Last Epoch is setting up a bootstrap paradox

General
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(for those who don’t know, a bootstrap paradox can also be described as a self-fullfilling prophecy, but basically its the idea that you travel through time to change something, but ultimately the thing you tried to change happens because you traveled through time to try and change it, meaning it never would have happened had you not done that.)

So in the story of last epoch (and I am paraphrasing a bit), we find ourselves as characters who live in the divine era, traveling for various reasons in the region just north of what would eventually become Thetima, there we encounter a shard of a divine object that teleports us into the post-apocalyptic ruined era, where a mysterious thing called the void has taken over and destroyed most of the world, however, while there we learned of some events that took place between our departure and arrival here (the events of the imperial era) seeking a way to defeat the void (and circumvent it’s arrival altogether) we complete the epoch stone and arrive at the end of time. here we are instructed that, in order to stop the void, we have to defeat the immortal emperor who consumed the essence of the gods (from our original era) and who eventually was consumed by the void, which he is believed to be responsible for summoning. meeting several defectors and resistors of the immortal emperor, we make our way to his throne room, a former temple of Rahyeh, for the big face off, where we are betrayed by one of our allies, who then re-betrays the emperor, revealing it to be an elaborate plan that according to her, we came up with. (this is where the paradox comes in)
we then find our self scrambling to return to the divine era from which we originally came in order to meet up with the younger, still mortal version of our ally who fake-betrayed us. while here we witness Rahyeh strike a lethal blow against Heriot, the god of the north, because he’s a big angsty bird who wants to be the one true god of all things. From here, we travel north to retrieve the lance of Heriot at his request, so that he may bless it before he dies. a bunch of yada yada happens in here and we find ourselves traveling west to receive a similar blessing from Lagon, the big tentacle ocean boi, so that the lance will be strong enough to strike down the immortal emperor, even though lagaon seems to assume we mean to use it to kill Rahyeh.

now for the time being, this is where the story ends, but presumably we will be traveling south to get the final blessing from earth snake goddess or whatever, THEN we’ll return to the imperial era, lance in hand, to strike down the Immortal Emperor and stop him from summoning the void.

However, as was established earlier in the story, bad things happen when you kill a god. and at the moment, the emperor holds the power of at least one god, and we hold the power of the other 3 in the form of a lance. this leads me to predict that, in our efforts to kill the emperor, this is in fact what unleashes the void, leading to the secondary timeline where the wingari try to resurrect Rahyeh with the power of the void, introducing us into the level 68 monolith timeline, since originally the immortal emperor hunted down the wengari to extinction, which is why they weren’t present in the ruined era originally.
now the paradox that exists here is twofold:
1: assuming that the main 4 timelines we visit in the story are the original state of things, as they would have occurred in our absence (aside from the thing with Yulia, which doesn’t quite add up, but i’ll get there in a second) then the ruined era should have been inaccessible to us who used the epoch stone to prevent the ruined era in the first place, technically speaking the imperial era should also be inaccessible, but then we’d rope back around to having the void rahyeh timeline.
2: Assuming the above is false and we’re dealing with linear time travel theory (we can’t change our own, personal past, but we can change the direction of our personal future, including the state of the entire world [think trunks from dragonball z]) Then yulia should never have recognized us in the imperial era or have ever made a plan with us to kill the immortal emperor, as we hadn’t done that yet.

you can’t have it both ways devs, either we can’t change the future period, or we can and yulia can’t know us ahead of time. this means the literal only solution to the problem at hand is the bootstrap paradox: we caused all of it. we caused the void to arrive and spread by our actions trying to prevent the void from doing that, we caused the immortal emperor to rise to power, and we even caused Rahyeh to send his minions after the Epoch shard, which ultimately caused it to fall into our hands in the first place, thus leading us down this arbitrary rabbit hole.

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a) apparently I need to pay attention to the story,
b) Yulia knows us in the Imperial era because from her point of view she’s met us in the Divine Era, it’s just that’s not our personal past.

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  1. correct, time travel plots are interesting.
  2. she can’t possibly know us unless she was also a time traveler, in which case we should already have had the encounter with her in our past, as she would have been there. further evidence of this linear time travel theory includes the College of Welren side quest where we are unable to enter the college in the ruined era because it was locked, until we get the key in the imperial era and open it, which leads us to the ruined era again to retrieve a second key from a guard to unlock the door in the past, something which we should have been able to from the start if events from our future are able to apply to our present, as Yulia implies, but doesn’t apply to the college quest, showing a clear demonstration of the devs mixing linear and non-linear time travel.
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Why? Apart from that she’s still alive in a different era, presumably several hundred years later? Maybe thousands.

