so in regards to my observations on the story here: (Last Epoch is setting up a bootstrap paradox - #17) i went through the story again on a shaman to get the verbatim dialogue spoken to us by Yulia, and this time around i noticed something potentially interesting that she says in a secondary dialogue option while confronting the immortal emperor (about Alric)
she says (and this is paraphrasing): “he’s dead, the immortal emperor ripped his soul from his body… i could tell you hadn’t told him anything, he didn’t know about what was really going on so i played along, after all we both know the dangers of meddling with time…”
this loops back around to the dialogue where she reveals the plan formed by us to use the lance of Heriot against the emperor, which fails, leading us to go back in time and form that plan in the first place (what was originally the causal loop paradox)
however, what this dialogue implies is that she, too, is a time traveller, which continues to stand in firm denial of linear time travel theory, but also starts to unravel non-linear time travel at the same time as it would mean:
we should run into ourselves when we travel to meet her past self.
she should never have been able to run into a version of us that had also time traveled (as it would require us to enter HER loop from the outside somehow.
she would have known ahead of time that the plan would fail, and thus she was either acting for some reason, or she’s intentionally trying to perpetuate a causal loop.
so what does this mean for us? basically speaking: there is no time travel happening at all. if you’ve ever watched the anime “Steins;Gate” then you’ll probably know what i mean when i say we’re hopping world lines. for those of you who don’t know, i’ll explain briefly: in essence, each time we “time travel” we’re just going from the universe we are currently in, to one where events transpired in such a way that we arrived from another dimension at a certain time.
what makes this functionally different from linear time travel is threefold:
Each time we travel, the universe we came from is effectively abandoned to it’s eventual fate, and we no longer exist in it (nor can we ever return to it)
it’s possible to run into other time travelers ONCE (unless you travel together) since they would create a new universe when they traveled that would be different from the one you create, even if you went to the same version of a universe (in your version, you showed up, in their version, they showed up)
in relation to the above point, it’s also possible to run into ourselves, which also means that there is a theoretically infinite number of epoch stones that could be collected into one spot if you were to murder yourself and take their (your) epoch stone.
what this means for us (if Yulia is a time traveler) is that when we encountered her in the imperial era, she had made a plan with a different us (and thus was unable to encounter that version of us again, since they didn’t travel together) and then we proceed to go back in time (enter a universe that was at a specific moment in time) and made that plan with a Yulia that WAS NOT the Yulia we just left back in the imperial era, and unless we travel with the new Yulia, we will never be able to encounter that one again, although we could still run into a third Yulia who had made the same plan with a different us. (it’s leapfrogging, but it makes sense)
what this also means is that the entire story is a completely selfish crusade on our part to find a universe that we’re happy with, since each one we weren’t happy with won’t be saved, since we are no longer within them.
IF it’s time traveling at all, the problem here is the devs havn’t outright said if this is supposed to be linear time travel, non linear time travel, or multiverse hopping (which isn’t technically time travel)
As I mentioned before I still maintain that the devs could be playing with the idea that it is both. But since it’s not completely finished yet I’m looking forward to seeing what happens and enjoying trying to figure out where it may all be heading.
well no, because time travel implies that you are altering an as off yet occurring event (if you travel to the past), or you’re just skipping a period of time (if you travel to the future).
with multiverse hopping you are entering what is basically a copy of events, just at a different point in their happening, but it has no effect on the universe you came from, nor would it have existed in the first place had you not used whatever method you used to go there in the first place (in our case, magic)
My interpretation of the multiverse or the “many world” universe is similar to yours. Except I also consider the version that every possible action in the universe do take place and each splits into their own universe (I.e. universes are not selectively created by consciousness but simply do, as a matter of course).
I also interpret “time travelling” as simply the act of travelling to a particular “point in time” and am agnostic to whether it affect my past or future or not.
well sure, but for the sake of story telling, the only universes that would matter to us are those created by our decisions, technically speaking each time we time travel we create 2 universes, the one we arrive at (and therefore that matters to us) and a second universe where we chose not to time travel, and therefore eventually died in.
It may be semantics, but why wouldn’t you’d you call travelling from one universe into the past of a different one time travel? You’re still travelling backwards (or forwards), just a little bit sideways as well.
Although I really love theoretical physics, it’s one area which I’m too humble on to talk along without feeling like a complete idiot.
Our capabilities of experiencing multiverses starts from the 5th plane of dimensions so hopping within these worlds within these dimensional restrictions you would not be time travelling but simply having a new world perspective within the same time scale.
If we go up to the dimensional scale of 9, then it is plausible that multiverse hopping + time travel would solve the problem as we would be able to choose the properties of the universe which don’t involve the causal loop paradox which @Zarono is struggling with.
I might be completely wrong on all of the above though and would love to be corrected!
The developers have settled with the dimensional scale of 6 though, which I don’t have a solution for - YET! Because I’ve been watching too many paleontology videos on Youtube.
Here, let me share my disease: https://www.youtube.com/c/TREYtheExplainer/videos
Yes, this is based on the 10 dimensions of the Superstring Theory but using only the capabilities of 9 dimensions because going past it requires some really heavy plot armor for no reason.
Already the usage of 9 dimensions should would mean that the character(s) should be capable of simply choosing the universe and time where they achieve their goal but this could be avoided with not having mastery of it or due to their toenails being broken or whatever their reason could be - these ailments could be invented to be more consistent with the laws of physics which we know so far.
well no, to put it into analogy form, time travel is like living inside of a building with no entrances or exits, and (the time traveller) use the time travel device (in our case, the epoch stone) to alter that state of all objects inside the building, leaving ourselves unaffected.
where as dimensional hopping is using the time travel device (the epoch stone) to just create a doorway from our building to an adjacent one, where the state of objects is just different, but it doesn’t actually change anything about the building we came from.
it’s not a struggle, i just want the devs to tell us if this is a multiverse situation or an actual time travel situation, since in the latter they’d have to fix the yulia issue, or there’s literally only one way the story can end which is incredibly disappointing.
and if it’s the former than our character is basically just a selfish idiot fishing for a universe we like at the expense of the nearly infinite ones we ruined on our way through.
So even if you went back to the early universe of a different universe (assuming time flowed at the same rate & started at the same point), you wouldn’t concider that time travel in any way?
I’ve always viewed it as a river, you flow from the origin of the river to the end point (the sea) at the same pace as everything else (unless you get caught in a slightly slower part of the river, aka an intense gravity field or are traveling at relativistic speeds), with time travel being the ability climb out of the river & walk back upstream (or downstream).
Travelling to a different universe (which you call dimension hopping) would be getting out of “your” home river & travelling perpendicular to a neighbouring river. The new river might be moving faster, slower or the same speed as your original river, but once you get into it, you’re subject to it’s speed (and it may carry you downstream faster than your original river).
Additionally, you may decide to get out & rather than just walk perpendicular to the direction of flow of your original river, you may walk upstream a bit till you get to the next river, you’d still be travelling to a parallel river, but you’d also be travelling in time as well.
They’ve probably not thought about it in that kind of depth…
Correct me if I’m wrong but if the developers claimed that it’s linear time travel then there’s no reason to expect that the story would be operating at a lower or higher dimension?
If it’s linear time travel, then it’s well, that.
If it’s multiverse time travel then I don’t see a reason why the character would be restricted to linear time travel in only one universe unless evil Aku has thrown Samurai Jack down the portal or something.
Multiverse time traveling capabilities should be a redundant factor for the current story as it’s never played out. They can just say that Yulia is magic!
I have also realized that my former statement is wrong and should be shoved up to 9th dimension which I will edit now
I have time travelled to the past and removed all evidence of me typing 7.
Why would the ending be disappointing in the former scenario?
if so then yulia can’t know us from our future without creating a paradox (as it would then force us to become that version of us that she knows to become the version of her that meets us to begin with)
if it’s a multiververse then the character can’t time travel at all, only enter a universe that has reached a desirable point in time to be at for our purposes (something that would be easier to prove if the story didn’t have us basically start in the ruined era and work our way backwards, leaving me only able to cite the college of welren quest and the shining coast side quest, which would both create a paradox in non-linear time travel)
because the game presents itself as us fighting to save the timeline from a terrible fate (at the hands of rahyeh, the immortal emperor, and the void, in that order) but if it plays out this way, then we didn’t save jack, and i don’t imagine the character will have an existential crisis over it.
well no, because if you were to spend, say, a year in that universe, then return to your original one, a year would have also passed in your absence, and would reflect nothing that you did in the other universe (if i set my house on fire, then come to your house and throw a bunch of water everywhere, my house still burns down and now yours is all wet, and nobody was helped)
in this scenario, imagine that there’s a single boat in each river, and it is this boat that you get into and out of, even if you leave the river, the boat keeps going, and if you want to come back, you still have to get into the boat, where it has ended up.
This can be magic or completely new laws of physics by having 9th dimension capabilities.
Multiverse time travel can occur if the story would take place in the 6th dimension or above.
We save one universe - is that not enough to provide satisfaction?
I saved a bee when I was swimming in a lake yesterday - I had great satisfaction although there are a few more of them!
Ah, you see, that’s totally not how time travel works in my head cannon. In your example there can’t be any time travel since the boat is the only way to experience the universe and there’s only one of them. Which sucks, no Dr Who timey wimey shenanigans which would make Llama a very sad domesticated camelid. Though your building metaphor makes more sense now.
