Regarding time-travel, science fiction usually follows one of three paths:
- The “Back to the Future” model: changing the past changes the present. If someone time travels to the past, changes something and then returns to the present, they may find a very different reality from the one they left; they may even erase themselves from existence, depending on how much of the past they change
- The “Avengers: Endgame” model: changing the past creates a splint timeline with the changes, but the original timeline is unchanged. Going to the past, changing something and then coming back would lead to the exact same reality one left from; the future of the altered past would be a new, different timelin e
- The “12 Monkeys” model: trying to change the past created the present. If someone went back in time to kill baby Hitler, they would fail and learn that their attempt was what actually caused today’s present to be like it is. The past cannot be changed, and the attempts to do so are already part of history.
Now, what is Last Epoch’s model?
When we meet the Oracle, she has already met our characters. Which means, our future is actually her past – the actions we were going to take were already part of the timeline we were living in. Travelling through time was not changing the future, rather reaffirming what had already happened. This is the “12 Monkeys” model…
…Which means, our characters actually can’t change the future. The Ruined Era cannot be prevented, nor can the End of Time.
I don’t really expect the storyline to address this – IMO, this was a wasted opportunity to deal with a scenario in which acting in the past actually changes the future as we advanced through the cam paign.
But I would really enjoy if, at the end of the campaign, we were to fight Orobyss, get a temporary victory (as he claimed he cannot be really defeated, being the god of time and fate), and then use his power to go back in time to the Burning Forest. And then we would kill both Grael and the low level version of our characters. Without those two, there would be no Immortal Emperor and no one to drive Apophis into the past to turn the Observer into Orobyss.
What do you think Last Epoch’s time travel model is?