Not necessarily. Even if she were a time traveller like us, that doesn’t mean she’s been to every point in time. Thats like saying that the grandfather paradox must occur because if we travel back in time we have no option but to kill our grandfather. What if I travelled back to the 30s & chilled out in the Bahamas (where he wouldn’t have been)? Or met him & had a nice chat over a beer or cup of tea?

I think you’ve got that the wrong way round, you start off in the Imperial Era with a locked door, travel forward to the Ruined Era to steal the key & go back to the Imperial Era to loot it.

I think what you’re saying is that I need to start another alt (probably a Sentinel, for a change) and pay attention to the story this time so we can have a proper discussion.

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I’m of the opinion that considering this sort of plot worked in Chrono Trigger, which this game heavily borrows from, then it’ll work here too.

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for the quest, sure, but we go from the divine era to the ruined era first, THEN the imperial era after going to the end of time, and the first time around if you go to the college (before you have access to the quest) the door is locked.

but to give you another example, in non-linear time travel there can only be a single sequence of events, as any attempt to change your own past will bootstrap paradox and cause you to have no reason to do that (this also allows Yulia to know us ahead of time, as we always would have traveled back to meet her), however the monolith of fate presents us with different versions of the timelines, presumably based on changes we made along the way, something that would be impossible in non-linear time travel since, as soon as we change something, we would create a universe in which we would never have needed to change that thing (and thus we don’t change it and it still happens, i.e. the bootstrap paradox)

except you were born in a universe where that didn’t happen, and thus you COULD go back in time and chat with him, but then you either:
a) have non-linear time travel in which you are still never born because you stalled him having sex with your grandmother, thus leading to a different sperm reaching the egg and a different person being born aside from your parent, meaning you would never be born to go back in time to chat with him, even if the person who is born in your parents place does have a child who goes back in time, it would have been a sequence of events where he would have talked to someone else, and the same issue would have still occurred.

b) you’re dealing with linear time travel in which you did that, but your personal past is unchanging, so you just created a new future for your grandfather in which case he either doesn’t have, or has a different grandchild than you.

to re-affirm the above point: Yulia knowing us ahead of time is a clear demonstration of non-linear time travel, in which it is conceptually impossible for us to change any events we experience, as they exist in sequence with us trying to change them, i.e. there can’t be alternate timelines and we should be running around in a big circle to end up at the same result with no beginning (as the beginning would also exist in sequence with us trying to circumvent our reason for trying to circumvent events)

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I don’t know the story of chrono trigger to comment on this, but there is technically a third type of time travel, that being steins;gate’s world line singularity time travel, but that’s already disproved by our ability to go physically backwards and forwards in the first place, and itself ignores a multitude of bootstrap paradoxes in order to occur. (and also relies on the main characters ability to remember timelines he’s been to even though he shouldn’t)

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Yeah, fair point, the door should always be unlocked because you unlock it in the Imperial Era.

She only knows us “ahead of time” because from our point of view we’ve never met her, but from her point of view, we have. Maybe I have a different view since I was bought up on Dr Who (though they didn’t really go into this kind of thing like they do in new Who). I don’t have any problem with Yulia knowing who we are but us not knowing who she is (or her plan) since we’re experiencing events out of sequence. If you look at it from an external observer (Ancient Era->Divine Era->Imperial Era->Ruined Era) it makes sense, since Yulia met this person (in the Divine Era?) who presumably told her that bad **** happens in the future, devised a plan to deal with it & then enacts the plan in the future. This is where me not really paying attention to the plot is a bit of a problem.

Why? How does me (a random person as far as he knows) having a drink with him change things such that I can’t go back & have a drink with him? I don’t have to tell him that I’m his grandson from the future & that it’s really bad so he should avoid having kids (which he may then ignore & have kids anyway).

But that is based on the assumption that a)I interact with him at all & b)that that interaction must change what happens.

I agree with that, but not with Yulia knowing us being clear evidence of non-linear time travel.

