Masked said:
As for the Sox thing, what I was saying was kinda confusing but think about it this way. Before the game starts Ethan starts out with Sox A, then when the hole opens at the beginning and he receives the pen, that's Sox B (from the future). At the end of the game, Ethan sends Sox A back in time, leaving him only with Sox B. However, since objects disappear in their new timeline when the point of time at which they left their original timeline (like Irving as Twombly said and I mentioned before), Sox B would disappear as soon as he sent Sox A back in time. So... all of his Soxes are gone. Unless if there are more than two Soxes, some of which were sent even into the present by even farther into the future which just complicates things, the ending FMV showing Sox by Ethan's bed is confusing.
On a side note does anyone understand how Twombly became Irving? Irving/Twombly tried to explain it but the explanation was so weird I couldn't understand it
Yeah, I'm probably thinking way too much about this game... there are some serious continuity errors
The problem is that Irving's million-dollar explanation doesn't fit with the way things worked out. His explanation went like this:
Say you have a million dollars. You send it five minutes into the past with your Time Hollow. Now, time resolves and you have a million dollars (from the past), but you don't have be million dollars you just put into the hole using your Time Hollow (that's obvious, right?)
So you only have one Derek, and only one Sox, because you put one in the hole and got a duplicate back from the past. So far, so good... everything makes sense.
Except for two little things. First: If you send something back, that changes the past... and now there's a good chance you didn't put the million dollars (or the Sox, or Derek) into the hole after all. (The game acknowledges this by the way you seem to 'teleport' every time you use your Time Hollow -- because, of course, since history was different, you never went to the place where you used your Time Hollow, and never actually used it.) Needless to say, this is a paradox. No, having the time-shifted duplicate magically disappear eventually for no adequately explained reason does not explain this, although the game
wants that to be the answer, due to the second point...
Second: The game really, really, really wants the Derek that remains at the end of the game, and the Irving that explains the million-dollar question to you, to be the 'original' ones -- the ones that never went into the hole. As you'll see if you look at the initial explanation for the million-dollar question, this doesn't work (the reason you only have one Sox, Derek, or Irving is because you put that original into the whole... so the one that's left is the time-shifted duplicate.) It's perfectly logical that way, except that that would mean that the Irving present in the game wouldn't be able to use his Time Hollow after first going into the hole, and the Derek who married his childhood sweetheart would not be the one left at the end of the game (hardly a happy ending -- she'd be left with a copy of her husband that she never knew.)
The game doesn't really care which Sox you end up with, but since that one is a Stable Time Loop (you
must put Sox into the hole in every iteration, or you never receive your Time Hollow and everything falls apart) common sense says you'd have to be left with the time-shifted duplicate. (Otherwise, you have two totally unconnected Soxes, one that constantly loops back and one that never goes into the hole at all -- which makes no sense. Having Sox slip back and then live forwards again makes relatively good time-travel sense, even if it doesn't fit with the rest of the series logic.)
Basically, long story short: The game had to screw all its explanations up and create bizarre magical rules about time-shifted duplicates disappearing because it wanted to ensure that the "right" Derek and Irving were left after their loops were resolved, even though common sense would say you'd have the "wrong" ones left (the ones who have been through the hole.)
Oh, and as for the original Jack Twombly... Irving, um, Irving politely talked him into retiring. Yes. He gave Twombly a penson and Twombly retired somewhere and lived happily ever after. That is what happened to Jack Twombly.
(Seriously, though, the obvious conclusion is that Irving killed him. If you want a less violent possibility, another option is that by taking his place way back when, Young Irving simply preempted him -- there was another, original Jack Twombly who
would have applied for a job at the school at some point, but Irving was already working there, so the job opening didn't exist and Twombly's life went very differently. Honestly, killing him seems a bit pointless, since all Irving really has to do is get the job first. Not that that means he
didn't kill him, what with Irving being a psychopath and all.)
Then again, the game also accidentally implies that you should have a romantic relationship with your cousin at the end, so maybe we shouldn't look at it too closely (seriously, that is going to be
awkward.)
Another interesting point I wondered about: Irving sends himself into the past. Simple enough. He changes things, which influence
your entire life. You live through all that... presumably, you have no idea who Irving is that entire time? And then, suddenly, when you hit the point in the timeline when Irving went through the hole (in the
old timeline) everything hits your head in a massive burst of flashbacks?
I mean, that does seem to be the way it works, but it's a little odd. The game presents flashbacks as being the memories of the 'new' timeline (usually what you know about the new timeline is only whatever you can glean from those flashbacks), but from the perspective of everyone else, the moment of the flashbacks is when you get the memories of the
old timeline -- if Twomby-Irving was in the room with you when you reached that point, say, from his perspective you would in an instant go from seeing him as your friendly teacher Twomby to seeing him as the evil time-traveler Irving.
...so, given all that, why did Irving wait until you regained those memories before getting his revenge? From his perspective, after he enters the hole, you are helpless for almost your entire life, and the logical time to attack you would have been just after he kills your parents (before you regain your memories relating to him.) But for some reason, he waited until you regained your memories so you could fight back.
I think that
this movie sums the whole thing up nicely...