, the main character is not only incompetent, but also incredibly dumb. They would be unable to predict things that had already happened, and unable to prevent any of the catastrophes that happen to the world. Unless we get a massive āDeus Ex Machinaeā at the end, Orobyss may be defeated, but the world will have ended with the Ruined Era anyway, after suffering through the Empire Era.
I view it a bit differently. It looks like branching universe/multiverse to me, especially in monoliths and our goal is not to prevent those events, because that would only create one timeline in which things went well. Our goal will be to gather means to solve those problems in many branches. Hence the lance to be able to defeat emperor in as many branches as we see fit. There will probably be other tools as well, like epoch.
Maybe in the end we will just bring hope to Orobyss turning him to Observer again.
You forgot the part where it is revealed that Orobyss was the one that convinced Rahyeh to do his war of conquest all along.
Personally I think the end will be that defeating Orobyss in the earth of the void will effectively erase him from existance and thus āfixā the timeline
Every story where the MC has access to unlimited time travel can only work if said MC is dumb, the antagonist also has access to unlimited time travel, or you come up with a flimsy excuse why this isnāt so (looking at you, MCU ).
I think Final Fantasy XIII-2 does something interesting, in that the main characters have time travel and the antagonists donāt, but the antagonists live forever and can see the future, so it kind of balances itself.
But now Iām curious thinking about a story in which two time travellers fight against each other through time.
There are a few around. In movies thereās Timecop or Looper (hey, you didnāt say they had to be good stories ). Predestination is a good movie sort of like that, although with a twist.
As for books, thereās This Is How You Lose The Time War (although itās a bit abstract).
The terminator movies are also kind of like that, in that both skynet and the resistance keep sending people/machines back to change the past, supposedly reacting from the changes the other makes.
Iām sure there are more examples, but these are the ones I remember off the top of my head.
).
). Predestination is a good movie sort of like that, although with a twist.