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the problem with her knowing us in her past and our future means that she should also know that the person she’s talking to in the emperors throne room hasn’t met her yet, but she doesn’t because she hasn’t failed yet and prompted us to go back and make the plan with her (bootstrapping us into a course where we could only have gone back to form the plan with her that fails because she doesn’t know that she will encounter a version of us that didn’t make a plan with her)

unless you were born in a non-linear universe where you were only born because you DID go back in time and chat with your grandpa (in which case you become your own bootstrap paradox), your starting point must always be from a universe where you didn’t do that, and the butterfly effect being what it is, even existing back in time when you didn’t prior would change the state of the world such that either you are never born, never time travel, or time travel for a different reason, thus changing events again, leading to you never doing that. (on your point listed after this one, traveling back in time, even if you successfully avoided all human contact, your existence would create matter at your arrival point, thus displacing air at a rate exceeding the speed of light and quantum breaking the universe, which is why physical time travel is impossible, but looping back into video game logic our character starts at the second farthest back point in time possible, which on a relative scale is really really close to the imperial and ruined eras, but super far from the ancient era, so any changes to the timeline would be much more relevant and noticeable if they occurred in the ancient era, but since that doesn’t happen, we’re either bootstrapping or we’re dealing with linear time and Yulia still can’t know us, since we are the time traveler who hasn’t met her yet. her past is our future, and in linear time the future of the time traveler is the only one who can change.

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The Forgotten Knight says so many versions of us have come thru they don’t want to know what path (ie mastery) we’ve chosen this time because they want to be surprised. Also several other encounters suggest that because of a lack of recognition on someone’s part it may not the same person. So it seem to indicate not just time travel but mulitiverses and they’re all intersecting. This might mean the Yulia who recognizes us is actually recognizing an “us” from an altered timeline/separate “verse”.

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this is indicative of linear time, which is shown everywhere else in the story EXCEPT Yulia knowing us ahead of time, since it is in fact us who travel back to speak with her (more on the forgotten knight, linearly speaking we went through the story, created a new timeline, that version of us went through a different story, created a new timeline, and so on)

Yulia knowing a different version of us should also not be possible since that means she would exist in a timeline where the future had already been altered and thus wouldn’t have met us trying to fix it differently. either she knows the current version of us (which breaks the story) or she never met us since we havn’t done that yet.

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its non-linear because she somehow managed to interact with a future version of us, THEN a past version of us. it happened out of order and therefore defines the literal term of non-linear. the only problem is that her gaf is the literal ONLY example of non-linear time travel in the entire story up to that point, since until then the continuity always followed our character from our personal past to our eventual future (such as the priest guy in the ruined era mentioning one of the 3 epoch shards going missing in the divine era, because we had taken it ourselves and then arrived with it there) everything being linear EXCEPT Yulia means:

  1. the devs messed up
    or

  2. she is also a time traveler (in which case we enter the doctor who river song plot, but likely with less romance, which still doesn’t explain why Yulia didn’t know that we wouldn’t know her in the imperial era)

  3. (and this one is impossible, but included to explain another comment) she encountered a parallel universe version of us in the past, as mentioned by the forgotten knight, which isn’t the case, since that would then mean we would also have to encounter that parallel version of us both at the immortal emperor, and in the past warning Yulia about the immortal emperor.

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some good analysis here, and i’m happy to see it since i’m one of the apparently few nerds who actually likes storytelling in my games.

i think Caius made the point that i was planning to make as i was reading the other posts, but i’ll bring it up again: according to what the Elder and the Forgotten Knight tell us at the End of Time, we are one of a seemingly infinite number of travelers who have found the Epoch and i think this is going to be a key element in how “our” story resolves.

i believe Zarono is correct that there’s a paradox involved, which has caused this sort of infinite regression. i’m just speculating, but i think the story will eventually lead to us realizing this and having to end the paradox by making a different choice.

since it seems clear from what we’ve experienced so far that we will have to fight the Emperor at some point, i’m not sure that this will be the event that causes the paradox as Zarono suggested. plus it would be strange for him not to be the Final Boss of the game (or at least close to Final) as it’s set up so far. perhaps we will have to face one of the other Travelers as they arrive to kill him.

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So this.

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Great layout, makes it very clear. I still believe the multiverse puts an aspect to this that we don’t yet have as well as the fact the whatever is going to occur in the Ancient Era is completely empty right now (and on a separate note is my biggest anticipation - I cannot WAIT to go into the Ancient Era.)

Whatever the case, it’s going to be fun watching it unfold.

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i anticipate that (if they’re trying to make this a causal loop sort of situation) that the story ends with us going to the ancient era to destroy the epoch, which splits it into 3 shards (again) which causes it to eventually fall back into our hands in the divine era, thus completing the loop.

however, if they actually want the story to have literally any ending other than completing the loop, they have to fix the yulia paradox or the story won’t make sense at all in any ending that doesn’t involve the closed loop.

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