EmperorOfCanada said:
Some of you all really need to brush up on your temporal theory
Not really. The handling of time-travel in this game is very
Timey Wimey Ball -- it doesn't follow any set of rules, it just works however the plot needs it to.
The biggest example: For most of the game, when someone changes time, the change kicks in 'instantly', and hits everyone completely into a totally new revised world, except for Time Hollow holders and people outside of time, right? There is no such thing as a 'partial' change; changes happen when you perform them, and not before. In other words, the fact that I
will save my friend from the accident that got him out of sports (if you do it -- it's optional) doesn't cause him to be saved when I first know him. The fact that I
will save the dog from the treehouse doesn't mean it's been saved initially, when the game starts. I don't have to live through the villain's changes to the timeline -- from killing my parents to everything he did in Chapter 5 -- until after he does them, when the world is suddenly revised. This all fits into one coherent view at time-travel.
But at the very end of the game, it pulls a
Stable Time Loop on you. This seems satisfying at first, but when you think about it, it doesn't work with the game's established logic at all.
The problem is, just like with the dog or the ladder accident -- according to the series time-travel logic, my receiving the pen is not applied to the timeline until
after I do it in the future (at which point it's applied retroactively.) In other words, a Stable Time Loop cannot happen; I can't receive the pen from myself, for the same reason that the dog wasn't saved until I did it in the present. Just like I had to live through a world where the dog wasn't saved to reach the point where I can use the pen to actually save it, you would have to live through a world where you hadn't received the pen, before you can give the pen to yourself and apply that revision to the timeline (an impossibility.) The version of me that saved the dog first lived through a world where I hadn't saved the dog; the version of me that lost my parents (and then saved them) first got to live through a world where I hadn't lost them, then had to live through a world where I hadn't saved them, until I reached the point where the necessary changes were applied. But the pen doesn't work the same way; it's applied to the timeline all along, and in fact that setup
requires that it have been applied to the timeline all along. That is not possible with the way Time Hollow's time travel system has worked elsewhere. (By definition, there must be no iterations where I do not receive the pen; otherwise, I never get it. Every single iteration must have the pen arriving... but that doesn't fit with the way the game handled anything else.)
There are time-travel setups where it
is possible to set up a Stable Time Loop, of course... the point is, Time Hollow is inconsistent about how its time travel works. Sometimes the things you do in the future influence the initial past you live through; sometimes they don't; and the only difference seems to be what's convenient for the plot.
Another plot hole: At the end, Derek goes back in time to save Kori. But this won't work, because the villain already went
further back in time to the point of the bus accident -- in fact, initially, when you were going to send Derek back, I tried to go to that place, since obviously you have to send Derek through the earliest hole you have access to if you want him to have a fighting chance. Even if Derek saves Kori, it won't stop that version of the villain from interfering, because the villain went earlier into the past and is now outside of time for the indicated timeframe, exempt from further revisions to the timeline just like Kori was for most of the story. He can no longer use a Time Hollow, of course, so Derek might simply be able to fight him off or kill him -- but he's still had a
lot of time to screw around with the timeline between the time of the bus accident and the time Derek arrives, and Derek's stupid method of arriving left him both helpless and announced his presence. The copy of the villain sent to the time of the Bus accident -- who gets to take
The Slow Path back to the future -- would know, specifically, to keep an eye on Kori at that particular point, and would in fact receive a Flashback alerting him that you'd interfered with it.
Basically, I don't see any explanation for why your change to the timeline at the point when Kori falls would automatically give you primacy over the villain's schemes, not when the villain already went further back in time and gets to interfere first.
(I did like the fact that your parents had to explain everything to Derek from the start every single time you revise the timeline near the end, though.)
The Real Jdbye
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Psionic Roshambo:
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BigOnYa:
